It depends on the person. Me, I've played Devil May Cry 4, yet I'm perfectly happy playing Jazz Jackrabbit (if you haven't played it, it runs on DOS, 'nuff said), and the fact that I've finished Half-Life Episode 2 doesn't prevent me from enjoying a nice time in DooM or Duke Nukem 3D.
Artistic design is much more important than the technical prowess of the graphics, for me, but even that won't stop me from enjoying a game if the gameplay is good (see also: Far Cry).
While for me, Opera is noticeably faster on my "ancient" P3 1.1 Ghz laptop with it's "miserable" 256 MBs of RAM, and I've never used an extension other than Flashblock, the functionality of which has been easily replicated in my case simply by not installing flash in the first place.
Yeah, it's closed-source, but IMHO Opera is the best example of how a well-behaving closed-source company should be, unlike a certain fruity-flavored company loved by half of Slashdot, so in their case I'm willing to make an exception for my "Free Software whenever I can" policy.
A post can be both flamebait and true as mine was.
True, but the proper mod for those kinds of posts is -1, Flamebait, sorry. Check the moderation guidelines if you don't believe me.
The issue here is that Google is a company and a company makes money by catering to LARGE groups of people. This is why they're willing to develop for Windows and Mac OS X and not so much for Linux. Emphasis on the LARGE in large groups of people there.
And OSX's marketshare is anything but "LARGE". Yes, it's bigger than Linux's, but only barely, specially outside the USA.
The problem with some Linux users is that they cannot see that time has a price value too. If you severely undervalue your time at $5 an hour, then you have about 40 hours to tinker with Linux and get it running properly before it would have made more sense to just shell out the money for a copy of Windows. Lets say you go for a Mac instead, with a MacBook at $1000 that gives you 400 hours to get your Linux install working properly. Thats 16 days worth of time. I can assure you that there are folks who have spent 16 MONTHS trying to get Linux to do what a Windows running PC or Mac can do pretty much out of the box.
You're basing your argument on two false assumptions: first, that Linux always requires post-install configuration and troubleshooting, and second, that neither Windows nor Mac do. Ohh yeah, and also that a MacBook costs only $1000, which is pretty much false outside the US, unless you want a second-hand G4.
Lets say you go for a Mac instead, with a MacBook at $1000 that gives you 400 hours to get your Linux install working properly. Thats 16 days worth of time. I can assure you that there are folks who have spent 16 MONTHS trying to get Linux to do what a Windows running PC or Mac can do pretty much out of the box.
And again, you're assuming that Windows and Mac will do everything you need them to do out of the box, which unless your name is Bill Gates or Steve Jobs is simply not true 99.99% of the time.
Of course if you were smart enough to realize any of this you wouldn't be using Linux in the first place, now would you?
Ohhh, name-calling, clever. I'll leave you alone to ponder about what it says about yourself, 'kay?
Why in the fucking world was the above post modded +4 Insightful? Other than the fact that it praises Apple, of course.
First, "superior" is in the eye of the beholder. Personally I'd rather have Linux+Xfce than OSX, even without considering the price difference, but I don't go around claiming it's inherently "superior" (other than for me). And classifying Linux developers as "childish" and Mac's as "mature" is a sure sign of *way* too much kool-aid.
Mods: just because a post praises your favorite OS doesn't mean it's not flamebait.
I don't get too many people copying photos from my site, but that doesn't mean there aren't a lot of Ansel Adams' photos scattered around the net in violation of copyright.
Let us assume that every single photo by Ansel Adams is still under copyright all around the world (which it isn't). Now, *how* many people who've downloaded a "pirated" version of one of his photos, or worse, have decided to post in a forum or blog a 600x450 crop of one, do you think would've bought one of his prints instead? I mean, seriously now.
