The fact is the subscription music plan just sucks. It's like paying for radio. XM and sirus have a good idea, but very few people are willing to shell out money for music that stops playing when they stop paying.
I agree with you that people are not willing to pay, but what I am wondering is, why? "It's like paying for radio." Yeah, but it's also like paying for television. It comes for free over the airwaves. Millions pay for cable, even though when you stop paying, the cable stops working. You pay $100 a month for cable, and you own nothing when it's all said and done. You could have taken that $100 a month and bought DVDs (and nowadays much stuff on TV is now available on DVD) but instead people are RENTING TV. Why?
Maybe people are less willing to rent music because music is so cheap. Also, cable television has been around for decades--long enough for people to get used to the idea of paying for television. The idea of renting music or paying for radio is still a very new idea, and it could take awhile to catch on. With music being as cheap as it is nowadays, and with more and more people producing music and distributing it over the Net for free, I think renting music will NEVER catch on. Maybe satellite radio has a shot--they have live things that you can't preload onto an iPod--but the music rental business will go nowhere.
But it doesn't seem to me that the idea of renting music is ridiculous on its face. Thirty years ago people probably thought renting television was nuts.
Strange they forgot Visicalc. It was the first big-time spreadsheet. Arguably more important than 123.
Even more strange is that they forgot Visicalc but then gave top rank to the Apple II. Visicalc was the killer app for the Apple II. People bought Apple II just so they could use Visicalc. WIthout Visicalc, who knows if Apple II would ever have been so big?
Oh well, I will just join all the other people on here who will leave comments about how dumb the list is. Dvorak is often an idiot, but he is right when he says that the editors just sit around in a room with donuts and jot down what they think should be on a list. How else should they do it, anyway...
Wow, I'm not surprised that EMI is offering DRM free downloads (it's about time!) but I'm surprised they're partnering with Apple. I thought they'd want to "stick it" to Apple. I guess EMI realizes Apple is the best bet for selling music online.
Come on Zonk, why is this categorized under "Linux" with a Tux icon? OOo is cross platform--runs on Linux, Windows, and OS X (even if it does take X11 to run under Mac.) I'd even be willing to bet that there are more Windows users of OOo than there are Linux users of OOo.
Newegg.com. Huge selection. Useful reviews. Exhaustive specifications. You can shop at your own home at your leisure.
Downsides of course are 1) you have to wait for shipping and 2) you have to receive the package. Waiting is not a big deal for me, and Newegg ships fast. You can always upgrade the shipping. Receiving the packages can be a big deal for some, but I live in a building with a desk that takes packages (and that's a big reason I'm not eager to move into a house!)
If you want a retail experience for computers and you've got a Micro Center nearby, they're pretty good. Nice selection and decent staff.
Best Buy and Circuit City are both awful, with meager selection and worthless staff. Avoid both.
This whole Dell preinstalled Linux thing strikes me as a sham to get something out of Microsoft, like lower Windows license prices.
The best thing Dell could do for Linux is simply make sure its hardware works. Put some engineers in a "Linux lab." They would make sure that all Dell computers, or just select Dell models, work well with Linux. That would mean that these models would have supported wireless and multimedia buttons that work. They would have video cards with open source drivers. Dell's Linux Web page would be much improved over its current version. It would have detailed instructions on how to make sure that suspend to RAM works with Dell laptops. It would have detailed instructions on how to get a selected Dell remote control to work with MythTV. Dell engineers would make sure the hardware has drivers, writing patches for the kernel if needed (then upstream would gladly help maintain the new code.)
If Dell did all this, there would be no question on "what distro to support." EVERY distro would then support Dell! Debian, Ubuntu, Gentoo, Red Hat, SUSE, etc. would all take the necessary steps to get the Dell models supported in their distro. After all, with the detailed Dell information on the Dell site, integrating support would be dead simple! There would then be strong community sentiment in favor of Dell. Dell would be the best hardware maker for Linux. Everybody wins.
Linux preinstalled is not all that important. The emphasis on preinstalled is the old, Windows/Mac way of thinking. If the kernel supports the hardware, then ANY distro will work with Dells! Installing any distro would take just a few clicks. Sure, some people will want preinstalled. For that, Dell could just have "Certified Linux Partners" that would preinstall whatever distro they want. Then the partner gets the support calls, not Dell. Dell would have lots of partners and sell computers, without getting end user support hassles. Again, everybody wins.
