If Copyright were only 1 year, do you really think that people wouldn't still be pirating films by aXXo the day of DVD release?
Yes. All most people care about is watching good-looking movies on the cheap, and with a one-year copyright it'd be only ~6 months from the DVD release (at most) until the movie itself is out of copyright and all those copies you see on the street being sold for $1 would be 100% legal, your cable company would be free to take the film and broadcast it 24/7 without paying the studios a single penny, and *that* would remove the need for going through the hassle of downloading the thing yourself.
No, I don't think a one-year lenght would work, because copyright sadly covers not only entertainment but productivity and educational tools, but I don't believe you truly grasp the inconveniences caused by the copyright system if you believe people, overall, would continue "pirating" movies and music in your hypothetical scenario.
And please stop raping the english language calling copyright infringement "theft".
And how many people do you think will bother reading the entire website instead of just the column labeled "Windows"? If you're the type that reads the entire website instead of going straight to the "Download" link, you're the type that needs to know the practical problems of using propietary software but for most people you could probably put "I love child porn!" in there and it wouldn't affect the downloads one bit.
Two problems: first, Foxit isn't Free Software, which I imagine is a huge problem for the Free Software Foundation Europe. And second, Foxit sucks, not only does it have *ads* (c'mon, even Opera took them out and they were far less annoying), but the interface is a cluttered, incoherent mess and the fact that I still used it until today is only a testament to how pathetically bad Adobe Reader is, not to any quality of Foxit.
Well, until today I've always installed Foxit on my Windows machines, wanting to have a PDF reader for the odd game manual or so but unwilling to use the attrocious and bloated Adobe Reader. Thanks to this article, however, I've found Sumatra PDF, freeing me from Foxit's ads and cluttered interface so count one convert already.
Perhaps you're right and there are too few F/OSS PDF readers to merit a specific listing of them, but maybe this would give incentive to F/OSS devs to create some more of 'em;) besides, raising awareness of other PDF readers helps dispel the idea that Adobe Reader is the only PDF reader out there, which helps with the stupid, propietary extensions that some are using on top of the PDF format that can only be properly used with Adobe Reader.
I name my PCs based on different naming schemes. So I have on my LAN an Athlon, Laptop, Debian, Thinkpad, another one with my ex gf's name, my first computer was named Microsoft and my retired server was ShadowCat. Weirdly enough it wasn't intentional, I just kept switching naming schemes always thinking "this one's gonna be the definitive one", 'til I thought of a better one;)
I've never understood why some Christians are so afraid of finding life on other planets or why some atheists are so adamant that it will prove the Christians wrong.
Fixed that for you. I'm an atheist and believe me, if we find intelligent life on other planets, the theological implications of such a discovery will be the *last* thing on my mind. Ensuring that said alien civilization doesn't go all Borg on our ass is much more important to me, personally;)
Debian Linux would have cost at least $1.9B to produce in a private environment.
Debian GNU/Linux is an OS whose size and scope dwarfs *anything* ever put out by the propietary world, not even Microsoft's entire software portfolio can match it let alone a single product, so the comparison isn't really valid. You don't need to match Debian to have a working, sellable product.
Let's also not forget the fact that there are few, if any, desktop OSS apps that are as robust as, say, the Adobe suite of products or Microsoft Office.
Define "robust". Because my particular definition of it isn't met by either MS Office, or anything put out by Adobe more than three years after the acquisition of the original company that developed it.
It does OSS no service by giving people the impression that it is cheap and easy to produce. In fact, that is downright self-destructive because such an impression will make people behave even more like cheapskates. "What do you mean I should buy a supported license? I don't need to help pay for no stinkin R&D!! This stuff is supposed to be free? Why am I paying you anyway?!"
But it *is* cheap to produce, you just need enough charisma to lead a community (I think there's a Linus quote about it somewhere). And you should buy a license if you want support, that's the obvious answer, the product may be free but the company's time isn't so if you want help, pay up. It's the classical F/OSS business model.
Currently, in Finland, it is illegal to monitor emails of employees who are using company equipment and the company network. This is, of course, completely absurd.
Please provide a logical reason for the "of course". Because to me its just like installing a security camera on your bathroom: yes, it's yours, but that doesn't mean the other person shouldn't have any privacy. Plus, the fact that you wanna know speaks volumes about you, none of it flattering.
All Nokia wants is the ability to see the the following information: Sender, Receiver, Size and Type of Attachments, and Date/Time. They don't even want to read the contents.
Can the proposed law in any way, shape or form allow them to even take a look at the actual contents of the emails? because badly-written laws *will* get abused, the US' DMCA the best example of that.
