One thing I don't understand is that there seems to be a consensus that Apple got it right, UI-wise. Unix underpinnings, but an elegant interface (from what I hear, anyway....I haven't used a Mac since ~1994). The knock against linux seems to be that the frameworks are there, it's just sort of a kludgey interface a lot of the time. "Too much command line needed". In my experience, things like Ubuntu have made it a lot better, but it still seems like a bastardized version of Windows. Sure somethings are prettier sometimes, but a lot of times other parts aren't remotely close. So my question is....
Why not rip off the other guys? Rather than chase Windows, chase freakin' OS X. If Apple can make a glamorous OS based on Unix, why can't anyone make a glamorous OS based on Linux? Is it because Apple has those magical UI fairies? FOSS vs commercial shouldn't matter - people are ultimately the ones that make the stuff. Are you telling me there are no more best and brightest out there working in the FOSS world, that they're all snatched up and locked down for commercial project?
I love a lot of the aspects of the Linux desktop, but it just seems like the vast majority of FOSS projects' tagline should be "almost as good as the commercial counterpart, but it's free!". IMHO there are only a few major projects that have actually *improved* on their commercial counterparts and made a *better* product. And those projects are the ones that succeed. For Linux On The Desktop to actually work, it needs to stop trying to be the "free alternative to Windows or Mac" and actually be a *better* alternative, for more reasons than just not having to pay for the software.
That's retarded. Normal users aren't going to do that, hell, I wouldn't. I'm not going to set up WSUS or download and try and set up some third party software just to update the handful of PCs my family has at home so I can game the bandwidth meter maids. And Windows isn't the only one with updates, nor are OS's the only thing with updates. Games, office suites, utilities, patches, virus updates....there's a whole ton of potential data transfer in the background before you even get into stuff like streaming video, YouTube, iTunes, Amazon, emusic, etc. This whole thing is a stupid, stupid idea.
Ugh, that is wrong on so many levels. A partnership with iTunes? What if I don't want to get my music from iTunes? What if I want to download from emusic or Amazon? POP email for free? What if my primary email is via my own host, or gmail? Mirrors are great and all, but they don't have everything. What if I'm a YouTube freak and want to watch that all day? Or something like Joost? Why the f- should the ISP be telling me what I can or cannot do with my connection? And depending on the ISP for content?!? Insane!
This whole idea of bandwidth metering or tiered pricing is bad, bad, BAD. We're sitting on the edge of a revolution with streaming video and other multimedia, and it's getting neutered before it even takes off because the telecom companies won't see the light that they need to build the infrastructure to handle it.
No worries, though....*someone* will come along with the infrastructure (Google and their dark fiber?), and win ALL of the consumers.
It doesn't play games for XBox or Playstation, but the library it brings to the table is much bigger, and covers a much wider array of playstyles. There's simply more variety with the Wii.
I'd want to change that to say *potential* library. I love my Wii, but it seems to me that there's actually a lack of many games. Sure, the entire history of NES/SNES would be great, but they don't have everything out yet. Where the heck is Dr. Mario on the VC?
But those "non-average" users, the early adopters, are paving the way for the future. Sure, they're checking banks and email until that hot new HD movie is released on iTunes. Or something like Joost takes off. I'd like to think something like iTunes is fairly mainstream, and Apple is pushing to have it be the media center of the home. How fast will you burn through that cap when you're renting and downloading tons of HD content from places like iTunes and Netflix??
Limiting progress is not the answer!
Welcome to technological progress? So we should stifle any sort of new uses for high-bandwidth by penalizing it's use, rather than create the infrastructure to handle it? Why would I want to build out the road system when the rails work so well?!
Because the discussion tools at/. are much better than the forum at Ars? Frankly, I find the Ars forum software a horrible pain to use, especially it's subscription options to keep track of posts.
Isn't the point that if TW puts it out, and there's no competition, what are the consumers supposed to do? It's kinda like paying for gas.....they can raise the prices, but if there's no real alternative, what are you gonna do?
If you're only real option is TW for broadband, you'll probably just eat it and pay the charges. And they'll look at it as their system working.
