I'm glad that a lot of OSS developers don't have the same mindset as you. It sounds like you're saying, "Who the hell cares if Linux serves the needs of other people. As long as it serves my needs, everything else is wasted effort."
We as open source developers don't have limitless time and resources to spend making our software usable by everyone, or EZ enough for grandma to use.
I've never seen it implied that you must. But if you want other people to use it, you're going to kinda have to make it easy enough for other people to use it. Maybe you're the type that doesn't care whether other people use your software or not. If so, then fine, write code that is as single-user (i.e. you) usable and obscure as you want, and don't sit around and scratch your head when you're the only one that uses it.
Fortunately, a lot of OSS developers have decided that as long as they're coding something that's useful to themselves, they might as well make it a little prettier so that it's usable (or even developable) to others as well, and eventually, we end up with software that grandma can use. Maybe you don't care, and if so, fine, don't care. But if you're the one who has to pay for grandma's copy of Windows just so she can send an e-mail, you start to appreciate all of the time and hard work those OSS developers have spent doing something that you're incapable of doing.
Linux doesn't have to become a product, it does not need popular appeal.
Wow, is that ever a gross misstatement. How pretty does pretty have to be before you consider it crossing the line from being "designed for experts to use" to being usable by "the average person"? What if the guy (or gal, or group) who wrote, oh I dunno, IDE disk drive drivers decided that he didn't need to simplify those gnarly function calls, and that every time you wanted to open a file on Linux, you had to make some low-level interrupt calls? I mean the fact that you can just call a function named something like open() was just a simplification to make your life easier, right? Wasn't it just a way of increasing that programming languages popular appeal? Does that mean that languages that implement an open() function are evil or just a waste of time?
I don't care how much of an expert you are, unless you're programming in assembler, you're standing on the shoulders of giants. And even if you are, you're probably still standing on the shoulders of a giant that wrote the editor you're using, the keyboard driver that's interpreting your keystrokes, the display driver that's showing you your code, and so on.
So yeah, I find it incredible arrogant to essentially say, "Hey, you all have programmed it well enough for me to use, so if you make it any easier for other people to use, you're really just wasting your time."
As for me, I'll gladly take whatever OSS developers give me in terms of ease of use, and I'll be extremely grateful for it, even if it's something I feel is pretty well developed already. And if grandma can use it too, all the better.
Why must compromises be made so that Linux can be prettier and easier?
I'm sorry, I must have missed the memo that said that now that Linux is prettier, you can't still run it as a lean mean special-purpose machine. What compromises are you referring to? What exactly is it that you can't do now in Linux that you used to be able to? What nugget of "expert" functionality was it that was removed that had you all up in arms now? Last time I checked, I could get just as down and dirty with the low-level stuff as I always could. Yes, even in Ubuntu.
if I make a movie it's mine and that's _right_, and no matter what the law says, to censor the free flow of ideeas is _wrong_.
That's entirely subjective. What if instead of a movie, you make a cure to AIDS, and since it's yours, you decide that you're not going to sell a dose of it for less than a million bucks? I have a really hard time seeing how that's _right_.
Or what if your free flow of ideas is making up some completely malicious and slanderous lie about a business rival and telling all of his or her customers about it and taking out a front-page ad in the USA Today to tell everyone your lie? Again, I have a really hard time seeing how that's not _wrong_.
I can think of even more contrived examples to call what you said BS, but hopefully you get the point. As much as you like to deal in absolutes, when it comes to issues of morality, there is very rarely any such thing. That's why we have laws, at least in theory. To resolve people's individual differences in opinion so that we can all live together in a state of relative peace.
At any rate, I don't think it's Google's responsibility to change the censorship laws of China, and I don't think it's being evil if they, as a company, choose to abide by them in order to do business in that country. Hopefully, the laws in China will someday change so that they can allow freedom of expression without violating the censorship laws there, but until those laws there change, they have to follow them.
Let me put it another way: How would you like it if a foreign company decided that it would just start breaking the laws of the U.S. in the U.S. all willy-nilly, ignoring the ones that it regards as wrong? You don't think there would be any repercussions for that? (*cough* AllOfMp3.com...)
If they pulled out of U.S. markets because of some misguided holier-than-thou notion that they're morally superior to us, you don't think there would be long-lasting resentment towards that company, even if we eventually repealed the very laws they were breaking?
You know what I think would be a good thing for Google to do? Start offering a service where I could post high-quality downloads of my favorite movies and television shows without commercials. It would be the ultimate in freedom of expression. Unfortunately, though, we have these little things called laws that, while Google is not being evil, they still have to follow. Weird as it may sound, other countries have them too, and sometimes, they're not the same as ours.
Did you not read the summary? If the Australian government orders the content to be taken down, it will be taken down. Just because Google has a corporate goal of not being evil doesn't mean that it can afford to simply disregard laws it doesn't like, any more than you or I can.
