Seriously... power users aren't GUI users (and as you said earlier, you as a power user, want to customize your GUI desktop more flexibly, you know, like a power user would do:D), and they aren't Darwin ports users. I compile every non-closed app from source, and I use the command line for almost everything. That's where Unix power comes from... not from pre-made packages that aren't compiled the way you would like them (for example, take any distro and try to install a headless system that includes Python, and see if you don't have to install all of X11 with it along with a bunch of GUI widget libs that you'll never use... ack!).
Sorry man, you say you're a power user, but power users know you're not. You're out of your element, which is why people are calling you a troll. You make unsubstantiated remarks as though they're coming from a "power" user but the statements themselves negate the entire idea behind a power user. I have no doubt that you've been doing this for a long time but I think you haven't been exposed enough to what really makes Unix a power environment. Try installing base Slackware and then customizing the system through source apps instead. That's a great way to learn to become a power user. As well, learn to write scripts, use the command line more and read up on some shell books or something. Take a look at the kernel source, take a look at the source of some of your favourite apps, read some of the unix programming books from addison wesley, etc etc... You're missing out on a LOT of what power users have enjoyed for a *very* long time.
Oh, and power users always know that they don't know enough to be power users.
The freedom to modify, to localize, and to produce their own was the part of the equation which promised to create a thriving IT industry based on local demand, which was quite high.
I'm sure it would have been good, but let's face facts here... nothing was stopping people from doing that and creating their own businesses. Sure MS did some bad shit, but it doesn't stop things. One has to wonder why a country that had Linux on the desktop, and had all of these wonderful aspects that were available were pirating windows and switched to windows when win98 was free. There's something to that argument I think. I agree it wasn't as good as what could have been but clearly Linux was not delivering on some aspects that windows was. But I think we're arguing in circles now. I certainly concede that you know more about this than I do and that your points are quite valid. I simply can't accept the idea that Linux would be "the" solution for any large group. It can't interoperate with Windows very well, it's not as media rich, and it simply isn't as easily usable for the average joe. It's a great OS, but it's not a great desktop OS.
... was pretty much exactly what happened...
No it's not. They brought out Win98, which was a piece of crap and way outdated, and then EOLed it without giving away XP and friends for free, correct? That's not what I was suggesting at all... If there's a reason to put Win98 up for free then there's no reason not to do that with XP and friends... all MS did was bait and switch. That's crap.
I don't dispute a damn thing you have to say about corrupt governments and companies. We could enjoy many a beer talking about that, I'm sure.
But Thailand wasn't making use of the free speech aspect of Linux, which is what we were talking about. The free beer aspect was being used to a great result. It was functionally the same thing as piracy, in the sense that it was copies of software from one source all over the place, but in this case copying was OK because the OS was free beer. If MS made Windows, and all of the apps that people use, free beer to the Thai people, and continued that until such time as it was reasonable to change it to a pay scenario then they wouldn't be screwed. The fact that MS products are closed source makes no difference here. It's not closed source versus open source, it's free beer versus gougingly overpriced beer, and that's a totally different topic.
Freedom is the main reason a lot of people use Linux.
No it's not, not remotely. MOST people don't give a crap about that. I agree completely with what Divebus said: "People don't WANT to use Linux, more people just don't want to use Windows...". People want to switch from windows and they can't run OSX on their hardware (or maybe they don't know that they can - OSX86 might be the answer for them), so they use the big popular *nix for the PC. If it was "freedom" they cared about then Linux isn't the only choice, and some would certainly argue it isn't the first choice at all.
But let's even ignore that point altogether and think really hard about this: What do people look for in an OS? Is it strength, quality, uptime, ease of use, power, resource usage, responsiveness, networking tools, security? No no... forget all that stuff, I guess... it's "freedom". "Give me a piece of crap OS! Yes! So long as it gives me freedom I'll use it!". Give me a break... the "main reason"? One finds it difficult to see that it's a "reason" at all.
If you lived and worked in areas of the world which I would call "developing," you would favor freedom more than you do now. For some of, forgetting about "it's got to be free, man" is like giving up on real democracy and just accepting the corruption that exists and destroys as inevitable. Free software may not mean much for the deleveloped nations of the west, but for the rest of the world, Free software equates to national freedom.
I get it... seriously. I understand the wonder of FOSS and I was an enormous proponent of it for years (I used to be quite the Linux zealot) and still support it to a very high degree. However, you might want to consider that, because you're living and working in areas that you call "developing", that you might have lost a bit of objectivity here.
You're actually equating the idea of being able to see and modify source code to national democracy, and that if you take it away, somehow it affects national freedom. That's not the case. If all the code you had went closed source, but was still free (as in beer), what would really happen? So you couldn't modify the source code of all of the apps and the OS you run. Do you really do that now? Do you think the average Linux person does that now? Come on, be fair. Apple, in this case, is not what I would call "corrupt". They're not a pharmaceutical company raping the people of the third world, or a clothing manufacturer exploiting workers... they're Apple. They write software. Yes, they probably have some ties in with something bad when it comes to the hardware, but I highly doubt that the software is causing any *real* problem in that regard.
