The Simpleton1405241582

When the iPhone came out, there were many so-called 'iPhone killers'. Yet the iPhone has managed to hold its charm over the rest of the market. Every Apple product manages to garner such attention and so is the case with the iPad. It has managed to grab quite a few eyeballs since its release, and although it hasn't been released worldwide yet, the lucky people who were able to buy it have expressed satisfaction. However, as is the case with every Apple product, there are a few cons associated with the iPad as well. I don't remember the list exactly and since this topic isn't about the iPad directly, I won't take the time to search for the cons list. The point is, the iPad does have a few shortcomings which users hope will be overcome in the next version. In the meantime, there have been some companies bringing out tablets to rival the iPad. One of them is the Adam, which I'm sure most of you haven't heard of A start-up called Notion Ink, is bringing out this tablet, and it promises to offer more features than the iPad, at a much lesser price. Here is a link to the site so that you can read more about its features. http://http://www.notionink.in/adamoverview.php One of the features I like is the Pixel Qi display, which makes it easier to see the screen in broad daylight. The iPad doesn't have this feature, meaning that in the streets during daytime, you'd have a tough time reading off the screen normally, as the display wouldn't be bright enough. Another interesting feature in the Adam is the inclusion of USB ports, whose usage is left to the imagination of the user. A quick use would be to hook up a USB keyboard to make typing faster. It has Wi-fi and 3G connectivity options which should satisfy a lot of users. The price is the most attractive point. While the iPad starts at aroung $500, the Adam starts at around $300. So it offers lot more features for a lesser price. Since this is a new company, people will have their doubts over buying it, and especially when its competing with a brand like Apple, there will be high doubts about its performance and reliability. The project has been raising expectations over the internet and quite a lot of people are eagerly awaiting its release. I would certainly purchase it if the initial reviews are good. The iPad hasn't been released over here yet so this would be a good way to experience the tablet PC.

I'm hunting for topics to respond (to pay off my huge myCENT debt) so please don't mind this tinkering of old threads! This thread was started in 2008? BSNL hasn't changed a bit since then. They still have low prices and good speeds. The only problem is that they still haven't learned how to put these two together. It's high time that they updated their plans keeping their prices intact but increasing bandwidth and/or speed. 2.5GB per month (night unlimited) at 2mbps for Rs.500 is something other providers can't and won't provide, but the fact remains that 2.5GB simply isn't enough. The next upgrade for the same speed is again expensive. It would be good if BSNL upgrades the bandwidth for all existing packages. 2.5 gb isn't enough for someone who watches lot of videos on Youtube or listens to lot of songs online. I haven't had a problem with their service till now so I can't complain about their customer service, but all these people couldn't be wrong. The employees can get irritating to deal with at times and it's high time they changed this behaviour of theirs. It's their pride which is making them do all this, and since the customers have no other better option they have to keep up with this sort of behaviour It's sad that other ISPs aren't learning from BSNL. If they reduced their prices and improved service quality, it would create a competitive situation and at once everyone would start behaving better, in fear of losing customers. Hardly any other ISP than BSNL takes their service seriously. Airtel tried to make 100mbps popular, but at Rs.16000/- per month?!! How did they even imagine that it would get wide appeal? There has been a battle for the 3G spectrum recently. Hopefully if the data plans are priced sensibly, we may get some hope of good and better plans. BSNL was good when it was introduced, but it seriously needs a major change and soon.

I'm writing in this old topic because there's no point in starting a new thread for the same topic.My vote goes to Linux. It's not exactly user-friendly, and it doesn't have excellent gaming support, and it most certainly doesn't readily support popular applications like Photoshop (although one can use WINE for this). Still, it's my favourite only because of the secure environment it offers and due to its amazing speed. If I could afford a Mac and used it for a while, maybe I would have a tough time deciding between Mac and Linux as the former offers visual appeal on top of security, but since the cost factor is high, for now Linux is my favourite. For the average user, who has no reason to login as root, Linux can be very safe and secure, and the basic malware/viruses don't execute as easily as they do in Windows. That's the best advantage of using this OS. Another factor is speed. I've been using Linux since two years and there hasn't been any decrease in speed, whereas Windows tends to become slower as time passes and the user has to resort to disk defragmentation.Had Linux supported gaming, I'm sure it would have received a lot more votes than what it has now, because other people can't argue against speed and security. Alas, gaming is a huge dream and the small efforts going on right now need to take shape before the OS starts gaining more popularity.

