Wow that sounds amazingly similar to what happens in Mexico... Telmex (the company owned by the 2nd richest man in the world) was given as a free gift when it was privatized by the government and now it is nothing less than a huge monopoly which abuses its power . Mexico has one of the most expensive telephone tarifs and the Internet was the same (until cable companies started fighting the monopoly).
Now, the electricity company is testing Internet over power lines technology in order to provide cheaper and better internet services. I am sure Mr. Slim must be shaking by the mention of "VoIP", as I know several people that have been using it instead of the incredibly overpriced long distance calls...
Monopoly and corruption... I thought it was a trademark of Mexico =oP
I am afraid you are asking the wrong question, you should not prepare a boiled egg, you should not EAT eggs beacuse they are bad for cholesterol. You'd better eat chicken, chicken is good for your health. But be aware of eating Free (as in wild) chicken and not those non-free chicken produced by Bachocco or any other vil corporation.
So what the fuck has Spinal tap to do with computers?? who is spinal tap? it is not very well known anyway (I do not know them, and who the fuck id Derek?
(people not imported straight from Indian grad schools, thank you Microsoft for playing)
Racist much?
What the fuck do you have against Engineers in England? one of the advantages of open source is that it is open to everyone and anyone IN THE WORLD who wants to contribute. And what a best place to be educated than an Open Source project were "people imported straight from indian grad schools" can improve their coding skills and can be flamed because of their errors ?
Oh, I take that you believe that only the average White Skin Kukuxclan-American programmers are good enough for Open Source developing? Hate to break it to you but several of the head open source developers pionners are NOT caucasian (Miguel de Icaza comes to mind).
The one thing I'm missing in Free software land, actually, is a vector graphics program with decent EPS support so I can interoperate with Illustrator users
I do not know if you are going to read this (as this story is quite old) but I use OpenOffice Draw to create EPS files from anything you can put there (it is vector based but you can also insert raster images). I use it mainly to export raster images (jpg, png, etc) to EPS to use in Latex documents (THE way documents should be written).
You just have to select the objects you want to export to EPS and then click the menu FILE and then EXPORT (note, not export to pdf, just EXPORT) and select the EPS extension.
MS might be mediocre, but at least it is consistent mediocre
Please someone give parent poster the prize, the discussion is over.
You completely hit the nail on the head. The reason why people prefer Microsoft over whatever else is the reason why McDonalds and starbucks have spread like cancer all over the world. McDonalds hamburgers are horrible, yet, when you go to Istanbulilash you *know* what you are going to get if you go to the McDonalds, after eating the kabu-kebab or the costillas-mexicanas or whatever else the country offers, you know you can count on a McDonalds... even if it is terrible.
With Microsoft is the same, you can count on Windows, it is the same in all the places, the "lack" of choice translates into consistency. Even if it is just "good enough", thats all they need "enough". Enough for whom? for the 80% of the population, the other 20% can cry and kick all the way.
Just as a side example, is the ability of turning the screen image 90 or flippling it horiz. or vert. I just learnt you can do that in X-Window, but you need a command called "xrandr", so, if someone wanted to do it, they will have to learn that command and their flags and all... In Windows, you can do it with a menu in your manufacturers card or you can use just isntall irotate (via Next-nextnext-next-finlize) and you will have an icon placed on your tray notification area which you can right click and select the rotation. The difference is, that although the second option seems to have more steps, it is more intuitive, because it follows the *same * logic that every Windows program follows, open installer, click next-next-enxt and click your way through the menues. Whereas in Linux you have to guess the commands and options to write, oh and those are different for each program.
I Also find very funny how, lots of Linux "GUIs" that are supposed to be frontends for command line programs are nothing more than a GTK frame with a text box were you have to put the parameter string (ala -HSLk -p 300).
Saying it's not patentable is a false conclusion based on hindsight. If someone put a computer in front of you with a text-based interface, you wouldn't immediately look at it and say "tabs!" That's the answer! Obviously, you wouldn't even immediately create the idea of a GUI
I completely agree with you on this. Tabbed interfaces (ala windows app bar) IS novel invention, even if *now* it seems like stupid and superfluous for everyone... you just have to take a look at the Progman (windows 3.XX) interface and you will see how the idea of tabs really increases productivity.