Richard Stallman is a freak, not out for free as in democracy, or national freedom. He simply hates companies, hates people and has some pretty wicked narcissistic tendencies (hell, he scours newsgroups he's not a part of to see if people are saying bad things about him). I've talked with him a few times and only after talking to him, did I stop following him - I used to follow him very strongly.
Software is the least of the developing nations' problems, and if you take the "free" (as in speech) out of it, people will notice, but it certainly won't bring the nation crashing down, and all told it probably won't do anything significant whatsoever. Ask yourself what the free (as in speech) aspect is actually *doing* right now and you might bring your viewpoint a bit more to centre.
Congratulations:) I'm not sure that there was anything to "win", and I'm very sure that the concept of "sharing" code has nothing to do with the code itself. I can write a free "hello world" program and share it all over the place, but I don't think that that makes it better than Propellerheads Reason for handling audio. But hey... it's free, so it must be better. Interesting argument...
And yet, we're not "waiting on Linux". We're using it on our desktops today. What does that say?
That's not the point. I understand people are using it... like I said, I was using it for over ten years, and I always said that if something better came up, I would switch. When I switched, I knew I made the right choice... by a mile. I still say the same thing, though... if something better comes up, I'll switch. You're right, if Linux turns out to pass OSX someday, I'll switch again. But for now, OSX has got Linux beat by a long shot...
4) ESD, aRTS, JACK,...
Well, ESD was GNOME, aRTS was KDE and JACK was for Realtime with low latency... You forgot about OSS and ALSA, GNOME/KDE and lots of other similar duplicate efforts.
GNU/Linux is also about choice... something lots of people have forgotten since the old ages...
COMMAND.COM or 4DOS.COM ?
Sound Blaster or GUS (now, most of the time, it's the onboard sound card)
EMM386 or QEMM386 ?
All I can say here is that you seem to be missing the point. It's not that such things don't exist, they certainly do. All of the different types, the different implementations and flavours are all very nice and fun to have, but they simply don't measure up - they *really* don't. OSX CoreAudio and CoreMIDI are engineered properly. There's only one choice and you only need one choice. It's fast, it's clear and concise, it requires ZERO (read that word very carefully and then ask yourself how much work is required for any of the linux variants) user intervention to work with, there are no "interesting" bits of information that need to be known or configured, or tweaked and played with... etc etc...
Musicians write and perform music and the apps themselves are designed to let them do that with a minimum of hassle. Do you really think that any pro musician wants to spend any time whatsoever setting up the OS audio, let alone even having to choose which audio code to run, when OSX requires nothing of the sort and outperforms Linux anyways? I think that's the point of this whole thread (and others)... Linux may not have missed the boat here, since time is fluid and who knows what the future will bring, but OSX has given the Linux community what it's been craving for years - Unix on the Desktop - and it did it while the Linux community is still trying to figure out how to do it. Closed source simply did the better job here - it does happen. Apple could ignore any hardware issues since they controlled everything, and they could focus on the job at hand. OSS has much more "cowboy" related hardware issues to tackle, and it's not nearly as focused - OSS writes "everything" while closed source writes "something".
People don't WANT to use Linux, more people just don't want to use Windows
That's a brilliant observation and it's one I tend to overlook, but you're totally right. People don't necessarily want to use Linux, OSX, freebsd, Joe's OS, but they simply are tired of using Windows and desperately need an alternative. OSX doesn't immediately run on their Windows hardware, so the next choice is Linux.
Unix is not important to me, I also don't think the majority of people who use Linux, use it because they want something Unixy.
Wow... well, I think you just might be wrong there.
Tons of high quality third party applications and you are going to mention OS X? Can I have what you are smoking?
What do people do most of the time? Photo editing, surfing, word processing, spread sheets, movie watching, music playing, IM, email and gaming. Adobe Creative Suite, Omniweb (very nice app, by the way) - Firefox - Safari (not great), MS Office, Apple office suite (very very slick, IMO), Quicktime with codecs (quite nice, in fact), iTunes (not great, but not bad), Apple Mail (very nice app), various IM progs are all pretty decent, games... I don't play games, so I don't comment. You've got great interoperability in these apps, drag and drop is superb, man... it all just works.
But as well, how about artists? Incredible audio app support like no other. Most of the apps that windows has (and some it doesn't) but supported in an OS that understands how these things should be done - CoreAudio and CoreMidi - not bolted on by some third party guys after the fact. It's integrated and works extremely well. People are tossing out their synthesizers and studio gear for a powerful Mac and their favourite apps, and they're not afraid to take the gear on stage. Try this stuff with a linux box... I still have my wife using a linux box and she can't even get her email to work right because people send her attachments that are *still* a bitch to read on a Linux box, and I am not about to put in the effort to get it all working right... I've grown very tired of doing that stuff.
