I actually think the unofficial windows support should remain on the list. It doesn't mean everybody is an expert, but in terms of total numbers there are a lot more people proficient with windows, and everybody seems to know somebody. The average user has problems with the most mundane tasks, and it doesn't always require an expert to point them in the right direction.
Most people also work at an office steeped in Windows, and they can usually get pointers from the guys in IT.
So ultimately the entertainment industry will have to make it more convenient to just pay for it. They never will be able to make it as convenient as just using BT now (typing in credit card and personal information is not very convenient, private, or secure), so they ultimately have to make downloading the illegal copies more inconvenient. Which means more and more DRM.
There are online options for renting movies, as I said earlier.
I don't think the industry really cares if you use linux to watch the movie if you paid for it. They wouldn't care if everybody shared files if everybody also volunatarily paid a rental fee, but that is not going to happen.
It is the free enterprise system. There are a lot of succesful, wellknown artists that could ditch the industry and go out on their own, but they don't. It is kind of socialistic/communistic idea to want to dictate what someone's profit should be on something as fluff as music rather than let free market forces decide. Especially as I have said, there is a lot of legitamely free music out there.
If you really want to protest the system, then you get everybody to send 50 cents (half the going rate) or even 25 cents to every artist for every song they have downloaded. Cut out the middle-man and pay the artists directly. If everybody did this, then the big, bad record labels will go away. The problem is of course that only about 1% or less of the people are really making an idealogical statement by sharing files, they just want their damn music for free and nobody is stopping them.
>>Ever occured to you that people don't want to pay to try the movie
Obviously, this is Slashdot...
The Netflix/Blockbuster recommendation was directed at someone who did not know where thier local rental store was and was apparently to lazy to find it.
As far as the trailers and movie reviews, you should be able to make a reasonable determination whether or not you *want to watch the movie*, not a guarantee you will enjoy it. A movie is art (usually low art) though, and you are paying for the experience, like going to a concert. You usually can get something out of the experience, even if the movie was not great. In most cases you can wait a while and watch it for free on TV or rent it for a dollar or two, so it is not like they are charging a whole lot for this experience. There are very few movies I actually want to own, but there are quite a few I want to watch at least once.
As far as music goes, you can listen to it on the radio first or find other means to sample it for free online without having to share the file.
If an artist wanted everyone to enjoy his art for free, then... he would give it away for free. He wouldn't be signing merchandising contracts. We pay artists so that they can have time to produce art instead of spending all their time digging ditches for a living.
As long as you record it off a broadcast for personal use only. No sharing your copies or borrowing someone else's copies. If you don't record it yourself directly off a broadcast, you would be infringing.
Oh crap! You mean I have to walk to the mailbox again?...
For $18, you can have three movies out at a time (you can pay extra to have more out), so you can watch about 30 movies a month (assuming a 3 day turnaround.)
I personally have HBO and just keep a lot of movies Tivo'ed for later viewing.
If you don't like the record industry, then don't use their product. Period. Don't buy it, don't download it, and don't listen to it. Find other artists to listen to. The record industry doesn't have a monopoly on music. (Those artists who have been signed by a record label are usually pretty happy about it though, so they do seem to instill some value to the artists.)
Sharing the song isn't "saying NO". Not listening to their music at all is "saying NO".
The truth is that the majority of people sharing music are the ones who have heard a song on the radio or TV or wherever, and decided they want that song. But they also decided they don't want to pay for it. I want a Ferrari, but I am not willing to pay the price, so I drive a Honda instead.
If the $1/song is too rich for your blood, then join a subscription service or be content listening to it on the radio. OR find another song you like that doesn't cost as much. It is just music afterall, not something necessary for life. You can listen to all the music you want for free on the radio even.
I think "one ring = power" is so explicit that I would be reluctant to call it allegory. "One ring = atomic bomb" would be an example of allegory, though not one Tolkien intended.
The "meditation on power" is more about ideas and themes than allegory, like "does power or the desire for power lead to evil?" From the story perspective, I believe that the ring was fundamentally evil to begin with (it tried to return to its master, etc...) so I am not sure how much Tolkien intended it to be a "meditation on power."
Did not RTFA, but I don't think the summary is saying the LOTR necessarily has anything to do with politics or allegory. It is just saying that LOTR is popular because it has more interesting thematic elements. I'm not sure I buy that argument though; I think LOTR is popular because it was a well told story. I don't know if thematically it was particulary unique or interesting.