Did it ever occur to you that Google would love to publish blogs that run afoul of the Chinese government, and that as soon as it is hopefully able to do so without international legal repercussions, it probably will?
I don't consider myself particularly evil, either, but if I did business in China, I would also in no hurry to start an international incident by showing blatant disregard for China's laws. And before I get hit with the "just don't do business in China" stick, 1) that's not a practical solution, 2) it wouldn't do any good, as others would be more than happy to fill in the gap, and 3) once China does (hopefully) become a country of greater freedom, would you really want to be the one that turned your back on the country in its time of gradual change?
Instead of posting these little snipes at Google for following the laws of the lands they're working in, how about attacking the root cause of the problem, the Chinese government? How many rallies have you been to in Beijing? How many letters have you written to you Congresscritter asking for the U.S. to put more pressure on the Chinese government to allow more freedom?
Well, I care how much it costs, and I care about rootkits, so I won't be buying one, although I did buy a PS2 and a PSP.
Just as people underestimate the impact of Sony's consumer hostility, I think you're also overestimating people's desire for Final Fantasy games. I don't know about you, but I am the geek among my family and friends, and if I say, "The PS3 sucks, you need to get a Wii instead," that actually has an impact on their buying decision.
But being a geek, I have to be careful that when I tell my family and friends, "The PS3 sucks, you need to get a Wii instead," I don't say, "Because they put rootkits on CDs," I say, "Because all the really cool geeks know that the Wii is a lot more innovative and fun. Have you seen that new controller?"
I'm not saying that I'm the only influence on my friends and family, but as a geek, we do have some measure of sway. Assuming, of course, we actually bother to use it and, unlike you, just give up and resign ourselves to that just being the way it has to be. Remind me again who the sheep are?;-)
Every once in a great while, something comes along that is such a mindbogglingly stupid idea that there's no need to even comment on it. I'm not even going to dignify this idea with an explanation of why it's so stupid; I think it speaks for itself. I will say, however, that anyone who actually buys one of these things should be shot in the head to make their death quick and painless, because at least that way, we won't risk their idiocy potentially harming one or more of the rest of us when they tell their friends, "Hey, watch this!"
Mental note: Never buy stock in a company named Aladdin...
Yup. And while they're still pretty expensive, (around $360), they're well worth it. The really sucky thing is that 2 250GB hard drives will set you back around $220. For $3,360, they weren't even willing to spend the extra $140 (probably less as a vendor) to bump you up to 750GB.
How many ways are there to say it: Sony sucks, and this device is crap.
It is price discrimination, but it's also a form of DRM, at least as I define it: Anything that keeps you from doing what is reasonably technically possible due to legal or administrative reasons.
There is no technical reason why I shouldn't be able to watch a movie I buy in Japan on a player I buy in the U.S. In fact, they had to add stuff to the discs and players to ensure that I can't. That's stupid, it's a form of "managing" my digital rights, and it's why I don't feel the least amount of guilt about bypassing it and ripping DVDs I legally own to my hard drive so that I can exercise my fair use rights to actually watch them.
For real? Did you even read the review? Here's the short summary (see my comment above for the long one):
This machine really sucks ass. It won't let you play your movies. After a bunch of jumping through hoops, it may oblige, but when it does, the quality isn't even that good. Oh, and it's about five times more expensive than everything currently out there.
Final rating: 8 out of 10!
Seriously, are you on drugs?
8 out of 10? Sounds more like 2 out of 10 to me.
on
Sony Blu-ray Media Center
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
You've got to be kidding me. Keep in mind while you read this that this device costs around $3,360 USD.
If this thing gets an overall 8 out of 10, I can't help but wonder how a device can possibly get dinged for less. I mean, really, from TFA:
What happens what you try and watch an HDCP encrypted movie on a display without HDCP? I hooked up a bog standard 17in, 1,280 x 1,024 display and tried to play a movie. The supplied InterVideo WinDVD BD software started to play and then stopped - and that was that. So there you go - the disc won't even play.
So your fancy expensive toy won't let you watch your movies.
Storage comes courtesy of a couple of 250GB 7,200rpm Seagate Barracuda hard disks
All that money, and it stores less than one of my desktop's hard drives
Being a Sony, there's plenty of preinstalled software on the system, highlights of which are Adobe Photoshop Elements and Premier Elements, along with Norton Internet Security. There's also a trial version of Microsoft Office.
Ooh, around $150 worth of software, which they've undoubtedly OEMed for probably less than $20.
I was very surprised to discover that there's only a single TV Tuner supplied.
So you can only record one television station at a time. I hope you don't have two favorite shows that happen to come on back-to-back, or you're just SOL. Even my five-year-old TiVo has dual tuners, and it's not you can't get a dual-tuner component for less than $70.
