Or 4. People who don't have a need to spend $50-$80 a month on 200 channels with nothing on?
I never had cable growing up, and my parents still just have rabbit ears. They are neither grandmas (yet), ghetto dwellers, wilderness wildmen, nor snobs or health nuts. They get all the main networks, and that's what they watch. They've never seen a need for anything more. Hell, I pay almost $100/month for cable internet and TV, and we pretty much only watch network television, ESPN, and Comedy Central. The wife sometimes watches E!. Really, outside of sports and HD (our TV doesn't have a digital HD tuner), I really wonder why I'm paying so much for so little, and am thinking of dropping it altogether. If we could only get all the college sports on regular network TV, or if I could just find a freakin' cheap HD tuner box. Sigh.....
Why not? Ultimately, it's just personnel resources, whether it's commercial or OSS. Are there not graphics programmers, mission designers, texture artists, concept artists, AI programmers, skybox artists, effects artists, animation engineers, networking programmers etc. available to the OSS community?
Not a miser, but I'd say you're in the fortunate(?) minority who is able to mooch off a parent's cell phone service and have your work pick up your own cell and internet service. I would guess the majority of people out there actually have to pay for their own stuff:-).
Where's the online database of murderers, thieves, and drug users? Didn't anyone ever read the Scarlet Letter? Not saying the sex crimes and kiddie-rapers are OK, but if you're convicted and serve your time, why do you still have to be persecuted publicly?
Funny, on my Verizon KRZR, if I press down on the d-pad I get to the calendar. Granted, it's not useful for anything more than glancing at dates, but it's there. I didn't get the KRZR thinking it would be a smartphone, either, though.
But why would a person with little knowledge or interest in a subject edit or correct it's mistakes in the first place? Isn't the whole point that Wikipedia is a community reviewed summary of topics? I thought the idea was that if 100 people all present their take on something, and 97 of those people agree on a point, then you can assume that the "true" picture is coming forward. You shouldn't have to worry about those other 3 people that make no sense because the community should filter that out automatically.
Wouldn't this perfectly suit a gmail appliance? Personally, I think Gmail's interface for webmail is the best out there. I ended up biting the bullet and moving my personal domain to their free hosted services because I can't offer 5GB of email space to my friends with standard hosting, nor offer the reliability of gmail. But I still have in the back of my mind that ultimately everything is on Google's servers. They're probably better able to handle maintenance than me, but still.
They already have a search appliance. Why not a standalone email appliance that schools and businesses could install, hook it up to gobs of storage space, and there ya go? Hell, make a whole standalone Google Apps appliance, and tear Exchange a new one. You get to keep the email in-house, plus with great search, but with the Google stamp of goodness. I'd give an arm and a leg for this!
To both your points - doing that just pushes students away. Why would I want to use my school's email that forces me to store stuff locally when I can keep everything online with gmail? Gmail didn't just change the game for Hotmail and Yahoo...expectations for webmail/email in general have changed. Granted, I've been out of school for a few years now, but I use hosted gmail with my personal domain for my primary mail. I think if I was in school now I'd have a hard time IMAP/POPping my email to Thunderbird or Outlook.
I'm not saying the alternative shouldn't emulate the market leader, I'm saying it should improve upon the market leader and offer a *better* product. I use Firefox because it's a better product than IE. I use Pidgin because it's a better product than the AIM client (granted, I assume....I haven't tried the stock client in years. But Pidgin handles other protocols, too). But doesn't anyone honest to goodness REALLY use OpenOffice because it's truly a better product. Please stop kidding yourself. If MS Office were free to download and the DOC format were open, it would have 100% of the market share because it is the best out there right now save for the cost and the hangups some people have or proprietary document formats. OO works, but I don't believe for a minute that a double blind test would say OO is more pleasant to use than MS Office. GIMP doesn't really offer anything that Photoshop can't do; if Photoshop were free, everyone would use that. Thunderbird is an awesome email-only IMAP client, but Outlook beats the pants off it for PIM use. Thunderbird plus Lightning is a joke in that regard. We're talking years away from being where Outlook was 3 years ago. If you just keep trying to be like the market leader, you're aiming for a never stopping target. Like it or not, for the most part the thing free software has going for it is that it's free. The real successes come from matching and beating proprietary software, not just aiming to be like it.
Sigh....my point is "good enough" is not really good enough. It's time to go further than just trying to match what's out there, and listen to the users to make things better.
Agreed! OO is good, but really only because it is free. Would you pay money for OO? No, you'd go with the polish of MS Office. Anyone who says different is only kidding themselves.