Yup that's the one. I followed it with interest for a while and somewhere lost track of it. Yes it's main purpose is to answer the many questions left unanswered over the years and these answers could help us in unexpected ways. But when do we get to see these changes? That's a big question..... I'm not entirely against to spending money for science. If we hadn't spent any money in the past, we wouldn't be in this rich technological age today. So what we did wasn't wrong. What I'm proposing is that we give a small break to these advancements and concentrate on other burning issues as well. Developing science to answer long-pending questions is not a bad idea. If we could wait all these years, why not wait for a little longer? There's a lot of black money lying waste all over the world. If only it could be extracted there would be enough to fund projects like these and yet there would be enough left to try to remove poverty etc. Lol but that is a far-fetched dream which is never going to happen. So you don't want to think about the rest of the world at all? One part of the world advances too fast and one part advances too slow - the impact will hit the whole world in unexpected ways. Science can never prove anything about afterlife and death. It's something that we should accept. People will still hold on to these things with religion and spirituality but it's best to let them be as they are now. Tinkering with the name of science is not such a good idea when we know there's no good outcome in trying.

It's true that lot of open-source projects fail without sufficient funding. It's hard to argue against facts. However, I don't think all of the projects are still there only because they get the funding and support which they require. My point in the paragraph which gave rise to your reply was that the original intention behind these projects was never money-making. It came as a surprise package. Agreed that had they not received the funding, we wouldn't even have heard about some of these projects in the first place, but the original intention might have been something else than simply "money-making". Your challenge about how long OS projects could survive without funding is indeed a matter to ponder about. I'm guessing it would survive long enough because now a lot of people are taking interest in it, and they might support it as a pet project or something similar. They won't die very soon, that's for sure. And that's because behind all the money-mindedness, there's the feeling of community. Oh, and they never focused much on "free-as-in-beer". It was always "free-as-in-freedom". We agreed sometime ago that developing software for fame is out of the question, because there is simply too much satisfaction. For learning experience......well there is quite a lot to learn from any kind of project so it can be done in both the commercial and open-source communities. Lastly money.....an aspiring developer's first question is how he can profit from his skills. The immediate answer is that he can earn good money through it. But if there are no one to buy the software is there any use of it at all? Only the software which is heavily promoted gets sold in large numbers these days. For small-scale developers, it's a bad situation because not many people buy their software and thus their efforts don't give much fruit. In case of FOSS, the developers know that the users will be ready to try out their software because it is free and will keep their fingers crossed that some of those users will support them. They may not be making any large amounts of money but at least their work is being useful to someone else, and there is much satisfaction in that. It is for this satisfaction that there will always be a demand for software developers, so existing developers should be wary of losing their current positions. As for companies, I don't know what they look for in resumes, but I do know that they want their employees to be the best. Open-source projects allow them to improve their skills more and they can put this to use in the corporate world as well. In the end it's still debatable whether open-source does more harm than good, but we have to realise that it's not going to die soon and that both the worlds will have to learn to live parallely and help each other to survive. Stuff which makes life comfortable.....perhaps it is this which makes Asians think twice before spending on digital material. Perhaps they are still under the impression that anything that they can't touch directly can't make their life comfortable, and it is just a luxury. Remember that Asian economies have been on the rise from a long time, but the lifestyle of the people has been changing only since the last decade. They still need time to adapt to the change. And you're ignoring the fact that Apple doesn't have any official stores in India yet. They do have "Apple Shops" but these are simply dealers which deal with other brands as well. As for the app store, I can't speak much about it as I haven't seen all the prices myself. I can just say that the prices may be listed in Rupees but they're only converting them and not balancing them. So yes, $19 does mean Rs.1100. And who on Earth told you that the iphone costs Rs.14000?!! The price hasn't been reduced. In fact, the new iPhone 4 is going to be even more expensive, with the cost going into 40k. Please check your sources before posting something like this As for why people who afford expensive gadgets don't purchase other software, maybe it's only these people who are actually purchasing them; it is the common public which can't afford to buy original products. It is thanks to these well-to-do people that there is at least some hope that a few products will sell. Otherwise no one would bother spending bundles of money on a single piece of software. And it's not an excuse - it's a fact. What's going wrong here is that the people who were supposed to accept this fact quietly started doing the wrong thing by encouraging piracy. If only they had been silent, there might have been some chance of the prices coming down. You say pricing here is reasonable. That's wrong and I'll take the iphone as an example again. It costs $173 to manufacture an iphone and that's around Rs.8000. But the price here becomes above Rs.30k. Who is to blame if the sellers are so greedy? You once again mention that there are regional pricing sites. Maybe I'm just an ignoramus, but could you give an example of such sites? For software such sites are a rarity. They exist for other consumer products but it's not in the case of software. So could you please support your claim with an example? All I see everywhere are either original US sites or local sites which offer only literally-converted prices. Lol how can you compare sale of day-to-day items with sale of software? I know it's wrong that people don't care for the company or the developers when they buy pirated copies. Their general opinion is that the companies are rolling in wealth and this "harmless act" of piracy won't affect the companies in any way. They're wrong but they don't realise it yet. They need some time to realise this fact. And it's not like the whole region is not purchasing anything. There are people who support the economy and buy original software. It's just unfortunate that these people are in the minority. It's already an open secret that outsourcing firms cheat their employees by paying them far below the average salary in their original country (US/UK/Australia). But no one's complaining because even this less salary is far more than what the average salary is in other professions. Offer this same salary to someone in the developed countries and they too will start to look for ways to cut costs, because it simply won't fit into their budget if they're going to keep buying software every now and then. If the outsourcing salaries could be reduced, why not the software prices? That would be a balancing act and then more people would be encouraged to buy original. In any case, the number of software professionals and engineers are not even 20% of India's total population and hence they can't represent the country as a whole. 70% of the population still remains under poverty and the remainder struggles to meet ends with a tight-knit budget in which there is room for very few luxuries. Once again the wrong move by these people is that instead of being content with the luxuries they have, they resort to piracy to experience the software luxuries Computers were being enjoyed since 2000? My turn to say *cough* When I bought my PC in 2002, it cost me Rs.40,000/- for a 256MB RAM, 40GB hard disk, 2.1 (or perhaps less) Ghz CPU set. Now that configuration doesn't exist in the market, but if it did it would cost well below Rs.15,000. So it is now that computers are becoming common. In those days, it is, as you said, a luxury. A luxury which not many people could afford. Even today some people think twice before buying a basic PC. It still burns a hole in their pockets and they don't spend more for other accessories. From what I've written I know that some more points will be raised so I won't make any concluding remarks right now

