The big issue, stated time and again, is that Microsoft has a desktop monopoly, so they can't bundle the same things that others can. If Apple were in a monopoly position, you can bet your bottom dollar that the Slashdot crowd would be hollering just as loud as they do against Microsoft (which isn't, incidentally, that loud).
It doesn't have anything to do with the mysterious anti-Microsoft pro-Apple conspiracy. People just like rooting for the underdog, even if the underdog would be just as Evile as the top dog if/when given the chance.
I'm interested in: what's the best distro with regards to Arabic support? I've been studying Arabic for a year or two now and I enjoy tinkering around with Arabic on Linux, but sometime's it's so hard to get things to work! (I recently tagged some of my Arabic-language mp3s with Arabic Unicode in the id3 tags, and so far the only player I've found that will display the Arabic tags is the Beep Media Player (gtk2 fork of xmms).
Maybe they've changed it... according to this page, you can recover the account, plus three songs, for free, and get additional songs hosted for $6.99 each.
Or, alternatively, you can simply pay a one-time fee of $99 to get all your songs back, no ads on your band's page, and unlimited hosting for all your songs for life.
Well, so says the site, anyway. Can anyone verify if it's true?
Just curious on this one... that's one of the reasons I'm loathe to switch to Firefox on my Linux desktop--it runs ever-so-slightly slower than Opera. Opera just responds faster to everything... are you sure it runs slower than Firefox on your machine?
More than a year on, iTunes is going strong. If anything, from the numbers it seems to be gaining momentum. Seems to me like it works just fine.
iTunes is going strong--but would it be going any less strong if they had, by some magical miracle, convinced the RIAA to go with non-DRM protected AAC files?
Furthermore, do you think the DRM they do have stops anybody who wants to from copying the music? I doubt it--it's just a bone thrown to satisfy those who don't understand that DRM is "FLAWED LOGIC THAT WON'T WORK!!!" to quote the grandparent.
Programs and products that use DRM may work--they may work very well. But DRM will never, short of a police state, prevent people from copying DRM'd stuff.
By that same logic, none of the problems PJ talked about would be "Linux problems". They'd be "Midnight Commander" problems or "man" problems or "documentation" problems. The key is--what problems, in whatever piece of software (or paperware), are keeping Linux from more widespread adoption? PJ talks about documentation--I'm talking about problems with X and copying. Either way, they're Linux problems to me.
Everyone knows the clipboard in Linux has some problems. But few know exactly
how deep these problems go.
In my opinion, there should be two separate clipboards, which I refer to as
the "Tempboard" and the "Permboard" for clarity. Yes, I hear many of you
saying--this is the way it's implemented. Well, yes--partially. Let me
first explain The Right Way to Do It, followed by applications that break the
rules.
The Right Way to Do It:
On Selection: * Send selected-stuff to Tempboard On Shift-Ins or Middle-Click: * Paste contents of Tempboard On Deselection: 1) Leave the Tempboard as is or 2) Clear the Tempboard
On CTRL-C/CTRL-X: * Send most recently selected stuff from active window to Permboard. On CTRL-V: * Paste contents of Permboard
(I'm using Eterm 0.9.2, Gaim 0.75, and Opera 7.23 on a Fedora box. Please let
me know if these errors don't happen on other versions or other distros.)
Select some text in a Gaim window, then close that window and attempt to
middle-click paste it into another program. No pastage. Problem: The Tempboard gets deleted when the window is closed.
In Gaim, select some text in the textbox and then attempt to middle-click pa
ste it to the same text box. No pastage. Problem: The Tempboard gets deleted when you middle-click inside the
same text input widget.
Highlight some text in Opera. Then unselect it. Try to middle-click paste
it somewhere. It works! Problem: Opera uses "fake selects" in order to work around the clumsy
situation of not being able to highlight multiple things at the same time.
Firefox does is that well, and so does OpenOffice.org. As we shall see, they
don't always get it right.
Highlight some text in Opera. Unselect it. Highlight something in another
window and close that window. Try to middle-click paste--you get the old fake
Opera-select. Problem: The Tempboard reverts to Opera's old fake-select when the window
is closed.
Highlight something in an Opera textbox. Middle-click it to the url box.
It works. Highlight something using the keyboard. Middle-click it to the url
box. It pastes instead your old highlight. Problem: Highlighting with the keyboard doesn't update the
Tempboard.
