I agree whole heartedly. NASA, back in its early days, was a great program. Today, it needs to be scrapped. We keep funneling taxpayer dollars into a system that has been going backwards since before they space shuttle program was ever even started. I can't even begin to fathom why our government wants to keep dumping money into this system, when they could just promise rewards as Pournelle suggests, and watch the ingenuity of competitive industry take its course.
I find the idea of a 13.3", 5.2 pound laptop not being ultra portable amusing. But then, I carry around a 17", 10 pound laptop, so I guess it's a matter of perspective.
I hear that. I bought a compaq last summer with a 19" screen. The thing is a monster. I bought it to use so I could have the same computer at home as I do at school, and occasionally take it places when I need it. Now I wish I'd bought a smaller (cheaper) laptop and built a cheap desktop. The desktop would be there when I need power, the laptop when I need portability. Trying to combine the two is relatively useless.
If I ever come up with a spare $1,049 (hooray for student discounts) I'll probably spring for one of these new MacBooks and leave my Compaq on the desk.
Yes, but since Apple lost the law suit you mention, it's more likely that they believe interfaces cannot be legally owned. That case shows that a precedent has been set in the courts, and while the precedent may have worked against Apple last time, if it's upheld, it will work for them this time.
I've had hardware for which I had to go and hunt down Windows drivers. I had to download drivers for my printer (which is supposed to be plug n play), a laptop wireless card, and a webcam I bought online. Of course Windows drivers exist for the hardware, but that doesn't mean they're easy to find.
On the other hand when I installed Ubuntu, my wireless card just worked, my printer installation was easy, and getting the webcam working required one download that was relatively easy to find. I've had other things such as TV tuners that were also quick to install in Linux, despite the given drivers being for windows.
For both Windows and Linux I've had to do some hunting for drivers, but I've gotten every device working under both systems.
Ubuntu also takes care of "Package Hell." Very rarely do I come across something I want to install that is not in Ubuntu's repositories. And anything that's in the repositories automatically downloads any dependencies (which will also be in the repository). Finding software just requires a search in synaptic package manager. Once you've found what you want installation or removal is a breeze. Every once in a while I come up with something that isn't in the Ubuntu repositories, but a quick search often gives me an unofficial repository that has what I'm looking for. I don't think I have anything installed that didn't come from a repository. Other linux distros have similar systems. Ubuntu uses the system created by Debian, but I know Fedora Core has a system as does Mandriva. Gentoo uses the portage system. Very rarely have I had problems that involved lacking dependencies, and they were almost always easy to resolve.
As far as the original question, "Can Ordinary PC Users Ditch Windows for Linux?" My answer is "yes, if they're willing to try." Switching to Linux is not trivial, any more than switching to a Mac is trivial. There are some learning curves, but once you get used to the different file system and differences in GUIs the basic functions are pretty easy to work with.
When you step in your car it will automatically adjust the seats, tune your 6 presets, adjust the volumes, load your phone number list into the car phone, queue your MP3s
My dad has a friend whose car adjusts seats and mirrors (don't know about MP3s), except it uses the wireless remote used to unlock the door instead of a chip implanted in his body. When his wife uses her remote, it readjusts for her. And in the scenario that one person unlocks the car and the other is going to drive, it double checks the key.
I do think a lot of the Sci-Fi-esque implications of this are pretty cool, but I think it could be done just as easily and less Orwellian with something like a watch instead of a chip implanted in your body.
It should have negative connotations. Sharing has positive connotations. You teach your kids to share, not to cop out of paying for a CD or movie. Do you think the RIAA and MPAA view downloading movies and music as "sharing?"
A sibling post suggested using the words "Copyright infringement." That has "negative and unhelpful connotations" as well, but thats exactly what it is.
I said it was a free alternative to Windows XP MCE, not a 100% cost free way to build a DVR. Yahoo! isn't forcing anyone into building a DVR, they're just providing what looks to be decent software for someone looking to do so.
I agree with the bit about the phone, but your other points aren't very good.
The TV portion of Yahoo! go looks to me to be a free (lower case 'f') alternative to Windows XP MCE. I don't think the idea is for people to think "Hey, that looks like a neat tool, I'll download it and play with it." It's for people who are somewhat serious about starting a media center PC but don't want to spend money on a new system (and you can't buy MCE without hardware because of Microsoft's licensing). I don't get the impression that they're tring to market this to everyone who has a computer, just people who already plan to have a PC near a TV and a video card that can connect to their TV. That said, I'm keeping my MythBox.
