I don't think that'll work anymore because there are just too many people using open-source browsers nowadays, including all Mac users.
Microsoft's enormous mistake was to drop IE for the Mac. Back in the days, when you complained to a webmaster about a webpage not rendering well on Linux, you'd get laughed at. I got even insulted once, about how i had to use a 'serious' browser. Now, when you complain about a page not rendering well on a Mac, webmasters take you seriously because Mac OS gets a lot more respect as a desktop OS.
While there are still web sites out there that don't render well outside of IE, there are a LOT less of them compared to three years ago.
If I were MS, I'd make a huge marketing campaign about a brand new browser, with a different name and all, with all sorts of new features, and make sure you provide a Mac version. If they were smart, they'd release a Linux version too, but god knows pigs will fly when that happens...
No, FC doesn't include the patch that provides the 4KSTACKS options, while the bk patches have that option (hence my recommendation of using 2.6.5-bk or 2.6.6-bk). I'm running FC2 with the nVidia driver as i'm typing this.
There are many forums out there that will explain in great details. For example, see here.
The fast version: the Nvidia driver will NOT work with FC2's kernel because of the 4KSTACKS problem. Unfortunately, FC2's kernel no longer has the config option to disable this new "feature", so you will need to:
- recompile a new kernel (i.e. a stock kernel). For example, 2.6.5-bk2, or 2.6.6-bk4
- make sure to use Fedora's own config files (from/usr/src/linux-2.6.5-1.358/configs), and turn off the options CONFIG_4KSTACKS and CONFIG_REGPARM
2. Upgrade Gnome and KDE applications without having to install yet ANOTHER version of glibc. That or statically link everything and quit pursuing dynamically-linked utopia. I think there's enough disk space now.
I hate dynamic libraries too (hard to manage, lack of versioning standards,...), but it's not just a matter of disk space, more a matter of memory. You don't want to have 5 gnome applications (browser,toolbar,file manager, terminal,...) each having its own copy of the 50MB gnome libraries. Imagine waiting for swap everytime you click on a different window...
'Third-party applications bundled with this download may record your surfing habits, deliver advertising, collect private information, or modify your system settings.'
The answer to spyware ? Two words: "Reverse Snapshot".
This is also exactly the way I work. The problem is there's never ONE window or ONE application i want to go to, it's always a subset of them. Each virtual desktop typically contains a group of related windows/apps, such as an xemacs window AND a terminal, or xmms AND a nautilus window, and so on. Sometimes multiple windows of the same application live in different desktops (e.g. web browser windows, or file managers). So the whole 'focus on a single application' paradigm i think is oversimplistic. That's what makes virtual desktops so popular. On the other hand, we all could use a little extra eye candy.
On an unrelated note, i wish they'd make metacity more configurable. Long live sawfish.
This is simply one of the scariest post i have read in a long time. This reminds me of a Dilbert cartoon: it's amazing what you can get used to. Big Brother is here, and people are sheep and accept it. Simply scary.
"It couldn't possibly be because (a) most of us have already replaced all our old vinyl and cassettes, so all that windfall money is no longer flowing in, or (b) because the record companies have made some really lousy decisions as they tried to guess what we consumers would want to buy."
I think one greatly underestimated reason for the loss of CD sales is the advent of ClearChannel. I personally call ClearChannel the "cancer of music".
Many of us "perceive" that the overall quality of available music is down. I sincerely doubt that musicians around the world have suddently lost their creativity. But the fact that music (as in culture) is controlled vertically by a handful of monopolies is what is creating this perception. And ClearChannel is one of the main culprit: their near-monopoly over radio stations means there's a greater chance you'll keep hearing the same stuff over and over again. Same things with concerts. All major venus are literally locked down and controlled by ClearChannel which "pushes" artists to them. In theory venues are free to choose their performers, in partice they often have to yield to external pressure. All this leads to lack of diversity and global music homogenization.
If copyright holders want some respect, they need to act in a fashion deserving of such respect. Let's see. We have
way overpriced music -- especially compared to movies -- how many hundred million $ goes into a DVD vs. a CD?
[...]
Clear Channel
You forgot one :
Ticketmaster
Let's see. We could charge people $1 extra for nice personalized concert tickets (e.g. Europe). Or we could have monopoly power over all U.S. venues and charge people 7$ for ugly computer-printed tickets. Let's call it a "convenience fee". Muhahaha. Sure is more convenient than driving to the box office, which is open every other sunday from 6 to 6:15am.