To play a Blu-ray disc you need to use dedicated software that can handle the HDCP part of the AACS encryption standard and Media Center can't do this at present.
This extra bit of complication brought to you courtesy of the letters D, R, and M.
I contacted Microsoft about this and it confirmed to me that there will be a plug-in for Vista that at the very least will let you launch an external application, such as InterVideo when you try to play a Blu-ray disc from inside MCE... For now though, to play the movie from the sofa you'll have to pick up the keyboard—although at least it's wireless.
Oh, so to play our movies, we'll have to actually upgrade to Vista when it comes out. Good, because it's not like you've already spent enough to buy the box itself, right? And I'm sorry, I'm not going to use a frickin' keyboard to play a frickin' movie from my frickin' DVD player on my frickin' tv.
The software supplied is InterVideo WinDVD BD for VAIO, a rather convoluted title. On first attempt we got a region code error message. I then went into the software and selected Region B.
Yet more hoops to jump through to play a movie, again brought to you by the letters D, R, and M.
There was again a step up but the overall experience was marred by grain and noise. In terms of immediacy the quality was not as impressive as the lush samples you see demoed in stores with super detailed close ups of flowers. There was also a hint of the system struggling with the frame rate at times.
Oh, now we see why it earned an 8 out of 10! Oh, wait, those are bad things, aren't they? Well, all of that is worth it if we get image quality that knocks our socks off, so let's get to the bottom line:
It was as clear as day to me, but actually not everyone in the office could make this out or was impressed by it. In fact many were as under-whelmed as I was when I first saw Blu-ray at the launch of the Samsung player last month.
I then hooked up a Dell 2407 24in screen that let me see the full 1080 lines of resolution. There w
Read on past the Linux stuff. This is the same group that took money from Phillip Morris and then (can you imagine?) complained that the Department of Health and Human Services report on the dangers of smokeless tobacco was a waste of taxpayer money. Go figure.
I missed the memo where apt-get worked on all systems. And the one that said that there are packages (and package dependencies!) ready for all distributions that do use apt-get. The parent has a valid point, if installation internals for both methods aren't needed, why would it not be better to have only one, preferably the one that is common to both KDE and Gnome? I think it would go miles towards having a standard adopted. (See my next comment...)
Don't get me wrong, packages have come a long way since tar xvf/make/install, but they're also still a long way from being as easy as you just implied that it is.
Plus, not to put too fine a point on it, this will be one more thing that developers will have to worry about. Right now, we have something like:
if (kde) { -stuff- }
else if (gnome) { -other stuff- }
else { -handle neither being installed- }
Now, well have something more like:
if (portland) { -stuff- }
else if (kde) { -other stuff- }
else if (gnome) { -yet more stuff- }
else { -handle neither being installed- }
Is it that big a deal? I don't know, I don't develop Gnome/KDE apps. (I wish I did!) But I hope that it either sweeps the G/K development world by storm and is adopted very, very quickly, or that it dies immediately. Otherwise, it makes things more complicated, not less.
I love reading stuff like this. I hope that they lock DVDs down so tight that no one can even play them on their regular players. Then, when the next blockbuster movie sell a grand total of four DVDs, maybe the movie and television studios will finally realize how much money this is costing them.
And seriously, can I see a quick show of hands of everyone who thinks that this will keep people from copying DVDs?...
And Bookpool.com (my preferred retailer of technical books) has it cheaper still. And look, it's yet another "it's cheaper on Amazon.com" post.
Seriously, anyone who reads Slashdot knows that they link to B&N, period. As I recall, I think that Rob actually posted about that specific topic a couple a years ago. I don't remember why they do, unless it has to do with earning commission off of it for the referral (which they do, but Amazon.com offers a similar Associates program
, and I don't know which pays more), but that's just the way it is, was, and since they haven't changes yet, probably will be for a long, long time.
Meanwhile, don't worry, really. The Slashdot crowd is (in general) pretty smart, and we all know how to shop around for the best price.
Even if I agreed with you, I didn't say that Yahoo should censor anything. There's a HUGE difference between being well within their rights to and should.
It is your responsibility to moderate yourself.
I would, but 1) I don't have any mod points, and 2) even if I did, you can't mod your own comments. I'm glad to see that someone else took the initiative to ping it with a +1 Insightful, though.;-)
You just admited it's okay for anybody to take your "sucker" away to protect you.
It's not my sucker, it's theirs. (Duh.) They're only letting me use their sucker, and since it's their sucker, they can take it away any ol' time they want to. But you're missing my point: If that sucker is too sour, I am well within my rights to not use it and to lick on Google's sucker instead. Fortunately, they're not the only ones with the power to decide what I do and do not lick.
Pretty neat how that competition thing works, isn't it?