Firefox bested IE because it was *better*. It offered an improved experience. For OSS to really shine, it needs to stop just trying to be "like" Office, "like" Photoshop, etc. etc. OSS apps need to innovate, offer something new and *better* than what it's trying to replace. Until that happens, the only thing OSS software really has going for it is that it costs less money than the commercial alternatives.
Why bother pirating Visual Studio? It should be available free or very cheap to any student, and the free Express Editions are good enough for most any basic project. That said, I think VS2005 is one of the best development environments out there, proprietary or not. It really makes development nice. I try and use the best tool for the job....not force myself to use a crappy solution just because it's not open. VS is something Microsoft got *right*. I still use PuTTY a lot all the same for some applications, and it's solid, too. Why not use what works?
Don't the Thinkpads still have this? My T60p does....I usually prefer the touchpad if I have to just because that's what I'm used to. Mostly I still use a plugged in mouse, though.
Really, for most purposes high-end laptops are just as powerful as a desktop. My T60p flies through what I need to do for work. And for the cramped issue - make it a non-issue. I've got my laptop set as the primary monitor, with an external LCD as the second monitor. External USB keyboard and a MX500 mouse give me full keyboard and mouse. I've basically got a fully stocked desktop right here, but I can unplug everything and take it with me, and work on the laptop keyboard and trackpad if I need to. It's the best of both worlds, and I don't forsee myself ever getting a full tower desktop again!
But why couldn't you get that $30k item back? It's purely digital, it'd be trivial to restore things to as they should. Supply and demand shouldn't come in....they're not making a new copy for you, they'd be removing the stolen copy and returning it to how it should be.
But you can't in turn *take* the money back from the Nigerian scammers. Why can't the admins remove the "stolen" furniture from the accused accounts, and "return" it to the rightful owners? And then ban the faulty parties from the system?
No. Apple should not be concerned because they are great are doing hardware...:-)
I think Apple should be slightly worried. However, I think the same who will buy no mp3 player by an iPod will stick with the iPhone for the same reason: the bling factor.
So you basically blackmailed your friend until he caved in and used a website that he didn't want to use? Nice. What he should have done is told every one of you to fuck off, pissed on your beds, and found new "friends".
Slashdot Mirror
Sounds to me like the world really isn't big enough for all of us!
Or 4. People who don't have a need to spend $50-$80 a month on 200 channels with nothing on?
I never had cable growing up, and my parents still just have rabbit ears. They are neither grandmas (yet), ghetto dwellers, wilderness wildmen, nor snobs or health nuts. They get all the main networks, and that's what they watch. They've never seen a need for anything more. Hell, I pay almost $100/month for cable internet and TV, and we pretty much only watch network television, ESPN, and Comedy Central. The wife sometimes watches E!. Really, outside of sports and HD (our TV doesn't have a digital HD tuner), I really wonder why I'm paying so much for so little, and am thinking of dropping it altogether. If we could only get all the college sports on regular network TV, or if I could just find a freakin' cheap HD tuner box. Sigh.....
Why not? Ultimately, it's just personnel resources, whether it's commercial or OSS. Are there not graphics programmers, mission designers, texture artists, concept artists, AI programmers, skybox artists, effects artists, animation engineers, networking programmers etc. available to the OSS community?
You couldn't do something like, say, make a better product than the competition?
Not a miser, but I'd say you're in the fortunate(?) minority who is able to mooch off a parent's cell phone service and have your work pick up your own cell and internet service. I would guess the majority of people out there actually have to pay for their own stuff :-).
Where's the online database of murderers, thieves, and drug users? Didn't anyone ever read the Scarlet Letter? Not saying the sex crimes and kiddie-rapers are OK, but if you're convicted and serve your time, why do you still have to be persecuted publicly?
Funny, on my Verizon KRZR, if I press down on the d-pad I get to the calendar. Granted, it's not useful for anything more than glancing at dates, but it's there. I didn't get the KRZR thinking it would be a smartphone, either, though.
But why would a person with little knowledge or interest in a subject edit or correct it's mistakes in the first place? Isn't the whole point that Wikipedia is a community reviewed summary of topics? I thought the idea was that if 100 people all present their take on something, and 97 of those people agree on a point, then you can assume that the "true" picture is coming forward. You shouldn't have to worry about those other 3 people that make no sense because the community should filter that out automatically.
How 'bout this?
Who the fuck are you, and why should anyone care?
