Ever play Guild Wars: Nightfall (African themed Guild Wars campaign)?
Ahh, Guild Wars. My personal favorite MMO, and one game that avoids this whole "racism" bullshit by providing entire campaigns based on certain races' historical backgrounds. Alas, there's just one problem with that: the Latin American-based campaign is a fuckin' expansion, which means you cannot create new characters on it, and even that is shared with the norse. So while there's plenty of blacks, asians and european-looking characters in the game, your only option for a latino guy is to create a dark-but-not-so-much character on the other expansions and ignore campaign-specific facial features for the sake of roleplaying.
If I were a bloody idiot, I'd be screaming "racism!" at the top of my lungs. Alas, I am not, and as such are content to play good ol' whites in Aztec-themed armor;)
to be pedantic.... elves, hobbits and orcs are different species.
To be pedantic, if they can mate between themselves and produce viable offspring they're members of the same species, and there's nothing to indicate half-elves and half-orcs are sterile, as far as I know.
Plus, "hand holding"-style support won't ever go away either. I mean, look at the graphic design industry, they have *ONE* program made to supply all their needs (Photoshop), most people in the field don't even look at alternatives, let alone use them for anything serious, practically all university design courses use it and teach it, yet people make quite a mint selling Photoshop tutorials and classes, be it in the forms of books or videos, online or off-the-shelf.
Sure, the amount of people looking for support on Notepad is probably in the single digits, but anything more complex than that and there *will* be people that can't use it off-the-bat and would rather pay than learn on their own.
I've always said that in a fair market, Microsoft would have complete dominance of the PC peripheal market. Their mouses are excellent, their keyboards are second to none but IBM, and their gaming controllers have the best price/quality ratio of the industry by far (Logitech's either suck or cost a kidney and half).
It's just a pity that their OS and Office software divisions are so bloody incompetent, and a shame that they also happen to be the most successful ones so far.
Actually, the world needs both. The fact of the matter is that many CS students are not only after Software Engineering, that's what they're being taught and poorly, so there's a lack of both good computer scientists as well as well-trained software engineers.
there are several GUI solutions, rather than a centralised effort, there are several browsers gunning to be the main browser, there are several sound sub-systems/servers... why cant these people learn to play together, and come up with something that fits everybody.
Because you can't. There isn't a car that fits everybody, not a house, not a pen, not a shirt, nothing. And if we can't even agree on a simple *pen* that fits everybody, what makes you think we can agree on something as complex as a computer interface?
If life can teach us anything is that there's no such thing as the "average" human, we're all fucked up in various, wildly different ways, we've got different tastes, and we *will* cry foul when somebody tries to impose theirs onto us. Plus, we may have several different browsers gunning to be the main one, but since they're all better than the shit called IE and the turd called Safari, it seems to be working quite well so far, thankyouverymuch.
How can Linux win me back? Whatever machine I bring home from Best Buy has to "just work" at the end of the install/config program. Is that too much to ask for?
Politely requesting again that you buy quality hardware? seriously, it's not hard to buy well-supported hardware, it's not expensive either, and if you don't you cannot seriously expect that everything will "just work". And no, it won't "just work" on a Mac either unless you also check for the happy face logo on stuff you buy. Hell, it sometimes won't even "just work" on Windows simply because there's some stuff out there only for 9x, others only support Windows up to XP, and others mandate XP or Vista.
Windows seems to "just work" when you buy from an OEM that sells Windows preinstalled, and also get lucky with the hardware purchases. And even then, someone somewhere suffered for it making the system image you now have, which shows (painfully) if you ever try to set up an off-the-shelf Windows install on the same PC.
As in all cases like this, the government had to show both the victim's family and society at large that they'd go after this sort of thing. The case will probably be overturned because the case they could put together was pretty tenuous(because there wasn't a crime for what she did), but they've shown people that they're serious about this shit.
Exactly. They've shown people that if they're serious enough about nailing somebody they *WILL* find a law to allow it. And that's by far the scariest, and most unacceptable aspect about this case.
Not quite. Good binary blobs for hardware = hardware that can handle
software that people will want to run. Conversely, if your hardware sucks, binary blobs or not, no one will use it because it simply won't do its job. That job: to let people run the software they need/want to run.
Sorry, you're stretching things *WAY* too thin for your argument to make any sense. Simply put, the free use of hardware is entirely a matter of hardware, and any involvement of software in the exercise of those freedoms is purely incidental. If I decide that I want to eat my sound card and Creative decides to prevent me from doing so, my freedoms to use my hardware as I see fit are being constricted, but no software is involved in any way.
