You're right. But this is Apple. Apple is the height of Consumerism Run Amok. I'm sure that there are people that would give Apple/AT&T a DNA sample to get their hands on this latest plastic gadget.
Congrats for Apple on maintaining exorbitantly high prices on all of their products and services. If they can get enough suckers to buy this, then good for them. Just goes to show how powerful some smart marketing can be, even among supposedly "educated" consumers.
Unfortunately, I don't have the time or interest to read said book. I will say that "faith" in a system that has a goal of actively investigating and discovering facts about our universe is grossly difference than "faith" in religion, which by it's very definition, is NOT based on facts or truth. I have "faith" that when I step on my brake pedal in my car, that it will stop. That's science. That's not Jesus.
The schools don't force an opinion. Science, by and large, isn't an "opinion". Get your head out of your ass. To put science and faith on the same level is insulting to scientists everywhere.
People talking to invisible men who live in the sky is an opinion... a wrong one.
Because, when it all boils down to it, you have to have faith in something, be it science or religion.
Bullshit. Don't water down science as something that people must have "faith" to believe in. That's is 100% false, and that is purely rhetoric to make science sound like something that is debatable. By and large, it is not. It's not always right, but it is right a hell of a lot more often than not. Religion and science do NOT intersect. In fact, they're polar opposites.
Nintendo stock is grossly overvalued right now. Good time to short it (unless of course, you happen to think that the Wii will singlehandedly replace all stereo, television, computer equipment, and all other consumer electronic on the planet, as opposed to simply being a fad game system). At a P/E of 53.78 there are a lot of really, really stupid people pretending to be investors out there.
Facebook, Myspace, Friendster... they're all the same, but they'll always change. As what is "Cool" changes, people will continue migrate to this week's Big Thing. Kids always think that what they happen to be doing at the time is revolutionary.
Understanding that that is just a setting (on my XP boxes, it is NOT checked by default), I re-iterate my point. I have no idea how people manage to make Windows 2000/XP unstable.
That summer, Halamka had embarked on a quest to find a viable alternative to the Microsoft desktop--fed up as he was with Windows' instability.
Yeah, and after I read that, this guy lost all credibility in my eyes. As a non-Windows admin (not even an IT person), I have no idea how people manage to make Windows 2000+ "unstable".
I'm smart enough to live in a town cool enough to have our own local radio station, and I agree with the other posters. It's great. It's run by local people, often playing local music. The only other radio worth listening to is NPR.
I think there's as big difference. I'm of the "buy the best, buy it once" school. When I buy something like a knife or a pot for my kitchen or a shovel for my garden, I buy the best I can find. When I buy a computer or a cellphone, I get the cheapest I can find that does what I need it to do. The big difference that I see is that most electronics like cell phones and computers either are unusable due to new standard, or simply fall apart, in a relatively short time. Unless I'm going to make some serious money using it, I would never buy a high end PC, or a high end cell phone. But I will gladly pay $100+ for a shovel if I know that it's likely to last 20 years.
But that's just me. You're right. So many people are just caught up in the whole consumer thing that it's kinda' ridiculous.
It's really no big deal. If the data's there, people will do what they want with it, license or no. There's very little that the RIAA and MPAA can do about this, unless they decide to sue a large portion of the world's population.
SugarCRM, etc. shouldn't be going around calling their stuff Open Source when it's not.
Why not? Let the market sort it out. Forcing people to comply with the Open Source (tm) guidelines is absurd. It's not freedom. It's OSI's definition of freedom, which by definition, is not free. Kinda like George Bush's version of "Freedom" means "killing a sovereign nation's citizens until they capitulate to the US military".
I don't accept that "Nobody's doing it" is a good reason not to do it. Many people have become rich precisely because they had the courage to do exactly what everybody else is not doing.
There are problems for existing laptop manufacturers. They have a bulk licence agreement from MS based on the number of laptops they sell, rather than the number of Windows laptops they sell. You would need to start a company from scratch, and that's high risk, but there is a potential for profit.
You're right. But my point is that with everybody and their brother selling PC's these days, I find it hard to believe that if Linux on laptops (or PC's) was a viable niche, that somebody would be doing it already. It's certainly not a revolutionary idea. I think that if there actually were a market larger than the population of Slashdot, that somebody would already have exploited that market, and would be making money.
Well, you're not looking at the big picture. A few hundred, even a few thousand geeks who want to buy laptops with Linux are not going to be worth it to a big company like Dell. Considering they're only making tiny margins on the machines to begin with, the amount they'd have to spend on training new support staff alone would be massive.
With all of the companies out there making laptops, if NOBODY is offering say, Ubuntu on a laptop, then there's a good reason for that. The competition in the PC market is fierce, and I guarantee that if there were a nickel to be made, somebody would be doing it.
Hey, Zippy the Wonderpet, if one of your systems goes down, isn't it your job to FIX it, rather than passing the buck to Apu in India?
No, it isn't my job to fix it. That's why I pay large sums of money for software. If I wanted to fix software for a living, I'd (still) be working in IT. Thanks Christ on a toothpick that I'm not. End users don't fix their own software, nor should they.