But! If I were to choose a system for Unix capability, I would choose windows over OS X...
For Unix compatibility, you would choose a non-Unix over a Unix... Thanks for playing:) I just started being a Windows programmer about four months ago - Unix-like, it aint. Wow... what a thing to say - you are probably the first to ever write down such a thing. Congrats.
Naw, I won't start a Java war:) Sufficed to say, I never touched ObjC before I met my Mac, and I gotta say it's wicked cool for development. Mix in some C++, Python and Ruby, all of which are well supported now, and it's shake and bake.
But you're right, if you're a Java guy then you're somewhat hosed... but I'll never fault apple for that very fine decision:)
Hardware issues notwithstanding (yeah, you're tied to the hardware, unless you get a machine that runs OSX86 well) it's a great OS - turning back just doesn't seem like an option for me. BTW on the macbook pro (that's all I've ever used, so it may be on everything else as well), the touchpad has a second mouse button - just tap with two fingers. This a bloody godsend!
Switching from Linux to OSX (after using Linux exclusively for over 10 years) ranks up there as one of the largest impacts, for the better, to my personal productivity and enjoyment of programming, and computing in general, that's ever happened to me.
I admire the work being done with Linux on the Desktop, but all of this talk of "Linux on the desktop in 200X!" is getting to be kind of silly. There's a monstrously large Elephant in the living room and it's not getting discussed much... You want Unix and a production quality desktop with tons of high quality third party apps with a buttload of real-world usage? Stop waiting on Linux and switch to OSX... What you want is here, now.
Forget about all of this "It's got to be 'free', man" stuff and just recognize the fact that it has to work, and work well... 10 years I was with Linux, set up hundreds of machines in various places. Now, I just tell people to go buy a Mac and let the computer work for you instead of having to learn (what is to the lay-person) a bunch of voodoo magic.
Take it from me, I work in HR at a Fortune 500 company, so I know a thing or two.
This AC is totally right. Every time I need a decision on which language I should use to implement a product, I always go straight to HR; preferably HR in fortune 500 company. Those folks really know their stuff!
As if what companies use has anything whatsoever to do with this paper... I agree Java sucks, but this has nothing to do with whether or not someone is "employable" after reading this paper - it has to do with a fairly smart group of folks trying to make Java a bit better for numerical work. (i.e. for the public sector, more often than not)
1. Other apps haven't had a problem because of this. Both Mozilla and OpenOffice, for example, insisted on writing their very own framework and widgets, so basically they're _neither_ Gnome nor KDE. Your line of thinking seems to be that that would make them shunned by both KDE and Gnome users, yet that's not really the case. And then there's stuff like XMMS, which doesn't even try to look even remotely like the desktop, and had no problem either.
This isn't a problem? If a company^H^H^H^H^H^H^H anyone has to write all their own widgets so that their app "works" then first, that's excruciating, second it's a waste of time, third there's more code to debug and fourth the app doesn't look like it belongs. Firefox on my Mac looks like a bastard child of a forgotten age and, quite frankly, looks like shit compared to all of my other apps.
I'm sorry, but I've written apps for Linux that use a GUI and it's positively brutal. Ever since I started programming for the Mac, I've wondered why I was wasting my time before. Try reading Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X and do some programming on OS X with Cocoa. If you don't immediately change your opinion, I'd be extremely surprised.
You've been a developer, right? Have you ever had to work tons of (free) overtime to fulfill some salesman's wild promises to a customer in order to get himself a big, fat commission? When you put out that software, which generally sucks because of the ridiculous time pressures, and had to support that software, have you ever had anyone tell you how lousy you are at your job for writing it like that? Have you ever felt like a total ass for doing something for free, sacrificing your free time and your home life, and a part of your reputation so that some sales guy who, essentially @#%@ed you, can get a big commission? A sales guy who obviously doesn't care one whit about you?
You have to realize that you just might be that sales guy... and if you're OK doing that to people who used to be on your team, working with you, then, well... then that's your choice, but don't blame them for hating your guts.
You're telling me not to steal it, and not buy it if I don't like what they get paid. Clearly, I'm not buying it if I steal it. I'll keep stealing it then, thanks.
And, just FYI, it is very much OK to steal from the rich, because it's not stealing. All we're doing is taking back a smal-assed percentage of what they stole from us in the first place. You can't claim that the price of an object is motivated purely by demand as though "demand" were some concept that is completely under the control of the consumer -- it's not. If it were 100% under my control, then the billions and billions of dollars spent researching (hell, forget what it costs to implement) marketing techniques would be a huge waste of cash, and it's not.
