Google is a serious innovator in serving ads. I think the grandparent post is referring to invasive advertising - if he isn't, that means he doesn't know Google has ads, proving his own point.
Why won't "we" be able to? You bring up the idea about how Netscape got crushed but what about Mozilla/Firebird?
Have you seen the Google Zeitgeist browser percentages? Mozilla/Fire[creature]'s percentage is negligible. Even grouped with Netscape it's still lower than IE5 for crying out loud - for all CERT, Slate or even government agencies' help, it's hardly competing - and don't give me the 'people fake their browser ID' fob-off - for the amount of users Firefox has, an even smaller percentage will be doing that - adding those isn't going to make Firefox hypermagically emerge as a real competitor to IE.
Outside Slashdot and the geek community, Firefox is almost as obscure as ever. People resist change and use what comes on their computer - so if Microsoft want to make a terrible service and make it the pre-installed default, how many people will use it? Only the same amount as use IE - and that's only 90%+ of the market, right?
That, and the uncanny ability to crash without knowing what's crashed or what crashed it, and then close one half of the problem when it STILL doesn't know what it is;
" has caused an invalid page fault in , will now be closed."
Shock as electronics companies charge extra for brand name!
Am I supposed to be shocked by the fact big-name electronics companies sell their near-identical products at a higher cost than smaller-name companies? You think Levi jeans are any better made (from a practical point of view) than a no-label pair picked up in a department store? No, they're more expensive because of the label that comes attached. It's the same with electronic products - see the Simpsons episode where Homer gets cheap electronics like 'Panaphonics' and 'Sorny' - paying for the label has been going on forever.Move along people, nothing to see here.
There will always be a way for MS to gain a foothold in the Linux application market so long as the Linux alternatives lack functionality that businesses rely on.
Until conversion to Linux from Windows is just a case of installing the OS and office suite and everything just works (including VBA compatibility and all the other Microsoft-only features businesses use), then Microsoft will always be able to gain a foothold in the Linux app market - it just depends when they decide to do it.
The gentoo guys (and girls) have released 2004.2 for the x86, AMD64, HPPA, and SPARC. You can read the information page here or go straight to the mirrors."
I resent the implication I don't understand the responsibility we all have 'living in a modern society'. On the contrary, I think I'm responsible enough to know what's best for me and what's right and wrong for my body - I don't need the government to tell me - they can advise, they can educate, but they should not be able to enforce it in this way - not unless this is an issue with a high possibility of harming other people.
Most harmful drug experiences hurt no-one but the user themselves - if their kid turns out to be a drug user, a user's parents might be angered and upset - but a lot of less-liberal parents would feel the same way if their child was homosexual - should the government develop a drug against the pleasure homosexuals gain from sleeping with same-sex partners? Sorry, you shouldn't be able to make things illegal just because of the stigma they have in 'polite society', especially when the government allows (and even collects money via taxation from) products that are just as potentially damaging -Just ask the friends or family of any serious alcoholic; just because a drug is legal does not mean it is any safer from irresponsible use, and there are irresponsible users of every product there is - the responsible and sensible should not be stopped from experiencing something just because of the irresponsible minority - if that's the case, we might as well outlaw everything. right now.
Fifth floor, third door on the left, next to the Ministry for Snipping, run by Dr Timothy Ognobaki, your previously unknown third cousin, who recently passed away leaving you the sum of $17,000,000...
Childhood immunisation would provide adults with protection from the euphoria that is experienced by users
Call me too far left if you want, but protection from euphoria? That's a worrying precedent. Maybe I'm being too Timothy Leary here, but if people want to try something on their own bodies, they should be allowed to - drugs or no drugs, why should the goverment or a corporate entity have the power to give us 'protection from euphoria';
From dictionary.com
euphoria ( P ) Pronunciation Key (y-fôr-, -fr-)
n.
A feeling of great happiness or well-being.
Drugs or no drugs, is this something we want to be protected from? It's my body, I should be allowed to put whatever I want into it, but next time I want to be 'protected from a feeling of great happiness or well-being' acheived in a non-government-licenced way, I'll call them up.
Meanwhile, I'll go back to watching the world slowly march towards 1984.
OK, I guess I did oversimplify the issue, but the outcome is still the same - reguardless of if the problems were Windows's fault, a driver fault, or Compaq's hardware's fault, getting rid of XP fixed the problems for me. It's a laptop, I can't easily replace the hardware, so if it's an OS-specific driver problem (I was using the latest drivers, I tried all that) then replacing the OS is the only way to go.
It doesn't really matter to me who's fault it was, but this is a popular model of laptop, so there must be a lot of people out there experiencing the same errors as me - even from a fresh 'Compaq Restore' it would still misbehave. So maybe everyone with this model of laptop experiences XP bluescreens - maybe everyone with any Compaq laptop, or maybe just me - I just find it hard to believe I'm the only one in the world who had these problems, especially since they were present from a fresh install on a store-bought system.
When are they going to realise that when people hear about them doing this stuff, it makes them less inclined to buy their content? RIAA tantrums induce piracy because of the affect on thousands of people every time who will refuse to buy crap from such a selfish company.
All companies are out to make money, but haven't the RIAA heard of a little thing called 'PR'? They spend enough trying to make their latest teeny-pop artist look 'cool' and 'must buy' - why don't they pool their marketing expertise and realise that when they do things like this, they make themselves look bad and in turn discourage people from buying from them - effectively inducing piracy.
