Yeah, that's another crazy thing with the US elections. Every, and I mean every other 1st world country I know holds their national elections on a Sunday.
Did these guys know about upcoming copy protection when they signed their contract? Was it even something that they could have known?
And, as someone who happens to know a few musicians, you are quite mistaken. If you want to make a living, you can sign the deal, go to another label which will offer you pretty much the same, or piss off.
The record companies hold the keys to the record stores. If you're not with a label you have a chance of precisely 0.01% to ever have any shelf space in any record shop anywhere, including your home town. And the 0.01% are for the musicians who happen to own a record shop.
The record companies also hold the keys to the radio stations, to MTV and in many cases to the recording studios.
So if you want a little more than playing occasionally in some underground club, you have little choice but cutting a deal with the devil.
What exactly is "user friendly" about using the same old and still sucking core interface?
Outlook, Thunderbird, Holy Moly - whatever they're called, you can barely spot the difference in screenshots.
I'm sure that a lot of people like the interface that way, and a lot of people would be more comfortable with a different one. Too bad nobody has the guts anymore to try something that doesn't look like a M$ rip-off.
So I'll stay with mutt, even though at times some graphics would be nicer than text-only.
We do it because it conveys meaning. I actually have a serious dislike for M$, so they get that $ sign in there because it expresses my dislike. I am not neutral in my feelings, so why should I speak as if I were? In face-to-face talk I would convey the meaning using tone of voice, in text form these modifications are the replacement.
Physical books have a lot going for them, that e-books will not replace, not now and not in 20 years.
e-books will add to and complement books, but that's it. My personal bet is on e-books replacing newspapers and magazines, and books only as in library and lending. When you buy a book, you usually want to have it stay around, look into it again, and just enjoy it. I know my wall of books gives me a good feeling.
Newspapers, OTOH, are usually read once and then discarded. If e-book technology advances to the point where they are easily portable and comfortable to read, you might soon pick up your e-book reader in the morning, after it has automatically downloaded that morning's newspaper edition, and read your paper on the train that way.
That would be a great application, especially considering the environmental impact. And it is much, much more likely than e-books replacing actual books.
Only if your definition of "proponent" includes "being the last to the party, but making the loudest entrance".
There were several quite good GUIs for computers going back to C64 times (GEOS). There were several for DOS and X was started in 1984. X11 was released in 1987, the same year that Windows 2.0 was released. Anyone remember Windows 2.0? I didn't think so, it was an abomination that failed spectacularily. Windows 3.0 was released in 1990. By that time X11 was at R4 or so and very close to what it is today. MacOS 7 was released a year later. In fact, there was PC/GEOS 2.x in 1990, which was superior to Windows 3.0.
In other words: All competitors had mature systems by the time Gates finally joined. Gates didn't push anything that was not already well en route. He just leveraged his DOS monopoly.
He's a smart (if criminal) businessman, no doubt about that. But on technology is track record is abysmal.
That's like saying that police is the reason for crime because people don't lock their houses down as much knowing they can go there.
It's utter and ridiculous nonsense. Without IT departments people might (and I very much doubt it) be more careful with their computers, but as soon as something happens anyways (and it will), there is nobody there to clean it up and it will spread uncontrollably.
Bright idea, really. Let's dismantle the police, I'm sure crime rates will drop.
Unfortunately, yes. Originally, corporations were formed for specific tasks, not to make money. For example, you'd form a company to build a railroad from Boston to Austin. The purpose of the corporation was to get the railroad done, not to make money.
I wonder what M$ charter would be, if it had to re-incorporate under these old principles.
why do we care what he has to say in the first place,
Because we fear that there are still people out there - non-techies, mostly - who believe that he has a remote clue about technology.
his days as a heady proponent of technology
Pardon me? Exactly which technology are you speaking about? AFAIK the only thing that Bill himself ever did in the technology sector was writing a BASIC interpreter, and some sources claim he stole even that.
And don't think for a minute that the mainstream media doesn't pick up on this.
You mean the way I read articles about the male/female stereotypes in hollywood movies every other day?
The media will pick up whatever it wants, and if it doesn't find something, it creates something.
Remember all the crying of "think of the chiiiildren" back when they found some boobs in a game labeled 17 or older already? Right, that was a major issue for the 9-13 age bracket.
I've got another hint: Stop worrying about the media and start making better games, you morons.
