One - I am a modem user. Downloading the high res version would have taken way too long anyway.
Two - I prefer watching trailers at the cinema.
Therefore being asked to pay for features I don't want, because Apple paid off LucasFilm, just in order to see a promotional video pisses me off.
First of all, do you have any evidence to back up that "Apple paid off LucasFilm" assertion? PPOR.
Aside from that, you (1) can't and (2) wouldn't watch the high-res trailers at home, but you're all offended that you've been asked to pay for them. Sounds like your opinion on this subject doesn't really matter very much. Apple isn't asking you to pay for anything, since you're not interested in watching the high-res trailers on the web site anyway.
So why are you all up-in-arms, again? Is it just about the principle of the thing? Angels and ministers of grace, defend us from a Slashdotter with his back up against a principle.
I am telling you and repeated stories have shown that enterprises ARE deploying linux on the desktop, in fact right now we have about 5,000 desktops running linux, true that is compared to about 45,000 running either win2k or solaris, but it is still quite a few seats!
You seem to be ignoring one important fact that most people seem to have realized: Linux on the desktop does not work. If the desktop experience itself were acceptable-- it isn't-- then you'd run into the application gap. If it weren't for the application gap, you'd run into the untold thousands of compatibility and consistency problems.
The fact that your company-- whatever it is; you seem to have neglected to mention-- is experimenting with Linux on the desktop simply means that you folks haven't yet realized the error of your ways.
Budget system users want to be able to get on the internet, write some documents and maybe play some games. They can do that just as well if not faster with a $599 Dell system as they can with a $1100+ Apple system.
If your premise were correct, your conclusion would undoubtedly be correct, too. But as it is....
I think Apple's biggest success over the past two years has been marketing the idea of the digital hub. While it used to be true that the average first-time computer buyer was interested only in email, surfing, and Quicken, today's newbies want to play MP3s, connect their digital cameras, and make DVDs out of their home movies.
Keeping up with these new trends just isn't practical with PC hardware running either Windows or Linux. Have you ever tried to capture video, edit a movie, and burn a DVD with either of those platforms? Nightmare!
If all you're interested in is surfing and email, by all means, buy the Dell. But Apple's contention-- rightly or wrongly-- is that you should expect to be able to do more than that with your home computer. And I think they're doing a great job of promoting that point of view.
Cheap powerful machines == more opportunities for Linux on the desktop. Thanks Apple!
You've got a lot of nerve, coming to an apple.slashdot.org article and posting a comment about Linux on the desktop. Are you wearing your asbestos underwear, or what?
Then again, looking at your posting history, it appears that you may just be a subtle and effective troll.
Certainly all the comments about RAM and OS X I've seen indicate that running it with less than 256MB significantly affects performance. My own experience is in line with that.
Mine is, too, but I suspect that this was more true under 10.0 than it is under 10.1. I upgraded my laptop and my desktop to 256 MB and 640 MB, respectively, back in the 10.0.4 days. It made a noticable, although not astonishing, difference. But I've never seen 10.1.n run with 128 MB, so I can't say how it performs.
wow way to latch on to one point and ignore everything else I said!
That's because the rest of what you said is irrelevant to the subject at hand. You are an exception, a data point way outside the normal curve. So what you do with your computers isn't representative of what most people do with them. What's your point?
Quicktime could potentially be usefull to a corporation as a multimedia delivery tool, and I therefore think that apple could potentially make $ off of a linux offering.
There you go again, making that leap between one isolated data point and the rest of the distribution. Yes, QuickTime is a useful intranet media delivery tool for corporations. But corporations do not typically deploy Linux on the desktop. Period. So jumping to the conclusion that Apple should port QuickTime to Linux for corporate customers just doesn't make any sense at all.
It's DVD quality in the same vein that mp3 is cd quality.
Oh. You mean it's DVD quality in the sense that it's not.
Just to clarify the point here, DVDs are encoded with MPEG-2 at variable bit rates that average between five and eight megabits per second, depending on the disc.