In my childhood all I did for fun was watch TV or go out with friends. When I was too bored to do anything I simply took a nap or did some other work that didn't involve me sitting at a place for too long. Today the scene has changed completely. I carry around a number of gadgets depending on the time, and even when I'm out doing some work, I keep using these gadgets in some way or the other. Is it really hard to live without these gadgets? Can't we lead a normal day without having to run behind these gadgets?The top gadget in the list is the mobile phone. Without calling or messaging someone, my day doesn't seem to go well. Someone or the other keeps contacting me at odd times during the day and that is why I'm forced to carry around the phone wherever I go. It also functions as a music player to cure boredom in case of emergencies.Then there is the netbook. It seems to come along with me whenever I have some formal work to do. It hardly weighs 2kg but still is a burden to carry around at all times. I can't manage without it so there is no other option but to grudgingly carry it along.Next in line is the mp3 player, obviously inspired by the ipod. It's small in size and can provide music whenever and wherever I want. For now that is all I have on my list. The other gadgets which I don't carry around but still use a lot are my PC, PS2, and of course, when there is no other option, the TV.This is just an average person's list. There can be many other gadgets included in this list, like a smartphone, or a tablet PC, etc. We are getting used to using so many gadgets daily that we hardly bother to notice how much we are getting used to them. Can't we live without them? If they disappeared suddenly, or if we lost them, would be able to be at peace for a whole day? I doubt it.What do you think about this? Depending on gadgets that make our work easier is not a bad thing. We should just be careful that we don't depend way too much on them so that we are not in a miserable position if we are away from them for a while. I know a few people who can't stay away from their phones at any time of the day. Even while meeting other friends, they stay hooked to their phones, holding a two-way conversation! They may be good at multi-tasking, but it doesn't look nice to the people who are talking to them directly.

This happened to me as well. I didn't experiment with my TV but did so with my CRT monitor and one day the colour change became permanent. At first banging it on the top helped to bring back the original look, but later no amount of banging could save the poor soul! Now whenever a phone rings in front of my LCD TV I do think I hear some slight disturbance although I'm not sure it's from the TV?