Ido feel that the USPTO should insist on a uniform licensing model, though, and that patents should need to be defended as the holder becomes aware of the problem, not several years later when the fruit is ripe
The problem I see with this is that if you have a small company, which is trying to license a portfolio of licenses you might not have the resources to look into every application on every place in order to make sure that it is not infringing your patents. And, it is until the products of these companies get famous that you might actually realize they are infringing.
Of course, I think there is no need to sue first, I would incline to agree on a license with the infringing party, but sometimes, these big corporations are so high in their horses that they will just tell you to fuck off and die, and then it is when you should sue.
Therefore, I believe that patents are not evil, the problem is that with the current law (or the current *way* to enforce the law) makes it possible for patent leaches like these to exist. It is a matter of being sue-happy. But then again, from my (non USAnian) point of view, in the USA everyone tries to fix everything by suing each other (you know, the McDonalds coffee, the Suing house thief, and the suing slipping guy because there was no "watch out" sign...).
I used to love (and currently kind of love) RAR files. I have Winrar in my windows partition (with the corresponding license) of course but as it is closed source, there is no descent Linux program w/GUI that can handle them (not just decompressing but compressing with all the options).
Besides that, I think the Winrar interface and shell extensions are the best ones I've seen in a long time. And I havent seem anything similar in Linux (I am specifically thinking in cascaded context menus in the Windows Explorer with auto.rar file creation/naming and also auto file naming and creation when selecting some files in a folder). But still, closed source and even if it is usable with wine, it has no integration with any Linux file manager... so it is a no no.
thing since it just doesn't seem to work with some cards that worked fine with the last version. From what I have seen on the ubuntu forums (i went there a lot while trying to make my wireless card work on Ubuntu), this is quite normal with every ubuntu release, hardware that used to work fine on preivous releases just stop working on the new releases.
And for one of the first posters that states in some way implying that the justification for Feisty of being buggy is that it has just been released, that is bullshit. It is surely the same people that are the first to note any Windows Vista bugs malfunctions, so if we apply the same stick, Windows was "just released".
In conclusion, if they didnt cared to test their software before using it then it is their fault, it is a buggy distribution if some of its pieces are buggy. That is the price to pay for "cutting edge", and that for me was the primary reason why I didnt use Kubuntu which is based in KDE that is IMHO a piece of buggy software... (shure not BSODs but KCRASH SIGSEV windows appear each 5 mintues) and no, it is not my hardware, I am running Windows XP (and Ubuntu) quite nicely.
Agree, I really would like to see gTalk adding video, not because I will move (in order to use gTalk I would need to convince all the people I talk to in Skype to move... and I just wont) but because maybe skype will wake up and provide video support for linux... that will be sweet and will make me move to Ubunty 7 (provided that it now works with my wireless chip:P)
Open Office code is famous for being a deformed beast without head or tail. It is by itself as an OS native app slow as a turtle...
Yay, imagine the bloat of OpenOffice and Firefox together in one big horrible web based office suite:P
On the other side, about the "would you use it?" question, I used to say "NO" until 2 months ago when I started planning my brother and mother's trip to the UK and our trip trough Europe. Google Docs is really a useful thing... of course it is more of a Wordpad than a Word replacement
I am from Mexico and we have plenty of vacations. First, we have the government vacations (christmass, new year, some national days here and there), then we have the odd day and then by law you have 1 week (first year), 2 weeks(2snd year) 3 years(3rd year) and 4 years(4th year) or smoething similar.
Of course, if you are a teacher or work in the government you will get *more* vacations, oh, and you have the Semana Santa (easter) vacation, Jueves Santo and Viernes Santo.
How hard is it to add a couple of "widthxheight" in a text file?
As hard as it was to type xcopy a:\dir c:\docs/E/V/C On MSDOS, and how changing that for *click* Edit/copy, *right-click* paste in windows made it easier.
It is easy when you know that adding *wdhtxlhegt=23131" in the *xrghdpg.xcfngh* file under the "/etc/xconklfg" folder is going to solve your problems. But you see, the problem is how the heck do you get to know how to do that... For some things it might be easy to know the commands with google, but for others you've got to google AND browser through hundreds of useless Linux-zealot posts^W^WHelp Forums.