It's no wonder that IT people rarely advance into top management. The myopia of people in IT careers is absolutely staggering.
It's called mission critical software. If a cash register goes down at 8:00 PM EST, I need someone on the phone right then, not the next morning whenever the support person for the tiny software company gets back to work. I've seen Linux systems go down plenty of times. Don't try to sell me the "Linux never breaks" FUD.
If you want your software to work, you should care about freedom and "all of that malarkey" because when your software doesn't work in a closed model, you are often left without recourse. Especially if you are past end of life.
Yes, and there's also a chance that I could hit the lottery, too. The potential risks of software (especially MS software) being discontinued and being completely SOL is a minor one. Sure, it could happen, and I could be hit by lightning, too. It's just not all that realistic, and in most cases, not a very good reason for considering or not considering a piece of business software. I'm much more afraid of using some barely used OSS app, it being discontinued, and my only option being to hire a very, very expensive programmer/consultant to dig out of the mess. That happens all of the time. I'm not too afraid of getting "stuck" using products that are used by millions and millions of other people.
Besides, that whole argument just doesn't really hold water. Worst case scenario: You're using a proprietary app, the company making it folds over night, and nobody else knows how to use the software. 9/10 times, you "Export" your data in any kind of format you can, massage it, and stick it in a new product.
If anything, I'd say the "You're DEAD if your proprietary software stops working" argument is a good example of what FUD really is.
I'm not buying into any FUD. I'm an end user of software. I couldn't care less about "freedom" and all of that malarkey. I need my software to work. Right now, my MS software works just fine. It's not FUD. It's a fact. Consider yourself lucky that you have the luxury of choosing software based on religious philosophies. Don't forget to tithe a portion of your income to the OSS altar (FSF).
Part of an app doing the "best job" is to have 24/7 support. I do NOT run an IT business, and having an IT staff on hand to write a custom software package that I can buy off the shelf for Windows is absurd. Stay in your ivory tower. Reality isn't all it's cracked up to be.
I have every reason to support Free and Open Source software
Blind, unwavering faith in an idea with no reason or facts to back it up. You're not an Islamic or Christian Fundamentalist also, by any chance, are you?
Slashdot Mirror
You're right. But this is Apple. Apple is the height of Consumerism Run Amok. I'm sure that there are people that would give Apple/AT&T a DNA sample to get their hands on this latest plastic gadget.
Congrats for Apple on maintaining exorbitantly high prices on all of their products and services. If they can get enough suckers to buy this, then good for them. Just goes to show how powerful some smart marketing can be, even among supposedly "educated" consumers.
Unfortunately, I don't have the time or interest to read said book. I will say that "faith" in a system that has a goal of actively investigating and discovering facts about our universe is grossly difference than "faith" in religion, which by it's very definition, is NOT based on facts or truth. I have "faith" that when I step on my brake pedal in my car, that it will stop. That's science. That's not Jesus.
The schools don't force an opinion. Science, by and large, isn't an "opinion". Get your head out of your ass. To put science and faith on the same level is insulting to scientists everywhere.
People talking to invisible men who live in the sky is an opinion... a wrong one.
Because, when it all boils down to it, you have to have faith in something, be it science or religion.
Bullshit. Don't water down science as something that people must have "faith" to believe in. That's is 100% false, and that is purely rhetoric to make science sound like something that is debatable. By and large, it is not. It's not always right, but it is right a hell of a lot more often than not. Religion and science do NOT intersect. In fact, they're polar opposites.
Nintendo stock is grossly overvalued right now. Good time to short it (unless of course, you happen to think that the Wii will singlehandedly replace all stereo, television, computer equipment, and all other consumer electronic on the planet, as opposed to simply being a fad game system). At a P/E of 53.78 there are a lot of really, really stupid people pretending to be investors out there.
Facebook, Myspace, Friendster... they're all the same, but they'll always change. As what is "Cool" changes, people will continue migrate to this week's Big Thing. Kids always think that what they happen to be doing at the time is revolutionary.
Understanding that that is just a setting (on my XP boxes, it is NOT checked by default), I re-iterate my point. I have no idea how people manage to make Windows 2000/XP unstable.
That summer, Halamka had embarked on a quest to find a viable alternative to the Microsoft desktop--fed up as he was with Windows' instability.
Yeah, and after I read that, this guy lost all credibility in my eyes. As a non-Windows admin (not even an IT person), I have no idea how people manage to make Windows 2000+ "unstable".
I'm smart enough to live in a town cool enough to have our own local radio station, and I agree with the other posters. It's great. It's run by local people, often playing local music. The only other radio worth listening to is NPR.
Fuck Clear Channel.
I think there's as big difference. I'm of the "buy the best, buy it once" school. When I buy something like a knife or a pot for my kitchen or a shovel for my garden, I buy the best I can find. When I buy a computer or a cellphone, I get the cheapest I can find that does what I need it to do. The big difference that I see is that most electronics like cell phones and computers either are unusable due to new standard, or simply fall apart, in a relatively short time. Unless I'm going to make some serious money using it, I would never buy a high end PC, or a high end cell phone. But I will gladly pay $100+ for a shovel if I know that it's likely to last 20 years.
