Although the Boxee developers release builds for Windows, Mac, and Linux, it's always seemed to me that they hope to get their product bundled with set-top boxes sold by hardware manufacturers. Even now, Apple TV users form the largest part of their user base. Boxee is basically taking XBMC, building social networking around it (they even go so far as to *require* you to create an account), and releasing the result as a semi-proprietary bundle.
Now that Apple has shown just how profitable an app store can be, Boxee is going to try to cram that in too.
I'm just going to throw out the idea that TLDs were never intended to be a complete ontology of all things. And you're making a whole lot of problems (security and logistical) for people so that you can make clever domain names. Is this really necessary?
ICANN has been a giant bungle from the very beginning. It was designed to be (and continues to be) the closest thing we have to The Organization that Runs the Internet. It doesn't take much thinking to realize what a dangerous thing this is and why it shouldn't exist in the first place.
From where I sit, it looks to me like ICANN is running for the sole benefit of the domain registrars anymore. The registrars already have just about the most lucrative business model on the planet: pay us a perpetual subscription fee for something that costs next to nothing to issue and maintain and we probably won't hand it over to a scammer. Most registrars actively encourage the spread of spammers, squatters, and scammers because those customers buy the most domains. Don't believe me? Every major registrar has tools for the bulk purchase, management, and selling of domains. They proudly claim that you can manage tens of thousands of domains with their tools. But when you think about it, who on earth would have a legitimate reason to own 10,000 domain names?
Now that the.com,.org, and.net domains are pretty much sold out, the registrars want new gTLDs to exploit and have finally pressured ICANN into getting the ball rolling. Mark my words, when these free-for-all gTLDs are announced, we're going to see GoDaddy, eNom, and others trying to grab gTLDs like.web,.blog,.home, and so on. The application fee is high enough to discourage individuals and small companies from trying buying their own gTLD, but low enough that any corporation with influence can splurge and grab however many they want on opening day.
The entire range of gTLDs, in my opinion, should have been country codes and left at that. This would have put everyone on equal ground and would have prevented "land grabs" with the current gTLDs we have. It wouldn't have stopped spammers, but it wouldn't have made their jobs as easy as they are today.
Microsoft can't smash the competition in the Netbook market without Windows XP, which itself is a product they can't make a profit on anymore and are desperate to get rid off.
How do you not make a profit charging $90 (or whatever) a pop for an OS that was finished a decade ago and really only needs bugfixes and maintenance releases at this point?
The whole reason Vista was seen as a failure was because they poured a ton of money into developing it and got a lukewarm reception instead of a swift and massive industry changeover like they got with Windows 95 and XP.
If 64-bit Windows 7 would be slow like the 64bit edition Ubuntu 8.10, then no thanks. The thing uses 1 gig of RAM for mail and web browsing. Java apps use nearly twice the RAM compared to the 32-bit edition because there are too many pointers. The same with gcc, a simple build task consumes 500 megs of RAM compared to 350 in 32-bit. So one gigabyte in 64-bit Ubuntu is as slow as 512 megs in Vista.
Wow, just... wow. If I had mod points, I wouldn't know whether to mod you +1 Funny or -1 Troll. There should be a Slashdot Achievement for this.
On the off-chance that you're not joking... You clearly don't understand the difference between 32-bit and 64-bit architectures and software. To wit: An 64-bit application does not automatically consume twice as much memory or run twice as slow as a 32-bit application. I run 64-bit Ubuntu machines both at home and at work and they certainly do not consume 1GB of memory for web browsing and email. In fact, I have a hard time getting them to consume 1GB of memory at all no matter how many programs I have running.
XP is pretty decent, but Vista is a better OS in pretty much every way imaginable.
This argument depends strongly on what you consider "better".
For my mom, the biggest reason to uninstall Vista on her brand new machine was because Vista was a full order of magnitude slower on her new machine than XP was on the old one. Once Vista was replaced with XP, she loved the new machine.