As an example, do you know it is possible to rotate the image on your screen 90 degrees with X11?, I just did it on Windows by Installing a neat program called iRotate, and now I just need to press CTRL+ALT+LEFT or CTRL+ALT+RIGHT... as easy as that. On Linux? sure it comes with the utility installed bbuuuuuut:
xrandr -o left
What the fuck is xrandr??? and isnt there a nice config setting in the Dekstop Configuration window in any distro?
For fucks sake, I think a lot of people here in slashdot should go and study Computer Science to realize that CS is NOT all about programming, there are countless branches of Computer Science were programming has *nothing* to do. I am making my PhD in Comp.Science right now, and if it wasnt for the fact that I am doing simulations (which in some circumstances it might be possible to do *without* programming like using RepastPy) I would not be using programming.
You people are confusing Computer Science with Software Engineering. Software Engineering is what most of slashdotters would *need* to study in order to be "professional" developers (this is, learn the theory and background behind that PHP, Python, Java, C++, C, Visual Basic, etc etc/coding/ you do).
It is completely possible to study in a subfield of Computer Science (in fact in many of them) without knowing how to program (in fact, many of my fellow PhD students do exactly that, oh, and my own supervisor [a Prof. in Comp. Science] does not/code/).
Several slashdotters will find this last comment offending: I believe that removing Programming will indeed attract more women, basically because this fat-dirty-geek-egocentric-smelly person idea is specifically centered on programmers, coders, etc, not on Computer Scientists overall. Gosh, there are really intelligent Women in Computer Scientists, one that comes to mind now is the cryptoanalyst women that sometimes has been featured in slashdot.
my name is jane.....i am 7 years old with black hair and red eyes. i have no nose or ears.... i am dead. if you do not send this 15 people in the next 5 minutes i will appear tonight by your bed with a knife and kill you.. this is no joke Something good will happen to u 2nite at 9:22. This is not a joke some1 will either call u or will talk to u online and say that they love u. do not break no send bak sorry!
Just read into slashdot, yesterday I went to bed and the story was still in the firehose (in UK here). But on one of my thoughts were around the question of the two separate incidents, according to the press conference I saw yesterday, the police representative said that after the first two shootings in the first building they believed that the murderer had left the campus and treat was over. My though was, how fucked up should the US be that for them a murder of two people in a school is seen as something normal, and after it finishes they think "uh, okay, well the guy killed two persons but he then escaped, well, it is good that it is over, lets clean the corpses and continue living".
But then again I am all against this US gun-o-rama culture. That is one of the reasons why I would *never* go to USA to study or work... ha, just when I was considering going there, no thanks I prefer to stay in my poor third world country eating beans.
Not to forget that OpenGL can not be compared to DirectX as DirectX besides Direct3D, there are a lot of other full fledged features as DirectInput, DirectPlay, DirectSound, DirectMusic, DirectSetup, DirectX-Media and DirectX Media Objects (Look at wikipedia for a description of all of those), all of that in one lean package and consistent APIs (through all of them... of course the darn version function suffixes are shit).
Whereas in Linux you'll have to make a mutant join of SDL(with all the half assed libraries that were never finished to play) OpenAL OpenGL Allegro X11 , TCP/IP freetype, ffmpeg etc etc etc etc...
I know because I have developed games in both of them.
As a personal opinion, I still prefer the OpenGL modeling approach (against the Direct3D one), as it is cleaner. I use it when doing scientific 3D visualization apps (which do not need all the other media things).
Yep, I did that already, the best one hands down is: Windows UE
You've got everything you need out of the box. It is Windows XP, the way it *should* have been released. =o)
Saying Linux is easier to Windows is equally as misleading as EASIER is a subjective term. I find Windows easier than Linux. And I use Linux at work 10 hours a day 5 days a week. But when I return to my house and after having fought with computers for all that time I just want something that just works.
I will make the following analogy (sorry, no cars here): Windows for a TV as Linux is for a VHS recorder/player. With Windows, you *can* be stupid, you can just sit down and let the information flow. With Linux you *must* tinker with the darn thing to make it work. Sure, it is cool when you are in the University and you are studying about that (gosh I loved installing, reainstalling and re-re-reinstalling every BSD flavour available at Uni) but it is a hassle when you just want to *use* your computer.
