The John Lewis Partnership are similar in the UK. They're a department store and supermarket group who are wholly owned by their employees, as such giving them various democratic rights and a lot of say in how the business is run. Suppliers are treated well, and the supermarket division have school-building projects and such in countries which supply their fruit.
As for profit, well, the dept. stores were pretty much the only stores in the UK which actually increased sales last Christmas IIRC...
Thing is, last time I had to call for an activation key (a copy of XP Home on a relative's PC) it was actually fairly painless. Online activation failed, sure, but the phone was quick, and it was all sorted within 5 minutes. Very impressive indeed.
You really are one paranoid little man. Seriously, anyone who even takes a critical look at Linux to you is a sockpuppet of Gates/Ballmer/Allchin/Satan/me.
Also, since when was Slashdot anything more than a de-facto free software forum? As far as I can see it's billed as "News For Nerds. Stuff That Matters." not "LUNIX FTW!!! M$ SUX0RZ!!!!"
Actually, I put that a little wrongly. A symlink is subtly different from a Windows shortcut because it is only a pseudofile, a file system construct that looks and works like a file but isn't one. Windows shortcuts are just normal files (extension.lnk) which contain data about where the shortcut points to.
The first one is just a shortcut, as is the second one. A link is an entirely different concept.
To put it very simply, a symlink is a special type of file which when referenced calls a linked file. So let's say you symlinked C:/foo to D:/bar; if you then opened C:/foo, you'd get the contents of D:/bar. They're called "symbolic" links because they're just that; they do not point to data directly, merely represent it, so if you delete the symlink the original file is unaffected. Hard links, on the other hand, point to physical data on a volume, so if you delete one of those the original file gets deleted too.
To put it even simpler, a symlink is just like a normal Windows shortcut (a file that points to another one) whereas a hardlink is a more low level thing.
And I've told you a lot of times that that post ignores reality and is bullshit, and that my post stating precisely that is clearly visible beneath it.
You know, you really look like a cretin when you go on about so and so "loves" $thingyoudislike and "hates" $thingyoulike. It makes you look very insecure.
As Macthorp stated (as we're both from Britain, is this OMG ALL OF BRITAIN HATES OPEN SOURCE? That sounds like something you'd say) if something sells well then you can lower margins and receive the same amount of profit. This is how businesses, retail and just about everything involving profit ever works. Of course, ignoring reality is one of your main skills. Perhaps you should get a job at Fox News or the Daily Mail, they'd love you.
Although, that doesn't quite explain why Windows costs as much as it does. (Yes, you did just see me criticising Microsoft. Try not to shit yoursel...oh.)
What the iPod did to music? It popularised the idea of using a hard-disk player, made it socially acceptable and made the use of an online store (yes, DRMed, but the DRM isn't very restrictive (and, as I found recently, is very sily-eanay ripped-stray)) popular.
If someone can do that for eBooks, where nobody has been able to before, then they'll stand to be very successful.
I think his point is, rather, that if your currency is not backed by something of value (e.g gold) and then the value of it floats around, it is far too easy to have that value withheld from you in an instant, as you actually don't own anything except paper banknotes.
Not an unreasonable point, if that IS what he's getting at.
It's funny, but just this afternoon I tried to help someone make a simple graph with Excel and can say most of the things you did about Open Office. The graph defaults sucked and while I remembered every one of the tweaks to fix it, it was irksome to have to.
So in other words, OpenOffice's chart making is no better than Excel's.
Right? Is that what you meant?
Oh, but you should learn the free one that practically nobody uses. Important life skill, there.
Well, happy Twitter fan, I'm not sure what groupware is because I've never worked in a business that really used it. The pieces were mostly scattered, constantly replaced and never worked together well. KDE is now offering most of what a company wants in a way that works. Free software is like that.
Translation: "I've got no idea what the wanking fuck I'm going on about, but errrrrrrrrrrrr GNU RULEZ!!!"
I imagine he things that the M$ upgrade train and Vista are going to be good for the environment
No, I think that you're so desperate to bash Microsoft that you're pulling arguments out of your arse. How exactly did your post above relate to the comment above it? Not much at all.
I really love how you link to your own (or your sockpuppet Erris', as you did above) comments as if they're some impartial, infallible font of knowledge.
And then you call everyone else astroturfers and shills.
Just the other day, he annoyed me enough to research his faithful but insulting defense of M$ in all things.
OH NOES HE DEFENDED TEH MICROSOFTS?!!? And what did you do? You wrote one of your famous posts which links to a lot of his comments and talks shit about them all, just as you did with me. And then you dupe posted it, just to get across the message that twitter was stamping his little footsies in anger. Did you not notice that you got modded down to -1 Troll with that comment? Or is this, in your eyes, a failure of the new Microsoft-controlled Slashdot moderation system?