For me, the biggest reason to avoid Vista (and run Linux, or XP when I have to run a Windows app) is because of all the DRM that's built into the core of the OS. Vista places artificial restrictions on what I do with my own media and hardware.
On the other hand, I have a friend who bought a really expensive laptop and ran Vista on it because he liked all the slick animations and updated Microsoft applications. (Although, now that I think about it, he later replaced it with a Macbook Pro.)
The problem that I have with craigslist is that they're refusing to scale their staff and procedures in accordance with their popularity. In some categories, the spam/scam level is as high as 90% so clearly whatever they've been doing for the last few years isn't working. If you're a legitimate user whose IP has been marked on their system as suspicious and try to post an ad, they tell you to jump through a bunch of hoops (including creating an account, verifying the account, etc) that lead absolutely nowhere. They have no technical support and do not respond to emails.
I like the idea of craigslist, but I fear that the site is going to collapse under the weight of its own success unless they start engineering some practical, scalable solutions to the problems of spammers, scammers, as well as legitimate users.
I know this might be such a radical idea that I'll certainly be modded down for it, but I simply must suggest...
If you don't like the game, maybe don't play it?
Give it a shrug and walk away, as you'd do with anything else that doesn't interest you. It doesn't cost anything to download and play in full, so if you tried it and didn't like it, the only thing you've wasted is your own time and who's fault is that really? Those of us that think it's just fine will continue having our fun, absent your oh-so-valuable approval.
Not knowing much about the technical details, I was going to suggest any old Linux distribution and then running DOSEMU + FreeDOS on it, but virtualization probably is the far superior option, for the following reasons:
You can continue using the exact same setup, only running on virtual hardware.
Backups are a brain-dead simple. Just shut down the virtual machine and copy the image. You can even save snapshots and such.
Restores are likewise trivial. A virtualized OS "sees" the same hardware no matter where its running.
The native OS can be kept up to date with all the newfangled web browsers and such without worrying about how it'll affect the stability of the database application.
To be honest, I would consider upgrading the virtualized OS to Win98SE at least. If only DOS is required, perhaps consider tossing out Windows anyway and using a late version of MS-DOS, OpenDOS/DR-DOS, or FreeDOS. (All have their pros and cons but if this is a fairly standard DOS program we're talking about, it should run fine on any of those.)
To the submitter: This actually sounds like a fun project. Good luck.
Does this mean that Google reserves the right to filter my web browsing experience in Chrome (without my consent to boot)?
Possibly.
Is this a carry-over from the EULAs of Google's other services (gmail, blogger etc),
Yes.
or is this something more significant?
Not likely, but I guess you never know. Don't forget that they can change the terms of the agreement whenever they like, without your prior approval or consent.
One would think that after the previous EULA affair with Chrome, Google would try to sound a little less draconian."
All disclaimers, license agreements, and contracts sound draconian. They're written in legalese to be clear, precise, serious, and intimidating. They're designed to give the authoring party as much power as possible while limiting their liability to nothing.
The solution, however, is pretty simple: If you have any doubts at all about the terms of an agreement, don't agree to it. Or ask Google the change it. Submitting a Slashdot article about it is just a lot of pointless whining.
"ubuntu 9.04 beta and fedora 11 beta benchmarked..."
Fixed that for ya.
Also, the article pretty much boils down to "Fedora 11 Beta is slower in a lot of areas which might be because they have a bunch of debugging stuff enabled, but really we're not sure. Anyway, enjoy the meaningless bargraphs."
Also, it's not free (as in freedom) if you lack the technical ability to compile and fix defects.
Of course it is. The freedom to use, modify, and distribute open source software is not affected by anyone's technical skill. Software of any complexity can be open source. Just because the "average user" (however you choose to define that) might not have the skill to fix a programming error or modify the code, that doesn't take away from their right to modify or redistribute the software. Whether or not they have the ability to do so is a completely separate matter.
Then you're forever reliant on programmers to fix your software. So go on and broadcast that message however they're not going to listen because you already shot them down when they were trying to get help in the first place.