About 10 years ago (or maybe a bit less) there was a buzzword around the internet SAS, Software as a Service was the *next best thing* since sliced bread.
As a developer I love web apps because instead of selling my software for say, $20 to one person (who is going to distribute it to 100 more to use illegally), I can provide my app in some homepage, with 0 installation and update issues (the client always have the *last* available version, no need to click on "accept update patchfix kb32421"). The best thing is that the clients will keep paying me for the rest of their life (or at least for the rest of the time they want to use my service).
Of course this software as a service thing should *really* have emphasis in the *service* thing. You should provide additional services which are not provided by standard desktop software. As an example, take Gmail, The first time I used a mail account was back around 1994 when I created a new account at Hotmail. Since then I have always used webmail and I just cant use the desktop clients, the mere thought of having to download all my mail in my notebook or my PC or my mom's PC or my brother's PC if I want to check certain mail with a nice Enchiladas recipe at their places is ridiculous.
Well, I am no a lawyer either but I have read some of the legal RIAA vs X court documents and they *do* refer the illegal actions as DOWNLOADS. Even the defendants' lawyers.
I don't know why your question was modded up, because you don't seem familiar with the factual matrix of these cases at all.
Incredible how many bullshit can lawyers write without meaning anything. Thats some good 1337 speak.
Don't get me wrong, my best friend is a lawyer (yeah slashdot crowd, it is true) and we are friends since we were just kids, and he also tends to speak like you =o)
p.s. Thanks for your insight in the RIAA's cases, it is always funny to watch how people sue each other over there in the USA.
Or how the USA wanted to make a "north american union" ala European Union but of course the USA wanted all the advantages but didnt liked the idea of free immigration and things like that...
Slashdot Mirror
Wow that sounds amazingly similar to what happens in Mexico... Telmex (the company owned by the 2nd richest man in the world) was given as a free gift when it was privatized by the government and now it is nothing less than a huge monopoly which abuses its power . Mexico has one of the most expensive telephone tarifs and the Internet was the same (until cable companies started fighting the monopoly).
Now, the electricity company is testing Internet over power lines technology in order to provide cheaper and better internet services. I am sure Mr. Slim must be shaking by the mention of "VoIP", as I know several people that have been using it instead of the incredibly overpriced long distance calls...
Monopoly and corruption... I thought it was a trademark of Mexico =oP
Or better yet, user your tags and put
"SonyEvil" or "UniversalEvil", etc..
Just try immersing yourself inside the Black-Scholes or Binomial Option pricing model and you will see what Real Financial maths are about.
How can I prepare a boiled egg?
I am afraid you are asking the wrong question, you should not prepare a boiled egg, you should not EAT eggs beacuse they are bad for cholesterol. You'd better eat chicken, chicken is good for your health. But be aware of eating Free (as in wild) chicken and not those non-free chicken produced by Bachocco or any other vil corporation.
So what the fuck has Spinal tap to do with computers?? who is spinal tap? it is not very well known anyway (I do not know them, and who the fuck id Derek?
(people not imported straight from Indian grad schools, thank you Microsoft for playing)
Racist much?
What the fuck do you have against Engineers in England? one of the advantages of open source is that it is open to everyone and anyone IN THE WORLD who wants to contribute. And what a best place to be educated than an Open Source project were "people imported straight from indian grad schools" can improve their coding skills and can be flamed because of their errors ?
Oh, I take that you believe that only the average White Skin Kukuxclan-American programmers are good enough for Open Source developing? Hate to break it to you but several of the head open source developers pionners are NOT caucasian (Miguel de Icaza comes to mind).
Sheesh...
The one thing I'm missing in Free software land, actually, is a vector graphics program with decent EPS support so I can interoperate with Illustrator users
I do not know if you are going to read this (as this story is quite old) but I use OpenOffice Draw to create EPS files from anything you can put there (it is vector based but you can also insert raster images). I use it mainly to export raster images (jpg, png, etc) to EPS to use in Latex documents (THE way documents should be written).
You just have to select the objects you want to export to EPS and then click the menu FILE and then EXPORT (note, not export to pdf, just EXPORT) and select the EPS extension.
hth
MS might be mediocre, but at least it is consistent mediocre
Please someone give parent poster the prize, the discussion is over.
