[...] but it appears that Russian schools in the area are so scared about being shipped off to a Siberian Gulag, that they are buying Linux gear instead.
I think we've found Linux's new World Domination(tm) strategy.
VLC (as well as MPlayer, Xine, ffmpeg, etc.) have not paid license fees for the patented audio and video codecs they use. So it's illegal anywhere that software patents are enforceable.
but the important thing is that it provides a legal way to play Windows Media files on Ubuntu in the USA. Not having to tell all your users to break the law to watch a video is a good thing.
There's nothing illegal about playing Windows Media files. It's just a question of licensing the appropriate patents. Freespire just happens to have the right to use Microsoft's tech without paying, thanks to their antitrust lawsuit.
So, it's really just a question of money... and a very small amount of money at that.
The same argument was (is?) used with regards to things like NES/SNES roms, but now Nintendo is reselling the games (virtual console).
Just because you CAN find another way to squeeze a few more dollars out of the current copyright scheme, doesn't mean it's a good thing.
Even though it might cost the copyright holders a little bit of money, I believe the OP has a reasonable scheme...
I'd also be happy with copyright renewal every 5 or 10 years... So anything not worth the registration fee to the owner (who may no longer even exist), becomes public domain automatically.
Of course, just stopping the infinite retroactively applied copyright extensions, and going back to a 20 year maximum, would be even better.
So what was this package marked "X11" I just installed of my 10.4 Tiger DVD?
You can install X11 on OS X, of course, just as you can install any other app.
"Apple" however, is certainly not "using" it. Their GUI is not based on X11 at all (hence the need to install it separately if you want to run X11 programs).
You can install X11 on every other operating system on the planet as well... That doesn't mean Microsoft is using X11.
1) Weight isn't all that significant when shipping via ground, except in the more extreme cases. Volume matters much more. 2) You've failed to take TIME into the equation at all. In lengthy deployments, such as Iraq, even a ridiculously slow TRICKLE of a 190% return on fuel would have more than paid off transporting the device, several times over. 3) The method by which this generates that extra fuel is (vaguely) described, and the unit is pictured, so it's quite easy to get a ballpark of what kind of volume to expect from the device.
You can assume all you want, but I think I'll keep making educated guesses based on reality.
Tis to say that the Utahns will vote for the Republican no matter how un-ideal he
To prove that is the case, you need a hell of a lot more evidence than the voting statistics for one single election.
As I said, if John Kerry just happened to have offended Mormons, that would easily account for the numbers, even if they were die-hard liberals to begin with (which they obviously are not).
But it would be possible if humans actually cared enough to put any effort into sustainable energy.
No, it sure as hell wouldn't. Maybe 100+ years from now, when technology has advanced significantly, so that we can reprocesses every single material to a form that is 100% like-new, it will be possible. With current technology, however, it's idiotic and vastly wasteful to try and recycle materials that just don't lend themselves to recycling. No amount of "effort" is going to overcome the limitations of current technology. Nor is it at all necessary. Landfills aren't hurting anyone. And if we could generate clean, cheap electricity from them, so much the better.
No, there's also the benefit of not cutting down trees. Logging leads to soil erosion, destroys animal habitats, can damage water catchments, and takes away important carbon sinks.
NOBODY is cutting down old-growth forests to make paper. The implication is ridiculous.
These days, damn near everything comes from fast growing trees, which the loggers continually replant and come back to harvest again and again.
There may be some subsidies, but they don't make up an appreciable part of the equation.
One is reduced landfill space consumption (the importance of which, except in areas of very high population density, is... arguable),
And for that, we come back to the topic at hand... You can burn old paper, for perhaps the cleanest, most inexpensive, and quite abundant fuel source around.
All Linux/Unix OS's have a file called/etc/magic that allows any *nix application to determine what the file type is. While it is possible to setup *nix file managers to look at extensions it is rather pointless if the "magic" file is properly configured
Complete nonsense. Sure, the magic file is there, but the vast majority of X11 file managers still aren't capable of making use of it. Gnome and KDE's default f.m.s are, but they are in the minority.