I did actually say fresh "cells" though because of your exact argument. I thought it through a little bit;)
It does seem that if you could re-form molecules based upon one's "pattern", you could modify your pattern first and create whatever you want. Younger, stronger, and super-sized private parts.
Didn't one of those books say the tranporter is the least plausible of any of Star Trek's technology? Not only would there be huge amounts of data to transfer, but if you were beaming somebody up you would have to resolve the location of every molecule from hundreds of miles away. It seems like it would be a fountain of youth as well - just replace the old cells with fresh ones.
Disparaging your competitors or their products without offering any evidence is illegal. It's unfair competition, tortious interference, fraud, antitrust violations, and false advertising. Red Hat, IBM, etc. could sue Microsoft and force it to show its cards. Perhaps they are waiting until after they are protected by the GPLv3.
Or perhaps they have chosen to get legal advice from thier attorneys instead of Slashdot's vast array of legal scholars working out of their mothers' basements.
I strongly suspect that they have been granted the patents they claim; they might not withstand challenge, but until they are challenged they would be valid (which is probably why they haven't explicity listed them). As long as their patents are currently valid, I don't think you could claim fraud. I think only the people who paid Microsoft to use these particular patents could claim fraud anyway. Third parties might claim deceptive advertising or something, but if their patents are currently valid then there would not be much of a case.
A big business usually can't have morals. First off they are an organization, not a person, and second the shareholders ultimately are most concerned about making money. Laws tend to be the controlling factor in business rather than morals, but the good point there is that citizens can theoritically change laws.
In your example of the lawyer, I personally think that is a good reason to change the law. I think the lawyers should be personally punished for pursuing frivolous lawsuits.
Microsoft is not threatening to commit a crime, so I don't believe it would be racketeering. Threatening "something bad" is just business unless the "something bad" is criminal. Lawyers do it all the time.
Many of the quests are complimentary, and you do have to be careful about doing some of the "kill 10 of x" quests before you have acquired all the complimentary quests. You don't want to go kill 10 boars, then you get a quest that says collect ten boar legs, then finish that up and the get a quest to collect ten boar stomachs, when all three quests could be completed at once. In general though, the "kill 10 of x" quests get completed almost automatically when doing the main quests.
About the only time I grind is to collect hides for my forester vocation, but even then it is often tied to making money, completing certain quests, and completing certain deeds.
>> Burglars are not main the DSP class, hunters and champions are
I'm not sure what thier DPS rates are (I have heard that it is close to champions), but Burglars seem to be the best at one-on-one combat. Maybe he confused best fighter to best DPS. This a small annoyance for me since I have a champion, and the word "champion" would seem to imply to me that they would be the best.
Champions "area of effect" damage is great at taking out multiple enemies, but one-on-one, against equal or higher level opponents, the champion can be kind of lacking. Burglar's can take down a lot tougher opponents, and in my experience can usually out duel a champion.
I don't know about the other games, but in LOTRO deeds can gain you more than just titles. The deeds gain you titles and "traits".
You gain or improve a specific trait (fortitude, charity, determination, etc...) by finishing the particular deed associated with it. Each trait has multiple effects on your character attributes, for example it might increase your disease resistance by 2% and increase your agility by 2 points.
There about 10 or so traits, but you can only have a certain portion of them "equipped" at one time, depending on your level. There is a certain strategy element to this in deciding which traits to go after and which ones to upgrade thru further deeds. For example you might be want to try to focus on boosting agility, or morale, or melee damage or whatever, or you might try different ways of balancing these.
I wonder how many geeks actually care about baseball to begin with, especially to worry about watching every game when they are traveling. But I suppose the geeks will be the ones sitting in their hotel room alone watching baseball on their laptop while most other peope will be sitting in a sports bar wathching it.
I knew a guy who used to do this with sales calls meant for the owner of the company. Whenever we got one of those calls, the receptionist would transfer the call to him. He would be "Joe in Maintenance" then "Fred in Engineering" then "Tom in Accounting" etc... until the caller would finally just hang-up. Most peole only lasted being "transferred" about three times, but there was once or twice they went through about 5 or 6 "people" before finally giving up. His fake voice would become more and more exaggerated the longer it went on.
Slashdot Mirror
I actually think the unofficial windows support should remain on the list. It doesn't mean everybody is an expert, but in terms of total numbers there are a lot more people proficient with windows, and everybody seems to know somebody. The average user has problems with the most mundane tasks, and it doesn't always require an expert to point them in the right direction.