You completely hit the nail on the head. The reason why people prefer Microsoft over whatever else is the reason why McDonalds and starbucks have spread like cancer all over the world. McDonalds hamburgers are horrible, yet, when you go to Istanbulilash you *know* what you are going to get if you go to the McDonalds, after eating the kabu-kebab or the costillas-mexicanas or whatever else the country offers, you know you can count on a McDonalds... even if it is terrible.
With Microsoft is the same, you can count on Windows, it is the same in all the places, the "lack" of choice translates into consistency. Even if it is just "good enough", thats all they need "enough". Enough for whom? for the 80% of the population, the other 20% can cry and kick all the way.
Just as a side example, is the ability of turning the screen image 90 or flippling it horiz. or vert. I just learnt you can do that in X-Window, but you need a command called "xrandr", so, if someone wanted to do it, they will have to learn that command and their flags and all... In Windows, you can do it with a menu in your manufacturers card or you can use just isntall irotate (via Next-nextnext-next-finlize) and you will have an icon placed on your tray notification area which you can right click and select the rotation.
The difference is, that although the second option seems to have more steps, it is more intuitive, because it follows the *same * logic that every Windows program follows, open installer, click next-next-enxt and click your way through the menues. Whereas in Linux you have to guess the commands and options to write, oh and those are different for each program.
I Also find very funny how, lots of Linux "GUIs" that are supposed to be frontends for command line programs are nothing more than a GTK frame with a text box were you have to put the parameter string (ala -HSLk -p 300).
Saying it's not patentable is a false conclusion based on hindsight. If someone put a computer in front of you with a text-based interface, you wouldn't immediately look at it and say "tabs!" That's the answer! Obviously, you wouldn't even immediately create the idea of a GUI
I completely agree with you on this. Tabbed interfaces (ala windows app bar) IS novel invention, even if *now* it seems like stupid and superfluous for everyone... you just have to take a look at the Progman (windows 3.XX) interface and you will see how the idea of tabs really increases productivity.
Ido feel that the USPTO should insist on a uniform licensing model, though, and that patents should need to be defended as the holder becomes aware of the problem, not several years later when the fruit is ripe
The problem I see with this is that if you have a small company, which is trying to license a portfolio of licenses you might not have the resources to look into every application on every place in order to make sure that it is not infringing your patents. And, it is until the products of these companies get famous that you might actually realize they are infringing.
Of course, I think there is no need to sue first, I would incline to agree on a license with the infringing party, but sometimes, these big corporations are so high in their horses that they will just tell you to fuck off and die, and then it is when you should sue.
Therefore, I believe that patents are not evil, the problem is that with the current law (or the current *way* to enforce the law) makes it possible for patent leaches like these to exist. It is a matter of being sue-happy. But then again, from my (non USAnian) point of view, in the USA everyone tries to fix everything by suing each other (you know, the McDonalds coffee, the Suing house thief, and the suing slipping guy because there was no "watch out" sign...).
Agreed.
.rar file creation/naming and also auto file naming and creation when selecting some files in a folder). But still, closed source and even if it is usable with wine, it has no integration with any Linux file manager... so it is a no no.
I used to love (and currently kind of love) RAR files. I have Winrar in my windows partition (with the corresponding license) of course but as it is closed source, there is no descent Linux program w/GUI that can handle them (not just decompressing but compressing with all the options).
Besides that, I think the Winrar interface and shell extensions are the best ones I've seen in a long time. And I havent seem anything similar in Linux (I am specifically thinking in cascaded context menus in the Windows Explorer with auto
thing since it just doesn't seem to work with some cards that worked fine with the last version.
From what I have seen on the ubuntu forums (i went there a lot while trying to make my wireless card work on Ubuntu), this is quite normal with every ubuntu release, hardware that used to work fine on preivous releases just stop working on the new releases.
And for one of the first posters that states in some way implying that the justification for Feisty of being buggy is that it has just been released, that is bullshit. It is surely the same people that are the first to note any Windows Vista bugs malfunctions, so if we apply the same stick, Windows was "just released".