So your argument is that no software is free (as in freedom) unless the end-user is capable of modifying or debugging it him/herself? That's one hell of a leap of logic. I personally don't have the technical skill to fix a bug or write a new device driver for the Linux kernel. But by your very argument, that means that Linux is not really free software (contrary to the GPL that it's licensed under) because I, one person, cannot fully grok it. I guess Linus Torvalds has been lying to everyone all these years.
Luckily I'm a programmer and have commit lots of fixes to OSS however I'm not deluded enough to convince myself that freedom for me means freedom for average users.
You're confusing the technical ability to modify and redistribute software with the legal ability to modify and redistribute software. Free software, as defined by the FSF and everyone else in the free/libre/open source world, is only concerned with the latter.
Also before you or anyone else arrogantly mentions paying someone to fix your problems, that's not an option.
Why is that not an option? If you need a piece of software to do a particular job, either you buy a product that comes with the support you need, or you install an open source one and support it yourself. If your open source option never requires any support (which is true a good portion of the time), then you've come out ahead. If your open source option requires support and you can handle it yourself, then you've come out ahead. If you require support but don't have the technical ability to do it yourself, and the maintainers of the software won't do it for free (which they're not obligated to, by the way), then yes, you might have to pay for it.
This isn't just my opinion, this is actually how the software industry works. This is why there are many, many people who use open source software and never end up paying a dime for it. This is also why there are programmers and consultants who provide services (for money) relating to open source software.
If free software were this panacea where all of the programs worked perfectly for everyone, never had any bugs, and never required any support, there would be no Microsoft, no Novell, no Oracle, no Red Hat. In fact, there would really be no software industry to speak of.
A typical bug cost thousand of dollars to fix, that is not freedom in either libre or beer.
Tell that to open source projects like Mozilla, FreeBSD, and OpenOffice who each have thousands of bugs fixed every month. If what you say is true, then the Mozilla foundation spent over $2.4 million last month alone fixing
'People who do surf the internet for fun at work -- within a reasonable limit of less than 20 per cent of their total time in the office -- are more productive by about nine per cent than those who don't,' said Coker.
I had a boss that would have balked at the 20% figure. He believed (and told us as much) that you were wasting company time and money if you were anything less than 100% engaged in your work. He was, however, always interested in boosting productivity any way possible, so when someone brought up Google's "personal project time" policy (Google was the rockstar of the Internet then, even moreso than now), he wanted to try it. Once we started seriously discussing it, though, the boss killed the idea by proclaiming that the personal project time would be in addition to, not replacing your normal 8-hour day. That means you either had to come in early, stay late, or come in on a weekend. And it wouldn't count as overtime either. That pretty much killed all interest.
Being serious for a moment, a large part of the problem with Linux - at least in the "getting more people to adopt it" sense (chicken and egg) - is the fact that Linux developers/proponents tend to be unable to understand that while something is "not their fault", it is still their problem.
Wrong. As long as they are giving you a software product for free, it's only their problem if they decide it is. That's the greatest strength and weakness of open source (not just Linux in particular): developers get to choose exactly what they want to work on. This leads to widely varying levels of software quality: some of it is quite superior to anything else (Linux, Firefox), but some of it is just atrocious (MythTV).
But make no mistake: You WILL get flamed if you sit around and badmouth something that someone put their own time and effort into and gave to the world with no expectation of getting paid for it. The proper response to a defect or problem with open source software is to:
* Make a suggestion, feature request, or bug report * Fix it yourself
Notice in particular that neither of those is, "flame the software and its developers on some random message board."
When I've asked about this on Linux help boards, the response is always the same (and I'm sure I'll get a bunch of raving loons attacking me here for saying so as well): "well it's your fault for having an ATi board you should go spend $$$$$$ on a hauppauge and a nvidia board and buy this and buy that because that's what my box uses and anyways the ati drivers suck because ati sucks."
It sounds to me like the problem here is twofold: 1) Your friends misinformed you about the nature of open source software and 2) you didn't do adequate research before implementing your DVR.
