Sure, there might be a variety of ways to hack this, but the point is, a keylogger alone won't do it. So, for most banks you have a username/password, and for HSBC, you have a username/password/password-on-virtual-keyboard-inp ut-by-mouse. It's not perfect security, but then again, what is?
HSBC has two points of authentication. The first is a normal username/password which allows you to view your accounts. The second requires typing a password on a virtual keyboard before you can do anything with your money. Online bill-pay, bank transfers, etc. are all behind this second password.
When I saw it, I immediately started thinking about how you could narrow the possibilities if you could record mouse movements. However, that still requires that you can get past the first login as well as record the user's mouse movements. It's not perfect, but it's better than a lot of online banking security.
A significant majority of the mac users I have know treat their mac as more then a simple tool. No idea why, maybe its the type of people why buy macs.
I think that's true enough, but I don't think it's the difference between thinking of the computer as a tool or "more than a simple tool". I think it's the difference between a construction worker who doesn't care what kind of a hammer he uses, as long as he can drive nails in, vs. a construction worker who has decided that, if he's going to be driving nails all day, it's worth getting a nice hammer with a nice grip so that the experience will be as pleasant as possible. Once you've invested in finding/buying tools that you like, you start caring about them instead of thinking of them as "disposible".
Is that your point, then? Then I should ask: why should they be interested in any way?
Yes, this is my point. I'm not upset that they aren't interested in feedback or increased an increased user-base, but I can tell you why they should be interested: If they want their project to succeed, then user-satisfaction and a large user-base is the way to go. If they don't want their project to succeed, then who cares?
And by a "successful project", I'm imagining one that receives backing somehow (which could get the developers paid), and/or a project that attracts users/developers, one that is actually useful/used, and one that will become something more than your little pet project that ends when you lose interest.
If you're just looking to scratch your own personal itch, then fine, scratch it. I have no problem with that. If you want to pretend you've given a great gift to the world, for which humanity owes you, then you can live in your own little fantasy world, too. If you want to actually contibute to building a useful project that will help others and be useful for years to come, then I hope you recognize that user-feedback can be a useful contribution as well, and open hostility toward your users serves no one.
Well, I'm a little surprised by your good experience with Compaq, a company which, in my experience, falls right behind Packard Bell as the "worst computer manufacturer ever". Those IBM Thinkpads, though-- you may have me there. I've dealt with plenty of laptops-- HP, Compaq, Toshiba, Sony, Dell-- and they all have quality problems that are comparable to Apple's or worse. But damn, those IBM Thinkpads are very solid.
They probably went with the 32-bit architecture because they wanted to make the transition ASAP, and 64-bit wasn't quite ready. Will it really be such a headache to support? Xcode, for example-- can't you just write the program once, and have it compile into a Universal Binary? I can't imagine supporting 32-bit and 64-bit Intel will be harder than supporting 32-bit PPC, 64-bit PPC, and 32-bit Intel.
I agree with this. I've said it before-- the main reason you hear more quality complaints from Mac users isn't that the quality is lower than Dell, but because the users expect more. Macintosh users tend to be picky, and Apple raises the bar for themselves by hyping their systems as being somehow "flawless".
Take the example of the Powerbook Ti, which had a tendency for a small amount of paint to flake off. If you looked at the forums on Mac news sites, you'd think it was the end of the world. On the other hand, how many models of Dell/Sony laptops have had some sort of problem where you could scrape off some paint, or the casing became discolored at some point? Pretty much all of them.
So what's the difference? When Apple user's computers have the smallest problems, they get together on their little forums and compare notes about every little flake of paint. When Dell users computers have small problems, they either ignore them, or they call some guy in India and try to get it replaced.
I don't see any Apple people, however, complaining about the quality of their hardware/software and wishing they'd bought a Dell running Windows.
"Are you a begger if you go to a public park or a museum?"
Of course not! if only because it's paid from your taxes. You become a beggar when you *beg*. It's that simple.
And what if you haven't paid with taxes. What if you're a child, or a visitor from someplace else? My point is that some things have been given over to public use, and you aren't a beggar for making use of those things.
Indeed, there does seem to be a misunderstanding. Perhaps something that might be attributed to English not being your first language?
