They're similar, but not really the same. Python isn't geared towards being a command shell (although obviously after importing the right packages you can use it as one).
Agreed. I have to say I find it very difficult to "blame" Microsoft in this context — they're simply providing a service that few others can (and that needs a strong industry position to do so, admittedly). Apple are attempting to create a monopoly, despite how short-term it will probably end up being.
Still, it would be a good step, if I didn't usually watch movies on a Mac.
Windows Media technologies are available for OSX, it's only Linux that'd be missing out to the best of my knowledge (unless they didn't release that section of it). Thanks a lot for the clarification though, helps a lot.
The most eggregious part of both standards, though, is that the actual high-density content on the disks won't play unless you have a DRM Protected TV and / or computer monitor. Protected TV's are rare. Protected computer monitors aren't even available. So while you may have spent 1,000 dollars on an awesome studio display, HD-DVD and Blu-Ray disks will still perform the same as a standard DVD disk. This is what Gates refers to when he says the studios got too much power over the standard. Standard DVD images are certainly good enough to pirate anyway, considering how much they are downsampled in the ripping process. This will only hurt paying consumers, and has to be the biggest block with the scheme. Even if I wanted to buy a HD-DVD or Blu-Ray drive, it wouldn't do me any good as they will refuse to work with my computer monitors.
Completely agreed. As much as the argument "the hardware will become available" is, it's really not clear that any actual gain is to be had from these technologies, and there's a horrific downside. It's a short-sighted system designed to keep large companies who refuse to change their business model in play.
Because of insufficient evidence to produce an objective finding, many scientists have realized that much more faith is required for 'Darwinism', than for ID.
Wasn't a major difference that HD-DVD specified a method for ripping content (albeit still DRMed to the best of my knowledge), whereas Blu-Ray completely denies any possibility?
While Bill Gates talks about how content should be hard drive based, The ITMS actually lets you buy epsisodes of lost for $2.
Irrelevant. Microsoft don't sell content, they sell technology. There are several sites selling MSDRM-covered content (although none with the real clout of ITMS, with the possible exception of the BBC online service tests, which use Microsoft's DRM). They've provided a technological alternative, but content selling is not their market sector — they have, however, provided tools to help other companies provide these services. The fact that Apple do both is not really an issue here. It's just a different business plan.
That said, I'd be much more receptive to this if the features were developed as a FF Extension rather than a full-on browser distro, so I didn't have to make the "total switch" commitment. Of course, maybe the features run deeper... I haven't really looked into it.
The main problem I see with that is that a lot of features integrate with each other, and replace functionality in Firefox, rather than just augmenting it. The favourites system, for example, is completely replaced. Removing existing functionality in Firefox extensions is very difficult, so this replacement would be difficult.
That said though, it seems to support most existing well-made Firefox extensions with very little effort, so the "total switch" isn't quite all that it seems.:)
It's not so much that they bundled popular extensions, they more built in (in a manner like extensions) a bunch of features (which could theoretically be added to Firefox with extensions) to their browser which facilitate a lot of the more modern things that people do on the net, in a way that gels. Things like AdBlock and GreaseMonkey are pretty specialised, although popular, and are not needed for a system that gels like this one does.
I have to say I'm quite enjoying it. It's nice to have a program show you that the menial tasks you tended to live with because it was "the way things are done" were actually unnecessary.
Digital media is also different from normal media in that every use of it requires copying. Opt-in ruins provision of material where the creator either doesn't hear about the scheme or is unavailable to opt in. Google's plan is only to allow access to small sections of the text at once — the phrase "online in full" is misleading in this way. It will not be possible to just download a whole book from Google (with the exception of public domain books), you can simply get relevant excerpts from the book.
Every use of a computer creates a copy — this is essentially an extension of personal use to that of a corporation. I would hope that their staff are not allowed to see all of the scanned information at once (at least not allowed access to it to copy away), but I don't see that as infringement. The only parts actually being published (which is what should be the benchmark for copying and fair use, after all) are excerpts — just like one would expect to find in a book review, and just like the material covered sepcifically by the Fair Use provisions of US law (and similar provisions elsewhere). Google is also wholesale copying websites and the like to their servers, and they offer an opt-out clause of this too — I don't think there's any convincing reason why the situations should be viewed differently, particularly since Google offers a lot less of the scanned books to the public.