I emailed them and told them that I won't be shopping at their stores until they make this right. An apology attached to a 4 figure check is what I suggested. Let's face it, a corporate apology that doesn't have money attached to it (since corps only care about money) is an empty apology.
I think piracy is a poor reflection on people's own characters, and their distorted view that time is more expendiable than money!
A) we live in a society where the almighty dollar actually does mean more than most things. I'm surprised you think that the masses would believe otherwise.
B) People are constantly trading their time for money. What do you think jobs are all about? Ever hear anyone complain about their job? Why waste their time at it if they don't like it?
C) People don't waste two hours on shit. I watched King Kong (a three hour movie) in about 20 minutes. The story started out and lasted about 10 minutes, and then it was another 10 minutes of fast forwarding. I don't call that a waste of time. In 20 minutes, I learned it was shit and knew not to waste my money or more time in a theatre to see it on the "big screen". Not only that, I could tell other people that it's a waste of time.
D) Time is more expendable than money. By your example, I would assume you value your time at, say, $15/hr? Well, something more than $2.50 at least. Are you saying that you have an average of $270 per day that you'd be happy to part with? That's almost $100k a year. Even if you did have that, would you say that the average person does? Mathematics being what they are, time is more expendable than money.
E) Piracy has nothing to do with your statement (well, it does, but it's actually the opposite of what you state). If you go to a theatre and spend $20-$30 for you and your date to watch shit, not only did you waste your time, you also gave money to a bunch of guys that stole that time from you, promising that it would be an amazing romp of an adventure with plot twists, deep character development, and a whole bunch of booms (the last of which is probably the only thing it had, assuming of course that it did turn out to be shit). So now, your precious time, and your precious money are both gone. At least if you pirated the movie, you only would have been out your time (and wouldn't have felt too bad about shutting it off as opposed to cutting your losses, walking out of the theatre and tossing your $20-$30 down the crapper). Watching a movie shouldn't be a akin to pulling down the one-armed bandit.
As far as I can tell, by your own statement, piracy is actually a good thing -- it can save the person some precious time, and on top of that, it can save them from wasting money on shit. You seem to believe that people can know something is shit before they see it, and thus watching a pirated copy, somehow knowing that it is shit beforehand, is a waste of time. That, of course isn't the case.
Most likely, that's not it. You Tube eats up more bandwidth than, say wikipedia, which is really the kind of thing that the library is for. Granted, there might be 2 or 3 educational videos on You Tube but that's not a big percentage. Tagging it as a sex site is one way to stop you from sucking down their bandwidth.
And what do these people have to show the copyright holders in a positive light?
Actually, I would think they have a fair bit to show off. I only watched part 1 and was so unimpressed that I didn't watch any other parts, mostly for the reason that they gave no ideas on what is good about filesharing. All they were interested in was stating that it wasn't illegal and showing how cool they were for getting back up and running immediately. That's not helping the cause much.
They could show the **AA what they already should know (and do, in fact, know)
The power of 0day wares, audio and video is a juggernaught like nobody has ever seen. Why go through a ton of websites looking for the latest release of "X" or trolling for software when you can just go to TPB or wherever else and it's just there waiting for you? Make use of that medium! Start your own site with this stuff on it. Put up trailers, teasers, inside shit that isn't anywhere else, support it with ads for your own shit if you want. Make a site where people can go to get all of the latest updates for their software, or see new demos of other software, etc... P2P is one powerful medium and they refuse to make use of it. That's just being blind.
People are unwilling to watch shit and pay for it. Snakes on a plane??? Come on! That thing will go down in history as one of the stupidest things ever. The daily show has made so much fun of it, and has done so in such a serious way that it's the only entertaining way of seeing it.
P2P networks have let me see movies that are truly amazing (Primer, Kinky Boots, and many others). They should be able to see that these are very popular movies, and learn from that (i.e. "Why did we back snakes on a plane and not these other ones??? They didn't cost a couple of hundred million to make!").
Is the consumer telling us that we've priced ourselves out of the market? Who wants to pay $20 for a movie that might suck? Who wants to pay $20 for a move that doesn't suck when $5 is what it's really worth? Maybe they could benefit from not expecting to make 150000% off of popcorn sales, or 800% on DVD sales, sell everything at a price the public is willing to pay and then get higher volume? Would this address the argument of, "Dude, you're not losing billions because if I had to pay full price, I wouldn't buy any of this stuff". Maybe the consumer is tired of paying more to compensate our losses when we bet on a loser.
What's happening with these TV downloads? Why are there so bloody many of them? Maybe we should create our own site for this stuff, ad supported, guaranteed high rate of bandwidth, and the knowledge that it's "OK" to do it?
