Hard as it may be to imagine, 'free' is not always the primary selling point to open source software.
Why is it hard to imagine? People will pay money for something if it saves them time, or is simply more pleasant to use. It's software after all - free isn't the best drawcard if the software is crap to begin with, and goodness-knows there's a ton of crap open source software out there.
I have an external HDD I use mainly for backups, but also occasionally for data transfer between computers. I had the same issue - I wanted the backups (which were basically just cp's of my Linux data partition) to retain permissions and ownership so that if I had to copy my entire backup back to my computer, everything would be retained, but at the same time I wanted to use the drive elsewhere on non-Linux machines.
I used gparted to create two primary partitions - an EXT3 partition, and an NTFS partition. Linux backups would be sent to the EXT3 partition, and anything I wanted to share or transfer between machines would go on the NTFS partition. If I knew I wanted to share content already on the EXT3 partition, I'd just copy it to the NTFS as well. Seems to work.
Now this is the Apple way of committing a robbery! I bet if Microsoft had tried to rob the place, they would have just smashed a Hummer through the front door, then drive off without taking anything.
Boycotting games, or for that matter any other media (music, movies, etc) for reasons of principals doesn't actually have the intended effect.
If game sales are low, the publisher is going to blame is piracy. Not due to people boycotting the game due to shitty DRM, crappy bugs, shallow gameplay, etc, but piracy. What will this result in? More research into developing the perfect game, which publishers will purchase and force developers to integrate into their game, resulting in less time/money being put into actually making the game.
I have no stats to suggest that boycotts don't work. Just observations and a cynical opinion of the guys at the top, who don't understand the underlying issues and only care about revenue reports.
we get it already Linux is used everywhere for all sorts of computing needs. Why is this news in 2009?
Simple - the year of the desktop has been promised for god-knows how long and still hasn't taken hold in significant numbers, so some people need reassurance that Linux is being used in other areas to justify their faith in the platform.
I've found Flash-based sites such as Youtube to be quite effective at burning the battery. I know this because when I used to run Vista on my laptop, I could watch quite a lot of online vids before draining the battery. Not as long as if I was just simply browsing non-video content, but still a lot longer than the same streaming in Linux.
Now of course, the CPU usage by the Flash plugin is ridiculous in Linux compared to Windows, but at least I had a source for my power problem. No real way to fix it either except to attempt to bypass Flash by sending the URL stream to VLC or whatever, or just put up with it.
Microsoft is becoming AOL. A crappy, proprietary, expensive, unreliable impediment to getting onto the internet. Their applications have plateaued, and open-source desktop and web-based competitors are improving rapidly. They'll hang on longer, but they've begun their long decline.
I think one of the reasons why I have a problem with Slashdot commenters is because they have delusions that simply aren't being seen in the real world. Microsoft is stronger than ever these days, and Windows 7 is only going to continue their domenance. I don't see businesses leaving their technologies for anything else anytime soon.
It's very important to not have Slashdot as your only source of tech news, otherwise you can become deluded just like this poster. Microsoft are fucking BIG. We've been suggesting their decline for years. Why do people still believe in this myth?
Of course there is, but they will be overruled by their superiors who insist on continuing with the overuse of buzzwords because they're the latest craze.
The higher-up you get, the safer your actions will be. It's risky to call out the press as a bunch of blubbering parrots who don't think for themselves, particularly if you're in the same business.
That's rather impressive given the fact MS Office is pirated up the wazoo. People at my uni would much prefer pirating MS Office instead of having to spend the time learning OpenOffice. It's free either way.
It's probably worth mentioning Media Player Classic Home Cinema, which is a fork of MPC that contains (among other things) integrated codecs via ffdshow. I prefer using this to VLC because of the various weird GUI bugs in VLC, plus the accurate seeking MPC-HC has compared to VLC. VLC comes a close second though, and first place if you aren't running Windows.
Paint.NET is extremely small (1.6 MB download). It uses the.NET framework so it's well integrated with the Windows GUI. Unlike the GIMP it's very easy to use. It's fast. It doesn't have as many function as GIMP sure, but what it does have, it's nicer to use than GIMP by miles.
If I had been in a different field, I'm sure that LaTeX would have made more sense, but if I sent anything but Word to my instructors asking for comments, their heads would have exploded.
I did my masters in Computer Systems Engineering. My supervisor told me explicitely to write my thesis in LaTeX (well, LyX actually) or OpenOffice. If I used Word... he would kill me. I was uncertain of whether he was actually joking or not, so I learnt LyX and it worked out quite well.
Good luck EMI. You have given me one more reason to pirate.
If you honestly disagree with EMI - don't pirate. Just avoid their content entirely.
If you pirate, you're basically demonstrating a lack of scruples for your position. You talk the talk, but won't walk the walk, and because of this you can't be taken seriously. People will just accuse you of being a cheapskate instead of someone who will actually put his foot down and go without, as opposed to cheating by pirating and still getting the content.
Sure, the different to EMI is the same - no money to them, but at least you'll avoid being labeled a hypocrite. Believe me, it's damn hard to go without when it's so easy to pirate, but if you REALLY want to take a stand, you have to take a little pain. At least initially.