Except that it doesn't. Software freedom allows one to "sell his soul" to Company XYZ in exchange for the license to run that company's software or to give that company the finger if he doesn't like their asking price.
Wrong. That's free trade, which again, has little to nothing to do with software per se. And yes, propietary software cannot be a part of Free Software since it denies its freedoms, just like a slave cannot be free even if he sold himself willingly.
In other words, a choice between two open-source drivers is more freedom than the choice between two proprietary drivers if, and only if you can make the open-source goods fit your needs. If not, then you'd lose out on the freedom to use your computer as you see fit.
Wrong. Two OSS drivers have more freedom than two propietary drivers in all cases, since in every case the propietary drivers lack the ability of the user to extend the driver to make things it cannot, and as such, propietary drivers cannot ever provide the freedom to "use your computer as you see fit". See above.
Here, you make a very fine distinction between censorship and a lack of advertising. Frankly, most people would not see the difference because in this case, there is none.
Frankly, most people do see the difference and so do the legal systems governing in their particular areas of the world. As they say 'round here, "Free speech doesn't mean we're forced to hear you".
How is not recognizing that yes, there may a proprietary driver/software that can meet your needs better than this free one not censorship? That is eliminating information that would otherwise be available. And yes, that philosophy does indeed actively inhibit freedom. It may not be vendor lock-in, but the result is the same.
See above and, well, see above. It is not censorship, it is not inhabiting your freedom, and to pretend otherwise is simply foolish.
-2: The Freedom to run any hardware, for any purpose
That has no business as a 'software' freedom, since it explictly affects only hardware. Good 0 Freedom for a Free Hardware Manifesto, though.
-1: The Freedom to run proprietary software, to run any hardware.
Except that propietary software conflicts with every other freedom, and as such the manifesto would contradict itself.
I don't understand why people don't want others have the freedom to install proprietary software on Linux system. I use both Linux and Windows. I enjoy running the latest and greatest games with the fastest video and sound cards.
Who? Stallman doesn't, he thinks running propietary software is inmoral, but he's fighting that the way a true freedom fighter would: by convincing you of it with arguments, not by force. You're still free to make an entire distro centered around NVidia's propietary drivers, you're still free to use GCC to compile propietary software, and you're still free to use GNU Emacs to write it. Your freedom hasn't been affected, you're just being warned about the consequences of doing so.
If Stallman had his way, there would be a huge disincentive to have working drivers. I require that my computer works with the hardware I bought for it.
Yeah, so? Freedom doesn't mean "everybody plays nice with my own wishes". They allow propietary drivers already, no reason why they should incentive them.
However, Stallman's philosophy that "A free system distribution must not assist users in obtaining any nonfree information for practical use, or encourage them to do so" is ridiculous. Why should this be so? How does this promote freedom?
How does this counter freedom? the information is not being censored, it is not being eliminated, it is simply being, well, not advertised.
Stallman can't see the forest from the trees.
Funny, but that's exactly what I'd say about you. You're not only willing to diminish your own freedom for a simple sound card, but you demand (not ask, demand) the help of Free Software developers in doing so.
If the device manufacturers had put the firmware in ROM (flash/EEPROM/whatever) attached to the peripheral rather than downloaded by the driver, does that really change anything? You haven't given the user any more or less freedom; you've just redistributed what lives where and probably increased hardware costs (and made firmware upgrades less simple).
Correct me if I'm wrong, but you would also have removed the need to reimplement the device's firmware if you only wanted to rewrite the driver, which has obvious advantages from a F/OSS point of view.
Quite frankly, I'm a pragmatist who admires all the great freedom in Linux (and that's why I choose to use it) and supports hardware manufacturers who release their specs (hence the reason I now have an ATI graphics card). That said, at the end of the day, I want a distro that makes my hardware work without a ton of fucking around because somebody philosophically disagreed with a driver.
Exactly. And the thought of being locked into a specific architecture because somebody philosophically disagreed with the idea of letting their users port drivers to their architecture of choice, well, ain't a pleasant one. Hey, lock yourself up all you want, I know that sometimes a short-term gain is worth a long-term sacrifice and I do that as well sometimes, but let's not pretend that people who think differently are instantly 'loony'.
But what ever happened to a web browser just being a web browser instead of a development platform with three heads breathing fire, half a dozen plugins, six months of combatability testing, and a kitchen sink?
Died after Netscape came along. Then IE and ActiveX not only put the final nail in the coffin, it fucked the corpse before doing so.