As the usage of open source software has begun to move beyond the skilled developer and administrator cohort, there are lots of new people trying out open source software for the first time that have no idea how it's different than proprietary software other than the price. And that's the fault of people like me (who have been using open source for over a decade) who want to see greater adoption of the software we toil over, but don't adequately describe its tradeoffs to newcomers.
Lets use your case as an example. I'll assume you told a friend, or someone, that you wanted to build your own DVR and they suggested Linux and MythTV. That's not a bad suggestion on its own, but it should have probably been qualified with, "as long as you don't mind some trial-and-error, lots of tweaking, and getting your hands dirty." But it sounds to me like you wanted something that you could just install, configure, and be done with in a few hours. Had your friend known of this requirement, he or she should have suggested some proprietary DVR software that's designed to be easy to set up and use. Proprietary software vendors have a vested interest in making their products as easy to use as possible. They want to lead the market, gain new customers, and keep existing ones. If you pay for software, you should have every right to seek support from the company that made it because they implicitly made a promise that by selling the software, it would work for its advertised purpose. If it doesn't, you have every right to complain to the world at large that the company takes your money but doesn't provide a suitable product or service.
Open source software, however, never comes with these assumptions. If it doesn't work for you, tough luck because you most likely didn't pay anything for it. Your options are, as always: report it, fix it, or move on. Sure, you can always try to seek help on a community-run forum, but don't get all obstinate when they don't produce the exact answer you were looking for because they have no more obligation to help you than the developers who wrote the software.
Your core message (after all the complaining has been filtered out) is correct, however. We, the open source community, need to do a better job at communicating the fact that free software is free in terms of freedom, not in terms of effort or technical skill.
I wouldn't be surprised if they justify things by saying simply that the people that were actually interested in naming the module, voted Serenity, and that was the point of the vote, not to see who could dig up the most voters for unrelated reasons. Really, they didn't vote to name the module after Colbert, they voted to do what Colbert asked them to do, with absolutely no interest in what it was.
There are two kinds of people who voted for Serenity: those who thought it was a pretty name and those who were rabid fans of the TV science fiction show Firefly. I'll let you decide which of those probably held more sway in the vote.
That said, this is far from the first time that Colbert has instructed his viewers to write in his name for an online poll. This is just the first time that he stands a greater-than-zero chance of succeeding. Personally, I think it's funny. Does everything around space exploration have to be so sanitary and serious? We explore space to heighten our understanding of the universe and push our intellect, skill, and abilities to the limit. Why shouldn't we incorporate humor, as one of the more positive aspects of humanity, into the endeavor?
Yes, it's stupid, but I don't see how this is Hulu's fault. They're getting jerked around by the content providers just like the rest of us.
Hulu is fully owned and operated by the content providers. This is not your Google or Facebook story were some hard-working geniuses struck it lucky and now have a popular website, this is a continuation of the entertainment industry's effort to implement new technology that's been implemented by everyone else for years.
I don't even mind the ads on Hulu because they are 15-30 seconds instead of 2 minutes or more on regular TV.
This will change, mark my words.
When hulu started, there were no ads. Then they started putting "this program brought to you by so-and-so" in the beginning. Then they started inserting one or two very short ads per show. Now they're up to just as many commercial breaks as "regular" TV. (More, actually, on some older shows.) Next we'll start seeing 2 or more ads per break and it'll be the same as regular broadcast TV and cable.
Don't get me wrong, I really don't mind the advertising revenue model. What frustrates me is the sheer number of ads combined with the sheer shittiness of the ads. When I sit down to watch TV and am forced to spend a full 1/3 of the time getting screamed at by advertisements, I have a hard time rationalizing it as time well-spent afterwards.
1) Do people trust a memtest86 error to mean a bad memory module or motherboard or CPU?
Please, please tell me this is an early April fool's joke. If not, dear submitter, I hope that you're either very tired or very drunk right now because you literally just asked:
"Windows is crashing randomly and the program that I ran to test the memory is reporting errors. Does that mean the memory in my computer is bad?"