Also, how many copies of 'Willennium' do they have to distribute? Every time I see an announcement like this they're handing out a new 3-figure sum of the damn things to some poor public institute!
Clippy might not be a common part of the Windows experience, but blue-screens are. OK, so they're not the same TYPE of blue screen (well, different layout anyway) but that white-on-blue text is still a part of Windows life.
I've had all sorts of blue screen problems on my laptop (Compaq (I know, I know), bought from a big retail outlet, haven't put anything remotely dodgy on it... I still get all sorts of incarnations of that dreaded white-on-blue, only now it switches itself off straight after. Microsoft claiming Windows XP doesn't blue-screen is a cop-out; Turning itself off instead is not a more viable alternative, and if I see that 'Windows has recovered from a serious error' dialog one more time I will scream. but then I won't see it again, as after a month of battling numerous other problems with the infernal machine I formatted and put Linux on it.
I'm no Linux fanboy, if XP worked as well as it CAN work all the time, I'd much prefer it to Linux, but I know the problems I had with it on my machine were it's fault because everything's working fine now.
Just saying that problems with crashing are far from a rare experience, even with XP.
I give it about 3 weeks from the first release of the tech to the first seedy Russian server starts offering 'Br1tney_spear5.sculpt' to go with that new whole-body 'sculpting suit' certain 'adult-oriented vendors' will come out with;)...and about 3 minutes before the first release of the user shorts the whole damn thing.
...in the form of a Shakespeare quote: "My only love sprung from my only hate!"
In my opinion they should be embracing P2P - there are a myriad of ways they could actually use it to their advantage - Being a little less technophobic would let them bring down advertising costs, stop them pouring money into so many anti-P2P lawsuits and, most of all, let people discover the artists they will want to hear rather than the latest Britney Spears clone;
- Create a P2P client that offers free downloads of ALL the artists in their catalogue - sound insane? hear me out. The MP3s (or whatever format they choose to offer the downloads in, but it would, to get the most mindshare, have to be MP3s) would be encoded at a low bitrate - not so low that no-one would use the system, but low enough that a CD would be a viable alternative. (those downloaders who would just download and not even consider buying the CD, forget it, RIAA, they ain't buying those CDs even if you took away P2P altogether)
- They offer these files as a download from high-speed centralised servers, which would put an end to all those 'Remotely Queued' and 'Waiting for User' problems, as well as those slow download speeds from 56k'ers.
- 'You Might Also Like' categories set by users, with the option of making the client into an iTunes-type system, where you get high-bitrate MP3s rather than the low-bitrate ones, and get the program to use the ID3 tags in the files to give users a 'Buy this Album' button, maybe even with prompts if they downloaded, say, 3 songs from the same album, which after signing up you could order a copy of the CD straight from the record company.
- Throw a sizeable amount of money at the project for marketing. If they can get the amounts of people who listen to Britney Spears to keep on doing so by sheer marketing, they can get people to use a service like this. Throw in extras like signifiantly cheaper-than-store CD prices, extra content on the CDs, making previews availible of a few tracks from new albums via this service and nowhere else, and a few more tricks I'm sure their execs could dream up.
Hey presto, instant money-making machine - While Apple and a few others are doing it well with solely-MP3 services, I'd say it would be a great idea for the RIAA partner companies to group together to adopt - I haven't seen a service do this for CDs yet, and with the right amount of marketing (read: a lot) and well-chosen ideas for sweeteners, I'm sure this could work out pretty well for the RIAA, and even if it's a flop, they'd at least look a little better in the eyes of/.;)
[tinfoil_hat = on] That is, of course, unless they don't want us to listen to the Britney clones they're marketing - maybe they're going for mind(share/control, delete as applicable) rather than market(share/control). [tinfoil hat = off]
I don't see it as too amazing - I expect it took a lot of work to clone the Outlook interface using only web tools, but I don't think many people are that tied into the Outlook 'look'. If people want an email client, they can use one, but this, while being an interesting proof of concept, just looks stuffy to me, compared to the Gmail interface.
The Gmail interface is prettier, colourful and (as far as I know) is cross-browser compatible - people are just going to see this as a stuffy, broken (non-IE-incompatibility is becoming more of an issue with the amount of people switching over following the IE/IIS panic - it's not much, but it's there) and I don't think too many people craving that IE-app look in their webmail clients.
I used to have a Yahoo! Mail account and the interface was nice - it had a few annoyances but it looked good, worked almost as good and didn't have that insipid Microsoft grey (that even MS themselves are trying to get rid of as much as they can) that this interface has.
Interesting proof-of-concept, but I'm a graphics guy, I like things to look good - It doesn't interest me how much like a Windows application they can get a webpage to be - could be very good if they made it look a little less stuffy, but then wouldn't it just be another webmail client? As far as I can see the only thing that makes this 'Amazing' is the fact it looks like Outlook.
I've had my PS2 for years and it hasn't died yet. I've got an original Playstation I bought the year it came out and if I were to haul it out of my 'Junk Electronics' cupboard I'm 100% certain it would still work - the only reason it's there is because I don't need it thanks to my PS2.