Is there ever a point where a web developer will concede that the web is not the Best Platform for Everything in The Universe(tm)?
Is there ever a point where a C developer will concede that C is not the Best Language for Everything In The Universe(tm)? no, because he has a monetary interest in perpetuating that perception. People who aren't solely web developers, however, would and do concede that, you just haven't looked hard enough.
Or is it just that they were never schooled in the old temple and given a proper appreciation of a real language like C++?
I'm sorry, did you mean C? or did you declare yourself incompetent in the ways of programming by calling the turd commonly known as C++ a real language?:D kidding but only partially, what's a "real" language varies from programmer to programmer and you shouldn't assume your opinion is the only valid one. Plus, languages have little to do with the platform, plenty of non-web apps written in Perl, and plenty of web apps written in Java too.
where does this attitude that everything has to be crowbar'd into a web interface to be considered modern these days?
Because it's easier to sell it to PHBs. How many trends in programming during the last twenty years have made logical sense everywhere they've been applied to? it wouldn't surprise me to hear about a company that demands a MVC architecture on servers' shell scripts, just as it doesn't surprise me to hear about people trying to cram an office suite into a web browser.
Well, this woman got off light. I say an Eye for an Eye. I say that if you want to teach people to take responsibility, you must show them that this kind of behavior will not be tolerated. Execute her.
You, sir, are a class-A moron. The only, the *only* things one should be punishable for are one's own actions, and to argue otherwise is to argue for vengeance, not justice. Yes, the kid killed herself, so what? the fact that the kid had depression so that she was willing to take her life for that wasn't Lori Drew's fault, and unless she had the capability to predict such an outcome from her actions, she should not be judged for her death, neither morally nor legally.
But then again, if the GP you replied to (or hell, Lori Drew herself) committed suicide tomorrow, you'd be arguing for your own execution after your 'scathing' post. Kind of a farfetched scenario, but a kid killing herself after someone posted bad stuff about her on MySpace ain't significantly less so.
Excellent post, but there's a single issue I'd like to respond to:
I think that the latter one, especially, is why Half Life's "silent protagonist" works so well. In a game without cutscenes, having Gordon say something would break the player's identity with the character.
Except that not saying anything is *still* a choice. For me, Gordon Freeman breaks my identity as a player because I *wouldn't* stand silent during the events he has witnessed and the situations he's have to deal with, so when he does stay silent (and other characters react as such), I feel "this Gordon Freeman character is a real jerk", nothing to do with me per se.
Perhaps a better example of the silent protagonist done right is the Chrono series. For all intents and purposes, the characters talk, you just can't hear them, so you're free to imagine yourself how you would say it in their place, with your language and your feelings. Characters like that are much easier to relate to than the explicitly silent Gordon Freeman, IMHO. Still, both games have inmersion problems in other areas, so they're definitely not perfect either, but as far as silence goes I think they use it much better than the Half-Life series.
You're comparing apples and oranges. The GP's point was that most people didn't morally object to it because they didn't know what exactly means having a steak in front of them, in all your examples the problem would be lack of sufficient skill, an entirely different problem, therefore *your* argument is 100% moot, sorry.
I feel it is a right for me to eat meat. No one should have the ability to remove that right from me. If I have to use their own holy books against them, so be it.
And if I *don't* feel it is a right for us to eat meat, it's OK if I also use their own holy books to convince them as such? or doesn't that just perpetuate stupid religious debates, even when the two sides arguing are fuckin' atheists?
As a wise man once said, if something's worth doing, it's worth doing right. And if you're gonna manipulate people's religious beliefs to push your own agenda, we're all better off if you don't say anything at all.
First off the PC wasn't an open design, it was closed but companies did a "whiteroom" re-engineering of the BIOS (something that the DMCA would outlaw today). It became more successful once opened but the original design was very much closed
But the original design was not, and wasn't intended to be successful. It was cloned because Compaq et al saw it as an easy way to 'leech off' IBM's reputation, which is why the first PCs were all marketed as "IBM compatible", and once they did that and prices began to drop the PC market began to grow. Take that away, and there's no way in hell the PC platform would've been as successful as it was, not even IBM wanted it to be since for them it was just a 'bone' to throw to those who weren't ready to buy proper workstations.
and of course the operating systems that made it successful are pretty much the poster child of the closed software movement
But when it came out, it was *much* more open than the competition. For starters, you weren't forced to buy expensive hardware from Microsoft to get it. Openness, and not closed source (what you're aiming at, and which has little to do with open standards) was what gave Microsoft its monopoly.
The other example you give which is MP3 isn't really open either (otherwise why would there be Ogg?).