Recently I had consistent BSODs with Vista64 on a PC with 4GB; I tried memtest86 and it always failed within hours. Yet when I ran 64bit Ubuntu at 100% load and using all memory, it ran fine for days.
You should have also tried running a hacked version of OS X to serve as a tie-breaker.
"Finally, someone has broken the 25+ year old too-many-open-windows-and-chaos desktop paradigm with UNR's task oriented layout, which is perfect for small netbook screen sizes."
I'm pushing 30 and I find that many people (including employers) assume that you have experience in your chosen field just because of your age alone, even before they've seen your resume. If the choice for a position comes down to you and a pimply-faced youth just out of college, age can be huge advantage. A lot of employers look for maturity and intellect first, raw skills second.
And anyway, it's never the case that your resume is what gets you a job, although it might limit you to an entry-level position. Either a strong recommendation or an excellent interview will get you the job. And if you spend your next few years boning up on I.T. or whatever you want to do, the interview will be easier than you think.
The Model M is a fantastic keyboard. Solid, reliable, types well. The problem for me, however, is that it's too noisy and takes far more effort to type on than a modern rubber-dome keyboard. Unix commands and such are great, by try writing a paper (or very long Slashdot comment) sometime and you'll see what I mean.
I would love to have a keyboard with the durability and layout of a model M combined with the comfort and quietness of a modern keyboard. I've spent YEARS searching online and in real life. I would pay any amount of money for that perfect keyboard that is durable, comfortable, relatively quiet, and has the classic 101-key layout.
Slashdot Mirror
Although the Boxee developers release builds for Windows, Mac, and Linux, it's always seemed to me that they hope to get their product bundled with set-top boxes sold by hardware manufacturers. Even now, Apple TV users form the largest part of their user base. Boxee is basically taking XBMC, building social networking around it (they even go so far as to *require* you to create an account), and releasing the result as a semi-proprietary bundle.
Now that Apple has shown just how profitable an app store can be, Boxee is going to try to cram that in too.
ICANN has been a giant bungle from the very beginning. It was designed to be (and continues to be) the closest thing we have to The Organization that Runs the Internet. It doesn't take much thinking to realize what a dangerous thing this is and why it shouldn't exist in the first place.
From where I sit, it looks to me like ICANN is running for the sole benefit of the domain registrars anymore. The registrars already have just about the most lucrative business model on the planet: pay us a perpetual subscription fee for something that costs next to nothing to issue and maintain and we probably won't hand it over to a scammer. Most registrars actively encourage the spread of spammers, squatters, and scammers because those customers buy the most domains. Don't believe me? Every major registrar has tools for the bulk purchase, management, and selling of domains. They proudly claim that you can manage tens of thousands of domains with their tools. But when you think about it, who on earth would have a legitimate reason to own 10,000 domain names?
Now that the .com, .org, and .net domains are pretty much sold out, the registrars want new gTLDs to exploit and have finally pressured ICANN into getting the ball rolling. Mark my words, when these free-for-all gTLDs are announced, we're going to see GoDaddy, eNom, and others trying to grab gTLDs like .web, .blog, .home, and so on. The application fee is high enough to discourage individuals and small companies from trying buying their own gTLD, but low enough that any corporation with influence can splurge and grab however many they want on opening day.
The entire range of gTLDs, in my opinion, should have been country codes and left at that. This would have put everyone on equal ground and would have prevented "land grabs" with the current gTLDs we have. It wouldn't have stopped spammers, but it wouldn't have made their jobs as easy as they are today.
Clearly, you should have taken the blue pill instead.
How do you not make a profit charging $90 (or whatever) a pop for an OS that was finished a decade ago and really only needs bugfixes and maintenance releases at this point?
The whole reason Vista was seen as a failure was because they poured a ton of money into developing it and got a lukewarm reception instead of a swift and massive industry changeover like they got with Windows 95 and XP.
Wow, just... wow. If I had mod points, I wouldn't know whether to mod you +1 Funny or -1 Troll. There should be a Slashdot Achievement for this.
