I had a legacy machine at home running Win95 and had a hell of a time getting it to talk to my WinXP machine...though it could be my own ineptitude.
On the other hand...
Most of the FOSS I'm familiar with is Linux oriented, and I can't seem to recall a time I ever had trouble reading a FAT formatted floppy from Linux. I also don't seem to have any trouble using 10 year old FOSS on my linux machines...or 10 year old Windows documents for that matter.
They survived Windows Me and they already announced (leaked) the next OS is on the way sooner than thought Assuming such a leak isn't a desperate bid to placate shareholders.
And assuming there's any reason to believe Windows 7 will be released on time.
But you're probably right. Micro$oft is so vast an organization, they are unlikely to be brought down by fair to mediocre sales of one product. I mean, they're not the record industry after all...[bah-dum CHING]
People treat having access to free music like it's a matter of life & death. Trust me on an importance to your life factor of 0-10 it's about a.007. Unless it's your career.
If Radiohead hadn't made money thanks to prior album sales, how successful could they be by marketing an album as "pay what you like?" They probably would not have made as much as they have.
If Marllion hadn't been able to build a large and loyal fanbase by selling albums and touring through the 80s and 90s, would they have a large enough fanbase to have their fans prepay for albums as they do now?
Many of the ideas I see like this are good ideas, but I think it's easy to forget that they are ideas that really only work for artists who have already amassed capital by way of "the old way of doing things."
It's not impossible, but there are so many bands and artists out there competing for our attention and money, it's difficult to know who to choose...and frankly it's somewhat like politicians. Whoever is able to drum up the money is the politician who gets the most air time and attention, but it doesn't mean they're the best person for the job...nor are the musicians who may come out of nowhere to get ahead necessarily be any better than manufactured pop stars...they may simply be better at marketing themselves. And as our culture shows, once you're at the top, all it takes to stay there is some patience and a little intelligence. If you're a marketing genius, that should be no problem.
As for the anti-social marketing defects who write and record and perform music that alters our lives...then we just have to hope that they can get their signal out through all the noise.
An artist who is attempting to commercially exploit their work could garner more time to create such work if they are financially successful and can afford to delegate business duties to other specialists.
The part-timer, on the other hand, are seldom heard from except by a small group of people. There is nothing wrong with local who just likes to play his/her songs at the bars and coffeeshops and share the experience with fellows of like mind.
But if the part-timer produces something that gets around and is suddenly in high demand, what will he/she do about it? If there's no money involved, they'll be happy their song virally spread to far off lands, and continue playing their local joints, either because it's all they wanted to do in the first place, or because it's all they can afford to do.
The thing is, if the part-timer would really like to gain a wider audience, he/she has to compete with a very diluted "marketplace" of ideas, which severely limits the possibilities of being heard. The full-timer, on the other hand, can afford to spend time on their craft precisely because they have a wider audience and can continue to exploit that audience.
My real point is that there is an anecdote for almost every point of view.
So you think that Beethoven and Bach grew up learning music for money? I think they got paid as a result of being great composers. They would have been great composers whether they got paid or not. Yes, actually. It was a career move. They attended schools and were mentored in music and composition specifically so they could make a career of it. Does that mean they didn't enjoy it? No...I think they derived a great deal of satisfaction from it. Much as many modern writers and musicians do.
There will always be amateurs, and people who do it for the enjoyment of it, but when people hone their skill and craft (often expending an extraordinary amount of time) to such a level that other people desire their works, then those writers and performers should be compensated for their efforts when they deliver.
To suggest that Bach and Beethoven's attainment of their skills had nothing to do with money is just an example of "Golden Age" thinking. There was no such thing.
-----------------
- How is it Slashdot thinks there's money to be made in space, but none in music?
Why can't groups learn to cultivate talent, take it on the road...I'll give Led Zeppelin as an example. They had most of their material for the 1st album ready to go FROM rehearsals, and playing the songs on the road. They recorded their album on their own dollar (Jimmy Page and Peter Grants) because they hadn't even signed with Atlantic records yet. I'm a big supporter of live music because I do enjoy it, but there are many bands that whose art simply exists in the studio. Sure, that leaves plenty of room for mediocrity, but that's no different than the mediocrity in live music as well. Live performance and recordings are two very different artforms. The manipulation of sound, or of verse, or meter...the act of coming up with that stuff is something that I just think deserves some compensation if people are then going to surround themselves with it in their daily lives. It's all well and good that some people have the social skills (and it does take social skills) and musicianship to do it on stage, but some people are just better at building the ship than sailing it.
That said, I wish Peter Gabriel would finish building his next ship and then take it out to sea...I'd enlist immediately.