Dell must realize all this. Their IdeaStorm is nothing more than PR BS. If they really wanted to support Linux, they would just improve hardware support. Write some drivers. Post some instructions. Instead they're doing a big public song and dance. I predict they will wave this website at MS during price negotiations. MS will drop the price. Then that's all we'll hear of this preinstalled BS. But that won't preclude TRUE Linux support like I've outlined here, and hopefully that will be forthcoming.
Or maybe he's just counting the time until the computer is actually usable. With Linux once the computer is booted, and you see the desktop, it's ready to use. With windows, it takes another 20 seconds (at least) after the desktop appears for it to actually become usable.
For my machine and GNOME, not true. GNOME goes through its splash screen and shows a desktop, but it is still loading panel applets and the clock. It takes several more seconds. It's hardly usable because loading anything while it's at this stage takes forever.
I used to think KDE starts slower than GNOME. Now I think it's a dead heat. KDE shows its splash screen and it's there longer, but KDE is almost (if not entirely) done loading when it says "KDE is up and running." GNOME seems to take the Windows approach: show the desktop to fool 'em, even though it is actually still loading.
Tagging MP3s: Musicbrainz has projects to automatically tag MP3s with metadata on track name, album, etc. As for tagging them with mood: good luck; however All Music Guide has been working on this sort of thing for years; see also Last.fm. Integrating these into a desktop would be nice, though your comparison to "Microsoft tunnel vision" is quite harsh seeing as open source desktops have long had features that Windows sorely lacks, such as transparent SSH file transfers, thumbnailing of PDFs and other non-photo documents, and viewers for multiple file types, embedded right into the file manager.
I don't know about the Open Source camp, but the Free camp as led by RMS would strongly disagree with you. RMS has said that if you have proprietary software and your neighbor wants a copy, you're morally obligated to copy it and give it to him. RMS says that even if the proprietary ware is "free" like beer it is still inferior because you cannot modify it. RMS' old story of not being able to use a printer because he didn't have the source code to the driver rings true even today: look at how badly 64-bit Windows is hamstrung because the driver inventory is poor, compared to Linux where 64-bit works quite well because almost all the software and drivers are free and easily modified to run 64-bit.
So RMS would say copy the software, even if it's proprietary, but that the Free software is better.
Makes tons of money "sharing" Wikipedia's content to sites like Answer.com for a cut of the advertising revenue, then fraudulently claims that the site needs more money to run?
Do you have any proof of that? All Wikipedia content is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License, so I could copy all of it right now and run answers2.com, for free. So how is Wales somehow making money from Answers.com?
The only problem with your logic is that the assertion that "C-SPAN is a publicly-supported charity" is flat out, one-hundred-percent, plain wrong.
"C-SPAN is a private, non-profit company, created in 1979 by the cable television industry as a public service. Our mission is to provide public access to the political process. C-SPAN receives no government funding; operations are funded by fees paid by cable and satellite affiliates who carry C-SPAN programming." --C-SPAN website
If you ever watch C-SPAN, they will frequently say "Created by Cable, offered as a public service." This is not just a line. That bias comes out in minor ways, too (their website used to have a link "Get cable Internet!")
There is a lot of talk about how IPv6 is more secure than IPv4. This boils down to two things; one of them is real, the other isn't. The good news is that because the IPv6 address space is so large, randomly scanning for systems that are vulnerable is completely infeasible. The story goes that at the height of the self-propagating malware explosion a few years ago, an unpatched Windows system would be infected faster than it could download the necessary security updates. With IPv6, that is simply impossible: even with a billion infected hosts each scanning a billion IPv6 addresses per second, it takes more than a hundred million years to scan just the IPv6 address space that's given out to ISPs right now, which is about 0.01 percent of what's available. However, targeted scanning, although not easy, is still possible, so security measures like those used with IPv4 are still necessary.
Did the person interviewed for this article actually read the draft?
"This License explicitly affirms your unlimited permission to run the unmodified Program." (emphasis added) "This License permits you to make and run privately modified versions of the Program, or have others make and run them on your behalf." It is only this permission to make and run privately modified versions that terminates if the licensor sues for infringement. This is a far cry from what the article suggests, which is that the license "to use the open source code" terminates when the licensor brings a patent claim.