Other than that, yeah, you're right, but considering his blog post was a poorly-thought rant against, well, I don't even know whether he was ranting against DRM-free eBooks, free-as-in-beer eBooks, or simply against people who donate pitiful amounts through PayPal. Seriously, with a story like this, knee-jerk comments are all he deserves.
Nope, a PS2 because they cost half of what a Wii does, the games cost less than half of what a Wii game does, and if we compare it against the Xbox360 or the PS3, the ratio becomes much, *much* worse for the "current-gen".
And yeah, for MMORPGs you're pretty much stuck in Windows-land, but the investment of time and money that they demand is so huge that I simply don't even consider them at all.
Well, I've seen countless of "Canon free"-style articles in photography websites, particularly after the release of the Nikon D3. It just so happens that when a particular company's products have controlled a given market for years, young professionals begin to think that said company's products are a "necessity" for, well, being a professional, and it just so happens that many other young professionals enjoy proving them wrong.
Same thing for "Adobe-free" (or at least, Photoshop-free), though it's not as common... perhaps in websites about graphic design? and Samsung, well, I don't know any market that they dominate to the extent that Microsoft does, so dunno where to search.
You may have a point with respect to Linux vs Windows for games, but in my experience Windows gaming is *still* way too trouble for what it's worth. I used to use Linux as my primary desktop with a Windows partition for the odd game or two, but after a while I grew tired of the old "install driver, reboot, install driver, reboot" dance, dealing with "helper" applications cluttering my taskbar, the endless DRM, etc.
But when I had to download an hex editor to manually edit a.DLL file just to get a fucking game to run on my computer, I simply went and bought myself a PS2. Easier, faster, with a huge library of games, and the only genre which is lacking on consoles (FPSs) just happens to be the one area in which Linux is able to match Windows. End result? haven't touched Windows in a *long* time, and my life is much happier and simpler now.
Seriously, if you want games, get a PS2. Wave those driver problems and idiotic DRM apps goodbye, and hopefully to Windows too in the process.
Dunno about KDE, but GNOME runs just fine without either Epiphany or Firefox. Except, of course, for the whole "not being able to access the web" and all that, but I guess you could install Opera if you wanted to prove your point.
But, where's the Windows (or OSX) equivalent of "apt-get --purge remove firefox" for IE and Safari? keep in mind that when I say "remove" I mean "remove", not just "erase the pretty icon".
Why don't you try Abiword instead, then? OO.o, like MS Office itself, aims to be an "everything but the kitchen sink"-style suite, whereas Abiword (and Gnumeric, for spreadsheets) try only to be a good word processor.
Personally though, I prefer LaTeX. Faster and more intuitive once you get the hang of it, and *much*, *MUCH* better than Word or anything else like it when you have to deal with mathematical formulas, which in my case is "most of the time", being a math student and all that.
Wow, so basically your argument is "but people can do everything with other languages that they currently do with Python"? here's some news: you could apply that argument to *any* language over the face of the planet. Java? why not C#? Tcl, Lua, Javascript? why not Python, Ruby or Perl? C++? why not Obj-C? C? don't you fucking know Assembly?
Personally, I prefer Python and Ruby over Tcl, Lua or shell script due to the ease in which I can understand code written on them (mine included). I understand that for some people, LISP is the ultimate in language design, while others have trouble visualizing the design of anything that's not written in pure C. Well, I'm not one of them, and if that bothers you, too bad.
Though being a user of both languages, it does surprise me how you're able to call Python "bloated" right after praising Java, but oh well... if I'm worried about bloat, I'll write the thing in Pascal anyways. Much nicer than C for that;)
The bad guys in this situation, the guys crossing the line, the guys violating their agreements... is the Red Cross.
No, the bad guys here are the American Red Cross for trying to profit from an internationally-used symbol for medical care and hope, Johnson & Johnson for suing the ARC over the trademark they hold for said internationally-used symbol, *and* the US Government for granting J&J said trademark in the first place, going against a 100-years-old international treaty in the process.
