Because what you so arrogantly call "being a specwhore" means caring about features, which enable us to do things we couldn't otherwise, and that "liking clean design and a good experience" line would be a lot more believable if you went with non-Apple products every once in a while and waited until the actual products were out before you started evangelizing about them.
Not really. Remember the launch of Windows 7? tech event of the decade as far as I'm concerned, and those of the X360 or even the Kinect weren't so insignificant either.
The reason Apple launches are news is the same reason Microsoft or Google product launches are news: they're an insanely big corporation with more devoted followers than most companies have plain old customers.
Now, you could argue that other large corporations like IBM don't get that kind of media frenzy, but I'd say it's mostly due to their customer base: CEOs don't frequent Slashdot, and they certainly don't write articles for newspapers. It's easier to hype something up when you're hyped about it yourself, after all.
Actually, it's because they haven't been able to convince you to adopt a better solution yet.
Everytime someone on Slashdot has so much mentioned a national ID system, half the site jumps on him with mentions of 1984 and whatever else they can think of scary enough, and we as a whole do know the US' SSN system is flawed as hell. The masses that still fall for the charade? oh boy.
You'll sooner get the US to adopt SI units than abandon their precious SSN system.
In my opinion, it's OK as long as you neither pretend it's the only option, use low-rate psychological tricks to prevent your customers to evaluate your offer rationally, or violate the law in any other way.
These guys undoubtedly violate the last two criteria, and YMMV on whether they violate the first or not though I think their mentions of Open Source software make them, if not ideal, at least tolerable on that account at least.
As for the hat businessman, no they're not morally superior merely on the account of their transport, and while I don't think they should be *required* to tell their customers the cost price, I do think that if they don't they should have no recourse if somebody calls them a bunch of greedy assholes either, regardless of what effect it may have on their business.
Off the top of my head, I can't think of any situation that wouldn't be solved by a) using a flash or b) letting a more experienced photographer do it in the first place.
For social gatherings and such a flash is by far the easiest choice, and for events such as concerts and plays not only is there usually a professional photographer hired for the event, even *with* a shiny toy and shiny lenses, without knowing how to use them their photos inevitably turn out to be crap anyways, not to mention playing photographer diminishes your own enjoyment of the show itself.
Huh. Now find yourself the data for men vs women, and rich vs poor people.
Lies, damn lies and statistics. There's a reason why you need to spend years of your life studying to become a sociologist, let alone a statistician. Of course, that's one of those pesky facts that simply fly over the heads of racist cowards like yourself, but oh well.
Few if any really share the goal of bringing this powerful easy to use operating system to the masses.
Fixed that for you. Many distros, such as Gentoo and Arch, follow a BSD-like philosophy of "make the best distro we can" rather than worrying about winning any popularity contest, and it pains me how many people on Slashdot can't (or don't want to) understand that.
Same here. I've read the odd trollish article here and there (not unlike this one) about Canonical's alleged self-interest, but user reaction is generally to the tune of "they're not a charity and their goals still align with ours, so why is this news?" rather than outrage of any sort, and as far as I'm aware their share of the Linux pie keeps growing.
This stinks of FUD, either by a zealot for another distro or a professional astroturfer.
Disclaimer: I'm a Debian user and haven't used Ubuntu in years.
The point is that you don't, as the cheapest devices are, particularly in the case of cellphones, often the easiest ones to use by virtue being aimed at people that don't have the resources to take advantage of their more expensive brethren's capabilities.
So in the end, many people end up buying said more expensive brethren in order to look knowledgeable to themselves and their friends, then loudly bitch when their tools don't manage to be as simple as their sensible friends' vastly cheaper device, "in spite of" its superior capabilities when in reality it's "because of" them.
If you're doing prints the size where a p&s camera's limitations will be apparent, you should *really* spend some time and money on learning how to use that shiny toy of yours rather than say "screw it, I'll just buy one shinier!" as if it were magically gonna fix your problem.
Yeah, like a solution to the problem of chocolate melting in your hands is including a personal maid with every purchase that feeds you the chocolate herself.
It may be a nice fantasy to the average Slashdotter, but anyone with half a brain would realize it's simply not cost-effective at any scale whatsoever.
The problem of Apple is that they're designed around a "for dummies" philosophy but are priced as "feature creep" devices. I understand the appeal of a device you only need to read an illustrated pamphlet to understand its workings, but that's a market that the $10 'dumbphones' address far better already than the iPhone ever has.
That's also why I *do* look down on people who claim they don't have time and/or desire to learn the details of their electronic devices yet deliberately spend above the range aimed at them for its 'coolness' factor. I'm far nicer to folks that don't know how to operate their $100 point-n-shoot camera than morons that ask me where's the Auto mode on their $3000 dSLRs.
Other than RS232, who's using IEEE1284? Who's using PS/2 Mouse/keyboard connectors?