Does anyone here really think you could run a large company without being able to monitor emails sent by company representatives, using company resources? Does this really seem right to you?
I understand your logic, but... without a browser, how exactly would you GET a browser?
I imagine the same way everyone gets drivers for their network cards: borrow someone else's laptop and use a pendrive. Seriously, it isn't as hard as you're making it sound.
I disagree. Take for instance the old Rainbow Six games or the old Ghost Recon ones, plenty of realism yet they were (are) extremely fun to play, *because* of the realism. Another possible example would be STALKER, which would be nothing more than "Oblivion with guns" were it not for the realism in weapons and enemies, which elevate it above the rest of the genre.
Badly-done realism, however, as it was the case for Far Cry and Crysis (dunno about FC2, haven't played it yet), can make an otherwise niceish game an incredibly tedious one, but it's not realism per se.
Can't speak for Vista but 7's "Classic" mode looks even worse than those old Win-like skins for KDE2 (remember those?), while still managing to run as 'fast' (read: horribly slow) as the normal UI does.
All things considered Windows 7 is a pretty nice OS, but it fails miserably at delivering the "classic Windows experience". It remains to be seen how the average customer is gonna react to that, though.
Although if Microsoft had an option in 7 to "make it look like 2K" it would be a good thing.
Fixed that for you. People in general disliked XP's Fisher Price UI, it's just that since it was easy to change and the underlying OS worked well enough they didn't reject it as vehemently as Vista.
Why should I pay for some deadbeats who should be punished instead of being rewarded for their actions.
Exactly, after the abuses the RIAA and company have made with the world's copyright laws, *specially* that of the US and UK (aren't we due for the next "we have to get in line with international standards" copyright extension?), *they* should be the ones paying very large fines to the government, and very large settlements for the poor shmucks who were once their customers. Further, I'd call any business model that requires special legislation passed for them as "failed".
No, I don't infringe their copyrights, not because I have any respect left for them though, their products just suck.
Except you're neglecting the cost of diluting the brand (just what *is* Windows 7 now?) and creating confusion on the average customer who may or may not need features A, B or C, let alone know he/she needs them.
That's why most companies that do such a thing implement only two or three levels, not five, and certainly not the 11 that Vista had IIRC.
Me, I'm planning on illegally downloading a copy of 7 Ultimate just to make sure I keep all the features I might have had with the beta. They want my money, they'd better offer Ultimate at a decent price, I have neither the time nor the desire to work out the differences between the rest.
They called it the 4.0 release and said it wasn't ready for general use. Which were we supposed to believe?
Both. You don't develop against beta libraries for obvious reasons, so we need the project to declare when is it API stable.
It's like if someone said, "I'm a virgin and I fucked the whole football team."
Actually, it's more like if someone said, "I'm a virgin, and I gave blowjobs to the whole football team." Yes, one may at first believe both statements are contradictory, but once you think about things a little you realize it isn't, and that she *did* have the cock of the whole football team in her mouth, despite not having any inside her vagina.
Ogg just sounds stupid. If you don't think so, then I guess you are one of the few people who just don't get it. It sounds like something a retarded caveman would say.
Pretty much every name in the tech industry sounds stupid. If you don't think so, then you're obviously mistaken;)
Names matter. It's why significant amounts of marketing money are spent coming up with names for products. If Ford named a car the "Ogg" do you really think that having such a dumb name wouldn't prevent people from buying it?
Dunno. Did it prevent Google become the giant it is? or Adobe? or the iPod? plus "OGG" is much better than "MP4". One sounds, allegedly, like a prehistoric word, the other sounds like an assault rifle. Which one is more appropiate, more marketing-friendly for a music codec?
I have heard alot of dumb technology names in my time, but Ogg is *far and away* the worst. I used to think Athlon sounded dumb, and it did, but after a while it stopped sounding that way. However, Ogg sounded terrible the first time I heard it 10 years ago or so, and it STILL sounds stupid. It is just a terrible name, plain and simple, and trust me, it's hurt the adoption of that standard, and will continue to do so.
Prove it. Because in all my years the only place I've heard criticisms along the lines of "$PROJECT_X needs to change its name NOW! it sounds so stupid its hurting adoption!" is here at Slashdot. Nowhere *fucking* else, so forgive me if I don't just take your word for it.
You know, if you had only seen Natalie Portman on the Star Wars prequels, you may also be tempted to think she's an horrible actress whose only claim to fame is a pretty face. A shitty director can make *anyone* look idiotic, and James Cameron isn't much better than our dear mr. Lucas.