And face facts man, the consumer really seems unwilling to ensure our profits are maximized... greed got us where we are. We're not trying to protect our livelihood -- we're trying to protect our glutonous profiteering. Maybe, just maybe, we don't need to pay actors $20mil for 8 months work. Maybe, just maybe, the execs don't need to have 6 multi million dollar houses across the globe, dozens of expensive cars and enough money to gamble $20k away every day for the rest of their lives. Maybe the consumer finds it offensive that we tell them they're stealing the food out of the mouths of the key grips, and roadies when the guys running the companies are making hundres, sometimes thousands of times their salaries for a level of effort that is merely on-par with theirs. Maybe this really is just the laziest civil disobedience the world can muster.
Gimme a break. Do you think that they have sessions with Dr. Phil about how to kill people happily? Come on! "Gooks", "Towelheads", etc... these are not endearing terms but the military uses them all the time (i've known a lot of people in the military -- mostly grunts). Do you think their commanding officer says, "Hey! They aren't Gooks. They're feeling people with their own wives and children and they are just trying to protect them against the evil invaders... we're them."
In war, there is an enemy and an ally. Which is which merely depends on which side you're on. The enemy are not evil whatsoever... and why is that? Because we aren't, and we're the enemy from the enemy's point of view.
Do you honestly think that the military is going to let their soldiers read, what amounts to enemy propaganda on the net? Please! Propaganda bombs are dropped all the time... particular content on the net is just one more. Only, unless it's censored, nobody has to bomb the base -- the soldiers will click on their own.
Soldiers must be desensitized against murder. If they aren't then they can't do their job. It's a horrible job that I couldn't do, and I thank each and every one of them for doing it.
Get yer head out of the sand, dear son... The Military doesn't go into a war expecting to lose. Letting their soldiers read propaganda doesn't help you win.
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Seriously... power users aren't GUI users (and as you said earlier, you as a power user, want to customize your GUI desktop more flexibly, you know, like a power user would do :D), and they aren't Darwin ports users. I compile every non-closed app from source, and I use the command line for almost everything. That's where Unix power comes from... not from pre-made packages that aren't compiled the way you would like them (for example, take any distro and try to install a headless system that includes Python, and see if you don't have to install all of X11 with it along with a bunch of GUI widget libs that you'll never use... ack!).
Sorry man, you say you're a power user, but power users know you're not. You're out of your element, which is why people are calling you a troll. You make unsubstantiated remarks as though they're coming from a "power" user but the statements themselves negate the entire idea behind a power user. I have no doubt that you've been doing this for a long time but I think you haven't been exposed enough to what really makes Unix a power environment. Try installing base Slackware and then customizing the system through source apps instead. That's a great way to learn to become a power user. As well, learn to write scripts, use the command line more and read up on some shell books or something. Take a look at the kernel source, take a look at the source of some of your favourite apps, read some of the unix programming books from addison wesley, etc etc... You're missing out on a LOT of what power users have enjoyed for a *very* long time.
Oh, and power users always know that they don't know enough to be power users.
I'm sure it would have been good, but let's face facts here... nothing was stopping people from doing that and creating their own businesses. Sure MS did some bad shit, but it doesn't stop things. One has to wonder why a country that had Linux on the desktop, and had all of these wonderful aspects that were available were pirating windows and switched to windows when win98 was free. There's something to that argument I think. I agree it wasn't as good as what could have been but clearly Linux was not delivering on some aspects that windows was. But I think we're arguing in circles now. I certainly concede that you know more about this than I do and that your points are quite valid. I simply can't accept the idea that Linux would be "the" solution for any large group. It can't interoperate with Windows very well, it's not as media rich, and it simply isn't as easily usable for the average joe. It's a great OS, but it's not a great desktop OS.
... was pretty much exactly what happenedNo it's not. They brought out Win98, which was a piece of crap and way outdated, and then EOLed it without giving away XP and friends for free, correct? That's not what I was suggesting at all... If there's a reason to put Win98 up for free then there's no reason not to do that with XP and friends... all MS did was bait and switch. That's crap.
I don't dispute a damn thing you have to say about corrupt governments and companies. We could enjoy many a beer talking about that, I'm sure.
But Thailand wasn't making use of the free speech aspect of Linux, which is what we were talking about. The free beer aspect was being used to a great result. It was functionally the same thing as piracy, in the sense that it was copies of software from one source all over the place, but in this case copying was OK because the OS was free beer. If MS made Windows, and all of the apps that people use, free beer to the Thai people, and continued that until such time as it was reasonable to change it to a pay scenario then they wouldn't be screwed. The fact that MS products are closed source makes no difference here. It's not closed source versus open source, it's free beer versus gougingly overpriced beer, and that's a totally different topic.
That might be today. Check out the OSx86 project. It might not work for you but it's worth a shot.