Before everyone gets to feeling sorry for Google for this grave injustice against them, you should realize that Yahoo is well within their rights to block anything they want to from going through their IM service, and once people figure out that it's broken as a result, they'll start using an alternative.
Speaking of "willing to buy the book", Slashdot links to B & N here, but Amazon has it cheaper (look at the "Used and new..." 3rd party sellers), and I'm sure there are other sites that are also cheaper. Why does Slashdot keep linking to B & N all the time? Even if their reviews make a book seem great, the relatively high prices they link to aren't very attractive.
As was pointed out to me very recently, Amazon.com gives more money to the Republican party and B&N only gives money to the Democrat party. Maybe it doesn't matter to you, in which case feel free to buy it wherever. And maybe that's not the reason Rob picked B&N instead of Amazon.com, I don't know. But it does matter to me, so I personally like the B&N links better.
Or if you're looking for the best price on a new copy from a well-known and reputable online retailer, get it from Bookpool.com instead. (It's only $21.95 there.)
It just goes to show you that going into space is a very dangerous prospect. All of the astronauts in the space program know and understand this, and accept the level of risk it entails. Sometimes when we do thing like send civilian teachers into space or read about how the latest millionaire hitched a ride on a Soyuz, we forget just how risky it really is, but that doesn't make it any less so.
I'm not saying that's a bad thing. I really respect the bravery of our astronauts, if given a chance, I'd go up on the next shuttle. The public just needs to understand that it's not a joyride, it's hard, dangerous work.
Oh, and the good news is that thanks to these pioneers, hopefully, going outside the protective shell that is our atmosphere will become safe, and perhaps even common. If we're lucky, maybe even within our lifetimes. After all, it wasn't very long ago at all that riding in an airplane was a relatively risky proposition, and today, thousands of people do it every day without giving it a second thought.
I supposed your answer is better, that we continue in this nightmare limbo, where companies like Microsoft let people use pirated copies of their software (wink, wink!) as long as it suits their business purposes to gain almost a virtual monopoly, and then begins to really give them the shaft?
Or maybe you like the part where for people to get the fair use of software they pay for, they have to resort to using cracks and other things of dubious legality and motivation?
Or maybe it's the way you really dig the way that software developers compelled to write software for an operating system that's closed and very non-conducive to write software for because that's where the marketshare is, thanks to unethical business practices?
Or perhaps you're just one of those misguided people who thinks, "who cares if we don't have free software and Uncle Bill tracks everything we do, as long as I'm not personally being sued, the rest of the world be damned!"
And the question that's burning on my mind, of course, is how the hell did Steve Ballmer get mod points?
Seriously, this is wonderful news! The more Microsoft screws its customers, the more likely they will be to seek out alternative solutions.
I've used GNU/Linux off and on for a few years for various and sundry purposes. Three weeks or so ago, I finally sat down, figured out what I need--and don't need!--from Windows, and made the switch completely. I installed Ubuntu, and so far, it's been relatively painless. For every program I thought I couldn't live without, I've found several that work just as well or better. It's got its quirks, but Windows doesn't, right? And thanks to Cedega, I'm still even playing City of Heroes.:-)
So personally, I hope they lock it down even more. I hope they develop uncrackable locks, and charge people out the wazoo for even thinking about booting up their computers that run Vista. I hope they make it so hard and painful to run software that people have no choice but to switch. For all of the Microsoft-bashers out there, it's a dream come true!
I also hope that they do manage to completely lock out all pirates of the OS. That way, when the 90% of the real world that can't afford Windows all start using an OS like GNU/Linux, its market share will pretty much relegate Windows to that quaint little OS that used to be popular before everyone realized that they could get a lot more without even having to pay for it!
On a related note, a buddy of mine just got a new job and he asked if he could use Linux on his workstation instead of Windows. They said, "As long as you can do your job, we don't care what you use." As more and more people do this, and companies realize that there is productive life after Windows and how much money they can save and how many problems they can avoid by moving out of the room with the 800-pound gorilla in it, I think you'll see things start to change dramatically for the better.
Now, if only they could develop uncrackable DRM that screws up everyone's players. Oh, wait, Sony's already done it! YAY!
*shrug* Well, there you go. I've gotta admit, it sounded made up to me, I guess it's not. Sorry! And thanks for the info. They say you learn something new every day. I just met my quota, so I'm going home now.
What does that have to do with anything? That's not unusual. If you're a company looking for government to help you out, you would too. Republicans are all about corporatism.
Besides, I really doubt that the decision was made on a political basis, probably on who gives better referral commissions.
And say, since you brought it up, how do you know that, and what exactly is Barnes & Nobles's giving ratio?
Because it's a referral link. If you buy the book by following that link, Slashdot gets money.
