The obvious conflict of interest of the patent troll wannabe serving as jury foreman. The moment he started he started running his mouth off, the whole thing should have been declared a mistrial.
> The hardware is great, it's linux that sucks at multimedia.
No. It's you that sucks. You are a really lame troll.
Plenty of Linux users (myself included) do very well with Atom based nettops.
Linux does quite well at multimedia. I don't have download anything called Shark007 in order to get my codecs sorted out. Linux is no worse supported on an Atom based nettop than Windows is.
The limiting factor is CPU guzzling streaming services that will choke an Atom anyways.
The main problem here is that Flash and Silverlight suck. Even if you are running Windows, that simple fact is going to cause you a problem. It will increase your system requirements and may make the whole system less suitable for deployment in your living room.
Using the GPU to decode something is a LOT more efficient than the brute force CPU approach. You may not like the result of running your streaming service on a PC.
Your CPU running full bore versus your video card barely breaking a sweat.
Like I said. That sounds like a problem that has squat to do with Linux. I too have tried all of this stuff and under various conditions. That includes running Windows and MacOS on comparable hardware and getting similar results.
Flash just sucks. Don't be too quick to blame Linux.
> Pony up for a copy of windows home edition, and install XBMC on that
Except it will have the exact same problems with Flash. The truth of the matter is that hardware acceleration is a new thing with Adobe. It's not something you can depend on in Flash because it's a new feature that webmasters have to specifically enable.
Meanwhile, even Linux has supported full GPU acceleration for years. That copy of XBMC that you didn't really try out had that available.
The Adobe devs are too busy fixating on clanlib.
> For the punchline, I picked up an original xbox
Original xbox? Really? You need to come up with less absurd stuff.
The only device I have where I find that kind of thing to be a problem really is my Sony BluRay player. You would hope that with Linux inside, it would be more robust than it actually is.
My Ubuntu based HTPCs are rocks of Gibraltar in comparison.
When one of my HTPCs do go wonky, they also recover a lot quicker and easier than my Sony appliance.
Streaming is still an inferior option. Selection is inferior. Price is inferior. Quality and features are inferior. Device support is inferior.
Even if you have access to Netflix and Amazon and whatever, you may still find it more effective to use spinny disks and just create your own iTunes style experience.
A DRM free file allows you to have complete control over the experience and employ any decoder or user interface of your choosing.
It's also not just Linux desktops that pose a compatibility problem with streaming services.
> The Roku only does streaming media,...which makes it the perfect compliment for an HTPC. The problem with PC based streamers is that Flash and Silverlight sucks. Even if your favorite service or plug-in is supported, you will still need to use brute force software decoding.
That will require a beefier box than an HTPC that can decode BluRays with the GPU.
Noise and heat are more likely to be problems with CPU decoding.
That's nonsense. It's just Flash. Linux has no more trouble with it than any other platform. That includes all of the usual complaints about performance and crashing.
I would not call this thing a gaming PC. I would call it an upscale low profile PC. It looks like it could be a very respectable HTPC for people who want something more than a $300 ION or $100 Roku.
It's less lame than a Mac Mini.
Really, it's just a Dell with a very Linux friendly video card.
> Many Linux advocates like to talk about how Linux runs great on last generation hardware, which does not encourage OEMs to race out and offer high-end (expensive) systems
No. Linux users are smart and demanding. That makes them harder marks for fraud and nonsense.
They understand the math and are less likely to pay a lot more for marginal improvements of little value. This can be paying too much for the CPU or the video card or paying the extra premium for a compact form factor when you don't really need it.
Linux users are probably a harder mark.
Of course American corporations don't want informed consumers.
This is a new phenomenon. Prior to Apple's advertising renaisance, it was on perpetual deathwatch for years. The idea that they would ever sell more of anything than Microsoft was laughable.
They were marginalized just like any other would-be PC competitor.
It's only by becoming a Sony wannabe that they managed to avoid becoming nothing more than a historical footnote. It's a stupid and invalid comparison. The new Apple is the successor of the Sony Walkman, not the IBM PC.
The US worker probably has the expectation that he can live better than his relatives that still dig ditches. That's kind of a big part of the whole point of going to school for 4 years and building up a large amount of debt that has to be repaid.
If I wanted to live like my poor cousins, I could have just skipped all of the extra work I've done to avoid that life.
Thus conditions that are likely to decrease the local talent pool.