Most people also work at an office steeped in Windows, and they can usually get pointers from the guys in IT.
So ultimately the entertainment industry will have to make it more convenient to just pay for it. They never will be able to make it as convenient as just using BT now (typing in credit card and personal information is not very convenient, private, or secure), so they ultimately have to make downloading the illegal copies more inconvenient. Which means more and more DRM.
There are online options for renting movies, as I said earlier.
I don't think the industry really cares if you use linux to watch the movie if you paid for it. They wouldn't care if everybody shared files if everybody also volunatarily paid a rental fee, but that is not going to happen.
It is the free enterprise system. There are a lot of succesful, wellknown artists that could ditch the industry and go out on their own, but they don't. It is kind of socialistic/communistic idea to want to dictate what someone's profit should be on something as fluff as music rather than let free market forces decide. Especially as I have said, there is a lot of legitamely free music out there.
If you really want to protest the system, then you get everybody to send 50 cents (half the going rate) or even 25 cents to every artist for every song they have downloaded. Cut out the middle-man and pay the artists directly. If everybody did this, then the big, bad record labels will go away. The problem is of course that only about 1% or less of the people are really making an idealogical statement by sharing files, they just want their damn music for free and nobody is stopping them.
>>Ever occured to you that people don't want to pay to try the movie
Obviously, this is Slashdot...
The Netflix/Blockbuster recommendation was directed at someone who did not know where thier local rental store was and was apparently to lazy to find it.
As far as the trailers and movie reviews, you should be able to make a reasonable determination whether or not you *want to watch the movie*, not a guarantee you will enjoy it. A movie is art (usually low art) though, and you are paying for the experience, like going to a concert. You usually can get something out of the experience, even if the movie was not great. In most cases you can wait a while and watch it for free on TV or rent it for a dollar or two, so it is not like they are charging a whole lot for this experience. There are very few movies I actually want to own, but there are quite a few I want to watch at least once.
As far as music goes, you can listen to it on the radio first or find other means to sample it for free online without having to share the file.
Most videogames have a trial or demo version.
If an artist wanted everyone to enjoy his art for free, then... he would give it away for free. He wouldn't be signing merchandising contracts. We pay artists so that they can have time to produce art instead of spending all their time digging ditches for a living.
As long as you record it off a broadcast for personal use only. No sharing your copies or borrowing someone else's copies. If you don't record it yourself directly off a broadcast, you would be infringing.
Oh crap! You mean I have to walk to the mailbox again?...
For $18, you can have three movies out at a time (you can pay extra to have more out), so you can watch about 30 movies a month (assuming a 3 day turnaround.)
I personally have HBO and just keep a lot of movies Tivo'ed for later viewing.
If you don't like the record industry, then don't use their product. Period. Don't buy it, don't download it, and don't listen to it. Find other artists to listen to. The record industry doesn't have a monopoly on music. (Those artists who have been signed by a record label are usually pretty happy about it though, so they do seem to instill some value to the artists.)
Sharing the song isn't "saying NO". Not listening to their music at all is "saying NO".
The truth is that the majority of people sharing music are the ones who have heard a song on the radio or TV or wherever, and decided they want that song. But they also decided they don't want to pay for it. I want a Ferrari, but I am not willing to pay the price, so I drive a Honda instead.
If the $1/song is too rich for your blood, then join a subscription service or be content listening to it on the radio. OR find another song you like that doesn't cost as much. It is just music afterall, not something necessary for life. You can listen to all the music you want for free on the radio even.
>>i'm not playing $20 for a movie i dont know is worth it yet. and i have no idea where the closest rental place is
Netflix and Blockbuster online have all the movies you can watch for about $20 month. You only have to walk to the mailbox.
You can find trailers and movie reviews online as well to help you decide how to spend your money.
Laziness is kind of a lame excuse.
>>It's pure, unsubstantiated opinion, and in many cases it's simply wrong
Right at home on Slashdot, I would say...
They actually did the same sort of article on Vista and on Linux a while back, so they are giving everybody a chance to complain.
I think "one ring = power" is so explicit that I would be reluctant to call it allegory. "One ring = atomic bomb" would be an example of allegory, though not one Tolkien intended.