(That's not a "Slashdot is evil" thing, if you buy the book after reading about it here, they did refer you to it, and they do deserve a referral fee. And besides, it's not like it costs you money. That having been said, I wish Slashdot would set up an Amazon.com referral account instead...)
At is the definition the people who founded and birthed the field came up with; the definition that SFWA, in the Milford meetings, decided was the definition.
Oh, because it's not like language evolves or words take on new meanings, is it? Or that words and phrases can have multiple meanings? Or that there is a Semantic Oracle to consult on the matter with final say-so?
It doesn't matter to me if you think that "science fiction" is limited to books exclusively written in Dutch that are exactly 371 pages long. If you ask the population what genre Dr. Who is, of the ones who have seen it, 99.9% will answer, "Science Fiction." If it were something that were mathematically provable such as, "What is the sum of 6 and 5," then there's room to say that 99.9% of the population is wrong. But it's not, it's how people define the term, which is subjective.
So feel free to believe it isn't science fiction if you want to. Meanwhile, the rest of us will happily know which channel to tune in to see the show.
At least, using the Wikipedia definition. Dr. Who does not delve into the magical or supernatural, which is what differentiates science fiction from fantasy. Or rather, at least when it does, it does so with the understanding that there's some logical scientific explanation.
Just because they make up some of the science (and may be wildly inaccurate) doesn't make it not science fiction.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm glad that a lot of OSS developers don't have the same mindset as you. It sounds like you're saying, "Who the hell cares if Linux serves the needs of other people. As long as it serves my needs, everything else is wasted effort."
I've never seen it implied that you must. But if you want other people to use it, you're going to kinda have to make it easy enough for other people to use it. Maybe you're the type that doesn't care whether other people use your software or not. If so, then fine, write code that is as single-user (i.e. you) usable and obscure as you want, and don't sit around and scratch your head when you're the only one that uses it.
Fortunately, a lot of OSS developers have decided that as long as they're coding something that's useful to themselves, they might as well make it a little prettier so that it's usable (or even developable) to others as well, and eventually, we end up with software that grandma can use. Maybe you don't care, and if so, fine, don't care. But if you're the one who has to pay for grandma's copy of Windows just so she can send an e-mail, you start to appreciate all of the time and hard work those OSS developers have spent doing something that you're incapable of doing.
Wow, is that ever a gross misstatement. How pretty does pretty have to be before you consider it crossing the line from being "designed for experts to use" to being usable by "the average person"? What if the guy (or gal, or group) who wrote, oh I dunno, IDE disk drive drivers decided that he didn't need to simplify those gnarly function calls, and that every time you wanted to open a file on Linux, you had to make some low-level interrupt calls? I mean the fact that you can just call a function named something like open() was just a simplification to make your life easier, right? Wasn't it just a way of increasing that programming languages popular appeal? Does that mean that languages that implement an open() function are evil or just a waste of time?
I don't care how much of an expert you are, unless you're programming in assembler, you're standing on the shoulders of giants. And even if you are, you're probably still standing on the shoulders of a giant that wrote the editor you're using, the keyboard driver that's interpreting your keystrokes, the display driver that's showing you your code, and so on.
So yeah, I find it incredible arrogant to essentially say, "Hey, you all have programmed it well enough for me to use, so if you make it any easier for other people to use, you're really just wasting your time."
As for me, I'll gladly take whatever OSS developers give me in terms of ease of use, and I'll be extremely grateful for it, even if it's something I feel is pretty well developed already. And if grandma can use it too, all the better.
I'm sorry, I must have missed the memo that said that now that Linux is prettier, you can't still run it as a lean mean special-purpose machine. What compromises are you referring to? What exactly is it that you can't do now in Linux that you used to be able to? What nugget of "expert" functionality was it that was removed that had you all up in arms now? Last time I checked, I could get just as down and dirty with the low-level stuff as I always could. Yes, even in Ubuntu.
That's entirely subjective. What if instead of a movie, you make a cure to AIDS, and since it's yours, you decide that you're not going to sell a dose of it for less than a million bucks? I have a really hard time seeing how that's _right_.
Or what if your free flow of ideas is making up some completely malicious and slanderous lie about a business rival and telling all of his or her customers about it and taking out a front-page ad in the USA Today to tell everyone your lie? Again, I have a really hard time seeing how that's not _wrong_.
I can think of even more contrived examples to call what you said BS, but hopefully you get the point. As much as you like to deal in absolutes, when it comes to issues of morality, there is very rarely any such thing. That's why we have laws, at least in theory. To resolve people's individual differences in opinion so that we can all live together in a state of relative peace.
At any rate, I don't think it's Google's responsibility to change the censorship laws of China, and I don't think it's being evil if they, as a company, choose to abide by them in order to do business in that country. Hopefully, the laws in China will someday change so that they can allow freedom of expression without violating the censorship laws there, but until those laws there change, they have to follow them.