I had a good time using Ubuntu on my old PC until version 9.10. When I upgraded to 10.04, I noticed that my old hardware had many issues with it, due to which it became slow and sluggish. I reverted back to 9.10. However, I would like to know if 10.04 is better than 9.10 or not. I know for a fact that the boot time is much faster for 10.04, and that the default theme is changed, and that the window control buttons are placed to the left instead of the right (an option which can be customised, of course).Other than these are there any bigger changes that improve the user experience? Can someone who's been using 10.04 please share their experiences over here?

Right from the beginning, we ended up asking too many questions and now all those questions are piled up, with their answers still yet to be found. If we hadn't bothered to ask those questions, then we would probably still be living in caves today. So it's a good thing that someone asked all those questions which brought such a radical change in our lives. Now the question remains as to when will those other questions be answered? Most of these other questions involve the supernatural, as Skepticus has pointed out above. Then there are spiritual questions, historical questions and other assorted questions. So to some extent, we have already answered the questions whose answers have helped us improve our lives. The remaining questions are like surplus, and although some of the answers might change our lives yet again, I feel that for now there is no immediate need to rush through to find answers. Instead, science could be used to solve more important issues. For example, there was that mega project conducted in Europe recently - oops I don't remember the name - it was the world's largest........damn it I forgot. Anyway, a lot of money was poured into that project and the goal was to find some answers. Just for a second, let's imagine what could have been done with that same amount of money - it could have helped in improving the lives of a lot of people who are starving to death. The answers are important, but they certainly aren't more important than the lives of our fellow people. Development should take place throughout the world - today a few countries have raced ahead and are enjoying luxuries that a few other countries can only dream of. The people of the developed countries have very little to complain about, and spend all their money in efforts like this, to find the answers. But think about places like Africa, where the people live in a miserable state. Of course its not as if there's a law that the developed countries should try to develop other countries, but it's just a suggestion. In science fiction stories, the writers always talk about life on other planets being as being united. Do they talk about different countries on those planets? No (because that would mean additional writing!) Wouldn't it be a real achievement for science if it brought together all countries? Yes we do need some answers about questions related to religion, the afterlife, etc. But let's not forget today's world, and let's try to use science to do something better today!

World of Warcraft boasts of having more than 10 million subscribers, and Blizzard certainly works hard for the game to look good and offer new gameplay to the gamers. But one small company, called Zynga, are rolling in fame and money, with their games becoming huge hits and their game Farmville has over 70 million players, with a large part of that being active players. Zynga has been accused of merely copying games off other original designs (Farmville was inspired from Farm Town, Mafia Wars from Mob Wars, etc) and they added some attractive features to these "inspired" designs, and are now raking in the money as they offer tons of virtual stuff in exchange for paper money! I haven't played any other Zynga games other than Farmville so I'll talk about that for now. I got pulled into Farmville by my friends, who just couldn't stop talking about it, and their news feeds were always filled with their farmville updates. Is this what the news feed is supposed to be used for?! Of course now there is an option to turn off farmville updates, but the nuisance hasn't stopped entirely. Ok so after playing farmville for a week I could see why it became so popular - there is lot of scope in that game for showing off. First it starts with how many coins you earned, after that it's how many neighbours you have, after that it's how big your farm is, and then it's your XP level, and finally it's about how many decorations you have on your farm. The game even offers a chance to take a screenshot of your farm and share it with friends. What was that for?! The concept of playing together with friends is fun but this game is highly addictive and is causing a change in habits and behaviour as well. None of my friends can afford to buy farmville cash so they're safe but the people who shell out loads of cash just to get a few more decorations show what damage this game can cause. As of now Farmville has only 70 levels. For an active gamer, that shouldn't take more than a few weeks. What comes after that? Nothing. Zynga keeps bringing on "specials" with every season and players are supposed to collect these specials, most of which can only be bought with farmville cash. What joy is there in buying this virtual stuff, and truckfulls of it? If it's not about the money spent, its about the time spent. I have a few friends who use Facebook only to play farmville and other games. They seem to have forgotten that they're supposed to be on a social-networking site and not on an online-gaming site. I never get a response from these people on Facebook so I have to try and reach them in some other way. I once got to meet a friend who was playing farmville, and he had the biggest farm available, and had filled it with at least 500 plots. He had to click on all those plots to "plow" and then "plant". I observed that it took at least 30 minutes for the process to be complete! World of Warcraft may be 10 times more addictive as players can do a lot of stuff on their own, but Farmville isn't less dangerous. I'm not saying people should stop playing it or anything (I'm still playing ) but that players should try to minimise their attachments to their farms. It's too easy to get lost in the virtual world; maybe it's time we learned to deal with the real world better.