In any event, you're missing my point entirely. I didn't complain that I'm getting rebuffed by open source projects when I make requests, but only that many developers seem disinterested in soliciting user feedback. If you want to know where you were rude, there's the fact that you called me a "beggar", as well as this sentence:
"So you go to some people that don't owe nothing to you; that *allow* you to use what they built with their time, effort and knowledge, offering them _NOTHING_ and are you really surprised that sometimes they won't pay their attention to your requests???"
There's a pretty hostile tone to your language there. I didn't ask you for anything. I didn't ask anyone for anything. I was making the comment that many in the open-source community (if not developers, than open-source fans) are not particularly accepting of users offering feedback, and you proved my point. You, insofar as you are "in the community", yelled at someone who was asking for nothing for their own sake. You said offering feedback was offering "_NOTHING_" (emphasis yours).
I stand by my position, that most users can't offer anything but feedback and an increased user-base. If developers want to see their projects succeed, I believe that they should welcome these two contributions (for what they're worth) and avoid alienating those users. Many developers recognize this and are, in fact, polite. Many in the open-source "community" (apparently including you), however, sometimes take the attitude that users are worthless leeches who should be yelled at for a failure to contribute. I don't find this attitude to be helpful.
Well, if you're a pro, you start developing techniques to speed trouble-shooting and resolution. Often, you'll get some sort of imaging technique (that will include a wipe/reinstall) that will be your best bet in many situations, especially if you're working on similar configs all the time.
However, if you want to learn how to fix computers, reformatting isn't the advisable route. All you'll learn is how to reinstall Windows. Also, if you learn more, you'll find that you can fix more of the problems you see faster than it takes to back up user data, wipe/reinstall, and restore the data again.
So, yes, if you're not very skilled, don't wish to be skilled, and just want a computer running well again, backup/wipe/install is great. Otherwise, it should generally be a last resort.
I was just about to post this. First of all, it's true that in most topics, fixing computers included, there's no substitute for experience. But especially when it comes to troubleshooting Windows.
I'm not on a mission to bash Windows here, but I've been fixing Microsoft Windows systems since Windows 3.1, and there's just no sense in it. A service pack might change where settings are located. The registry is a mess if you're looking for a specific setting. And in Windows, more than any OS I've ever dealt with, weird things happen for no apparent reason. You just have to have a sense about how Microsoft designs these things, and an instrinct for how to fix them. This takes experience, no more, no less.
And so my best advice is to get experience. Fix computers. If something is broken, don't wipe the disk and reinstall. Read error messages. In later versions of Windows, read your event viewer. Google for your answers. Microsoft Knowledge Base is useful, too. Befriend some computer geeks. Don't read books on troubleshooting.
thank god... for a second there, I thought you wrote "11 years old".
When I was his age, I was all the time using my computer. Playing Test Drive (CGA version) for hours, or programming in Pascal.
Yeah, I think you'll find that a lot of people here had some kind of obsessive geekery that kept us up all night when we were teenagers. It's not healthy, but it's not new, and it's pretty normal.
I think she gave it back after a mere 2 days because his behaviour became unmanagable. He didn't come to the last BBQ we organized. He spends all his days (and nights, I guess) behind his computer playing WoW.
Some of that's just discipline. When I was a teenager, I'd spend all night working on programs and playing games and such, but my Mom would still require that I go to family events and school and everything. I guess what I'm saying is, it's not the game-playing that's a problem, it's shirking responsibilities or misbehaving that's a problem. Then again, that behavior isn't new or abnormal among teenagers either.
Wireless "everything" is hugely overhyped. Yes, a wireless mouse is nice because it doesn't snag, but why do I need a wireless printer? Or a wireless monitor? Or anything else that's largely static for its lifetime?
So that I don't have to plug-in and unplug my laptop to 20 things all the time?
I didn't RTFA, but maybe there's some sort of QoS that makes sure Windows Update or something like that doesn't slow down your games? I think I'd rather have manual control, though, and just turn off things that I'm downloading in the background.
I'm not sure what else they could do, though, and I guess that wouldn't reduce latency as much as increase throughput for games. If you're halfway around the world from your destination, I don't know how a better network card is going to get you a faster ping.
But hey, someone tell me if I'm just not getting it.
Yes, in fact, when you look at what's come out of the WWDC, there are some good, solid improvements. Leopard sounds to me like it'll be a worthwhile upgrade, Xcode 3 sounds like it has some improvements that I, not being a developer, won't fully appreciate. And the Mac Pros came out, which is a pretty big deal. It means Apple has a full Intel line-up, and the MacPro looks to be a speed demon at a very competitive price.