Any self-respecting geek (myself included!) would rather chew glass than suffer the agony and stigma of working on old gear...
Any self-respecting geek should find enjoyment in seeing what their limited hardware can do, as opposed to having hardware with huge amounts of power which gets wasted.
In limiting your options, you can gain an appreciation for how to optimize, cull the fat/bloat, and so on. I like old gear because there's a skill knowing how to utilise it well instead of throwing money away at newer gear you don't actually need the power of at the time.
I'm going to rip it apart for different reasons than RMS would.. I installed moonlight, but every time I tried to access a silverlight page it refused to even try to load, said I needed silverlight instead.
They don't seem notably different from, say, Vista's to me. Or for that matter, OSX's (except that I STILL find the multi-pane approach more confusing than just looking at a current folder... though the way Vista displays directory paths and lets me easily reselect any path element is beautiful.)
Can you please explain why a file dialog needs to do more than let me find a file with different folder views? Or what, specifically, is missing from the dialogs commonly used in KDE and GNOME applications?
I like the fact that in Windows' file dialogs, I can rename, copy, move and delete files right inside the selector. There are times I might want to perform some on-the-stop file management when I select a file to open in whatever application I'm using. The fact that I can perform this manipulation right there, instead of having to either stop and do it elsewhere, or remember to make the modification afterwards, is a time-saver. It's one of those things you miss once you've gotten use to having that capability there.
I don't like it when people say that file selectors should just be for selecting files. Why? They're not sacrosanct - the ability to perform file management in them is USEFUL! Isn't that a good thing?
The lack of any computers in South Korea still left alive to run Starcraft will cause a country-wide panic. There will be riots on the streets! Blood will run free, mark my words...
WHat the hell is immersion anyway? I never feel like I'm a character in any game- I'm me. I'm playing a game. I don't want to feel more like I'm a pretend character, I want the gameplay mechanics to be more fun to use and the strategy level/difficulty level to be correct. If that's there, I have fun. If its not, trying to make me think I am the character won't help.
That great, you're of the "old school" traditional gaming camp.
However, many gamers have shown that they like being sucked into games to the point of becoming part of the story, the setting, the protagonist. Valve have run with this via Gordon Freeman - the game is designed to make the player play as if they ARE Gordon. He has some back-story, but the player ends up feeling as though they're the one fighting the combine instead of controlling some guy who's doing all the work. Hence the lack of cut-scenes or any concept of Gordon talking.
And you know what? The gameplay mechanics are fun too! You can have fun and gameplay AND get sucked into becoming the character, it isn't mutually exclusive. I don't know why you were modded insightful - maybe some people believe that opinions that buck the trend are somehow insightful for this very reason.
Slashdot Mirror
You can't have a problem when you don't know any better.
Why is it hard to imagine? People will pay money for something if it saves them time, or is simply more pleasant to use. It's software after all - free isn't the best drawcard if the software is crap to begin with, and goodness-knows there's a ton of crap open source software out there.
I have an external HDD I use mainly for backups, but also occasionally for data transfer between computers. I had the same issue - I wanted the backups (which were basically just cp's of my Linux data partition) to retain permissions and ownership so that if I had to copy my entire backup back to my computer, everything would be retained, but at the same time I wanted to use the drive elsewhere on non-Linux machines.
I used gparted to create two primary partitions - an EXT3 partition, and an NTFS partition. Linux backups would be sent to the EXT3 partition, and anything I wanted to share or transfer between machines would go on the NTFS partition. If I knew I wanted to share content already on the EXT3 partition, I'd just copy it to the NTFS as well. Seems to work.
Now this is the Apple way of committing a robbery! I bet if Microsoft had tried to rob the place, they would have just smashed a Hummer through the front door, then drive off without taking anything.
Damnit, that's suppose to say "More research into developing the perfect DRM".
Where's my coffee?
Boycotting games, or for that matter any other media (music, movies, etc) for reasons of principals doesn't actually have the intended effect.
If game sales are low, the publisher is going to blame is piracy. Not due to people boycotting the game due to shitty DRM, crappy bugs, shallow gameplay, etc, but piracy. What will this result in? More research into developing the perfect game, which publishers will purchase and force developers to integrate into their game, resulting in less time/money being put into actually making the game.
I have no stats to suggest that boycotts don't work. Just observations and a cynical opinion of the guys at the top, who don't understand the underlying issues and only care about revenue reports.
Simple - the year of the desktop has been promised for god-knows how long and still hasn't taken hold in significant numbers, so some people need reassurance that Linux is being used in other areas to justify their faith in the platform.
I've found Flash-based sites such as Youtube to be quite effective at burning the battery. I know this because when I used to run Vista on my laptop, I could watch quite a lot of online vids before draining the battery. Not as long as if I was just simply browsing non-video content, but still a lot longer than the same streaming in Linux.