Good point, but again, the success of MP3 was due to its openness. It wasn't *legal*, but no one back then paid a cent to the patent holders to implement it, use it, and redistribute MP3 files, and if they had to, there's no way in hell it would've caught on as it did. And it continues to be popular because the manufacturers refuse to implement OGG and FLAC, and MP3s are much more open than the formats they do implement.
Apart from suggesting that Apple's products are better than Microsoft's (and I stand behind that assertion), where did I say anything that suggested that Apple was either better than or more deserving of a pass than Microsoft?
The fact that you replied to a post that asked whether there was any difference in the companies themselves to merit the difference in judgement towards them. If they're irrelevant, why list them? hell, I could name a few other differences too: one company's name starts with a M, and the other with an A, one's name has 9 letters, the other 5, and though both companies' CEO are named Steve, one's Ballmer and the other's Jobs. Really useful, isn't it?
On a serious note: how are Microsoft's peripherals better than those two? And for bonus points, find reasons that are not personal value judgments, such as "damages your hands less" or "lets you do your work faster".
In comparisons between PC peripheals, there's only one characteristic that can be objetively evaluated, and that's price. Everything else is a personal value judgement, and in *my* personal value judgement, I've yet to use an "ergonomic" keyboard that doesn't utterly suck, or a Logitech product that's good enough to justify the price tag (they don't suck, they just don't excel either, IMHO).
Your opinion may be different, of course, and I have no problem with that but Microsoft's peripheal offerings have enough of a following, IMHO, to call them superior to what Apple bundles with their computers and as such disproving the "Apple makes superior products" claim of the previous poster.
otherwise the market devolves into monopoly control everywhere, and the only "competition" happens on the fringe edges where you might have two big mostly-monopolies trying to horn in on each other's monopoly turf.
I wonder whether the fact that the above sounds just like a description of the US election system is a coincidence or not...
Depends on your needs. If all you need is something to stick in your pocket with enough music to last you the trip from home to work and back, I'd recommend an el-cheapo chinese-made MP3 player. They can be had for around ~$30, hold around 2 GBs of MP3s, and not only work as standard USB Storage Devices, but also use standard AAA batteries so you can buy a couple of rechargeables anywhere, and in an emergency buy replacements even in a grocery store.
Apple's products are vastly superior to Microsoft's.
Microsoft's PC peripheals are second to none but IBM, and that includes the poor excuse of a keyboard that comes with my Powerbook. And Apple may not make products in that area, but Visual Studio and Flight Simulator are also definitely at the top of their respective markets, so they do produce excellent products from time to time. I don't see how that excuses anything, though.
Microsoft has been convicted of anti-trust violations in federal court. Apple has not.
Legal, not moral difference. Unless you base your morality on law, which has some nasty (IMHO) consequences.
Apple's monopoly power is in the portable music market. Microsoft's is in the desktop operating system market.
And this is an action done to protect their monopoly in the portable music market, nothing to do with their OS. Unless you think there's an inherent difference to the markets themselves that makes an action OK in one, and unacceptable in the other?
It always amazes me when people make an ultra-literal interpretation of someone's analogy, then try to attack the analogy because it doesn't conform perfectly to their ultra-literal interpretation.
Ultra-literal, pointing out that 'reduced profits' is much, much different from 'jail time' and therefore the GP is comparing apples and oranges (pun not intended)? no, that's just applying some common sense.
Parent's point, obviously, is that sometime we do things that we don't like because the consequences of not doing them are even more unpleasant. In the case of taxes, the alternative of going to jail is more unpleasant than paying.
And I continue to breath because dying a slow, painful death is unpleasant, but if I said that not earning as much money is the same as denying me oxygen that'd be monumentally stupid. To draw something useful from comparisons, the items or situations being compared have at least to be similar.
Your point that there are no laws forcing Apple to add DRM would only be relevant if parent was trying to argue that Apple had no choice but to add DRM; and there's nothing in his post to indicate that he's trying to argue that.
The fact that he compared it to a situation where you're legally forced to comply, and that there was nothing in his post to indicate that he was aware of that difference doesn't help that case.
He's simply pointing out that sometimes people do things that they don't like, so Apple adding DRM doesn't prove that Jobs was lying when he said that he doesn't like DRM.
Point given, but based on this we can't trust what Jobs says at all, then. If all it takes is a light push from our friends at the RIAA and MPAA to make him go against his "principles", then he has none at all.
Slashdot Mirror
Ever play Guild Wars: Nightfall (African themed Guild Wars campaign)?
