That won't make these people feel any less cheated. Yes, they can take their business elsewhere, but what about that cable modem they've already bought? As the article said, it was an act of faith in the company, a guarantee of staying with them until at least the modem itself was paid off. By switching the pricing scheme to target these people specifically, AT&T is basically saying "up yours" to these people.
So why shouldn't they feel upset at this again?
Just because Internet access is not a right (although I'd call it a luxury rather than privilege, as the term luxury implies that the customer actually gives something back for it) doesn't mean that companies should be screwing with their customers, and it's just plain stupid to screw with their best customers who are willing to pay a premium for a year or more.
This isn't a story of luxury vs. rights. This is simply a tale of mistreatment of customers.
I really want a vorbis add-on module for my visor. The springboard stuff is great, and there's already an MP3 module, but I really want a vorbis one that I can carry around with me. I could finally stop carrying my diskman and case of CD's everywhere I go. It'd be perfect if it could also play MP3's and had a bunch of flash memory too.
The link between books and music is confusing to me, and it doesn't seem like the author follows the logic. He opens and ends the article stating that musicians will become as modern authors, then moves on to say that the music industry is facing shrinking profits with the technological changes. Huh?
I agree with both ideas. Today's titans of culture will become yesterday's classics of culture, and the music industry will surely figure out more novel and brutal ways to lose money. But how is this related?
Most famous authors were not particularly rich, to my knowledge, unless they came from money or were complete and utter superstars (Lord Byron is an example of both). Faulkner, Poe, Keats, and most other authors you can think of did not die with a lot of money in their pockets from their works, even though they are remembered as literary giants today. Then there are those who are not discovered until after their death, such as Blake and Kafka, who really did not make money off of their writings.
And then there's the idea that music replaced books as the driving force of popular culture. I would grant that only in part, but I would also say film and TV took equal parts of that massive share once held by books (and religion). Besides that, books still drive an incredible portion of culture. If you don't believe me, think about the sheer number of movies that are based off of books while you drive down to your local Barnes and Noble or Borders book superstore.
The thing that really bothered me about the article though, was that the author does not present anything to take the place of music as a dominant cultural mover. There will be some cultural form to replace music if it truly falls by the wayside, but until something actually comes forward to replace it, music isn't really going anywhere. The industry will change, as the article asserts, but musicians will not become mediocritized until something else comes forward. Given that internet distribution is making artists more popular than they likely would have ever been (watch TRL for evidence) I find it doubtful that music will lose its cultural power with the advent of the internet. If anything, it'll be strengthened.
I also think that Freedom in Software is more important than recognition for the GNU Project.
If RMS disagrees with me on that last point, I'd like to see him admit it publicly!
To be fair, I don't think he would disagree with you at all. RMS has always been far more concerned with promoting Free Software than his own project. A good example of this is his approval of the ogg project licensing under a BSD-style license in order to promote adoption over MP3.
While I don't agree with the need to call Linux GNU/Linux, if you read what he says about it, his choice of name is to remind people of the philosophy behind Free software. The statement towards United Linux is actually a perfect example, because they are calling it Linux, but using non-Free software in it. Using the term GNU/Linux is meant to imply complete freedom. You could just as easily call it FreeLinux or something similar, but I feel his intention is in the right place. Free software is far more important to him than recognition, but because recognition is associated with Free software, his motives are not quite as apparent.
Long after all the commercial distros that we use today have faded in to the past like so many of their once popular brethren, Debian will still be there, slowly but steadily improving. It's the very ethos of Free software.
I'll open my own f'ing cinema, with beer and coffee and social functions.
And you can sell virgin kits containing things like rice and toilet paper to throw. You can have perverse events before and during the show. You can have everyone come in costume and sing and scream at the top of their lungs.
I think the Rocky Horror Picture Show is perhaps the last refuge for the idea that a movie can be a social event now. That and first-day showings of movies like Star Wars.
And actually Alex has a point...watching a movie in a theatre is way different than watching a movie on a computer monitor, on your TV, or on cable. If the MPAA has that all locked up, we are that much poorer culturally. So even if we win technologically, we lose an unique experience to the multinationals and their slaves in public office.