Hmm I didn't want to start another topic so am bringing this old one alive. Over here the PSP costs around $75 more than a PS2. So I can see that the prices have come down. Wikipedia says the PSP takes one-and-a-half hours to charge and gives around 4.5 hours of battery backup. That's a little more than what my netbook gives, so it's pretty decent, right? In any case, gaming for more than three hours could get exhausting and the battery running out is a good excuse to take a break.So is it a good buy? I'd say yes, because as of now no other handheld console offers the same assortment of features that the PSP does. The Nintendo DS is good for playing games but the rest of its features aren't too impressive. And it costs almost the same as the PSP here (Nintendo doesn't have official sales in India some dealers put the price of the DS at just around $20 less than the PSP). Then there's the matter of games - this situation is similar to the console war back in the 90s. There was Sony's Playstation and Nintendo's....umm 64? Don't remember exactly. Anyway, Nintendo was still using catridges while Sony moved on to compact discs. So games could be bigger and better on the PS. It's a similar case now. The DS uses some sort of memory cards? The PSP has a specialised disc which can certainly pack in more material. It's just a shame that both consoles haven't produced path-breaking games like the full-size consoles do, but on Nintendo there's just Mario while on the PSP there are at least a few memorable titles like God of War, Tekken, GTA, etc.This topic was started five years ago. The PSP has evolved a lot since then and has brought in many changes, while the DS hasn't made any noteworthy changes. So in today's context, the PSP is the way to go!

It may not be readable but the special software you mention (I'm guessing you have something like IsoBuster in mind?) manages to read the disc and rip its contents onto the PC or into an iso file, and that is how of course it gets leaked onto the net. After getting the disc's content onto the PC the futile effort of playing it normally in an emulator begins! The company doesn't care what we do with the disc - all they bother about is that we don't make illegal copies of it. And is that really a contract? Isn't it more like a warning? A warning which scares you by saying that your disc may get damaged unless you use it in the prescribed machine. Whether its a warning or a contract, at least it doesn't put any restrictions like DRM does for music. As long as we use the disc on the correct machine, we can do whatever we want with it.

Oh I suggested that just because you said the text was not selectable. Pdf printer is certainly a faster way if you want the whole page as PDF. If you want to select just some text and convert it into PDF then the open office method is much faster than other pdf converters.

@Бојан: I think you didn't read what 8ennett said above - it's not permitted to talk about or encourage illegal activities on the site, even though it is "real" and "everyone" does it. No, everyone doesn't do it, and everyone doesn't get their OS and other software through piracy So even if you're not doing any actual uploading, you're still spending quite some amount of time to gather links, convert them and put them in the auto-poster etc. Then the wait starts. In the end all you get is $15 while hotfile probably earned a lot more than that selling premium accounts to people who used those links. Ok anyway as I said it's your choice as to what you do with your time. I hope you realise soon that if you really wanted, you could earn much more legally in that same time. Wow that's a quite a lot of money! Day Labourers over here get paid very less - around Rs.200-500 per day ($4-9) The work is the same but I guess the payout depends on the country. I've even seen some people trying to sell ebooks on How to make money with Hotfile in some sites. With this I assume that hotfile was one of the earliest sites to introduce this money-earning concept. They seem to have been successful to a large extent. It's just the users who are losing their time over peanuts.

Maybe some people would answer that question with a strong NEVER! but hey, it's bound to happen one day or another. I think it was 2004 when WoW first came out? Since six years its been ruling the MMORPG universe, undisputed. I haven't played WoW even for a minute, although I've played Warcraft III many times over. I can imagine what it's like, to romp in an online world, going off on a different adventure every day, escaping from reality and achieving something that no one in the real world really cares about. No wonder it's been such a huge hit. Sadly though, all good things must come to an end. The players who've been playing from day one till today must be wondering what they've achieved in these years. All those hours they spent levelling up and collecting virtual goodies could have been used for something more useful. Now they have online online glory to claim as their own, and nothing more. Still, how long do you think this craze will hold? I have no interest in joining now because it's too late and there are already millions of players who've reached the highest level possible and me doing it would bring me no satisfaction. Maybe there are others who think like me, and won't join, or some players may stop playing after a while. With each expansion pack, Blizzard is unleashing new features, places and whatnot. In the end, however, it's the same old thing which doesn't really appeal after a while. So, any guesses as to when we will be saying, R.I.P.?