In the Gaim textbox, type "Text1". Select the text and CTRL-X it. Type
"Text2" in the textbox. From another window, select "Text3".
Go back to Gaim, select "Text2", and type Shift-Ins. "Text1" is pasted. Problem: Shift-Ins pastes from the Permboard, not Tempboard.
CTRL-X "Text1" in Gaim again. Select text from Eterm. Shift-Ins in the
terminal window. Shift-ins in Gaim. Different things are pasted to each
window! Problem: Shift-ins pastes from the Tempboard in Eterm, but pastes from
the Permboard in the Gaim window.
CTRL-C text in Gaim's chat screen, and try CTRL-V to paste it into the
textbox below. It instead pastes what was previously in the Permboard. Problem: Selecting chat text and CTRL-C doesn't update the
Permboard.
Does anybody else have ones they'd like to add to my list?
Filthy, absolutely filthy. How can the government allow people to publish this smut--and online, where anybody can access it! Please, won't somebody think of the children?
That's assuming that your bandwidth is initially limited by your finite number of pigeons. Perhaps it's not--you have plenty of pigeons--you just can only tape thumbdrives to pigeons at a very slow rate, say. Thus as the distance increases, your surplus pigeons decrease (although you still have a surplus), but you're still limited only by your thumbdrive taping speed, so doubling the distance wouldn't affect the bandwidth at all.
So if the movie companies did sell low-resolution copies of their movies (fully DRM'd, of course) for handhelds, for say $4 a movie, then it would somehow no longer be fair use to copy our DVDs to our handhelds? It would be illegal to do so (under the DMCA) and we should have to fork out an additional $4, on top of whatever we paid for the DVD, in order to watch it on a Palm or Zaurus?!
Anybody can own a car, even a blind person or someone with Down's Syndrome. But you can only drive it on your own property--once you start driving it on somebody else's (like the government's) property, you're going to need permission (a government license) from that somebody else.
Sorry I didn't make myself more clear... as I said, there are a good handful of proprietary software programs that are older than five years old and still in development. Now look at the number of proprietary software packages that have died in that same time period.
Is the percentage of dead proprietary software compared to still-in-development proprietary software any greater than the percentage of dead OSS compared to still-in-development OSS? As far as I can tell, the answer is No.
How many commercial products are there that were started over five years ago that are still in current development? There are quite a handful still in current development--but vastly more that have been abandoned completely.
Both in the open source world and in the commercial world, the vast majority of projects die. The difference is that in the open source world, the dead projects can still be put to good use in a new reincarnation down the line.
I've got a house, a car, a job, and a family--and I prefer Open Source. I've contributed to various projects, I run OSS on my desktop and at work, and if I came up with some program on my own time I'd be more likely to GPL it than make it shareware or try to sell licenses.
But I charge people money for writing code that they want me to write. That's how I get paid--that's where my monthly paychecks come from. 99% of that code is in-house code that nobody will ever see again. But if they do manage to sell it again to other people, more power to them--I don't think it's immoral. But like the parent said, releasing my code for free doesn't mean not getting paid for writing it.
Now, I'm no Microsoft fanboy, but I really don't see what the big deal is with Windows Media Player. Like somebody pointed out (Monkeyboy Ballmer IIRC), Windows has shipped with a Media Player since Windows 3.1 at least, and nobody's complained about illegal bundling.
Of course, what they might be doing (although I haven't been able to find any reputable sources for this) is disallowing OEMs to pre-install, say, Quicktime and Realplayer on the systems they sell. If indeed they're doing this, that is (imnsho) abusing their monopoly, and they should be forced to allow OEMs and others to pre-install whatever software they want.
But to require them to bundle Quicktime/Realplayer/whatever with Windows? That seems wrong on so many levels...
I wonder if we'll see responses from Microsoft saying, "See? It's all Linux's fault--darn, insecure Linux full of bugs and backdoors--that allowed our SuperSecret Source Code to be stolen."
However, grammar is still poor, as most kids are not taught the rules of the english language, I'm learning more about sentence construction in my German class than I have in English over the past 13 years.
I went to a lecture by John Searle a couple of weeks ago, and he made the statement that "You never really learn grammar until you study a foreign language." I think that's very true--I honestly don't think "English grammar" should be taught in schools--teach them Latin, or German, or any other language for that matter--and you'll end up teaching them more about English grammar than they ever would have otherwise learned.