It does require a major change, that's right. However, the change might be very different from what you think is needed.
Once upon a time, society was held back by the problem that getting what you needed was a very, very long journey. First you had to exchange your sheep for a cow, then bring that cow to the miller where you got grain for it, bring the grain and some milk to the baker, and finally the bread could be exchanged for that knife you wanted.
I'm sure someone proposed something that would've worked, but required wide-ranging changes to the infrastructure, plus user education and a new language for barter.
And someone invented money, solving the problem with a new approach.
I'm not the one with the new approach. But I'm saying that if an idea is infeasable, it might not be due to the idea, but due to our approach of implementation.
One could argue for users, but I take offense to that even though I consider 99% of the users stupid as a bovine. But without users, there would be no computing and thus no computer security.
Management, however, typically adds nothing whatsoever to either computing nor computer security, understands nothing of it, yet is blind ot its own lack of understand and insists on making decisions whose only contribution to security is that they serve as a fairly good source of randomness.
After a while, the HR manager came to me and said, that in four years, half of the employees complained about me. Whenever I tried to change something (firewall, user rights,...), there were another ten or twenty complains.
That's why if you implement a security policy - any security policy - at work, you get the CEO into the boat, make sure he understands both the dangers and the sacrifices in comfort necessary, and gives it his OK.
There are many, many uses for micropayment. One that you'll certainly find interesting is in e-mail.
If everyone charged, say 1/10th of a cent for every e-mail received, the net cost to most of us would be roughly nothing, because in an ongoing conversation both parties send roughly the same number of mails. And so what if I send you 20 mails more than you send me over a period of some months, that's 2 cents.
Spam, however, would be dead as soon as this system is set up and working. Everyone using it would either stop getting spam or accumulate a small fortune (for me, it'd be around $500 a month), both effects would make more and more people join the system.
My online game accepts donations. I've looked very hard two years ago when I added that feature, and I found a total of two services I could use (PayPal and Moneybookers). Everyone else asks either for a ridiculous set-up fee or is otherwise unsuited for small businesses, donations, etc.
I started offering both. In 18 months, a grand total of $10 was sent through Moneybookers, compared to a few thousand through Paypal. Guess which one I dropped.
but generally it's not that more "events" are happening, rather that more people are in the way
Exactly. I don't think our planet is any more unstable then 100, 1000 or 10000 years ago. Yeah, maybe we have global warming but even so it makes much, much more of a difference that a hurricane making landfall at the Mississipi estuary affects several million people today compared to 10,000 in 1803 or maybe a couple hundred in 500 BC.
Anyone got the original, very first image they posted?
There's got to be a way to at least make the challenge easier. All the random pixels just confuse my visual cortex, so blacking them out, leaving only the pixels already revealed (about 45000 by the time I post this) would certainly make the job easier.
If you play online games, you've probably met a few people in the hurricane area already. I know that several of the players in my game (see below) were hit badly, and yet they logged back in as soon as they could.
I'm not surprised. If something catastrophic happens to your life, normality and routine are very reassuring. If you play a game intensely, that game can provide an entire environment where everything is back to normal, even if your house is half-flooded, your garden and car blown away and someone from your family missing.
It's just a normal part of the process of gathering your life back together. If my or any other online game helps by allowing people to take their minds off the disaster and mentally rest for a moment, that's a good thing.
Cry me a river. "This case is sooo hard, the guy has a different handwriting than the last one!"
When I read this pathetic whining, I wonder what they do when they encounter real criminals. You know, the guys who have a boot-up password or (horror, shudder, unbelievable!) encrypt their files or harddisk.
Company announces product that will destroy the competition. "Out real soon!"/. falls for another vaporware announcement and posts it all over the 'net, causing the marketing drone that wrote it ("hey, you! write something that'll cause our competition some pain, but it doesn't have to cost much!") a spontaneous orgasm.
Slashdot Mirror
More recent versions of apt support signatures, and require confirmation before they will install an unsigned package.
Yeah, that's another crazy thing with the US elections. Every, and I mean every other 1st world country I know holds their national elections on a Sunday.
Who forced him to sign that contract ?
Did these guys know about upcoming copy protection when they signed their contract? Was it even something that they could have known?
And, as someone who happens to know a few musicians, you are quite mistaken. If you want to make a living, you can sign the deal, go to another label which will offer you pretty much the same, or piss off.