> 80k per year minimum. The big tech corps pay their H-1Bs more than that already
No they don't. You can't lie to us. We know better. We've seen this sh*t for ourselves.
Considering that you are advocating the creation of a Jim Crow style underclass, your attempt to play the race card is really pathetic. If anything, it's the "so-called racists" here that are calling for social justice.
Actually, some Masters degrees in STEM disciplines aren't much better than this PhD in literature. In a lot of fields you will be doing grunt work for the PhD's and everyone will be asking you why you stopped at your Masters.
EA is currently in the final four of the "Worst Company in America" tournament. They won last year and they appear to be winning this year primarily on the strength of the Sim City debacle.
Clearly, there are some people visibly pissed off about this stuff.
They are what you could call a "hardcore gamer" device. For small jobs and casual use, a broom or a manual carpet brush are more than adequate.
The real problem is that people expect much more mobility out of computer games and computer networks are much more unreliable than the electrical grid.
Most people don't expect their vacuum to be mobile. Most people don't go around running their vacuum off a big batter. People expect to do that with computing devices.
Right now, YOU may only have power because at one time your nation made it a priority to get the bit of ground you're standing on wired for electricity. In many places, such an effort focused on the Internet has yet to occur.
People are skeptical about this network DRM for the same reason they're skeptical about "cloud" anything. The tech simply isn't there yet.
Slashdot Mirror
> Why the heck are you still developping new fangled intercontinental missile ?
We have crazy dictators threatening us with a nuclear first strike.
> What "truly epic level bad decision"?
The obvious conflict of interest of the patent troll wannabe serving as jury foreman. The moment he started he started running his mouth off, the whole thing should have been declared a mistrial.
> The hardware is great, it's linux that sucks at multimedia.
No. It's you that sucks. You are a really lame troll.
Plenty of Linux users (myself included) do very well with Atom based nettops.
Linux does quite well at multimedia. I don't have download anything called Shark007 in order to get my codecs sorted out. Linux is no worse supported on an Atom based nettop than Windows is.
The limiting factor is CPU guzzling streaming services that will choke an Atom anyways.
The main problem here is that Flash and Silverlight suck. Even if you are running Windows, that simple fact is going to cause you a problem. It will increase your system requirements and may make the whole system less suitable for deployment in your living room.
Using the GPU to decode something is a LOT more efficient than the brute force CPU approach. You may not like the result of running your streaming service on a PC.
Your CPU running full bore versus your video card barely breaking a sweat.
Then it makes very little sense to ask about building a system to access PAY PER VIEW services.
Yet I continue to be able to play Amazon streaming videos under Linux for some strange reason.
Idiots like you love to run off at the mouth without having any clue what-so-ever.
Like I said. That sounds like a problem that has squat to do with Linux. I too have tried all of this stuff and under various conditions. That includes running Windows and MacOS on comparable hardware and getting similar results.
Flash just sucks. Don't be too quick to blame Linux.
> Pony up for a copy of windows home edition, and install XBMC on that
Except it will have the exact same problems with Flash. The truth of the matter is that hardware acceleration is a new thing with Adobe. It's not something you can depend on in Flash because it's a new feature that webmasters have to specifically enable.
Meanwhile, even Linux has supported full GPU acceleration for years. That copy of XBMC that you didn't really try out had that available.
The Adobe devs are too busy fixating on clanlib.
> For the punchline, I picked up an original xbox
Original xbox? Really? You need to come up with less absurd stuff.
Troll harder next time.
The only device I have where I find that kind of thing to be a problem really is my Sony BluRay player. You would hope that with Linux inside, it would be more robust than it actually is.
My Ubuntu based HTPCs are rocks of Gibraltar in comparison.
When one of my HTPCs do go wonky, they also recover a lot quicker and easier than my Sony appliance.
Streaming is still an inferior option. Selection is inferior. Price is inferior. Quality and features are inferior. Device support is inferior.
Even if you have access to Netflix and Amazon and whatever, you may still find it more effective to use spinny disks and just create your own iTunes style experience.
A DRM free file allows you to have complete control over the experience and employ any decoder or user interface of your choosing.
It's also not just Linux desktops that pose a compatibility problem with streaming services.
> The Roku only does streaming media, ...which makes it the perfect compliment for an HTPC. The problem with PC based streamers is that Flash and Silverlight sucks. Even if your favorite service or plug-in is supported, you will still need to use brute force software decoding.