Ahh, Guild Wars. My personal favorite MMO, and one game that avoids this whole "racism" bullshit by providing entire campaigns based on certain races' historical backgrounds. Alas, there's just one problem with that: the Latin American-based campaign is a fuckin' expansion, which means you cannot create new characters on it, and even that is shared with the norse. So while there's plenty of blacks, asians and european-looking characters in the game, your only option for a latino guy is to create a dark-but-not-so-much character on the other expansions and ignore campaign-specific facial features for the sake of roleplaying.
If I were a bloody idiot, I'd be screaming "racism!" at the top of my lungs. Alas, I am not, and as such are content to play good ol' whites in Aztec-themed armor ;)
to be pedantic.... elves, hobbits and orcs are different species.
To be pedantic, if they can mate between themselves and produce viable offspring they're members of the same species, and there's nothing to indicate half-elves and half-orcs are sterile, as far as I know.
Plus, "hand holding"-style support won't ever go away either. I mean, look at the graphic design industry, they have *ONE* program made to supply all their needs (Photoshop), most people in the field don't even look at alternatives, let alone use them for anything serious, practically all university design courses use it and teach it, yet people make quite a mint selling Photoshop tutorials and classes, be it in the forms of books or videos, online or off-the-shelf.
Sure, the amount of people looking for support on Notepad is probably in the single digits, but anything more complex than that and there *will* be people that can't use it off-the-bat and would rather pay than learn on their own.
I've always said that in a fair market, Microsoft would have complete dominance of the PC peripheal market. Their mouses are excellent, their keyboards are second to none but IBM, and their gaming controllers have the best price/quality ratio of the industry by far (Logitech's either suck or cost a kidney and half).
It's just a pity that their OS and Office software divisions are so bloody incompetent, and a shame that they also happen to be the most successful ones so far.
Actually, the world needs both. The fact of the matter is that many CS students are not only after Software Engineering, that's what they're being taught and poorly, so there's a lack of both good computer scientists as well as well-trained software engineers.
there are several GUI solutions, rather than a centralised effort, there are several browsers gunning to be the main browser, there are several sound sub-systems/servers... why cant these people learn to play together, and come up with something that fits everybody.
Because you can't. There isn't a car that fits everybody, not a house, not a pen, not a shirt, nothing. And if we can't even agree on a simple *pen* that fits everybody, what makes you think we can agree on something as complex as a computer interface?
If life can teach us anything is that there's no such thing as the "average" human, we're all fucked up in various, wildly different ways, we've got different tastes, and we *will* cry foul when somebody tries to impose theirs onto us. Plus, we may have several different browsers gunning to be the main one, but since they're all better than the shit called IE and the turd called Safari, it seems to be working quite well so far, thankyouverymuch.
How can Linux win me back? Whatever machine I bring home from Best Buy has to "just work" at the end of the install/config program. Is that too much to ask for?
Politely requesting again that you buy quality hardware? seriously, it's not hard to buy well-supported hardware, it's not expensive either, and if you don't you cannot seriously expect that everything will "just work". And no, it won't "just work" on a Mac either unless you also check for the happy face logo on stuff you buy. Hell, it sometimes won't even "just work" on Windows simply because there's some stuff out there only for 9x, others only support Windows up to XP, and others mandate XP or Vista.
Windows seems to "just work" when you buy from an OEM that sells Windows preinstalled, and also get lucky with the hardware purchases. And even then, someone somewhere suffered for it making the system image you now have, which shows (painfully) if you ever try to set up an off-the-shelf Windows install on the same PC.
As in all cases like this, the government had to show both the victim's family and society at large that they'd go after this sort of thing. The case will probably be overturned because the case they could put together was pretty tenuous(because there wasn't a crime for what she did), but they've shown people that they're serious about this shit.
Exactly. They've shown people that if they're serious enough about nailing somebody they *WILL* find a law to allow it. And that's by far the scariest, and most unacceptable aspect about this case.
Not quite. Good binary blobs for hardware = hardware that can handle software that people will want to run. Conversely, if your hardware sucks, binary blobs or not, no one will use it because it simply won't do its job. That job: to let people run the software they need/want to run.
Sorry, you're stretching things *WAY* too thin for your argument to make any sense. Simply put, the free use of hardware is entirely a matter of hardware, and any involvement of software in the exercise of those freedoms is purely incidental. If I decide that I want to eat my sound card and Creative decides to prevent me from doing so, my freedoms to use my hardware as I see fit are being constricted, but no software is involved in any way.
