Those "common" folk whose "good" you are protecting are complicit in the censorship; the overwhelming majority of people in the United States support obscenity laws and whatnot. Most people do not really care about Yaoi manga being removed form Amazon, and quite a few people in America will applaud Amazon for being a "family friendly company" that protects their children from any depiction of sexuality (certainly HOMOSEXUALITY).
Or we could take another look at distributed P2P systems like Gnutella, so that no single server can be blocked. The whole point of the Internet was to be peer-to-peer.
Sorry, but when it comes to large and powerful corporations, I have a lot of trouble trusting them to help people who actually harm their bottom line. Comcast has throttled BitTorrent in the past, they own TV stations whose shows can be found via TPB, and they are busy trying to make sure that the government does not pass any regulations that would impede their ability to throttle or filter traffic. Now suddenly a technical problem strikes TPB, and people immediately ask if Comcast is doing this deliberately; Comcast can ignore the problem and let "Serious Tubes Networks" deal with it, or they can help out and gain some positive PR.
Gee, why would I think that Comcast was not just trying to get some good PR here?
Why are you surprised? Do you think Comcast wants people to start pointing at them during net neutrality arguments, when their merger with NBC is still so controversial?
No, it just means that they are afraid to draw attention to the fact that they are evil, you know, when their merger with NBC is being scrutinized. Best if they look like they really care about keeping the network neutral and just carrying bits, so that nobody thinks of asking what might happen when NBC's competitors try to stream their video over Comcast's little corner of the Internet.
Magnetic core memory was the main form of non-volatile memory for computers from the 50s through to the 70s
It was also the most commonly used form of RAM; I have an old Fortran textbook that says something to the effect of, "Semiconductor memory will probably become popular over the next decade." It is also the reason we still speak of "core dumps."
And this idea that the world wants 10 different CPU architectures for mainstream computing is laughable tripe.
What "the world wants" and what would work well are not always in alignment. This whole "one architecture to rule them all" situation has resulted in a lot of friction -- better architectures cannot get a foothold, developers do not write portable software, a certain popular desktop operating system is forced to maintain compatibility with old software that is extremely poorly written, etc. Had we had 3-5 popular desktop architectures over the past decade, I think it is safe to say that we would have had an easier time escaping bad designs in both hardware and software, and moving on to better designs.
We'll see if the same assholes are whining in 5 years when ARM is the only architecture used for anything mobile
First of all, it is rude to refer to people you disagree with as "assholes," and second of all, yes, having one architecture rule an entire class of computers is a bad thing regardless of who makes the architecture. x86 didn't win on the desktop because it was the best architecture around, and ARM is not necessarily the best mobile architecture.
Yeah, and you know what? Those types of users seem to fare pretty well with popular GNU/Linux distros, from what I have seen. SSH to my mom's system, make sure her software is up to date, and she never needs to worry about breaking things. It took all of two days for her to get used to GNOME.
I'm not going to even go into the clusterfuck of hairpulling that is the typical Linux desktop.
Please do go into it; I am curious as to what sort of hair pulling you might be referring to. The last time I had to deal with hair pulling was about 5 years ago; I recently installed Fedora on a brand new desktop with very recent hardware, including a high end Nvidia graphics card, and it worked right out of the box -- the only real work involved was copying my home directory from the old desktop and installing a few programs that are not installed by default.
No, it is not a question of "elite," it is a question of why someone picked the particular software they picked. Choosing software for its technical merits is fine, but that is not why most of the GNU/Linux users I have encountered decided to use that OS. Most GNU/Linux users, unfortunately, neither understand the technical merits of the system nor understand the licensing structure and its merits.
Really, I fail to see why someone who actually reads licenses and makes a decision not to use software because of the license should be called a "zealot." Some of us really do not want to agree not to modify or reverse engineer our OS, or not to use our word processor to produce controversial documents, or to allow a company to silently modify our software configuration. You might not care, or you might operate under the assumption that these things will not matter -- fine, but how does caring about what one agrees to make one a zealot?
Not to mention that Skype is proprietary. Maybe this will push people over to SIP a little quicker.
...when did the number of people who care become something other than a tiny minority? Seriously, how many people can you name who have actually read the license to the software they use or refused to agree to a license whose terms they considered unacceptable?
Here is the problem with Ekiga: it is completely unreliable on Windows, and still very much "Beta" on GNU/Linux. When it works, it works...but more often than not, I feel like I fighting against the tide to keep Ekiga operational. Now, for a bunch of neckbeards like myself, that is OK -- perhaps when I have time, I will even submit a patch -- but when my mother sees Ekiga exploding like that, she just says, "Why aren't we using Skype?"
Slashdot Mirror
Those "common" folk whose "good" you are protecting are complicit in the censorship; the overwhelming majority of people in the United States support obscenity laws and whatnot. Most people do not really care about Yaoi manga being removed form Amazon, and quite a few people in America will applaud Amazon for being a "family friendly company" that protects their children from any depiction of sexuality (certainly HOMOSEXUALITY).
...and so we do nothing to correct this censorship problem, where even cartoons can be labelled "obscene."
Where do people go when they give up Amazon?
Back to paper books? I can think of half a dozen independent book stores within walking distance of my home, and I am in a medium sized town.
There are plenty of ways people in Thailand could protect themselves from this sort of overt censorship, if they wanted to do so.
Or we could take another look at distributed P2P systems like Gnutella, so that no single server can be blocked. The whole point of the Internet was to be peer-to-peer.