Yup, that's right. It's not on the minds of the developers though. No matter how choppy the gameplay is, every game that comes out these days has top-notch graphics. Game critics too heavily stress on graphics for every game, and hence even if the gameplay is terrible we end up reading that the graphics were awesome or that the game was a visual treat. It happens. In any case, NFS has always been ahead of its generation in terms of graphics. I still remember how "great" NFS2 looked when it first came out! Thanks to youtube I have seen how all of the NFS games look, even those which I haven't played yet, and at least in terms of visual appeal, the games are becoming realistic. The only problem is that, the other racing games too have the same visual appeal and top it, they have better gameplay. Now even die-hard fans aren't shy about expressing their disappointment with the series. So for now we have to be content with playing the old games and remembering all those old memories of good ol' NFS. Maybe the need for speed has become the need for a better game.

Interesting theory - maybe you should try it out once and post the results for us so that we can decide which machine to buy next Anyway, you made your point. In the end it's the owner's choice what to do with the disc. Play it, eat it, bite it or smash it. All the company cares is that they got paid for it!

Hmm you can't assume that everyone gets their OS through piracy - I run Linux which is free and doesn't need to be pirated Besides, I'm not asking you to stop what you're doing - you're at perfect freedom to do what you want with your internet connection And because these file-hosting sites protect your identity you know you'll be safe. But in the end is it all worth it? You spend all that time uploading huge files and chances are that someone will report them and they will be deleted soon - all the time spent uploading goes waste. And in the little time that the files stay alive, there's no guarantee that you'll get enough downloads to earn smoothly. If there is any fresh content, there will be duplicate links to it all over the net so your links will have a short life anyway - which explains why you haven't reached $15 yet (no offense). If you put aside the legal issues, I think all of this is just a waste of time and for some people, waste of bandwidth too. There are much better and faster ways to earn money on the net which don't eat as much time as this does. In the end, it's your own personal choice, but just ask yourself, is wasting so much time uploading and then many hours waiting for your account to reach $15 really worth it?

This is exactly the kind of thing that encourages the spread of piracy. Well it's no use talking about piracy right now. It's bound to spread in one form or another. And I'm not saying you and your friends are earning through spreading illegal files, but the point is that the maximum number of people end up earning only through spreading "popular" files. It would be hard to find 1500 people to download a legitimate file, because they could download such a file from an official website anyway. Such schemes arouse the greed in the average user and end up flooding the net with links

If I'm not wrong, PDFs are constructed in the form of images? All the text is selected as one image and then saved? I'm not sure of this although I think that's about right. Anyway, there's a quick solution if you just want to select some text and convert it into PDFs quickly. Use the Open Office Word Processor. Paste text into it just like you would in Microsoft Word, and then in the File menu choose Export as PDF. That's it. One quick step to convert your text into PDF. No need to run behind "doc to pdf converters" anymore Oh and I'm not sure if this will work well in Windows but you can select text from existing PDFs and copy them into Open Office and save them again as PDFs. If you paste selected text from PDFs into other word processors, all you would see is garbage.

Oh, Colin works on LCDs too? I should have gotten that idea before. In any case, it seems a good, safe idea. I guess the cleaning fluid is what makes the whole kit a bit pricey? I'll take my chance with colin for now and report back by progress here tomorrow. I've got good replies but I still haven't found the time to go ahead and do the job. Maybe I'm just too scared to spoil the shiny new toy. If it were a year old I wouldn't have bothered this much!