Slashdot Mirror
The big issue, stated time and again, is that Microsoft has a desktop monopoly, so they can't bundle the same things that others can. If Apple were in a monopoly position, you can bet your bottom dollar that the Slashdot crowd would be hollering just as loud as they do against Microsoft (which isn't, incidentally, that loud).
It doesn't have anything to do with the mysterious anti-Microsoft pro-Apple conspiracy. People just like rooting for the underdog, even if the underdog would be just as Evile as the top dog if/when given the chance.
Dlugar
Your version is the same amount of characters, and less readable. I think the "cat" version is better.
Dlugar
correction:
a hamza is a glottal stop.
an 3ayn is a pharyngeal consonant. For example to say l3b, you would say "lob" but constrict your throat while saying the vowel (kinda).
Dlugar
I'm interested in: what's the best distro with regards to Arabic support? I've been studying Arabic for a year or two now and I enjoy tinkering around with Arabic on Linux, but sometime's it's so hard to get things to work! (I recently tagged some of my Arabic-language mp3s with Arabic Unicode in the id3 tags, and so far the only player I've found that will display the Arabic tags is the Beep Media Player (gtk2 fork of xmms).
Dlugar
Maybe they've changed it ... according to this page, you can recover the account, plus three songs, for free, and get additional songs hosted for $6.99 each.
Or, alternatively, you can simply pay a one-time fee of $99 to get all your songs back, no ads on your band's page, and unlimited hosting for all your songs for life.
Well, so says the site, anyway. Can anyone verify if it's true?
Dlugar
Just curious on this one ... that's one of the reasons I'm loathe to switch to Firefox on my Linux desktop--it runs ever-so-slightly slower than Opera. Opera just responds faster to everything ... are you sure it runs slower than Firefox on your machine?
Dlugar
Furthermore, do you think the DRM they do have stops anybody who wants to from copying the music? I doubt it--it's just a bone thrown to satisfy those who don't understand that DRM is "FLAWED LOGIC THAT WON'T WORK!!!" to quote the grandparent.
Programs and products that use DRM may work--they may work very well. But DRM will never, short of a police state, prevent people from copying DRM'd stuff.
Dlugar
What are your thoughts on Searle's Chinese Room thought experiment? Do you agree with him? If not, what's your reply?
Dlugar
By that same logic, none of the problems PJ talked about would be "Linux problems". They'd be "Midnight Commander" problems or "man" problems or "documentation" problems. The key is--what problems, in whatever piece of software (or paperware), are keeping Linux from more widespread adoption? PJ talks about documentation--I'm talking about problems with X and copying. Either way, they're Linux problems to me.
Dlugar
In my opinion, there should be two separate clipboards, which I refer to as the "Tempboard" and the "Permboard" for clarity. Yes, I hear many of you saying--this is the way it's implemented. Well, yes--partially. Let me first explain The Right Way to Do It, followed by applications that break the rules.
The Right Way to Do It:
(I'm using Eterm 0.9.2, Gaim 0.75, and Opera 7.23 on a Fedora box. Please let me know if these errors don't happen on other versions or other distros.)
- Select some text in a Gaim window, then close that window and attempt to
middle-click paste it into another program. No pastage.
- In Gaim, select some text in the textbox and then attempt to middle-click pa
ste it to the same text box. No pastage.
- Highlight some text in Opera. Then unselect it. Try to middle-click paste
it somewhere. It works!
- Highlight some text in Opera. Unselect it. Highlight something in another
window and close that window. Try to middle-click paste--you get the old fake
Opera-select.
- Highlight something in an Opera textbox. Middle-click it to the url box.
It works. Highlight something using the keyboard. Middle-click it to the url
box. It pastes instead your old highlight.
- In the Gaim textbox, type "Text1". Select the text and CTRL-X it. Type
"Text2" in the textbox. From another window, select "Text3".
- CTRL-X "Text1" in Gaim again. Select text from Eterm. Shift-Ins in the
terminal window. Shift-ins in Gaim. Different things are pasted to each
window!
- CTRL-C text in Gaim's chat screen, and try CTRL-V to paste it into the
textbox below. It instead pastes what was previously in the Permboard.
Does anybody else have ones they'd like to add to my list?Problem: The Tempboard gets deleted when the window is closed.
Problem: The Tempboard gets deleted when you middle-click inside the same text input widget.
Problem: Opera uses "fake selects" in order to work around the clumsy situation of not being able to highlight multiple things at the same time. Firefox does is that well, and so does OpenOffice.org. As we shall see, they don't always get it right.
