Ho ho ho. "State sponsored piracy!" I like it. It has a nice ring to it. A bit like "state sponsored terrorism". Those bastard French people are trying to take away our freedom by taking restrictions out of DRM! Oh, wait...
Yes, naughty little French pirates. They need to be punished. They need to know what it feels like. I implore all Slashdotters to head over to Google Video and pirate some Alizee music videos. For those of you who have been living under a rock for the past couple of years, Alizee is a hot French babe... uhh, I mean, PIRATE!
I'm unconvinced either way about this. On the one hand, it is nice to have the freedom to use whatever web technology we like.
On the other hand, isn't this the same as the government specifying that people with disabilities must be catered for in real life? Why should things be any different on the internet?
Should all buildings have wheelchair ramps? To an extent, I think so, yes. Obviously it would be ridiculous for all homes to have wheelchair ramps. What about stores, shopping centres and government buildings? I think all of those buildings should have ramps. Maybe it should be the same way on the internet. Maybe any commercial or government websites should be required to make a "good faith" effort toward accessibility. Certainly government websites, at least. I currently have a complaint lodged with my state's election office because the W3C validator returns errors for their website. They've replied to me, and are currently looking into fixing it.
You make it sound as though accessibility for the blind is a bad thing.
Consider what websites or programs need to do in order to be usable by a blind person. First of all, they can't have clutter. They need to obey standards. (eg. W3C, for websites) They need to have a good, well-designed user interface, in general.
Notice how all of those things have very positive results for regular users, too? Blind people probably see websites much as a regular user would see them through a text-only browser like lynx. If there are problems parsing the website, that could lead to other major problems in comprehending it.
Accessibility is a good thing for all users. If a blind person can easily use a website, a person who can see can also use it easily. There are too many cluttered, difficult-to-use websites around. Accessibility is an important goal.
You don't know that for sure. If they were rewriting Windows Explorer from scratch, fine, but they're going to be modifying it or leaving it as it is.
It's not simple because you need to ask: how well can Windows Explorer function when you take Internet Explorer out of it? The dependence isn't necessarily one-way. It sounds like the two are thoroughly one program, at the moment.
Will Windows Explorer still be able to function as a web browser once IE7 has been installed separately on XP?
I imagine a lot of users are quite used to typing webaddress.com into Windows Explorer, now. I suppose that should respond by launching the user's default browser with the command line argument webaddress.com, but is that what it will do, or will WinExplore still function as a browser?
Intel are so off on this one. Just from a preliminary glance, I can see that they named this chip wrong. "Pentium Extreme Edition 965"? Where should I start?
First of all, this chip is at the very least an Extreme Turbo Edition 1078. However, I have a strong suspicion about it being closer to a Super Mega Extreme Turbo 8000.
So, tell me, why exactly is more than one library a problem? It's not as if it's some huge number (two), and DirectX doesn't have a single, unified way of doing everything. It's just a bunch of libraries rolled into one.
Because Microsoft have done their very best to prevent operating systems other than Windows from being compatible with Windows. MS Office won't even be out on Mac for months yet! (maybe years, considering Vista delays)
DirectX ensures that no operating system will ever run games quite as well as Windows will, unless game developers drop DirectX. (which they should do, considering that OpenGL + SDL can mean that almost no code changes would be necessary to compile a game for almost any platform)
How does Microsoft plan to make money from open source and Linux?
The majority of Microsoft doesn't understand the benefits of the OSS development model. We are pretending to incorporate its most positive elements into our development practices. We like to claim our top priority is to produce great software that meets the needs of our customers, partners, and other constituent communities. We recently struck deals that will see us screw over SugarCRM and Jboss, open source vendors we normally would leave alone. The reason we pursued these relationships is because in both cases nearly half of the infidel traitors are running Windows Server. By fucking over these companies, we can help raise the perceived TCO of open source software. The deals are also a prime example of the success partners are finding on the Windows platform regardless of the development model they employ (so we need to put an end to this).
What excuse do we have for voting these people in, even if we know that they are bloody morons? There is more than two political parties in Australia. The Australian population is stupid for not researching the alternatives.
(P.S. I am an Australian, and was proud to be one before September 11 hysteria)
The Greens are the only sensible party in Australia. Despite their name, they're not focused on JUST environmental issues. They're very concerned about civil rights, they're against our invasion of Iraq, and they seem to be the only party full of people who are in politics because they are genuinely concerned about the state of our country.
We can vote for The Greens, or we can wait and see what John Howard/Philip Ruddock come up with next after having re-introduced sedition laws along with other anti-freedom (aka "anti-terrorism") laws aimed at secretly locking people up, started introducing more censorship (the graffiti game and the John Howard parody site), and having further stripped workers of rights. (IR legislation)
It seems like they've done everything, but you know there's more coming. National ID card is obviously next, but what about after that?
How, exactly, could it backfire on them? As long as they remain the best in some fields (which they will in search), isn't it only good for them to stretch their legs out a bit and see what else they can do well?
Think of it in terms of the theory that if you go around bars asking for sex, you'll eventually get some.