Admittedly my PS2 is a little temperamental about working sometimes these days (though I've no such problems when it's turned upside down - anyone know why it behaves like this?) but as I had an N64 which died within 18 months of purchase, and two friends of mine have had GameCubes die on them. I hear a lot about Playstations being unreliable but I've never experienced it - then again I've had Linux recognise (out-of-the-box) several pieces of common hardware that 3 different varieties of Windows refused to detect without a lot of assistance, so maybe all my technology is backwards.
And as for repetitive games, that's hardly the fault of Sony, is it? it's the third-party dev companies cranking out sequels of prequels of sequels - and then there's EA's infernal sports-titles - FIFA 2004 had the player-editing feature removed to make sure people had to buy the next one to get the new players instead of just adding them to their current game - It's sad when games companies start shipping crippleware.
Nintendo's neverending streams of Marios, Mario Karts and Zeldas are the only big games on Nintendo consoles - at least there's the occasional big game release that's original with the PS2. Games development on Nintendo consoles was mortally wounded when Rareware went to the dark side (Microsoft Game Studios).
This might be a little offtopic, and this might be a little bit of an old point (or two), but it needs to be made. Not all P2P is criminal activity or takes bread from the mouths of 'starving artists'. I think we're all collectively tired of corporations, 'associations' and politicians treating everyone like a criminal.
- Some people don't mind distribution of their material via P2P. Hell, a lot of stuff that goes over P2P networks is public domain anyway.
Case in Point: My band (admittedly small) would be perfectly OK with everyone downloading our material over the latest and greatest P2P app all they want - simply because it's nice to know that as 'artists' (not trying to sound artsy about a hobby here) our art is being appreciated enough that people will take the time to download it. If people want to buy it, sure, that's great, but download all you want. I'm sure we're not the only band who thinks this way, either.
- Do these people know just how many people buy CDs after hearing a song or two via P2P? Here's something people like the RIAA don't seem to believe exists: I *like* owning the albums of music I like - I'm a collector at heart, really, and no real collector wants cheaply-made fakes in their set. My gf is an avid classic-comic collector, and she wouldn't settle for downloading and printing off the pages when she could buy the original, even if it did cost a lot of money to buy - While it's not strictly the same thing, I would much rather own the real CD than some burned copy I downloaded off the net.
I'd say around 2/3rds of the CDs I've bought in the last three years have been by artists that I first heard downloading songs via P2P. Sure, there have been bands I've downloaded MP3s of and haven't liked, but that's not a 'lost sale' - I wouldn't have bought it anyway - I don't buy what I don't like. (I think one of the things they hate about P2P is people can sample a band before they buy their album, rather than just buying what the record co.'s say is great).
What they've *gained* is a *lot* of ACTUAL sales from me due to P2P, and I'm sure I can't be the only one.
I'd like to say I'm glad I don't live in the US, as I'd hate for your erosion of freedom to happen here, but unfortunately I live in the UK, so I know whatever you guys pass, I'm going to get rammed down my neck in a few months time - but at least I have time to brace myself!
Oh God NO!!!! Anything but the command line. I need pretty pictures and maybe a dancing paper clip thingy. It's too much to remember a few commands.
It's not so much a need as a preference. Can new users *really* be bothered to learn how to use the command line? No.
Should all users have to drop to command line? I don't buy it. Does lack of command-line use make an Operating System inferior?
No, look at how Apple do it. Most 'new users' WANT their bright shiny GUI interface and won't want to dig under the hood to get things working. I'd say the need to drop to command line a lot is the main reason a lot of people don't switch to Linux (probably second after it's inability to run games without the likes of Wine or WineX). The command line looks daunting to new users. Big shiny buttons that tell you exactly what they do look easy. First appearances count for a lot, as does ease of use. command-line does not look easy-to-use. Be it an installer, a program or the whole OS, if it looks easy to use, if it is easy to use, a lot of people will use it. A lot of people dont care about the technical details and 'getting to know their computer', they just want a quick and easy way to get everything done so they can do their work (or play). Just ask the guys at Apple.
Oh, and leave Clippy alone, Clippy is your fr... OK, I concede that one, Clippy is a bastard.
- no difficult choices during setup (pre-configured PCs)
RedHat 9 installer. All I did was click 'next' (or similar) until the thing installed. Most complex thing I had to do was switch the CD to the next one. It's only complex if you want to do complex things, a default install is just a case of clicking 'Next' until it's completed.
- no need to read difficult manpages and other such stuff
Now let's make one thing clear. I *hate* manuals. Of any sort. I self-taught myself guitar because I hate manuals. I have never read a manual for a piece of software, this includes Linux. The things I learned about Linux were the non-obvious things - I will concede it's pretty complex if you want to do anything that is 'out of the norm', but please, most distros come with OpenOffice, a web browser and an email client - and an easy-as-pie update system (see RedHat as an example again) - what else is the average (newbie) user going to need?
- most hardware just works out of the box
Windows 2000 doesn't recognise my graphics card 'out-of-the-box'.
Windows 98, Windows 2000, Windows XP and even Windows Server 2003 don't recognise my router 'out-of-the-box'.
Windows 2000 and XP don't recognise my soundcard 'out-of-the-box'.
RedHat 9 and Debian both recognised *all* my hardware straight away. This might just be my experience, I'm sure it can't be this way for everyone due to the amount of Windows zealots who cite plug-and-play hardware as a plus-point for the MS system, but as far as I've seen Linux handles my hardware a lot better than any of the versions of Windows I've had to use.