A good point. Most of the developers first settle down in their careers before being part of the open-source community. Of course there are those who focus only on the community and not on their careers, thus losing their jobs, but the majority of them do put their own careers in front of the community. They do their bit for the community and feel immensely satisfied for it. That's a very good list and you could also include Linux in it, as its more secure than Windows, but as it is still not widely accepted, it's inclusion in the list is debatable. All of the above mentioned software are Free and Open-source software, right? Except for The GIMP which loses out to Photoshop, all the others easily beat their commercial counterparts in many ways. All of them accept donations, but don't they deserve every bit of it? They really do. And most of them have collected a good amount of money through donations, proving that if the project is a success, people will surely appreciate it. I agree that the developers do depend on funding and donations and are always looking out for these. Ubuntu, the widely-popular Linux distribution gets its funding from a private company, which is why they are able to afford giving out free CDs all over the world. Not all open-source projects have this luxury. It's true, however, that the developers do look out for money; it's human nature. The developers who do not care for money even a little are rare to find, but at least these money-hungry developers are not pestering the users too much. They put out their work for the world to see and hope that it touches the users enough to make them give a generous donation. In most cases this doesn't work out as intended, but the developers haven't stopped trying and are not going to stop their work either. If a single failure allowed them to be let down, the community wouldn't have come this far at all. Oops I was talking about FOSS (Free and Open-Source Software). The best known Open-source software are usually free which is why I mixed up these two terms. I'll be more clear from now on. I'll admit that my knowledge in this field (both in FOSS and open source) is limited so I won't comment much on the process behind these software. I'll just say that in today's world there is no dearth of developers. If a single developer feels discouraged that his/her project didn't garner as much attention as expected, he/she will not quit (usually), because there are many people ready to fill the void. Thus your statement that lack of support from people will kill the business is somewhat doubtful - there are a lot of talented developers and very little opportunities so the business will always be on, no matter how the people respond. With this in mind, the business should try to become more people-friendly. I wanted to expand on this but I'm not getting enough ideas right now. Wow you seem to be focusing a lot on Asia and not other places. Any bad experiences? Your questions are reasonable although I can try to give some answers for them. I think I too know how Asians think, me being one of them What's more, I'm from India In the US/UK the cost of living is much higher but at the same time the income is high too and it sorts of balances out. Over here the cost of living used to be low but it has spiraled up after the recession while salaries kept falling. For example, an average movie ticket in the US costs something like $10? Here in the average theater it costs $1. That's how steep the difference is. In any case there was never a balance due to which the majority of the people controlled their spending. I'll start answering with your first example - people here buy the iPhone but don't spend in the app store? I don't remember exactly how much the iPhone costs in the US, but I do remember that I did a conversion when I saw the price and it came to around Rs.7000/- And what does it cost when it comes here? Rs.32,000+ And yet you wonder why piracy is rampant. Most of the sets that people buy are from the black market, which sell it at almost the original price of Rs.7k. I haven't seen the app store till now so I don't know what the prices are like, but if the pricing is only US-friendly, then it's definitely not friendly to India or the other Asian countries. Next you say $20 software is affordable to every laptop owner. True. After conversion that amounts to roughly Rs.1000, which isn't a small amount. It's true that the laptop owner could spend it to buy a good software. However, with that same amount, he could buy a month's worth of fuel or some other important utility. See my point? If that software cost something along the lines of Rs.200-500, it's popularity would surely increase. Next you talk about DVDRipper. A DVD-ROM costs Rs.1100, which falls in your $15-30 category, and it comes with a basic version of NERO which is more than enough for the average computer user. The more computer-literate people do use advanced software, although not always necessarily genuine. The point is, it's not just India or any other country. People put priorities for spending money and in countries like these, buying software is like a luxury. The mentality here, as you call it, is not get it free or don't get it at all, but Why pour so much money for a single CD/DVD when the same amount of money could help you get through life for a few more days?. Hmm looks like I have the bad habit of steering away from the topic every time!! All this discussion started at people from Asia not supporting developers enough, right? I'll just say that people from Asia have bigger problems in life due to which they can't appreciate how intricately a software has been designed, or how many hours the developer put in to make it work, etc. People here are just beginning to get the hang of the computer world and it's most unfortunate that a few people (i.e. pirates), who already went much ahead, brought in the curse of piracy and now it's tough to push into millions of busy minds that software needs to be purchased, or (in case of FOSS or open-source) appreciated. The developers, who are used to good support from the US/UK/other developed countries, haven't learned to control their pricing in these developing countries, due to which they don't get much support. FOSS gives software to everyone for free, and I'm sure every user, at least for one millisecond, thanks the developer for putting it out for free. The more patient people even drop in a word of thanks, and the large-hearted people send in donations. The bug-reporting and feedback backbone is maybe a little weak; it's starting to grow strong gradually. It just needs time. I think for now, there is no need to worry about the economy being damaged, because open-source (paid and free) technology hasn't been able to stand up to the onslaught of paid software strongly, except in a few business-scenarios. Come to think of it, paid open-source will only benefit corporate companies, because the common public doesn't know what to do with the source-code! So I think for the time-being, it's best for the developers to choose their path and do their best at it, enabling a parallel development between both worlds.