Instead of Google being an unattractive slob, though, they're handsome and all the girls want to have sex with them. In other words, there are lots of people who want to use all the Google services they can. Google would be stupid not to oblige.
Any serious organisation would quickly hire someone to fix a show-stopping problem, if they could, though. Do you think a company with 1,000 workers would sit around doing nothing and pissing off all of their customers instead of just contracting someone to fix a major problem they're experiencing?
With proprietary software that option isn't really there, and the best they can do is report the problem to the company they got the software from, or find some alternative software that does the same thing. The latter mightn't even be an option if that software is specialised enough or deeply embedded into their processes enough.
The situation I'm envisaging isn't an unrealistic one. Suppose some company uses software called SpecialTool and that software is vital to their business, and even non-technical people in the company have been trained to use SpecialTool. One day, SpecialTool gets auto-updated with some urgent security fixes, and like iTunes, the updates are not reversable. Unfortunately, the "fixes" break an important feature of SpecialTool that our company uses, and no one can get much work done without it. Meanwhile, we're losing customers because we're unable to provide the services we usually do to them! We've asked the vendor for a fix, and they will get back to us "within 7 working days". Uh oh!
Sure, but isn't a balance of both the best thing in terms of getting work done? I mean, imagine locking yourself into proprietary software and then being forced into expensive upgrades that you can't afford, or not being able to fix a show-stopper bug because you can't get access to the source code.
If you want to always get work done, there is an argument to be made for using free (as in freedom) software.
What are you talking about?! Google has heaps of stuff on their front-page.
Here's a list of some of them: - Web search - Full blown calculator (try: "6 newtons / 2 kilograms", for example...) - Movie times and reviews (try: "V for Vendetta") - Stock prices (try: "GOOG") - Maps (try: "map of new york") - Images (try: "images of natalie portman")... and probably more that I don't know about.
What is so important that you Linux hippies feel the need to encrypt? Do you have something to hide? It's kiddy porn, isn't it? Be honest! I for one am glad that Microsoft doesn't help out the terrorists and pedophiles in their illegal activity. Their encrypting filesystem includes numerous backdoors to assist law enforcement. I just wish the OSS community would do the same.
Mr President, is that you? What are you doing on the internet?
Slashdot Mirror
Ho ho ho. "State sponsored piracy!" I like it. It has a nice ring to it. A bit like "state sponsored terrorism". Those bastard French people are trying to take away our freedom by taking restrictions out of DRM! Oh, wait...
Yes, naughty little French pirates. They need to be punished. They need to know what it feels like. I implore all Slashdotters to head over to Google Video and pirate some Alizee music videos. For those of you who have been living under a rock for the past couple of years, Alizee is a hot French babe... uhh, I mean, PIRATE!
I'm unconvinced either way about this. On the one hand, it is nice to have the freedom to use whatever web technology we like.
On the other hand, isn't this the same as the government specifying that people with disabilities must be catered for in real life? Why should things be any different on the internet?
Should all buildings have wheelchair ramps? To an extent, I think so, yes. Obviously it would be ridiculous for all homes to have wheelchair ramps. What about stores, shopping centres and government buildings? I think all of those buildings should have ramps. Maybe it should be the same way on the internet. Maybe any commercial or government websites should be required to make a "good faith" effort toward accessibility. Certainly government websites, at least. I currently have a complaint lodged with my state's election office because the W3C validator returns errors for their website. They've replied to me, and are currently looking into fixing it.
I want everyone to remember that we stand on the edge of oblivion! I want everyone to remember why they need us!
You make it sound as though accessibility for the blind is a bad thing.
Consider what websites or programs need to do in order to be usable by a blind person. First of all, they can't have clutter. They need to obey standards. (eg. W3C, for websites) They need to have a good, well-designed user interface, in general.
Notice how all of those things have very positive results for regular users, too? Blind people probably see websites much as a regular user would see them through a text-only browser like lynx. If there are problems parsing the website, that could lead to other major problems in comprehending it.
Accessibility is a good thing for all users. If a blind person can easily use a website, a person who can see can also use it easily. There are too many cluttered, difficult-to-use websites around. Accessibility is an important goal.
You don't know that for sure. If they were rewriting Windows Explorer from scratch, fine, but they're going to be modifying it or leaving it as it is.
It's not simple because you need to ask: how well can Windows Explorer function when you take Internet Explorer out of it? The dependence isn't necessarily one-way. It sounds like the two are thoroughly one program, at the moment.
I'll give you a hint. I might be poking fun at the name of this chip.
Will Windows Explorer still be able to function as a web browser once IE7 has been installed separately on XP?
I imagine a lot of users are quite used to typing webaddress.com into Windows Explorer, now. I suppose that should respond by launching the user's default browser with the command line argument webaddress.com, but is that what it will do, or will WinExplore still function as a browser?
Intel are so off on this one. Just from a preliminary glance, I can see that they named this chip wrong. "Pentium Extreme Edition 965"? Where should I start?
First of all, this chip is at the very least an Extreme Turbo Edition 1078. However, I have a strong suspicion about it being closer to a Super Mega Extreme Turbo 8000.
That wasn't what I was referring to. Of course the operating system isn't affected by how common the architecture is, but other programs are!