As far as the PC portion of Yahoo! Go, I actually find the Yahoo! Widget Engine (the basis for Yahoo! Go PC) to be a useful application. My desktop isn't cluttered with Yahoo's tool until I press F8. If you lock all of your widgets to the Heads Up Display, you can get the tools to appear quickly when you need them, and then disappear as soon as your done. I'd hardly call it being cluttered with Yahoo's tool. Also, Yahoo's Widget Engine works on Macs as well, not just windows. Yes, Linux gets left out, but there are similar tools available.
Now, how would you use all those wonderful pieces of technology without Yahoo! Go? There are certainly other options, but Yahoo! Go looks to me like it will be a simple way for the average Joe to get more out of their phone, TV, and PC.
There are quite a few legitimate uses of file sharing. Bit Torrent, for example, was designed to take the load off of web servers, not as a piracy tool. Yes it gets abused, probably more than it gets used legitimately (especially on college campuses), but I find BitTorrent to be great for getting ISOs of Linux distributions without burdening the the creator of the distro. There's no reason that ought to be banned.
But perhaps a more significant file sharing program comes built into Windows. The Windows file share and samba allow people to share data between their own computers. If my university blocked samba shares I would be greatly inconvenienced. My main computer is a laptop that runs windows. It has a small hard drive, so I keep most of my files on my Linux box via a samba share. The Linux box isn't powerful enough to replace my laptop, it's just there to provide storage space. I'm not sharing my files with the world, or even a few other people on campus, so the RIAA has no right to tell me (or my university) that I can't share files between my own computers.
As much as the RIAA pisses me off, I think the pirates are largely to blame. If some people weren't always trying to get copyrighted works without paying for them, the media producers wouldn't have nearly as many excuses to bind users to certain platforms in order to use the media.
I'm not a pirate. I haven't illegally downloaded anything in at least 6 years, and at that time the quality of pirated media was lower than what you can get for money. Consequently, everything I pirated in middle school has either been replaced by legitimate copies, or discarded.
As I say, I'm not a pirate. I'm a legitimate consumer whose pissed because I can't legally play DVDs on my Linux box, and the $350 I have invested in content from the iTunes music store keeps me tied to Windows. My family falls into the HD early adopter category, and the HD Television and Projector we purchased don't meet the standards set by HDDVD and BluRay players. I'm not trying to justify piracy. In my mind piracy gave the recording industries the opportunity to screw legitimate consumers like myself. I just wish the recording industry would come to realize that their "anti-piracy" tactics go further to promote piracy than to discourage it. If they ever get that message (which I'm not counting on), maybe everyone will be able to get a fair deal.
It's getting to the point where one advantage of pirating a movie instead of paying for it is that you can actually get a better quality product by pirating it. In an era when the high quality movie players downgrade the quality to older sources, and you can only play your DVD in certain parts of the world, a pirated DVD offers more flexibility.
The same goes for music. If you're limited as to where you can play your music for buying at an online music store, it suddenly seems more advantageous to start pirating music, so you can play it on an uncertified MP3 player or an operating system that doesn't have DRM support.
If the movie and music industries want to fight piracy, they're going to have to provide a product that is at least as good as what you can get by pirating.
Different distros may have different ideas of how to handle dependencies package distribution and dependencies. I'm a relative noob to Linux, and I already know that debian uses one kind of package, gentoo another, fedora another, and there are several other methods of distributing. I think part of the problem is that each of these distribution techniques has its own advantages. You're not going to get people who use Gentoo to download and use binaries (at least not for everything), and you're not going to get people who use Ubuntu to compile everything they want to install.
Not wanting to meet someone else's standard may lead to a lack of ability to maintain dependencies, but that doesn't mean the method of distribution is necessarily low quality.
So apparently this technology works by playing the same articles commercials repeatedly with no actual content, so if you want to get any use of your slashdot television your only option is to watch the same thing over and over.
If eBay wants to fight google, they should stop being one of google's biggest advertisers. Search for any noun on google, you get an ad telling you that it can be found on Google. Example:
A search for George Bush provides:
George Bush
Looking for George Bush?
Find exactly what you want today.
www.eBay.com
A search for Eggs provides:
Eggs
All your favorite collectibles!
Eggs and more -aff
Ebay.com
A search for Milk provides:
Milk
Save on Glass and Glassware!
Milk and more -aff
Ebay.com
In fact, I dare you to find a noun you can search for on google without coming up with an eBay add. As near as I can tell, eBay is Google's single largest advertiser. If they want to hurt google, they should start by cutting off some funding.