This reminds me of an event I was going to go to, but never got the chance. There was an ad in the LA Weekly (free paper with all the latest happenings around town) for a pirate movie. The movie itself was legit, but the way they were showing it was almost like a rave, where they would have a secret location every week, like a parking lot or something, where they would show the film. In order to find out where the location was, you'd call up a phone number listed on their website and then go there at the appointed time.
It sounded like an interesting idea that would have been fun to go to, but my friend couldn't make it. Still, it was an intriguing way out of the problem you're describing.
I'm not saying it's a weekend project, or even an easy one. But it's definitely a possibility for someone who's inclined to do it. Just because a project can take a long time doesn't mean that it'll never get done.
While I also like the idea of having a fresh and new idea, I don't think that should in any way block a project like this. Warcraft and Starcraft are still fun games, and there's no reason at all why there shouldn't be a high quality free engine to make them.
Just because something isn't new and exciting doesn't mean it's not fun. FPS's are essentially Wolf3D rehashed over and over again, but they are still fun for many people. Computer RPG's like Baldur's Gate are rehashes of old tabletop gaming systems, but they're still fun. And yes, even ancient games like chess still manage to be very worthwhile, even though they're neither fresh or new.
I'm personally hoping that someone decides to be really bold and take a lot of the original ideas for Warcraft III that got scrapped and make a game that includes them. RPG and adventure elements in an FPS would be a very good thing, and now some great tools are out there to do it.
Re:Mozilla/Netscape usage & anti-Netscape sent
on
Mozilla RC3 Released
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· Score: 3, Interesting
With all the IE holes, I've been sensing more and more of an anti-IE sentiment. In fact the only browser that I've never heard a truly disparaging remark about (although I have heard honest testaments to its shortcomings) is Opera.
And when I show people Mozilla with disabling pop-ups and tabbed browsing, anti-IE sentiment grows where it never existed before.
Innovative is perhaps the wrong word. I think "daring" is a little better. Sure, these are proven technologies, but this is a company with well-loved brands, and the fact that they are pushing them in new directions shows that they aren't stale.
And if you don't think that this is daring, witness then sound and fury directed at Nintendo for making Metroid an FPS and Zelda cell-shaded. They are risking things people know and love and trying to push them in directions that, while not totally new, are new for these particular products.
I think he did that between the release of Mario64 and Mario Sunshine. The gameboy games were like reruns during the summertime, and Paper Mario does not count.
My guess is that Nintendo called Luigi in to clear out that mansion at the last minute because Mario was still hungover from his rockin' vacation. The time for plumbin' with Peach is over buddy, it's time to get to adventurin'!
I'm still bitter that Metroid never made it to the N64. And only one real Mario game, and at the very beginning of the product's cycle. Yeah, it's more than time for some renewal. Maybe one of these days I'll get a gamecube.
I'm definitely going to pick up the GBA Metroid when that comes out. I hope a GBA Zelda is in the works, even though there's multiple GBC Zelda's, a full-fledged game like the SNES version would be perfect.
But why would you want to go outside? If hell has frozen over, then surely Debian stable has been released, Mozilla has hit 1.0, Duke Nukem Forever is out, and you're probably putting off having sex with a supermodel to play with all that new software.
But is this really going to happen anyway? People are trained to use standard addresses. If it doesn't end in ".com" people are very confused. No one is going to just type "Web Browser" in to their addresss bar. They'll type "www.webbrowser.com" because that's what they've been trained to do by being saturated with web addresses for the past 5 years or so.
Even if Microsoft implements this, I don't think anyone will use it.
As a disclaimer, this is also not meant to start a WM/desktop war. To its credit, this is one thing KDE always has had. kwm is well integrated and works well, and very few people feel the need to switch, or even know that they can. One of the things that really turned me off about Gnome was the realization that Enlightenment wasn't really part of it, and that switching to sawmill (it was sawmill then for me too) was what everyone seemed to be doing, if for good reasons.
A real standard wm has been something that I didn't much like about Gnome for a while. I don't know what I had against sawfish, it just didn't appeal to me. Maybe it was the Lisp thing, I don't know (nothing against Lisp, I just don't know it) but the feeling of a really clear separation between Gnome and its WM felt very clear to me. If metacity smoothes over this split to make it more KDE-like, I think it'll be good for Gnome in the long run. Here's hoping for improvement.
This is so true. I'm still in amazement when people tell me Linux is hard to use. How's that again? Two or three years ago when I did my first installs, yeah it was really tough, but now? A fresh mandrake install is incredibly easy to do, and it works like a charm.
