Who has a TV and doesn't watch the BBC?
There are people like this. I doesn't matter whether or not you believe that it's possible that somewhere where you can't see it, people are watching Sky Movies and not watching BBC.
and you're saying 120/yr is too much for these people?
It could be. You're not allowing them to make the choice. Just because someone can afford something, doesn't mean that it's ok just to charge them because you can. They may not watch the BBC; they may not want to. Right now we get away with putting the BBC on everything and charging everyone; hardly fair on people who don't use the service.
people sharing a residence (read:students) have to pay per *residence* - If they live in halls, each 'room' is a residence - if they share a flat, it's one residence in total Have a look at the offical documentation, unless you're using a "communal area" you'll need your own tv licence. Student flats and halls are covered, but communal areas do not always exist, and if you decide to have your own television, then you have to pay for your own licence. My understand is that quite a few people do pay for their own licences currently.
FUD
"OMG some1 d0en'7 4gr33 w1th m3333!!!! FUDD!!!!F F UFDD!!
£120 is probably a lot for the people who have a television and don't use any BBC services. I'm not one of them, but consider that perhaps it is unfair to charge £120 a year to someone who just wants to watch the Movies on Sky. I'm not one of these people (I only use Freeview), but the blanket £120 sum is unfair.
Also consider, people sharing a residence (read:students) have to pay the tv licence per head. Four people in one residence means £480 a year; and everyone in the residence has to pay it (saying 2 of the four don't watch tv doesn't save you paying for all four).
This rule means that when many poorer students go to university, they now cannot afford a television. That's certainly the situation I'm looking at. Add this in to the new tutition fees, and you have made poor students broke. For the first half of their lives. Student loans for tuition fees generally amount to £20k-£40k, depending on your course and whether you have to live in expensive areas.
All this because the country is filled with baby boomers, many of whom were given state grants for their entire further education, and who don't give a damn about young people; they just want tax cuts on medium incomes, and this just means that poorer people pick up the bill.
Not legitimate?!?! How DARE you! This is ALL true.
Re:And shockingly enough...
on
Vim 7 Released
·
· Score: 4, Funny
A quick look at your linked site reveals the following;
91 HTML errors by the W3C html validator
A horrible Mac OS X design
8 "use *"/"created by *" buttons
"This site best viewed at 1024x768 or higher resolution"
Links to Opera and Skype (obviously two perfect examples of good GNU/Linux software)
and more a bunch of crappy amazon "paymepaymepaymepaymepaymepaymepayme" links
Perhaps you should keep it down.
I'm not following your logic? Wouldn't Microsoft benefit from this plugin? It allows the state to use their office suite (cha-ching $$$), and still give them the open document format that they are after. On top of that, Microsoft didn't have to do any work to develop it.
Microsoft aren't interested in the Mass thing for fiscal reasons. The problem is that if the Mass. authority can do ODF, then many other public authorities could follow. Microsoft could've written this functionality at any point, and virtually no cost. If they wanted it to happen, they would have done it long ago.
You're confusing what monolithic means, I think. I wouldn't call mplayer monolithic in particular; it's not (it's not especially modular either). You have the option of compiling the whole thing as a static, but that's not default (or even that well used). MPlayer doesn't interact with anything much other than input, codec and output; it's not of the structural complexity where it can really be either monolitic or modular. I haven't used Xine in depth, but I expect it's pretty much the same (I suspect the grandparent meant something other than exactly what you were construing him to mean).
I think the distinction he's trying to draw is that MPlayer really is a command line tool; the people who use MPlayer aren't really going to be the same crowd that use things like nautilus or totem. Normally you only get mplayer plugins where people see them are really critical; mplayerplug-in for example. If you're using IceWM or *box pretty much just to get graphical web browsing and multiple terms (like I am), then totem and nautilus etc seem redundant.
I can't speak for xine, but MPlayer is a reasonable example of a good "Unix" program; at least according to the Unix Philosophy.
Apple didn't have a choice.
No, Apple did have a choice. They could have provided the music without restrictions. That's blindingly obvious. The fact that it's commercially viable doesn't make it ethical, or the right thing to do. If Apple had really wanted a long term situation where they could've profited, they would have worked with artists.
Apple didn't change the "rules" about how you use your music.
You clearly have no idea what you are talking about. They did; see here; Features lost in iTunes upgrades
Now if you buy DRM'd music from Apple's online store then there are some rules in place, but they are among the must user friendly out there.
They can be user friendly; but they're still wrong. I could give a guillotine a grapical point-and-click interface, but it'd still be a terrible thing.