And let's not forget that Apple just announced the Intel transition one year ago. The first Intel-based Macintoshes were releases a little over six months ago. Apple is a company in rapid transition and I'm sure it's a lot for them to deal with, and as their position solidifies, they shouldn't be making as many total-redesigns and huge changes all the time. OSX is becoming a more mature OS, and so the improvements should have fewer huge leaps and more incremental shifts. The should be continuing to fine-tune under the hood. The should be refining their UI instead of redesigning from scratch.
I just don't see that there's anything to complain about. They'll release some new hardware designs in the next year, most likely. I think that a phone and a media-center device may well be on the horizon-- now that they've finished the Intel transition and they're on-track to release the next version of the OS, I think their R&D may become more and more focussed on new devices and the next-big-thing after the iPod.
It is like complaining that you passed calculus without knowing how to use a slide rule. Ridiculous.
Not to be pedantic, but isn't it more like complaining that someone passed calculous when they have shown an inability to pass a calculus test?
ACID2 is not the end-all and be-all of web standards compliance, but it does give an indication of how well a browser is rendering certain kinds of CSS with reference to the W3C standards. It was devised on feedback from web developers to be a collection of common rendering inconsistencies between the major browsers. It's not completely meaningless.
You have not the time, you have not the money, you have not the interest.
There's a name for a such a person: it's called a "beggar". Since (in software-related terms) you are a beggar, I think you'd better adjust your expectations to those of a beggar.
Are you a begger if you go to a public park or a museum? Would you be a begger if you accept a free cookie that someone offered you at a picnic? I think you're metaphor is way off, and you'd better think of something better. Open-source software has been graciously offered to the world community, and those who use it are not beggers and freeloaders any more than you are when you buy a cheap book that's in the public domain. Trying to shame people for using public/free software is not good for the open-source movement or community.
Is just quite curious how many times I myself offered exactly what you say (just "increased user-base and feedback"), and *never* had such an answer.
But that was essentially the response you had just given me, and I hadn't even asked you for anything.
If you track the conversation, your response here makes no sense. You're making a big stink about how I'm a begger and don't deserve to use software, and then go on to assume that I have some wild expectations about developers custom-building software for me or something.
If you trace my posts, I've only claimed that I like a lot of open source software, and it serves me well in spite of the fact that I can't contribute. I went on to explain that it wasn't that I was disinterested in contributing, but only that I have no resources to do so other than to offer feedback from an end-user standpoint, and developers seem generally disinterested in that.
I don't see where your inflamitory rhetoric is coming from, but it doesn't seem an appropriate response to me.
Combining and iPod, Newton and cell phone is an interesting idea, but we have seen that there is some consumer resistance to combining gadgets. Unless Apple can really come up with a new and exciting way to 'do' the cell phone, I don't expect Jobs will entertain the notion.
There is some resistence, but obviously not TONS of resistence. Look at how many cell phones have cameras in them. PDAs have pretty much died-off, and their functionality has gone into phones (which is what Jobs predicted).
Besides, most of the resistence is due to the fact that the interface/design on convergence devices are terrible. You end up with a camera/phone/PDA/music-device that's hard to make phone calls on, hard to take pictures with, hard to pull up your contacts on, and hard to listen to music on. Then you have to deal with size/weight issues, battery time, etc.
But this is exactly the sort of thing that Apple has proven itself good at. Squeezing lots of functionality into a small space, and combining lots of different functions into a simple interface. If any company has demonstrated that they could accomplish this feat, it's Apple. Unfortunately, the carriers will never allow it, so I'd almost expect Apple to do this with a WiMAX VOIP phone.
That's great advice for rich people. Unfortunately, I have to work for a living, and don't have time to run around organizing fundraisers. I don't have money to pay programmers to write what I want. And again, I'm not a programmer.
I'm sorry if most open-source developers don't understand this or don't like it, but it's likely that the gross majority of their users have exactly two things to offer:
an increased user-base (by using it)
feedback
Seriously. That's all we have to offer. The "open source community" (and some individuals in it) are very schizophrenic about this. When someone mentions they use IE, some guy comes back with, "You're using Windows and IE?! What, are you a moron?! Use Linux and Firefox!"