Except that it doesn't. Software freedom allows one to "sell his soul" to Company XYZ in exchange for the license to run that company's software or to give that company the finger if he doesn't like their asking price.
Wrong. That's free trade, which again, has little to nothing to do with software per se. And yes, propietary software cannot be a part of Free Software since it denies its freedoms, just like a slave cannot be free even if he sold himself willingly.
In other words, a choice between two open-source drivers is more freedom than the choice between two proprietary drivers if, and only if you can make the open-source goods fit your needs. If not, then you'd lose out on the freedom to use your computer as you see fit.
Wrong. Two OSS drivers have more freedom than two propietary drivers in all cases, since in every case the propietary drivers lack the ability of the user to extend the driver to make things it cannot, and as such, propietary drivers cannot ever provide the freedom to "use your computer as you see fit". See above.
Here, you make a very fine distinction between censorship and a lack of advertising. Frankly, most people would not see the difference because in this case, there is none.
Frankly, most people do see the difference and so do the legal systems governing in their particular areas of the world. As they say 'round here, "Free speech doesn't mean we're forced to hear you".
How is not recognizing that yes, there may a proprietary driver/software that can meet your needs better than this free one not censorship? That is eliminating information that would otherwise be available. And yes, that philosophy does indeed actively inhibit freedom. It may not be vendor lock-in, but the result is the same.
See above and, well, see above. It is not censorship, it is not inhabiting your freedom, and to pretend otherwise is simply foolish.
I think you missed the "must not assist" part of the phrase...
I think you missed the "must not assist" part of the phrase...
-2: The Freedom to run any hardware, for any purpose
That has no business as a 'software' freedom, since it explictly affects only hardware. Good 0 Freedom for a Free Hardware Manifesto, though.
-1: The Freedom to run proprietary software, to run any hardware.
Except that propietary software conflicts with every other freedom, and as such the manifesto would contradict itself.
I don't understand why people don't want others have the freedom to install proprietary software on Linux system. I use both Linux and Windows. I enjoy running the latest and greatest games with the fastest video and sound cards.
Who? Stallman doesn't, he thinks running propietary software is inmoral, but he's fighting that the way a true freedom fighter would: by convincing you of it with arguments, not by force. You're still free to make an entire distro centered around NVidia's propietary drivers, you're still free to use GCC to compile propietary software, and you're still free to use GNU Emacs to write it. Your freedom hasn't been affected, you're just being warned about the consequences of doing so.
If Stallman had his way, there would be a huge disincentive to have working drivers. I require that my computer works with the hardware I bought for it.
Yeah, so? Freedom doesn't mean "everybody plays nice with my own wishes". They allow propietary drivers already, no reason why they should incentive them.
However, Stallman's philosophy that "A free system distribution must not assist users in obtaining any nonfree information for practical use, or encourage them to do so" is ridiculous. Why should this be so? How does this promote freedom?
How does this counter freedom? the information is not being censored, it is not being eliminated, it is simply being, well, not advertised.
Stallman can't see the forest from the trees.
Funny, but that's exactly what I'd say about you. You're not only willing to diminish your own freedom for a simple sound card, but you demand (not ask, demand) the help of Free Software developers in doing so.
If the device manufacturers had put the firmware in ROM (flash/EEPROM/whatever) attached to the peripheral rather than downloaded by the driver, does that really change anything? You haven't given the user any more or less freedom; you've just redistributed what lives where and probably increased hardware costs (and made firmware upgrades less simple).
Correct me if I'm wrong, but you would also have removed the need to reimplement the device's firmware if you only wanted to rewrite the driver, which has obvious advantages from a F/OSS point of view.
Quite frankly, I'm a pragmatist who admires all the great freedom in Linux (and that's why I choose to use it) and supports hardware manufacturers who release their specs (hence the reason I now have an ATI graphics card). That said, at the end of the day, I want a distro that makes my hardware work without a ton of fucking around because somebody philosophically disagreed with a driver.
Exactly. And the thought of being locked into a specific architecture because somebody philosophically disagreed with the idea of letting their users port drivers to their architecture of choice, well, ain't a pleasant one. Hey, lock yourself up all you want, I know that sometimes a short-term gain is worth a long-term sacrifice and I do that as well sometimes, but let's not pretend that people who think differently are instantly 'loony'.
But what ever happened to a web browser just being a web browser instead of a development platform with three heads breathing fire, half a dozen plugins, six months of combatability testing, and a kitchen sink?
Died after Netscape came along. Then IE and ActiveX not only put the final nail in the coffin, it fucked the corpse before doing so.