There's no such thing as a "good guy" here, people.
Websites, like all things marketing-related, should be done with regards to those for whom you're trying to cater, which isn't always the largest population. Or, to put it more bluntly, anyone ignorant enough not to know the architecture they needis someone who shouldn't be using Debian in the first place, and I say this as a happy (x)Ubuntu user.
And, given that Debian doesn't rely on customers to survive, but rather on volunteers donating their time to the project, I'd say that their social contract *is* the most important thing they have on their website, maybe second only to the distribution itself, since it's the main attractive the distribution has for working on it.
They didn't want to go back to three major platforms in the console arena either, but the free market has a way of not giving a shit about that when it's free of the constrains of an abusive monopolist.
Too bad for you, most people who need an image editor have not chosen the free GIMP and use Photoshop instead.
I'd argue that most people using Photoshop today haven't even heard of TheGIMP.
Like I say, I prefer GIMP for my usage, but you simply cannot for a second pretend that actual professionals doing actual work could use it. The lack of CMYK support is one of the most common complaints, even on here.
Fair point, but "actual professionals doing actual work" *isn't* an apt description for most of the people using Photoshop today. I'd bet most Photoshop users don't even know what CYMK is, let alone need it.
People are moving, but a lot slower than you'd like - the OS that's gained the most ground recently is Vista, and from my family's use of it (Home Basic) on their laptop I personally can't see where the problem is.
Lucky them, but after using Eclipse on a friend's laptop with 1 GB of RAM and waiting *seconds* for the program to respond to a single keypress, I can see the problem perfectly. Incidentally, I wonder, how well does Photoshop run on a Vista-using machine with "only" 1 GB of RAM or so? 'cause a sluggish RAM-consuming behemoth running a sluggish RAM-consuming behemoth doesn't strike me as the best of ideas...
But if the software isn't written for the users, what is it written for? If it is just written purely for the author's use, then don't bother creating a community.
Actually from what I've seen, even in the closed-source world (scratch that, *specially* in the closed-source world), software developers tend to create communities not out of the goodwill of their hearts and/or an effort to give their labor to "the greater good" or something, but rather simply to lighten the number of support requests they get. Writing software is much easier when it's your users themselves who deal with the stupid n00bish questions instead of yourself.
Seriously, it was right to fork Pidgin, the feature *is* stupid and making it obligatory is even worse, but that's just it. What the Pidgin developers did may have been stupid, but it certainly wasn't inmoral, they haven't betrayed the community or anything like that. They were perfectly within their (legal and moral) rights to make the changes, just as the community was perfectly within their (legal and moral) rights to fork it and change it back.
So, sign me up to test the fork, just leave out all the high-school drama, 'kay?
She has repeatedly confirmed that no one in Venezuela would ever use the word "Americano" for anyone other than an American. In fact, that's the word she says that is preferred for Americans. And her parents were diplomats in Venezuela as well, so I suspect her usage of the word might carry a lot of proof, as I'd imagine being a daughter of diplomats, she'd have been using the "correct" words (or, at least, know what the "correct" words are).
I'd imagine diplomats are used to doing what's "politically correct" instead of using more "proper" words, and given the US' abuse on their political speeches of the word "american" to refer to themselves, as well as their status in the political world, it's no surprise that they'd bow to the US' traditions instead of local ones.
I'm personally from Chile, and the word "americano" is seldom used here in any context, though my friends from Spain are a bit more liberal in it's use. What's more, in all english-speaking TV series and movies, whenever a character uses the word "american" to refer to the US' citizens, it's almost always translated as "estadounidense", never "americano".
My one final complaint is the people who keep saying "America" is a continent. No, it is not, and saying otherwise reveals a fundamental ignorance about geography. The relevant continents in Western Hemisphere are North and South America. America is the block of two continents at best.