Are you kidding? Artists shouldn't even be making money on concerts. If we allow people to make money off of live experiences, then we have to consider them making money off of recordings of the live experience. DVDs, MP3s, etc...
In all seriousness, and trolling aside, this is what I don't understand about the argument that artists should give up making money off of their recordings and just have people pay for live shows. I presume people go to the concert for the experience of the show, but does that mean people do not listen to the recording for the experience of the song? Both are abstractions. The difference is that one is (almost) infinitely replicable, while the other is unique...until one makes a recording of the live show. Now the experience is not the same as actually being there, but it can be reviewed again and again and again.
I think people believe concerts are "safe." They don't think that one day some idea or technology will come around that will replace concerts with a digital facsimile that's close enough to the real thing that we just won't need to pay the artist anymore, because we can just share the experience.
And if people don't believe that, then I have an MP3 I'd like to send them (rather than a high fidelity version.)
I know markets change, and I know that we just have to deal with it and adapt. I don't even object to that. But I think we need to acknowledge that either we're going to come up with a solution that allows artists and creative types to continue making money off their work (and with all due respect to the poster above who was attempting to do just that) or we need to acknowledge that compensation for art is on it's way out.
Accurate as this post is, Apple has the most brilliant marketing strategy ever. They have thousands upon thousands of genuine fans out there who will defend and promote their products in every way possible, from digging out the facts to providing various anecdotes, and they will do it all for free.
Apple, meanwhile, just pretends to keep everything a secret until it's released (creating a "buzz"), and then let's fanboys and haters duke it out. All Apple has to do is provide product specs and make a product that looks so cool that people don't want to argue with it.
Not a criticism or a compliment...just an observation.
Well there are always services like "Steam" out there, though they don't have a particularly large selection of games on hand. But then again, look at the video card in the Air. Does it look like a gaming machine?
Having used an Eee, I can say that most of those problems are simply not an issue. Just using the default Linux OS, I've had the GUI e-mail client and Firefox with a few tabs running simultaneously with no problem. Open Office runs just fine (I suppose if you have multiple docs and spreadsheets open it may bog down fairly quickly.) As far as hooking up a digital camera, it has both USB and SD ports (tried this just the other day, and were able to transfer pictures the same way we do on our desktops.)
To be fair, you're right about movies and music and I hope that's something that future generations of sublaptops will solve as solid state drives come down in price, though movies on an Eee would be a slightly disappointing affair due to the size of the screen. My only other gripe is the size of the keyboard, which I feel could have been just slightly larger, but at the price it's hard to complain.
Let's just not forget that there's about a $1300 difference in price between these two machines, which is quite important if your very budget conscious and looking for a great student machine or something more useful than a PDA at around the same price.
No, it's ridiculous. You're talking about a device with 4GB of storage versus one with 80GB. A device with a 630Mhz Celeron versus a 1.6Ghz Core 2 Duo. A 1280x800 screen versus 800x480. 512MB of RAM versus 2GB. 2.5 hours of battery versus 5.
The specs on the Eee PC are a lot closer to those of the iPhone than they are to the Macbook Air. Oh yeah...and over four times the price of the Air.
But let's be real, here. More and more the question is the usability and practicality of the device. The iPhone is an expensive, albeit well designed mobile internet device / cell phone. The Eee is an inexpensive wireless computing appliance great for students and rugged travellers who just need to do the basics effectively. The Air is clearly targeted at a higher class of consumer...the business traveler / commuter, for whom it is overpowered unless they plan on getting their World of Warcraft on while flying cross country (do they have wireless on the airlines?)
I'm not saying it's a bad machine, but I think in purpose it has more to do with the Eee than the Eee does to the iPhone. It's just after a different demographic who wants things slicker, cleaner, at a higher resolution and a price point they can boast about.
Actually, it's perfect if what you want to do is light computing and you have a fair amount of disposable income around. $1700? I'm not sure I saw any features worth the price point. My only real gripe about the Asus Eee (my girlfriend has one) is the size of the keyboard. Otherwise it works wonderfully, and at a fraction of the cost of the "Air."
I am a bit of an Apple fanboy, but this one seems to be more an exercise in marketing than anything actually useful. It's more likely that this is an indicator of things to come than a product that's going to have much more than limited success. Think I'll hold out for the next generation Eees or something like them unless something like this manages to drop in price almost $1000. Being "thin", "wireless" and having a multitouch touchpad just don't strike me as worth that much.
It absolutely is noticeable. You might not realize what you are hearing, but you will know something is wrong. That's what I think everytime I listen to a compressed file. Seems to me most people wouldn't know the difference, however. I'm not sure most listeners care about the quality of the recording...just the content of the music.
