> I don't understand how Asia can have a few of these incidents and the west has so none.Is there a distinct cultural difference to explain this?
Could it be money? I think that Asia has bigger percent of poor people than the West. I think that majority of the deaths have happened in Internet cafes. Those are used by people who don't own their own computer and connection so they proparly aren't that rich (for example in my country, even those who don't have a job, usually have computers). This could simply mean that the people who died were too poor to eat properly or visit the doctor often enough. Or they simply try to make money from the game and therefore push their limits.
> and is pissed off because their system did what they just let it do
No, they are pissed off, because they turned the updates off and Windows still managed to update itself, without never asking permission from the user. This means that Microsoft could for example destroy all data in almost all Windows computers or steal the data from there. I'm pretty sure that US government knows this and probably they have already used it.
I'm scared about this and I don't even use Windows. Microsoft has a really big power in this world, much bigger than first thought.
> But when a card becomes old and outdated, it will interesting to so how long it's really supported.
That is not really a problem. Once the drivers are implemented and major bugs are fixed, the maintenance work is very small task. So maintainer might not be needed at all.
> i am the original author of a quite succesful program , which is now OS (since last year), but I am not more proud of it
Open source is not magic. If you write a closed source software and then release it as open source, it will be the same shit it was before. The reason why open source software generally is better is because of the 3 rules from which you have t sacrifice at least one when making software: - Time - Money - Quality
Because open source is often done on free time, without salary and deadlines. There is no need to worry about time or money. So all the effort can be put on the quality.
But of course again, there is no magic. If you are a bad programmer, writing open source program doesn't make the result better. But if you are a good programmer, time is usually the only thing that is limiting the quality of your programs.
But this doesn't make any difference between closed source program on free time and open source program on free time. But open source has another benefit. For example I have actually red the whole source code of one program and I did find some bugs from there, which might have never been spotted without someone reading the code. Or look this project, which has revealed several bugs from open source projects: http://scan.coverity.com/
Then open source has patches. There is one product which was really good and I enjoyed using it, but it had bugs I didn't like. It wasn't open source and it had only one developer, which then stopped developing it and the project was pretty much dead after that. No fixes, no development. If it had been open source, I would have fixed the bugs for free on my free time. But because it wasn't I couldn't do this. This is the main reason why I prefer open source over anything else. If it is broken and no-one else cares about fixing it, at least I have an option of doing it myself.
> There is a lwa that states that next year brazilian diesel will have to use a small percentage of bio-diesel,
The European Union has set a goal:
* For 2010 that each member state should achieve at least 5.75% biofuel usage of all used traffic fuel.
* For 2020, 10 % .
> to try and get MS to make something that would actually be standard, and it got approved
Obviously they want this. But they also want that no other than them is able to implement their standard. If OO.org could implement their standard, they would lose their Office sales to OO.org. Their only chance keeping the markets is to ensure that no-one can use their documents in other software. But now the need "official" standard for the format, because goverments require it.
> If you only want certain people to be able to use that method, then only show those certain people how it's done.
Replace the "source code" with words like "music" or "movie" or "book" and your sentences make a lot more sense. Books are available on the library, so certainly I have the right to copy a book and then sell it with profit, right? If I didn't have this right, the book wouldn't be public. Right?
According to the comments placed next to the vote. It looks like majority has voted "no", and yet the majority has actually voted for "yes". Do those people actually know what yes and no votes mean?
> (1) add "CPUTYPE=[whatever-my-cpu-is-here]" to my make.conf file
The problem is that most of the people don't know what their CPUTYPE is. I don't know it either and I have actually build the pc from parts on my own. Is it really impossible to autodetect the CPUTYPE?
> How many people know that if they buy a copy of some closed-source MySQL-based bulletin board software, > that they are required to then go purchase a license from MySQL AB in order to *use* the software?
They don't need to buy a license to use it. The license you can buy only gives you a permission to use MySQL with non-free software. If you are going to use only free software, then you don't need to buy the license. To again GPL provides freedom. Don't mix GPL with the non-GPL license MySQL is selling for those who don't want freedom.
> So if sick people need to pay more than healthy people, what's the point of having insurance?
Because even healty people can some day lose their health. Even when it is statistically unlikely.
Sick people take more money (but not all of it) from the bucket, so they should put more in it. Healty people take less, but they do take some. So they should put some money in also. The only problem is how "healthy" is measured.
One solution would be government regulated insurance, where everyone would have to pay money, but it would be put on a personal account. a) Person A is very healty and never sick. He pays insurance payments every month, untill he has $X money on his account. At that point, he can stop paying the insurance. If he some day needs the money, he will have to start paying again. b) Person B is always sick. His account shows negative numbers, so he will have to pay more and for a longer time. c) Person C is normally very healty, but he experiences an accident and medical operations cost a lot of money, so the account goes to negative side. Person C will then pay more for some time, but because he is generally healty, he can also stop paying when he meets the $X limit.
