I wasn't aware making alcohol was as easy as downloading a torrent.
Yeast, sugar, water.. mix well. Store in a warm place with a valve to allow the CO2 out, and fairly soon you get alcohol. Good alcohol on the other hand, takes skill and a certain familiarity with the ingredients and the brewing/distilling process.
I'm clueless on the topic... so I will just ask the question. What royalties are their for file formats? Does this basically mean that Microsoft pays for the different codecs that are included in Windows Media Player and that Adobe pays for the different formats that it can export to?
Yes. Each codec that is licensed and due royalties require payments to the owner. So MPEG, MP3, Quicktime, DiVX etc. all require a payment or the creator of the product runs the risk of ending up in court and having their product withdrawn. The open formats do not.
Yeah cause lord knows its not like you have to install a video driver if you want 3D acceleration or anything.....and lord knows its not like its going to take you 4 visits to the ubuntu forums, 3 visits to the IRC chat room, and much head banging to do it.
And Lord knows that heroic levels of exaggeration sound much better than sticking to reality..
I'm a fedora user myself, but I have installed Ubuntu a few times, and the video driver installation has been pretty much automated since 7.something. Perhaps earlier. Whenever Codec buddy was included.
In Fedora once you do the slightly more complex task of installing the Livna repository (download the RPM and double click it in the file manager), how hard is it to type "yum install kmod-nvidia" as root and reboot after the package manager takes care of everything. Hardly a major task. It used to be a bit more complicated, but now it is getting so easy that it will stop being a challenge any day now.
Except the lock pick comes in the form of an app that takes less than a minute to do its magic and you never have to deal with it ever again.
Ahh.. So you only have to install a single modified update and then you can go back to using the standard Apple updates and still have a functioning phone.. Sorry.. I was under the impression that once you installed the jailbreak hack once, you had to do it every time, or the phone didn't work when Apple brought out the next update..
You're just one of those cool counter-counter-culture kids who think that hating whatever's cool is awesome.
Regular people don't want to do anything but plug something in and go. Like a video recorder or DVD/Bluray, or a set top box at the most. If it isn't working out of the box, they don't know, don't care. Computers are for surfing the net, not watching TV.
Regular people are not the market for these products. Just as Photoshop, Maya and various other more high end or exotic stuff is not aimed at "Regular" people either.
I'm not sure netbooks are good for gnu/linux. They are positioning it as an almost operating system for people who are too cheap to buy a real computer. That's not a good long term position to be in a marketplace.
You mean like when Microsoft made an OS for people too cheap to buy an Apple or one of the *nix variants for a desktop? When Microsoft started off first, one of the computers they were keen to get MSDOS on was the Amstrad PC clones. They actually approached Amstrad, because they were clued in enough to know that if they got it running on as many computers as possible, they would have more users. Same applies to Linux. It is on my router, my web tablet, my PC and my laptop. And there is also a fair chance it is on my TV. The more the merrier. Apart from the Mac and the iPhone, how many places is the reassuringly expensive OSX?
Nothing wrong with cheap. Especially considering the possibility of replacing "Linux.. Ohh that's the really complicated one that places like NASA use" with "Linux.. Oh yeah.. I used it on a netbook a friend of mine had?"
As has been mentioned, we're referring to competing with software that Apple gives away, as in gratis. There is no competition for any revenue stream of Apple's.
Because in the Apple world, all applications and products are totally independent, so you can use any combination of Apple hardware and Apple software.
This is an extremely very clear case of bias... Phrasing like to try and defend itself makes it extremely obvious the submitter has already passed judgment, even before hearing the described forthcoming justification from "the other side" of the argument. That is no longer reporting, since it doesn't present FACTS, but spouting off an opinion (biased as it is).
And people think it has nothing to do with the product. It was obviously demonstrating Vista's new important features.. Running tight and stealing leather giraffes.
Living there right now. Everything is available in metric measures.Very few if any products are sold in imperial any more. About the only exception is beer.
I guess nobody here has yet figured out what "beta" means.
Course we do... Pre SP1!
OMG!!! Call the press!!! A beta build is oversized, and... gasp!!!... has some bugs too!!!
It's easy to understand the mistake, however- Slashdot is filled with people who only beta quality software which will never be ready for prime time. It's free for a reason...
Oh come on.. Just because Microsoft are pushing it so hard, doesn't mean we all have to use Vista.
And in five years' time, when they've stopped supporting your card in the latest kernel version, you do what?
Either the same as they do now with their closed driver card and buy a new one, or get the source and compile it themselves.