So, tell me, why exactly is more than one library a problem? It's not as if it's some huge number (two), and DirectX doesn't have a single, unified way of doing everything. It's just a bunch of libraries rolled into one.
Because Microsoft have done their very best to prevent operating systems other than Windows from being compatible with Windows. MS Office won't even be out on Mac for months yet! (maybe years, considering Vista delays)
DirectX ensures that no operating system will ever run games quite as well as Windows will, unless game developers drop DirectX. (which they should do, considering that OpenGL + SDL can mean that almost no code changes would be necessary to compile a game for almost any platform)
The reason they're going strong is because they're going from a less common architecture to THE MOST common architecture.
How does Microsoft plan to make money from open source and Linux?
The majority of Microsoft doesn't understand the benefits of the OSS development model. We are pretending to incorporate its most positive elements into our development practices. We like to claim our top priority is to produce great software that meets the needs of our customers, partners, and other constituent communities. We recently struck deals that will see us screw over SugarCRM and Jboss, open source vendors we normally would leave alone. The reason we pursued these relationships is because in both cases nearly half of the infidel traitors are running Windows Server. By fucking over these companies, we can help raise the perceived TCO of open source software. The deals are also a prime example of the success partners are finding on the Windows platform regardless of the development model they employ (so we need to put an end to this).
Did the guy really expect to win?
Free, as in, you can charge whatever the bloody hell you want for this software!
We don't have a two party system. If you actually *VOTE* for other parties, then it won't seem so binary anymore!
What excuse do we have for voting these people in, even if we know that they are bloody morons? There is more than two political parties in Australia. The Australian population is stupid for not researching the alternatives.
(P.S. I am an Australian, and was proud to be one before September 11 hysteria)
There's a good test to see whether a site is clean or just lacking features:
What do you want it to do that it doesn't already do?
The Greens are the only sensible party in Australia. Despite their name, they're not focused on JUST environmental issues. They're very concerned about civil rights, they're against our invasion of Iraq, and they seem to be the only party full of people who are in politics because they are genuinely concerned about the state of our country.
We can vote for The Greens, or we can wait and see what John Howard/Philip Ruddock come up with next after having re-introduced sedition laws along with other anti-freedom (aka "anti-terrorism") laws aimed at secretly locking people up, started introducing more censorship (the graffiti game and the John Howard parody site), and having further stripped workers of rights. (IR legislation)
It seems like they've done everything, but you know there's more coming. National ID card is obviously next, but what about after that?
How, exactly, could it backfire on them? As long as they remain the best in some fields (which they will in search), isn't it only good for them to stretch their legs out a bit and see what else they can do well?
Think of it in terms of the theory that if you go around bars asking for sex, you'll eventually get some.
Instead of Google being an unattractive slob, though, they're handsome and all the girls want to have sex with them. In other words, there are lots of people who want to use all the Google services they can. Google would be stupid not to oblige.
How long until someone writes a client and a server, turning it into an online computer game? I bet it won't be long.
Any serious organisation would quickly hire someone to fix a show-stopping problem, if they could, though. Do you think a company with 1,000 workers would sit around doing nothing and pissing off all of their customers instead of just contracting someone to fix a major problem they're experiencing?
With proprietary software that option isn't really there, and the best they can do is report the problem to the company they got the software from, or find some alternative software that does the same thing. The latter mightn't even be an option if that software is specialised enough or deeply embedded into their processes enough.
The situation I'm envisaging isn't an unrealistic one. Suppose some company uses software called SpecialTool and that software is vital to their business, and even non-technical people in the company have been trained to use SpecialTool. One day, SpecialTool gets auto-updated with some urgent security fixes, and like iTunes, the updates are not reversable. Unfortunately, the "fixes" break an important feature of SpecialTool that our company uses, and no one can get much work done without it. Meanwhile, we're losing customers because we're unable to provide the services we usually do to them! We've asked the vendor for a fix, and they will get back to us "within 7 working days". Uh oh!
Sure, but isn't a balance of both the best thing in terms of getting work done? I mean, imagine locking yourself into proprietary software and then being forced into expensive upgrades that you can't afford, or not being able to fix a show-stopper bug because you can't get access to the source code.
If you want to always get work done, there is an argument to be made for using free (as in freedom) software.
This poor little http server is on the front page of Slashdot and Digg simultaneously.
What are you talking about?! Google has heaps of stuff on their front-page.
... and probably more that I don't know about.
Here's a list of some of them:
- Web search
- Full blown calculator (try: "6 newtons / 2 kilograms", for example...)
- Movie times and reviews (try: "V for Vendetta")
- Stock prices (try: "GOOG")
- Maps (try: "map of new york")
- Images (try: "images of natalie portman")
What is so important that you Linux hippies feel the need to encrypt? Do you have something to hide? It's kiddy porn, isn't it? Be honest! I for one am glad that Microsoft doesn't help out the terrorists and pedophiles in their illegal activity. Their encrypting filesystem includes numerous backdoors to assist law enforcement. I just wish the OSS community would do the same.
Mr President, is that you? What are you doing on the internet?