A lot of people, apparently, given the healthy stock of brand new PS/2 mice I saw at my local friendly hardware retailer last week. I even picked one up myself for my aging IBM 600e, as the touchpoint is broken and its only got a single USB port, so you can guess how "pleasant" it is to save my files to an USB drive.
Firewire? Apple was one of the few major players to support it.
Of course they did, they crippled it with patents then tried to charge fees to anyone else that dared use it, that's why it eventually ended up thrown into the depths of irrelevance in spite of its alleged technical superiority. Sounds familiar? it should. Why?
HTML5 vs. flash? Apple supports the open standard.
It's called a Perspective Flip, and that page has most of the examples in this thread as well as a few others. Warning, though: TVTropes can ruin your life.
Because nothing is new, everything is derivative. Yes, even Tolkien.
Really, we established that years ago, did you buy that account on eBay? I can't see how you'd maintain that hopelessly silly notion of 'new' for so long here on Slashdot.
No, it's because we actually pay attention and know your hypothesis doesn't hold in the real world.
I'd post you links to scientific studies and large-scale experiments done by book publishers, music labels and individual artists, but really, you can just Google that on your own.
Being an armchair scientist is bad enough already, don't make it worse by insulting anyone who doesn't believe in your unsupported hypothesis, it's pathetic.
Fair point, but just because you can think of an advantage of something doesn't mean it's beneficial and should be preserved either, and I see nothing in your post showing why the tradeoffs in copyright would have a positive net effect on society.
You are in ultimate control over your system. DRM's existence doesn't change this.
But the intentions of putting said DRM in the prime standard for the World Wide Web does.
Keep it outside the standard and you can have your DRM if you want, just don't pollute everyone else's computers just to keep your stupid vendetta against Adobe.
No, the claim was that it's impossible to protect something effectively if you broadcast it. Read the fucking post you replied to beyond the first paragraph, and it should become obvious.
However, for videos that are only present online and I only plan on watching online, why would DRM be such a terrible thing?
Because it increases the cost of implementing the standard needlessly, hurting independant browser developers while only providing some small benefit to large corporations.
HTML5 does not, should not and shall not mean the end of plugins, just throw your DRM implementation inside one (or continue to use Flash) and leave the goddamned standard alone.
Slashdot Mirror
Because what you so arrogantly call "being a specwhore" means caring about features, which enable us to do things we couldn't otherwise, and that "liking clean design and a good experience" line would be a lot more believable if you went with non-Apple products every once in a while and waited until the actual products were out before you started evangelizing about them.
Not really. Remember the launch of Windows 7? tech event of the decade as far as I'm concerned, and those of the X360 or even the Kinect weren't so insignificant either.
The reason Apple launches are news is the same reason Microsoft or Google product launches are news: they're an insanely big corporation with more devoted followers than most companies have plain old customers.
Now, you could argue that other large corporations like IBM don't get that kind of media frenzy, but I'd say it's mostly due to their customer base: CEOs don't frequent Slashdot, and they certainly don't write articles for newspapers. It's easier to hype something up when you're hyped about it yourself, after all.
Agreed, plus the PS3 is designed to play BluRays so you can pirate those alongside your games while you're at it ;)
Actually, it's because they haven't been able to convince you to adopt a better solution yet.
Everytime someone on Slashdot has so much mentioned a national ID system, half the site jumps on him with mentions of 1984 and whatever else they can think of scary enough, and we as a whole do know the US' SSN system is flawed as hell. The masses that still fall for the charade? oh boy.
You'll sooner get the US to adopt SI units than abandon their precious SSN system.
In my opinion, it's OK as long as you neither pretend it's the only option, use low-rate psychological tricks to prevent your customers to evaluate your offer rationally, or violate the law in any other way.
These guys undoubtedly violate the last two criteria, and YMMV on whether they violate the first or not though I think their mentions of Open Source software make them, if not ideal, at least tolerable on that account at least.
As for the hat businessman, no they're not morally superior merely on the account of their transport, and while I don't think they should be *required* to tell their customers the cost price, I do think that if they don't they should have no recourse if somebody calls them a bunch of greedy assholes either, regardless of what effect it may have on their business.
Off the top of my head, I can't think of any situation that wouldn't be solved by a) using a flash or b) letting a more experienced photographer do it in the first place.
For social gatherings and such a flash is by far the easiest choice, and for events such as concerts and plays not only is there usually a professional photographer hired for the event, even *with* a shiny toy and shiny lenses, without knowing how to use them their photos inevitably turn out to be crap anyways, not to mention playing photographer diminishes your own enjoyment of the show itself.
So, can't think of any. Can you?
Huh. Now find yourself the data for men vs women, and rich vs poor people.
Lies, damn lies and statistics. There's a reason why you need to spend years of your life studying to become a sociologist, let alone a statistician. Of course, that's one of those pesky facts that simply fly over the heads of racist cowards like yourself, but oh well.
Few if any really share the goal of bringing this powerful easy to use operating system to the masses.