If the driver is open, then it is in the wild, and doesn't get dropped off the face of the earth when the OS changes. Ever upgrade to a different version of Windows? How much hardware didn't have drivers for the new version. Linux isn't 100%, but what OS is.
All the drivers are not included in the kernel by default. Which is why some hardware is automatically picked up by one distro, but may be patchy or require tweaking with another.
Realistically, how many people have five year old cards right now that are not still supported as a matter of course? The Nvidia cards certainly have backward compatibility, the ATI card in a T41 Thinkpad (which was released in 2003), has driver support in Linux, And I installed Linux on two computers that had S3 video cards that worked on first boot. And although it isn't as complex a device perhaps, my scanner, which is certainly more than 5 years old, still works with a driver someone wrote themselves. This particular scanner is so old it uses a parallel port, and wasn't supported by XP. So we are looking at 7+ years old.
Oh, I know the virtues of Linux. I use it, and OS X, at home along with XP, because they all have their own advantages. My comment about the world being nicer was that it would be nice if we lived in a world where MS trusted us (and likewise, we paid for all of our OSes) but that just doesn't happen.
That is a bigger problem than you might think. And not only in the computer industry. Any market where a supplier sees themselves as indispensable you have a big problem. This leads to contempt for customers, and bad service.
My post was referring to the parent who suggested running WGA was stupid even if you have a legal copy of Windows. I just wanted to get the reasoning behind that, because that means you don't get any updates. As you pointed out, your OS doesn't even play Youtube videos without an update. Installing any flavour and not running apt-get (or whatever) isn't the best advice IMHO.
The post I was replying to was..
What's wrong with WGA? I realize the world would be nicer if it wasn't there at all, but MS decided to use it, so now your choice is to use it or not. AFAIK, it's needed to have a patched system. I like the fact that my OS and many of its apps are up to date. MS can have my MAC and GUID if that means they give me free updates every week.
If there is away "around" WGA, have fun with that. But I've already paid for my OS and the stuff I download from MS, and I don't need to waste time running virus-ridden binaries from Limewire or set up my own fake server just to use my computer.
I freely admit I may have misunderstood your point, but it seemed to me that it was dismissive of the potential harm of the WGA mechanism, and supporting the concept that Microsoft were giving you updates as some kind of favour.. Which I strongly disagree with.
Every OS and just about every non trivial app needs to be updated. It isn't a reward for being a good little consumer and buying the product. It is a mechanism that allows software companies to release software while they are still working on it. Vista could have taken years more to get out the door if it had to be ready to use on day one.
There are ways to get around WGA, and still get updates, but like you, I can't be bothered playing follow the hacks with such mechanisms, so I decided to say goodbye to Windows, and as I said, much better experience. And how can you fail a test you never take. Microsoft don't dare to forbid access to important updates, so people can keep downloading the important stuff and ignoring the WGA for as long as possible. The more people who don't use WGA the better.
If more users objected, and acted on it, this wouldn't be a problem, as illustrated by the quick Microsoft climbdown on limiting the number of activations for retail copies of Vista, or the decision to make IE7 a non WGA checked item. If they are not supporting pirates, why bother making IE7, a premium download, available to the people who didn't pay for their copy of Windows?
I don't understand why people want word-processors in the first place. They are usually the wrong tool for the job. So they are a poor example of what people need anyway.
But a very good example of what people do when given a tool, but little general training. They push what they know in new and often undesirable ways. A word processor is not a desktop publishing app, and should never be used as one. And Excel is not a database.
What's wrong with WGA? I realize the world would be nicer if it wasn't there at all, but MS decided to use it, so now your choice is to use it or not. AFAIK, it's needed to have a patched system. I like the fact that my OS and many of its apps are up to date. MS can have my MAC and GUID if that means they give me free updates every week.
If there is away "around" WGA, have fun with that. But I've already paid for my OS and the stuff I download from MS, and I don't need to waste time running virus-ridden binaries from Limewire or set up my own fake server just to use my computer.
I agree.. WGA is a great feature. Life changing in fact. Almost as good as Vista in it's own right. And you are absolutely correct. The world is a much nicer place without WGA.
It's what got me to give Linux a really serious try. And I have never been happier with an OS. My PC is more responsive, I have access to lots of apps to play with that are just a few clicks away. I don't have to carefully research freeware apps before I install them in case they are really spyware.. No annoying firewall or virus scanner update notice popping up while I am playing a game and crashing it. What's not to like.