- no need to choose between distros
This probably is the issue - people will assume they're all different and/or incompatible in some way. That and they won't know which is the most simple (RedHat being the most simple to install, I've found, and Debian the easiest to use/maintain for a mainly-Windows user).
- no need to choose between multiple software packages that do the same job, just differently
You can do that for Windows, too, if people stop using the default applications. Linux has defaults, too, and if you don't stray from them, there's no choices involved. The choices are there if people *want* to make them, not there so they *have* to. If they don't want to 'choose' their software package, they can let the distro do it for them, and use the default settings.
Don't get me wrong, I like Windows a lot, I've grown up using it - I prefer KDE to Gnome because of it's similarity to the Windows interface (zealots aside, it makes things easier for a relative Linux newbie like myself for the desktop to behave like I'm used to) I'm not one of these people who've spent their working lives in UNIX. Windows has a lot of plus-points going for it, but it also has a lot of niggly problems, Just like Linux has.
I don't think either group are 'spoiled', I think they're both good solutions to the same problem, taken in a different way. I understand the point you're trying to make about making things easier for the average user, but Linux isn't as far behind as many people seem to think. It's this assumption that prevents Linux from taking off on the desktop, more than any true technical reason.
If I had one true gripe with Linux it would be the need to drop to terminal to do things I'd much rather do in a user-friendly GUI. I don't care about 'grep', I just want the easiest way possible to edit settings. It's not whining, it's just common sense - people like things simple.
I think the difference is that if you put up billboards with pornography on them, you're exposing it to people who do not want to see it. On the internet, You don't come across too many porn sites advertising on perfectly normal pages. Most porn sites advertise other porn sites, most normal sites advertise other normal sites. Granted, sites in the rest of the 'seedier' side of the web (warez, etc) also tend to carry pornography, but kids shouldn't be downloading illegal software either.
I for one have never stumbled across hardcore pornography while browsing the 'clean' internet. It just doesn't seem to happen. It's a solicitation issue - if you put up billboards with pornography on them, you're exposing it to people who don't want to see it. On the internet, you have to go out of your way to see it to, well, see it. (the exception is spam, which is totally indiscriminatory - not to come bring up *another* spam issue on/.).
It's a parent's responsibility to make sure they don't go looking for pornography - these kids aren't being solicited into viewing pornography or having it forced upon them, they're deliberately going looking for it.
Sorry, but you can't compare public billboards to data you have to *deliberately* look for - they're entirely different.
A lot of people are screaming about how banning child pornography cannot possibly be twisted into A Bad Thing, but it is not child pornography that this debate really centres on.
The issue most people have is a large corporation having sway over what it's users can and can't view. It's not just child porn, what happens if someone posts anti-BT comments or messages? I've seen enough companies censor their support forums by banning users and deleting posts that criticise their service, do we really want a company able to censor the entire internet? the 'net is one of the few havens of totally free speech availible, and if BT is given the power to block one sort of site, then they will use it as a 'test case' to gain the right to block other kinds of sites.
Next will go the anti-government sites. Websites that criticise the government, simply blocked from view thanks to BT. Then regular porn sites. Scream at me to say I've got my tinfoil hat on over this, but all I see is a large corporation taking it's first tentative steps towards 'sanitizing' the internet. Blocking child pornography is just the start - the company can block child porn and live safe in the knowledge that anyone who objects will be labelled a paedophile or a supporter of child pornography. Then they can start sliding other categories onto their block lists, safe in the knowledge that anyone who objects to it will get the full wrath of the following knee-jerk reaction:
"Oh so you don't like internet censorship, then, do you? what do you want, then, you want kiddie porn all over the place then? is that what you want!" - BT looks good by proxy of public hysteria.
First it's the big, bad child-porn sites. Then it will be the big, bad anti-government sites. Then it will be the whole porn sector, then whole swathes of the internet that do not agree with 'company policy'. Like I said, I might have my tinfoil hat on over this, but the world seems to get a little closer to something out of a cyberpunk novel everyday.
...that Fedora Core 2 is the only one with the XP dual-boot problem that got noticed? It's not a problem with Fedora Core, it's not the fault of the Fedora team, it's a fault to do with the kernel (yeah, yeah, I know it's "strictly Microsoft's doing", but with Windows the dominant OS, whether they like it or not Linux distros should make sure they can work around it's quirks - lots of people will want to use a Windows/Linux dual-boot when they first dip their toes into the pool of non-MS operating systems, just so they can test-run a Linux distro while their familiar Windows desktop is just a reboot away, and to them, this will seem like Linux's fault - their box worked till they put this new alien OS on it, and now it doesn't, so they will blame the new OS).
Every article under the sun seems to be slagging Fedora for this problem when it's not even their fault. I guess that's just what comes with being the 'MS of Linux distros' - everyone's looking for an excuse to have a pop at them when their OS can't magically hop over problems caused by something it has no control over.
Personally I've found the new Fedora to be useful (despite a few quirks that people have mentioned already in the thread) and I've yet to see a reason to switch distros - I just wish people would stop bashing Fedora for what is, in fact, a kernel problem (or a Windows problem, it's up to you - just so the zealots don't lynch me).
Slashdot Mirror
>Google left out (Ads
Google is a serious innovator in serving ads.
I think the grandparent post is referring to invasive advertising - if he isn't, that means he doesn't know Google has ads, proving his own point.
Why won't "we" be able to? You bring up the idea about how Netscape got crushed but what about Mozilla/Firebird?