Everyone. This is something on the broadcaster's end that somehow doesn't need to interact with your television.
I assume this only works with cable boxes that call home and report what channel you're on, and the broadcaster won't send you a new signal during commercials, but I may be mistaken.
I read this and the first thing to run through my mind was flammable DVDs. A few years back some DVD producers were making DVDs that would expire after a few days, effectively becoming rentals you don't have to return. I saw the headline and I was thinking that with these new DVDs, you could burn them once you had finished with them, perhaps as an attempt to dispose of any evidence.
If the cycle continues it will certainly, without a doubt, lead to the death of us as a civilization, whether we were the cause or not.
Doesn't the term cycle imply that something is cyclical? That term would imply that it will go up for a while, then back down, if the cycle continues. The concern is the cycle not continuing, and the temperature rising continuously. Also, you're implying that without human interference, the temperature would continue rising, unchecked, forever. That's bogus.
If this is part of a natural cycle (which I believe it is from some statistics I've seen of the past 3,000 years), it will continue rising for a while, then whatever has caused the cycles in the past will cause temperature drops.
If this is not part of a natural cycle, but is infact man made (a poorly supported theory), its still likely that whatever checks and balances the Earth has in place will kick in and bring the temperature back down.
The thing most people don't seem to take into consideration when watching the temperature rise is long term history. The statistics I've seen put us right at the average for the past 3,000 years. And warmer isn't necessarily worse. A thousand years ago, Greenland was populated by the vikings and it was very fertile. Good luck getting anything edible to grow there now. The parts of the Earth that would be most greatly effected by global warming have very little land. More land will be fertile if the Earth gets warmer.
You think you're not already being surveiled most of the time? As a sibling post stated, most malls have surveilance cameras, as do banks. Grocery stores, drugs stores, gas stations, other convenience stores frequently have cameras at least monitoring who comes in. This is infrequent at restaurants (at least nicer ones), but in such cases your typically fairly close to other customers who might be watching your or listening to what you say. In cities, there are often cameras at stoplights and other intersections (not so much on the highway). My highschool had security cameras all over the halls. There were a few dead zones, and you weren't on camera in classrooms, but they could identify who was in what classroom at what time.
I typically assume any time I'm in public, I need to watch what I say or do. If a minor goes and gets smashed in a public place, there's a good chance they'll get caught. If someone is sitting at a table at a restaurant and talking about how their boss is a huge ass, there's a possibility, however remote, that someone at a nearby table could be the boss's daughter (seen the twixt commercial?). Anything that happens in private and stays private is another story, but I don't think anyone would present an argument that online social networks are private (with the exception of private or protected posts that some blogs allow). I keep a blog, and I don't put anything on it if there's anyone at all I wouldn't want reading it. I anticipate the possibility of my parents reading my blog, or a future employer, the cops, or anyone else who might take an interest in what I write. I don't consider this detrimental to the material of my blog, I just consider it an aspect of blogs.
Game-Point.net: "There is no website configured at this address."
Isn't that your site?
You say people like me are the reason all these domain squatters exist. How exactly do you figure that? People like me buy a domain I actually want because I can get it at a good price, and use it for my own purposes, even if they are minimal. Someone like me is not going to be supporting a domain squatter by buying a domain for $50,000 and thus encouraging their practice.
You suggest raising the price of a.com to $100/year. That would be a huge hassle to me, having every e-mail address I use on my domains, and I suspect by looking at the parked domain that seems to be your site, it would affect you. Fortunately ICANN seems to respect the individual web hosts, and sets prices reasonably. Eventually we'll see what they decide to do about squatters, hopefully it won't screw over people like myself.
Slashdot Mirror
I agree whole heartedly. NASA, back in its early days, was a great program. Today, it needs to be scrapped. We keep funneling taxpayer dollars into a system that has been going backwards since before they space shuttle program was ever even started. I can't even begin to fathom why our government wants to keep dumping money into this system, when they could just promise rewards as Pournelle suggests, and watch the ingenuity of competitive industry take its course.
I find the idea of a 13.3", 5.2 pound laptop not being ultra portable amusing. But then, I carry around a 17", 10 pound laptop, so I guess it's a matter of perspective.
I can't speak for creative, but the iPod doesn't have an on/off switch.
If I ever come up with a spare $1,049 (hooray for student discounts) I'll probably spring for one of these new MacBooks and leave my Compaq on the desk.