If the publishers are unhappy, they should opt out. This lawsuit, if successful, will do nothing to help them that they can't do themselves (stopping Google scanning their books, and will harm what is an incredible opportunity for archiving and increasing the accessibility of books.
This is why publishers are against google, as well as all the authors. They already make only pennies an hour when you figure out the time it takes to write a book versus the money paid. To have to give everything away for free? That would drive the entire publishing business under.
But the system only gives small amounts out for free, helping the user search through a book while stopping them from reading the whole thing.
As I enjoy reading, as this is clearly not an aid to piracy, as this clearly doesn't facilitate piracy, and as this will serve as an aid to the uptake and preservation of books, I hope that Google is not thwarted.
I've found this problem with Linux as well — the default sizes for things in GNOME are huge, to the degree that my 1024x768 laptop can't display most windows completely unless I mess with the settings for a while. It's highly annoying, although it's hard to fault them (or MS, or Apple), since most people will be using these systems on newer hardware, and most newer hardware will have a higher resolution.
Yes, but you only need do that at distribution time. You own the copyright to the software you wrote, you are free to arbitrarily relicence it at your leisure, even if you GPLed it in the past. There is no way that the GPL can stop you from doing this, it dictates rights for others. The Qt licence states that you can't use its commercial version if you have ever used the OSS one, which is an additional restriction.
I think they are misinterpreting the GPL. Or possibly have written that answer to obscure it, but still actually saying what the GPL says.
I think the problem in this case is nothing to do with the GPL, and more a feature of the Qt commercial licence, which states that it can't be used for apps that were developed using the open source edition. They're not misinterpreting the GPL, since it is not the licence which introduces this restriction.
Re:Why are we hiding from the police, daddy?
on
Vim 6.4 Released
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· Score: 1
But for a programmer who spends say 95% of the work day on text editing, learning an advanced efficient tool (maybe even Emacs) makes sense.
I think that an IDE would work yet better for this, and involve less learning. I certainly don't think that people, in general, edit text at a rate to justify this. Although, to be fair, once learned it will help, but I really don't think it would be significant. Could possibly (in the case of Vim in particular) cut down on RSI due to not having to move fingers from the keyboard though, I suppose.
We also disagree on what usability means. Learnability of an application is highly important for the casual user. But for the power user, learnability is pretty low priority, if the return in efficiency outweights time/effort spent on learning the application.
I'm using the definition that's in common usage — it's just what usability tends to be about these days, at least for apps in general.
I just wish to point out that modern UI designers have an unfair bias towards tailoring for the casual user, and tradefoff on the power/efficiency of applications.
I agree with everything but the word "unfair" — I think that a lot of the time such efficiency is overrated, and in general a more learnable tool is a better option. A tool that one uses for 95% of one's workday, perhaps, but as a programmer I have to say that even then, I'd be unlikely to actually gain much speed (I certainly don't type or edit text in complex ways for anything like 95% of my day, even if I am using a text editor). Much of the time though, people use many different tools for many different tasks, and have neither the will nor the rational justification to learn complex systems to use each.
I know there are people for whom Vim is a worthwhile investment of time (particularly if one is working frequently in a terminal environment), but I don't think a system like Vim is justifiable in many cases at all. A learnable, obvious system which is usable just through familiarity and metaphor is far more useful in most cases (and I can hear my good friend LaTeX weeping as I type this), since most systems are not used for enough of the time to warrant learning them.
Or other clients in general. May not be just GAIM.
Good point. Chances are an open implementation of this will help other client development by association anyway.:)
Re:Why are we hiding from the police, daddy?
on
Vim 6.4 Released
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· Score: 1
It's not easy to use. It's efficient to use. In terms of usability, learnability of a system is far more important.
I don't believe that Vim makes one considerably more efficient in the long term, for anything of any real importance. You really want to spend much more time thinking about what you want to type than actually typing it.
This does not mean Vim is a bad editor. I know a lot of people love to use it, and love being so quick with things. That's great, and it probably means that Vim is the editor for those people. But I think that touting it as some kind of fantastic productivity application is misleading, it most certainly is not.
I've never heard of such a thing. Neither has google.