Have you seen the Google Zeitgeist browser percentages? Mozilla/Fire[creature]'s percentage is negligible. Even grouped with Netscape it's still lower than IE5 for crying out loud - for all CERT, Slate or even government agencies' help, it's hardly competing - and don't give me the 'people fake their browser ID' fob-off - for the amount of users Firefox has, an even smaller percentage will be doing that - adding those isn't going to make Firefox hypermagically emerge as a real competitor to IE.
Outside Slashdot and the geek community, Firefox is almost as obscure as ever. People resist change and use what comes on their computer - so if Microsoft want to make a terrible service and make it the pre-installed default, how many people will use it? Only the same amount as use IE - and that's only 90%+ of the market, right?
Ouch, that'll teach me to use the Preview button - it's supposed to say;
"(unknown) has caused an invalid page fault in (unknown), (unknown) will now be closed."
but then if Windows can understand it without knowing what it is... SO CAN YOU!
That, and the uncanny ability to crash without knowing what's crashed or what crashed it, and then close one half of the problem when it STILL doesn't know what it is;
" has caused an invalid page fault in , will now be closed."
Ingenious.
Shock as electronics companies charge extra for brand name!
Am I supposed to be shocked by the fact big-name electronics companies sell their near-identical products at a higher cost than smaller-name companies? You think Levi jeans are any better made (from a practical point of view) than a no-label pair picked up in a department store? No, they're more expensive because of the label that comes attached. It's the same with electronic products - see the Simpsons episode where Homer gets cheap electronics like 'Panaphonics' and 'Sorny' - paying for the label has been going on forever.Move along people, nothing to see here.
There will always be a way for MS to gain a foothold in the Linux application market so long as the Linux alternatives lack functionality that businesses rely on.
Until conversion to Linux from Windows is just a case of installing the OS and office suite and everything just works (including VBA compatibility and all the other Microsoft-only features businesses use), then Microsoft will always be able to gain a foothold in the Linux app market - it just depends when they decide to do it.
The gentoo guys (and girls) have released 2004.2 for the x86, AMD64, HPPA, and SPARC. You can read the information page here or go straight to the mirrors."
/.'ers
Ooh! show me these Linux-loving females!
posted with utmost respect for female
I resent the implication I don't understand the responsibility we all have 'living in a modern society'. On the contrary, I think I'm responsible enough to know what's best for me and what's right and wrong for my body - I don't need the government to tell me - they can advise, they can educate, but they should not be able to enforce it in this way - not unless this is an issue with a high possibility of harming other people.
Most harmful drug experiences hurt no-one but the user themselves - if their kid turns out to be a drug user, a user's parents might be angered and upset - but a lot of less-liberal parents would feel the same way if their child was homosexual - should the government develop a drug against the pleasure homosexuals gain from sleeping with same-sex partners? Sorry, you shouldn't be able to make things illegal just because of the stigma they have in 'polite society', especially when the government allows (and even collects money via taxation from) products that are just as potentially damaging -Just ask the friends or family of any serious alcoholic; just because a drug is legal does not mean it is any safer from irresponsible use, and there are irresponsible users of every product there is - the responsible and sensible should not be stopped from experiencing something just because of the irresponsible minority - if that's the case, we might as well outlaw everything. right now.
Nigeria has an entire ministry for ICT
Fifth floor, third door on the left, next to the Ministry for Snipping, run by Dr Timothy Ognobaki, your previously unknown third cousin, who recently passed away leaving you the sum of $17,000,000...
Call me too far left if you want, but protection from euphoria? That's a worrying precedent. Maybe I'm being too Timothy Leary here, but if people want to try something on their own bodies, they should be allowed to - drugs or no drugs, why should the goverment or a corporate entity have the power to give us 'protection from euphoria';
From dictionary.com Drugs or no drugs, is this something we want to be protected from? It's my body, I should be allowed to put whatever I want into it, but next time I want to be 'protected from a feeling of great happiness or well-being' acheived in a non-government-licenced way, I'll call them up.
Meanwhile, I'll go back to watching the world slowly march towards 1984.
OK, I guess I did oversimplify the issue, but the outcome is still the same - reguardless of if the problems were Windows's fault, a driver fault, or Compaq's hardware's fault, getting rid of XP fixed the problems for me. It's a laptop, I can't easily replace the hardware, so if it's an OS-specific driver problem (I was using the latest drivers, I tried all that) then replacing the OS is the only way to go.
It doesn't really matter to me who's fault it was, but this is a popular model of laptop, so there must be a lot of people out there experiencing the same errors as me - even from a fresh 'Compaq Restore' it would still misbehave. So maybe everyone with this model of laptop experiences XP bluescreens - maybe everyone with any Compaq laptop, or maybe just me - I just find it hard to believe I'm the only one in the world who had these problems, especially since they were present from a fresh install on a store-bought system.
...another tantrum from the RIAA.
When are they going to realise that when people hear about them doing this stuff, it makes them less inclined to buy their content? RIAA tantrums induce piracy because of the affect on thousands of people every time who will refuse to buy crap from such a selfish company.
All companies are out to make money, but haven't the RIAA heard of a little thing called 'PR'? They spend enough trying to make their latest teeny-pop artist look 'cool' and 'must buy' - why don't they pool their marketing expertise and realise that when they do things like this, they make themselves look bad and in turn discourage people from buying from them - effectively inducing piracy.