There is a limit to the number of times you can burn a play list that contains DRM's music. I believe that limit is 10, but if you need to burn more than that the solution is pretty easy. Use another program to burn additional copies of the CD.
The limit is 7. You're probably confused because this is one of the rules about how you use your music that changed.
"A company acting in it's own self interest so it can turn a profit? Blasphemy!"
Again, just because an action is legally possible, does not make it ethical.
I know, let's do away with all private and public companies and let the central government plan everything to do away with this evil notion known as "profits".
You know, calling Free and Open Source Software communist is normally something only indulged in by Steve Ballmer. Having Freedom to use your possesions in any way you wish is an idea that has little in common with the many applications of Communism. It isn't even a particularly prominent feature of theoretical Marxism. It's a pretty childish insult, and it's one I haven't seen in a long time.
It's literature isn't it? After all, it's one of the most popular books of all time. And by that, I do mean all time. I'm fiercly non-religious, but lets be honest, the Christian Bible is a pretty widely read book.
This is entirely ignorant.
If RMS had his way we'd all be in black and white X11 windows with emacs running in every xterm.
What the hell are you talking about? It was him that pioneered many of the ideas that people should be able to fork their software.
This may sound like player hater but look at the hundreds of packages in the average distro. Now look for his name in the authors list. How many packages have his name on them?
How many packages are compiled with gcc or any other part of the GNU toolchain? How many packages use the GPL/LGPL? How many web resources use the GFDL? How many distributions use the GPL for all original content and license as much as possible under the GPL? His contribution, both politically, and technically has been significant.
Besides we know he does this because he can't hack it in the real world where he has to actually be productive and not just some press-whoring asshat with a beard.
Good to see you let a little ad hominem attacks slip through, troll.
There isn't even notepad. I've tried to run gVim from a flash drive, only to find that am not able to execute local binaries.
I, personally would rather that none of these programs (AutoCAD, HL2 etc) were recompiled on GNU/Linux; they're not Free Software. Using those programs is something I would rather people avoided. If GNU/Linux is to have a CAD program, we must write it from scratch (or have an existing program released Free; ie Blender). Even Daemon Tools is not Free Software; it is only freeware; there's no source code.
There's no point in having closed-source programs ported to GNU/Linux; we would just be copying the proprietary system; a system we already know and hate. Having Adobe Photoshop released for GNU/Linux would just be like having Adobe Photoshop on Windows; and no one wants that. We need Free programs to replace these.
Well, you may have noticed that a search for '"bbc bias"' gives 68,000 results, compared with the `BBC` search that results in 401 million. Even if one were to include the 5.5 million results linked by you; it is a minority issue.
But let's be honest, google hits don't mean shit. There is no issue of BBC bias.
Re:Moderation Abuse
on
On The BBC 2.0
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Have you considered that perhaps the moderation was not for the insults, but for the points they raised? Thought not.
Re:Staying Relevant
on
On The BBC 2.0
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· Score: 4, Insightful
Anti-US bias? You are confusing bias with factual reporting. It's something you might not get on Fox News.
I've never seen anyone accuse the BBC of anti-american bias before; probably because the idea is so incredibly stupid. The only real case of a reasonable case for poor quality reporting in the past two decades was "Campbell Dossier", and this wasn't related to America in any real sense.
If there really was any real accusation of anti-american bias, there would have been some kind of report or media discussion. There hasn't been; you're just sounding off because you don't like the coverage.
Re:great resource, but incomplete
on
On The BBC 2.0
·
· Score: 4, Informative
programmes which do not exist
This notice is because some programs (such as Dad's Army) have had tapes written over/destroyed because of previous BBC policy.
You contradict you own position between the first and second paragraphs. "It's because he wants to keep a good client to himself" vs. "It's because he's gone to the dark side".
I don't see your reasoning here. They are two possible both reasons for keeping the source closed. It is not possible for him to percieve (wrongly, in my eyes) that there may be multiple plus points to himself of not giving source away?
But wait there's more!! Your post sounds like thinly veiled jealousy. Are you a blue frog developer?
Jealousy? Hardly. I do not currently use the Azureus client on any of my machines; however, people I live with do; it's obvious after little use that the program has a feature set far superior to any other client. I'm not about to dispute that there are technical advantages of uTorrent; it's (AFAIK) the least resource intensive Win32 client (though there are Unix clients far better in this respect).
I'm also not an Azureus developer, for the record.
Exactly. uTorrent isn't Free and Open. It's not in the same ballpark as a client like Azureus anyway; Azureus is aimed at the user looking for features. You're not gonna get many Azureus to uTorrent converts.