So, how many continents are there, then? because Wikipedia states that what's a continent is defined by convention, and as such varies from place to place. We might as well call you ignorant of world history if you say that "America" is a country, given the word's roots, but calling you ignorant just because things are taught differently in your country would be a bit arrogant, wouldn't it?
Personally, I'd rather refer to "America" as a single continent, reserve the word "american" to refer to the people of such continent, and refer to US citizens as, well, "US citizens", because a direct translation of the term "estadounidense" sounds kinda stupid, IMHO, but that's just me, and if you wanna call US citizens "americans" and "America" to the US, feel free, just don't go around calling everyone else who doesn't understand, or follow that convention "ignorant", it just makes you look like an ass.
It depends on your definition of "users", too. If a company has a big, expensive server running AIX serving all of their 10000 employees, does that count as 1 or 10000 AIX users?
if the former, yeah, OSX is the most widely-used UNIX, but if the latter I do have my doubts.
Just a quick question out of curiosity: do Libertarians want the responsabilities of protecting themselves from being killed for themselves? if they do, what's precisely the difference between Anarchism and Libertarianism? and if they don't, who decides where the line stands between "killing somebody" and "letting somebody else die"?
I don't think that being Pro Open Source is necessarily about being against having to pay per se, but it's certainly against having to pay *per user*.
How many people use TheGIMP for example? I'll tell you straight away that it's a *lot* more than the number of downloads from ftp.gimp.org, so how could they even know how much to pay for per-user licensing schemes, if they wanted to do so?
And of course, most if not all those "RAND" licenses include per-user payments ("RAND" in quotes because whether they're reasonable is highly debatable).
Everybody says I'm nuts... but you just wait... Well, one imagines that if you *are* nuts, you have plenty to worry about from squirrels as it is, y'know, with the whole "nut-searching sense of smell", "specialized nut-chewing teeth" and all that stuff.
To quote yourself:
Bullshit. Double bullshit. I used to use those green and amber monochromatic monitors when I was a kid, and I still remember the nausea they gave me if I used them for more than half an hour. Switching from B&W to color monitors didn't make me *anywhere* near as happy as switching from those POS to a proper, black-and-almighty-fucking-white monochromatic monitor did.
Different for you? sweet, but don't pretend your experience applies to everybody else. Many of us despise those color schemes specifically because we were forced to use them before.
Re:Slashdot is getting slow
on
The DIY Tank
·
· Score: 2, Funny
That's because proper editing and source-checking takes time, and that's something that needs to be done for *all* stories, so stop pressuring the editors unless you want Slashdot's normally excellent quality standards to drop.
Slashdot Mirror
No, it isn't.
It depends on the person. Me, I've played Devil May Cry 4, yet I'm perfectly happy playing Jazz Jackrabbit (if you haven't played it, it runs on DOS, 'nuff said), and the fact that I've finished Half-Life Episode 2 doesn't prevent me from enjoying a nice time in DooM or Duke Nukem 3D.
Artistic design is much more important than the technical prowess of the graphics, for me, but even that won't stop me from enjoying a game if the gameplay is good (see also: Far Cry).
While for me, Opera is noticeably faster on my "ancient" P3 1.1 Ghz laptop with it's "miserable" 256 MBs of RAM, and I've never used an extension other than Flashblock, the functionality of which has been easily replicated in my case simply by not installing flash in the first place.
Yeah, it's closed-source, but IMHO Opera is the best example of how a well-behaving closed-source company should be, unlike a certain fruity-flavored company loved by half of Slashdot, so in their case I'm willing to make an exception for my "Free Software whenever I can" policy.
True, but the proper mod for those kinds of posts is -1, Flamebait, sorry. Check the moderation guidelines if you don't believe me.
The issue here is that Google is a company and a company makes money by catering to LARGE groups of people. This is why they're willing to develop for Windows and Mac OS X and not so much for Linux. Emphasis on the LARGE in large groups of people there.And OSX's marketshare is anything but "LARGE". Yes, it's bigger than Linux's, but only barely, specially outside the USA.