I hope the article is a distortion of what this attorney said. If it isn't, then anybody who has hired this lawyer for anything software-related should get another lawyer, pronto.
What interests me about that $109 is just how expensive it is compared to the cost of everything else in the computer. Windows last saw a major update five years ago. Back then, even if we forget about inflation, a retail box of Windows cost less than $109. So the price of Windows has gone up.
Meanwhile, the cost of every single other thing in the computer has gone down, and the value provided has gone up. Processors: cheaper and faster. Optical drives: cheaper, faster, more capacity. RAM: cheaper, more capacity. Screens: cheaper, bigger, more resolution. The list goes on and on. Now one can spend just a few hundred dollars and get a good desktop, or just a little more and get a decent laptop.
Software has gotten cheaper too. Much of it is available free of charge via download or through a Web app. A lot has changed in five years.
A lot, that is, except Windows. Sure, it picks up some new features. But everything else has gotten lots of new features and has dropped in price. Windows, meanwhile, picks up a few features and gets more expensive.
Wikipedia article has a link and says "Although Xiph.Org states it has conducted a patent search that supports its claims, outside parties (notably engineers working on rival formats) have expressed doubt that Vorbis is free of patented technology."
Seriously man, why are you bothering to use the "legitimate" version when you know that the pirated one is the superior product? Since you own a license, you have fulfilled whatever moral obligation you think you have to add a few more dollars to the pile of Microsoft billions. I wouldn't be calling India multiple times to uphold some sort of principle. Use a pirated version and be done with it. Alternatively, get Linux: Windows is downright hostile to DIY PC users like you; on the other hand you can install Linux as often as you want to.
I mean no hostility with this post so I'm sorry if it reads that way, but I'm just wondering why you're letting MS screw you again and again.
Sadly, not much have happned on the usability front comparing the average form based input page and the 3270 terminal system anon. 1972. Chances are that people is going to be fed up with subpar performacne and cluncky interfaces and head back to the "fat client".
Have you tried using Google Calendar? It is by far the MOST usable calendar app I have ever seen. Forget about forms. It's the only calendar app I've ever used that's actually intuitive. I can simply type "Dentist appointment on 2/24 from 10:00am to 11:00am at 1315 New Hampshire Ave" and GCal parses all this info into the appropriate chunks (date, time, location, etc) and stores it.
Last time I looked, it's the fat client that's stupid here. Outlook or GroupWise makes me jump through hoops on their forms. Tab to date, tab to time, tab to location, click and drag little widgets. It's Outlook and Groupwise that are using 1972-style forms. All they've done is put some pretty pictures on the forms and made them largely mouse-based (which actually makes them HARDER to use than 1972-style dumb terminal forms!)
Bad user interfaces are unfortunately quite common, but it's not a fat vs thin client thing. Google right now is an interface innovator. I'll take GCal, with its ability to quickly type in an appointment, over Outlook or GroupWise any day.
different grep commands such as grep, egrep and fgrep which clearly shows the advantages that Perl has over grep.
I wonder if the author listed a significant disadvantage of Perl: it is very slow compared to awk and grep. For example: "Notice that Perl requires over sixty seconds to match a 29-character string. The other approach, [used by grep and awk], requires twenty microseconds to match the string. That's not a typo."
There's nothing like specialized Unix utilities, refined over thirty years with some GNU innovation thrown in, to deliver lightning fast speed.
Stuff like perl -i -pe 's/FOO/BAR/g' *, which will change the string FOO to BAR in all the files in the current directory.
Sed will do that too:
sed -i 's/FOO/BAR/g' *
The review says that the book uses the reader's knowledge of sed, awk, and grep. I figure: why not just use sed, awk, and grep...however, one advantage for Perl here is that (I presume) that line works with any Perl; '-i' is a GNU sed extension and may not work on non-GNU seds...
Read the paperwork that comes with any Dell. There is an arbitration clause. Whether a court would enforce it is another question, and maybe suing them would still get their attention. But it's another hurdle to jump through.
Re:The FIRST robotic garage in NJ...
on
Parking Attendant 2.0
·
· Score: 4, Informative
In NJ, it was a battle over the software used to run the garage. It was proprietary software, which made it easy for the vendor to hold the city hostage. Remember this story?