Now of course, the CPU usage by the Flash plugin is ridiculous in Linux compared to Windows, but at least I had a source for my power problem. No real way to fix it either except to attempt to bypass Flash by sending the URL stream to VLC or whatever, or just put up with it.
I think one of the reasons why I have a problem with Slashdot commenters is because they have delusions that simply aren't being seen in the real world. Microsoft is stronger than ever these days, and Windows 7 is only going to continue their domenance. I don't see businesses leaving their technologies for anything else anytime soon.
It's very important to not have Slashdot as your only source of tech news, otherwise you can become deluded just like this poster. Microsoft are fucking BIG. We've been suggesting their decline for years. Why do people still believe in this myth?
Of course there is, but they will be overruled by their superiors who insist on continuing with the overuse of buzzwords because they're the latest craze.
The higher-up you get, the safer your actions will be. It's risky to call out the press as a bunch of blubbering parrots who don't think for themselves, particularly if you're in the same business.
That's rather impressive given the fact MS Office is pirated up the wazoo. People at my uni would much prefer pirating MS Office instead of having to spend the time learning OpenOffice. It's free either way.
It's probably worth mentioning Media Player Classic Home Cinema, which is a fork of MPC that contains (among other things) integrated codecs via ffdshow. I prefer using this to VLC because of the various weird GUI bugs in VLC, plus the accurate seeking MPC-HC has compared to VLC. VLC comes a close second though, and first place if you aren't running Windows.
Paint.NET is extremely small (1.6 MB download). It uses the .NET framework so it's well integrated with the Windows GUI. Unlike the GIMP it's very easy to use. It's fast. It doesn't have as many function as GIMP sure, but what it does have, it's nicer to use than GIMP by miles.
I did my masters in Computer Systems Engineering. My supervisor told me explicitely to write my thesis in LaTeX (well, LyX actually) or OpenOffice. If I used Word... he would kill me. I was uncertain of whether he was actually joking or not, so I learnt LyX and it worked out quite well.
I'm rather impressed Adobe even updated the alpha 64-bit plugin for Linux at the same time as all the other platforms:
http://labs.adobe.com/downloads/flashplayer10.html
I was kinda expecting they had forgotten about it, so it's nice they didn't.
If you honestly disagree with EMI - don't pirate. Just avoid their content entirely.
If you pirate, you're basically demonstrating a lack of scruples for your position. You talk the talk, but won't walk the walk, and because of this you can't be taken seriously. People will just accuse you of being a cheapskate instead of someone who will actually put his foot down and go without, as opposed to cheating by pirating and still getting the content.
Sure, the different to EMI is the same - no money to them, but at least you'll avoid being labeled a hypocrite. Believe me, it's damn hard to go without when it's so easy to pirate, but if you REALLY want to take a stand, you have to take a little pain. At least initially.
Any self-respecting geek should find enjoyment in seeing what their limited hardware can do, as opposed to having hardware with huge amounts of power which gets wasted.
In limiting your options, you can gain an appreciation for how to optimize, cull the fat/bloat, and so on. I like old gear because there's a skill knowing how to utilise it well instead of throwing money away at newer gear you don't actually need the power of at the time.
Every single computer in our corporation because it's mandated by IT?
Foxit is nice, but it's not the "industry standard". I'm not joking.
What are you talking about? Microsoft DOES give you the option!
You can dual-boot Windows 7 & Vista, or Windows 7 and XP, or Windows 7 and 2000...
Go here: http://www.go-mono.com/moonlight-preview/
Install the extension, then go here: http://www.microsoft.com/en/us/default.aspx
It will work beautifully.
I like the fact that in Windows' file dialogs, I can rename, copy, move and delete files right inside the selector. There are times I might want to perform some on-the-stop file management when I select a file to open in whatever application I'm using. The fact that I can perform this manipulation right there, instead of having to either stop and do it elsewhere, or remember to make the modification afterwards, is a time-saver. It's one of those things you miss once you've gotten use to having that capability there.
I don't like it when people say that file selectors should just be for selecting files. Why? They're not sacrosanct - the ability to perform file management in them is USEFUL! Isn't that a good thing?
The lack of any computers in South Korea still left alive to run Starcraft will cause a country-wide panic. There will be riots on the streets! Blood will run free, mark my words...
Does CS4 run flawlessly in Wine? If anything breaks or requires workarounds, it's not worth it.
Sucks to be running Linux.
*gets back to work in Photoshop* ...
See? All operating systems have their disadvantages. Now stop being smug.
That great, you're of the "old school" traditional gaming camp.
However, many gamers have shown that they like being sucked into games to the point of becoming part of the story, the setting, the protagonist. Valve have run with this via Gordon Freeman - the game is designed to make the player play as if they ARE Gordon. He has some back-story, but the player ends up feeling as though they're the one fighting the combine instead of controlling some guy who's doing all the work. Hence the lack of cut-scenes or any concept of Gordon talking.
And you know what? The gameplay mechanics are fun too! You can have fun and gameplay AND get sucked into becoming the character, it isn't mutually exclusive. I don't know why you were modded insightful - maybe some people believe that opinions that buck the trend are somehow insightful for this very reason.