The problem with some Linux users is that they cannot see that time has a price value too. If you severely undervalue your time at $5 an hour, then you have about 40 hours to tinker with Linux and get it running properly before it would have made more sense to just shell out the money for a copy of Windows. Lets say you go for a Mac instead, with a MacBook at $1000 that gives you 400 hours to get your Linux install working properly. Thats 16 days worth of time. I can assure you that there are folks who have spent 16 MONTHS trying to get Linux to do what a Windows running PC or Mac can do pretty much out of the box.You're basing your argument on two false assumptions: first, that Linux always requires post-install configuration and troubleshooting, and second, that neither Windows nor Mac do. Ohh yeah, and also that a MacBook costs only $1000, which is pretty much false outside the US, unless you want a second-hand G4.
Lets say you go for a Mac instead, with a MacBook at $1000 that gives you 400 hours to get your Linux install working properly. Thats 16 days worth of time. I can assure you that there are folks who have spent 16 MONTHS trying to get Linux to do what a Windows running PC or Mac can do pretty much out of the box.And again, you're assuming that Windows and Mac will do everything you need them to do out of the box, which unless your name is Bill Gates or Steve Jobs is simply not true 99.99% of the time.
Of course if you were smart enough to realize any of this you wouldn't be using Linux in the first place, now would you?Ohhh, name-calling, clever. I'll leave you alone to ponder about what it says about yourself, 'kay?
Why in the fucking world was the above post modded +4 Insightful? Other than the fact that it praises Apple, of course.
First, "superior" is in the eye of the beholder. Personally I'd rather have Linux+Xfce than OSX, even without considering the price difference, but I don't go around claiming it's inherently "superior" (other than for me). And classifying Linux developers as "childish" and Mac's as "mature" is a sure sign of *way* too much kool-aid.
Mods: just because a post praises your favorite OS doesn't mean it's not flamebait.
Let us assume that every single photo by Ansel Adams is still under copyright all around the world (which it isn't). Now, *how* many people who've downloaded a "pirated" version of one of his photos, or worse, have decided to post in a forum or blog a 600x450 crop of one, do you think would've bought one of his prints instead? I mean, seriously now.
Other than that, yeah, you're right, but considering his blog post was a poorly-thought rant against, well, I don't even know whether he was ranting against DRM-free eBooks, free-as-in-beer eBooks, or simply against people who donate pitiful amounts through PayPal. Seriously, with a story like this, knee-jerk comments are all he deserves.
Nope, a PS2 because they cost half of what a Wii does, the games cost less than half of what a Wii game does, and if we compare it against the Xbox360 or the PS3, the ratio becomes much, *much* worse for the "current-gen".
And yeah, for MMORPGs you're pretty much stuck in Windows-land, but the investment of time and money that they demand is so huge that I simply don't even consider them at all.
Well, I've seen countless of "Canon free"-style articles in photography websites, particularly after the release of the Nikon D3. It just so happens that when a particular company's products have controlled a given market for years, young professionals begin to think that said company's products are a "necessity" for, well, being a professional, and it just so happens that many other young professionals enjoy proving them wrong.
Same thing for "Adobe-free" (or at least, Photoshop-free), though it's not as common... perhaps in websites about graphic design? and Samsung, well, I don't know any market that they dominate to the extent that Microsoft does, so dunno where to search.
You may have a point with respect to Linux vs Windows for games, but in my experience Windows gaming is *still* way too trouble for what it's worth. I used to use Linux as my primary desktop with a Windows partition for the odd game or two, but after a while I grew tired of the old "install driver, reboot, install driver, reboot" dance, dealing with "helper" applications cluttering my taskbar, the endless DRM, etc.
