Lucky? I hardly think so. WoW is hardly an obscure game - it is the most popular MMORPG in the world. The idea that wine can run, out of the box, such a high profile game is perfectly incompatible with 'no games, period.'
Zero games? Tell that to World of Warcraft, which seems to work fine for me on Ubuntu, straight out of the box, through wine. Also, the idea that Linux has no virus purely because it isn't popular ignores the fact it is very popular for servers which are bigger targets for crackers.
We have no weapons, no means of mass broadcasting, and no widespread support for changing anything.
A revolution in the UK would face, unarmed, one of the most modern armies in the world (probably second only to the US), cultural inertia, and a ubiquitous and loud system of propaganda decrying it as a few undesirables making trouble.
Yet the idea of switch government computers to Linux is consider absurd by ministers. Probably because they get their IT advice from someone on the MS payroll.
This is fallout from the Baby P incident. One tragic case of failure in social services got hammered by the media for weeks, complete with pictures of cute-now-dead toddler, and the newspapers got into full on campaign mode. The government has no choice but to respond. Our IT policy is being dictated by the emotional reaction people have to a small child being beaten to death. Rationality has truly gone out the window.
Knowing how the UK government (and certain ISPs) think, I am concerned that the might use higher speeds to leverage people into more intrusion on their private communications. Virgin currently offer the fastest broadband and they are notorious.
Also, there is a difference between what a UK ISP sells you as a high speed connection and what you actually get. The ISPs spat the dummy out not so long ago about how IPlayer was 'ruining' the Internet because *gasp* people were actually starting to use the bandwidth they had paid for. Just because you've got a bazillion gigabits between your house and the ISP, doesn't mean the ISP is planning to support that at its end. They might well be counting on you buying an uberfast connection just to show off then not using it.
Porn isn't a bad thing for those who aren't intimidated by human sexuality. Harassment and privacy invasion have been around for a long time (and in fact can be eased by the Internet). Traditional forms of social interaction and businesses have no intrinsic value, except as a blankie for those who the world has left behind. Also, if you get turned down for a job based on facebook posts a) you can sue them and b) why the fuck did you friend your future employer?
Defining the sum of peoples actions as 'the market' and then claiming it as an independent entity that is wise and should be left to do its work is self-evidently retarded; its sociological creationism. God/Invisible Hand/Magic Man did it!
Or maybe, just maybe, they will stop overproducing special-effects-laden turds with hideously overpaid actors and dumping them on audiences who have little better else to choose from?
Nobody is forcing them to spend 300 million on a movie. Also, nobody has every convinced me that a 300 million dollar movie is 300 times more entertaining than a 1 million dollar movie.
What are the cons? If there is anything you don't like on or about the Internet, simply unplug. To me there are no cons to an enhancement in communications technology, or a radical lowering of the barriers of entry for publishing.
The only people who see bad things about the Internet are the old and those frightened by change.
Your blind worship of markets is misguided. We don't want them to do for the entertainment industry what they have done for the financial industry, do we?
I don't trust 'the market' - because its an abstraction designed to keep us from looking at what people are really up to. I don't trust governments either, simply because they are governments. I only trust in people.
The cost of distributing media has dropped to nearly zero. The era of centralised media is over, they just haven't figured it out yet.
They became complacent, got used to telling people what to consume, when to consume, and how to consume information. They can't do that any more and are having a tantrum about it.
Trying to promote Linux in places like Africa that are still working on their IT industries could be perceived as paternalistic. The sad, sad fact is that the majority of the western world uses MS Windows, and that if you try and say that despite this, African users should embrace Linux - it can come across as if you are fobbing them off with something second rate. You aren't, of course, but that isn't how the Microsoft Ministry of Truth is going to spin it.
The best way to promote Linux in developing markets is to promote it in developed markets. Countries that want to build their IT industry will, logically, look to how its done in countries with successful IT industries. Any increase in the Linux user base in the United States or Europe will be mirrored by an increase in much of the rest of the world.
You can sell clothing to women because women have distinct needs from men in this regard, and there is are well established cultural differences in how men and women dress.
You can sell computers to power users, to office workers, to creative types, to programmers etc, but you can't sell computers to women because a persons gender does not define what they need out of a computer.
Yeah, Europeans are just so cool. Find me any group of European countries that comprise 300 million people
Its called the EU, retard. The total debt of some of the constituent states may be high, but its balanced out over the whole union; the exteral debt of the EU is about 60% of GDP rather than about 100% of GDP for the US.