Is there ever a point where a web developer will concede that the web is not the Best Platform for Everything in The Universe(tm)?
Is there ever a point where a C developer will concede that C is not the Best Language for Everything In The Universe(tm)? no, because he has a monetary interest in perpetuating that perception. People who aren't solely web developers, however, would and do concede that, you just haven't looked hard enough.
Or is it just that they were never schooled in the old temple and given a proper appreciation of a real language like C++?
I'm sorry, did you mean C? or did you declare yourself incompetent in the ways of programming by calling the turd commonly known as C++ a real language? :D kidding but only partially, what's a "real" language varies from programmer to programmer and you shouldn't assume your opinion is the only valid one. Plus, languages have little to do with the platform, plenty of non-web apps written in Perl, and plenty of web apps written in Java too.
where does this attitude that everything has to be crowbar'd into a web interface to be considered modern these days?
Because it's easier to sell it to PHBs. How many trends in programming during the last twenty years have made logical sense everywhere they've been applied to? it wouldn't surprise me to hear about a company that demands a MVC architecture on servers' shell scripts, just as it doesn't surprise me to hear about people trying to cram an office suite into a web browser.
Well, this woman got off light. I say an Eye for an Eye. I say that if you want to teach people to take responsibility, you must show them that this kind of behavior will not be tolerated. Execute her.
You, sir, are a class-A moron. The only, the *only* things one should be punishable for are one's own actions, and to argue otherwise is to argue for vengeance, not justice. Yes, the kid killed herself, so what? the fact that the kid had depression so that she was willing to take her life for that wasn't Lori Drew's fault, and unless she had the capability to predict such an outcome from her actions, she should not be judged for her death, neither morally nor legally.
But then again, if the GP you replied to (or hell, Lori Drew herself) committed suicide tomorrow, you'd be arguing for your own execution after your 'scathing' post. Kind of a farfetched scenario, but a kid killing herself after someone posted bad stuff about her on MySpace ain't significantly less so.
Excellent post, but there's a single issue I'd like to respond to:
I think that the latter one, especially, is why Half Life's "silent protagonist" works so well. In a game without cutscenes, having Gordon say something would break the player's identity with the character.
Except that not saying anything is *still* a choice. For me, Gordon Freeman breaks my identity as a player because I *wouldn't* stand silent during the events he has witnessed and the situations he's have to deal with, so when he does stay silent (and other characters react as such), I feel "this Gordon Freeman character is a real jerk", nothing to do with me per se.
Perhaps a better example of the silent protagonist done right is the Chrono series. For all intents and purposes, the characters talk, you just can't hear them, so you're free to imagine yourself how you would say it in their place, with your language and your feelings. Characters like that are much easier to relate to than the explicitly silent Gordon Freeman, IMHO. Still, both games have inmersion problems in other areas, so they're definitely not perfect either, but as far as silence goes I think they use it much better than the Half-Life series.
You're comparing apples and oranges. The GP's point was that most people didn't morally object to it because they didn't know what exactly means having a steak in front of them, in all your examples the problem would be lack of sufficient skill, an entirely different problem, therefore *your* argument is 100% moot, sorry.
I feel it is a right for me to eat meat. No one should have the ability to remove that right from me. If I have to use their own holy books against them, so be it.
And if I *don't* feel it is a right for us to eat meat, it's OK if I also use their own holy books to convince them as such? or doesn't that just perpetuate stupid religious debates, even when the two sides arguing are fuckin' atheists?
As a wise man once said, if something's worth doing, it's worth doing right. And if you're gonna manipulate people's religious beliefs to push your own agenda, we're all better off if you don't say anything at all.
First off the PC wasn't an open design, it was closed but companies did a "whiteroom" re-engineering of the BIOS (something that the DMCA would outlaw today). It became more successful once opened but the original design was very much closed
But the original design was not, and wasn't intended to be successful. It was cloned because Compaq et al saw it as an easy way to 'leech off' IBM's reputation, which is why the first PCs were all marketed as "IBM compatible", and once they did that and prices began to drop the PC market began to grow. Take that away, and there's no way in hell the PC platform would've been as successful as it was, not even IBM wanted it to be since for them it was just a 'bone' to throw to those who weren't ready to buy proper workstations.
and of course the operating systems that made it successful are pretty much the poster child of the closed software movement
But when it came out, it was *much* more open than the competition. For starters, you weren't forced to buy expensive hardware from Microsoft to get it. Openness, and not closed source (what you're aiming at, and which has little to do with open standards) was what gave Microsoft its monopoly.
The other example you give which is MP3 isn't really open either (otherwise why would there be Ogg?).