Ludvig remains the only person with access to Torrent's source code. Torrent remains closed-source to prevent clones and modifications such as DHT hacks, not to conceal anti-P2P code.
Bullshit. He's keeping the code because he doesn't want to help other people build clients as good as his. DHT hacks and clones are a total smokescreen; it's already trivial to do that with other clients. Security through not realising the source code is moronic; security through obscurity obviously doesn't work for anyone (see Microsoft).
Please refrain from spreading misinformation about Torrent.
It wasn't. The grandparent said the program was closed source: it is. The grandparent said that Peerfactor was an anti-p2p company; it is. The whole "SARL" bullshit is probably some kind of puppet company; I don't trust it, or them, an inch.
Should you have further concerns about the integrity of the program, please raise them in the Torrent community forums.
Here's the most idiotic part. No one is going to discuss things where you want them. uTorrent is a suspicious program and it gonna catch hell all over the Free Software community.
Will removing some aspects of customisation might improve network performance, many of these school sites (including my own) make manditory changes that hinder useability (example; the only text editor available on my school machines is MS Word; useless for compatibility).
I spoke to the resident administrator about him blocking wikipedia. He didn't realise that it was an educational reference. While I'm sure that many administrators aren't like this; you probably have no idea about the poor quality of admin employed by most schools.
Well, if by "legitimately" you're refering to the thugs they stationed outside voting chambers to beat up and threaten non-nazi voters, then you're correct. I think when the grandparent said "seized" I think he's refering to the massive growth in support because of their coalitions with other parties.
I agree. It's an interesting grey area. I, also, get the impression that RMS's view that mp3 is less than desirable because it is patented in some countries.
Personally, I agree in. However, mp3 has Free Software tools available for it, and so does MPEG4. Lame and ffmpeg are both good pieces of software. While the mp3 format is technically proprietary, I feel that in reality the format has now been forced open by lame. When it's worth doing, I use ogg (ie when I am doing the original encode of a file) for this reason. I don't however, transcode mp3s into ogg (unless space is an issue). However, the current issue is that ogg isn't brilliantly supported. I also like FLAC (the audiophile is shining through;))
I can see the Ogg formats taking over eventually. They're nice, and they're small, and imo, they're a hell of a lot better than aac in most instances.
Slashdot Mirror
Who has a TV and doesn't watch the BBC?
There are people like this. I doesn't matter whether or not you believe that it's possible that somewhere where you can't see it, people are watching Sky Movies and not watching BBC.
and you're saying 120/yr is too much for these people?
It could be. You're not allowing them to make the choice. Just because someone can afford something, doesn't mean that it's ok just to charge them because you can. They may not watch the BBC; they may not want to. Right now we get away with putting the BBC on everything and charging everyone; hardly fair on people who don't use the service.
people sharing a residence (read:students) have to pay per *residence* - If they live in halls, each 'room' is a residence - if they share a flat, it's one residence in total
Have a look at the offical documentation, unless you're using a "communal area" you'll need your own tv licence. Student flats and halls are covered, but communal areas do not always exist, and if you decide to have your own television, then you have to pay for your own licence. My understand is that quite a few people do pay for their own licences currently.
FUD
"OMG some1 d0en'7 4gr33 w1th m3333!!!! FUDD!!!!F F UFDD!!
£120 is probably a lot for the people who have a television and don't use any BBC services. I'm not one of them, but consider that perhaps it is unfair to charge £120 a year to someone who just wants to watch the Movies on Sky. I'm not one of these people (I only use Freeview), but the blanket £120 sum is unfair.
Also consider, people sharing a residence (read:students) have to pay the tv licence per head. Four people in one residence means £480 a year; and everyone in the residence has to pay it (saying 2 of the four don't watch tv doesn't save you paying for all four).
This rule means that when many poorer students go to university, they now cannot afford a television. That's certainly the situation I'm looking at. Add this in to the new tutition fees, and you have made poor students broke. For the first half of their lives. Student loans for tuition fees generally amount to £20k-£40k, depending on your course and whether you have to live in expensive areas.
All this because the country is filled with baby boomers, many of whom were given state grants for their entire further education, and who don't give a damn about young people; they just want tax cuts on medium incomes, and this just means that poorer people pick up the bill.
Not legitimate?!?! How DARE you! This is ALL true.
A quick look at your linked site reveals the following; 91 HTML errors by the W3C html validator A horrible Mac OS X design 8 "use *"/"created by *" buttons "This site best viewed at 1024x768 or higher resolution" Links to Opera and Skype (obviously two perfect examples of good GNU/Linux software) and more a bunch of crappy amazon "paymepaymepaymepaymepaymepaymepayme" links Perhaps you should keep it down.