.DLL file just to get a fucking game to run on my computer, I simply went and bought myself a PS2. Easier, faster, with a huge library of games, and the only genre which is lacking on consoles (FPSs) just happens to be the one area in which Linux is able to match Windows. End result? haven't touched Windows in a *long* time, and my life is much happier and simpler now.
But when I had to download an hex editor to manually edit a
Seriously, if you want games, get a PS2. Wave those driver problems and idiotic DRM apps goodbye, and hopefully to Windows too in the process.
Dunno about KDE, but GNOME runs just fine without either Epiphany or Firefox. Except, of course, for the whole "not being able to access the web" and all that, but I guess you could install Opera if you wanted to prove your point.
But, where's the Windows (or OSX) equivalent of "apt-get --purge remove firefox" for IE and Safari? keep in mind that when I say "remove" I mean "remove", not just "erase the pretty icon".
Why don't you try Abiword instead, then? OO.o, like MS Office itself, aims to be an "everything but the kitchen sink"-style suite, whereas Abiword (and Gnumeric, for spreadsheets) try only to be a good word processor.
Personally though, I prefer LaTeX. Faster and more intuitive once you get the hang of it, and *much*, *MUCH* better than Word or anything else like it when you have to deal with mathematical formulas, which in my case is "most of the time", being a math student and all that.
Wow, so basically your argument is "but people can do everything with other languages that they currently do with Python"? here's some news: you could apply that argument to *any* language over the face of the planet. Java? why not C#? Tcl, Lua, Javascript? why not Python, Ruby or Perl? C++? why not Obj-C? C? don't you fucking know Assembly?
;)
Personally, I prefer Python and Ruby over Tcl, Lua or shell script due to the ease in which I can understand code written on them (mine included). I understand that for some people, LISP is the ultimate in language design, while others have trouble visualizing the design of anything that's not written in pure C. Well, I'm not one of them, and if that bothers you, too bad.
Though being a user of both languages, it does surprise me how you're able to call Python "bloated" right after praising Java, but oh well... if I'm worried about bloat, I'll write the thing in Pascal anyways. Much nicer than C for that
No, the bad guys here are the American Red Cross for trying to profit from an internationally-used symbol for medical care and hope, Johnson & Johnson for suing the ARC over the trademark they hold for said internationally-used symbol, *and* the US Government for granting J&J said trademark in the first place, going against a 100-years-old international treaty in the process.
There's no such thing as a "good guy" here, people.
Websites, like all things marketing-related, should be done with regards to those for whom you're trying to cater, which isn't always the largest population. Or, to put it more bluntly, anyone ignorant enough not to know the architecture they needis someone who shouldn't be using Debian in the first place, and I say this as a happy (x)Ubuntu user.
And, given that Debian doesn't rely on customers to survive, but rather on volunteers donating their time to the project, I'd say that their social contract *is* the most important thing they have on their website, maybe second only to the distribution itself, since it's the main attractive the distribution has for working on it.
They didn't want to go back to three major platforms in the console arena either, but the free market has a way of not giving a shit about that when it's free of the constrains of an abusive monopolist.
I'd argue that most people using Photoshop today haven't even heard of TheGIMP.
Like I say, I prefer GIMP for my usage, but you simply cannot for a second pretend that actual professionals doing actual work could use it. The lack of CMYK support is one of the most common complaints, even on here.Fair point, but "actual professionals doing actual work" *isn't* an apt description for most of the people using Photoshop today. I'd bet most Photoshop users don't even know what CYMK is, let alone need it.
People are moving, but a lot slower than you'd like - the OS that's gained the most ground recently is Vista, and from my family's use of it (Home Basic) on their laptop I personally can't see where the problem is.Lucky them, but after using Eclipse on a friend's laptop with 1 GB of RAM and waiting *seconds* for the program to respond to a single keypress, I can see the problem perfectly. Incidentally, I wonder, how well does Photoshop run on a Vista-using machine with "only" 1 GB of RAM or so? 'cause a sluggish RAM-consuming behemoth running a sluggish RAM-consuming behemoth doesn't strike me as the best of ideas...