Good point, but again, the success of MP3 was due to its openness. It wasn't *legal*, but no one back then paid a cent to the patent holders to implement it, use it, and redistribute MP3 files, and if they had to, there's no way in hell it would've caught on as it did. And it continues to be popular because the manufacturers refuse to implement OGG and FLAC, and MP3s are much more open than the formats they do implement.
Apart from suggesting that Apple's products are better than Microsoft's (and I stand behind that assertion), where did I say anything that suggested that Apple was either better than or more deserving of a pass than Microsoft?
The fact that you replied to a post that asked whether there was any difference in the companies themselves to merit the difference in judgement towards them. If they're irrelevant, why list them? hell, I could name a few other differences too: one company's name starts with a M, and the other with an A, one's name has 9 letters, the other 5, and though both companies' CEO are named Steve, one's Ballmer and the other's Jobs. Really useful, isn't it?
On a serious note: how are Microsoft's peripherals better than those two? And for bonus points, find reasons that are not personal value judgments, such as "damages your hands less" or "lets you do your work faster".
In comparisons between PC peripheals, there's only one characteristic that can be objetively evaluated, and that's price. Everything else is a personal value judgement, and in *my* personal value judgement, I've yet to use an "ergonomic" keyboard that doesn't utterly suck, or a Logitech product that's good enough to justify the price tag (they don't suck, they just don't excel either, IMHO).
Your opinion may be different, of course, and I have no problem with that but Microsoft's peripheal offerings have enough of a following, IMHO, to call them superior to what Apple bundles with their computers and as such disproving the "Apple makes superior products" claim of the previous poster.
otherwise the market devolves into monopoly control everywhere, and the only "competition" happens on the fringe edges where you might have two big mostly-monopolies trying to horn in on each other's monopoly turf.
I wonder whether the fact that the above sounds just like a description of the US election system is a coincidence or not...
Depends on your needs. If all you need is something to stick in your pocket with enough music to last you the trip from home to work and back, I'd recommend an el-cheapo chinese-made MP3 player. They can be had for around ~$30, hold around 2 GBs of MP3s, and not only work as standard USB Storage Devices, but also use standard AAA batteries so you can buy a couple of rechargeables anywhere, and in an emergency buy replacements even in a grocery store.
Apple's products are vastly superior to Microsoft's.
Microsoft's PC peripheals are second to none but IBM, and that includes the poor excuse of a keyboard that comes with my Powerbook. And Apple may not make products in that area, but Visual Studio and Flight Simulator are also definitely at the top of their respective markets, so they do produce excellent products from time to time. I don't see how that excuses anything, though.
Microsoft has been convicted of anti-trust violations in federal court. Apple has not.
Legal, not moral difference. Unless you base your morality on law, which has some nasty (IMHO) consequences.
Apple's monopoly power is in the portable music market. Microsoft's is in the desktop operating system market.
And this is an action done to protect their monopoly in the portable music market, nothing to do with their OS. Unless you think there's an inherent difference to the markets themselves that makes an action OK in one, and unacceptable in the other?
In fact, can a helpful geek with the requisite wget-fu post the command we must use to fully mirror them on our PCs? thank you.
It always amazes me when people make an ultra-literal interpretation of someone's analogy, then try to attack the analogy because it doesn't conform perfectly to their ultra-literal interpretation.
Ultra-literal, pointing out that 'reduced profits' is much, much different from 'jail time' and therefore the GP is comparing apples and oranges (pun not intended)? no, that's just applying some common sense.
Parent's point, obviously, is that sometime we do things that we don't like because the consequences of not doing them are even more unpleasant. In the case of taxes, the alternative of going to jail is more unpleasant than paying.
And I continue to breath because dying a slow, painful death is unpleasant, but if I said that not earning as much money is the same as denying me oxygen that'd be monumentally stupid. To draw something useful from comparisons, the items or situations being compared have at least to be similar.
Your point that there are no laws forcing Apple to add DRM would only be relevant if parent was trying to argue that Apple had no choice but to add DRM; and there's nothing in his post to indicate that he's trying to argue that.
The fact that he compared it to a situation where you're legally forced to comply, and that there was nothing in his post to indicate that he was aware of that difference doesn't help that case.
He's simply pointing out that sometimes people do things that they don't like, so Apple adding DRM doesn't prove that Jobs was lying when he said that he doesn't like DRM.
Point given, but based on this we can't trust what Jobs says at all, then. If all it takes is a light push from our friends at the RIAA and MPAA to make him go against his "principles", then he has none at all.