On the other hand, if the framerates on their games are anything less than 60fps they think they've been completely cheated.
Okay...so I work in audio, and might be a little bitter.
They could always go buy the low end Asus Eee, purchase Windows (which is what Microsoft really wants anyway) and install it themselves...then they'll know how wonderfully on runs on that kind of hardware. Sounds like an option to me, and at a similar price point.
This is the second time I've seen the child porn assertion, and what I have to wonder is, how likely is someone to smuggle child pornography into the U.S. on a laptop? This is not a criticism of the responders (for once I didn't RTFA), but I do wonder how ridiculous our gov't has become in regards to "security."
What's amusing about this post is the number of posts by other users that declare Linux unready for the desktop until Wine can accommodate most Windows games effortlessly.
Wait...do you mean to tell me her iBook didn't come with a manual? Because all of those issues are resolvable by reading the manual.
Frankly any new desktop environment or OS for someone is going to be confusing, whether it's Windows, OSX or some flavor of Linux. If they genuinely have no inclination, curiosity or time to learn the OS by trial and error, I would highly recommend reading the furnished materials first. 20 minutes now could save them hours of frustration later.
And you being the computer guy, no offense, should have known to read the manual (available to you online if not in print form.)
This is my issue. I love Linux. It's versatility. The feel of it. The philosophy. The thousand different flavors there are for whatever application I need (legacy machines, day to day use, etc...)
Problem is I can't use Linux for most of my productivity. I'm an audio guy in a world where Pro Tools is the standard, and that's how I make my living. Pro Tools on a Mac just works (999 times out of 1000, of course.) I've tried Ardour, and there is just too much tweaking to do to make things or keep things working properly. When someone develops a full featured DAW on Linux that works everytime (or 999 times out of 1000) without interupting my productivity I will be happy to switch (and contribute more to the development of that software.)
For now, though, it's Linux at home and OSX at work.
I'm actually thinking more along the lines of GNUCash vs. MS Money (or Quicken, if you prefer). And yes, I'd rather pay $60 for something that works easily and intuitively over something that lacks major features and isn't intuitive. I know we're talking about utter n00bs here, but for even the slightly competent modern computer user - Quicken on Linux
Wikipedia is a propaganda tool. It is one of the best out there at shaping the minds of the gullible. The government knows this. So does everyone else with an ax to grind. So do the wikinazis. Wikipedia has very little in the way of genuine quality, independence or accuracy, but thanks to the vanity of its leaders and admins it has every illusion of authority and integrity. OK. I'd like some kind of metrics or data measuring the inaccuracy of Wikipedia. I'm constantly hearing anecdotal evidence, but rarely see anyone providing actual data. I'm not suggesting Wikipedia is perfect by any means (and I don't believe most people think that it is), however Wikipedia often includes a lot of information and sources that are useful in the early stages of research.
Be indignant about that. Be indignant that Wikipedia is not encouraging its users to question the data it contains, be indignant that Wikipedia does not have disclaimers and warnings as to its potential inaccuracies -- that's your true crime, your true deception, right there. You mean the disclaimer found here? The one that has a link at the bottom of this page? Where most disclaimers appear?
Please. If you're going to try to point out inaccuracies, be sure to have your own material vetted. Perhaps you could even provide some sources. Wikipedia usually does.
I think most people will just find this to be too annoying to be effective. In some ways it goes along with the failure of video phones because people don't necessarily want to pick up the phone and be seen in their pajamas right after getting up out of bed.
Slashdot Mirror
IANAITGUY but...
I had a legacy machine at home running Win95 and had a hell of a time getting it to talk to my WinXP machine...though it could be my own ineptitude.
On the other hand...
Most of the FOSS I'm familiar with is Linux oriented, and I can't seem to recall a time I ever had trouble reading a FAT formatted floppy from Linux. I also don't seem to have any trouble using 10 year old FOSS on my linux machines...or 10 year old Windows documents for that matter.
Am I just the exception to the rule?
And assuming there's any reason to believe Windows 7 will be released on time.
But you're probably right. Micro$oft is so vast an organization, they are unlikely to be brought down by fair to mediocre sales of one product. I mean, they're not the record industry after all...[bah-dum CHING]
And we can, except it's a diluted marketplace.
If Radiohead hadn't made money thanks to prior album sales, how successful could they be by marketing an album as "pay what you like?" They probably would not have made as much as they have.
If Marllion hadn't been able to build a large and loyal fanbase by selling albums and touring through the 80s and 90s, would they have a large enough fanbase to have their fans prepay for albums as they do now?