Yup that's right - with each day it's becoming difficult to get famous Yes, nothing wrong with it. And of these 80% at least 90% of people already know that all their hard work would go unnoticed by the general public anyway, and so they're content with the money they're making. They deserve every small part of it. They really do. I guess it's the remaining 20% of people who are the pioneers of open-source software, and these are the guys who don't care how much money they're making, as long as they are providing something to the community. They do need money to live of course, but they don't make it their single goal in life to earn money through their talent. They use their skill to help others. This is the same thing that ordinary programmers do, and they get paid for it too, but the difference is that open-source programmers get the satisfaction that their users don't have to burn holes in their pockets to get what they want. When people pay for software, they hardly spend time appreciating its quality. Most of them simply take it for granted that they paid good money, and so get the features they want. In case of open-source software there's a lot of experimenting involved and the users often get surprised.They may not bother much about the amount of work put in to develop that software, but they will surely appreciate the fact that they're getting what they want for free. Not everyone may be supporting or donating to the community but the situation is not all that bad - there are people who donate generously or support the project in different ways (promoting it, etc) These things are seen only in the open-source community, although the reason for this could be that commercial software doesn't need any support as the users are already paying it before they use it!! If you're looking to developing a software company like Microsoft, then commercial software is the way to go. In the open-source community, money is hardly bothered about, and in any case, it's an open secret that open-source doesn't offer much money, and so people who are concerned about making money can back out early, leaving the people who do their best to keep their projects running. If their work shows promise, they will easily get support from bigger organizations, as is the case with Mozilla (AOL supported it in its early days). The reason why people in Asia don't buy more legit software because the prices are still US/UK prices merely converted into the local currency. Piracy offers them cheaper alternatives. The phone support too charges them way too much, which is why they shy away from those. Most of them just ask for support in the many forums available on the net and in most cases the problem is solved. As of now open-source software is yet to gain ground. People are still convinced that paid software is always the best because it costs something, and most people wouldn't put their trust in something that came "cheaply". So as of now there's no huge scale loss of developer jobs. The commercial software world might have been shaken a bit, but it just cuts down their profits; it doesn't eat into what they have already earned (which is quite a lot)

Ok, if you consider that time, then on my PC Windows needs at least a whole minute before it is ready to open firefox and load google.com. Ubuntu, on the other hand, opens firefox within 2 seconds of reaching the desktop. On today's average PC the speed for Windows 7 and Ubuntu might be even faster, but the gap between them is still the same! You've shown how complicated Linux can get in advanced environments, but isn't this topic about the regular computer (PC??) I think Linux clearly wins here no matter how many angles you try to see it in. You seem to be stressing a lot on making money and getting famous! The general public doesn't know a lot about any famous programmers so fame comes for programmers only within the coding circles and its plenty in both open source and closed source programming. And you said open source programmers will lack motivation if they're not paid. This isn't true - many open source projects have been developed for many years and a majority of the programmers hardly get paid - a good example is the development of the various distros of Linux. They've been here for many years in spite of the fact that not every developer of the project gets paid! Oops writing a lot off the topic again - if there is a thread relating this matter, let's discuss there; otherwise if you start a new thread everyone can jump in and argue freely

I mentioned I had minor issues while playing Tekken 3. It was precisely this - the graphics rendering wasn't impressive and there wasn't any background music, etc. The only true emulator that emulates everything is available only for Gameboy but there everything is limited so one can't enjoy the game(s) fully. Typical behaviour from Microsoft. Well in this case I guess one can't blame them for protecting their hardware so carefully. Emulators aren't really supposed to be available, are they? Even if the gamers have bought original discs, using emulators instead of consoles isn't right. (blah blah blah people do it anyway!) Anyway, it would be better if the programmers working on emulators spent their time on some other useful project. They could come up with a fully functional emulator for the PS3, but who knows, by then we could be playing on the PS4