And as I said, file managers are only one place. There are many, many other situations where you need a file extension, and magic won't do.
That's nonsense. How about if the Republican candidate just happened to have been a mass murderer? Besides mass murder, ANY issue people disagree with, will have the same effect to a different extent. The people of Utah might just not have happen to like a law that Kerry voted for while he was a senator. Or maybe he said something offensive about Morons...
Of course they could just be collecting system info such as the system manufacturer, processor type, number of processors, sound card, etc.
That's complete nonsense. Windows has a perfectly standard way of finding out about system devices. Reading the BIOS would tell you almost none of the things you listed to begin with.
So the equivalent energy output of maybe two dozen gallons of diesel but in a low enough grade form that you wouldn't want to put it near a regular engine.
What's your point? It's not supposed to generate fuel for Humvees, it's supposed to generate lots of electricity, directly.
Are you perhaps not aware that military forces need large supplies of electricity, just as much as they need fuel for their tanks?
it starts making more sense on efficiency grounds to stick with lugging a small generator and a couple of five gallon cans of a far more usable fuel.
That's an idiotic assumption to make. What makes you think this multi-ton diesel engine is going to only be equivalent of a small generator? I have no doubt it's aiming to replace the equally large generators, that are currently in-use by the US military. A tiny, lightweight generator isn't going to handle that kind of load.
It's cool as a concept but 190% of not a lot is still not a lot
190% is a hell of a lot. Half as many fuel shipments... Half as many people putting their lives on the line to truck in that fuel. Less fuel spent in the trucks (or planes) that actually hauls that fuel in. etc.
That's not even mentioning the perhaps equally large benefit of easy disposal of waste. Not having to ship it out to a dump in a war zone could save many lives, as well as even more fuel.
It sounds great. My only question is why they're using a diesel engine, when the military currently uses turbines, which are generally more fuel efficient, and require less maintenance.
Because the vast majority of file managers need one. HTTP servers need one. Browser plug-ins need one. Programs like ffmpeg need one. etc.
File managers that operate based on file contents are significantly slower, use more memory, and are inaccurate quite often.
The difference between an MP3 and a MPEG video is extremely small, and it generally takes several MBs to be sure.
ROX-Filer works out it's a movie, and mplayer works out the format...
Actually, if MPlayer can quickly determine the format, either because it's damaged, or because the mp demuxers don't support the format, it will try to use ffmpeg's demuxer, which is 100% based on filename extension. Don't use extensions, and you'll have a lot more files that won't be playable with MPlayer, for no good reason.
"Ogg" refers to the container format; it's comparable to Quicktime, AVI, or Matroska.
No, it isn't comparable, because you'll probably NEVER see a MOV, AVI, or MKV file that is audio-only. This makes Ogg a pain to deal with in most file managers. I just rename any oggs with video to ogm. It's absolutely idiotic not to have separate extensions, ala wma/wmv. How would you feel if people starting renaming AVIs to.mp3, or putting video in a WAV container?
Ogg is also deeply tied into any codecs which it supports, so you really can't just throw any codec you want into an Ogg.
Another advantage with ogg over mp3 is that it supports more than 2 channels.
Vorbis can encode to as many channels as you want, but nobody has ever worked on the multi-channel joint encoding, so the bitrate is rather poor on more than 2 channels, and codecs like decades-old AC3 are superior.
Slashdot Mirror
And then they built the super collider.
I think we've found Linux's new World Domination(tm) strategy.
That's one hell of a motivator...
VLC (as well as MPlayer, Xine, ffmpeg, etc.) have not paid license fees for the patented audio and video codecs they use. So it's illegal anywhere that software patents are enforceable.
There's nothing illegal about playing Windows Media files. It's just a question of licensing the appropriate patents. Freespire just happens to have the right to use Microsoft's tech without paying, thanks to their antitrust lawsuit.
So, it's really just a question of money... and a very small amount of money at that.