The "meditation on power" is more about ideas and themes than allegory, like "does power or the desire for power lead to evil?" From the story perspective, I believe that the ring was fundamentally evil to begin with (it tried to return to its master, etc...) so I am not sure how much Tolkien intended it to be a "meditation on power."
Um...It's ARAGORN, not Arragon...
Did not RTFA, but I don't think the summary is saying the LOTR necessarily has anything to do with politics or allegory. It is just saying that LOTR is popular because it has more interesting thematic elements. I'm not sure I buy that argument though; I think LOTR is popular because it was a well told story. I don't know if thematically it was particulary unique or interesting.
I did actually say fresh "cells" though because of your exact argument. I thought it through a little bit ;)
It does seem that if you could re-form molecules based upon one's "pattern", you could modify your pattern first and create whatever you want. Younger, stronger, and super-sized private parts.
Didn't one of those books say the tranporter is the least plausible of any of Star Trek's technology? Not only would there be huge amounts of data to transfer, but if you were beaming somebody up you would have to resolve the location of every molecule from hundreds of miles away. It seems like it would be a fountain of youth as well - just replace the old cells with fresh ones.
Or perhaps they have chosen to get legal advice from thier attorneys instead of Slashdot's vast array of legal scholars working out of their mothers' basements.
I strongly suspect that they have been granted the patents they claim; they might not withstand challenge, but until they are challenged they would be valid (which is probably why they haven't explicity listed them). As long as their patents are currently valid, I don't think you could claim fraud. I think only the people who paid Microsoft to use these particular patents could claim fraud anyway. Third parties might claim deceptive advertising or something, but if their patents are currently valid then there would not be much of a case.
A big business usually can't have morals. First off they are an organization, not a person, and second the shareholders ultimately are most concerned about making money. Laws tend to be the controlling factor in business rather than morals, but the good point there is that citizens can theoritically change laws.
In your example of the lawyer, I personally think that is a good reason to change the law. I think the lawyers should be personally punished for pursuing frivolous lawsuits.
Microsoft is not threatening to commit a crime, so I don't believe it would be racketeering. Threatening "something bad" is just business unless the "something bad" is criminal. Lawyers do it all the time.
Many of the quests are complimentary, and you do have to be careful about doing some of the "kill 10 of x" quests before you have acquired all the complimentary quests. You don't want to go kill 10 boars, then you get a quest that says collect ten boar legs, then finish that up and the get a quest to collect ten boar stomachs, when all three quests could be completed at once. In general though, the "kill 10 of x" quests get completed almost automatically when doing the main quests.
About the only time I grind is to collect hides for my forester vocation, but even then it is often tied to making money, completing certain quests, and completing certain deeds.
>> Burglars are not main the DSP class, hunters and champions are
I'm not sure what thier DPS rates are (I have heard that it is close to champions), but Burglars seem to be the best at one-on-one combat. Maybe he confused best fighter to best DPS. This a small annoyance for me since I have a champion, and the word "champion" would seem to imply to me that they would be the best.
Champions "area of effect" damage is great at taking out multiple enemies, but one-on-one, against equal or higher level opponents, the champion can be kind of lacking. Burglar's can take down a lot tougher opponents, and in my experience can usually out duel a champion.
I don't know about the other games, but in LOTRO deeds can gain you more than just titles. The deeds gain you titles and "traits".
You gain or improve a specific trait (fortitude, charity, determination, etc...) by finishing the particular deed associated with it. Each trait has multiple effects on your character attributes, for example it might increase your disease resistance by 2% and increase your agility by 2 points.
There about 10 or so traits, but you can only have a certain portion of them "equipped" at one time, depending on your level. There is a certain strategy element to this in deciding which traits to go after and which ones to upgrade thru further deeds. For example you might be want to try to focus on boosting agility, or morale, or melee damage or whatever, or you might try different ways of balancing these.
I wonder how many geeks actually care about baseball to begin with, especially to worry about watching every game when they are traveling. But I suppose the geeks will be the ones sitting in their hotel room alone watching baseball on their laptop while most other peope will be sitting in a sports bar wathching it.
I knew a guy who used to do this with sales calls meant for the owner of the company. Whenever we got one of those calls, the receptionist would transfer the call to him. He would be "Joe in Maintenance" then "Fred in Engineering" then "Tom in Accounting" etc... until the caller would finally just hang-up. Most peole only lasted being "transferred" about three times, but there was once or twice they went through about 5 or 6 "people" before finally giving up. His fake voice would become more and more exaggerated the longer it went on.