Two days later, the same guy comes back and says, "I tried the Ubuntu live CD, and I love it. Thanks so much. By the way, I have this great idea on how it could be improved..." and they get yelled at.
"You damned leech! We allow you to use our software, and we owe you NOTHING!!! I'm not even going to listen to what you have to say! How dare you give feedback without PAYING ME!!!"
And then in some other discussion, we hear that open source software is better because it's made by people who are working out of love for what they're creating, and a desire to see it be good and useful.
All I'm saying here is this: If you're a developer and you don't want to hear feedback, then ignore any feedback. That's fine. But you should also understand that some of your users might not be able to offer more than that. They can be beta testers, and offer you ideas and suggestions, but they can't program, and they can't pay you. They're offering you suggestions in the same vein as you offered them software: in good faith and with good will. Often, they sincerely mean to be helpful, even if their suggestions are bad.
And if you don't want to offer your software to anyone who doesn't contribute or pay, and you want your users to "owe you", then find a licensing scheme to support that. I don't believe the GPL does. Under the GPL, i can leech off of the hard work of others all day, and I can be happy to benefit from great software that I didn't do a thing to create.
It didn't fail because it was "too Hollywood". It failed because of bad writing. After putting up with the POS that was Voyager for a few years (which decimated the good faith of fans), Enterprise just wasn't good enough. In other words, Star Trek was played out for general audience, and so the writing needed to be more clever, interesting, and entertaining.
I see this, too. From the perspective of an IT manager, things like "product activation" and proprietary formats/protocols are very frustrating. I want all my systems to work together without any hassle. I don't want the accessibility of my company's data to be at the whim of some particular company. I don't mind closed source necessarily, but open formats/protocols/standards are a must. I'm trying to avoid vendor lock-in wherever possible.
The only way I know to avoid these pitfalls is to migrate away from Microsofts offerings (wherever possible) toward open-source alternatives. I don't think I can do it everywhere yet, but I consider it necessary for the security of my company.
Redhat probably doesn't like it, but they can't do anything about it, and they make their money off of support anyway. However, if I wanted RHEL and didn't care about support, I wouldn't buy RHEL, I'd download CentOS.
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Really. Please, to all developers out there, steal every good idea you can within the law.
The hard part is almost never the idea anyway. Implimenting the idea in a useful way that's not a big PITA to use-- that's hard.
Sure, there might be a variety of ways to hack this, but the point is, a keylogger alone won't do it. So, for most banks you have a username/password, and for HSBC, you have a username/password/password-on-virtual-keyboard-inp ut-by-mouse. It's not perfect security, but then again, what is?
HSBC has two points of authentication. The first is a normal username/password which allows you to view your accounts. The second requires typing a password on a virtual keyboard before you can do anything with your money. Online bill-pay, bank transfers, etc. are all behind this second password.
When I saw it, I immediately started thinking about how you could narrow the possibilities if you could record mouse movements. However, that still requires that you can get past the first login as well as record the user's mouse movements. It's not perfect, but it's better than a lot of online banking security.
Isn't a "keylogger" for a keyboard? Wouldn't you need, like, a "mouselogger"?
I think that's true enough, but I don't think it's the difference between thinking of the computer as a tool or "more than a simple tool". I think it's the difference between a construction worker who doesn't care what kind of a hammer he uses, as long as he can drive nails in, vs. a construction worker who has decided that, if he's going to be driving nails all day, it's worth getting a nice hammer with a nice grip so that the experience will be as pleasant as possible. Once you've invested in finding/buying tools that you like, you start caring about them instead of thinking of them as "disposible".
Yes, this is my point. I'm not upset that they aren't interested in feedback or increased an increased user-base, but I can tell you why they should be interested: If they want their project to succeed, then user-satisfaction and a large user-base is the way to go. If they don't want their project to succeed, then who cares?
And by a "successful project", I'm imagining one that receives backing somehow (which could get the developers paid), and/or a project that attracts users/developers, one that is actually useful/used, and one that will become something more than your little pet project that ends when you lose interest.
If you're just looking to scratch your own personal itch, then fine, scratch it. I have no problem with that. If you want to pretend you've given a great gift to the world, for which humanity owes you, then you can live in your own little fantasy world, too. If you want to actually contibute to building a useful project that will help others and be useful for years to come, then I hope you recognize that user-feedback can be a useful contribution as well, and open hostility toward your users serves no one.