Even funnier, when the posts you've linked to include such disgusting M$ propaganda as "I like the Windows key, as it provides a handy shortcut key for OS-specific functions" and a comment lambasting both IE and Firefox, presumably in favour of Opera or some such. And he doesn't have to resort to petty "M$" style name calling (LOL firefucks lolololol, look I'm as inventive as twitter! Take that, sparsely-related Internet-based open source software development team!) and is far more reasonable and interesting than you, who has recently written a frankly hilarious screed saying that Microsoft are going to hurt the environment. Not in relation to the article, of course, just in general. You took a comment which said that not sending out plastic media might help the environment a bit and responded to it with "BUT VISTA WILL REQUIRE NEW COMPUTARS!!! LINUX ROX!!!". But I digress.
In conclusion: shut up, you prick. (and I'm sure that will be included in one of your delightful little posts with links to all my comments...go ahead, knock yourself out. I don't mind.)
I refer you to the AC who recently posted in reply to one of your shitfests: "Someone who enjoys and contributes to free software thinks you're a retarded jihadist FUD-spewing ignorant, petulant loser that contributes nothing to the community. Does this fracture your view of reality much? I ask because that is reality."
(Gotta say...good answer. Far better than the "BUT OMG IM A FREEDOM FIGHTER 2" bullshit I usually get when I say that sort of thing, nice to get a reply with some smarts behind it:)
It depends on whether the price of CDs is artificially inflated, really. For all you know, an album might well have cost $20 to produce and sell. It's also worth bearing in mind that labels also tend to release many less promoted and less purchased albums which don't recoup much if any of their investment, let alone make a profit; in this way, more popular albums might subsidise more esoteric/less popular ones.
I, personally, still don't think that price justifies piracy in any way, shape or form though. The labels have set out their price; if you are unwilling to pay it, then feel free to go and listen to some Creative Commons music or something. Nobody is entitled to major label music at the price they want to pay...nobody's really entitled to anything at the price they want to pay, that's life.
*sigh* Nobody's saying that you can't protest against DRM, just so long as you don't pretend you're on the same level of "injustice" as a poor sweatshop worker working cents an hour. DRM is controls on audio and video, for fucks sake; not even in the same ballpark. To be honest, it feels silly even having to refute the comparison.
DRM's a world away from working long hours for low pay in pretty much inhospitable working conditions, things which just about all humans would consider disgusting and deplorable.
Any attempt to claim that DRM and sweatshops are anywhere near each other on some bizarre scale of abusiveness is laughable. If you are seriously trying to claim this, I suggest you go and have a good, long think about your priorities.
Slashdot Mirror
I think you won the thread. ;)
You forgot the part about starting the setup wizard and going through the setup wizard, which is quite a bit longer than 7 steps.
The John Lewis Partnership are similar in the UK. They're a department store and supermarket group who are wholly owned by their employees, as such giving them various democratic rights and a lot of say in how the business is run. Suppliers are treated well, and the supermarket division have school-building projects and such in countries which supply their fruit.
As for profit, well, the dept. stores were pretty much the only stores in the UK which actually increased sales last Christmas IIRC...
(Disclaimer: I work for them)
Thing is, last time I had to call for an activation key (a copy of XP Home on a relative's PC) it was actually fairly painless. Online activation failed, sure, but the phone was quick, and it was all sorted within 5 minutes. Very impressive indeed.
Unfortunately, twitter meant it seriously.
Didn't you just prove my point, by carrying on with all this bollocks about me working for MS when that patently isn't true?
You really are one paranoid little man. Seriously, anyone who even takes a critical look at Linux to you is a sockpuppet of Gates/Ballmer/Allchin/Satan/me.
Also, since when was Slashdot anything more than a de-facto free software forum? As far as I can see it's billed as "News For Nerds. Stuff That Matters." not "LUNIX FTW!!! M$ SUX0RZ!!!!"
Actually, I put that a little wrongly. A symlink is subtly different from a Windows shortcut because it is only a pseudofile, a file system construct that looks and works like a file but isn't one. Windows shortcuts are just normal files (extension .lnk) which contain data about where the shortcut points to.
No.
The first one is just a shortcut, as is the second one. A link is an entirely different concept.
To put it very simply, a symlink is a special type of file which when referenced calls a linked file. So let's say you symlinked C:/foo to D:/bar; if you then opened C:/foo, you'd get the contents of D:/bar. They're called "symbolic" links because they're just that; they do not point to data directly, merely represent it, so if you delete the symlink the original file is unaffected. Hard links, on the other hand, point to physical data on a volume, so if you delete one of those the original file gets deleted too.
To put it even simpler, a symlink is just like a normal Windows shortcut (a file that points to another one) whereas a hardlink is a more low level thing.
I really wish I'd worded that post a bit better. I save all the good shit for this account. ;)
And I've told you a lot of times that that post ignores reality and is bullshit, and that my post stating precisely that is clearly visible beneath it.
You fucking cretin.
You know, you really look like a cretin when you go on about so and so "loves" $thingyoudislike and "hates" $thingyoulike. It makes you look very insecure.
As Macthorp stated (as we're both from Britain, is this OMG ALL OF BRITAIN HATES OPEN SOURCE? That sounds like something you'd say) if something sells well then you can lower margins and receive the same amount of profit. This is how businesses, retail and just about everything involving profit ever works. Of course, ignoring reality is one of your main skills. Perhaps you should get a job at Fox News or the Daily Mail, they'd love you.