Ghyslain/Star-Wars-Kid forgot to say thank you for the $3250 he received from the Internet community. I wonder whether it's him or his parents pushing for the lawsuit...
I created the MP3 by using a patch i wrote for the atari800 emulator. Probably the emulation ran in PAL mode (the default), which is 50hz. That might explain the somewhat slower music. That's however exacly how it sounds on a PAL Atari800xl.
I read the term 'Engine Archeology' in a european car magazine. They were reviewing the US-made engine of, I think, a new Chevy Camarro model. If you compare the horsepower/engine displacement ratio of US sports cars vs european/asian ones, it's pretty amazing.
Michael Powell is the reason ClearChan^H^H^H^H^H TicketMaster charges $7.50 for concert tickets printed on cheap ugly computerized tickets. And venues box-office are open, like, sunday from 8:10 to 8:15am.
If the MPlayer license complies with the GPL in all regards *except* allowing binary distribution, that means the authors cannot stop me from modifying and re-releasing it under GPL-or-better terms. So why hasn't Debian done exactly that? "Nope, not MPlayer, we changed int main(int argc, char **argv) to int main(int argc, char *argv[]), much more aesthetically pleasing, and released it as DPlayer under pure GPL terms"?. Seems that the GPL allows that...
You're right but the issue is no longer the binary distribution (that was fixed long ago). You can distribute MPlayer binaries if you want, except you'll get flamed by MPlayer's authors if you don't package it properly:-) (and it's somewhat tricky). I believe the main issues are:
- MPlayer uses ffmpeg (libavcodec) which some people say has patent issues wrt MPEG4. Xine uses the same library, as it's the only Linux-native DivX decoder (and therefore fastest)
- Mplayer uses modified code from libmpeg2, but didn't include a ChangeLog. No big deal as they work closely with the libmpeg2 project and it'll be resolved in a future version of libmpeg2
But Xine doesn't have 20% of MPlayer's features. You can't compare Xine and MPlayer in terms of code base. Still, i'm totally willing to agree that Xine has much cleaner code (i don't really know), but that doesn't prove much. Xine is certainly not more stable than MPlayer.
I stand corrected for the reverse-engineering aspect, though you make it sound strangely easy. Yet I don't see any open-source decoders based on those rev-eng efforts out there, even hosted in copyright-liberal countries. But anyway, f, however, reproducing the scrambling tables is illegal, then there's no perfect solution to this problem. So don't blame MPlayer's people for going to the easier DLL solution then!! All i want is a linux player that plays Sorensen v2 and 3 (and no, Crossover doesn't qualify).
The MPlayer authors are rarely the guys behind reimplementing codecs -- that's what the authors of ffmpeg (libavcodec) do. MPlayer just takes the glory by putting it all together.
You make it sound like the MPlayer authors are just a bunch of code thieves, which is completely untrue. They wrote a lot of the codecs and work closely with a lot of the projects they borrow code from. Everybody knows ffmpeg is not MPlayer, nor is it Xine (which also uses it).
I never said MPlayer was perfect code. It isn't, but making a perfectly modular approach while supporting so many different formats and codecs is easier said than done. I have to agree the condecs.conf is kludgy.
Reverse-engineering is the perfect solution, but in practice it can only be done for simple things. Reverse-engineering WMV or Sorensen v3: you can't be serious, this is almost impossible unless you're either a authistic genius or somebody with inside information about how the codecs work. In the real world, those codecs will most likely NEVER be reverse engineered. And i don't think begging Microsoft and Apple/Sorensen for Linux versions will work either (laugh!). So what do you do ?
MPlayer is the only project that provides a solution. I couldn't care less how they do it.
What you're pasting in your post is not the list of MPlayer problems, it's the list of Xine problems. The Mplayer authors were just trying to prove that there's a double standard here. Xine has as many problems as MPlayer, yet it's included in Debian.
The Debian people, though, have responded that they'll look into those Xine issues and that if they turn out to be true they'll yank Xine out of Debian too.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't think that'll work anymore because there are just too many people using open-source browsers nowadays, including all Mac users.
Microsoft's enormous mistake was to drop IE for the Mac. Back in the days, when you complained to a webmaster about a webpage not rendering well on Linux, you'd get laughed at. I got even insulted once, about how i had to use a 'serious' browser. Now, when you complain about a page not rendering well on a Mac, webmasters take you seriously because Mac OS gets a lot more respect as a desktop OS.