Now my main PC is running Fedora, I bought an N800 running a custom cut down Linux distro, which thanks to the latest OS update even plays Youtube videos directly from the site with few frame drops and downloads the same videos into a specialised client for local flawless play. and I'm waiting for a laptop to arrive in a day or two that will be Windows for a few days while I make sure it is the right one for me, but it will have some version of Linux installed too as soon as I buy a new hard drive. My one remaining Windows box will eventually be replaced with a Linux PVR, and may or may not end up as a game box/print server for the existing Windows games that don't work under WINE. Now I don't have to even contemplate dealing with potential headaches from Vista, or even worry about WGA being set off if I replace faulty hardware or upgrade. And my box of install disks for various apps and drivers has shrunk to a single DVD and an internet connection.
Have fun using Microsoft's Windows. I'll stay with the penguin and use my computers with my copy of Linux in the way I choose.
You laugh, but I knew someone who did even worse all by themselves back in the Windows 3X days.. Imagine fluorescent green and bright purple. And she was an artist. My revenge was taking a screen cap of her desktop to set as wallpaper and minimising the program manager... Took her ages to figure out what had happened.
People who say that 16GB is enough are naive. It might be enough *for you*, but your needs don't represent everyone else's needs. For example, I own enough CDs to fill 30GB worth of space in MP3 compressed format. I own enough DVDs to fill 100GB if I compress each film down to only 1GB each. I work with image files that take 200-300MB for each master copy. I work with audio projects that take 500-1000MB each. The average size of a modern game is 5-10GB. Windows XP takes 4-5GB (while Vista takes about 15GB). Do you see where this is going?
So no, 16GB is FAR from enough space.
And you need to carry all that around on a laptop at all times?
Slashdot Mirror
I wasn't aware making alcohol was as easy as downloading a torrent.
Yeast, sugar, water.. mix well. Store in a warm place with a valve to allow the CO2 out, and fairly soon you get alcohol. Good alcohol on the other hand, takes skill and a certain familiarity with the ingredients and the brewing/distilling process.
I'm clueless on the topic... so I will just ask the question. What royalties are their for file formats? Does this basically mean that Microsoft pays for the different codecs that are included in Windows Media Player and that Adobe pays for the different formats that it can export to?
Yes. Each codec that is licensed and due royalties require payments to the owner. So MPEG, MP3, Quicktime, DiVX etc. all require a payment or the creator of the product runs the risk of ending up in court and having their product withdrawn. The open formats do not.
For FMS's sake! Enforcing GPL? Tracking offenders? What's next? FSFE busts a GPL-violator ring in a two year undercover operation!
Yep.. Tivo's days are numbered..
i didn't even know that brits had computers yet. it's fantastic news.
Yep.. After inventing them, they kinda lost interest..
Yeah cause lord knows its not like you have to install a video driver if you want 3D acceleration or anything.....and lord knows its not like its going to take you 4 visits to the ubuntu forums, 3 visits to the IRC chat room, and much head banging to do it.
And Lord knows that heroic levels of exaggeration sound much better than sticking to reality..
I'm a fedora user myself, but I have installed Ubuntu a few times, and the video driver installation has been pretty much automated since 7.something. Perhaps earlier. Whenever Codec buddy was included.
In Fedora once you do the slightly more complex task of installing the Livna repository (download the RPM and double click it in the file manager), how hard is it to type "yum install kmod-nvidia" as root and reboot after the package manager takes care of everything. Hardly a major task. It used to be a bit more complicated, but now it is getting so easy that it will stop being a challenge any day now.
If only my mod points hadn't run out yesterday..
Except the lock pick comes in the form of an app that takes less than a minute to do its magic and you never have to deal with it ever again.
Ahh.. So you only have to install a single modified update and then you can go back to using the standard Apple updates and still have a functioning phone.. Sorry.. I was under the impression that once you installed the jailbreak hack once, you had to do it every time, or the phone didn't work when Apple brought out the next update..
You're just one of those cool counter-counter-culture kids who think that hating whatever's cool is awesome.
Absolutely. Keep telling yourself that.
You can install other apps on the iPhone, too. It's called Jailbreaking.
Kind of like buying a house and having to pick the lock to get inside. No thanks.
Which might just be a good reason not to use it.
Regular people don't want to do anything but plug something in and go. Like a video recorder or DVD/Bluray, or a set top box at the most. If it isn't working out of the box, they don't know, don't care. Computers are for surfing the net, not watching TV.