When you die, government will take the money/loans from the account to balance them up.
With this model, you would almost only pay for what you actually use. But at the same time those who are the least fortunate would still be taken care of. Obviously those who are often sick don't like this model. No matter are they sick because of their own habits or genetics. But their genetics isn't those fault either who currently pay the bills and they would still get help from the rest of the population if it costs too much for them to handle. So I think this is fair if good limits and monthly payments are calculated.
> Calling me a stupid troll and a dumbass isn't helping Linux capture any market share, now is it?
No, you are absolutely right. So here is a suggestion: Because you find Windows easier to use, create empty partition using Windows (Windows installation disk for example [I'm assuming it can do this, because you said it is easier to use.]) and once you have the empty partition created, installing Linux should cause you no problems. Simply select the partition, make few clicks and go get coffee. So your problem is now solved and you can start using Ubuntu if you really want to and assuming you were right about how easy it is to install/use Windows. If you were wrong about how easy it is to use Windows, then your options are more limited. Buy a new hard drive, ask someone more experienced to help you, or simply wipe out your existing hard driver to install something else on it.
> The evidence speaks for itself: Linux can't even capture market share with its software by giving it away for free.
Linux already has a market share. They don't have major market share, but they do have quite many users.
> In any other business on Earth, if you can't capture your competitor's customers by making your products free, it means there is something seriously,seriously wrong with your product.
Let's say that I present to you product A and product B. Product A is superior in every aspect to product B and you agree with this. But then I say that if you choose product B I will give you a huge amount of money. Would you now choose product A which is better, or product B, because you can live with it also and get a huge pile of money with it?
People opinions can be influenced. Either by threats or bribes. There are a lot of stories where Linux was considered to be used in a school/company/country, but then Microsoft appears and offers huge donations or threats, to keep them using Microsoft products. So it is not all about how good your product is.
That is true. Anti-virus companies, marketing people, help desk, lots of system admins. But on the other hand, you can also create a lot of jobs by simply throwing rocks at windows and breaking them. Manufacturing new windows, transporting it and installing it will create a lot of jobs. Yet people seem to think that breaking windows is not a good thing. The reason for this is, that if the people wouldn't have to repair the broken windows, they could do some other work, that might help the society more.
It is the same with Microsoft products. Sure it will generate a lot of jobs, but the same job could be done with less manpower by using the free alternatives. These resources could then be used for something else.
In other words: We could use the money now spent on marketing by the Microsoft, into making better software.
> 3. Most government offices use Microsoft Office on Microsoft Windows for word processing, so Microsoft is the best format to use since the > government is already integrated with their products.
In other words: They are locked in to Microsoft products. And they can keep it that way. Or suffer now and be free in the future.
Why not just write a cross platform game instead of a Linux or Windows game? It is actually easier than writing a DirectX game, because of the advanced libraries. Try writing a game with Irrlicht-library for example. You can even select whether to use DirectX or OpenGL as a rendering engine for the same code you write and it takes only about 20 lines of code to write a working program that will load a 3D-object from file and display it.
AFAIK the EU has ruled that length should be 70 years, so this should make UK almost unique in the Europe. But there are several other countries that use 50 years. Personally I think the copyright should hold only certain amount of years, since publishing. The current law assumes that people die relatively young (under 200 years old), while some scientist bulieve that this will change in the near future and people could live thousands of years.
> Also, it's hard to imagine Britannica being unable to find loads of mistakes in Wikipedia.
Show us the list then.
The thing is, Britannica is a book. And books don't write lists. But if there were such a list, the errors would be corrected probably the same day the list is published.
Passwords are not in plain text, but readable with Firefox.
You can set master password to truely encrypt them. But if you let people to access your harddrive, you can install keyloggers to steal the master password also. Or any password, no matter do you save it or not.
It is not about safety of the Firefox. It is about safety of websites that allows users to insert Javascript code to their sites. It's like a bank which would allow anyone to step behind the desk and act as an employee of the bank.
But they can only "steal" the passwords of that website. They can't steal your all passwords. So just remember to select different passwords for websites that might allow users to insert Javascript code on the site. So it doesn't matter that much if they manage to steal your passwords.
Or use Noscript as suggested. Or simply don't use such websites, as they clearly don't think much about user's security.
Slashdot Mirror
> I don't understand how Asia can have a few of these incidents and the west has so none.Is there a distinct cultural difference to explain this?
Could it be money? I think that Asia has bigger percent of poor people than the West. I think that majority of the deaths have happened in Internet cafes. Those are used by people who don't own their own computer and connection so they proparly aren't that rich (for example in my country, even those who don't have a job, usually have computers). This could simply mean that the people who died were too poor to eat properly or visit the doctor often enough. Or they simply try to make money from the game and therefore push their limits.