Although, that doesn't quite explain why Windows costs as much as it does. (Yes, you did just see me criticising Microsoft. Try not to shit yoursel...oh.)
What the iPod did to music? It popularised the idea of using a hard-disk player, made it socially acceptable and made the use of an online store (yes, DRMed, but the DRM isn't very restrictive (and, as I found recently, is very sily-eanay ripped-stray)) popular.
If someone can do that for eBooks, where nobody has been able to before, then they'll stand to be very successful.
That's why cheap players don't do ogg
Erm...
I think his point is, rather, that if your currency is not backed by something of value (e.g gold) and then the value of it floats around, it is far too easy to have that value withheld from you in an instant, as you actually don't own anything except paper banknotes.
Not an unreasonable point, if that IS what he's getting at.
It's funny, but just this afternoon I tried to help someone make a simple graph with Excel and can say most of the things you did about Open Office. The graph defaults sucked and while I remembered every one of the tweaks to fix it, it was irksome to have to.
So in other words, OpenOffice's chart making is no better than Excel's.
Right? Is that what you meant?
Oh, but you should learn the free one that practically nobody uses. Important life skill, there.
Well, happy Twitter fan, I'm not sure what groupware is because I've never worked in a business that really used it. The pieces were mostly scattered, constantly replaced and never worked together well. KDE is now offering most of what a company wants in a way that works. Free software is like that.
Translation: "I've got no idea what the wanking fuck I'm going on about, but errrrrrrrrrrrr GNU RULEZ!!!"
I imagine he things that the M$ upgrade train and Vista are going to be good for the environment
No, I think that you're so desperate to bash Microsoft that you're pulling arguments out of your arse. How exactly did your post above relate to the comment above it? Not much at all.
I really love how you link to your own (or your sockpuppet Erris', as you did above) comments as if they're some impartial, infallible font of knowledge.
And then you call everyone else astroturfers and shills.
Just the other day, he annoyed me enough to research his faithful but insulting defense of M$ in all things.
OH NOES HE DEFENDED TEH MICROSOFTS?!!? And what did you do? You wrote one of your famous posts which links to a lot of his comments and talks shit about them all, just as you did with me. And then you dupe posted it, just to get across the message that twitter was stamping his little footsies in anger. Did you not notice that you got modded down to -1 Troll with that comment? Or is this, in your eyes, a failure of the new Microsoft-controlled Slashdot moderation system?
Even funnier, when the posts you've linked to include such disgusting M$ propaganda as "I like the Windows key, as it provides a handy shortcut key for OS-specific functions" and a comment lambasting both IE and Firefox, presumably in favour of Opera or some such. And he doesn't have to resort to petty "M$" style name calling (LOL firefucks lolololol, look I'm as inventive as twitter! Take that, sparsely-related Internet-based open source software development team!) and is far more reasonable and interesting than you, who has recently written a frankly hilarious screed saying that Microsoft are going to hurt the environment. Not in relation to the article, of course, just in general. You took a comment which said that not sending out plastic media might help the environment a bit and responded to it with "BUT VISTA WILL REQUIRE NEW COMPUTARS!!! LINUX ROX!!!". But I digress.
In conclusion: shut up, you prick. (and I'm sure that will be included in one of your delightful little posts with links to all my comments...go ahead, knock yourself out. I don't mind.)
I refer you to the AC who recently posted in reply to one of your shitfests: "Someone who enjoys and contributes to free software thinks you're a retarded jihadist FUD-spewing ignorant, petulant loser that contributes nothing to the community. Does this fracture your view of reality much? I ask because that is reality."
You're really clutching at straws now, aren't you?
(Gotta say...good answer. Far better than the "BUT OMG IM A FREEDOM FIGHTER 2" bullshit I usually get when I say that sort of thing, nice to get a reply with some smarts behind it :)
It depends on whether the price of CDs is artificially inflated, really. For all you know, an album might well have cost $20 to produce and sell. It's also worth bearing in mind that labels also tend to release many less promoted and less purchased albums which don't recoup much if any of their investment, let alone make a profit; in this way, more popular albums might subsidise more esoteric/less popular ones.
I, personally, still don't think that price justifies piracy in any way, shape or form though. The labels have set out their price; if you are unwilling to pay it, then feel free to go and listen to some Creative Commons music or something. Nobody is entitled to major label music at the price they want to pay...nobody's really entitled to anything at the price they want to pay, that's life.
The difference is this; Caesar, Gandhi, Tutu, Parks and Mandela didn't break the law motivated by a selfish desire for free shit.
*sigh* Nobody's saying that you can't protest against DRM, just so long as you don't pretend you're on the same level of "injustice" as a poor sweatshop worker working cents an hour. DRM is controls on audio and video, for fucks sake; not even in the same ballpark. To be honest, it feels silly even having to refute the comparison.
DRM's a world away from working long hours for low pay in pretty much inhospitable working conditions, things which just about all humans would consider disgusting and deplorable.
Any attempt to claim that DRM and sweatshops are anywhere near each other on some bizarre scale of abusiveness is laughable. If you are seriously trying to claim this, I suggest you go and have a good, long think about your priorities.