No it's not, not remotely. MOST people don't give a crap about that. I agree completely with what Divebus said: "People don't WANT to use Linux, more people just don't want to use Windows...". People want to switch from windows and they can't run OSX on their hardware (or maybe they don't know that they can - OSX86 might be the answer for them), so they use the big popular *nix for the PC. If it was "freedom" they cared about then Linux isn't the only choice, and some would certainly argue it isn't the first choice at all.
But let's even ignore that point altogether and think really hard about this: What do people look for in an OS? Is it strength, quality, uptime, ease of use, power, resource usage, responsiveness, networking tools, security? No no... forget all that stuff, I guess... it's "freedom". "Give me a piece of crap OS! Yes! So long as it gives me freedom I'll use it!". Give me a break... the "main reason"? One finds it difficult to see that it's a "reason" at all.
I get it... seriously. I understand the wonder of FOSS and I was an enormous proponent of it for years (I used to be quite the Linux zealot) and still support it to a very high degree. However, you might want to consider that, because you're living and working in areas that you call "developing", that you might have lost a bit of objectivity here.
You're actually equating the idea of being able to see and modify source code to national democracy, and that if you take it away, somehow it affects national freedom. That's not the case. If all the code you had went closed source, but was still free (as in beer), what would really happen? So you couldn't modify the source code of all of the apps and the OS you run. Do you really do that now? Do you think the average Linux person does that now? Come on, be fair. Apple, in this case, is not what I would call "corrupt". They're not a pharmaceutical company raping the people of the third world, or a clothing manufacturer exploiting workers... they're Apple. They write software. Yes, they probably have some ties in with something bad when it comes to the hardware, but I highly doubt that the software is causing any *real* problem in that regard.
Richard Stallman is a freak, not out for free as in democracy, or national freedom. He simply hates companies, hates people and has some pretty wicked narcissistic tendencies (hell, he scours newsgroups he's not a part of to see if people are saying bad things about him). I've talked with him a few times and only after talking to him, did I stop following him - I used to follow him very strongly.
Software is the least of the developing nations' problems, and if you take the "free" (as in speech) out of it, people will notice, but it certainly won't bring the nation crashing down, and all told it probably won't do anything significant whatsoever. Ask yourself what the free (as in speech) aspect is actually *doing* right now and you might bring your viewpoint a bit more to centre.
Congratulations :) I'm not sure that there was anything to "win", and I'm very sure that the concept of "sharing" code has nothing to do with the code itself. I can write a free "hello world" program and share it all over the place, but I don't think that that makes it better than Propellerheads Reason for handling audio. But hey... it's free, so it must be better. Interesting argument...
That's not the point. I understand people are using it... like I said, I was using it for over ten years, and I always said that if something better came up, I would switch. When I switched, I knew I made the right choice... by a mile. I still say the same thing, though... if something better comes up, I'll switch. You're right, if Linux turns out to pass OSX someday, I'll switch again. But for now, OSX has got Linux beat by a long shot...
All I can say here is that you seem to be missing the point. It's not that such things don't exist, they certainly do. All of the different types, the different implementations and flavours are all very nice and fun to have, but they simply don't measure up - they *really* don't. OSX CoreAudio and CoreMIDI are engineered properly. There's only one choice and you only need one choice. It's fast, it's clear and concise, it requires ZERO (read that word very carefully and then ask yourself how much work is required for any of the linux variants) user intervention to work with, there are no "interesting" bits of information that need to be known or configured, or tweaked and played with... etc etc...
Musicians write and perform music and the apps themselves are designed to let them do that with a minimum of hassle. Do you really think that any pro musician wants to spend any time whatsoever setting up the OS audio, let alone even having to choose which audio code to run, when OSX requires nothing of the sort and outperforms Linux anyways? I think that's the point of this whole thread (and others)... Linux may not have missed the boat here, since time is fluid and who knows what the future will bring, but OSX has given the Linux community what it's been craving for years - Unix on the Desktop - and it did it while the Linux community is still trying to figure out how to do it. Closed source simply did the better job here - it does happen. Apple could ignore any hardware issues since they controlled everything, and they could focus on the job at hand. OSS has much more "cowboy" related hardware issues to tackle, and it's not nearly as focused - OSS writes "everything" while closed source writes "something".
Who the hell could be surprised at the outcome?
That's a brilliant observation and it's one I tend to overlook, but you're totally right. People don't necessarily want to use Linux, OSX, freebsd, Joe's OS, but they simply are tired of using Windows and desperately need an alternative. OSX doesn't immediately run on their Windows hardware, so the next choice is Linux.
Thanks for the insight.
Article nor the summary says that.
Google is your friend... I'm being general.
Unix is not important to me, I also don't think the majority of people who use Linux, use it because they want something Unixy.
Wow... well, I think you just might be wrong there.
Tons of high quality third party applications and you are going to mention OS X? Can I have what you are smoking?