In conclusion, if they didnt cared to test their software before using it then it is their fault, it is a buggy distribution if some of its pieces are buggy. That is the price to pay for "cutting edge", and that for me was the primary reason why I didnt use Kubuntu which is based in KDE that is IMHO a piece of buggy software... (shure not BSODs but KCRASH SIGSEV windows appear each 5 mintues) and no, it is not my hardware, I am running Windows XP (and Ubuntu) quite nicely.
Agree, I really would like to see gTalk adding video, not because I will move (in order to use gTalk I would need to convince all the people I talk to in Skype to move... and I just wont) but because maybe skype will wake up and provide video support for linux... that will be sweet and will make me move to Ubunty 7 (provided that it now works with my wireless chip :P)
Open Office code is famous for being a deformed beast without head or tail. It is by itself as an OS native app slow as a turtle...
:P
Yay, imagine the bloat of OpenOffice and Firefox together in one big horrible web based office suite
On the other side, about the "would you use it?" question, I used to say "NO" until 2 months ago when I started planning my brother and mother's trip to the UK and our trip trough Europe. Google Docs is really a useful thing... of course it is more of a Wordpad than a Word replacement
I am from Mexico and we have plenty of vacations. First, we have the government vacations (christmass, new year, some national days here and there), then we have the odd day and then by law you have 1 week (first year), 2 weeks(2snd year) 3 years(3rd year) and 4 years(4th year) or smoething similar.
Of course, if you are a teacher or work in the government you will get *more* vacations, oh, and you have the Semana Santa (easter) vacation, Jueves Santo and Viernes Santo.
Sorry pal, you are screwed =oP
cheers,
Pacho Sombrero
(a bit drunk, sorry)
How hard is it to add a couple of "widthxheight" in a text file?
/E /V /C On MSDOS, and how changing that for *click* Edit/copy, *right-click* paste in windows made it easier.
As hard as it was to type xcopy a:\dir c:\docs
It is easy when you know that adding *wdhtxlhegt=23131" in the *xrghdpg.xcfngh* file under the "/etc/xconklfg" folder is going to solve your problems. But you see, the problem is how the heck do you get to know how to do that... For some things it might be easy to know the commands with google, but for others you've got to google AND browser through hundreds of useless Linux-zealot posts^W^WHelp Forums.
As an example, do you know it is possible to rotate the image on your screen 90 degrees with X11?, I just did it on Windows by Installing a neat program called iRotate, and now I just need to press CTRL+ALT+LEFT or CTRL+ALT+RIGHT... as easy as that. On Linux? sure it comes with the utility installed bbuuuuuut:
xrandr -o left
What the fuck is xrandr??? and isnt there a nice config setting in the Dekstop Configuration window in any distro?
d run 'urpmi.update -a'. I'
I dont understand what do you mean by "run 'urpmi.dupa -a '.I
On ubuntu I click on Accessories, then click on Synaptic package manager, then enter my password and click on Select All Upgrades and click OK!
Were do you run those obscure commands? on Firefox? I tried it and I only got to a google search page without any results...
For fucks sake, I think a lot of people here in slashdot should go and study Computer Science to realize that CS is NOT all about programming, there are countless branches of Computer Science were programming has *nothing* to do. I am making my PhD in Comp.Science right now, and if it wasnt for the fact that I am doing simulations (which in some circumstances it might be possible to do *without* programming like using RepastPy) I would not be using programming.
/coding/ you do).
/code/).
You people are confusing Computer Science with Software Engineering. Software Engineering is what most of slashdotters would *need* to study in order to be "professional" developers (this is, learn the theory and background behind that PHP, Python, Java, C++, C, Visual Basic, etc etc
It is completely possible to study in a subfield of Computer Science (in fact in many of them) without knowing how to program (in fact, many of my fellow PhD students do exactly that, oh, and my own supervisor [a Prof. in Comp. Science] does not
Several slashdotters will find this last comment offending: I believe that removing Programming will indeed attract more women, basically because this fat-dirty-geek-egocentric-smelly person idea is specifically centered on programmers, coders, etc, not on Computer Scientists overall. Gosh, there are really intelligent Women in Computer Scientists, one that comes to mind now is the cryptoanalyst women that sometimes has been featured in slashdot.