As an additional thought, is this even something that could be done via an extension? I know some people *hate* the Gmail conversations, but I think they are great at keeping track of things. Even with Thunderbird's "threading" enabled, new messages don't necessarily show up at the top of the list until the box is refreshed (IMAP here); usually a new message is just buried further down the thread.:-/
So where's the "Gmail" style conversations in standard desktop clients? I use Thunderbird at work, alongside some users with Outlook. I've got threading turned on for Thunderbird but compared to Gmail's implementation it, in a word, sucks.
But it doesn't just apply to "illegal" filesharing. More and more downloads are going to be handled via P2P protocols because of the bandwidth crunch that the ISPs have created for themselves. How many HD movie downloads via iTunes would it take to hit 160GB in a month? What about legal downloads of isos or movies via bittorrent? What about Joost streaming TV (or any streaming video technology) that makes use of P2P technologies?
Capping bandwidths and throttling users is very shortsighted - it's only going to put off the inevitable. The truth is that the ISPs have always oversold their bandwidth, and are now getting burned for it. The answer isn't to limit people's use - the solution is to build more bandwidth infrastructure!
So what if he's been able to bankroll his movies up until now? Who are the crackpots that keep licensing their games to him to make into movies?!? Why on Earth, if you've made a successful video game, would you ever think to license the material to this guy?!? IMDB shows me two more Bloodraynes, Postal, another Alone in the Dark, and Far Cry. Why???
Dammit! I've been planning on looking into switching to AT&T DSL in the near future. I currently have a local cable provider for Internet and TV. The Internet access is OK, but the TV (specifically the HD content) quality sucks bad. Plus it's local so it don't even have the clout like Comcast to improve their offerings.
I've been looking into switching to AT&T DSL and a satellite provider to try and save money and get a better product. The DSL looks like it would be about $15/month cheaper, and the dish provider would give a lot better service I think. But now there's all this talk about AT&T messing with their Internet service....gahhhhh!
They are being totally unreasonable here. I'm reposting my own Ford pics on my sight the very next thing I do. I eagerly await a DCMA take-down message, for with it, gives me the federal nexus to demonstrate my injury to a federal judge. What hubris.
Until you start charging for those pics, or selling them, you might be waiting awhile for that takedown notice...
In Michigan, after moving to a different city, I just had to submit a change of address. I got a sticker in the mail with the updated address that I put on the back of the license.
If flying becomes that much of a pain, will we begin to see a resurgence of driving or maybe even privately run railroads? Could Amtrak spin this to climb from the abyss?
If it's a "national" ID/drivers license, does that mean you could get rid of state-specific licenses and just have one that you can use everywhere? As someone who has switched states twice in the past few years, it's a royal PITA to get a new license. Also, what would this do to fake ID's used to get alcohol? What will the underage students do? Which also leads me to...
The FA mentions slashing the costs, making it easier on the states. In at least Michigan and Indiana, the DMV in both are completely overwhelmed already. If they're going to have to do *more* work, how in the heck would they ever pull this off? Michigan already has just recently had to deal with plugging a hole where illegal immigrants would get a state issued driver's license.
What are the chances that we see in the next 10-15 years people from our generation (late 20s) come into power that understand what a clusterfck things have become, and get rid of this crap? Get rid of the DHS, PATRIOT act, and start living a more "enlightened" mindset? Can we hope??
Is that why most of the tracks (from all labels) are $.89 on Amazon, and albums are $8 or $9? Maybe it's because the labels have realized I want to be able to download a song and play it on my computer via Winamp or iTunes or Media player, and in my car via burned CD, MP3 CD, or any digital audio player with an FM out or aux out, or on any digital audio player while I'm elsewhere, or copied to a thumb drive and at work, etc. You know, rather than via iTunes on my computer, or via only an iPod while in the car, or via only an iPod while I'm away from the computer, etc. Ya know....
Why the hell would you search for content, and then wait for a download to complete, listen to it, delete it, and then do the whole stupid thing over again time after time??? If you're accessing content that often, it's infinitely more convenient to have the content locally. Backups? If you're gonna re-download it every time to listen to it, then you can re-download it on the off chance that you lose all your data.
In my experience, I'd tack it to Sharepoint. Firefox *works* with Sharepoint technically, but not as well as IE, and I've had to tweak the about:config to pass the Windows authentication to make it work seamlessly. And you still lose the integration with MS Office. If you have a corporate Sharepoint-based intranet that is mostly what people use, sure, you'll see IE usage over Firefox.
