None of those systems do the same thing. ESD and ALSA do different things. PulseAudio and ALSA do different things. ALSA and OSS do the same thing differently.
The question you need to be asking isn't, Why another sound thingamajig? There are five or six major file systems; no-one sane gets up in arms about those. The question should be, Does PulseAudio fix a lot of the things that ESD got wrong? Does it help solve some major ALSA issues? Does it bring new and better features? Does it do something for the sound system in Linux that is desperately needed?
The answer to these questions is arguably yes, and sometime no. Try installing it for yourself sometime: it's not hard. Network auto-discovery is cool. Per-program volume is cool. Streaming audio is cool. It's not bulletproof yet, which sucks. It's a little complicated. But it serves a purpose, and clearly those driving Linux forward are trying to move away from ESD, just as the moved away from OSS and aRTS. Why is that? Could it be because sound on Linux pretty much stinks with ALSA and ESD?
I think researchers and experts, when they talk about how exploits are found, fundamentally mistake the issues. No-one reads source to find exploits: that's the hard way to go about it. Closed source has only disadvantages in this regard, especially with fewer hands to fix things.
The "many eyes" argument fails as well, though, simply because many eyes do not make for better security. Many hands, on the other... um... hand, make for better response time. Open source code tends to be more agile because it's open.
Instead of going after voice spammers for simply filling a market void, instead of creating burdensome bureaucracy and yet more laws, there should be a free-market, technical solution to this problem.
Allow the market to function, and such a thing will happen. Allow the government to function, and you'll have a half-assed law that only gets enforced when it's profitable.
Microsoft want to sell more operating system licenses to recoup their upfront cost and make a profit. Selling more copies does that. The upgrade treadmill is expensive for users, but extremely profitable for Microsoft.
Microsoft wants to sell fewer pieces of hardware because they make little or no or negative money on hardware. Extend the life of the console, sell more games without the drag of a new console on the horizon. It's simple economics. The upgrade treadmill in consoles is expensive for Microsoft, not just users. This is why they would like to extend the life of the hardware: the money is in the games.
If they chose to make money on the hardware, it would be different. If Microsoft had a monopoly in the console market, it would different.
My PS2 still functions well. But of course I'm a sample size of 1, so that doesn't mean much.
What I came here to say is that this can't be anything but a good thing. Why should everyone rush out to buy a new console every four years or so? If the PS1/PS2/PS3 and X-Box/X-Box 360 aren't going to change their strategy and market segment at all (like Nintendo has, in handhelds and consoles), there's no great reason to get the latest and greatest.
Better graphics are impressive -- I've seen Halo 2 on the 360; it's gorgeous -- but are they really worth dropping $500 plus a bunch a bunch of money for new games? There's a large segment of the market that apparently seems to think so.
Microsoft is probably, though I hate to say it, making a wise move. Don't create an upgrade path that people don't need or necessarily want to follow unless it provides a clear feature advantage. This isn't the operating system market: you don't WANT to replace your console every four years, especially when you take a hit on each piece of hardware you sell.
My wife, of all people, ended up getting this--she called me in yesterday and wanted to know "What the hell is wrong with [my] Gmail?" Among other things, it looks like they've further integrated the IM features (which we both hate) and made them far more difficult to disable. She's one of those computer users that gets absolutely terrified and unnerved if anything about her computing experience changes, so this is not at all a positive thing. I say this with as much charity as I can muster, but how exactly does your wife exist on earth without becoming at least a little adapted to change? The user interface of her life is changing all the time; I'm pretty sure computers aren't that much different.
Frankly, if my wife called me with a problem like that, I'd ask her to have a crack at figuring it out for herself. It's not a magic box. It's logic and layout. There's nothing difficult about it, in fact, I can name a hundred more difficult things I have lying around my house (including my washing machine: the user interface on those things SUCKS).
There are some very interesting technologies that can be applied to a new.p2p format while remaining backward-compatible with.torrent files. Such as auto-regeneration of almost-complete torrents via in-file redundancy (small size increase, massive benefit), the possibility of onion routing and obfuscation, new uploading algorithms, that sort of thing.
And honestly, if Bittorrent closes some of the protocol, the features either going to be ignored or reverse engineered. In which case there's already 2 different.torrent specifications -- the old, open one and the new, partially-closed one -- why not go whole hog and fork the thing all to hell? An application should be able to easily handle both.