"Disagreeing with your utterly moronic view" is not the same as "Being a child".
I have a job, and am a grown man (28 to be exact). Your pissiness means less than nothing to me. As does your demand to hand over my computers for inspection by the IP Stasi.
I do appreciate other peoples work - I just do not appreciate other peoples demand for royalties whenever someone views their work. Far from being a child, I have demonstrated a subtlety of understanding you will never have even if you reach 100 years old.
Now, go home and cry you worthless little shit. The world has moved on and if you don't move with it you will die, and nobody will care.
Someone finally has decided to take a little of the heat away from the UK as the YRO punchbag. It is good to know we aren't the only nation in the western world gleefully demolishing the institutions of a free society.
I still keep thinking to myself: How the hell did Sarkozy get elected? Nobody in France ever seemed to really like him.
You've already shown by your posts you are too stupid to grasp the issues at hand. You haven't the brain power to distinguish between physical goods and information.
Freedom hangs on a precipice, and all you seem to care about is using brutally intrusive legislation to force people to pay money into a failed business model.
Only a retard would seriously compare the economics of beef to the economics of data. Unless something changed recently and beef can be replicated at near zero cost. I hope not, as if it got out of hand we could enter a Grey Mince scenario.
My view may be harsh, but it is not too simplistic.
Music predates recording and distribution by centuries. Musicians were poor of course - but then again it wasn't exactly plain sailing for a medieval peasant or an industrial mill worker. Musicians survived by performance alone.
Because musicians can earn at least minimum wage, as an hourly wage, for their performance if they are remotely good - they aren't owed a damn thing. If they want to live the same life as a full time office worker, they do the hours of a full time office worker. If you don't like it, tough shit - but don't come trying to crush our freedom so you don't have to work full time.
Maybe it does cause an 8% drop in GDP. So does slavery being illegal. By not being forced to work 20 hours a day in a factory you are depriving trainer companies of valuable income. THIEF!
If you think protecting someones business model is worth pissing on the privacy of citizens you need to get your head out of your arse. Nobody is owed a living that costs my freedom. That is the end of it.
Slashdot Mirror
Lucky? I hardly think so. WoW is hardly an obscure game - it is the most popular MMORPG in the world. The idea that wine can run, out of the box, such a high profile game is perfectly incompatible with 'no games, period.'
Zero games? Tell that to World of Warcraft, which seems to work fine for me on Ubuntu, straight out of the box, through wine. Also, the idea that Linux has no virus purely because it isn't popular ignores the fact it is very popular for servers which are bigger targets for crackers.
How?
We have no weapons, no means of mass broadcasting, and no widespread support for changing anything.
A revolution in the UK would face, unarmed, one of the most modern armies in the world (probably second only to the US), cultural inertia, and a ubiquitous and loud system of propaganda decrying it as a few undesirables making trouble.
Yet the idea of switch government computers to Linux is consider absurd by ministers. Probably because they get their IT advice from someone on the MS payroll.
This is fallout from the Baby P incident. One tragic case of failure in social services got hammered by the media for weeks, complete with pictures of cute-now-dead toddler, and the newspapers got into full on campaign mode. The government has no choice but to respond. Our IT policy is being dictated by the emotional reaction people have to a small child being beaten to death. Rationality has truly gone out the window.
Knowing how the UK government (and certain ISPs) think, I am concerned that the might use higher speeds to leverage people into more intrusion on their private communications. Virgin currently offer the fastest broadband and they are notorious.
Also, there is a difference between what a UK ISP sells you as a high speed connection and what you actually get. The ISPs spat the dummy out not so long ago about how IPlayer was 'ruining' the Internet because *gasp* people were actually starting to use the bandwidth they had paid for. Just because you've got a bazillion gigabits between your house and the ISP, doesn't mean the ISP is planning to support that at its end. They might well be counting on you buying an uberfast connection just to show off then not using it.
Porn isn't a bad thing for those who aren't intimidated by human sexuality. Harassment and privacy invasion have been around for a long time (and in fact can be eased by the Internet). Traditional forms of social interaction and businesses have no intrinsic value, except as a blankie for those who the world has left behind. Also, if you get turned down for a job based on facebook posts a) you can sue them and b) why the fuck did you friend your future employer?
Defining the sum of peoples actions as 'the market' and then claiming it as an independent entity that is wise and should be left to do its work is self-evidently retarded; its sociological creationism. God/Invisible Hand/Magic Man did it!