Also, how many copies of 'Willennium' do they have to distribute? Every time I see an announcement like this they're handing out a new 3-figure sum of the damn things to some poor public institute!
Clippy might not be a common part of the Windows experience, but blue-screens are. OK, so they're not the same TYPE of blue screen (well, different layout anyway) but that white-on-blue text is still a part of Windows life.
I've had all sorts of blue screen problems on my laptop (Compaq (I know, I know), bought from a big retail outlet, haven't put anything remotely dodgy on it... I still get all sorts of incarnations of that dreaded white-on-blue, only now it switches itself off straight after. Microsoft claiming Windows XP doesn't blue-screen is a cop-out; Turning itself off instead is not a more viable alternative, and if I see that 'Windows has recovered from a serious error' dialog one more time I will scream. but then I won't see it again, as after a month of battling numerous other problems with the infernal machine I formatted and put Linux on it.
I'm no Linux fanboy, if XP worked as well as it CAN work all the time, I'd much prefer it to Linux, but I know the problems I had with it on my machine were it's fault because everything's working fine now.
Just saying that problems with crashing are far from a rare experience, even with XP.
Should you build your UI based on feedback from the average Joe?
Yes, if you want the 'average Joe' to use it. That's the idea of 'desktop linux', right?
'Innovate' all you want, but if it's not what the average Joe wants, Linux is never going to get the marketshare it deserves.
You're new here, aren't you?
I give it about 3 weeks from the first release of the tech to the first seedy Russian server starts offering 'Br1tney_spear5.sculpt' to go with that new whole-body 'sculpting suit' certain 'adult-oriented vendors' will come out with ;) ...and about 3 minutes before the first release of the user shorts the whole damn thing.
...in the form of a Shakespeare quote:
/. ;)
"My only love sprung from my only hate!"
In my opinion they should be embracing P2P - there are a myriad of ways they could actually use it to their advantage - Being a little less technophobic would let them bring down advertising costs, stop them pouring money into so many anti-P2P lawsuits and, most of all, let people discover the artists they will want to hear rather than the latest Britney Spears clone;
- Create a P2P client that offers free downloads of ALL the artists in their catalogue - sound insane? hear me out. The MP3s (or whatever format they choose to offer the downloads in, but it would, to get the most mindshare, have to be MP3s) would be encoded at a low bitrate - not so low that no-one would use the system, but low enough that a CD would be a viable alternative. (those downloaders who would just download and not even consider buying the CD, forget it, RIAA, they ain't buying those CDs even if you took away P2P altogether)
- They offer these files as a download from high-speed centralised servers, which would put an end to all those 'Remotely Queued' and 'Waiting for User' problems, as well as those slow download speeds from 56k'ers.
- 'You Might Also Like' categories set by users, with the option of making the client into an iTunes-type system, where you get high-bitrate MP3s rather than the low-bitrate ones, and get the program to use the ID3 tags in the files to give users a 'Buy this Album' button, maybe even with prompts if they downloaded, say, 3 songs from the same album, which after signing up you could order a copy of the CD straight from the record company.
- Throw a sizeable amount of money at the project for marketing. If they can get the amounts of people who listen to Britney Spears to keep on doing so by sheer marketing, they can get people to use a service like this. Throw in extras like signifiantly cheaper-than-store CD prices, extra content on the CDs, making previews availible of a few tracks from new albums via this service and nowhere else, and a few more tricks I'm sure their execs could dream up.
Hey presto, instant money-making machine - While Apple and a few others are doing it well with solely-MP3 services, I'd say it would be a great idea for the RIAA partner companies to group together to adopt - I haven't seen a service do this for CDs yet, and with the right amount of marketing (read: a lot) and well-chosen ideas for sweeteners, I'm sure this could work out pretty well for the RIAA, and even if it's a flop, they'd at least look a little better in the eyes of
[tinfoil_hat = on]
That is, of course, unless they don't want us to listen to the Britney clones they're marketing - maybe they're going for mind(share/control, delete as applicable) rather than market(share/control).
[tinfoil hat = off]
I don't see it as too amazing - I expect it took a lot of work to clone the Outlook interface using only web tools, but I don't think many people are that tied into the Outlook 'look'. If people want an email client, they can use one, but this, while being an interesting proof of concept, just looks stuffy to me, compared to the Gmail interface.
The Gmail interface is prettier, colourful and (as far as I know) is cross-browser compatible - people are just going to see this as a stuffy, broken (non-IE-incompatibility is becoming more of an issue with the amount of people switching over following the IE/IIS panic - it's not much, but it's there) and I don't think too many people craving that IE-app look in their webmail clients.
I used to have a Yahoo! Mail account and the interface was nice - it had a few annoyances but it looked good, worked almost as good and didn't have that insipid Microsoft grey (that even MS themselves are trying to get rid of as much as they can) that this interface has.
Interesting proof-of-concept, but I'm a graphics guy, I like things to look good - It doesn't interest me how much like a Windows application they can get a webpage to be - could be very good if they made it look a little less stuffy, but then wouldn't it just be another webmail client? As far as I can see the only thing that makes this 'Amazing' is the fact it looks like Outlook.
More 'interesting' than 'amazing', in my book.
this should answer your question. Do not feed the trolls.
I've had my PS2 for years and it hasn't died yet. I've got an original Playstation I bought the year it came out and if I were to haul it out of my 'Junk Electronics' cupboard I'm 100% certain it would still work - the only reason it's there is because I don't need it thanks to my PS2.