Many of the ideas I see like this are good ideas, but I think it's easy to forget that they are ideas that really only work for artists who have already amassed capital by way of "the old way of doing things."
It's not impossible, but there are so many bands and artists out there competing for our attention and money, it's difficult to know who to choose...and frankly it's somewhat like politicians. Whoever is able to drum up the money is the politician who gets the most air time and attention, but it doesn't mean they're the best person for the job...nor are the musicians who may come out of nowhere to get ahead necessarily be any better than manufactured pop stars...they may simply be better at marketing themselves. And as our culture shows, once you're at the top, all it takes to stay there is some patience and a little intelligence. If you're a marketing genius, that should be no problem.
As for the anti-social marketing defects who write and record and perform music that alters our lives...then we just have to hope that they can get their signal out through all the noise.
And yet that's the trick.
An artist who is attempting to commercially exploit their work could garner more time to create such work if they are financially successful and can afford to delegate business duties to other specialists.
The part-timer, on the other hand, are seldom heard from except by a small group of people. There is nothing wrong with local who just likes to play his/her songs at the bars and coffeeshops and share the experience with fellows of like mind.
But if the part-timer produces something that gets around and is suddenly in high demand, what will he/she do about it? If there's no money involved, they'll be happy their song virally spread to far off lands, and continue playing their local joints, either because it's all they wanted to do in the first place, or because it's all they can afford to do.
The thing is, if the part-timer would really like to gain a wider audience, he/she has to compete with a very diluted "marketplace" of ideas, which severely limits the possibilities of being heard. The full-timer, on the other hand, can afford to spend time on their craft precisely because they have a wider audience and can continue to exploit that audience.
My real point is that there is an anecdote for almost every point of view.
There will always be amateurs, and people who do it for the enjoyment of it, but when people hone their skill and craft (often expending an extraordinary amount of time) to such a level that other people desire their works, then those writers and performers should be compensated for their efforts when they deliver.
To suggest that Bach and Beethoven's attainment of their skills had nothing to do with money is just an example of "Golden Age" thinking. There was no such thing.
-----------------
- How is it Slashdot thinks there's money to be made in space, but none in music?
That said, I wish Peter Gabriel would finish building his next ship and then take it out to sea...I'd enlist immediately.
Are you kidding? Artists shouldn't even be making money on concerts. If we allow people to make money off of live experiences, then we have to consider them making money off of recordings of the live experience. DVDs, MP3s, etc...
In all seriousness, and trolling aside, this is what I don't understand about the argument that artists should give up making money off of their recordings and just have people pay for live shows. I presume people go to the concert for the experience of the show, but does that mean people do not listen to the recording for the experience of the song? Both are abstractions. The difference is that one is (almost) infinitely replicable, while the other is unique...until one makes a recording of the live show. Now the experience is not the same as actually being there, but it can be reviewed again and again and again.
I think people believe concerts are "safe." They don't think that one day some idea or technology will come around that will replace concerts with a digital facsimile that's close enough to the real thing that we just won't need to pay the artist anymore, because we can just share the experience.
And if people don't believe that, then I have an MP3 I'd like to send them (rather than a high fidelity version.)
I know markets change, and I know that we just have to deal with it and adapt. I don't even object to that. But I think we need to acknowledge that either we're going to come up with a solution that allows artists and creative types to continue making money off their work (and with all due respect to the poster above who was attempting to do just that) or we need to acknowledge that compensation for art is on it's way out.
And suddenly it occurs to me.
Accurate as this post is, Apple has the most brilliant marketing strategy ever. They have thousands upon thousands of genuine fans out there who will defend and promote their products in every way possible, from digging out the facts to providing various anecdotes, and they will do it all for free.
Apple, meanwhile, just pretends to keep everything a secret until it's released (creating a "buzz"), and then let's fanboys and haters duke it out. All Apple has to do is provide product specs and make a product that looks so cool that people don't want to argue with it.
Not a criticism or a compliment...just an observation.
Kurosawa's "Dreams", made in 1990...one of the most beautiful movies ever made...18 years ago.
And don't tell me "Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou" doesn't even get a nod from your internationalist elitism.
Absolutely correct!
I often wonder if most slashdotters know what a budget is. Do they buy everything on overextended credit?
Well there are always services like "Steam" out there, though they don't have a particularly large selection of games on hand. But then again, look at the video card in the Air. Does it look like a gaming machine?
Having used an Eee, I can say that most of those problems are simply not an issue. Just using the default Linux OS, I've had the GUI e-mail client and Firefox with a few tabs running simultaneously with no problem. Open Office runs just fine (I suppose if you have multiple docs and spreadsheets open it may bog down fairly quickly.) As far as hooking up a digital camera, it has both USB and SD ports (tried this just the other day, and were able to transfer pictures the same way we do on our desktops.)