Regular people are not the market for these products. Just as Photoshop, Maya and various other more high end or exotic stuff is not aimed at "Regular" people either.
I'm not sure netbooks are good for gnu/linux. They are positioning it as an almost operating system for people who are too cheap to buy a real computer. That's not a good long term position to be in a marketplace.
You mean like when Microsoft made an OS for people too cheap to buy an Apple or one of the *nix variants for a desktop? When Microsoft started off first, one of the computers they were keen to get MSDOS on was the Amstrad PC clones. They actually approached Amstrad, because they were clued in enough to know that if they got it running on as many computers as possible, they would have more users. Same applies to Linux. It is on my router, my web tablet, my PC and my laptop. And there is also a fair chance it is on my TV. The more the merrier. Apart from the Mac and the iPhone, how many places is the reassuringly expensive OSX? Nothing wrong with cheap. Especially considering the possibility of replacing "Linux.. Ohh that's the really complicated one that places like NASA use" with "Linux.. Oh yeah.. I used it on a netbook a friend of mine had?"
As has been mentioned, we're referring to competing with software that Apple gives away, as in gratis. There is no competition for any revenue stream of Apple's.
Because in the Apple world, all applications and products are totally independent, so you can use any combination of Apple hardware and Apple software.
This is an extremely very clear case of bias... Phrasing like to try and defend itself makes it extremely obvious the submitter has already passed judgment, even before hearing the described forthcoming justification from "the other side" of the argument. That is no longer reporting, since it doesn't present FACTS, but spouting off an opinion (biased as it is).
Ever hear of editorial?
Lenovo UK still seem to be selling the R61 with Linux pre installed. http://www5.pc.ibm.com/uk/products.nsf/$wwwPartNumLookup/_NB0NCUK?open&OpenDocument&epi=web_express
It really was a commercial about nothing.
And people think it has nothing to do with the product. It was obviously demonstrating Vista's new important features.. Running tight and stealing leather giraffes.
According to them that's no excuse. You're responsible for your own equipment.
So how does that work if the ISP supplied your hardware, as is common in the UK?
Been to the UK lately?
Living there right now. Everything is available in metric measures.Very few if any products are sold in imperial any more. About the only exception is beer.
I guess nobody here has yet figured out what "beta" means.
Course we do... Pre SP1!
OMG!!! Call the press!!! A beta build is oversized, and... gasp!!!... has some bugs too!!!
It's easy to understand the mistake, however- Slashdot is filled with people who only beta quality software which will never be ready for prime time. It's free for a reason...
Oh come on.. Just because Microsoft are pushing it so hard, doesn't mean we all have to use Vista.
And in five years' time, when they've stopped supporting your card in the latest kernel version, you do what?
Either the same as they do now with their closed driver card and buy a new one, or get the source and compile it themselves.
If the driver is open, then it is in the wild, and doesn't get dropped off the face of the earth when the OS changes. Ever upgrade to a different version of Windows? How much hardware didn't have drivers for the new version. Linux isn't 100%, but what OS is.
All the drivers are not included in the kernel by default. Which is why some hardware is automatically picked up by one distro, but may be patchy or require tweaking with another.
Realistically, how many people have five year old cards right now that are not still supported as a matter of course? The Nvidia cards certainly have backward compatibility, the ATI card in a T41 Thinkpad (which was released in 2003), has driver support in Linux, And I installed Linux on two computers that had S3 video cards that worked on first boot. And although it isn't as complex a device perhaps, my scanner, which is certainly more than 5 years old, still works with a driver someone wrote themselves. This particular scanner is so old it uses a parallel port, and wasn't supported by XP. So we are looking at 7+ years old.
Oh, I know the virtues of Linux. I use it, and OS X, at home along with XP, because they all have their own advantages. My comment about the world being nicer was that it would be nice if we lived in a world where MS trusted us (and likewise, we paid for all of our OSes) but that just doesn't happen.
That is a bigger problem than you might think. And not only in the computer industry. Any market where a supplier sees themselves as indispensable you have a big problem. This leads to contempt for customers, and bad service.
My post was referring to the parent who suggested running WGA was stupid even if you have a legal copy of Windows. I just wanted to get the reasoning behind that, because that means you don't get any updates. As you pointed out, your OS doesn't even play Youtube videos without an update. Installing any flavour and not running apt-get (or whatever) isn't the best advice IMHO.
The post I was replying to was..
What's wrong with WGA? I realize the world would be nicer if it wasn't there at all, but MS decided to use it, so now your choice is to use it or not. AFAIK, it's needed to have a patched system. I like the fact that my OS and many of its apps are up to date. MS can have my MAC and GUID if that means they give me free updates every week.