Just because you CAN find another way to squeeze a few more dollars out of the current copyright scheme, doesn't mean it's a good thing.
Even though it might cost the copyright holders a little bit of money, I believe the OP has a reasonable scheme...
I'd also be happy with copyright renewal every 5 or 10 years... So anything not worth the registration fee to the owner (who may no longer even exist), becomes public domain automatically.
Of course, just stopping the infinite retroactively applied copyright extensions, and going back to a 20 year maximum, would be even better.
You can install X11 on OS X, of course, just as you can install any other app.
"Apple" however, is certainly not "using" it. Their GUI is not based on X11 at all (hence the need to install it separately if you want to run X11 programs).
You can install X11 on every other operating system on the planet as well... That doesn't mean Microsoft is using X11.
1) Weight isn't all that significant when shipping via ground, except in the more extreme cases. Volume matters much more.
2) You've failed to take TIME into the equation at all. In lengthy deployments, such as Iraq, even a ridiculously slow TRICKLE of a 190% return on fuel would have more than paid off transporting the device, several times over.
3) The method by which this generates that extra fuel is (vaguely) described, and the unit is pictured, so it's quite easy to get a ballpark of what kind of volume to expect from the device.
You can assume all you want, but I think I'll keep making educated guesses based on reality.
The fact that it can be installed is not the point. The point is that it isn't installed by default on most distros... Much like Windows.
As I said, if John Kerry just happened to have offended Mormons, that would easily account for the numbers, even if they were die-hard liberals to begin with (which they obviously are not).
Sj0 already addressed this as well as I could have: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=221054&cid=17
These days, damn near everything comes from fast growing trees, which the loggers continually replant and come back to harvest again and again.
There may be some subsidies, but they don't make up an appreciable part of the equation.
And as I said, file managers are only one place. There are many, many other situations where you need a file extension, and magic won't do.
That's nonsense. How about if the Republican candidate just happened to have been a mass murderer? Besides mass murder, ANY issue people disagree with, will have the same effect to a different extent. The people of Utah might just not have happen to like a law that Kerry voted for while he was a senator. Or maybe he said something offensive about Morons...
ANYTHING could have skewed the numbers.
Recycling is a good thing, but anyone who suggests recycling 100% of materials (in this century) doesn't have a very firm grip on reality. Yeah, good luck generating all the world's electricity from solar and wind. Let me know when you've finished that up...
Are you perhaps not aware that military forces need large supplies of electricity, just as much as they need fuel for their tanks? That's an idiotic assumption to make. What makes you think this multi-ton diesel engine is going to only be equivalent of a small generator? I have no doubt it's aiming to replace the equally large generators, that are currently in-use by the US military. A tiny, lightweight generator isn't going to handle that kind of load. 190% is a hell of a lot. Half as many fuel shipments... Half as many people putting their lives on the line to truck in that fuel. Less fuel spent in the trucks (or planes) that actually hauls that fuel in. etc.
That's not even mentioning the perhaps equally large benefit of easy disposal of waste. Not having to ship it out to a dump in a war zone could save many lives, as well as even more fuel.
It sounds great. My only question is why they're using a diesel engine, when the military currently uses turbines, which are generally more fuel efficient, and require less maintenance.
There are already several such power plants currently in use.
File managers that operate based on file contents are significantly slower, use more memory, and are inaccurate quite often.
The difference between an MP3 and a MPEG video is extremely small, and it generally takes several MBs to be sure. Actually, if MPlayer can quickly determine the format, either because it's damaged, or because the mp demuxers don't support the format, it will try to use ffmpeg's demuxer, which is 100% based on filename extension. Don't use extensions, and you'll have a lot more files that won't be playable with MPlayer, for no good reason.
Ogg is also deeply tied into any codecs which it supports, so you really can't just throw any codec you want into an Ogg.
With a hardware implementation, it's quite likely the larger volume possible with a more general codec would outweigh the small bitrate advantages.
E-mail virtual domains are possible of course, but I have rarely seen them in, and I doubt they're remotely as popular as WWW virtual domains.