Actually from what I've seen, even in the closed-source world (scratch that, *specially* in the closed-source world), software developers tend to create communities not out of the goodwill of their hearts and/or an effort to give their labor to "the greater good" or something, but rather simply to lighten the number of support requests they get. Writing software is much easier when it's your users themselves who deal with the stupid n00bish questions instead of yourself.
Seriously, it was right to fork Pidgin, the feature *is* stupid and making it obligatory is even worse, but that's just it. What the Pidgin developers did may have been stupid, but it certainly wasn't inmoral, they haven't betrayed the community or anything like that. They were perfectly within their (legal and moral) rights to make the changes, just as the community was perfectly within their (legal and moral) rights to fork it and change it back.
So, sign me up to test the fork, just leave out all the high-school drama, 'kay?
I'd imagine diplomats are used to doing what's "politically correct" instead of using more "proper" words, and given the US' abuse on their political speeches of the word "american" to refer to themselves, as well as their status in the political world, it's no surprise that they'd bow to the US' traditions instead of local ones.
I'm personally from Chile, and the word "americano" is seldom used here in any context, though my friends from Spain are a bit more liberal in it's use. What's more, in all english-speaking TV series and movies, whenever a character uses the word "american" to refer to the US' citizens, it's almost always translated as "estadounidense", never "americano".
My one final complaint is the people who keep saying "America" is a continent. No, it is not, and saying otherwise reveals a fundamental ignorance about geography. The relevant continents in Western Hemisphere are North and South America. America is the block of two continents at best.So, how many continents are there, then? because Wikipedia states that what's a continent is defined by convention, and as such varies from place to place. We might as well call you ignorant of world history if you say that "America" is a country, given the word's roots, but calling you ignorant just because things are taught differently in your country would be a bit arrogant, wouldn't it?
Personally, I'd rather refer to "America" as a single continent, reserve the word "american" to refer to the people of such continent, and refer to US citizens as, well, "US citizens", because a direct translation of the term "estadounidense" sounds kinda stupid, IMHO, but that's just me, and if you wanna call US citizens "americans" and "America" to the US, feel free, just don't go around calling everyone else who doesn't understand, or follow that convention "ignorant", it just makes you look like an ass.
It depends on your definition of "users", too. If a company has a big, expensive server running AIX serving all of their 10000 employees, does that count as 1 or 10000 AIX users?
if the former, yeah, OSX is the most widely-used UNIX, but if the latter I do have my doubts.
Umm, closed-source?
Just a quick question out of curiosity: do Libertarians want the responsabilities of protecting themselves from being killed for themselves? if they do, what's precisely the difference between Anarchism and Libertarianism? and if they don't, who decides where the line stands between "killing somebody" and "letting somebody else die"?
I don't think that being Pro Open Source is necessarily about being against having to pay per se, but it's certainly against having to pay *per user*.
How many people use TheGIMP for example? I'll tell you straight away that it's a *lot* more than the number of downloads from ftp.gimp.org, so how could they even know how much to pay for per-user licensing schemes, if they wanted to do so?
And of course, most if not all those "RAND" licenses include per-user payments ("RAND" in quotes because whether they're reasonable is highly debatable).
Double bullshit. I used to use those green and amber monochromatic monitors when I was a kid, and I still remember the nausea they gave me if I used them for more than half an hour. Switching from B&W to color monitors didn't make me *anywhere* near as happy as switching from those POS to a proper, black-and-almighty-fucking-white monochromatic monitor did.
Different for you? sweet, but don't pretend your experience applies to everybody else. Many of us despise those color schemes specifically because we were forced to use them before.
That's because proper editing and source-checking takes time, and that's something that needs to be done for *all* stories, so stop pressuring the editors unless you want Slashdot's normally excellent quality standards to drop.