Now that the content is there (or getting there), Amazon just needs to improve upon their already excellent store. Why can't I have a "wishlist" of songs I want to download? Right now I have a text file of songs I want, I just haven't gotten around to buying them yet. Shouldn't I be able to mark tracks for downloading later?
Slashdot Mirror
Who the f- leaves their browser open and running for weeks?!?
One thing I don't understand is that there seems to be a consensus that Apple got it right, UI-wise. Unix underpinnings, but an elegant interface (from what I hear, anyway....I haven't used a Mac since ~1994). The knock against linux seems to be that the frameworks are there, it's just sort of a kludgey interface a lot of the time. "Too much command line needed". In my experience, things like Ubuntu have made it a lot better, but it still seems like a bastardized version of Windows. Sure somethings are prettier sometimes, but a lot of times other parts aren't remotely close. So my question is....
Why not rip off the other guys? Rather than chase Windows, chase freakin' OS X. If Apple can make a glamorous OS based on Unix, why can't anyone make a glamorous OS based on Linux? Is it because Apple has those magical UI fairies? FOSS vs commercial shouldn't matter - people are ultimately the ones that make the stuff. Are you telling me there are no more best and brightest out there working in the FOSS world, that they're all snatched up and locked down for commercial project?
I love a lot of the aspects of the Linux desktop, but it just seems like the vast majority of FOSS projects' tagline should be "almost as good as the commercial counterpart, but it's free!". IMHO there are only a few major projects that have actually *improved* on their commercial counterparts and made a *better* product. And those projects are the ones that succeed. For Linux On The Desktop to actually work, it needs to stop trying to be the "free alternative to Windows or Mac" and actually be a *better* alternative, for more reasons than just not having to pay for the software.
And move on to soccer and cricket!
That's retarded. Normal users aren't going to do that, hell, I wouldn't. I'm not going to set up WSUS or download and try and set up some third party software just to update the handful of PCs my family has at home so I can game the bandwidth meter maids. And Windows isn't the only one with updates, nor are OS's the only thing with updates. Games, office suites, utilities, patches, virus updates....there's a whole ton of potential data transfer in the background before you even get into stuff like streaming video, YouTube, iTunes, Amazon, emusic, etc. This whole thing is a stupid, stupid idea.
Ugh, that is wrong on so many levels. A partnership with iTunes? What if I don't want to get my music from iTunes? What if I want to download from emusic or Amazon? POP email for free? What if my primary email is via my own host, or gmail? Mirrors are great and all, but they don't have everything. What if I'm a YouTube freak and want to watch that all day? Or something like Joost? Why the f- should the ISP be telling me what I can or cannot do with my connection? And depending on the ISP for content?!? Insane!
This whole idea of bandwidth metering or tiered pricing is bad, bad, BAD. We're sitting on the edge of a revolution with streaming video and other multimedia, and it's getting neutered before it even takes off because the telecom companies won't see the light that they need to build the infrastructure to handle it.
No worries, though....*someone* will come along with the infrastructure (Google and their dark fiber?), and win ALL of the consumers.
Wait, so in order to use the friggin' *PHONE* I am forced to have a computer??
It's all fine and dandy until your ISP starts charging you gobs of $$ to pull down those gobs of web TV......
But those "non-average" users, the early adopters, are paving the way for the future. Sure, they're checking banks and email until that hot new HD movie is released on iTunes. Or something like Joost takes off. I'd like to think something like iTunes is fairly mainstream, and Apple is pushing to have it be the media center of the home. How fast will you burn through that cap when you're renting and downloading tons of HD content from places like iTunes and Netflix?? Limiting progress is not the answer!
Welcome to technological progress? So we should stifle any sort of new uses for high-bandwidth by penalizing it's use, rather than create the infrastructure to handle it? Why would I want to build out the road system when the rails work so well?!
Because the discussion tools at /. are much better than the forum at Ars? Frankly, I find the Ars forum software a horrible pain to use, especially it's subscription options to keep track of posts.
Isn't the point that if TW puts it out, and there's no competition, what are the consumers supposed to do? It's kinda like paying for gas.....they can raise the prices, but if there's no real alternative, what are you gonna do?
If you're only real option is TW for broadband, you'll probably just eat it and pay the charges. And they'll look at it as their system working.