He means problems related to using the Free Software ones. He's not prepared to use the Sun non-free version, by the sounds of it.
Freedom of speech? How does that restrict another persons rights?
I'm not following your logic? Wouldn't Microsoft benefit from this plugin? It allows the state to use their office suite (cha-ching $$$), and still give them the open document format that they are after. On top of that, Microsoft didn't have to do any work to develop it.
Microsoft aren't interested in the Mass thing for fiscal reasons. The problem is that if the Mass. authority can do ODF, then many other public authorities could follow. Microsoft could've written this functionality at any point, and virtually no cost. If they wanted it to happen, they would have done it long ago.
Slashdot IS a trustworthy news source.
You're confusing what monolithic means, I think. I wouldn't call mplayer monolithic in particular; it's not (it's not especially modular either). You have the option of compiling the whole thing as a static, but that's not default (or even that well used). MPlayer doesn't interact with anything much other than input, codec and output; it's not of the structural complexity where it can really be either monolitic or modular. I haven't used Xine in depth, but I expect it's pretty much the same (I suspect the grandparent meant something other than exactly what you were construing him to mean).
I think the distinction he's trying to draw is that MPlayer really is a command line tool; the people who use MPlayer aren't really going to be the same crowd that use things like nautilus or totem. Normally you only get mplayer plugins where people see them are really critical; mplayerplug-in for example. If you're using IceWM or *box pretty much just to get graphical web browsing and multiple terms (like I am), then totem and nautilus etc seem redundant.
I can't speak for xine, but MPlayer is a reasonable example of a good "Unix" program; at least according to the Unix Philosophy.
Apple didn't have a choice.
No, Apple did have a choice. They could have provided the music without restrictions. That's blindingly obvious. The fact that it's commercially viable doesn't make it ethical, or the right thing to do. If Apple had really wanted a long term situation where they could've profited, they would have worked with artists.
Apple didn't change the "rules" about how you use your music.
You clearly have no idea what you are talking about. They did; see here; Features lost in iTunes upgrades
Now if you buy DRM'd music from Apple's online store then there are some rules in place, but they are among the must user friendly out there.
They can be user friendly; but they're still wrong. I could give a guillotine a grapical point-and-click interface, but it'd still be a terrible thing.
There is a limit to the number of times you can burn a play list that contains DRM's music. I believe that limit is 10, but if you need to burn more than that the solution is pretty easy. Use another program to burn additional copies of the CD.
The limit is 7. You're probably confused because this is one of the rules about how you use your music that changed.
"A company acting in it's own self interest so it can turn a profit? Blasphemy!"
Again, just because an action is legally possible, does not make it ethical.
I know, let's do away with all private and public companies and let the central government plan everything to do away with this evil notion known as "profits".
You know, calling Free and Open Source Software communist is normally something only indulged in by Steve Ballmer. Having Freedom to use your possesions in any way you wish is an idea that has little in common with the many applications of Communism. It isn't even a particularly prominent feature of theoretical Marxism. It's a pretty childish insult, and it's one I haven't seen in a long time.
It's literature isn't it? After all, it's one of the most popular books of all time. And by that, I do mean all time. I'm fiercly non-religious, but lets be honest, the Christian Bible is a pretty widely read book.
But let's be honest, it's pretty obvious to anyone that the MS XML format is shit now. Forget the far future; I don't want to use that today!
9. Gnucleus - Open source Gnutella for you freeloading open source hippies out there - Yea I am talking about you
;)
Careful who you call freeloaders there buddy.
This is entirely ignorant. If RMS had his way we'd all be in black and white X11 windows with emacs running in every xterm.
What the hell are you talking about? It was him that pioneered many of the ideas that people should be able to fork their software.
This may sound like player hater but look at the hundreds of packages in the average distro. Now look for his name in the authors list. How many packages have his name on them?
How many packages are compiled with gcc or any other part of the GNU toolchain? How many packages use the GPL/LGPL? How many web resources use the GFDL? How many distributions use the GPL for all original content and license as much as possible under the GPL? His contribution, both politically, and technically has been significant.
Besides we know he does this because he can't hack it in the real world where he has to actually be productive and not just some press-whoring asshat with a beard.
Good to see you let a little ad hominem attacks slip through, troll.
There isn't even notepad. I've tried to run gVim from a flash drive, only to find that am not able to execute local binaries.
I, personally would rather that none of these programs (AutoCAD, HL2 etc) were recompiled on GNU/Linux; they're not Free Software. Using those programs is something I would rather people avoided. If GNU/Linux is to have a CAD program, we must write it from scratch (or have an existing program released Free; ie Blender). Even Daemon Tools is not Free Software; it is only freeware; there's no source code.