On the off-chance that you're not joking... You clearly don't understand the difference between 32-bit and 64-bit architectures and software. To wit: An 64-bit application does not automatically consume twice as much memory or run twice as slow as a 32-bit application. I run 64-bit Ubuntu machines both at home and at work and they certainly do not consume 1GB of memory for web browsing and email. In fact, I have a hard time getting them to consume 1GB of memory at all no matter how many programs I have running.
This argument depends strongly on what you consider "better".
For my mom, the biggest reason to uninstall Vista on her brand new machine was because Vista was a full order of magnitude slower on her new machine than XP was on the old one. Once Vista was replaced with XP, she loved the new machine.
For me, the biggest reason to avoid Vista (and run Linux, or XP when I have to run a Windows app) is because of all the DRM that's built into the core of the OS. Vista places artificial restrictions on what I do with my own media and hardware.
On the other hand, I have a friend who bought a really expensive laptop and ran Vista on it because he liked all the slick animations and updated Microsoft applications. (Although, now that I think about it, he later replaced it with a Macbook Pro.)
The problem that I have with craigslist is that they're refusing to scale their staff and procedures in accordance with their popularity. In some categories, the spam/scam level is as high as 90% so clearly whatever they've been doing for the last few years isn't working. If you're a legitimate user whose IP has been marked on their system as suspicious and try to post an ad, they tell you to jump through a bunch of hoops (including creating an account, verifying the account, etc) that lead absolutely nowhere. They have no technical support and do not respond to emails.
I like the idea of craigslist, but I fear that the site is going to collapse under the weight of its own success unless they start engineering some practical, scalable solutions to the problems of spammers, scammers, as well as legitimate users.
I know this might be such a radical idea that I'll certainly be modded down for it, but I simply must suggest...
If you don't like the game, maybe don't play it?
Give it a shrug and walk away, as you'd do with anything else that doesn't interest you. It doesn't cost anything to download and play in full, so if you tried it and didn't like it, the only thing you've wasted is your own time and who's fault is that really? Those of us that think it's just fine will continue having our fun, absent your oh-so-valuable approval.
Thanks.
Not knowing much about the technical details, I was going to suggest any old Linux distribution and then running DOSEMU + FreeDOS on it, but virtualization probably is the far superior option, for the following reasons:
You can continue using the exact same setup, only running on virtual hardware.
Backups are a brain-dead simple. Just shut down the virtual machine and copy the image. You can even save snapshots and such.
Restores are likewise trivial. A virtualized OS "sees" the same hardware no matter where its running.
The native OS can be kept up to date with all the newfangled web browsers and such without worrying about how it'll affect the stability of the database application.
To be honest, I would consider upgrading the virtualized OS to Win98SE at least. If only DOS is required, perhaps consider tossing out Windows anyway and using a late version of MS-DOS, OpenDOS/DR-DOS, or FreeDOS. (All have their pros and cons but if this is a fairly standard DOS program we're talking about, it should run fine on any of those.)
To the submitter: This actually sounds like a fun project. Good luck.
Possibly.
Yes.
Not likely, but I guess you never know. Don't forget that they can change the terms of the agreement whenever they like, without your prior approval or consent.
All disclaimers, license agreements, and contracts sound draconian. They're written in legalese to be clear, precise, serious, and intimidating. They're designed to give the authoring party as much power as possible while limiting their liability to nothing.
The solution, however, is pretty simple: If you have any doubts at all about the terms of an agreement, don't agree to it. Or ask Google the change it. Submitting a Slashdot article about it is just a lot of pointless whining.
"ubuntu 9.04 beta and fedora 11 beta benchmarked..."
Fixed that for ya.
Also, the article pretty much boils down to "Fedora 11 Beta is slower in a lot of areas which might be because they have a bunch of debugging stuff enabled, but really we're not sure. Anyway, enjoy the meaningless bargraphs."
Nope. In the U.S., copyright infringement (under the misnomer "piracy") seems to be a federal crime.
You can probably thank the MPAA, RIAA, and BSA for that.
Well, we're boned.