Let me put it another way: How would you like it if a foreign company decided that it would just start breaking the laws of the U.S. in the U.S. all willy-nilly, ignoring the ones that it regards as wrong? You don't think there would be any repercussions for that? (*cough* AllOfMp3.com...)
If they pulled out of U.S. markets because of some misguided holier-than-thou notion that they're morally superior to us, you don't think there would be long-lasting resentment towards that company, even if we eventually repealed the very laws they were breaking?
You know what I think would be a good thing for Google to do? Start offering a service where I could post high-quality downloads of my favorite movies and television shows without commercials. It would be the ultimate in freedom of expression. Unfortunately, though, we have these little things called laws that, while Google is not being evil, they still have to follow. Weird as it may sound, other countries have them too, and sometimes, they're not the same as ours.
Did you not read the summary? If the Australian government orders the content to be taken down, it will be taken down. Just because Google has a corporate goal of not being evil doesn't mean that it can afford to simply disregard laws it doesn't like, any more than you or I can.
Did it ever occur to you that Google would love to publish blogs that run afoul of the Chinese government, and that as soon as it is hopefully able to do so without international legal repercussions, it probably will?
I don't consider myself particularly evil, either, but if I did business in China, I would also in no hurry to start an international incident by showing blatant disregard for China's laws. And before I get hit with the "just don't do business in China" stick, 1) that's not a practical solution, 2) it wouldn't do any good, as others would be more than happy to fill in the gap, and 3) once China does (hopefully) become a country of greater freedom, would you really want to be the one that turned your back on the country in its time of gradual change?
Instead of posting these little snipes at Google for following the laws of the lands they're working in, how about attacking the root cause of the problem, the Chinese government? How many rallies have you been to in Beijing? How many letters have you written to you Congresscritter asking for the U.S. to put more pressure on the Chinese government to allow more freedom?
Well, I care how much it costs, and I care about rootkits, so I won't be buying one, although I did buy a PS2 and a PSP.
Just as people underestimate the impact of Sony's consumer hostility, I think you're also overestimating people's desire for Final Fantasy games. I don't know about you, but I am the geek among my family and friends, and if I say, "The PS3 sucks, you need to get a Wii instead," that actually has an impact on their buying decision.
But being a geek, I have to be careful that when I tell my family and friends, "The PS3 sucks, you need to get a Wii instead," I don't say, "Because they put rootkits on CDs," I say, "Because all the really cool geeks know that the Wii is a lot more innovative and fun. Have you seen that new controller?"
I'm not saying that I'm the only influence on my friends and family, but as a geek, we do have some measure of sway. Assuming, of course, we actually bother to use it and, unlike you, just give up and resign ourselves to that just being the way it has to be. Remind me again who the sheep are? ;-)
Every once in a great while, something comes along that is such a mindbogglingly stupid idea that there's no need to even comment on it. I'm not even going to dignify this idea with an explanation of why it's so stupid; I think it speaks for itself. I will say, however, that anyone who actually buys one of these things should be shot in the head to make their death quick and painless, because at least that way, we won't risk their idiocy potentially harming one or more of the rest of us when they tell their friends, "Hey, watch this!"
Mental note: Never buy stock in a company named Aladdin...
Yup. And while they're still pretty expensive, (around $360), they're well worth it. The really sucky thing is that 2 250GB hard drives will set you back around $220. For $3,360, they weren't even willing to spend the extra $140 (probably less as a vendor) to bump you up to 750GB.
How many ways are there to say it: Sony sucks, and this device is crap.
It is price discrimination, but it's also a form of DRM, at least as I define it: Anything that keeps you from doing what is reasonably technically possible due to legal or administrative reasons.
There is no technical reason why I shouldn't be able to watch a movie I buy in Japan on a player I buy in the U.S. In fact, they had to add stuff to the discs and players to ensure that I can't. That's stupid, it's a form of "managing" my digital rights, and it's why I don't feel the least amount of guilt about bypassing it and ripping DVDs I legally own to my hard drive so that I can exercise my fair use rights to actually watch them.
For real? Did you even read the review? Here's the short summary (see my comment above for the long one):
This machine really sucks ass. It won't let you play your movies. After a bunch of jumping through hoops, it may oblige, but when it does, the quality isn't even that good. Oh, and it's about five times more expensive than everything currently out there.
Final rating: 8 out of 10!
Seriously, are you on drugs?
You've got to be kidding me. Keep in mind while you read this that this device costs around $3,360 USD.
If this thing gets an overall 8 out of 10, I can't help but wonder how a device can possibly get dinged for less. I mean, really, from TFA:
So your fancy expensive toy won't let you watch your movies.
All that money, and it stores less than one of my desktop's hard drives
Ooh, around $150 worth of software, which they've undoubtedly OEMed for probably less than $20.