You should add the following :
my name is jane.....i am 7 years old with black hair and red eyes. i have no nose or ears.... i am dead. if you do not send this 15 people in the next 5 minutes i will appear tonight by your bed with a knife and kill you.. this is no joke Something good will happen to u 2nite at 9:22. This is not a joke some1 will either call u or will talk to u online and say that they love u. do not break no send bak sorry!
And send it to all of you mail contacts .
Just read into slashdot, yesterday I went to bed and the story was still in the firehose (in UK here). But on one of my thoughts were around the question of the two separate incidents, according to the press conference I saw yesterday, the police representative said that after the first two shootings in the first building they believed that the murderer had left the campus and treat was over. My though was, how fucked up should the US be that for them a murder of two people in a school is seen as something normal, and after it finishes they think "uh, okay, well the guy killed two persons but he then escaped, well, it is good that it is over, lets clean the corpses and continue living".
But then again I am all against this US gun-o-rama culture. That is one of the reasons why I would *never* go to USA to study or work... ha, just when I was considering going there, no thanks I prefer to stay in my poor third world country eating beans.
Not to forget that OpenGL can not be compared to DirectX as DirectX besides Direct3D, there are a lot of other full fledged features as DirectInput, DirectPlay, DirectSound, DirectMusic, DirectSetup, DirectX-Media and DirectX Media Objects (Look at wikipedia for a description of all of those), all of that in one lean package and consistent APIs (through all of them... of course the darn version function suffixes are shit).
Whereas in Linux you'll have to make a mutant join of SDL(with all the half assed libraries that were never finished to play) OpenAL OpenGL Allegro X11 , TCP/IP freetype, ffmpeg etc etc etc etc...
I know because I have developed games in both of them.
As a personal opinion, I still prefer the OpenGL modeling approach (against the Direct3D one), as it is cleaner. I use it when doing scientific 3D visualization apps (which do not need all the other media things).
Yep, I did that already, the best one hands down is:
Windows UE
You've got everything you need out of the box. It is Windows XP, the way it *should* have been released. =o)
Saying Linux is easier to Windows is equally as misleading as EASIER is a subjective term. I find Windows easier than Linux. And I use Linux at work 10 hours a day 5 days a week. But when I return to my house and after having fought with computers for all that time I just want something that just works.
I will make the following analogy (sorry, no cars here): Windows for a TV as Linux is for a VHS recorder/player. With Windows, you *can* be stupid, you can just sit down and let the information flow. With Linux you *must* tinker with the darn thing to make it work. Sure, it is cool when you are in the University and you are studying about that (gosh I loved installing, reainstalling and re-re-reinstalling every BSD flavour available at Uni) but it is a hassle when you just want to *use* your computer.
About 10 years ago (or maybe a bit less) there was a buzzword around the internet SAS, Software as a Service was the *next best thing* since sliced bread.
As a developer I love web apps because instead of selling my software for say, $20 to one person (who is going to distribute it to 100 more to use illegally), I can provide my app in some homepage, with 0 installation and update issues (the client always have the *last* available version, no need to click on "accept update patchfix kb32421"). The best thing is that the clients will keep paying me for the rest of their life (or at least for the rest of the time they want to use my service).
Of course this software as a service thing should *really* have emphasis in the *service* thing. You should provide additional services which are not provided by standard desktop software. As an example, take Gmail, The first time I used a mail account was back around 1994 when I created a new account at Hotmail. Since then I have always used webmail and I just cant use the desktop clients, the mere thought of having to download all my mail in my notebook or my PC or my mom's PC or my brother's PC if I want to check certain mail with a nice Enchiladas recipe at their places is ridiculous.
Well, I am no a lawyer either but I have read some of the legal RIAA vs X court documents and they *do* refer the illegal actions as DOWNLOADS. Even the defendants' lawyers.
I don't know why your question was modded up, because you don't seem familiar with the factual matrix of these cases at all.
Incredible how many bullshit can lawyers write without meaning anything. Thats some good 1337 speak.
Don't get me wrong, my best friend is a lawyer (yeah slashdot crowd, it is true) and we are friends since we were just kids, and he also tends to speak like you =o)
p.s. Thanks for your insight in the RIAA's cases, it is always funny to watch how people sue each other over there in the USA.
Or how the USA wanted to make a "north american union" ala European Union but of course the USA wanted all the advantages but didnt liked the idea of free immigration and things like that...