Apple has about a 15% share on laptops, which is actually a growing segment of the market (and now selling faster than desktops).
Tell me again when laptops represent a bigger share of the PC market than desktops, not simply one growing faster, and we'll talk again.
Would you like some cheese to go with that?:-) What are these half a dozen other browsers? I can name a few, but I'm not sure I could say they were all strictly better.
Mozilla (the old one), Firefox, Opera, Chrome, Safari. I'm sure someone else can come up with the final one to make the half a dozen, but it matters little.
Never underestimate the importance of marketing. It's not about a monopolistic practices. In this case marketing has played a large role.
And tell me, *how* much marketing has Microsoft done for IE during the past four years? seriously, and they still have around 70% of the global browser market share.
My take is that MS is no longer a monopoly. I'd have no problem going against MS in any space where I think there is a significant technology/user experience gap.
My take is that they still are, and the market share of Vista alone compared to that of OSX and Linux proves my point quite nicely.
If someone tries to fiddle with a traditional camera in the same way its a lot more obvious.
Except it isn't. On small digital cameras the shutter is completely silent, and on those that emit a "clicking" sound through the speakers for familiarity, it can usually be disabled from the menu with ease.
So no, completely stupid, retarded and useless law.
Let me put it this way. Linux should put [all] resources on one desktop environment which should result into a wonderful desktop while leaving the possibility of using another should there be need. What's wrong with that?
"The mythical man-month", for starters, the issue of the philosophy underlying The One And Only DE (simplicity, flexibility, aesthetics, which one takes priority over the other two?) for another, and then there's the fact that if another desktop enviroment is at all developed, then it's not "all" resources and we're back where we originally were.
Perhaps due to the sample bias issue other posters have pointed out. If the average user is unlikely to volunteer for such a monitoring, what are the chances he'll actually go to the bugzilla and submit a bug about something he wants done?
The best example of that is the AwesomeBar, with dozens of people asking for its removal on bugzilla et al, yet how many normal, non-techy people have you met which actively dislike it? for me it's zero and I know plenty of normal Firefox users.
Slashdot Mirror
If Copyright were only 1 year, do you really think that people wouldn't still be pirating films by aXXo the day of DVD release?
Yes. All most people care about is watching good-looking movies on the cheap, and with a one-year copyright it'd be only ~6 months from the DVD release (at most) until the movie itself is out of copyright and all those copies you see on the street being sold for $1 would be 100% legal, your cable company would be free to take the film and broadcast it 24/7 without paying the studios a single penny, and *that* would remove the need for going through the hassle of downloading the thing yourself.
No, I don't think a one-year lenght would work, because copyright sadly covers not only entertainment but productivity and educational tools, but I don't believe you truly grasp the inconveniences caused by the copyright system if you believe people, overall, would continue "pirating" movies and music in your hypothetical scenario.
And please stop raping the english language calling copyright infringement "theft".
And how many people do you think will bother reading the entire website instead of just the column labeled "Windows"? If you're the type that reads the entire website instead of going straight to the "Download" link, you're the type that needs to know the practical problems of using propietary software but for most people you could probably put "I love child porn!" in there and it wouldn't affect the downloads one bit.
Two problems: first, Foxit isn't Free Software, which I imagine is a huge problem for the Free Software Foundation Europe. And second, Foxit sucks, not only does it have *ads* (c'mon, even Opera took them out and they were far less annoying), but the interface is a cluttered, incoherent mess and the fact that I still used it until today is only a testament to how pathetically bad Adobe Reader is, not to any quality of Foxit.
Well, until today I've always installed Foxit on my Windows machines, wanting to have a PDF reader for the odd game manual or so but unwilling to use the attrocious and bloated Adobe Reader. Thanks to this article, however, I've found Sumatra PDF, freeing me from Foxit's ads and cluttered interface so count one convert already.
Perhaps you're right and there are too few F/OSS PDF readers to merit a specific listing of them, but maybe this would give incentive to F/OSS devs to create some more of 'em ;) besides, raising awareness of other PDF readers helps dispel the idea that Adobe Reader is the only PDF reader out there, which helps with the stupid, propietary extensions that some are using on top of the PDF format that can only be properly used with Adobe Reader.
I name my PCs based on different naming schemes. So I have on my LAN an Athlon, Laptop, Debian, Thinkpad, another one with my ex gf's name, my first computer was named Microsoft and my retired server was ShadowCat. Weirdly enough it wasn't intentional, I just kept switching naming schemes always thinking "this one's gonna be the definitive one", 'til I thought of a better one ;)
I've never understood why some Christians are so afraid of finding life on other planets or why some atheists are so adamant that it will prove the Christians wrong.