I don't know what you typed, but I got over 100 results for a specific (quoted) search. I believe the term (which doesn't seem to be the popular term for it, but I don't know what is) refers less to its mono/micro architecture (you are right to say it's a hybrid) and more to the fact that it has a subsystem architecture meaning that Win32, or any other control API, is just a layer over the kernel itself. So to say that the NT kernel is flawed because of Win32 isn't really a good argument, since it can run many other things instead.
They're sending it in to space, (presumably) never to be seen again by anyone ever. Does it really matter if the tributes contain a few goatse references or whatnot?
Probably not, but if the Ancient Egyptians were right he'll have some explaining to do when he appears in the afterlife in a box crammed half-full of child porn and profantity.
I've not noticed Windows using more or less paging than Linux (or BSD, for that matter), having switched between the two on a couple of machines (one 192MB RAM, one 512MB). I've not seen anything to suggest that one was working better than the other.
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They're similar, but not really the same. Python isn't geared towards being a command shell (although obviously after importing the right packages you can use it as one).
Agreed. I have to say I find it very difficult to "blame" Microsoft in this context — they're simply providing a service that few others can (and that needs a strong industry position to do so, admittedly). Apple are attempting to create a monopoly, despite how short-term it will probably end up being.
Windows Media technologies are available for OSX, it's only Linux that'd be missing out to the best of my knowledge (unless they didn't release that section of it). Thanks a lot for the clarification though, helps a lot.
Completely agreed. As much as the argument "the hardware will become available" is, it's really not clear that any actual gain is to be had from these technologies, and there's a horrific downside. It's a short-sighted system designed to keep large companies who refuse to change their business model in play.
Nonsense.
Wasn't a major difference that HD-DVD specified a method for ripping content (albeit still DRMed to the best of my knowledge), whereas Blu-Ray completely denies any possibility?
Irrelevant. Microsoft don't sell content, they sell technology. There are several sites selling MSDRM-covered content (although none with the real clout of ITMS, with the possible exception of the BBC online service tests, which use Microsoft's DRM). They've provided a technological alternative, but content selling is not their market sector — they have, however, provided tools to help other companies provide these services. The fact that Apple do both is not really an issue here. It's just a different business plan.
If I had modpoints you'd certainly be sitting on the coin edge between "Offtopic" and "Informative", right enough ;).
On one hand, yes, on the other hand that death knell could mean a lot more variety in terms of actual applications for the desktop.
The main problem I see with that is that a lot of features integrate with each other, and replace functionality in Firefox, rather than just augmenting it. The favourites system, for example, is completely replaced. Removing existing functionality in Firefox extensions is very difficult, so this replacement would be difficult.
That said though, it seems to support most existing well-made Firefox extensions with very little effort, so the "total switch" isn't quite all that it seems. :)
It's not so much that they bundled popular extensions, they more built in (in a manner like extensions) a bunch of features (which could theoretically be added to Firefox with extensions) to their browser which facilitate a lot of the more modern things that people do on the net, in a way that gels. Things like AdBlock and GreaseMonkey are pretty specialised, although popular, and are not needed for a system that gels like this one does.
I have to say I'm quite enjoying it. It's nice to have a program show you that the menial tasks you tended to live with because it was "the way things are done" were actually unnecessary.
Digital media is also different from normal media in that every use of it requires copying. Opt-in ruins provision of material where the creator either doesn't hear about the scheme or is unavailable to opt in. Google's plan is only to allow access to small sections of the text at once — the phrase "online in full" is misleading in this way. It will not be possible to just download a whole book from Google (with the exception of public domain books), you can simply get relevant excerpts from the book.
Every use of a computer creates a copy — this is essentially an extension of personal use to that of a corporation. I would hope that their staff are not allowed to see all of the scanned information at once (at least not allowed access to it to copy away), but I don't see that as infringement. The only parts actually being published (which is what should be the benchmark for copying and fair use, after all) are excerpts — just like one would expect to find in a book review, and just like the material covered sepcifically by the Fair Use provisions of US law (and similar provisions elsewhere). Google is also wholesale copying websites and the like to their servers, and they offer an opt-out clause of this too — I don't think there's any convincing reason why the situations should be viewed differently, particularly since Google offers a lot less of the scanned books to the public.
