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Lone Programmer Writes 352 Webcam Drivers For Linux
mrneutron2004 writes "A French physician and ardent Linux supporter is the one man you can all thank for adding support for 352 webcams in Linux. The Open Source OS world may still be a bit of a mess when competing with the ease of Windows, but efforts like this make you wonder. One man with drive, tenacity, and no funding does what no one else can do. And none of the major Linux distributions back this guy's efforts, even the big players dipping into the corporate world's coffers."
I am stunned. That is a lot of code to write. That guy is a machine. Props to him 100%.
Thank you
So a bad driver caused him to give up on W2K, then he proceeds to spend endless hours of creating drivers for those crappy webcams?
Wouldn't it be better that an ill-supported webcam gets abandoned by the consumers, thus giving the market better-supported webcams as manufacturers are forced to lift up their games?
Would you buy a (oh no not again) cheap car with an oil leak, knowing that there's a free and simple way of fixing it? Or would you demand the car manufacturer to get its act together and fix the leak before its cars get out of the factory?
Virtual Betting on Facebook for non-geeks.
Mad props 733t d00d, or insert your favorite way to say, great job, thank you, and keep up the good work.
important enough for his name to get into a Slashdot summary. Oh well, at least he wasn't referred to as "the French Linux driver guy", like how Ramanujan was "the Indian math guy".
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
One man with drive, tenacity, and no funding does what no one else can do.
Should read:
One man with drive, tenacity, no funding, earning his livelihood elsewhere, and with no one to question whether he earned a dime doing this and with no shareholder expecting you to maximize your profits does what no one else can do. A corporation will start off asking "How many people will use webcams on linux and how much $$ can we make if we write drivers for them".
I don't know about you, but in that case he beats me by at least 8 bridge chips and numerous versions thereof ...
Only three things are certain; death, taxes, and apocryphal quotations - Ben Franklin.
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
This is a business model waiting to bring in the big bucks. Get some VC, some quality hardware people and have this guy join the team. Make good, true x-plattform cams. Profit.
A man with an asset like the knowlege he has is a gold mine when treated the right way.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
If of course, by "in history", you mean other than 99.9% of the rest of history.
The French are notorious for not giving up, with one exception, when their "allies" deserted them with the entire German army on their doorstep.
"Liberty or Death" is a false dichotomy, and a phrase that can only be repeated by someone that has never had to make that choice.
You don't win wars by dying, you win them by living.
There actually isn't anything about the concept of reusing code that implies object orientation, and nothing about inherent in OOP that requires reuse.
Advanced users are users too!
French surrender jokes are the favorite joke of people who know just enough history to know that the French surrendered to the Germans during WWII. These surrender joke tellers probably learned this history when they read someone else's surrender joke and then figured out what it meant. It makes these people feel smart that they now know enough history to make this joke. There's probably some internet law that states that any story involving France or the French will eventually accumulate a surrender joke in the comment area. Jokes like these are the essence of not funny.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
I dunno... I don't see much American admiration for the valiant Iraqi rebels.
Hey! What if they littered Iraq with cheese instead of bodies and rubble? I think I know what dubya's brilliant strategy #24 will be, once the "surge" fails. The cheese surge!
I'm a genius.
Software patents delenda est.
Um. We already make that endless stream of jokes, man.
Want them to stop? Stop being so pissy when they're told.
I mean, we're rather used to the fat, stupid, lazy american jokes, even if by and large they're not true. Do they stop? Dunno. Don't care. They're usually passed in mean spirit (whereas you can hardly consider 'surrendermonkey' as meanspirited; it's got the word 'monkey' in it), and I kinda just ignore such things.
"Think about it, would you really like the rest of the world to hold you - as individuals - responsible for the actions of your leaders?"
Lots of people do; why do you think the US considers our president such an embarrssment? Not saying it's right, but it *is* par for the course.
Also, I'd like to state for the record that it's fundamentally impossible to pin down the behavior of americans in general; geographically alone, we're too damned huge to be homogenous. Add to that the level of cultural difference you can experience in almost any large city in the world by walking two blocks, and you'll get the idea.
Anyway, in short, get the fuck over it, surrendermonkey. ^_^
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I'll cut that off right there, since the reasons they are beyond the pale to Americans are because they don't glorify America, and because they aren't about Americans. We're so self-centered that even movies about Britain need to be about Americans in Britain.
Not speaking for all Americans, hell, I'm not even speaking of my own views, but mainstream American culture disgusts me.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
it is an interesting point, and one worth repeating, that the french, like people who live at any geographic location, consist of individuals. in the modern age, individuals often get together to from a group with some of their time.
a valid question would be, which group membership is more important to this guy: his membership in the foss community or his french passport?
A riddle:
Is it better to be a Cheese-eating Surrender Monkey, or a Burger-eating Invasion Monkey?
You shouldn't be using his drivers directly, if possible. Most major distros already package them (at the very least, Mandriva and Ubuntu do, with the dkms-spca5xx and spca5xx packages, respectively). He has done an outstanding job already.
"I think it would be a good idea!"
Gandhi, about Internet Security
1) who will sell mirages to any sand dictator that comes along
This is a pretty hysterical claim considering the scum that the Americans have armed over the last five decades. Saddam, anyone? The fucking TALEBAN?
2) harbor some of the most radical people on this planet starting with kommeni
YOU created the disaster in Iran with your idiotic Shah - if you want to go looking for despots and lunatics in exile, London and New York harbour as many if not more than Paris.
3) like them and their quefranbec relations have an ENTIRE GOVERNMENT AGENCY on the preservation of french.... in others words to keep OUT AMERICAN INFLUENCES on culture and lanquage
Who will look after the French language and culture if not the French? Do ordinary Americans actually WANT corporate 'culture' - whether from the US or anywhere else - to flood the planet?
4) lack of support of its allies, namely the US, since WWII
What have you done that merited support and was not supported by the French? DOn't forget how the US didn't support (officially) the British in the Falklands, and where has British support of the calamity in Itaq gotten us? Blind support is even worse than blind opposition.
dissent