The record companies hold the keys to the record stores. If you're not with a label you have a chance of precisely 0.01% to ever have any shelf space in any record shop anywhere, including your home town. And the 0.01% are for the musicians who happen to own a record shop.
The record companies also hold the keys to the radio stations, to MTV and in many cases to the recording studios.
So if you want a little more than playing occasionally in some underground club, you have little choice but cutting a deal with the devil.
Many /. readers won't "get" this, and I don't blame them, there's lots that I don't get, either.
But this is art of the kind that some of us feel deeply within, without even being able to explain just why it touches us.
If there were a Burning Man Europe, I'd be there.
Especially famous, well-selling artists have considerable leverage.
Not all. Most of them are under long-term contracts. Remember Prince? He didn't even own his own stage name.
What exactly is "user friendly" about using the same old and still sucking core interface?
Outlook, Thunderbird, Holy Moly - whatever they're called, you can barely spot the difference in screenshots.
I'm sure that a lot of people like the interface that way, and a lot of people would be more comfortable with a different one.
Too bad nobody has the guts anymore to try something that doesn't look like a M$ rip-off.
So I'll stay with mutt, even though at times some graphics would be nicer than text-only.
We do it because it conveys meaning. I actually have a serious dislike for M$, so they get that $ sign in there because it expresses my dislike. I am not neutral in my feelings, so why should I speak as if I were? In face-to-face talk I would convey the meaning using tone of voice, in text form these modifications are the replacement.
Physical books have a lot going for them, that e-books will not replace, not now and not in 20 years.
e-books will add to and complement books, but that's it. My personal bet is on e-books replacing newspapers and magazines, and books only as in library and lending.
When you buy a book, you usually want to have it stay around, look into it again, and just enjoy it. I know my wall of books gives me a good feeling.
Newspapers, OTOH, are usually read once and then discarded. If e-book technology advances to the point where they are easily portable and comfortable to read, you might soon pick up your e-book reader in the morning, after it has automatically downloaded that morning's newspaper edition, and read your paper on the train that way.
That would be a great application, especially considering the environmental impact. And it is much, much more likely than e-books replacing actual books.
Not going to happen. Quote me in 2025.
Only if your definition of "proponent" includes "being the last to the party, but making the loudest entrance".
There were several quite good GUIs for computers going back to C64 times (GEOS). There were several for DOS and X was started in 1984. X11 was released in 1987, the same year that Windows 2.0 was released. Anyone remember Windows 2.0? I didn't think so, it was an abomination that failed spectacularily.
Windows 3.0 was released in 1990. By that time X11 was at R4 or so and very close to what it is today. MacOS 7 was released a year later. In fact, there was PC/GEOS 2.x in 1990, which was superior to Windows 3.0.
In other words: All competitors had mature systems by the time Gates finally joined. Gates didn't push anything that was not already well en route. He just leveraged his DOS monopoly.
He's a smart (if criminal) businessman, no doubt about that. But on technology is track record is abysmal.
That's like saying that police is the reason for crime because people don't lock their houses down as much knowing they can go there.
It's utter and ridiculous nonsense. Without IT departments people might (and I very much doubt it) be more careful with their computers, but as soon as something happens anyways (and it will), there is nobody there to clean it up and it will spread uncontrollably.
Bright idea, really. Let's dismantle the police, I'm sure crime rates will drop.
Corporations have a legal mandate to make money.
Unfortunately, yes. Originally, corporations were formed for specific tasks, not to make money. For example, you'd form a company to build a railroad from Boston to Austin. The purpose of the corporation was to get the railroad done, not to make money.
I wonder what M$ charter would be, if it had to re-incorporate under these old principles.
why do we care what he has to say in the first place,
Because we fear that there are still people out there - non-techies, mostly - who believe that he has a remote clue about technology.
his days as a heady proponent of technology
Pardon me? Exactly which technology are you speaking about? AFAIK the only thing that Bill himself ever did in the technology sector was writing a BASIC interpreter, and some sources claim he stole even that.
And don't think for a minute that the mainstream media doesn't pick up on this.
You mean the way I read articles about the male/female stereotypes in hollywood movies every other day?
The media will pick up whatever it wants, and if it doesn't find something, it creates something.
Remember all the crying of "think of the chiiiildren" back when they found some boobs in a game labeled 17 or older already? Right, that was a major issue for the 9-13 age bracket.