While there are still web sites out there that don't render well outside of IE, there are a LOT less of them compared to three years ago.
If I were MS, I'd make a huge marketing campaign about a brand new browser, with a different name and all, with all sorts of new features, and make sure you provide a Mac version. If they were smart, they'd release a Linux version too, but god knows pigs will fly when that happens...
-DZM
If by "only" you mean 613.297 people, then yeah, only that few.
And 500.000 of them are brazilians...
DZM
No, FC doesn't include the patch that provides the 4KSTACKS options, while the bk patches have that option (hence my recommendation of using 2.6.5-bk or 2.6.6-bk). I'm running FC2 with the nVidia driver as i'm typing this.
DZM
There are many forums out there that will explain in great details. For example, see here.
:
/usr/src/linux-2.6.5-1.358/configs), and turn off the options CONFIG_4KSTACKS and CONFIG_REGPARM
The fast version: the Nvidia driver will NOT work with FC2's kernel because of the 4KSTACKS problem. Unfortunately, FC2's kernel no longer has the config option to disable this new "feature", so you will need to
- recompile a new kernel (i.e. a stock kernel). For example, 2.6.5-bk2, or 2.6.6-bk4
- make sure to use Fedora's own config files (from
-DZM
2. Upgrade Gnome and KDE applications without having to install yet ANOTHER version of glibc. That or statically link everything and quit pursuing dynamically-linked utopia. I think there's enough disk space now.
...), but it's not just a matter of disk space, more a matter of memory. You don't want to have 5 gnome applications (browser,toolbar,file manager, terminal, ...) each having its own copy of the 50MB gnome libraries. Imagine waiting for swap everytime you click on a different window...
I hate dynamic libraries too (hard to manage, lack of versioning standards,
-DZM
The answer to spyware ? Two words: "Reverse Snapshot".
Long live VMWare.
DZM
This is also exactly the way I work. The problem is there's never ONE window or ONE application i want to go to, it's always a subset of them. Each virtual desktop typically contains a group of related windows/apps, such as an xemacs window AND a terminal, or xmms AND a nautilus window, and so on. Sometimes multiple windows of the same application live in different desktops (e.g. web browser windows, or file managers). So the whole 'focus on a single application' paradigm i think is oversimplistic. That's what makes virtual desktops so popular. On the other hand, we all could use a little extra eye candy.
On an unrelated note, i wish they'd make metacity more configurable. Long live sawfish.
DennisZeMenace
Lawrence Lessig posted some interesting comments about this case in his blog.
DZM
This is simply one of the scariest post i have read in a long time. This reminds me of a Dilbert cartoon: it's amazing what you can get used to. Big Brother is here, and people are sheep and accept it. Simply scary.
"It couldn't possibly be because (a) most of us have already replaced all our old vinyl and cassettes, so all that windfall money is no longer flowing in, or (b) because the record companies have made some really lousy decisions as they tried to guess what we consumers would want to buy."
I think one greatly underestimated reason for the loss of CD sales is the advent of ClearChannel. I personally call ClearChannel the "cancer of music".
Many of us "perceive" that the overall quality of available music is down. I sincerely doubt that musicians around the world have suddently lost their creativity. But the fact that music (as in culture) is controlled vertically by a handful of monopolies is what is creating this perception. And ClearChannel is one of the main culprit: their near-monopoly over radio stations means there's a greater chance you'll keep hearing the same stuff over and over again. Same things with concerts. All major venus are literally locked down and controlled by ClearChannel which "pushes" artists to them. In theory venues are free to choose their performers, in partice they often have to yield to external pressure. All this leads to lack of diversity and global music homogenization.
And really, the essence of music is diversity.
DZM
- way overpriced music -- especially compared to movies -- how many hundred million $ goes into a DVD vs. a CD?
- Clear Channel
You forgot one :[...]
- Ticketmaster
Let's see. We could charge people $1 extra for nice personalized concert tickets (e.g. Europe). Or we could have monopoly power over all U.S. venues and charge people 7$ for ugly computer-printed tickets. Let's call it a "convenience fee". Muhahaha. Sure is more convenient than driving to the box office, which is open every other sunday from 6 to 6:15am.DZM
Ghyslain/Star-Wars-Kid forgot to say thank you for the $3250 he received from the Internet community. I wonder whether it's him or his parents pushing for the lawsuit...
-DZM
I loved the "Agent USA' game. It is one of my all-time favourite Atari games, and it DID help me learn the US geography (not being American).