Slashdot Mirror
You can also record the rented songs too: check out Tunebite. Next question?
The fact is the subscription music plan just sucks. It's like paying for radio. XM and sirus have a good idea, but very few people are willing to shell out money for music that stops playing when they stop paying.
I agree with you that people are not willing to pay, but what I am wondering is, why? "It's like paying for radio." Yeah, but it's also like paying for television. It comes for free over the airwaves. Millions pay for cable, even though when you stop paying, the cable stops working. You pay $100 a month for cable, and you own nothing when it's all said and done. You could have taken that $100 a month and bought DVDs (and nowadays much stuff on TV is now available on DVD) but instead people are RENTING TV. Why?
Maybe people are less willing to rent music because music is so cheap. Also, cable television has been around for decades--long enough for people to get used to the idea of paying for television. The idea of renting music or paying for radio is still a very new idea, and it could take awhile to catch on. With music being as cheap as it is nowadays, and with more and more people producing music and distributing it over the Net for free, I think renting music will NEVER catch on. Maybe satellite radio has a shot--they have live things that you can't preload onto an iPod--but the music rental business will go nowhere.
But it doesn't seem to me that the idea of renting music is ridiculous on its face. Thirty years ago people probably thought renting television was nuts.
Strange they forgot Visicalc. It was the first big-time spreadsheet. Arguably more important than 123.
Even more strange is that they forgot Visicalc but then gave top rank to the Apple II. Visicalc was the killer app for the Apple II. People bought Apple II just so they could use Visicalc. WIthout Visicalc, who knows if Apple II would ever have been so big?
Oh well, I will just join all the other people on here who will leave comments about how dumb the list is. Dvorak is often an idiot, but he is right when he says that the editors just sit around in a room with donuts and jot down what they think should be on a list. How else should they do it, anyway...
Wow, I'm not surprised that EMI is offering DRM free downloads (it's about time!) but I'm surprised they're partnering with Apple. I thought they'd want to "stick it" to Apple. I guess EMI realizes Apple is the best bet for selling music online.
Come on Zonk, why is this categorized under "Linux" with a Tux icon? OOo is cross platform--runs on Linux, Windows, and OS X (even if it does take X11 to run under Mac.) I'd even be willing to bet that there are more Windows users of OOo than there are Linux users of OOo.
Newegg.com. Huge selection. Useful reviews. Exhaustive specifications. You can shop at your own home at your leisure.
Downsides of course are 1) you have to wait for shipping and 2) you have to receive the package. Waiting is not a big deal for me, and Newegg ships fast. You can always upgrade the shipping. Receiving the packages can be a big deal for some, but I live in a building with a desk that takes packages (and that's a big reason I'm not eager to move into a house!)
If you want a retail experience for computers and you've got a Micro Center nearby, they're pretty good. Nice selection and decent staff.
Best Buy and Circuit City are both awful, with meager selection and worthless staff. Avoid both.
This whole Dell preinstalled Linux thing strikes me as a sham to get something out of Microsoft, like lower Windows license prices.
The best thing Dell could do for Linux is simply make sure its hardware works. Put some engineers in a "Linux lab." They would make sure that all Dell computers, or just select Dell models, work well with Linux. That would mean that these models would have supported wireless and multimedia buttons that work. They would have video cards with open source drivers. Dell's Linux Web page would be much improved over its current version. It would have detailed instructions on how to make sure that suspend to RAM works with Dell laptops. It would have detailed instructions on how to get a selected Dell remote control to work with MythTV. Dell engineers would make sure the hardware has drivers, writing patches for the kernel if needed (then upstream would gladly help maintain the new code.)
If Dell did all this, there would be no question on "what distro to support." EVERY distro would then support Dell! Debian, Ubuntu, Gentoo, Red Hat, SUSE, etc. would all take the necessary steps to get the Dell models supported in their distro. After all, with the detailed Dell information on the Dell site, integrating support would be dead simple! There would then be strong community sentiment in favor of Dell. Dell would be the best hardware maker for Linux. Everybody wins.