Both KDE and Gnome are very easy to use once you start exploring. Click random buttons for half an hour, or have someone guide someone through the crucial points for 5 minutes, and you'll be just fine. My friends come over and use my Linux desktop all the time. No complaints at all, once they find out which icon means "Web Browser". In addition, I've managed to sell most of them on Mozilla after I show them tabbed browsing and popup killing. Sure, Linux can be harder than Windows, but that's when you want to really start configuring it, and then once you get over the initial hurdle it's a lot easier to configure something, if less immediately friendly.
All the pro-Microsoft sentiment around here is very very odd to me too. I'm sure there's astroturfing going on, but I'm also betting that it's a lot of people who haven't tried Linux since their last slackware install failed in 1996, but will trumpet WindowsXP or 2k as being rock solid.
In my experience, if you don't need very good 3d, you can't beat Matrox. Their 2d is absolutely stunning. They're far from really competing in the 3d realm, but their 2d simply can not be matched by either NVidia or ATI. Clean as a whistle.
If 3d is not important, and you stare at the monitor a lot, like at work, investing in a Matrox card is very worthwhile.
Sheldon, you become more and more a troll every time you post. Replies like this, containing absolutely no evidence but a fair amount of contempt really don't serve to prove your point.
Do you really want to show the world that proprietary software is better than open? Prove it. This is the last troll of yours I'm going to reply to until you have something worthwhile to say. I gave you a list of software, I showed you what I had to say. If there is truly any real thought behind that sneer of yours, then show it.
Your example of the GIMP is a pitiful one for two reasons. The first is that the GIMP is held up by patents in various areas. The second is that GIMP and Photoshop are not the kinds of products that the article is talking about. Say what you will of the GIMP's features and interface, it is no less dependable a program than Photoshop. I've never heard tales of GIMP users losing critical data any more so than Photoshop users.
Perhaps comparing IIS breakins vs. Apache breakins, especially given that there are more Apache servers on the web (and probably run by more amateurs than IIS admins). Or FreeBSD vs. Windows 2000 vulnerabilities. Or, to be fair, sendmail vs. Exchange (although I'm guessing a lot of people are using things like exim these days). Or how about PostgreSQL vs MSSQL?
These are critical pieces of software that are actually vulnerable to massive data loss. GIMP and Photoshop do not qualify in the same way. Throwing out the term "anecdotal evidence", does not change the fact if you look at the list, you'll find that more often than not, open software beats or at least matches the security and reliability record of its closed counterparts.
Slashdot Mirror
That won't make these people feel any less cheated. Yes, they can take their business elsewhere, but what about that cable modem they've already bought? As the article said, it was an act of faith in the company, a guarantee of staying with them until at least the modem itself was paid off. By switching the pricing scheme to target these people specifically, AT&T is basically saying "up yours" to these people.
So why shouldn't they feel upset at this again?
Just because Internet access is not a right (although I'd call it a luxury rather than privilege, as the term luxury implies that the customer actually gives something back for it) doesn't mean that companies should be screwing with their customers, and it's just plain stupid to screw with their best customers who are willing to pay a premium for a year or more.
This isn't a story of luxury vs. rights. This is simply a tale of mistreatment of customers.
I really want a vorbis add-on module for my visor. The springboard stuff is great, and there's already an MP3 module, but I really want a vorbis one that I can carry around with me. I could finally stop carrying my diskman and case of CD's everywhere I go. It'd be perfect if it could also play MP3's and had a bunch of flash memory too.
The link between books and music is confusing to me, and it doesn't seem like the author follows the logic. He opens and ends the article stating that musicians will become as modern authors, then moves on to say that the music industry is facing shrinking profits with the technological changes. Huh?
I agree with both ideas. Today's titans of culture will become yesterday's classics of culture, and the music industry will surely figure out more novel and brutal ways to lose money. But how is this related?
Most famous authors were not particularly rich, to my knowledge, unless they came from money or were complete and utter superstars (Lord Byron is an example of both). Faulkner, Poe, Keats, and most other authors you can think of did not die with a lot of money in their pockets from their works, even though they are remembered as literary giants today. Then there are those who are not discovered until after their death, such as Blake and Kafka, who really did not make money off of their writings.