Of course it is. The freedom to use, modify, and distribute open source software is not affected by anyone's technical skill. Software of any complexity can be open source. Just because the "average user" (however you choose to define that) might not have the skill to fix a programming error or modify the code, that doesn't take away from their right to modify or redistribute the software. Whether or not they have the ability to do so is a completely separate matter.
So your argument is that no software is free (as in freedom) unless the end-user is capable of modifying or debugging it him/herself? That's one hell of a leap of logic. I personally don't have the technical skill to fix a bug or write a new device driver for the Linux kernel. But by your very argument, that means that Linux is not really free software (contrary to the GPL that it's licensed under) because I, one person, cannot fully grok it. I guess Linus Torvalds has been lying to everyone all these years.
You're confusing the technical ability to modify and redistribute software with the legal ability to modify and redistribute software. Free software, as defined by the FSF and everyone else in the free/libre/open source world, is only concerned with the latter.
Why is that not an option? If you need a piece of software to do a particular job, either you buy a product that comes with the support you need, or you install an open source one and support it yourself. If your open source option never requires any support (which is true a good portion of the time), then you've come out ahead. If your open source option requires support and you can handle it yourself, then you've come out ahead. If you require support but don't have the technical ability to do it yourself, and the maintainers of the software won't do it for free (which they're not obligated to, by the way), then yes, you might have to pay for it.
This isn't just my opinion, this is actually how the software industry works. This is why there are many, many people who use open source software and never end up paying a dime for it. This is also why there are programmers and consultants who provide services (for money) relating to open source software.
If free software were this panacea where all of the programs worked perfectly for everyone, never had any bugs, and never required any support, there would be no Microsoft, no Novell, no Oracle, no Red Hat. In fact, there would really be no software industry to speak of.
Tell that to open source projects like Mozilla, FreeBSD, and OpenOffice who each have thousands of bugs fixed every month. If what you say is true, then the Mozilla foundation spent over $2.4 million last month alone fixing
I had a boss that would have balked at the 20% figure. He believed (and told us as much) that you were wasting company time and money if you were anything less than 100% engaged in your work. He was, however, always interested in boosting productivity any way possible, so when someone brought up Google's "personal project time" policy (Google was the rockstar of the Internet then, even moreso than now), he wanted to try it. Once we started seriously discussing it, though, the boss killed the idea by proclaiming that the personal project time would be in addition to, not replacing your normal 8-hour day. That means you either had to come in early, stay late, or come in on a weekend. And it wouldn't count as overtime either. That pretty much killed all interest.
(Posting this at work, from my new job.)
Wrong. As long as they are giving you a software product for free, it's only their problem if they decide it is. That's the greatest strength and weakness of open source (not just Linux in particular): developers get to choose exactly what they want to work on. This leads to widely varying levels of software quality: some of it is quite superior to anything else (Linux, Firefox), but some of it is just atrocious (MythTV).
But make no mistake: You WILL get flamed if you sit around and badmouth something that someone put their own time and effort into and gave to the world with no expectation of getting paid for it. The proper response to a defect or problem with open source software is to:
* Make a suggestion, feature request, or bug report
* Fix it yourself
Notice in particular that neither of those is, "flame the software and its developers on some random message board."
It sounds to me like the problem here is twofold: 1) Your friends misinformed you about the nature of open source software and 2) you didn't do adequate research before implementing your DVR.
As the usage of open source software has begun to move beyond the skilled developer and administrator cohort, there are lots of new people trying out open source software for the first time that have no idea how it's different than proprietary software other than the price. And that's the fault of people like me (who have been using open source for over a decade) who want to see greater adoption of the software we toil over, but don't adequately describe its tradeoffs to newcomers.