Problem: The Tempboard reverts to Opera's old fake-select when the window is closed.
Problem: Highlighting with the keyboard doesn't update the Tempboard.
Go back to Gaim, select "Text2", and type Shift-Ins. "Text1" is pasted.
Problem: Shift-Ins pastes from the Permboard, not Tempboard.
Problem: Shift-ins pastes from the Tempboard in Eterm, but pastes from the Permboard in the Gaim window.
Problem: Selecting chat text and CTRL-C doesn't update the Permboard.
Dlugar
jy's 'n doos.
Just visit www.prawnography.net if you don't believe me.
Filthy, absolutely filthy. How can the government allow people to publish this smut--and online, where anybody can access it! Please, won't somebody think of the children?
Dlugar
That's assuming that your bandwidth is initially limited by your finite number of pigeons. Perhaps it's not--you have plenty of pigeons--you just can only tape thumbdrives to pigeons at a very slow rate, say. Thus as the distance increases, your surplus pigeons decrease (although you still have a surplus), but you're still limited only by your thumbdrive taping speed, so doubling the distance wouldn't affect the bandwidth at all.
Dlugar
When you're talking about Mozilla, removing features could very well be a good thing.
Dlugar
"Slow and steady wins the race"?
Sheesh. Don't people read Aesop any more?
Dlugar
So if the movie companies did sell low-resolution copies of their movies (fully DRM'd, of course) for handhelds, for say $4 a movie, then it would somehow no longer be fair use to copy our DVDs to our handhelds? It would be illegal to do so (under the DMCA) and we should have to fork out an additional $4, on top of whatever we paid for the DVD, in order to watch it on a Palm or Zaurus?!
That's bullsh**.
Dlugar
Anybody can own a car, even a blind person or someone with Down's Syndrome. But you can only drive it on your own property--once you start driving it on somebody else's (like the government's) property, you're going to need permission (a government license) from that somebody else.
Dlugar
Searching for Xfree86 porn works, too! Strangely enough ...
Dlugar
Sorry I didn't make myself more clear ... as I said, there are a good handful of proprietary software programs that are older than five years old and still in development. Now look at the number of proprietary software packages that have died in that same time period.
Is the percentage of dead proprietary software compared to still-in-development proprietary software any greater than the percentage of dead OSS compared to still-in-development OSS? As far as I can tell, the answer is No.
Dlugar
How many commercial products are there that were started over five years ago that are still in current development? There are quite a handful still in current development--but vastly more that have been abandoned completely.
Both in the open source world and in the commercial world, the vast majority of projects die. The difference is that in the open source world, the dead projects can still be put to good use in a new reincarnation down the line.
Dlugar
I've got a house, a car, a job, and a family--and I prefer Open Source. I've contributed to various projects, I run OSS on my desktop and at work, and if I came up with some program on my own time I'd be more likely to GPL it than make it shareware or try to sell licenses.
But I charge people money for writing code that they want me to write. That's how I get paid--that's where my monthly paychecks come from. 99% of that code is in-house code that nobody will ever see again. But if they do manage to sell it again to other people, more power to them--I don't think it's immoral. But like the parent said, releasing my code for free doesn't mean not getting paid for writing it.
Dlugar
Now, I'm no Microsoft fanboy, but I really don't see what the big deal is with Windows Media Player. Like somebody pointed out (Monkeyboy Ballmer IIRC), Windows has shipped with a Media Player since Windows 3.1 at least, and nobody's complained about illegal bundling.
...
Of course, what they might be doing (although I haven't been able to find any reputable sources for this) is disallowing OEMs to pre-install, say, Quicktime and Realplayer on the systems they sell. If indeed they're doing this, that is (imnsho) abusing their monopoly, and they should be forced to allow OEMs and others to pre-install whatever software they want.
But to require them to bundle Quicktime/Realplayer/whatever with Windows? That seems wrong on so many levels
Dlugar
A low Slashdot user ID? *sniff, sniff* Well... that's just the nicest thing anyone's ever said about me! I feel so happy ... thanks anomynous coward!
Dlugar
I wonder if we'll see responses from Microsoft saying, "See? It's all Linux's fault--darn, insecure Linux full of bugs and backdoors--that allowed our SuperSecret Source Code to be stolen."
...
Sounds pretty likely to me
Dlugar
Dlugar