And then there's the idea that music replaced books as the driving force of popular culture. I would grant that only in part, but I would also say film and TV took equal parts of that massive share once held by books (and religion). Besides that, books still drive an incredible portion of culture. If you don't believe me, think about the sheer number of movies that are based off of books while you drive down to your local Barnes and Noble or Borders book superstore.
The thing that really bothered me about the article though, was that the author does not present anything to take the place of music as a dominant cultural mover. There will be some cultural form to replace music if it truly falls by the wayside, but until something actually comes forward to replace it, music isn't really going anywhere. The industry will change, as the article asserts, but musicians will not become mediocritized until something else comes forward. Given that internet distribution is making artists more popular than they likely would have ever been (watch TRL for evidence) I find it doubtful that music will lose its cultural power with the advent of the internet. If anything, it'll be strengthened.
Don't forget 'apt-get source united-linux'
While I don't agree with the need to call Linux GNU/Linux, if you read what he says about it, his choice of name is to remind people of the philosophy behind Free software. The statement towards United Linux is actually a perfect example, because they are calling it Linux, but using non-Free software in it. Using the term GNU/Linux is meant to imply complete freedom. You could just as easily call it FreeLinux or something similar, but I feel his intention is in the right place. Free software is far more important to him than recognition, but because recognition is associated with Free software, his motives are not quite as apparent.
You're right.
Long after all the commercial distros that we use today have faded in to the past like so many of their once popular brethren, Debian will still be there, slowly but steadily improving. It's the very ethos of Free software.
I think the Rocky Horror Picture Show is perhaps the last refuge for the idea that a movie can be a social event now. That and first-day showings of movies like Star Wars.
It sounded like an interesting idea that would have been fun to go to, but my friend couldn't make it. Still, it was an intriguing way out of the problem you're describing.
I'm not saying it's a weekend project, or even an easy one. But it's definitely a possibility for someone who's inclined to do it. Just because a project can take a long time doesn't mean that it'll never get done.
While I also like the idea of having a fresh and new idea, I don't think that should in any way block a project like this. Warcraft and Starcraft are still fun games, and there's no reason at all why there shouldn't be a high quality free engine to make them.
Just because something isn't new and exciting doesn't mean it's not fun. FPS's are essentially Wolf3D rehashed over and over again, but they are still fun for many people. Computer RPG's like Baldur's Gate are rehashes of old tabletop gaming systems, but they're still fun. And yes, even ancient games like chess still manage to be very worthwhile, even though they're neither fresh or new.
I'm personally hoping that someone decides to be really bold and take a lot of the original ideas for Warcraft III that got scrapped and make a game that includes them. RPG and adventure elements in an FPS would be a very good thing, and now some great tools are out there to do it.
With all the IE holes, I've been sensing more and more of an anti-IE sentiment. In fact the only browser that I've never heard a truly disparaging remark about (although I have heard honest testaments to its shortcomings) is Opera.
And when I show people Mozilla with disabling pop-ups and tabbed browsing, anti-IE sentiment grows where it never existed before.
Yes, that'll do very very very nicely. You just made my day :-)
Now all I need is a floodlight or someone to install an afterburner for me cheap.
Innovative is perhaps the wrong word. I think "daring" is a little better. Sure, these are proven technologies, but this is a company with well-loved brands, and the fact that they are pushing them in new directions shows that they aren't stale.
And if you don't think that this is daring, witness then sound and fury directed at Nintendo for making Metroid an FPS and Zelda cell-shaded. They are risking things people know and love and trying to push them in directions that, while not totally new, are new for these particular products.
I think he did that between the release of Mario64 and Mario Sunshine. The gameboy games were like reruns during the summertime, and Paper Mario does not count.
My guess is that Nintendo called Luigi in to clear out that mansion at the last minute because Mario was still hungover from his rockin' vacation. The time for plumbin' with Peach is over buddy, it's time to get to adventurin'!
I'm still bitter that Metroid never made it to the N64. And only one real Mario game, and at the very beginning of the product's cycle. Yeah, it's more than time for some renewal. Maybe one of these days I'll get a gamecube.
I'm definitely going to pick up the GBA Metroid when that comes out. I hope a GBA Zelda is in the works, even though there's multiple GBC Zelda's, a full-fledged game like the SNES version would be perfect.