Fixed that for you. I'm an atheist and believe me, if we find intelligent life on other planets, the theological implications of such a discovery will be the *last* thing on my mind. Ensuring that said alien civilization doesn't go all Borg on our ass is much more important to me, personally ;)
Debian Linux would have cost at least $1.9B to produce in a private environment.
Debian GNU/Linux is an OS whose size and scope dwarfs *anything* ever put out by the propietary world, not even Microsoft's entire software portfolio can match it let alone a single product, so the comparison isn't really valid. You don't need to match Debian to have a working, sellable product.
Let's also not forget the fact that there are few, if any, desktop OSS apps that are as robust as, say, the Adobe suite of products or Microsoft Office.
Define "robust". Because my particular definition of it isn't met by either MS Office, or anything put out by Adobe more than three years after the acquisition of the original company that developed it.
It does OSS no service by giving people the impression that it is cheap and easy to produce. In fact, that is downright self-destructive because such an impression will make people behave even more like cheapskates. "What do you mean I should buy a supported license? I don't need to help pay for no stinkin R&D!! This stuff is supposed to be free? Why am I paying you anyway?!"
But it *is* cheap to produce, you just need enough charisma to lead a community (I think there's a Linus quote about it somewhere). And you should buy a license if you want support, that's the obvious answer, the product may be free but the company's time isn't so if you want help, pay up. It's the classical F/OSS business model.
Plus, your phone can probably run NetBSD too ;)
Currently, in Finland, it is illegal to monitor emails of employees who are using company equipment and the company network. This is, of course, completely absurd.
Please provide a logical reason for the "of course". Because to me its just like installing a security camera on your bathroom: yes, it's yours, but that doesn't mean the other person shouldn't have any privacy. Plus, the fact that you wanna know speaks volumes about you, none of it flattering.
All Nokia wants is the ability to see the the following information: Sender, Receiver, Size and Type of Attachments, and Date/Time. They don't even want to read the contents.
Can the proposed law in any way, shape or form allow them to even take a look at the actual contents of the emails? because badly-written laws *will* get abused, the US' DMCA the best example of that.
Does anyone here really think you could run a large company without being able to monitor emails sent by company representatives, using company resources? Does this really seem right to you?
Yes and yes.
For Linux users, it comes purely from the fact that we aren't using Windows.
It also comes from the fact that we didn't pay a premium for a stylish and well done product ;)
I understand your logic, but... without a browser, how exactly would you GET a browser?
I imagine the same way everyone gets drivers for their network cards: borrow someone else's laptop and use a pendrive. Seriously, it isn't as hard as you're making it sound.
Sure, it's not "realistic"; fun games aren't.
I disagree. Take for instance the old Rainbow Six games or the old Ghost Recon ones, plenty of realism yet they were (are) extremely fun to play, *because* of the realism. Another possible example would be STALKER, which would be nothing more than "Oblivion with guns" were it not for the realism in weapons and enemies, which elevate it above the rest of the genre.
Badly-done realism, however, as it was the case for Far Cry and Crysis (dunno about FC2, haven't played it yet), can make an otherwise niceish game an incredibly tedious one, but it's not realism per se.
Can't speak for Vista but 7's "Classic" mode looks even worse than those old Win-like skins for KDE2 (remember those?), while still managing to run as 'fast' (read: horribly slow) as the normal UI does.
All things considered Windows 7 is a pretty nice OS, but it fails miserably at delivering the "classic Windows experience". It remains to be seen how the average customer is gonna react to that, though.
Although if Microsoft had an option in 7 to "make it look like 2K" it would be a good thing.
Fixed that for you. People in general disliked XP's Fisher Price UI, it's just that since it was easy to change and the underlying OS worked well enough they didn't reject it as vehemently as Vista.
Why should I pay for some deadbeats who should be punished instead of being rewarded for their actions.
Exactly, after the abuses the RIAA and company have made with the world's copyright laws, *specially* that of the US and UK (aren't we due for the next "we have to get in line with international standards" copyright extension?), *they* should be the ones paying very large fines to the government, and very large settlements for the poor shmucks who were once their customers. Further, I'd call any business model that requires special legislation passed for them as "failed".
No, I don't infringe their copyrights, not because I have any respect left for them though, their products just suck.
Except you're neglecting the cost of diluting the brand (just what *is* Windows 7 now?) and creating confusion on the average customer who may or may not need features A, B or C, let alone know he/she needs them.
That's why most companies that do such a thing implement only two or three levels, not five, and certainly not the 11 that Vista had IIRC.