If the publishers are unhappy, they should opt out. This lawsuit, if successful, will do nothing to help them that they can't do themselves (stopping Google scanning their books, and will harm what is an incredible opportunity for archiving and increasing the accessibility of books.
I appear to have repeated myself. Blast. This is what I get for not proof-reading things.
But the system only gives small amounts out for free, helping the user search through a book while stopping them from reading the whole thing.
As I enjoy reading, as this is clearly not an aid to piracy, as this clearly doesn't facilitate piracy, and as this will serve as an aid to the uptake and preservation of books, I hope that Google is not thwarted.
I've found this problem with Linux as well — the default sizes for things in GNOME are huge, to the degree that my 1024x768 laptop can't display most windows completely unless I mess with the settings for a while. It's highly annoying, although it's hard to fault them (or MS, or Apple), since most people will be using these systems on newer hardware, and most newer hardware will have a higher resolution.
Yes, but you only need do that at distribution time. You own the copyright to the software you wrote, you are free to arbitrarily relicence it at your leisure, even if you GPLed it in the past. There is no way that the GPL can stop you from doing this, it dictates rights for others. The Qt licence states that you can't use its commercial version if you have ever used the OSS one, which is an additional restriction.
I think the problem in this case is nothing to do with the GPL, and more a feature of the Qt commercial licence, which states that it can't be used for apps that were developed using the open source edition. They're not misinterpreting the GPL, since it is not the licence which introduces this restriction.
I think that an IDE would work yet better for this, and involve less learning. I certainly don't think that people, in general, edit text at a rate to justify this. Although, to be fair, once learned it will help, but I really don't think it would be significant. Could possibly (in the case of Vim in particular) cut down on RSI due to not having to move fingers from the keyboard though, I suppose.
I'm using the definition that's in common usage — it's just what usability tends to be about these days, at least for apps in general.
I agree with everything but the word "unfair" — I think that a lot of the time such efficiency is overrated, and in general a more learnable tool is a better option. A tool that one uses for 95% of one's workday, perhaps, but as a programmer I have to say that even then, I'd be unlikely to actually gain much speed (I certainly don't type or edit text in complex ways for anything like 95% of my day, even if I am using a text editor). Much of the time though, people use many different tools for many different tasks, and have neither the will nor the rational justification to learn complex systems to use each.
I know there are people for whom Vim is a worthwhile investment of time (particularly if one is working frequently in a terminal environment), but I don't think a system like Vim is justifiable in many cases at all. A learnable, obvious system which is usable just through familiarity and metaphor is far more useful in most cases (and I can hear my good friend LaTeX weeping as I type this), since most systems are not used for enough of the time to warrant learning them.
Good point. Chances are an open implementation of this will help other client development by association anyway. :)
It's not easy to use. It's efficient to use. In terms of usability, learnability of a system is far more important.
I don't believe that Vim makes one considerably more efficient in the long term, for anything of any real importance. You really want to spend much more time thinking about what you want to type than actually typing it.
This does not mean Vim is a bad editor. I know a lot of people love to use it, and love being so quick with things. That's great, and it probably means that Vim is the editor for those people. But I think that touting it as some kind of fantastic productivity application is misleading, it most certainly is not.
This is KHTML, as I think a sibling post to this one pointed out. And is there really a lighter-weight alternative around, on an open source licence?
From the page which you apparently went to, in a happy file marked "README":
So no, not Windows-specific. Just for old versions.
I don't know what you typed, but I got over 100 results for a specific (quoted) search. I believe the term (which doesn't seem to be the popular term for it, but I don't know what is) refers less to its mono/micro architecture (you are right to say it's a hybrid) and more to the fact that it has a subsystem architecture meaning that Win32, or any other control API, is just a layer over the kernel itself. So to say that the NT kernel is flawed because of Win32 isn't really a good argument, since it can run many other things instead.
Probably not, but if the Ancient Egyptians were right he'll have some explaining to do when he appears in the afterlife in a box crammed half-full of child porn and profantity.
I've not noticed Windows using more or less paging than Linux (or BSD, for that matter), having switched between the two on a couple of machines (one 192MB RAM, one 512MB). I've not seen anything to suggest that one was working better than the other.