Someone is too stupid to get the point...
Good call.
What, if anything, they are losing now is a fraction of what they've ripped from us with the format treadmill. Let the fuckers bleed.
Or maybe, just maybe, they will stop overproducing special-effects-laden turds with hideously overpaid actors and dumping them on audiences who have little better else to choose from?
Nobody is forcing them to spend 300 million on a movie. Also, nobody has every convinced me that a 300 million dollar movie is 300 times more entertaining than a 1 million dollar movie.
What are the cons? If there is anything you don't like on or about the Internet, simply unplug. To me there are no cons to an enhancement in communications technology, or a radical lowering of the barriers of entry for publishing.
The only people who see bad things about the Internet are the old and those frightened by change.
Your blind worship of markets is misguided. We don't want them to do for the entertainment industry what they have done for the financial industry, do we?
I don't trust 'the market' - because its an abstraction designed to keep us from looking at what people are really up to. I don't trust governments either, simply because they are governments. I only trust in people.
The cost of distributing media has dropped to nearly zero. The era of centralised media is over, they just haven't figured it out yet.
They became complacent, got used to telling people what to consume, when to consume, and how to consume information. They can't do that any more and are having a tantrum about it.
Trying to promote Linux in places like Africa that are still working on their IT industries could be perceived as paternalistic. The sad, sad fact is that the majority of the western world uses MS Windows, and that if you try and say that despite this, African users should embrace Linux - it can come across as if you are fobbing them off with something second rate. You aren't, of course, but that isn't how the Microsoft Ministry of Truth is going to spin it.
The best way to promote Linux in developing markets is to promote it in developed markets. Countries that want to build their IT industry will, logically, look to how its done in countries with successful IT industries. Any increase in the Linux user base in the United States or Europe will be mirrored by an increase in much of the rest of the world.
You can sell clothing to women because women have distinct needs from men in this regard, and there is are well established cultural differences in how men and women dress.
You can sell computers to power users, to office workers, to creative types, to programmers etc, but you can't sell computers to women because a persons gender does not define what they need out of a computer.
Its called the EU, retard. The total debt of some of the constituent states may be high, but its balanced out over the whole union; the exteral debt of the EU is about 60% of GDP rather than about 100% of GDP for the US.
"Disagreeing with your utterly moronic view" is not the same as "Being a child".
I have a job, and am a grown man (28 to be exact). Your pissiness means less than nothing to me. As does your demand to hand over my computers for inspection by the IP Stasi.
I do appreciate other peoples work - I just do not appreciate other peoples demand for royalties whenever someone views their work. Far from being a child, I have demonstrated a subtlety of understanding you will never have even if you reach 100 years old.
Now, go home and cry you worthless little shit. The world has moved on and if you don't move with it you will die, and nobody will care.
Someone finally has decided to take a little of the heat away from the UK as the YRO punchbag. It is good to know we aren't the only nation in the western world gleefully demolishing the institutions of a free society.
I still keep thinking to myself: How the hell did Sarkozy get elected? Nobody in France ever seemed to really like him.
You've already shown by your posts you are too stupid to grasp the issues at hand. You haven't the brain power to distinguish between physical goods and information.
Freedom hangs on a precipice, and all you seem to care about is using brutally intrusive legislation to force people to pay money into a failed business model.
Nobody owes 'content creators' shit.
Only a retard would seriously compare the economics of beef to the economics of data. Unless something changed recently and beef can be replicated at near zero cost. I hope not, as if it got out of hand we could enter a Grey Mince scenario.
My view may be harsh, but it is not too simplistic.
Music predates recording and distribution by centuries. Musicians were poor of course - but then again it wasn't exactly plain sailing for a medieval peasant or an industrial mill worker. Musicians survived by performance alone.
Because musicians can earn at least minimum wage, as an hourly wage, for their performance if they are remotely good - they aren't owed a damn thing. If they want to live the same life as a full time office worker, they do the hours of a full time office worker. If you don't like it, tough shit - but don't come trying to crush our freedom so you don't have to work full time.
Distributors would be out of business, and artists would have make a living through performing and struggle like the rest of us.
Fine by me.
Maybe it does cause an 8% drop in GDP. So does slavery being illegal. By not being forced to work 20 hours a day in a factory you are depriving trainer companies of valuable income. THIEF!
If you think protecting someones business model is worth pissing on the privacy of citizens you need to get your head out of your arse. Nobody is owed a living that costs my freedom. That is the end of it.