Me, I'm planning on illegally downloading a copy of 7 Ultimate just to make sure I keep all the features I might have had with the beta. They want my money, they'd better offer Ultimate at a decent price, I have neither the time nor the desire to work out the differences between the rest.
They called it the 4.0 release and said it wasn't ready for general use. Which were we supposed to believe?
Both. You don't develop against beta libraries for obvious reasons, so we need the project to declare when is it API stable.
It's like if someone said, "I'm a virgin and I fucked the whole football team."
Actually, it's more like if someone said, "I'm a virgin, and I gave blowjobs to the whole football team." Yes, one may at first believe both statements are contradictory, but once you think about things a little you realize it isn't, and that she *did* have the cock of the whole football team in her mouth, despite not having any inside her vagina.
Ogg just sounds stupid. If you don't think so, then I guess you are one of the few people who just don't get it. It sounds like something a retarded caveman would say.
Pretty much every name in the tech industry sounds stupid. If you don't think so, then you're obviously mistaken ;)
Names matter. It's why significant amounts of marketing money are spent coming up with names for products. If Ford named a car the "Ogg" do you really think that having such a dumb name wouldn't prevent people from buying it?
Dunno. Did it prevent Google become the giant it is? or Adobe? or the iPod? plus "OGG" is much better than "MP4". One sounds, allegedly, like a prehistoric word, the other sounds like an assault rifle. Which one is more appropiate, more marketing-friendly for a music codec?
I have heard alot of dumb technology names in my time, but Ogg is *far and away* the worst. I used to think Athlon sounded dumb, and it did, but after a while it stopped sounding that way. However, Ogg sounded terrible the first time I heard it 10 years ago or so, and it STILL sounds stupid. It is just a terrible name, plain and simple, and trust me, it's hurt the adoption of that standard, and will continue to do so.
Prove it. Because in all my years the only place I've heard criticisms along the lines of "$PROJECT_X needs to change its name NOW! it sounds so stupid its hurting adoption!" is here at Slashdot. Nowhere *fucking* else, so forgive me if I don't just take your word for it.
In my experience, a 40 MB WAV file becomes a nice, small 10-20 MBs FLAC, but perhaps that's one of the many benefits of listening to classical music.
Ohh, and if you believe PDFs are "useless" then you simply don't know anything about computers.
You know, if you had only seen Natalie Portman on the Star Wars prequels, you may also be tempted to think she's an horrible actress whose only claim to fame is a pretty face. A shitty director can make *anyone* look idiotic, and James Cameron isn't much better than our dear mr. Lucas.
I see you haven't had problems with your mailman yet.
Apple has about a 15% share on laptops, which is actually a growing segment of the market (and now selling faster than desktops).
Tell me again when laptops represent a bigger share of the PC market than desktops, not simply one growing faster, and we'll talk again.
Would you like some cheese to go with that? :-) What are these half a dozen other browsers? I can name a few, but I'm not sure I could say they were all strictly better.
Mozilla (the old one), Firefox, Opera, Chrome, Safari. I'm sure someone else can come up with the final one to make the half a dozen, but it matters little.
Never underestimate the importance of marketing. It's not about a monopolistic practices. In this case marketing has played a large role.
And tell me, *how* much marketing has Microsoft done for IE during the past four years? seriously, and they still have around 70% of the global browser market share.
My take is that MS is no longer a monopoly. I'd have no problem going against MS in any space where I think there is a significant technology/user experience gap.
My take is that they still are, and the market share of Vista alone compared to that of OSX and Linux proves my point quite nicely.
If someone tries to fiddle with a traditional camera in the same way its a lot more obvious.
Except it isn't. On small digital cameras the shutter is completely silent, and on those that emit a "clicking" sound through the speakers for familiarity, it can usually be disabled from the menu with ease.
So no, completely stupid, retarded and useless law.
Let me put it this way. Linux should put [all] resources on one desktop environment which should result into a wonderful desktop while leaving the possibility of using another should there be need. What's wrong with that?
"The mythical man-month", for starters, the issue of the philosophy underlying The One And Only DE (simplicity, flexibility, aesthetics, which one takes priority over the other two?) for another, and then there's the fact that if another desktop enviroment is at all developed, then it's not "all" resources and we're back where we originally were.
Perhaps due to the sample bias issue other posters have pointed out. If the average user is unlikely to volunteer for such a monitoring, what are the chances he'll actually go to the bugzilla and submit a bug about something he wants done?
The best example of that is the AwesomeBar, with dozens of people asking for its removal on bugzilla et al, yet how many normal, non-techy people have you met which actively dislike it? for me it's zero and I know plenty of normal Firefox users.