I've got another hint:
Stop worrying about the media and start making better games, you morons.
It does require a major change, that's right. However, the change might be very different from what you think is needed.
Once upon a time, society was held back by the problem that getting what you needed was a very, very long journey. First you had to exchange your sheep for a cow, then bring that cow to the miller where you got grain for it, bring the grain and some milk to the baker, and finally the bread could be exchanged for that knife you wanted.
I'm sure someone proposed something that would've worked, but required wide-ranging changes to the infrastructure, plus user education and a new language for barter.
And someone invented money, solving the problem with a new approach.
I'm not the one with the new approach. But I'm saying that if an idea is infeasable, it might not be due to the idea, but due to our approach of implementation.
Some other reply got it right.
It's not "collect later". It's "send me money now (micropayment) or your mail goes straight to the trash bin".
No payment, no mail delivery.
Why on earth did you drop moneybookers?
Because it takes additional effort to support two different payment systems, and it makes it more difficult to consolidate the money coming in.
Management is the #1 security problem.
One could argue for users, but I take offense to that even though I consider 99% of the users stupid as a bovine. But without users, there would be no computing and thus no computer security.
Management, however, typically adds nothing whatsoever to either computing nor computer security, understands nothing of it, yet is blind ot its own lack of understand and insists on making decisions whose only contribution to security is that they serve as a fairly good source of randomness.
After a while, the HR manager came to me and said, that in four years, half of the employees complained about me. Whenever I tried to change something (firewall, user rights, ...), there were another ten or twenty complains.
That's why if you implement a security policy - any security policy - at work, you get the CEO into the boat, make sure he understands both the dangers and the sacrifices in comfort necessary, and gives it his OK.
There are many, many uses for micropayment. One that you'll certainly find interesting is in e-mail.
If everyone charged, say 1/10th of a cent for every e-mail received, the net cost to most of us would be roughly nothing, because in an ongoing conversation both parties send roughly the same number of mails. And so what if I send you 20 mails more than you send me over a period of some months, that's 2 cents.
Spam, however, would be dead as soon as this system is set up and working. Everyone using it would either stop getting spam or accumulate a small fortune (for me, it'd be around $500 a month), both effects would make more and more people join the system.
Name an alternative.
My online game accepts donations. I've looked very hard two years ago when I added that feature, and I found a total of two services I could use (PayPal and Moneybookers). Everyone else asks either for a ridiculous set-up fee or is otherwise unsuited for small businesses, donations, etc.
I started offering both. In 18 months, a grand total of $10 was sent through Moneybookers, compared to a few thousand through Paypal. Guess which one I dropped.
but generally it's not that more "events" are happening, rather that more people are in the way
Exactly. I don't think our planet is any more unstable then 100, 1000 or 10000 years ago. Yeah, maybe we have global warming but even so it makes much, much more of a difference that a hurricane making landfall at the Mississipi estuary affects several million people today compared to 10,000 in 1803 or maybe a couple hundred in 500 BC.
Anyone got the original, very first image they posted?
There's got to be a way to at least make the challenge easier. All the random pixels just confuse my visual cortex, so blacking them out, leaving only the pixels already revealed (about 45000 by the time I post this) would certainly make the job easier.
If you play online games, you've probably met a few people in the hurricane area already. I know that several of the players in my game (see below) were hit badly, and yet they logged back in as soon as they could.
I'm not surprised. If something catastrophic happens to your life, normality and routine are very reassuring. If you play a game intensely, that game can provide an entire environment where everything is back to normal, even if your house is half-flooded, your garden and car blown away and someone from your family missing.
It's just a normal part of the process of gathering your life back together. If my or any other online game helps by allowing people to take their minds off the disaster and mentally rest for a moment, that's a good thing.
Cry me a river. "This case is sooo hard, the guy has a different handwriting than the last one!"
When I read this pathetic whining, I wonder what they do when they encounter real criminals. You know, the guys who have a boot-up password or (horror, shudder, unbelievable!) encrypt their files or harddisk.
Company announces product that will destroy the competition. "Out real soon!" /. falls for another vaporware announcement and posts it all over the 'net, causing the marketing drone that wrote it ("hey, you! write something that'll cause our competition some pain, but it doesn't have to cost much!") a spontaneous orgasm.
And breaking news: Water rumoured to be wet!