Just keep trying to push through the same law, eventually the other side will stop bothering to fight it and you'll get it to pass.
All the while allowing for law suits in an already overworked law suit court system.
...and what mistakes would you be referring to?
Sorry, but when it comes to large and powerful corporations, I have a lot of trouble trusting them to help people who actually harm their bottom line. Comcast has throttled BitTorrent in the past, they own TV stations whose shows can be found via TPB, and they are busy trying to make sure that the government does not pass any regulations that would impede their ability to throttle or filter traffic. Now suddenly a technical problem strikes TPB, and people immediately ask if Comcast is doing this deliberately; Comcast can ignore the problem and let "Serious Tubes Networks" deal with it, or they can help out and gain some positive PR.
Gee, why would I think that Comcast was not just trying to get some good PR here?
Why are you surprised? Do you think Comcast wants people to start pointing at them during net neutrality arguments, when their merger with NBC is still so controversial?
No, it just means that they are afraid to draw attention to the fact that they are evil, you know, when their merger with NBC is being scrutinized. Best if they look like they really care about keeping the network neutral and just carrying bits, so that nobody thinks of asking what might happen when NBC's competitors try to stream their video over Comcast's little corner of the Internet.
Magnetic core memory was the main form of non-volatile memory for computers from the 50s through to the 70s
It was also the most commonly used form of RAM; I have an old Fortran textbook that says something to the effect of, "Semiconductor memory will probably become popular over the next decade." It is also the reason we still speak of "core dumps."
Most windows users dont have that, they just wing it on their own
Most Windows users do not keep their software up to date. I remote in to update the packages on my mom's system.
She doesnt need to know a bazillion archaic command line utilities and go through usenet and ubunutu forums because youre doing it for her.
Yes, she does not need to know how to do this:
sudo yum -y update
I have no idea what "bazillion archaic commands" you use; maybe the last time you tried using GNU/Linux was 1995?
And this idea that the world wants 10 different CPU architectures for mainstream computing is laughable tripe.
What "the world wants" and what would work well are not always in alignment. This whole "one architecture to rule them all" situation has resulted in a lot of friction -- better architectures cannot get a foothold, developers do not write portable software, a certain popular desktop operating system is forced to maintain compatibility with old software that is extremely poorly written, etc. Had we had 3-5 popular desktop architectures over the past decade, I think it is safe to say that we would have had an easier time escaping bad designs in both hardware and software, and moving on to better designs.
We'll see if the same assholes are whining in 5 years when ARM is the only architecture used for anything mobile
First of all, it is rude to refer to people you disagree with as "assholes," and second of all, yes, having one architecture rule an entire class of computers is a bad thing regardless of who makes the architecture. x86 didn't win on the desktop because it was the best architecture around, and ARM is not necessarily the best mobile architecture.
Yeah, and you know what? Those types of users seem to fare pretty well with popular GNU/Linux distros, from what I have seen. SSH to my mom's system, make sure her software is up to date, and she never needs to worry about breaking things. It took all of two days for her to get used to GNOME.
Remember who you're talking to; this is Slashdot, where people do not have "partners" that are not battery powered.
The trick is to keep your electronics just out of reach. Then you get a little extra motivation to actually get out of bed in the morning.
I'm not going to even go into the clusterfuck of hairpulling that is the typical Linux desktop.
Please do go into it; I am curious as to what sort of hair pulling you might be referring to. The last time I had to deal with hair pulling was about 5 years ago; I recently installed Fedora on a brand new desktop with very recent hardware, including a high end Nvidia graphics card, and it worked right out of the box -- the only real work involved was copying my home directory from the old desktop and installing a few programs that are not installed by default.
Every year or so I wipe the drive with a fresh XP-CD install, and need to reinstall my favorite programs, but that would be true of any OS
Really? That's funny, I cannot remember the last time I was forced to do something like that with any of my Fedora systems, or CentOS, or RHEL.
That would be about as effective as the "If Facebook doesn't stop fucking with us, we will stop using it!" pages that were created on Facebook.
You left one out:
What about all those architectures other than x86 that died or are irrelevant on the desktop because of the monoculture?
Sounds like the sort of person who can give a good report on this issue.
You must be new to the Internet.
No, it is not a question of "elite," it is a question of why someone picked the particular software they picked. Choosing software for its technical merits is fine, but that is not why most of the GNU/Linux users I have encountered decided to use that OS. Most GNU/Linux users, unfortunately, neither understand the technical merits of the system nor understand the licensing structure and its merits.
Really, I fail to see why someone who actually reads licenses and makes a decision not to use software because of the license should be called a "zealot." Some of us really do not want to agree not to modify or reverse engineer our OS, or not to use our word processor to produce controversial documents, or to allow a company to silently modify our software configuration. You might not care, or you might operate under the assumption that these things will not matter -- fine, but how does caring about what one agrees to make one a zealot?
Not to mention that Skype is proprietary. Maybe this will push people over to SIP a little quicker.
Here is the problem with Ekiga: it is completely unreliable on Windows, and still very much "Beta" on GNU/Linux. When it works, it works...but more often than not, I feel like I fighting against the tide to keep Ekiga operational. Now, for a bunch of neckbeards like myself, that is OK -- perhaps when I have time, I will even submit a patch -- but when my mother sees Ekiga exploding like that, she just says, "Why aren't we using Skype?"