If there is away "around" WGA, have fun with that. But I've already paid for my OS and the stuff I download from MS, and I don't need to waste time running virus-ridden binaries from Limewire or set up my own fake server just to use my computer.
I freely admit I may have misunderstood your point, but it seemed to me that it was dismissive of the potential harm of the WGA mechanism, and supporting the concept that Microsoft were giving you updates as some kind of favour.. Which I strongly disagree with.
Every OS and just about every non trivial app needs to be updated. It isn't a reward for being a good little consumer and buying the product. It is a mechanism that allows software companies to release software while they are still working on it. Vista could have taken years more to get out the door if it had to be ready to use on day one.
There are ways to get around WGA, and still get updates, but like you, I can't be bothered playing follow the hacks with such mechanisms, so I decided to say goodbye to Windows, and as I said, much better experience. And how can you fail a test you never take. Microsoft don't dare to forbid access to important updates, so people can keep downloading the important stuff and ignoring the WGA for as long as possible. The more people who don't use WGA the better.
If more users objected, and acted on it, this wouldn't be a problem, as illustrated by the quick Microsoft climbdown on limiting the number of activations for retail copies of Vista, or the decision to make IE7 a non WGA checked item. If they are not supporting pirates, why bother making IE7, a premium download, available to the people who didn't pay for their copy of Windows?
I don't understand why people want word-processors in the first place. They are usually the wrong tool for the job. So they are a poor example of what people need anyway.
But a very good example of what people do when given a tool, but little general training. They push what they know in new and often undesirable ways. A word processor is not a desktop publishing app, and should never be used as one. And Excel is not a database.
It's a bit racist calling him a cracker. ITYM Hacker.
Nope.. Correct phrase, not popular phrase.
What's wrong with WGA? I realize the world would be nicer if it wasn't there at all, but MS decided to use it, so now your choice is to use it or not. AFAIK, it's needed to have a patched system. I like the fact that my OS and many of its apps are up to date. MS can have my MAC and GUID if that means they give me free updates every week.
If there is away "around" WGA, have fun with that. But I've already paid for my OS and the stuff I download from MS, and I don't need to waste time running virus-ridden binaries from Limewire or set up my own fake server just to use my computer.
I agree.. WGA is a great feature. Life changing in fact. Almost as good as Vista in it's own right. And you are absolutely correct. The world is a much nicer place without WGA.
It's what got me to give Linux a really serious try. And I have never been happier with an OS. My PC is more responsive, I have access to lots of apps to play with that are just a few clicks away. I don't have to carefully research freeware apps before I install them in case they are really spyware.. No annoying firewall or virus scanner update notice popping up while I am playing a game and crashing it. What's not to like.
Now my main PC is running Fedora, I bought an N800 running a custom cut down Linux distro, which thanks to the latest OS update even plays Youtube videos directly from the site with few frame drops and downloads the same videos into a specialised client for local flawless play. and I'm waiting for a laptop to arrive in a day or two that will be Windows for a few days while I make sure it is the right one for me, but it will have some version of Linux installed too as soon as I buy a new hard drive. My one remaining Windows box will eventually be replaced with a Linux PVR, and may or may not end up as a game box/print server for the existing Windows games that don't work under WINE. Now I don't have to even contemplate dealing with potential headaches from Vista, or even worry about WGA being set off if I replace faulty hardware or upgrade. And my box of install disks for various apps and drivers has shrunk to a single DVD and an internet connection.
Have fun using Microsoft's Windows. I'll stay with the penguin and use my computers with my copy of Linux in the way I choose.
You laugh, but I knew someone who did even worse all by themselves back in the Windows 3X days.. Imagine fluorescent green and bright purple. And she was an artist. My revenge was taking a screen cap of her desktop to set as wallpaper and minimising the program manager... Took her ages to figure out what had happened.
People who say that 16GB is enough are naive. It might be enough *for you*, but your needs don't represent everyone else's needs. For example, I own enough CDs to fill 30GB worth of space in MP3 compressed format. I own enough DVDs to fill 100GB if I compress each film down to only 1GB each. I work with image files that take 200-300MB for each master copy. I work with audio projects that take 500-1000MB each. The average size of a modern game is 5-10GB. Windows XP takes 4-5GB (while Vista takes about 15GB). Do you see where this is going? So no, 16GB is FAR from enough space.
And you need to carry all that around on a laptop at all times?