Wouldn't this perfectly suit a gmail appliance? Personally, I think Gmail's interface for webmail is the best out there. I ended up biting the bullet and moving my personal domain to their free hosted services because I can't offer 5GB of email space to my friends with standard hosting, nor offer the reliability of gmail. But I still have in the back of my mind that ultimately everything is on Google's servers. They're probably better able to handle maintenance than me, but still.
They already have a search appliance. Why not a standalone email appliance that schools and businesses could install, hook it up to gobs of storage space, and there ya go? Hell, make a whole standalone Google Apps appliance, and tear Exchange a new one. You get to keep the email in-house, plus with great search, but with the Google stamp of goodness. I'd give an arm and a leg for this!
To both your points - doing that just pushes students away. Why would I want to use my school's email that forces me to store stuff locally when I can keep everything online with gmail? Gmail didn't just change the game for Hotmail and Yahoo...expectations for webmail/email in general have changed. Granted, I've been out of school for a few years now, but I use hosted gmail with my personal domain for my primary mail. I think if I was in school now I'd have a hard time IMAP/POPping my email to Thunderbird or Outlook.
Incremental backups would fix that right up!
I'm not saying the alternative shouldn't emulate the market leader, I'm saying it should improve upon the market leader and offer a *better* product. I use Firefox because it's a better product than IE. I use Pidgin because it's a better product than the AIM client (granted, I assume....I haven't tried the stock client in years. But Pidgin handles other protocols, too). But doesn't anyone honest to goodness REALLY use OpenOffice because it's truly a better product. Please stop kidding yourself. If MS Office were free to download and the DOC format were open, it would have 100% of the market share because it is the best out there right now save for the cost and the hangups some people have or proprietary document formats. OO works, but I don't believe for a minute that a double blind test would say OO is more pleasant to use than MS Office. GIMP doesn't really offer anything that Photoshop can't do; if Photoshop were free, everyone would use that. Thunderbird is an awesome email-only IMAP client, but Outlook beats the pants off it for PIM use. Thunderbird plus Lightning is a joke in that regard. We're talking years away from being where Outlook was 3 years ago. If you just keep trying to be like the market leader, you're aiming for a never stopping target. Like it or not, for the most part the thing free software has going for it is that it's free. The real successes come from matching and beating proprietary software, not just aiming to be like it.
Sigh....my point is "good enough" is not really good enough. It's time to go further than just trying to match what's out there, and listen to the users to make things better.
Agreed! OO is good, but really only because it is free. Would you pay money for OO? No, you'd go with the polish of MS Office. Anyone who says different is only kidding themselves.
Firefox bested IE because it was *better*. It offered an improved experience. For OSS to really shine, it needs to stop just trying to be "like" Office, "like" Photoshop, etc. etc. OSS apps need to innovate, offer something new and *better* than what it's trying to replace. Until that happens, the only thing OSS software really has going for it is that it costs less money than the commercial alternatives.
Why bother pirating Visual Studio? It should be available free or very cheap to any student, and the free Express Editions are good enough for most any basic project. That said, I think VS2005 is one of the best development environments out there, proprietary or not. It really makes development nice. I try and use the best tool for the job....not force myself to use a crappy solution just because it's not open. VS is something Microsoft got *right*. I still use PuTTY a lot all the same for some applications, and it's solid, too. Why not use what works?
Didn't that promise the world, and umm....is just a gadget for people with too much money?
Don't the Thinkpads still have this? My T60p does....I usually prefer the touchpad if I have to just because that's what I'm used to. Mostly I still use a plugged in mouse, though.
Really, for most purposes high-end laptops are just as powerful as a desktop. My T60p flies through what I need to do for work. And for the cramped issue - make it a non-issue. I've got my laptop set as the primary monitor, with an external LCD as the second monitor. External USB keyboard and a MX500 mouse give me full keyboard and mouse. I've basically got a fully stocked desktop right here, but I can unplug everything and take it with me, and work on the laptop keyboard and trackpad if I need to. It's the best of both worlds, and I don't forsee myself ever getting a full tower desktop again!
But why couldn't you get that $30k item back? It's purely digital, it'd be trivial to restore things to as they should. Supply and demand shouldn't come in....they're not making a new copy for you, they'd be removing the stolen copy and returning it to how it should be.
But you can't in turn *take* the money back from the Nigerian scammers. Why can't the admins remove the "stolen" furniture from the accused accounts, and "return" it to the rightful owners? And then ban the faulty parties from the system?
So you basically blackmailed your friend until he caved in and used a website that he didn't want to use? Nice. What he should have done is told every one of you to fuck off, pissed on your beds, and found new "friends".