BTW, i have that game ROM image, and it works fine with the many available emulators.
DZM
Note the RedHat 7 RPMs will not install either, it has the wrong path for the qt3 libraries.
DZM
The Moon has been added to the infamous "Axis of Evil" group...
I created the MP3 by using a patch i wrote for the atari800 emulator. Probably the emulation ran in PAL mode (the default), which is 50hz. That might explain the somewhat slower music. That's however exacly how it sounds on a PAL Atari800xl.
DZM
For the nostalgic :
http://www.denisleroy.com/atari/mp3/Mule.mp3
Ever heard of 'wget' ? Anti-Leech that.
I read the term 'Engine Archeology' in a european car magazine. They were reviewing the US-made engine of, I think, a new Chevy Camarro model. If you compare the horsepower/engine displacement ratio of US sports cars vs european/asian ones, it's pretty amazing.
DZM
Michael Powell is the reason ClearChan^H^H^H^H^H TicketMaster charges $7.50 for concert tickets printed on cheap ugly computerized tickets. And venues box-office are open, like, sunday from 8:10 to 8:15am.
DZM
If ($movie->{MPEG4Header}{isCopyProtected} = 0) {
$movie->play();
}
If the MPlayer license complies with the GPL in all regards *except* allowing binary distribution, that means the authors cannot stop me from modifying and re-releasing it under GPL-or-better terms. So why hasn't Debian done exactly that? "Nope, not MPlayer, we changed int main(int argc, char **argv) to int main(int argc, char *argv[]), much more aesthetically pleasing, and released it as DPlayer under pure GPL terms"?. Seems that the GPL allows that...
:-) (and it's somewhat tricky). I believe the main issues are :
You're right but the issue is no longer the binary distribution (that was fixed long ago). You can distribute MPlayer binaries if you want, except you'll get flamed by MPlayer's authors if you don't package it properly
- MPlayer uses ffmpeg (libavcodec) which some people say has patent issues wrt MPEG4. Xine uses the same library, as it's the only Linux-native DivX decoder (and therefore fastest)
- Mplayer uses modified code from libmpeg2, but didn't include a ChangeLog. No big deal as they work closely with the libmpeg2 project and it'll be resolved in a future version of libmpeg2
That's about it.
DZM
But it has been done -- in Xine.
But Xine doesn't have 20% of MPlayer's features. You can't compare Xine and MPlayer in terms of code base. Still, i'm totally willing to agree that Xine has much cleaner code (i don't really know), but that doesn't prove much. Xine is certainly not more stable than MPlayer.
I stand corrected for the reverse-engineering aspect, though you make it sound strangely easy. Yet I don't see any open-source decoders based on those rev-eng efforts out there, even hosted in copyright-liberal countries. But anyway, f, however, reproducing the scrambling tables is illegal, then there's no perfect solution to this problem. So don't blame MPlayer's people for going to the easier DLL solution then!! All i want is a linux player that plays Sorensen v2 and 3 (and no, Crossover doesn't qualify).
The MPlayer authors are rarely the guys behind reimplementing codecs -- that's what the authors of ffmpeg (libavcodec) do. MPlayer just takes the glory by putting it all together.
You make it sound like the MPlayer authors are just a bunch of code thieves, which is completely untrue. They wrote a lot of the codecs and work closely with a lot of the projects they borrow code from. Everybody knows ffmpeg is not MPlayer, nor is it Xine (which also uses it).
DZM
I never said MPlayer was perfect code. It isn't, but making a perfectly modular approach while supporting so many different formats and codecs is easier said than done. I have to agree the condecs.conf is kludgy.
Reverse-engineering is the perfect solution, but in practice it can only be done for simple things. Reverse-engineering WMV or Sorensen v3: you can't be serious, this is almost impossible unless you're either a authistic genius or somebody with inside information about how the codecs work. In the real world, those codecs will most likely NEVER be reverse engineered. And i don't think begging Microsoft and Apple/Sorensen for Linux versions will work either (laugh!). So what do you do ?
MPlayer is the only project that provides a solution. I couldn't care less how they do it.
DZM
What you're pasting in your post is not the list of MPlayer problems, it's the list of Xine problems. The Mplayer authors were just trying to prove that there's a double standard here. Xine has as many problems as MPlayer, yet it's included in Debian.
The Debian people, though, have responded that they'll look into those Xine issues and that if they turn out to be true they'll yank Xine out of Debian too.
DZM