So you can only record one television station at a time. I hope you don't have two favorite shows that happen to come on back-to-back, or you're just SOL. Even my five-year-old TiVo has dual tuners, and it's not you can't get a dual-tuner component for less than $70.
This extra bit of complication brought to you courtesy of the letters D, R, and M.
Oh, so to play our movies, we'll have to actually upgrade to Vista when it comes out. Good, because it's not like you've already spent enough to buy the box itself, right? And I'm sorry, I'm not going to use a frickin' keyboard to play a frickin' movie from my frickin' DVD player on my frickin' tv.
Yet more hoops to jump through to play a movie, again brought to you by the letters D, R, and M.
Oh, now we see why it earned an 8 out of 10! Oh, wait, those are bad things, aren't they? Well, all of that is worth it if we get image quality that knocks our socks off, so let's get to the bottom line:
If you're like me, you're probably wondering, "The who said what about what?"
Wikipedia to the rescue.
Read on past the Linux stuff. This is the same group that took money from Phillip Morris and then (can you imagine?) complained that the Department of Health and Human Services report on the dangers of smokeless tobacco was a waste of taxpayer money. Go figure.
I missed the memo where apt-get worked on all systems. And the one that said that there are packages (and package dependencies!) ready for all distributions that do use apt-get. The parent has a valid point, if installation internals for both methods aren't needed, why would it not be better to have only one, preferably the one that is common to both KDE and Gnome? I think it would go miles towards having a standard adopted. (See my next comment...)
Don't get me wrong, packages have come a long way since tar xvf/make/install, but they're also still a long way from being as easy as you just implied that it is.
Plus, not to put too fine a point on it, this will be one more thing that developers will have to worry about. Right now, we have something like:
if (kde) { -stuff- }
else if (gnome) { -other stuff- }
else { -handle neither being installed- }
Now, well have something more like:
if (portland) { -stuff- }
else if (kde) { -other stuff- }
else if (gnome) { -yet more stuff- }
else { -handle neither being installed- }
Is it that big a deal? I don't know, I don't develop Gnome/KDE apps. (I wish I did!) But I hope that it either sweeps the G/K development world by storm and is adopted very, very quickly, or that it dies immediately. Otherwise, it makes things more complicated, not less.
I love reading stuff like this. I hope that they lock DVDs down so tight that no one can even play them on their regular players. Then, when the next blockbuster movie sell a grand total of four DVDs, maybe the movie and television studios will finally realize how much money this is costing them.
And seriously, can I see a quick show of hands of everyone who thinks that this will keep people from copying DVDs?...
Yeah, that's what I thought, and neither do I.
And Bookpool.com (my preferred retailer of technical books) has it cheaper still. And look, it's yet another "it's cheaper on Amazon.com" post.
Seriously, anyone who reads Slashdot knows that they link to B&N, period. As I recall, I think that Rob actually posted about that specific topic a couple a years ago. I don't remember why they do, unless it has to do with earning commission off of it for the referral (which they do, but Amazon.com offers a similar Associates program
, and I don't know which pays more), but that's just the way it is, was, and since they haven't changes yet, probably will be for a long, long time.Meanwhile, don't worry, really. The Slashdot crowd is (in general) pretty smart, and we all know how to shop around for the best price.
I can tell this is starting off well...
Even if I agreed with you, I didn't say that Yahoo should censor anything. There's a HUGE difference between being well within their rights to and should.
I would, but 1) I don't have any mod points, and 2) even if I did, you can't mod your own comments. I'm glad to see that someone else took the initiative to ping it with a +1 Insightful, though. ;-)
It's not my sucker, it's theirs. (Duh.) They're only letting me use their sucker, and since it's their sucker, they can take it away any ol' time they want to. But you're missing my point: If that sucker is too sour, I am well within my rights to not use it and to lick on Google's sucker instead. Fortunately, they're not the only ones with the power to decide what I do and do not lick.
Pretty neat how that competition thing works, isn't it?
Before everyone gets to feeling sorry for Google for this grave injustice against them, you should realize that Yahoo is well within their rights to block anything they want to from going through their IM service, and once people figure out that it's broken as a result, they'll start using an alternative.
...like, say, Google talk, maybe?
As was pointed out to me very recently, Amazon.com gives more money to the Republican party and B&N only gives money to the Democrat party. Maybe it doesn't matter to you, in which case feel free to buy it wherever. And maybe that's not the reason Rob picked B&N instead of Amazon.com, I don't know. But it does matter to me, so I personally like the B&N links better.
Or if you're looking for the best price on a new copy from a well-known and reputable online retailer, get it from Bookpool.com instead. (It's only $21.95 there.)
It just goes to show you that going into space is a very dangerous prospect. All of the astronauts in the space program know and understand this, and accept the level of risk it entails. Sometimes when we do thing like send civilian teachers into space or read about how the latest millionaire hitched a ride on a Soyuz, we forget just how risky it really is, but that doesn't make it any less so.