Well, I'm a little surprised by your good experience with Compaq, a company which, in my experience, falls right behind Packard Bell as the "worst computer manufacturer ever". Those IBM Thinkpads, though-- you may have me there. I've dealt with plenty of laptops-- HP, Compaq, Toshiba, Sony, Dell-- and they all have quality problems that are comparable to Apple's or worse. But damn, those IBM Thinkpads are very solid.
They probably went with the 32-bit architecture because they wanted to make the transition ASAP, and 64-bit wasn't quite ready. Will it really be such a headache to support? Xcode, for example-- can't you just write the program once, and have it compile into a Universal Binary? I can't imagine supporting 32-bit and 64-bit Intel will be harder than supporting 32-bit PPC, 64-bit PPC, and 32-bit Intel.
I agree with this. I've said it before-- the main reason you hear more quality complaints from Mac users isn't that the quality is lower than Dell, but because the users expect more. Macintosh users tend to be picky, and Apple raises the bar for themselves by hyping their systems as being somehow "flawless".
Take the example of the Powerbook Ti, which had a tendency for a small amount of paint to flake off. If you looked at the forums on Mac news sites, you'd think it was the end of the world. On the other hand, how many models of Dell/Sony laptops have had some sort of problem where you could scrape off some paint, or the casing became discolored at some point? Pretty much all of them.
So what's the difference? When Apple user's computers have the smallest problems, they get together on their little forums and compare notes about every little flake of paint. When Dell users computers have small problems, they either ignore them, or they call some guy in India and try to get it replaced.
I don't see any Apple people, however, complaining about the quality of their hardware/software and wishing they'd bought a Dell running Windows.
And what if you haven't paid with taxes. What if you're a child, or a visitor from someplace else? My point is that some things have been given over to public use, and you aren't a beggar for making use of those things.
Indeed, there does seem to be a misunderstanding. Perhaps something that might be attributed to English not being your first language?
In any event, you're missing my point entirely. I didn't complain that I'm getting rebuffed by open source projects when I make requests, but only that many developers seem disinterested in soliciting user feedback. If you want to know where you were rude, there's the fact that you called me a "beggar", as well as this sentence:
There's a pretty hostile tone to your language there. I didn't ask you for anything. I didn't ask anyone for anything. I was making the comment that many in the open-source community (if not developers, than open-source fans) are not particularly accepting of users offering feedback, and you proved my point. You, insofar as you are "in the community", yelled at someone who was asking for nothing for their own sake. You said offering feedback was offering "_NOTHING_" (emphasis yours).
I stand by my position, that most users can't offer anything but feedback and an increased user-base. If developers want to see their projects succeed, I believe that they should welcome these two contributions (for what they're worth) and avoid alienating those users. Many developers recognize this and are, in fact, polite. Many in the open-source "community" (apparently including you), however, sometimes take the attitude that users are worthless leeches who should be yelled at for a failure to contribute. I don't find this attitude to be helpful.
Well, if you're a pro, you start developing techniques to speed trouble-shooting and resolution. Often, you'll get some sort of imaging technique (that will include a wipe/reinstall) that will be your best bet in many situations, especially if you're working on similar configs all the time.
However, if you want to learn how to fix computers, reformatting isn't the advisable route. All you'll learn is how to reinstall Windows. Also, if you learn more, you'll find that you can fix more of the problems you see faster than it takes to back up user data, wipe/reinstall, and restore the data again.
So, yes, if you're not very skilled, don't wish to be skilled, and just want a computer running well again, backup/wipe/install is great. Otherwise, it should generally be a last resort.
I'm not sure this should by modded "funny"-- What part of "seriously" don't you mods understand?
Seriously, I think it should be "insightful".
It was making fun of TGIFridays, IIRC.
I was just about to post this. First of all, it's true that in most topics, fixing computers included, there's no substitute for experience. But especially when it comes to troubleshooting Windows.
I'm not on a mission to bash Windows here, but I've been fixing Microsoft Windows systems since Windows 3.1, and there's just no sense in it. A service pack might change where settings are located. The registry is a mess if you're looking for a specific setting. And in Windows, more than any OS I've ever dealt with, weird things happen for no apparent reason. You just have to have a sense about how Microsoft designs these things, and an instrinct for how to fix them. This takes experience, no more, no less.