That will require a beefier box than an HTPC that can decode BluRays with the GPU.
Noise and heat are more likely to be problems with CPU decoding.
That's nonsense. It's just Flash. Linux has no more trouble with it than any other platform. That includes all of the usual complaints about performance and crashing.
I would not call this thing a gaming PC. I would call it an upscale low profile PC. It looks like it could be a very respectable HTPC for people who want something more than a $300 ION or $100 Roku.
It's less lame than a Mac Mini.
Really, it's just a Dell with a very Linux friendly video card.
> Many Linux advocates like to talk about how Linux runs great on last generation hardware, which does not encourage OEMs to race out and offer high-end (expensive) systems
No. Linux users are smart and demanding. That makes them harder marks for fraud and nonsense.
They understand the math and are less likely to pay a lot more for marginal improvements of little value. This can be paying too much for the CPU or the video card or paying the extra premium for a compact form factor when you don't really need it.
Linux users are probably a harder mark.
Of course American corporations don't want informed consumers.
> How was Windows outselling Apple before Windows existed?
MS-DOS
That's right. Microsoft nearly ground Apple into the dirt with MS-DOS.
That's "manual memory management" versus the GUI driven Mac with an early form of LAN networking, virtual memory, and something akin to USB.
The tech gap between Microsoft and Apple now is nothing like it used to be.
Apple has more competent marketing.
This is a new phenomenon. Prior to Apple's advertising renaisance, it was on perpetual deathwatch for years. The idea that they would ever sell more of anything than Microsoft was laughable.
They were marginalized just like any other would-be PC competitor.
It's only by becoming a Sony wannabe that they managed to avoid becoming nothing more than a historical footnote. It's a stupid and invalid comparison. The new Apple is the successor of the Sony Walkman, not the IBM PC.
The US worker probably has the expectation that he can live better than his relatives that still dig ditches. That's kind of a big part of the whole point of going to school for 4 years and building up a large amount of debt that has to be repaid.
If I wanted to live like my poor cousins, I could have just skipped all of the extra work I've done to avoid that life.
Thus conditions that are likely to decrease the local talent pool.
> So are US workers incapable of or unwilling to make those same choices?
Sooner or later you're going to want to grow up. At that point, the MIS equivalent of a job at McDonald's just isn't going to cut it anymore.
No, an American employee can't/won't live like an illegal Mexican ditch digger.
At the very least, the American needs to pay off his student loan debt.
> 80k per year minimum. The big tech corps pay their H-1Bs more than that already
No they don't. You can't lie to us. We know better. We've seen this sh*t for ourselves.
Considering that you are advocating the creation of a Jim Crow style underclass, your attempt to play the race card is really pathetic. If anything, it's the "so-called racists" here that are calling for social justice.
That rationale goes both ways.
It applies equally well to the half-price H1B as it does to anyone else.
It's easy to look good when you have no student loans to repay and are willing to work for half the market rate.
Of course slave labor is going to look better to to an employer. That doesn't make it acceptable.
Actually, some Masters degrees in STEM disciplines aren't much better than this PhD in literature. In a lot of fields you will be doing grunt work for the PhD's and everyone will be asking you why you stopped at your Masters.
You can't take the "any STEM" thing on faith.
EA is currently in the final four of the "Worst Company in America" tournament. They won last year and they appear to be winning this year primarily on the strength of the Sim City debacle.
Clearly, there are some people visibly pissed off about this stuff.
Vacuums work quite well on hard surfaces.
They are what you could call a "hardcore gamer" device. For small jobs and casual use, a broom or a manual carpet brush are more than adequate.
The real problem is that people expect much more mobility out of computer games and computer networks are much more unreliable than the electrical grid.
Most people don't expect their vacuum to be mobile. Most people don't go around running their vacuum off a big batter. People expect to do that with computing devices.
Right now, YOU may only have power because at one time your nation made it a priority to get the bit of ground you're standing on wired for electricity. In many places, such an effort focused on the Internet has yet to occur.
People are skeptical about this network DRM for the same reason they're skeptical about "cloud" anything. The tech simply isn't there yet.
IBM passed their monopoly baton off to Microsoft.
Microsoft's entire current business is based on servicing IBM's 1981 attempt to prevent Apple from taking over the small computing market.
"It's gotta be DOS compatible man"