Linux preinstalled is not all that important. The emphasis on preinstalled is the old, Windows/Mac way of thinking. If the kernel supports the hardware, then ANY distro will work with Dells! Installing any distro would take just a few clicks. Sure, some people will want preinstalled. For that, Dell could just have "Certified Linux Partners" that would preinstall whatever distro they want. Then the partner gets the support calls, not Dell. Dell would have lots of partners and sell computers, without getting end user support hassles. Again, everybody wins.
Dell must realize all this. Their IdeaStorm is nothing more than PR BS. If they really wanted to support Linux, they would just improve hardware support. Write some drivers. Post some instructions. Instead they're doing a big public song and dance. I predict they will wave this website at MS during price negotiations. MS will drop the price. Then that's all we'll hear of this preinstalled BS. But that won't preclude TRUE Linux support like I've outlined here, and hopefully that will be forthcoming.
Or maybe he's just counting the time until the computer is actually usable. With Linux once the computer is booted, and you see the desktop, it's ready to use. With windows, it takes another 20 seconds (at least) after the desktop appears for it to actually become usable.
For my machine and GNOME, not true. GNOME goes through its splash screen and shows a desktop, but it is still loading panel applets and the clock. It takes several more seconds. It's hardly usable because loading anything while it's at this stage takes forever.
I used to think KDE starts slower than GNOME. Now I think it's a dead heat. KDE shows its splash screen and it's there longer, but KDE is almost (if not entirely) done loading when it says "KDE is up and running." GNOME seems to take the Windows approach: show the desktop to fool 'em, even though it is actually still loading.
Go on Magnatune.com and get all the lossless FLAC you want. Or if you want major label stuff, allofmp3 has plenty of FLAC too.
Tagging MP3s: Musicbrainz has projects to automatically tag MP3s with metadata on track name, album, etc. As for tagging them with mood: good luck; however All Music Guide has been working on this sort of thing for years; see also Last.fm. Integrating these into a desktop would be nice, though your comparison to "Microsoft tunnel vision" is quite harsh seeing as open source desktops have long had features that Windows sorely lacks, such as transparent SSH file transfers, thumbnailing of PDFs and other non-photo documents, and viewers for multiple file types, embedded right into the file manager.
I don't know about the Open Source camp, but the Free camp as led by RMS would strongly disagree with you. RMS has said that if you have proprietary software and your neighbor wants a copy, you're morally obligated to copy it and give it to him. RMS says that even if the proprietary ware is "free" like beer it is still inferior because you cannot modify it. RMS' old story of not being able to use a printer because he didn't have the source code to the driver rings true even today: look at how badly 64-bit Windows is hamstrung because the driver inventory is poor, compared to Linux where 64-bit works quite well because almost all the software and drivers are free and easily modified to run 64-bit.
So RMS would say copy the software, even if it's proprietary, but that the Free software is better.
Makes tons of money "sharing" Wikipedia's content to sites like Answer.com for a cut of the advertising revenue, then fraudulently claims that the site needs more money to run?
Do you have any proof of that? All Wikipedia content is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License, so I could copy all of it right now and run answers2.com, for free. So how is Wales somehow making money from Answers.com?
The only problem with your logic is that the assertion that "C-SPAN is a publicly-supported charity" is flat out, one-hundred-percent, plain wrong.
"C-SPAN is a private, non-profit company, created in 1979 by the cable television industry as a public service. Our mission is to provide public access to the political process. C-SPAN receives no government funding; operations are funded by fees paid by cable and satellite affiliates who carry C-SPAN programming." --C-SPAN website
If you ever watch C-SPAN, they will frequently say "Created by Cable, offered as a public service." This is not just a line. That bias comes out in minor ways, too (their website used to have a link "Get cable Internet!")
Did the person interviewed for this article actually read the draft?
"This License explicitly affirms your unlimited permission to run the unmodified Program." (emphasis added) "This License permits you to make and run privately modified versions of the Program, or have others make and run them on your behalf." It is only this permission to make and run privately modified versions that terminates if the licensor sues for infringement. This is a far cry from what the article suggests, which is that the license "to use the open source code" terminates when the licensor brings a patent claim.
I hope the article is a distortion of what this attorney said. If it isn't, then anybody who has hired this lawyer for anything software-related should get another lawyer, pronto.
What interests me about that $109 is just how expensive it is compared to the cost of everything else in the computer. Windows last saw a major update five years ago. Back then, even if we forget about inflation, a retail box of Windows cost less than $109. So the price of Windows has gone up.