But that's just me. You're right. So many people are just caught up in the whole consumer thing that it's kinda' ridiculous.
It's really no big deal. If the data's there, people will do what they want with it, license or no. There's very little that the RIAA and MPAA can do about this, unless they decide to sue a large portion of the world's population.
SugarCRM, etc. shouldn't be going around calling their stuff Open Source when it's not.
Why not? Let the market sort it out. Forcing people to comply with the Open Source (tm) guidelines is absurd. It's not freedom. It's OSI's definition of freedom, which by definition, is not free. Kinda like George Bush's version of "Freedom" means "killing a sovereign nation's citizens until they capitulate to the US military".
I don't accept that "Nobody's doing it" is a good reason not to do it. Many people have become rich precisely because they had the courage to do exactly what everybody else is not doing. There are problems for existing laptop manufacturers. They have a bulk licence agreement from MS based on the number of laptops they sell, rather than the number of Windows laptops they sell. You would need to start a company from scratch, and that's high risk, but there is a potential for profit.
You're right. But my point is that with everybody and their brother selling PC's these days, I find it hard to believe that if Linux on laptops (or PC's) was a viable niche, that somebody would be doing it already. It's certainly not a revolutionary idea. I think that if there actually were a market larger than the population of Slashdot, that somebody would already have exploited that market, and would be making money.
Well, you're not looking at the big picture. A few hundred, even a few thousand geeks who want to buy laptops with Linux are not going to be worth it to a big company like Dell. Considering they're only making tiny margins on the machines to begin with, the amount they'd have to spend on training new support staff alone would be massive.
With all of the companies out there making laptops, if NOBODY is offering say, Ubuntu on a laptop, then there's a good reason for that. The competition in the PC market is fierce, and I guarantee that if there were a nickel to be made, somebody would be doing it.
Hmm, the hasn't happened yet vs the impossible...
I wouldn't call "a user-friendly FREE OS" "impossible". I think it's probably possible. It just hasn't been done yet.
I sell dog and cat food. Whether the software that runs my cash registers is open source or not is completely irrelevant.
Hey, Zippy the Wonderpet, if one of your systems goes down, isn't it your job to FIX it, rather than passing the buck to Apu in India?
No, it isn't my job to fix it. That's why I pay large sums of money for software. If I wanted to fix software for a living, I'd (still) be working in IT. Thanks Christ on a toothpick that I'm not. End users don't fix their own software, nor should they.
It's no wonder that IT people rarely advance into top management. The myopia of people in IT careers is absolutely staggering.
It's called mission critical software. If a cash register goes down at 8:00 PM EST, I need someone on the phone right then, not the next morning whenever the support person for the tiny software company gets back to work. I've seen Linux systems go down plenty of times. Don't try to sell me the "Linux never breaks" FUD.
If you want your software to work, you should care about freedom and "all of that malarkey" because when your software doesn't work in a closed model, you are often left without recourse. Especially if you are past end of life.
Yes, and there's also a chance that I could hit the lottery, too. The potential risks of software (especially MS software) being discontinued and being completely SOL is a minor one. Sure, it could happen, and I could be hit by lightning, too. It's just not all that realistic, and in most cases, not a very good reason for considering or not considering a piece of business software. I'm much more afraid of using some barely used OSS app, it being discontinued, and my only option being to hire a very, very expensive programmer/consultant to dig out of the mess. That happens all of the time. I'm not too afraid of getting "stuck" using products that are used by millions and millions of other people.
Besides, that whole argument just doesn't really hold water. Worst case scenario: You're using a proprietary app, the company making it folds over night, and nobody else knows how to use the software. 9/10 times, you "Export" your data in any kind of format you can, massage it, and stick it in a new product.
If anything, I'd say the "You're DEAD if your proprietary software stops working" argument is a good example of what FUD really is.
Yeah, I'm waiting for a user-friendly FREE car. Let's see who gets their wish first, huh?
Microsoft's FUD at wholesale
I'm not buying into any FUD. I'm an end user of software. I couldn't care less about "freedom" and all of that malarkey. I need my software to work. Right now, my MS software works just fine. It's not FUD. It's a fact. Consider yourself lucky that you have the luxury of choosing software based on religious philosophies. Don't forget to tithe a portion of your income to the OSS altar (FSF).
Part of an app doing the "best job" is to have 24/7 support. I do NOT run an IT business, and having an IT staff on hand to write a custom software package that I can buy off the shelf for Windows is absurd. Stay in your ivory tower. Reality isn't all it's cracked up to be.
A lack of decent applications that run on Linux to replace my mission critical apps is why I can't even consider Linux now.
I have every reason to support Free and Open Source software
Blind, unwavering faith in an idea with no reason or facts to back it up. You're not an Islamic or Christian Fundamentalist also, by any chance, are you?