To be fair, you're right about movies and music and I hope that's something that future generations of sublaptops will solve as solid state drives come down in price, though movies on an Eee would be a slightly disappointing affair due to the size of the screen. My only other gripe is the size of the keyboard, which I feel could have been just slightly larger, but at the price it's hard to complain.
Let's just not forget that there's about a $1300 difference in price between these two machines, which is quite important if your very budget conscious and looking for a great student machine or something more useful than a PDA at around the same price.
OMG, I'm starting to sound like an Asus fanboy...
But let's be real, here. More and more the question is the usability and practicality of the device. The iPhone is an expensive, albeit well designed mobile internet device / cell phone. The Eee is an inexpensive wireless computing appliance great for students and rugged travellers who just need to do the basics effectively. The Air is clearly targeted at a higher class of consumer...the business traveler / commuter, for whom it is overpowered unless they plan on getting their World of Warcraft on while flying cross country (do they have wireless on the airlines?)
I'm not saying it's a bad machine, but I think in purpose it has more to do with the Eee than the Eee does to the iPhone. It's just after a different demographic who wants things slicker, cleaner, at a higher resolution and a price point they can boast about.
Actually, it's perfect if what you want to do is light computing and you have a fair amount of disposable income around. $1700? I'm not sure I saw any features worth the price point. My only real gripe about the Asus Eee (my girlfriend has one) is the size of the keyboard. Otherwise it works wonderfully, and at a fraction of the cost of the "Air."
I am a bit of an Apple fanboy, but this one seems to be more an exercise in marketing than anything actually useful. It's more likely that this is an indicator of things to come than a product that's going to have much more than limited success. Think I'll hold out for the next generation Eees or something like them unless something like this manages to drop in price almost $1000. Being "thin", "wireless" and having a multitouch touchpad just don't strike me as worth that much.
Excellent point (and unfortunately I'd already used up my mod points).
On the other hand, if the framerates on their games are anything less than 60fps they think they've been completely cheated.
Okay...so I work in audio, and might be a little bitter.
They could always go buy the low end Asus Eee, purchase Windows (which is what Microsoft really wants anyway) and install it themselves...then they'll know how wonderfully on runs on that kind of hardware. Sounds like an option to me, and at a similar price point.
This is the second time I've seen the child porn assertion, and what I have to wonder is, how likely is someone to smuggle child pornography into the U.S. on a laptop? This is not a criticism of the responders (for once I didn't RTFA), but I do wonder how ridiculous our gov't has become in regards to "security."
What's amusing about this post is the number of posts by other users that declare Linux unready for the desktop until Wine can accommodate most Windows games effortlessly.
Poor Wine...they just can't win.
Wait...do you mean to tell me her iBook didn't come with a manual? Because all of those issues are resolvable by reading the manual.
Frankly any new desktop environment or OS for someone is going to be confusing, whether it's Windows, OSX or some flavor of Linux. If they genuinely have no inclination, curiosity or time to learn the OS by trial and error, I would highly recommend reading the furnished materials first. 20 minutes now could save them hours of frustration later.
And you being the computer guy, no offense, should have known to read the manual (available to you online if not in print form.)
This is my issue. I love Linux. It's versatility. The feel of it. The philosophy. The thousand different flavors there are for whatever application I need (legacy machines, day to day use, etc...) Problem is I can't use Linux for most of my productivity. I'm an audio guy in a world where Pro Tools is the standard, and that's how I make my living. Pro Tools on a Mac just works (999 times out of 1000, of course.) I've tried Ardour, and there is just too much tweaking to do to make things or keep things working properly. When someone develops a full featured DAW on Linux that works everytime (or 999 times out of 1000) without interupting my productivity I will be happy to switch (and contribute more to the development of that software.) For now, though, it's Linux at home and OSX at work.
Be indignant about that. Be indignant that Wikipedia is not encouraging its users to question the data it contains, be indignant that Wikipedia does not have disclaimers and warnings as to its potential inaccuracies -- that's your true crime, your true deception, right there. You mean the disclaimer found here? The one that has a link at the bottom of this page?
Where most disclaimers appear?
Please. If you're going to try to point out inaccuracies, be sure to have your own material vetted. Perhaps you could even provide some sources. Wikipedia usually does.
I think most people will just find this to be too annoying to be effective. In some ways it goes along with the failure of video phones because people don't necessarily want to pick up the phone and be seen in their pajamas right after getting up out of bed.