And so my best advice is to get experience. Fix computers. If something is broken, don't wipe the disk and reinstall. Read error messages. In later versions of Windows, read your event viewer. Google for your answers. Microsoft Knowledge Base is useful, too. Befriend some computer geeks. Don't read books on troubleshooting.
He's only 14 (my wife is 11 years older)
thank god... for a second there, I thought you wrote "11 years old".
When I was his age, I was all the time using my computer. Playing Test Drive (CGA version) for hours, or programming in Pascal.
Yeah, I think you'll find that a lot of people here had some kind of obsessive geekery that kept us up all night when we were teenagers. It's not healthy, but it's not new, and it's pretty normal.
I think she gave it back after a mere 2 days because his behaviour became unmanagable. He didn't come to the last BBQ we organized. He spends all his days (and nights, I guess) behind his computer playing WoW.
Some of that's just discipline. When I was a teenager, I'd spend all night working on programs and playing games and such, but my Mom would still require that I go to family events and school and everything. I guess what I'm saying is, it's not the game-playing that's a problem, it's shirking responsibilities or misbehaving that's a problem. Then again, that behavior isn't new or abnormal among teenagers either.
Wireless "everything" is hugely overhyped. Yes, a wireless mouse is nice because it doesn't snag, but why do I need a wireless printer? Or a wireless monitor? Or anything else that's largely static for its lifetime?
So that I don't have to plug-in and unplug my laptop to 20 things all the time?
I didn't RTFA, but maybe there's some sort of QoS that makes sure Windows Update or something like that doesn't slow down your games? I think I'd rather have manual control, though, and just turn off things that I'm downloading in the background.
I'm not sure what else they could do, though, and I guess that wouldn't reduce latency as much as increase throughput for games. If you're halfway around the world from your destination, I don't know how a better network card is going to get you a faster ping.
But hey, someone tell me if I'm just not getting it.
Yes, in fact, when you look at what's come out of the WWDC, there are some good, solid improvements. Leopard sounds to me like it'll be a worthwhile upgrade, Xcode 3 sounds like it has some improvements that I, not being a developer, won't fully appreciate. And the Mac Pros came out, which is a pretty big deal. It means Apple has a full Intel line-up, and the MacPro looks to be a speed demon at a very competitive price.
And let's not forget that Apple just announced the Intel transition one year ago. The first Intel-based Macintoshes were releases a little over six months ago. Apple is a company in rapid transition and I'm sure it's a lot for them to deal with, and as their position solidifies, they shouldn't be making as many total-redesigns and huge changes all the time. OSX is becoming a more mature OS, and so the improvements should have fewer huge leaps and more incremental shifts. The should be continuing to fine-tune under the hood. The should be refining their UI instead of redesigning from scratch.
I just don't see that there's anything to complain about. They'll release some new hardware designs in the next year, most likely. I think that a phone and a media-center device may well be on the horizon-- now that they've finished the Intel transition and they're on-track to release the next version of the OS, I think their R&D may become more and more focussed on new devices and the next-big-thing after the iPod.
It is like complaining that you passed calculus without knowing how to use a slide rule. Ridiculous.
Not to be pedantic, but isn't it more like complaining that someone passed calculous when they have shown an inability to pass a calculus test?
ACID2 is not the end-all and be-all of web standards compliance, but it does give an indication of how well a browser is rendering certain kinds of CSS with reference to the W3C standards. It was devised on feedback from web developers to be a collection of common rendering inconsistencies between the major browsers. It's not completely meaningless.
You have not the time, you have not the money, you have not the interest.
There's a name for a such a person: it's called a "beggar". Since (in software-related terms) you are a beggar, I think you'd better adjust your expectations to those of a beggar.
Are you a begger if you go to a public park or a museum? Would you be a begger if you accept a free cookie that someone offered you at a picnic? I think you're metaphor is way off, and you'd better think of something better. Open-source software has been graciously offered to the world community, and those who use it are not beggers and freeloaders any more than you are when you buy a cheap book that's in the public domain. Trying to shame people for using public/free software is not good for the open-source movement or community.
Is just quite curious how many times I myself offered exactly what you say (just "increased user-base and feedback"), and *never* had such an answer.
But that was essentially the response you had just given me, and I hadn't even asked you for anything.