I'm not saying that's a bad thing. I really respect the bravery of our astronauts, if given a chance, I'd go up on the next shuttle. The public just needs to understand that it's not a joyride, it's hard, dangerous work.
Oh, and the good news is that thanks to these pioneers, hopefully, going outside the protective shell that is our atmosphere will become safe, and perhaps even common. If we're lucky, maybe even within our lifetimes. After all, it wasn't very long ago at all that riding in an airplane was a relatively risky proposition, and today, thousands of people do it every day without giving it a second thought.
I supposed your answer is better, that we continue in this nightmare limbo, where companies like Microsoft let people use pirated copies of their software (wink, wink!) as long as it suits their business purposes to gain almost a virtual monopoly, and then begins to really give them the shaft?
Or maybe you like the part where for people to get the fair use of software they pay for, they have to resort to using cracks and other things of dubious legality and motivation?
Or maybe it's the way you really dig the way that software developers compelled to write software for an operating system that's closed and very non-conducive to write software for because that's where the marketshare is, thanks to unethical business practices?
Or perhaps you're just one of those misguided people who thinks, "who cares if we don't have free software and Uncle Bill tracks everything we do, as long as I'm not personally being sued, the rest of the world be damned!"
And the question that's burning on my mind, of course, is how the hell did Steve Ballmer get mod points?
Seriously, this is wonderful news! The more Microsoft screws its customers, the more likely they will be to seek out alternative solutions.
I've used GNU/Linux off and on for a few years for various and sundry purposes. Three weeks or so ago, I finally sat down, figured out what I need--and don't need!--from Windows, and made the switch completely. I installed Ubuntu, and so far, it's been relatively painless. For every program I thought I couldn't live without, I've found several that work just as well or better. It's got its quirks, but Windows doesn't, right? And thanks to Cedega, I'm still even playing City of Heroes. :-)
So personally, I hope they lock it down even more. I hope they develop uncrackable locks, and charge people out the wazoo for even thinking about booting up their computers that run Vista. I hope they make it so hard and painful to run software that people have no choice but to switch. For all of the Microsoft-bashers out there, it's a dream come true!
I also hope that they do manage to completely lock out all pirates of the OS. That way, when the 90% of the real world that can't afford Windows all start using an OS like GNU/Linux, its market share will pretty much relegate Windows to that quaint little OS that used to be popular before everyone realized that they could get a lot more without even having to pay for it!
On a related note, a buddy of mine just got a new job and he asked if he could use Linux on his workstation instead of Windows. They said, "As long as you can do your job, we don't care what you use." As more and more people do this, and companies realize that there is productive life after Windows and how much money they can save and how many problems they can avoid by moving out of the room with the 800-pound gorilla in it, I think you'll see things start to change dramatically for the better.
Now, if only they could develop uncrackable DRM that screws up everyone's players. Oh, wait, Sony's already done it! YAY!
*shrug* Well, there you go. I've gotta admit, it sounded made up to me, I guess it's not. Sorry! And thanks for the info. They say you learn something new every day. I just met my quota, so I'm going home now.
What does that have to do with anything? That's not unusual. If you're a company looking for government to help you out, you would too. Republicans are all about corporatism.
Besides, I really doubt that the decision was made on a political basis, probably on who gives better referral commissions.
And say, since you brought it up, how do you know that, and what exactly is Barnes & Nobles's giving ratio?
Because it's a referral link. If you buy the book by following that link, Slashdot gets money.
(That's not a "Slashdot is evil" thing, if you buy the book after reading about it here, they did refer you to it, and they do deserve a referral fee. And besides, it's not like it costs you money. That having been said, I wish Slashdot would set up an Amazon.com referral account instead...)
Oh, because it's not like language evolves or words take on new meanings, is it? Or that words and phrases can have multiple meanings? Or that there is a Semantic Oracle to consult on the matter with final say-so?
It doesn't matter to me if you think that "science fiction" is limited to books exclusively written in Dutch that are exactly 371 pages long. If you ask the population what genre Dr. Who is, of the ones who have seen it, 99.9% will answer, "Science Fiction." If it were something that were mathematically provable such as, "What is the sum of 6 and 5," then there's room to say that 99.9% of the population is wrong. But it's not, it's how people define the term, which is subjective.
So feel free to believe it isn't science fiction if you want to. Meanwhile, the rest of us will happily know which channel to tune in to see the show.
At least, using the Wikipedia definition. Dr. Who does not delve into the magical or supernatural, which is what differentiates science fiction from fantasy. Or rather, at least when it does, it does so with the understanding that there's some logical scientific explanation.
Just because they make up some of the science (and may be wildly inaccurate) doesn't make it not science fiction.