> and is pissed off because their system did what they just let it do
No, they are pissed off, because they turned the updates off and Windows still managed to update itself, without never asking permission from the user. This means that Microsoft could for example destroy all data in almost all Windows computers or steal the data from there. I'm pretty sure that US government knows this and probably they have already used it.
I'm scared about this and I don't even use Windows. Microsoft has a really big power in this world, much bigger than first thought.
> But when a card becomes old and outdated, it will interesting to so how long it's really supported.
That is not really a problem. Once the drivers are implemented and major bugs are fixed, the maintenance work is very small task. So maintainer might not be needed at all.
> i am the original author of a quite succesful program , which is now OS (since last year), but I am not more proud of it
Open source is not magic. If you write a closed source software and then release it as open source, it will be the same shit it was before. The reason why open source software generally is better is because of the 3 rules from which you have t sacrifice at least one when making software:
- Time
- Money
- Quality
Because open source is often done on free time, without salary and deadlines. There is no need to worry about time or money. So all the effort can be put on the quality.
But of course again, there is no magic. If you are a bad programmer, writing open source program doesn't make the result better. But if you are a good programmer, time is usually the only thing that is limiting the quality of your programs.
But this doesn't make any difference between closed source program on free time and open source program on free time. But open source has another benefit. For example I have actually red the whole source code of one program and I did find some bugs from there, which might have never been spotted without someone reading the code. Or look this project, which has revealed several bugs from open source projects: http://scan.coverity.com/
Then open source has patches. There is one product which was really good and I enjoyed using it, but it had bugs I didn't like. It wasn't open source and it had only one developer, which then stopped developing it and the project was pretty much dead after that. No fixes, no development. If it had been open source, I would have fixed the bugs for free on my free time. But because it wasn't I couldn't do this. This is the main reason why I prefer open source over anything else. If it is broken and no-one else cares about fixing it, at least I have an option of doing it myself.
> There is a lwa that states that next year brazilian diesel will have to use a small percentage of bio-diesel,
The European Union has set a goal:
* For 2010 that each member state should achieve at least 5.75% biofuel usage of all used traffic fuel.
* For 2020, 10 % .
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biofuel#European_Union
They had 50 servers, but because of Linux, they need only 15.
> to try and get MS to make something that would actually be standard, and it got approved
Obviously they want this. But they also want that no other than them is able to implement their standard. If OO.org could implement their standard, they would lose their Office sales to OO.org. Their only chance keeping the markets is to ensure that no-one can use their documents in other software. But now the need "official" standard for the format, because goverments require it.
> If you only want certain people to be able to use that method, then only show those certain people how it's done.
Replace the "source code" with words like "music" or "movie" or "book" and your sentences make a lot more sense. Books are available on the library, so certainly I have the right to copy a book and then sell it with profit, right? If I didn't have this right, the book wouldn't be public. Right?
Why not just use "the amount of unsolved tickets"?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_Open_XML#Contr adiction_phase_voting
According to the comments placed next to the vote. It looks like majority has voted "no", and yet the majority has actually voted for "yes". Do those people actually know what yes and no votes mean?
> (1) add "CPUTYPE=[whatever-my-cpu-is-here]" to my make.conf file
The problem is that most of the people don't know what their CPUTYPE is. I don't know it either and I have actually build the pc from parts on my own. Is it really impossible to autodetect the CPUTYPE?
Or they are trying to get more hits by posting their link to the Slashdot.
> How many people know that if they buy a copy of some closed-source MySQL-based bulletin board software,
> that they are required to then go purchase a license from MySQL AB in order to *use* the software?
They don't need to buy a license to use it. The license you can buy only gives you a permission to use MySQL with non-free software. If you are going to use only free software, then you don't need to buy the license. To again GPL provides freedom. Don't mix GPL with the non-GPL license MySQL is selling for those who don't want freedom.
> So if sick people need to pay more than healthy people, what's the point of having insurance?
Because even healty people can some day lose their health. Even when it is statistically unlikely.
Sick people take more money (but not all of it) from the bucket, so they should put more in it. Healty people take less, but they do take some. So they should put some money in also. The only problem is how "healthy" is measured.
One solution would be government regulated insurance, where everyone would have to pay money, but it would be put on a personal account.
a) Person A is very healty and never sick. He pays insurance payments every month, untill he has $X money on his account. At that point, he can stop paying the insurance. If he some day needs the money, he will have to start paying again.
b) Person B is always sick. His account shows negative numbers, so he will have to pay more and for a longer time.
c) Person C is normally very healty, but he experiences an accident and medical operations cost a lot of money, so the account goes to negative side. Person C will then pay more for some time, but because he is generally healty, he can also stop paying when he meets the $X limit.
When you die, government will take the money/loans from the account to balance them up.