If you track the conversation, your response here makes no sense. You're making a big stink about how I'm a begger and don't deserve to use software, and then go on to assume that I have some wild expectations about developers custom-building software for me or something.
If you trace my posts, I've only claimed that I like a lot of open source software, and it serves me well in spite of the fact that I can't contribute. I went on to explain that it wasn't that I was disinterested in contributing, but only that I have no resources to do so other than to offer feedback from an end-user standpoint, and developers seem generally disinterested in that.
I don't see where your inflamitory rhetoric is coming from, but it doesn't seem an appropriate response to me.
Combining and iPod, Newton and cell phone is an interesting idea, but we have seen that there is some consumer resistance to combining gadgets. Unless Apple can really come up with a new and exciting way to 'do' the cell phone, I don't expect Jobs will entertain the notion.
There is some resistence, but obviously not TONS of resistence. Look at how many cell phones have cameras in them. PDAs have pretty much died-off, and their functionality has gone into phones (which is what Jobs predicted).
Besides, most of the resistence is due to the fact that the interface/design on convergence devices are terrible. You end up with a camera/phone/PDA/music-device that's hard to make phone calls on, hard to take pictures with, hard to pull up your contacts on, and hard to listen to music on. Then you have to deal with size/weight issues, battery time, etc.
But this is exactly the sort of thing that Apple has proven itself good at. Squeezing lots of functionality into a small space, and combining lots of different functions into a simple interface. If any company has demonstrated that they could accomplish this feat, it's Apple. Unfortunately, the carriers will never allow it, so I'd almost expect Apple to do this with a WiMAX VOIP phone.
That's great advice for rich people. Unfortunately, I have to work for a living, and don't have time to run around organizing fundraisers. I don't have money to pay programmers to write what I want. And again, I'm not a programmer.
I'm sorry if most open-source developers don't understand this or don't like it, but it's likely that the gross majority of their users have exactly two things to offer:
Seriously. That's all we have to offer. The "open source community" (and some individuals in it) are very schizophrenic about this. When someone mentions they use IE, some guy comes back with, "You're using Windows and IE?! What, are you a moron?! Use Linux and Firefox!"
Two days later, the same guy comes back and says, "I tried the Ubuntu live CD, and I love it. Thanks so much. By the way, I have this great idea on how it could be improved..." and they get yelled at.
"You damned leech! We allow you to use our software, and we owe you NOTHING!!! I'm not even going to listen to what you have to say! How dare you give feedback without PAYING ME!!!"
And then in some other discussion, we hear that open source software is better because it's made by people who are working out of love for what they're creating, and a desire to see it be good and useful.
All I'm saying here is this: If you're a developer and you don't want to hear feedback, then ignore any feedback. That's fine. But you should also understand that some of your users might not be able to offer more than that. They can be beta testers, and offer you ideas and suggestions, but they can't program, and they can't pay you. They're offering you suggestions in the same vein as you offered them software: in good faith and with good will. Often, they sincerely mean to be helpful, even if their suggestions are bad.
And if you don't want to offer your software to anyone who doesn't contribute or pay, and you want your users to "owe you", then find a licensing scheme to support that. I don't believe the GPL does. Under the GPL, i can leech off of the hard work of others all day, and I can be happy to benefit from great software that I didn't do a thing to create.
It didn't fail because it was "too Hollywood". It failed because of bad writing. After putting up with the POS that was Voyager for a few years (which decimated the good faith of fans), Enterprise just wasn't good enough. In other words, Star Trek was played out for general audience, and so the writing needed to be more clever, interesting, and entertaining.
I see this, too. From the perspective of an IT manager, things like "product activation" and proprietary formats/protocols are very frustrating. I want all my systems to work together without any hassle. I don't want the accessibility of my company's data to be at the whim of some particular company. I don't mind closed source necessarily, but open formats/protocols/standards are a must. I'm trying to avoid vendor lock-in wherever possible.
The only way I know to avoid these pitfalls is to migrate away from Microsofts offerings (wherever possible) toward open-source alternatives. I don't think I can do it everywhere yet, but I consider it necessary for the security of my company.
How about CentOS? It's just a rebranded RHEL.
Redhat probably doesn't like it, but they can't do anything about it, and they make their money off of support anyway. However, if I wanted RHEL and didn't care about support, I wouldn't buy RHEL, I'd download CentOS.