As an additional thought, is this even something that could be done via an extension? I know some people *hate* the Gmail conversations, but I think they are great at keeping track of things. Even with Thunderbird's "threading" enabled, new messages don't necessarily show up at the top of the list until the box is refreshed (IMAP here); usually a new message is just buried further down the thread. :-/
So where's the "Gmail" style conversations in standard desktop clients? I use Thunderbird at work, alongside some users with Outlook. I've got threading turned on for Thunderbird but compared to Gmail's implementation it, in a word, sucks.
But it doesn't just apply to "illegal" filesharing. More and more downloads are going to be handled via P2P protocols because of the bandwidth crunch that the ISPs have created for themselves. How many HD movie downloads via iTunes would it take to hit 160GB in a month? What about legal downloads of isos or movies via bittorrent? What about Joost streaming TV (or any streaming video technology) that makes use of P2P technologies?
Capping bandwidths and throttling users is very shortsighted - it's only going to put off the inevitable. The truth is that the ISPs have always oversold their bandwidth, and are now getting burned for it. The answer isn't to limit people's use - the solution is to build more bandwidth infrastructure!
So what if he's been able to bankroll his movies up until now? Who are the crackpots that keep licensing their games to him to make into movies?!? Why on Earth, if you've made a successful video game, would you ever think to license the material to this guy?!? IMDB shows me two more Bloodraynes, Postal, another Alone in the Dark, and Far Cry. Why???
Dammit! I've been planning on looking into switching to AT&T DSL in the near future. I currently have a local cable provider for Internet and TV. The Internet access is OK, but the TV (specifically the HD content) quality sucks bad. Plus it's local so it don't even have the clout like Comcast to improve their offerings.
I've been looking into switching to AT&T DSL and a satellite provider to try and save money and get a better product. The DSL looks like it would be about $15/month cheaper, and the dish provider would give a lot better service I think. But now there's all this talk about AT&T messing with their Internet service....gahhhhh!
In Michigan, after moving to a different city, I just had to submit a change of address. I got a sticker in the mail with the updated address that I put on the back of the license.
A smattering of thoughts...
If flying becomes that much of a pain, will we begin to see a resurgence of driving or maybe even privately run railroads? Could Amtrak spin this to climb from the abyss?
If it's a "national" ID/drivers license, does that mean you could get rid of state-specific licenses and just have one that you can use everywhere? As someone who has switched states twice in the past few years, it's a royal PITA to get a new license. Also, what would this do to fake ID's used to get alcohol? What will the underage students do? Which also leads me to...
The FA mentions slashing the costs, making it easier on the states. In at least Michigan and Indiana, the DMV in both are completely overwhelmed already. If they're going to have to do *more* work, how in the heck would they ever pull this off? Michigan already has just recently had to deal with plugging a hole where illegal immigrants would get a state issued driver's license.
What are the chances that we see in the next 10-15 years people from our generation (late 20s) come into power that understand what a clusterfck things have become, and get rid of this crap? Get rid of the DHS, PATRIOT act, and start living a more "enlightened" mindset? Can we hope??
Is that why most of the tracks (from all labels) are $.89 on Amazon, and albums are $8 or $9? Maybe it's because the labels have realized I want to be able to download a song and play it on my computer via Winamp or iTunes or Media player, and in my car via burned CD, MP3 CD, or any digital audio player with an FM out or aux out, or on any digital audio player while I'm elsewhere, or copied to a thumb drive and at work, etc. You know, rather than via iTunes on my computer, or via only an iPod while in the car, or via only an iPod while I'm away from the computer, etc. Ya know....
Why the hell would you search for content, and then wait for a download to complete, listen to it, delete it, and then do the whole stupid thing over again time after time??? If you're accessing content that often, it's infinitely more convenient to have the content locally. Backups? If you're gonna re-download it every time to listen to it, then you can re-download it on the off chance that you lose all your data.
In my experience, I'd tack it to Sharepoint. Firefox *works* with Sharepoint technically, but not as well as IE, and I've had to tweak the about:config to pass the Windows authentication to make it work seamlessly. And you still lose the integration with MS Office. If you have a corporate Sharepoint-based intranet that is mostly what people use, sure, you'll see IE usage over Firefox.
Now that the content is there (or getting there), Amazon just needs to improve upon their already excellent store. Why can't I have a "wishlist" of songs I want to download? Right now I have a text file of songs I want, I just haven't gotten around to buying them yet. Shouldn't I be able to mark tracks for downloading later?