Lets use your case as an example. I'll assume you told a friend, or someone, that you wanted to build your own DVR and they suggested Linux and MythTV. That's not a bad suggestion on its own, but it should have probably been qualified with, "as long as you don't mind some trial-and-error, lots of tweaking, and getting your hands dirty." But it sounds to me like you wanted something that you could just install, configure, and be done with in a few hours. Had your friend known of this requirement, he or she should have suggested some proprietary DVR software that's designed to be easy to set up and use. Proprietary software vendors have a vested interest in making their products as easy to use as possible. They want to lead the market, gain new customers, and keep existing ones. If you pay for software, you should have every right to seek support from the company that made it because they implicitly made a promise that by selling the software, it would work for its advertised purpose. If it doesn't, you have every right to complain to the world at large that the company takes your money but doesn't provide a suitable product or service.
Open source software, however, never comes with these assumptions. If it doesn't work for you, tough luck because you most likely didn't pay anything for it. Your options are, as always: report it, fix it, or move on. Sure, you can always try to seek help on a community-run forum, but don't get all obstinate when they don't produce the exact answer you were looking for because they have no more obligation to help you than the developers who wrote the software.
Your core message (after all the complaining has been filtered out) is correct, however. We, the open source community, need to do a better job at communicating the fact that free software is free in terms of freedom, not in terms of effort or technical skill.
There are two kinds of people who voted for Serenity: those who thought it was a pretty name and those who were rabid fans of the TV science fiction show Firefly. I'll let you decide which of those probably held more sway in the vote.
That said, this is far from the first time that Colbert has instructed his viewers to write in his name for an online poll. This is just the first time that he stands a greater-than-zero chance of succeeding. Personally, I think it's funny. Does everything around space exploration have to be so sanitary and serious? We explore space to heighten our understanding of the universe and push our intellect, skill, and abilities to the limit. Why shouldn't we incorporate humor, as one of the more positive aspects of humanity, into the endeavor?
With a summary like that, who needs to RTFA?
Hulu is fully owned and operated by the content providers. This is not your Google or Facebook story were some hard-working geniuses struck it lucky and now have a popular website, this is a continuation of the entertainment industry's effort to implement new technology that's been implemented by everyone else for years.
You don't, because there's no local facility (i.e., TV station) to be paid for.
This will change, mark my words.
When hulu started, there were no ads. Then they started putting "this program brought to you by so-and-so" in the beginning. Then they started inserting one or two very short ads per show. Now they're up to just as many commercial breaks as "regular" TV. (More, actually, on some older shows.) Next we'll start seeing 2 or more ads per break and it'll be the same as regular broadcast TV and cable.
Don't get me wrong, I really don't mind the advertising revenue model. What frustrates me is the sheer number of ads combined with the sheer shittiness of the ads. When I sit down to watch TV and am forced to spend a full 1/3 of the time getting screamed at by advertisements, I have a hard time rationalizing it as time well-spent afterwards.
Please, please tell me this is an early April fool's joke. If not, dear submitter, I hope that you're either very tired or very drunk right now because you literally just asked:
"Windows is crashing randomly and the program that I ran to test the memory is reporting errors. Does that mean the memory in my computer is bad?"
You should have also tried running a hacked version of OS X to serve as a tie-breaker.
Yes, Nokia did, 4 years ago.
I'm pushing 30 and I find that many people (including employers) assume that you have experience in your chosen field just because of your age alone, even before they've seen your resume. If the choice for a position comes down to you and a pimply-faced youth just out of college, age can be huge advantage. A lot of employers look for maturity and intellect first, raw skills second.
And anyway, it's never the case that your resume is what gets you a job, although it might limit you to an entry-level position. Either a strong recommendation or an excellent interview will get you the job. And if you spend your next few years boning up on I.T. or whatever you want to do, the interview will be easier than you think.
The Model M is a fantastic keyboard. Solid, reliable, types well. The problem for me, however, is that it's too noisy and takes far more effort to type on than a modern rubber-dome keyboard. Unix commands and such are great, by try writing a paper (or very long Slashdot comment) sometime and you'll see what I mean.
I would love to have a keyboard with the durability and layout of a model M combined with the comfort and quietness of a modern keyboard. I've spent YEARS searching online and in real life. I would pay any amount of money for that perfect keyboard that is durable, comfortable, relatively quiet, and has the classic 101-key layout.
But nobody makes one. Literally no one.