With this model, you would almost only pay for what you actually use. But at the same time those who are the least fortunate would still be taken care of. Obviously those who are often sick don't like this model. No matter are they sick because of their own habits or genetics. But their genetics isn't those fault either who currently pay the bills and they would still get help from the rest of the population if it costs too much for them to handle. So I think this is fair if good limits and monthly payments are calculated.
> Calling me a stupid troll and a dumbass isn't helping Linux capture any market share, now is it?
No, you are absolutely right. So here is a suggestion: Because you find Windows easier to use, create empty partition using Windows (Windows installation disk for example [I'm assuming it can do this, because you said it is easier to use.]) and once you have the empty partition created, installing Linux should cause you no problems. Simply select the partition, make few clicks and go get coffee. So your problem is now solved and you can start using Ubuntu if you really want to and assuming you were right about how easy it is to install/use Windows. If you were wrong about how easy it is to use Windows, then your options are more limited. Buy a new hard drive, ask someone more experienced to help you, or simply wipe out your existing hard driver to install something else on it.
> The evidence speaks for itself: Linux can't even capture market share with its software by giving it away for free.
Linux already has a market share. They don't have major market share, but they do have quite many users.
> In any other business on Earth, if you can't capture your competitor's customers by making your products free, it means there is something seriously,seriously wrong with your product.
Let's say that I present to you product A and product B. Product A is superior in every aspect to product B and you agree with this. But then I say that if you choose product B I will give you a huge amount of money. Would you now choose product A which is better, or product B, because you can live with it also and get a huge pile of money with it?
People opinions can be influenced. Either by threats or bribes. There are a lot of stories where Linux was considered to be used in a school/company/country, but then Microsoft appears and offers huge donations or threats, to keep them using Microsoft products. So it is not all about how good your product is.
I bulieve you. If you can prove it?
> 2. Microsoft creates a lot of jobs.
That is true. Anti-virus companies, marketing people, help desk, lots of system admins. But on the other hand, you can also create a lot of jobs by simply throwing rocks at windows and breaking them. Manufacturing new windows, transporting it and installing it will create a lot of jobs. Yet people seem to think that breaking windows is not a good thing. The reason for this is, that if the people wouldn't have to repair the broken windows, they could do some other work, that might help the society more.
It is the same with Microsoft products. Sure it will generate a lot of jobs, but the same job could be done with less manpower by using the free alternatives. These resources could then be used for something else.
In other words: We could use the money now spent on marketing by the Microsoft, into making better software.
> 3. Most government offices use Microsoft Office on Microsoft Windows for word processing, so Microsoft is the best format to use since the
> government is already integrated with their products.
In other words: They are locked in to Microsoft products. And they can keep it that way. Or suffer now and be free in the future.
Why not just write a cross platform game instead of a Linux or Windows game? It is actually easier than writing a DirectX game, because of the advanced libraries. Try writing a game with Irrlicht-library for example. You can even select whether to use DirectX or OpenGL as a rendering engine for the same code you write and it takes only about 20 lines of code to write a working program that will load a 3D-object from file and display it.
http://irrlicht.sourceforge.net/tut012.html
If you don't like Irrlicht, you can always use Ogre 3D or Crystal Space or even SDL with OpenGL.
> houses gave up wood-based heating
Actually biofuels are currently the "new thing", and people are converting oil based heating into wood pellets.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wood_pellet
List of countries' copyright lengtho pyright_length
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries'_c
AFAIK the EU has ruled that length should be 70 years, so this should make UK almost unique in the Europe. But there are several other countries that use 50 years. Personally I think the copyright should hold only certain amount of years, since publishing. The current law assumes that people die relatively young (under 200 years old), while some scientist bulieve that this will change in the near future and people could live thousands of years.
> Since when has Microsoft ever done anything specifically to make your life easier,
I used Windows to download Ubuntu install cd. Since then, my life has been a lot easier.
> Also, it's hard to imagine Britannica being unable to find loads of mistakes in Wikipedia.
Show us the list then.
The thing is, Britannica is a book. And books don't write lists. But if there were such a list, the errors would be corrected probably the same day the list is published.
Passwords are not in plain text, but readable with Firefox.
You can set master password to truely encrypt them. But if you let people to access your harddrive, you can install keyloggers to steal the master password also. Or any password, no matter do you save it or not.
Printing pdf is more fun than printing html.
It is not about safety of the Firefox. It is about safety of websites that allows users to insert Javascript code to their sites. It's like a bank which would allow anyone to step behind the desk and act as an employee of the bank.
But they can only "steal" the passwords of that website. They can't steal your all passwords. So just remember to select different passwords for websites that might allow users to insert Javascript code on the site. So it doesn't matter that much if they manage to steal your passwords.
Or use Noscript as suggested. Or simply don't use such websites, as they clearly don't think much about user's security.