Meanwhile, the cost of every single other thing in the computer has gone down, and the value provided has gone up. Processors: cheaper and faster. Optical drives: cheaper, faster, more capacity. RAM: cheaper, more capacity. Screens: cheaper, bigger, more resolution. The list goes on and on. Now one can spend just a few hundred dollars and get a good desktop, or just a little more and get a decent laptop.
Software has gotten cheaper too. Much of it is available free of charge via download or through a Web app. A lot has changed in five years.
A lot, that is, except Windows. Sure, it picks up some new features. But everything else has gotten lots of new features and has dropped in price. Windows, meanwhile, picks up a few features and gets more expensive.
That $109 doesn't seem much of a bargain to me.
Wikipedia article has a link and says "Although Xiph.Org states it has conducted a patent search that supports its claims, outside parties (notably engineers working on rival formats) have expressed doubt that Vorbis is free of patented technology."
Seriously man, why are you bothering to use the "legitimate" version when you know that the pirated one is the superior product? Since you own a license, you have fulfilled whatever moral obligation you think you have to add a few more dollars to the pile of Microsoft billions. I wouldn't be calling India multiple times to uphold some sort of principle. Use a pirated version and be done with it. Alternatively, get Linux: Windows is downright hostile to DIY PC users like you; on the other hand you can install Linux as often as you want to.
I mean no hostility with this post so I'm sorry if it reads that way, but I'm just wondering why you're letting MS screw you again and again.
Sadly, not much have happned on the usability front comparing the average form based input page and the 3270 terminal system anon. 1972. Chances are that people is going to be fed up with subpar performacne and cluncky interfaces and head back to the "fat client".
Have you tried using Google Calendar? It is by far the MOST usable calendar app I have ever seen. Forget about forms. It's the only calendar app I've ever used that's actually intuitive. I can simply type "Dentist appointment on 2/24 from 10:00am to 11:00am at 1315 New Hampshire Ave" and GCal parses all this info into the appropriate chunks (date, time, location, etc) and stores it.
Last time I looked, it's the fat client that's stupid here. Outlook or GroupWise makes me jump through hoops on their forms. Tab to date, tab to time, tab to location, click and drag little widgets. It's Outlook and Groupwise that are using 1972-style forms. All they've done is put some pretty pictures on the forms and made them largely mouse-based (which actually makes them HARDER to use than 1972-style dumb terminal forms!)
Bad user interfaces are unfortunately quite common, but it's not a fat vs thin client thing. Google right now is an interface innovator. I'll take GCal, with its ability to quickly type in an appointment, over Outlook or GroupWise any day.
different grep commands such as grep, egrep and fgrep which clearly shows the advantages that Perl has over grep.
I wonder if the author listed a significant disadvantage of Perl: it is very slow compared to awk and grep. For example: "Notice that Perl requires over sixty seconds to match a 29-character string. The other approach, [used by grep and awk], requires twenty microseconds to match the string. That's not a typo."
There's nothing like specialized Unix utilities, refined over thirty years with some GNU innovation thrown in, to deliver lightning fast speed.
Stuff like perl -i -pe 's/FOO/BAR/g' *, which will change the string FOO to BAR in all the files in the current directory.
Sed will do that too:
sed -i 's/FOO/BAR/g' *
The review says that the book uses the reader's knowledge of sed, awk, and grep. I figure: why not just use sed, awk, and grep...however, one advantage for Perl here is that (I presume) that line works with any Perl; '-i' is a GNU sed extension and may not work on non-GNU seds...
Now, if someone out there would like to create a GUI interface to emerge, that would be cool.
Kuroo for kdelibs
Porthole for gtk+
Read the paperwork that comes with any Dell. There is an arbitration clause. Whether a court would enforce it is another question, and maybe suing them would still get their attention. But it's another hurdle to jump through.
In NJ, it was a battle over the software used to run the garage. It was proprietary software, which made it easy for the vendor to hold the city hostage. Remember this story?
/ 08/1512211
http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/08
Look at the article; it has a video of the commercial that's making Gates mad. It's embedded using Flash player. This is on msnbc.msn.com.
MS is in bad shape if its own website isn't even using Windows Media.