Have you read China's constitution? Try it sometime. Then compare that document to the reality of living in the actual country.
South Africa may indeed be beating the US in terms of freedom, but that's not something you can tell by looking at a piece of paper. No matter which document format it uses.:)
Hell, look at the US constitution some time and compare.
I want to believe that there's a vast organisation dedicated to posting variations of this message all over the internet, people who refine their methods as they go, gauge reaction, and adjust the wording. They have a mailing list, a CVS repository with different branches, maybe host real-life meet-ups.
Otherwise, frankly, it's obnoxious. So I'll say this to said secret organisation: create a new "Non-Smug" branch, and work from there. For us. Please.
I'm trying to figure out if you're funny or insightful.
See, companies have been turning surveillance (legal or illegal, they don't care) into big business for a long time now. Shouldn't the idea of selling wiretaps be repugnant? Yes. Legal or illegal, it should be repugnant.
And if they sell them to the government for money... well... there are lots of groups who'd pay for that.
If a congressional panel doesn't legally have jurisdiction on a matter like this, then companies can't be expected to legally comply. If Congress wants oversight -- and why shouldn't it have this oversight? -- they should legislate it as such. They have the power to legislate, and they should use it.
It would follow if the two were remotely the same thing.
But of course they're not. Intellectual property is only useful and valuable when it assists in the creation of real-world value, the very thing that third-world countries neglect.
Other than that, intellectual property has no value. No scarcity, none of the properties that make real-world property valuable.
The only value it can have, then, is the value that we (or they, or whomever) force upon it. IP can have value only by collective agreement. And, unlike real property and real things, that agreement very easily be broken and cannot be easily enforced, making even the agreement worthless.
Unless, of course, everyone is completely honest and law-abiding.
Slashdot Mirror
My wife went in for some tests the other day, and her doctor said, "You have a few signs of Lupus."
She came home and told me. I looked her straight in the eye and said, "It's never Lupus." We both watch the show, and she laughed her ass off.
Later it turned out House was right. So either laughter is the best medicine or it really isn't ever Lupus.
(Also a fun word to say! Say it: Lupus, Lupus, Lupus, Lupus... it sounds like a Microsoft MP3 player or something.)
And have someone disagree with you and mod you troll or flamebait. No-one will read your comment. Except maybe a Google spider or three.
None of those systems do the same thing. ESD and ALSA do different things. PulseAudio and ALSA do different things. ALSA and OSS do the same thing differently.
The question you need to be asking isn't, Why another sound thingamajig? There are five or six major file systems; no-one sane gets up in arms about those. The question should be, Does PulseAudio fix a lot of the things that ESD got wrong? Does it help solve some major ALSA issues? Does it bring new and better features? Does it do something for the sound system in Linux that is desperately needed?
The answer to these questions is arguably yes, and sometime no. Try installing it for yourself sometime: it's not hard. Network auto-discovery is cool. Per-program volume is cool. Streaming audio is cool. It's not bulletproof yet, which sucks. It's a little complicated. But it serves a purpose, and clearly those driving Linux forward are trying to move away from ESD, just as the moved away from OSS and aRTS. Why is that? Could it be because sound on Linux pretty much stinks with ALSA and ESD?
I enjoyed your fansub, and would like to subscribe to your moonletter.
I think researchers and experts, when they talk about how exploits are found, fundamentally mistake the issues. No-one reads source to find exploits: that's the hard way to go about it. Closed source has only disadvantages in this regard, especially with fewer hands to fix things.
The "many eyes" argument fails as well, though, simply because many eyes do not make for better security. Many hands, on the other... um... hand, make for better response time. Open source code tends to be more agile because it's open.
Instead of going after voice spammers for simply filling a market void, instead of creating burdensome bureaucracy and yet more laws, there should be a free-market, technical solution to this problem.
Allow the market to function, and such a thing will happen. Allow the government to function, and you'll have a half-assed law that only gets enforced when it's profitable.
Microsoft want to sell more operating system licenses to recoup their upfront cost and make a profit. Selling more copies does that. The upgrade treadmill is expensive for users, but extremely profitable for Microsoft.