What do people do most of the time? Photo editing, surfing, word processing, spread sheets, movie watching, music playing, IM, email and gaming. Adobe Creative Suite, Omniweb (very nice app, by the way) - Firefox - Safari (not great), MS Office, Apple office suite (very very slick, IMO), Quicktime with codecs (quite nice, in fact), iTunes (not great, but not bad), Apple Mail (very nice app), various IM progs are all pretty decent, games... I don't play games, so I don't comment. You've got great interoperability in these apps, drag and drop is superb, man... it all just works.
But as well, how about artists? Incredible audio app support like no other. Most of the apps that windows has (and some it doesn't) but supported in an OS that understands how these things should be done - CoreAudio and CoreMidi - not bolted on by some third party guys after the fact. It's integrated and works extremely well. People are tossing out their synthesizers and studio gear for a powerful Mac and their favourite apps, and they're not afraid to take the gear on stage. Try this stuff with a linux box... I still have my wife using a linux box and she can't even get her email to work right because people send her attachments that are *still* a bitch to read on a Linux box, and I am not about to put in the effort to get it all working right... I've grown very tired of doing that stuff.
But! If I were to choose a system for Unix capability, I would choose windows over OS X...
For Unix compatibility, you would choose a non-Unix over a Unix... Thanks for playingNaw, I won't start a Java war :) Sufficed to say, I never touched ObjC before I met my Mac, and I gotta say it's wicked cool for development. Mix in some C++, Python and Ruby, all of which are well supported now, and it's shake and bake.
:)
But you're right, if you're a Java guy then you're somewhat hosed... but I'll never fault apple for that very fine decision
Hardware issues notwithstanding (yeah, you're tied to the hardware, unless you get a machine that runs OSX86 well) it's a great OS - turning back just doesn't seem like an option for me. BTW on the macbook pro (that's all I've ever used, so it may be on everything else as well), the touchpad has a second mouse button - just tap with two fingers. This a bloody godsend!
Switching from Linux to OSX (after using Linux exclusively for over 10 years) ranks up there as one of the largest impacts, for the better, to my personal productivity and enjoyment of programming, and computing in general, that's ever happened to me.
I admire the work being done with Linux on the Desktop, but all of this talk of "Linux on the desktop in 200X!" is getting to be kind of silly. There's a monstrously large Elephant in the living room and it's not getting discussed much... You want Unix and a production quality desktop with tons of high quality third party apps with a buttload of real-world usage? Stop waiting on Linux and switch to OSX... What you want is here, now.
Forget about all of this "It's got to be 'free', man" stuff and just recognize the fact that it has to work, and work well... 10 years I was with Linux, set up hundreds of machines in various places. Now, I just tell people to go buy a Mac and let the computer work for you instead of having to learn (what is to the lay-person) a bunch of voodoo magic.
I await the inevitable flamebait award...
Take it from me, I work in HR at a Fortune 500 company, so I know a thing or two.
This AC is totally right. Every time I need a decision on which language I should use to implement a product, I always go straight to HR; preferably HR in fortune 500 company. Those folks really know their stuff!
As if what companies use has anything whatsoever to do with this paper... I agree Java sucks, but this has nothing to do with whether or not someone is "employable" after reading this paper - it has to do with a fairly smart group of folks trying to make Java a bit better for numerical work. (i.e. for the public sector, more often than not)
1. Other apps haven't had a problem because of this. Both Mozilla and OpenOffice, for example, insisted on writing their very own framework and widgets, so basically they're _neither_ Gnome nor KDE. Your line of thinking seems to be that that would make them shunned by both KDE and Gnome users, yet that's not really the case. And then there's stuff like XMMS, which doesn't even try to look even remotely like the desktop, and had no problem either.
This isn't a problem? If a company^H^H^H^H^H^H^H anyone has to write all their own widgets so that their app "works" then first, that's excruciating, second it's a waste of time, third there's more code to debug and fourth the app doesn't look like it belongs. Firefox on my Mac looks like a bastard child of a forgotten age and, quite frankly, looks like shit compared to all of my other apps.
I'm sorry, but I've written apps for Linux that use a GUI and it's positively brutal. Ever since I started programming for the Mac, I've wondered why I was wasting my time before. Try reading Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X and do some programming on OS X with Cocoa. If you don't immediately change your opinion, I'd be extremely surprised.
Sendmail
You've been a developer, right? Have you ever had to work tons of (free) overtime to fulfill some salesman's wild promises to a customer in order to get himself a big, fat commission? When you put out that software, which generally sucks because of the ridiculous time pressures, and had to support that software, have you ever had anyone tell you how lousy you are at your job for writing it like that? Have you ever felt like a total ass for doing something for free, sacrificing your free time and your home life, and a part of your reputation so that some sales guy who, essentially @#%@ed you, can get a big commission? A sales guy who obviously doesn't care one whit about you?
You have to realize that you just might be that sales guy... and if you're OK doing that to people who used to be on your team, working with you, then, well... then that's your choice, but don't blame them for hating your guts.