But why would you want to go outside? If hell has frozen over, then surely Debian stable has been released, Mozilla has hit 1.0, Duke Nukem Forever is out, and you're probably putting off having sex with a supermodel to play with all that new software.
First they came for the Amiga, and I did not speak out because I was not an Amiga user.
Then they came for Be, and I did not speak out because I was not a Be user.
Then they came for Blender and I did not speak out because I was not a Blender user.
Then they came for PGP, and I was thankful that someone had spoken for me.
Many thanks to the GnuPG developers.
But is this really going to happen anyway? People are trained to use standard addresses. If it doesn't end in ".com" people are very confused. No one is going to just type "Web Browser" in to their addresss bar. They'll type "www.webbrowser.com" because that's what they've been trained to do by being saturated with web addresses for the past 5 years or so.
Even if Microsoft implements this, I don't think anyone will use it.
As a disclaimer, this is also not meant to start a WM/desktop war. To its credit, this is one thing KDE always has had. kwm is well integrated and works well, and very few people feel the need to switch, or even know that they can. One of the things that really turned me off about Gnome was the realization that Enlightenment wasn't really part of it, and that switching to sawmill (it was sawmill then for me too) was what everyone seemed to be doing, if for good reasons.
A real standard wm has been something that I didn't much like about Gnome for a while. I don't know what I had against sawfish, it just didn't appeal to me. Maybe it was the Lisp thing, I don't know (nothing against Lisp, I just don't know it) but the feeling of a really clear separation between Gnome and its WM felt very clear to me. If metacity smoothes over this split to make it more KDE-like, I think it'll be good for Gnome in the long run. Here's hoping for improvement.
This is so true. I'm still in amazement when people tell me Linux is hard to use. How's that again? Two or three years ago when I did my first installs, yeah it was really tough, but now? A fresh mandrake install is incredibly easy to do, and it works like a charm.
Both KDE and Gnome are very easy to use once you start exploring. Click random buttons for half an hour, or have someone guide someone through the crucial points for 5 minutes, and you'll be just fine. My friends come over and use my Linux desktop all the time. No complaints at all, once they find out which icon means "Web Browser". In addition, I've managed to sell most of them on Mozilla after I show them tabbed browsing and popup killing. Sure, Linux can be harder than Windows, but that's when you want to really start configuring it, and then once you get over the initial hurdle it's a lot easier to configure something, if less immediately friendly.
All the pro-Microsoft sentiment around here is very very odd to me too. I'm sure there's astroturfing going on, but I'm also betting that it's a lot of people who haven't tried Linux since their last slackware install failed in 1996, but will trumpet WindowsXP or 2k as being rock solid.
In my experience, if you don't need very good 3d, you can't beat Matrox. Their 2d is absolutely stunning. They're far from really competing in the 3d realm, but their 2d simply can not be matched by either NVidia or ATI. Clean as a whistle.
If 3d is not important, and you stare at the monitor a lot, like at work, investing in a Matrox card is very worthwhile.
Sheldon, you become more and more a troll every time you post. Replies like this, containing absolutely no evidence but a fair amount of contempt really don't serve to prove your point.
Do you really want to show the world that proprietary software is better than open? Prove it. This is the last troll of yours I'm going to reply to until you have something worthwhile to say. I gave you a list of software, I showed you what I had to say. If there is truly any real thought behind that sneer of yours, then show it.
Your example of the GIMP is a pitiful one for two reasons. The first is that the GIMP is held up by patents in various areas. The second is that GIMP and Photoshop are not the kinds of products that the article is talking about. Say what you will of the GIMP's features and interface, it is no less dependable a program than Photoshop. I've never heard tales of GIMP users losing critical data any more so than Photoshop users.
Perhaps comparing IIS breakins vs. Apache breakins, especially given that there are more Apache servers on the web (and probably run by more amateurs than IIS admins). Or FreeBSD vs. Windows 2000 vulnerabilities. Or, to be fair, sendmail vs. Exchange (although I'm guessing a lot of people are using things like exim these days). Or how about PostgreSQL vs MSSQL?
These are critical pieces of software that are actually vulnerable to massive data loss. GIMP and Photoshop do not qualify in the same way. Throwing out the term "anecdotal evidence", does not change the fact if you look at the list, you'll find that more often than not, open software beats or at least matches the security and reliability record of its closed counterparts.