Admittedly my PS2 is a little temperamental about working sometimes these days (though I've no such problems when it's turned upside down - anyone know why it behaves like this?) but as I had an N64 which died within 18 months of purchase, and two friends of mine have had GameCubes die on them. I hear a lot about Playstations being unreliable but I've never experienced it - then again I've had Linux recognise (out-of-the-box) several pieces of common hardware that 3 different varieties of Windows refused to detect without a lot of assistance, so maybe all my technology is backwards.
And as for repetitive games, that's hardly the fault of Sony, is it? it's the third-party dev companies cranking out sequels of prequels of sequels - and then there's EA's infernal sports-titles - FIFA 2004 had the player-editing feature removed to make sure people had to buy the next one to get the new players instead of just adding them to their current game - It's sad when games companies start shipping crippleware.
Nintendo's neverending streams of Marios, Mario Karts and Zeldas are the only big games on Nintendo consoles - at least there's the occasional big game release that's original with the PS2. Games development on Nintendo consoles was mortally wounded when Rareware went to the dark side (Microsoft Game Studios).
This might be a little offtopic, and this might be a little bit of an old point (or two), but it needs to be made. Not all P2P is criminal activity or takes bread from the mouths of 'starving artists'. I think we're all collectively tired of corporations, 'associations' and politicians treating everyone like a criminal.
- Some people don't mind distribution of their material via P2P. Hell, a lot of stuff that goes over P2P networks is public domain anyway.
Case in Point: My band (admittedly small) would be perfectly OK with everyone downloading our material over the latest and greatest P2P app all they want - simply because it's nice to know that as 'artists' (not trying to sound artsy about a hobby here) our art is being appreciated enough that people will take the time to download it. If people want to buy it, sure, that's great, but download all you want. I'm sure we're not the only band who thinks this way, either.
- Do these people know just how many people buy CDs after hearing a song or two via P2P? Here's something people like the RIAA don't seem to believe exists: I *like* owning the albums of music I like - I'm a collector at heart, really, and no real collector wants cheaply-made fakes in their set. My gf is an avid classic-comic collector, and she wouldn't settle for downloading and printing off the pages when she could buy the original, even if it did cost a lot of money to buy - While it's not strictly the same thing, I would much rather own the real CD than some burned copy I downloaded off the net.
I'd say around 2/3rds of the CDs I've bought in the last three years have been by artists that I first heard downloading songs via P2P. Sure, there have been bands I've downloaded MP3s of and haven't liked, but that's not a 'lost sale' - I wouldn't have bought it anyway - I don't buy what I don't like. (I think one of the things they hate about P2P is people can sample a band before they buy their album, rather than just buying what the record co.'s say is great).
What they've *gained* is a *lot* of ACTUAL sales from me due to P2P, and I'm sure I can't be the only one.
I'd like to say I'm glad I don't live in the US, as I'd hate for your erosion of freedom to happen here, but unfortunately I live in the UK, so I know whatever you guys pass, I'm going to get rammed down my neck in a few months time - but at least I have time to brace myself!
Oh God NO!!!! Anything but the command line. I need pretty pictures and maybe a dancing paper clip thingy. It's too much to remember a few commands.
It's not so much a need as a preference. Can new users *really* be bothered to learn how to use the command line? No. Should all users have to drop to command line? I don't buy it. Does lack of command-line use make an Operating System inferior?
No, look at how Apple do it. Most 'new users' WANT their bright shiny GUI interface and won't want to dig under the hood to get things working. I'd say the need to drop to command line a lot is the main reason a lot of people don't switch to Linux (probably second after it's inability to run games without the likes of Wine or WineX). The command line looks daunting to new users. Big shiny buttons that tell you exactly what they do look easy. First appearances count for a lot, as does ease of use. command-line does not look easy-to-use. Be it an installer, a program or the whole OS, if it looks easy to use, if it is easy to use, a lot of people will use it. A lot of people dont care about the technical details and 'getting to know their computer', they just want a quick and easy way to get everything done so they can do their work (or play). Just ask the guys at Apple.
Oh, and leave Clippy alone, Clippy is your fr... OK, I concede that one, Clippy is a bastard.
- no difficult choices during setup (pre-configured PCs)
RedHat 9 installer. All I did was click 'next' (or similar) until the thing installed. Most complex thing I had to do was switch the CD to the next one. It's only complex if you want to do complex things, a default install is just a case of clicking 'Next' until it's completed.
- no need to read difficult manpages and other such stuff
Now let's make one thing clear. I *hate* manuals. Of any sort. I self-taught myself guitar because I hate manuals. I have never read a manual for a piece of software, this includes Linux. The things I learned about Linux were the non-obvious things - I will concede it's pretty complex if you want to do anything that is 'out of the norm', but please, most distros come with OpenOffice, a web browser and an email client - and an easy-as-pie update system (see RedHat as an example again) - what else is the average (newbie) user going to need?
- most hardware just works out of the box
Windows 2000 doesn't recognise my graphics card 'out-of-the-box'.
Windows 98, Windows 2000, Windows XP and even Windows Server 2003 don't recognise my router 'out-of-the-box'.
Windows 2000 and XP don't recognise my soundcard 'out-of-the-box'.