There's no point in having closed-source programs ported to GNU/Linux; we would just be copying the proprietary system; a system we already know and hate. Having Adobe Photoshop released for GNU/Linux would just be like having Adobe Photoshop on Windows; and no one wants that. We need Free programs to replace these.
Well, you may have noticed that a search for '"bbc bias"' gives 68,000 results, compared with the `BBC` search that results in 401 million. Even if one were to include the 5.5 million results linked by you; it is a minority issue.
But let's be honest, google hits don't mean shit. There is no issue of BBC bias.
Have you considered that perhaps the moderation was not for the insults, but for the points they raised? Thought not.
Anti-US bias? You are confusing bias with factual reporting. It's something you might not get on Fox News.
I've never seen anyone accuse the BBC of anti-american bias before; probably because the idea is so incredibly stupid. The only real case of a reasonable case for poor quality reporting in the past two decades was "Campbell Dossier", and this wasn't related to America in any real sense.
If there really was any real accusation of anti-american bias, there would have been some kind of report or media discussion. There hasn't been; you're just sounding off because you don't like the coverage.
programmes which do not exist
This notice is because some programs (such as Dad's Army) have had tapes written over/destroyed because of previous BBC policy.
You contradict you own position between the first and second paragraphs. "It's because he wants to keep a good client to himself" vs. "It's because he's gone to the dark side".
I don't see your reasoning here. They are two possible both reasons for keeping the source closed. It is not possible for him to percieve (wrongly, in my eyes) that there may be multiple plus points to himself of not giving source away?
But wait there's more!! Your post sounds like thinly veiled jealousy. Are you a blue frog developer?
Jealousy? Hardly. I do not currently use the Azureus client on any of my machines; however, people I live with do; it's obvious after little use that the program has a feature set far superior to any other client. I'm not about to dispute that there are technical advantages of uTorrent; it's (AFAIK) the least resource intensive Win32 client (though there are Unix clients far better in this respect).
I'm also not an Azureus developer, for the record.
Exactly. uTorrent isn't Free and Open. It's not in the same ballpark as a client like Azureus anyway; Azureus is aimed at the user looking for features. You're not gonna get many Azureus to uTorrent converts.
Ludvig remains the only person with access to Torrent's source code. Torrent remains closed-source to prevent clones and modifications such as DHT hacks, not to conceal anti-P2P code.
Bullshit. He's keeping the code because he doesn't want to help other people build clients as good as his. DHT hacks and clones are a total smokescreen; it's already trivial to do that with other clients. Security through not realising the source code is moronic; security through obscurity obviously doesn't work for anyone (see Microsoft).
Please refrain from spreading misinformation about Torrent.
It wasn't. The grandparent said the program was closed source: it is. The grandparent said that Peerfactor was an anti-p2p company; it is. The whole "SARL" bullshit is probably some kind of puppet company; I don't trust it, or them, an inch.
Should you have further concerns about the integrity of the program, please raise them in the Torrent community forums.
Here's the most idiotic part. No one is going to discuss things where you want them. uTorrent is a suspicious program and it gonna catch hell all over the Free Software community.
Will removing some aspects of customisation might improve network performance, many of these school sites (including my own) make manditory changes that hinder useability (example; the only text editor available on my school machines is MS Word; useless for compatibility).
I spoke to the resident administrator about him blocking wikipedia. He didn't realise that it was an educational reference. While I'm sure that many administrators aren't like this; you probably have no idea about the poor quality of admin employed by most schools.
Well, if by "legitimately" you're refering to the thugs they stationed outside voting chambers to beat up and threaten non-nazi voters, then you're correct. I think when the grandparent said "seized" I think he's refering to the massive growth in support because of their coalitions with other parties.
I agree. It's an interesting grey area. I, also, get the impression that RMS's view that mp3 is less than desirable because it is patented in some countries.
;))
Personally, I agree in. However, mp3 has Free Software tools available for it, and so does MPEG4. Lame and ffmpeg are both good pieces of software. While the mp3 format is technically proprietary, I feel that in reality the format has now been forced open by lame. When it's worth doing, I use ogg (ie when I am doing the original encode of a file) for this reason. I don't however, transcode mp3s into ogg (unless space is an issue). However, the current issue is that ogg isn't brilliantly supported. I also like FLAC (the audiophile is shining through
I can see the Ogg formats taking over eventually. They're nice, and they're small, and imo, they're a hell of a lot better than aac in most instances.