This is more a case of double edged swords.
On the other hand when I installed Ubuntu, my wireless card just worked, my printer installation was easy, and getting the webcam working required one download that was relatively easy to find. I've had other things such as TV tuners that were also quick to install in Linux, despite the given drivers being for windows.
For both Windows and Linux I've had to do some hunting for drivers, but I've gotten every device working under both systems.
Ubuntu also takes care of "Package Hell." Very rarely do I come across something I want to install that is not in Ubuntu's repositories. And anything that's in the repositories automatically downloads any dependencies (which will also be in the repository). Finding software just requires a search in synaptic package manager. Once you've found what you want installation or removal is a breeze. Every once in a while I come up with something that isn't in the Ubuntu repositories, but a quick search often gives me an unofficial repository that has what I'm looking for. I don't think I have anything installed that didn't come from a repository. Other linux distros have similar systems. Ubuntu uses the system created by Debian, but I know Fedora Core has a system as does Mandriva. Gentoo uses the portage system. Very rarely have I had problems that involved lacking dependencies, and they were almost always easy to resolve.
As far as the original question, "Can Ordinary PC Users Ditch Windows for Linux?" My answer is "yes, if they're willing to try." Switching to Linux is not trivial, any more than switching to a Mac is trivial. There are some learning curves, but once you get used to the different file system and differences in GUIs the basic functions are pretty easy to work with.
Rhino records is a label that produces a lot of classic rock albums, as well as some others.
Now you know.
My dad has a friend whose car adjusts seats and mirrors (don't know about MP3s), except it uses the wireless remote used to unlock the door instead of a chip implanted in his body. When his wife uses her remote, it readjusts for her. And in the scenario that one person unlocks the car and the other is going to drive, it double checks the key.
I do think a lot of the Sci-Fi-esque implications of this are pretty cool, but I think it could be done just as easily and less Orwellian with something like a watch instead of a chip implanted in your body.
A sibling post suggested using the words "Copyright infringement." That has "negative and unhelpful connotations" as well, but thats exactly what it is.
My thoughts exactly. Gates couldn't get his hands on $40 billion from selling his stock. A little something called supply and demand.
I said it was a free alternative to Windows XP MCE, not a 100% cost free way to build a DVR. Yahoo! isn't forcing anyone into building a DVR, they're just providing what looks to be decent software for someone looking to do so.
The TV portion of Yahoo! go looks to me to be a free (lower case 'f') alternative to Windows XP MCE. I don't think the idea is for people to think "Hey, that looks like a neat tool, I'll download it and play with it." It's for people who are somewhat serious about starting a media center PC but don't want to spend money on a new system (and you can't buy MCE without hardware because of Microsoft's licensing). I don't get the impression that they're tring to market this to everyone who has a computer, just people who already plan to have a PC near a TV and a video card that can connect to their TV. That said, I'm keeping my MythBox.
As far as the PC portion of Yahoo! Go, I actually find the Yahoo! Widget Engine (the basis for Yahoo! Go PC) to be a useful application. My desktop isn't cluttered with Yahoo's tool until I press F8. If you lock all of your widgets to the Heads Up Display, you can get the tools to appear quickly when you need them, and then disappear as soon as your done. I'd hardly call it being cluttered with Yahoo's tool. Also, Yahoo's Widget Engine works on Macs as well, not just windows. Yes, Linux gets left out, but there are similar tools available.
Now, how would you use all those wonderful pieces of technology without Yahoo! Go? There are certainly other options, but Yahoo! Go looks to me like it will be a simple way for the average Joe to get more out of their phone, TV, and PC.
But perhaps a more significant file sharing program comes built into Windows. The Windows file share and samba allow people to share data between their own computers. If my university blocked samba shares I would be greatly inconvenienced. My main computer is a laptop that runs windows. It has a small hard drive, so I keep most of my files on my Linux box via a samba share. The Linux box isn't powerful enough to replace my laptop, it's just there to provide storage space. I'm not sharing my files with the world, or even a few other people on campus, so the RIAA has no right to tell me (or my university) that I can't share files between my own computers.
As much as the RIAA pisses me off, I think the pirates are largely to blame. If some people weren't always trying to get copyrighted works without paying for them, the media producers wouldn't have nearly as many excuses to bind users to certain platforms in order to use the media.
And if they did, would they be anywhere near small enough to be called "nano"?