Fixed that for you. Many distros, such as Gentoo and Arch, follow a BSD-like philosophy of "make the best distro we can" rather than worrying about winning any popularity contest, and it pains me how many people on Slashdot can't (or don't want to) understand that.
Same here. I've read the odd trollish article here and there (not unlike this one) about Canonical's alleged self-interest, but user reaction is generally to the tune of "they're not a charity and their goals still align with ours, so why is this news?" rather than outrage of any sort, and as far as I'm aware their share of the Linux pie keeps growing.
This stinks of FUD, either by a zealot for another distro or a professional astroturfer.
Disclaimer: I'm a Debian user and haven't used Ubuntu in years.
The point is that you don't, as the cheapest devices are, particularly in the case of cellphones, often the easiest ones to use by virtue being aimed at people that don't have the resources to take advantage of their more expensive brethren's capabilities.
So in the end, many people end up buying said more expensive brethren in order to look knowledgeable to themselves and their friends, then loudly bitch when their tools don't manage to be as simple as their sensible friends' vastly cheaper device, "in spite of" its superior capabilities when in reality it's "because of" them.
If you're doing prints the size where a p&s camera's limitations will be apparent, you should *really* spend some time and money on learning how to use that shiny toy of yours rather than say "screw it, I'll just buy one shinier!" as if it were magically gonna fix your problem.
Yeah, like a solution to the problem of chocolate melting in your hands is including a personal maid with every purchase that feeds you the chocolate herself.
It may be a nice fantasy to the average Slashdotter, but anyone with half a brain would realize it's simply not cost-effective at any scale whatsoever.
The problem of Apple is that they're designed around a "for dummies" philosophy but are priced as "feature creep" devices. I understand the appeal of a device you only need to read an illustrated pamphlet to understand its workings, but that's a market that the $10 'dumbphones' address far better already than the iPhone ever has.
That's also why I *do* look down on people who claim they don't have time and/or desire to learn the details of their electronic devices yet deliberately spend above the range aimed at them for its 'coolness' factor. I'm far nicer to folks that don't know how to operate their $100 point-n-shoot camera than morons that ask me where's the Auto mode on their $3000 dSLRs.
Other than RS232, who's using IEEE1284? Who's using PS/2 Mouse/keyboard connectors?
A lot of people, apparently, given the healthy stock of brand new PS/2 mice I saw at my local friendly hardware retailer last week. I even picked one up myself for my aging IBM 600e, as the touchpoint is broken and its only got a single USB port, so you can guess how "pleasant" it is to save my files to an USB drive.
You people and your silly linear conceptions of time.
Firewire? Apple was one of the few major players to support it.
Of course they did, they crippled it with patents then tried to charge fees to anyone else that dared use it, that's why it eventually ended up thrown into the depths of irrelevance in spite of its alleged technical superiority. Sounds familiar? it should. Why?
HTML5 vs. flash? Apple supports the open standard.
Because they're doing it again.
It's called a Perspective Flip, and that page has most of the examples in this thread as well as a few others. Warning, though: TVTropes can ruin your life.
True, but no sane person would argue this is the latter, yet the law treats it as such.
Because nothing is new, everything is derivative. Yes, even Tolkien.
Really, we established that years ago, did you buy that account on eBay? I can't see how you'd maintain that hopelessly silly notion of 'new' for so long here on Slashdot.
No, it's because we actually pay attention and know your hypothesis doesn't hold in the real world.
I'd post you links to scientific studies and large-scale experiments done by book publishers, music labels and individual artists, but really, you can just Google that on your own.
Being an armchair scientist is bad enough already, don't make it worse by insulting anyone who doesn't believe in your unsupported hypothesis, it's pathetic.
In that case, who's going to buy the DVD?
People who want a product made to a given standard of quality, or are ready to pay for the convenience of not downloading anything themselves.
Oh, wait, you meant who's going to buy the $30+ DVD? nobody, and I'm perfectly fine with that.
Fair point, but just because you can think of an advantage of something doesn't mean it's beneficial and should be preserved either, and I see nothing in your post showing why the tradeoffs in copyright would have a positive net effect on society.
You are in ultimate control over your system. DRM's existence doesn't change this.
But the intentions of putting said DRM in the prime standard for the World Wide Web does.
Keep it outside the standard and you can have your DRM if you want, just don't pollute everyone else's computers just to keep your stupid vendetta against Adobe.
No, the claim was that it's impossible to protect something effectively if you broadcast it. Read the fucking post you replied to beyond the first paragraph, and it should become obvious.
However, for videos that are only present online and I only plan on watching online, why would DRM be such a terrible thing?
Because it increases the cost of implementing the standard needlessly, hurting independant browser developers while only providing some small benefit to large corporations.
HTML5 does not, should not and shall not mean the end of plugins, just throw your DRM implementation inside one (or continue to use Flash) and leave the goddamned standard alone.