RedHat 9 and Debian both recognised *all* my hardware straight away. This might just be my experience, I'm sure it can't be this way for everyone due to the amount of Windows zealots who cite plug-and-play hardware as a plus-point for the MS system, but as far as I've seen Linux handles my hardware a lot better than any of the versions of Windows I've had to use.
- no need to choose between distros
This probably is the issue - people will assume they're all different and/or incompatible in some way. That and they won't know which is the most simple (RedHat being the most simple to install, I've found, and Debian the easiest to use/maintain for a mainly-Windows user).
- no need to choose between multiple software packages that do the same job, just differently
You can do that for Windows, too, if people stop using the default applications. Linux has defaults, too, and if you don't stray from them, there's no choices involved. The choices are there if people *want* to make them, not there so they *have* to. If they don't want to 'choose' their software package, they can let the distro do it for them, and use the default settings.
Don't get me wrong, I like Windows a lot, I've grown up using it - I prefer KDE to Gnome because of it's similarity to the Windows interface (zealots aside, it makes things easier for a relative Linux newbie like myself for the desktop to behave like I'm used to) I'm not one of these people who've spent their working lives in UNIX. Windows has a lot of plus-points going for it, but it also has a lot of niggly problems, Just like Linux has.
I don't think either group are 'spoiled', I think they're both good solutions to the same problem, taken in a different way. I understand the point you're trying to make about making things easier for the average user, but Linux isn't as far behind as many people seem to think. It's this assumption that prevents Linux from taking off on the desktop, more than any true technical reason.
If I had one true gripe with Linux it would be the need to drop to terminal to do things I'd much rather do in a user-friendly GUI. I don't care about 'grep', I just want the easiest way possible to edit settings. It's not whining, it's just common sense - people like things simple.
I think the difference is that if you put up billboards with pornography on them, you're exposing it to people who do not want to see it. On the internet, You don't come across too many porn sites advertising on perfectly normal pages. Most porn sites advertise other porn sites, most normal sites advertise other normal sites. Granted, sites in the rest of the 'seedier' side of the web (warez, etc) also tend to carry pornography, but kids shouldn't be downloading illegal software either.
/.).
I for one have never stumbled across hardcore pornography while browsing the 'clean' internet. It just doesn't seem to happen. It's a solicitation issue - if you put up billboards with pornography on them, you're exposing it to people who don't want to see it. On the internet, you have to go out of your way to see it to, well, see it. (the exception is spam, which is totally indiscriminatory - not to come bring up *another* spam issue on
It's a parent's responsibility to make sure they don't go looking for pornography - these kids aren't being solicited into viewing pornography or having it forced upon them, they're deliberately going looking for it.
Sorry, but you can't compare public billboards to data you have to *deliberately* look for - they're entirely different.
A lot of people are screaming about how banning child pornography cannot possibly be twisted into A Bad Thing, but it is not child pornography that this debate really centres on.
The issue most people have is a large corporation having sway over what it's users can and can't view.
It's not just child porn, what happens if someone posts anti-BT comments or messages? I've seen enough companies censor their support forums by banning users and deleting posts that criticise their service, do we really want a company able to censor the entire internet? the 'net is one of the few havens of totally free speech availible, and if BT is given the power to block one sort of site, then they will use it as a 'test case' to gain the right to block other kinds of sites.
Next will go the anti-government sites. Websites that criticise the government, simply blocked from view thanks to BT. Then regular porn sites. Scream at me to say I've got my tinfoil hat on over this, but all I see is a large corporation taking it's first tentative steps towards 'sanitizing' the internet. Blocking child pornography is just the start - the company can block child porn and live safe in the knowledge that anyone who objects will be labelled a paedophile or a supporter of child pornography. Then they can start sliding other categories onto their block lists, safe in the knowledge that anyone who objects to it will get the full wrath of the following knee-jerk reaction:
"Oh so you don't like internet censorship, then, do you? what do you want, then, you want kiddie porn all over the place then? is that what you want!" - BT looks good by proxy of public hysteria.
First it's the big, bad child-porn sites. Then it will be the big, bad anti-government sites. Then it will be the whole porn sector, then whole swathes of the internet that do not agree with 'company policy'. Like I said, I might have my tinfoil hat on over this, but the world seems to get a little closer to something out of a cyberpunk novel everyday.
...that Fedora Core 2 is the only one with the XP dual-boot problem that got noticed? It's not a problem with Fedora Core, it's not the fault of the Fedora team, it's a fault to do with the kernel (yeah, yeah, I know it's "strictly Microsoft's doing", but with Windows the dominant OS, whether they like it or not Linux distros should make sure they can work around it's quirks - lots of people will want to use a Windows/Linux dual-boot when they first dip their toes into the pool of non-MS operating systems, just so they can test-run a Linux distro while their familiar Windows desktop is just a reboot away, and to them, this will seem like Linux's fault - their box worked till they put this new alien OS on it, and now it doesn't, so they will blame the new OS).
Every article under the sun seems to be slagging Fedora for this problem when it's not even their fault. I guess that's just what comes with being the 'MS of Linux distros' - everyone's looking for an excuse to have a pop at them when their OS can't magically hop over problems caused by something it has no control over.
Personally I've found the new Fedora to be useful (despite a few quirks that people have mentioned already in the thread) and I've yet to see a reason to switch distros - I just wish people would stop bashing Fedora for what is, in fact, a kernel problem (or a Windows problem, it's up to you - just so the zealots don't lynch me).