As I say, I'm not a pirate. I'm a legitimate consumer whose pissed because I can't legally play DVDs on my Linux box, and the $350 I have invested in content from the iTunes music store keeps me tied to Windows. My family falls into the HD early adopter category, and the HD Television and Projector we purchased don't meet the standards set by HDDVD and BluRay players. I'm not trying to justify piracy. In my mind piracy gave the recording industries the opportunity to screw legitimate consumers like myself. I just wish the recording industry would come to realize that their "anti-piracy" tactics go further to promote piracy than to discourage it. If they ever get that message (which I'm not counting on), maybe everyone will be able to get a fair deal.
The same goes for music. If you're limited as to where you can play your music for buying at an online music store, it suddenly seems more advantageous to start pirating music, so you can play it on an uncertified MP3 player or an operating system that doesn't have DRM support.
If the movie and music industries want to fight piracy, they're going to have to provide a product that is at least as good as what you can get by pirating.
Not wanting to meet someone else's standard may lead to a lack of ability to maintain dependencies, but that doesn't mean the method of distribution is necessarily low quality.
So apparently this technology works by playing the same articles commercials repeatedly with no actual content, so if you want to get any use of your slashdot television your only option is to watch the same thing over and over.
A search for George Bush provides:
George Bush
Looking for George Bush?
Find exactly what you want today.
www.eBay.com
A search for Eggs provides:
Eggs
All your favorite collectibles!
Eggs and more -aff
Ebay.com
A search for Milk provides:
Milk
Save on Glass and Glassware!
Milk and more -aff
Ebay.com
In fact, I dare you to find a noun you can search for on google without coming up with an eBay add. As near as I can tell, eBay is Google's single largest advertiser. If they want to hurt google, they should start by cutting off some funding.
I assume this only works with cable boxes that call home and report what channel you're on, and the broadcaster won't send you a new signal during commercials, but I may be mistaken.
Microsoft joins the OpenDocument alliance.
I read this and the first thing to run through my mind was flammable DVDs. A few years back some DVD producers were making DVDs that would expire after a few days, effectively becoming rentals you don't have to return. I saw the headline and I was thinking that with these new DVDs, you could burn them once you had finished with them, perhaps as an attempt to dispose of any evidence.
Doesn't the term cycle imply that something is cyclical? That term would imply that it will go up for a while, then back down, if the cycle continues. The concern is the cycle not continuing, and the temperature rising continuously. Also, you're implying that without human interference, the temperature would continue rising, unchecked, forever. That's bogus.
If this is part of a natural cycle (which I believe it is from some statistics I've seen of the past 3,000 years), it will continue rising for a while, then whatever has caused the cycles in the past will cause temperature drops.
If this is not part of a natural cycle, but is infact man made (a poorly supported theory), its still likely that whatever checks and balances the Earth has in place will kick in and bring the temperature back down.
The thing most people don't seem to take into consideration when watching the temperature rise is long term history. The statistics I've seen put us right at the average for the past 3,000 years. And warmer isn't necessarily worse. A thousand years ago, Greenland was populated by the vikings and it was very fertile. Good luck getting anything edible to grow there now. The parts of the Earth that would be most greatly effected by global warming have very little land. More land will be fertile if the Earth gets warmer.
I typically assume any time I'm in public, I need to watch what I say or do. If a minor goes and gets smashed in a public place, there's a good chance they'll get caught. If someone is sitting at a table at a restaurant and talking about how their boss is a huge ass, there's a possibility, however remote, that someone at a nearby table could be the boss's daughter (seen the twixt commercial?). Anything that happens in private and stays private is another story, but I don't think anyone would present an argument that online social networks are private (with the exception of private or protected posts that some blogs allow). I keep a blog, and I don't put anything on it if there's anyone at all I wouldn't want reading it. I anticipate the possibility of my parents reading my blog, or a future employer, the cops, or anyone else who might take an interest in what I write. I don't consider this detrimental to the material of my blog, I just consider it an aspect of blogs.
Isn't that your site?
You say people like me are the reason all these domain squatters exist. How exactly do you figure that? People like me buy a domain I actually want because I can get it at a good price, and use it for my own purposes, even if they are minimal. Someone like me is not going to be supporting a domain squatter by buying a domain for $50,000 and thus encouraging their practice.
You suggest raising the price of a .com to $100/year. That would be a huge hassle to me, having every e-mail address I use on my domains, and I suspect by looking at the parked domain that seems to be your site, it would affect you. Fortunately ICANN seems to respect the individual web hosts, and sets prices reasonably. Eventually we'll see what they decide to do about squatters, hopefully it won't screw over people like myself.