Microsoft wants to sell fewer pieces of hardware because they make little or no or negative money on hardware. Extend the life of the console, sell more games without the drag of a new console on the horizon. It's simple economics. The upgrade treadmill in consoles is expensive for Microsoft, not just users. This is why they would like to extend the life of the hardware: the money is in the games.
If they chose to make money on the hardware, it would be different. If Microsoft had a monopoly in the console market, it would different.
My PS2 still functions well. But of course I'm a sample size of 1, so that doesn't mean much.
What I came here to say is that this can't be anything but a good thing. Why should everyone rush out to buy a new console every four years or so? If the PS1/PS2/PS3 and X-Box/X-Box 360 aren't going to change their strategy and market segment at all (like Nintendo has, in handhelds and consoles), there's no great reason to get the latest and greatest.
Better graphics are impressive -- I've seen Halo 2 on the 360; it's gorgeous -- but are they really worth dropping $500 plus a bunch a bunch of money for new games? There's a large segment of the market that apparently seems to think so.
Microsoft is probably, though I hate to say it, making a wise move. Don't create an upgrade path that people don't need or necessarily want to follow unless it provides a clear feature advantage. This isn't the operating system market: you don't WANT to replace your console every four years, especially when you take a hit on each piece of hardware you sell.
Maybe Google is the new Apple ;)
Nice. I laughed a lot reading that. Sublte.
Ripped from here:
The LA Times
Yeah, no kidding, and it didn't stop. The word is "sloppily", dear Mr Worthen.
They dropped a PS3 really, really hard on the PC and called it an upgrade, right?
And the languages won't win either. Javascript will stall at its currently supported version as people strive for cross-compatibility.
Frankly, if my wife called me with a problem like that, I'd ask her to have a crack at figuring it out for herself. It's not a magic box. It's logic and layout. There's nothing difficult about it, in fact, I can name a hundred more difficult things I have lying around my house (including my washing machine: the user interface on those things SUCKS).
There are some very interesting technologies that can be applied to a new .p2p format while remaining backward-compatible with .torrent files. Such as auto-regeneration of almost-complete torrents via in-file redundancy (small size increase, massive benefit), the possibility of onion routing and obfuscation, new uploading algorithms, that sort of thing.
.torrent specifications -- the old, open one and the new, partially-closed one -- why not go whole hog and fork the thing all to hell? An application should be able to easily handle both.
And honestly, if Bittorrent closes some of the protocol, the features either going to be ignored or reverse engineered. In which case there's already 2 different
According to my calculations, not very long at all. Less than a picosecond.
Have you read China's constitution? Try it sometime. Then compare that document to the reality of living in the actual country.
:)
South Africa may indeed be beating the US in terms of freedom, but that's not something you can tell by looking at a piece of paper. No matter which document format it uses.
Hell, look at the US constitution some time and compare.
I want to believe that there's a vast organisation dedicated to posting variations of this message all over the internet, people who refine their methods as they go, gauge reaction, and adjust the wording. They have a mailing list, a CVS repository with different branches, maybe host real-life meet-ups.
Otherwise, frankly, it's obnoxious. So I'll say this to said secret organisation: create a new "Non-Smug" branch, and work from there. For us. Please.
Definitions and the meaning of words are, at least if you accept that definition of the meaning of a word.
I'm trying to figure out if you're funny or insightful.
See, companies have been turning surveillance (legal or illegal, they don't care) into big business for a long time now. Shouldn't the idea of selling wiretaps be repugnant? Yes. Legal or illegal, it should be repugnant.
And if they sell them to the government for money... well... there are lots of groups who'd pay for that.
Wow. But do you use your x-ray vision and power of flight for the good of humanity?
If a congressional panel doesn't legally have jurisdiction on a matter like this, then companies can't be expected to legally comply. If Congress wants oversight -- and why shouldn't it have this oversight? -- they should legislate it as such. They have the power to legislate, and they should use it.
It would follow if the two were remotely the same thing.
But of course they're not. Intellectual property is only useful and valuable when it assists in the creation of real-world value, the very thing that third-world countries neglect.
Other than that, intellectual property has no value. No scarcity, none of the properties that make real-world property valuable.
The only value it can have, then, is the value that we (or they, or whomever) force upon it. IP can have value only by collective agreement. And, unlike real property and real things, that agreement very easily be broken and cannot be easily enforced, making even the agreement worthless.
Unless, of course, everyone is completely honest and law-abiding.