bxr

Yeah, nobody would want to use those. They especially wouldn't want to build a playlist on the fly with their ipod.

Man, if people who don't know what they're doing are this successful, imagine what it means about people who are. And how any laws we make about computer security are just security theater.

I'd take that deal.

    <a> That won't help my XY is W and V. What can I do?
    *b has changed the channel topic to: Don't ask questions.

Don't forget the corollary: Never ask if you can ask a question on channels where they don't like answering questions. You should know that its not a channel for asking questions. If you are brazen enough to ask a question expect the following answer:

    <a> How do I XY my Z?
    <@b> !google XY a Z
    <bot> http://lmgtfy.com/?q=XY+a+Z

I don't really get this article though. The "friendly fire" is what fuels the drive to make new hotness to be as good as it can be. I don't think its damaging outside of the handful of people daft enough to take it too personally.

The argument presented in the article is appealing enough, but ends before it gets to the part where it explains how to make inroads towards the cobol folks. Its been criticized up and down, left and right. The people still using it have taken themselves outside realm of constructive criticism. Any time spent there fighting a losing battle could also be spent improving on what we, who are willing to use new tools, have.

No. No they don't know. And no, no there isn't payment for every legal copy.

You mention Hulu. Lets look at that real quick. What if someone sets up a website that mimics hulu's free video system, with a different brand but just as legit looking and with pirated material, hell, lets say they even run ads. No one would know if the website was legit or not, especially not if there were no news articles about it.

Furthermore, look at youtube. The version of video X uploaded by hulu has no copyright violation, the version uploaded by hulo does violate copyright. Congresspeople upload clips from CSPAN. Are they breaking copyright? Did they get authorization from CSPAN for every single clip? Really? How do I know that?

Don't act like that the user knows. I still find myself explaining to the less technologically inclined that getting songs with whatever p2p software they're using is illegal. Don't even pretend that you can put the burden on the user to determine what websites are kosher.

There is a difference between the minimum you tolerate and what you want to actively participate in. You're just suggesting that The Oatmeal drag himself down to their level.

Not only is a useful tablet what I'm waiting for in a consumer device (for my definitions of useful), but business will love the thing. At work we have tons of netbooks and win xp tablet-ish devices littered around the labs and I love those little fuckers. There is never going to be an iScience or iEngieneer app to do even the bog-standard things that we need the netbooks around the lab for, and if there was it would be a re-invention of the wheel that is watered down with a toy interface slapped on it.

Look at android, many of us use it because we're willing to take a hit on the UI of our phone if it means we can do more. It will happen with tablets where we can get a step less polish and a huge jump of possibility.

Thats some very strange reasoning you're operating on there. The fact the industry isn't enforcing itself only suggests that people don't care enough about this to reach the tipping point at which the upset people involved start to negatively affect the business of the perpetrators to the extent that not engaging in the undesirable tactics would no longer be profitable. Most people do care, and do hate it, but renters have to deal with that world for very short and limited periods of time over the course of a year and can't afford to invest the kind of effort needed to affect change in an industry completely unrelated to them.

Its like you're saying no one cares about all the generic spam they get just because the 0.001% conversion rate spammers have make it a sustainable business model.

To address your other post, I would assume that you're getting down-voted because you're playing devil's advocate by presenting that argument in a discussion of something that almost all of us would agree is immoral, regardless of legality.

I'm not saying burnt in a lawsuit against them for infringement, it could be as simple as abandoning technologies based on recommendation or clarification from their legal council.

I don't mean to marginalize the gnu project, but there were already free -nixes out there. Starting over from scratch isn't much of an accomplishment other than the license...

>and created the culture and licenses that made it possible

The GPL has ultimately done more harm than good for open source. The only time proprietary software vendors are forced to release anything is when they accidentally mess up because they didn't understand what they were getting into. This happens rarely and when businesses get burnt, they're more apprehensive to do anything with opensource in the future. I know because I still see this happening today.

When people aren't scared of the codebase, they can start using it. If they can modify it without worrying about legal repercussions, they're not afraid to modify it. Sure they don't have to give back, but if you force them to they're not even going to make the modifications in the first place.

If someone wants to build something closed source, they're going to build something closed source even if it means re-inventing the wheel to avoid the GPL. I'd rather have the wheel be a BSD wheel, so even if product X will never be opensource, at least it will be built with good wheels. I'm a realist that knows closed software isn't going anywhere and at the end of the day I'd like all software to be as good as it can be.

Its unfortunate for many reasons, not the least of which is that they either were, or were perceived as (which is just as bad for the customer), so out of touch with the user base that such action was necessary.

>it also creates perverse incentives

No, it was created by a general disregard for customer service. The attitude that an issue is fine to ignore unless it is boiling over is what created the incentive, that was ages ago.

And if they don't do anything? They're not required to. Should he just forget about it?

They would be inferring the wrong thing if they did that. When someone thinks of the dangers of lead, they think of lead poisoning, not lead as carcinogenic. The dangers of exhaust, asphyxiation not as a carcinogen. Chloroform? Kidneys and liver damage from too high a dose, not cancer.

After wondering why they're reporting on this, I assumed that they might be drawing some conclusions or commenting on what this actually means. They have 6 months of code in the pipe, are they still testing? can't handle the volume of change? think their users can't handle the volume of changes? or just are happy enough in the market that they're comfortable sitting on a few things that are ready to go live? Anything?

Nope. The story came across with the voice of a schoolgirl giggling "he he he, facebook mentioned us." With trite reporting like this, who can be surprised they've implemented the level of control to blind techcrunch at will?

People anxieties aren't fleeting after every update, what is fleeting are peoples assumptions that they can be open on facebook. These days, almost every time I take out my camera someone will inevitably asks me not to put the photos on facebook (not that I would anyway). Some friends have quit drinking because they know that if a picture of them drinking in their free time, which they are allowed to do could still ruin their career.

Facebook isn't making people more candid, its making us self-censor. That self censoring is moving from facebook back to the real world. Its very troubling.

I downloaded this 'Free Screensaver Pack' and I want to run it! Who does this virus scanner think it is? Quit telling me that its a bad idea and just goddamn do what I want you to.

If bad software exists I don't want my computer to warn me that it might be a bad idea to run it, I'd rather apple just creates a walled garden so I can don't even have the option to command my computer to do something bad.

The requirements for an operating system have changed drastically with this new way of thinking about what it means to run an operating system. The requirements can be as low as supporting a single process that can talk tcp and (maybe) to disk. Look at Haskell Network Stack, it provides network support to an application and you don't need an OS proper, just Xen.

I'm very excited to see where highly lightweight OSes end up.

Everything else being equal, marketing is just propaganda that makes the market less functional. And a "strong brand" is the result of successful propaganda.

It already is, its just done with a "2.6." prefix.