You're telling me not to steal it, and not buy it if I don't like what they get paid. Clearly, I'm not buying it if I steal it. I'll keep stealing it then, thanks.
And, just FYI, it is very much OK to steal from the rich, because it's not stealing. All we're doing is taking back a smal-assed percentage of what they stole from us in the first place. You can't claim that the price of an object is motivated purely by demand as though "demand" were some concept that is completely under the control of the consumer -- it's not. If it were 100% under my control, then the billions and billions of dollars spent researching (hell, forget what it costs to implement) marketing techniques would be a huge waste of cash, and it's not.
... and even I know those figures are absolute crap.
It's comforting to know that the FUD isn't all coming from MS :)
Email: media.relations@RadioShack.com
I emailed them and told them that I won't be shopping at their stores until they make this right. An apology attached to a 4 figure check is what I suggested. Let's face it, a corporate apology that doesn't have money attached to it (since corps only care about money) is an empty apology.
I think piracy is a poor reflection on people's own characters, and their distorted view that time is more expendiable than money!
A) we live in a society where the almighty dollar actually does mean more than most things. I'm surprised you think that the masses would believe otherwise.
B) People are constantly trading their time for money. What do you think jobs are all about? Ever hear anyone complain about their job? Why waste their time at it if they don't like it?
C) People don't waste two hours on shit. I watched King Kong (a three hour movie) in about 20 minutes. The story started out and lasted about 10 minutes, and then it was another 10 minutes of fast forwarding. I don't call that a waste of time. In 20 minutes, I learned it was shit and knew not to waste my money or more time in a theatre to see it on the "big screen". Not only that, I could tell other people that it's a waste of time.
D) Time is more expendable than money. By your example, I would assume you value your time at, say, $15/hr? Well, something more than $2.50 at least. Are you saying that you have an average of $270 per day that you'd be happy to part with? That's almost $100k a year. Even if you did have that, would you say that the average person does? Mathematics being what they are, time is more expendable than money.
E) Piracy has nothing to do with your statement (well, it does, but it's actually the opposite of what you state). If you go to a theatre and spend $20-$30 for you and your date to watch shit, not only did you waste your time, you also gave money to a bunch of guys that stole that time from you, promising that it would be an amazing romp of an adventure with plot twists, deep character development, and a whole bunch of booms (the last of which is probably the only thing it had, assuming of course that it did turn out to be shit). So now, your precious time, and your precious money are both gone. At least if you pirated the movie, you only would have been out your time (and wouldn't have felt too bad about shutting it off as opposed to cutting your losses, walking out of the theatre and tossing your $20-$30 down the crapper). Watching a movie shouldn't be a akin to pulling down the one-armed bandit.
As far as I can tell, by your own statement, piracy is actually a good thing -- it can save the person some precious time, and on top of that, it can save them from wasting money on shit. You seem to believe that people can know something is shit before they see it, and thus watching a pirated copy, somehow knowing that it is shit beforehand, is a waste of time. That, of course isn't the case.
Most likely, that's not it. You Tube eats up more bandwidth than, say wikipedia, which is really the kind of thing that the library is for. Granted, there might be 2 or 3 educational videos on You Tube but that's not a big percentage. Tagging it as a sex site is one way to stop you from sucking down their bandwidth.
And what do these people have to show the copyright holders in a positive light?
Actually, I would think they have a fair bit to show off. I only watched part 1 and was so unimpressed that I didn't watch any other parts, mostly for the reason that they gave no ideas on what is good about filesharing. All they were interested in was stating that it wasn't illegal and showing how cool they were for getting back up and running immediately. That's not helping the cause much.
They could show the **AA what they already should know (and do, in fact, know)
Speaking of moderation...
:P
Gimme a break. Do you think that they have sessions with Dr. Phil about how to kill people happily? Come on! "Gooks", "Towelheads", etc... these are not endearing terms but the military uses them all the time (i've known a lot of people in the military -- mostly grunts). Do you think their commanding officer says, "Hey! They aren't Gooks. They're feeling people with their own wives and children and they are just trying to protect them against the evil invaders... we're them."
In war, there is an enemy and an ally. Which is which merely depends on which side you're on. The enemy are not evil whatsoever... and why is that? Because we aren't, and we're the enemy from the enemy's point of view.
Do you honestly think that the military is going to let their soldiers read, what amounts to enemy propaganda on the net? Please! Propaganda bombs are dropped all the time... particular content on the net is just one more. Only, unless it's censored, nobody has to bomb the base -- the soldiers will click on their own.
Soldiers must be desensitized against murder. If they aren't then they can't do their job. It's a horrible job that I couldn't do, and I thank each and every one of them for doing it.
Get yer head out of the sand, dear son... The Military doesn't go into a war expecting to lose. Letting their soldiers read propaganda doesn't help you win.