A Sorensen or MPEG-4 stream encoded at between one and two megabits per second is not, and cannot be considered, "DVD quality."
You're going to have to back that up for me to believe you, I'm afraid.
Can't do it. As I said, my information comes from inside sources within Alias|Wavefront. Since I can't back it up without getting myself or somebody else in trouble, I'll just retract my statement. My bad.
You reject three paragraphs of example and evidence without any counterclaim? You're better than Bush, Hollings, and Gates.:/
I'm just not all that interested in covering a subject that's off topic, and that's already been beaten to death elsewhere. With very few exceptions-- exceptions whose origins are mostly historical or marginal-- open source software is not as good as similar commercial software. Your examples are neither interesting nor significant, so I just don't feel like rehashing this old argument with you over them.
I think the opposite is true. Obviously not every Linux user is a die-hard zealot, but there are quite a few of them, and they're afraid that the rest of us will choose pragmatism over religion and migrate to OS/X.
I was trying to think of a way to say that very thing when I posted. Anecdotal evidence indicates that there's a lot of momentum behind Mac OS X in the fringes. People who reject Windows on religious grounds used to flock to Linux because it was the only appealing alternative: BSD is too mature (read "slow moving"), BeOS is marginalized to the point of irrelevance, and Mac OS Classic just wasn't that great. But Mac OS X is truly wonderful, and it sounds like lots of Linux users are coming to realize this.
Apple's even marketing OS X to UNIX users directly, in some of their print ads. They're well aware of the possibility of turning Linux or other UNIX users to Mac OS X.
So thanks for saying what I wanted to say, only better.;-)
I am fairly certain that Microsoft is the reason - one part of their support of Apple, financially and by producine IE and Office, is that Apple must do whatever they can to not support Linux.
This doesn't sound right. Microsoft entered into their agreement with Apple years ago, before Linux was even on anybody's radar. Doesn't sound to me like such a clause is very likely to exist.
Even if this were true, Microsoft's agreement with Apple has expired. The field is wide open now.
That's funny since I just got done building a couple linux workstations for software that costs 10's of thousands of dollars per seat!
If your alternative was to buy Sun workstations with 4 GB of RAM, then you're clearly not a typical computer user, are you? You have built, in your words, "a couple" of workstations. "A couple" does not a market make.
So apple, deciding they cannot make money on it, does not realease anything for Linux. Then codeweavers releases the crossover plugin and does:).
I guess you missed the part in the middle, about third-party licensees. Apple doesn't consider QuickTime Pro licenses to be a significant revenue source. The revenue from QuickTime comes from third parties, which license QuickTime for use in their own commercial products.
Since nobody is asking to license QuickTime for Linux for commercial use, Apple has no motivation to port QuickTime to Linux.
Yet you can buy Maya for Linux, which costs just a hair more than Photoshop or Microsoft Office.
I can speak to this. Are you aware that, according to insider information from Alias|Wavefront, Maya for Linux has lost more money for Alias than it has made? It cost more to port Maya to Linux than it has ever made back in sales.
It goes right back to what I said. People who use Linux-- as a gross but useful generalization-- don't buy commercial software. People who buy commercial software-- again, a useful generalization-- will not use desktop Linux.
As for the other items you mentioned, I reject your assertion that free software "kicks the hiney of its commercial counterparts." But that's an argument for another thread.
Ah, but it's not just about making sales to earn revenue. The other real reason for making a linux port available is that is would help them keep their market share.
According to everything I've read, desktop Linux has an even smaller market share than the 3-5% that goes to desktop Mac users.
I don't think Apple is quaking in their boots about a mass migration of Mac OS X users to Linux.
George Lucas and his best mate Steve Jobs unfortunately.
Gasp! Choke! Those bastards! Asking you to pay them money in return for getting something you want!
Sounds like it boils down like this. You wanted to watch the Episode II trailers in high resolution, and you got pissed off that you couldn't find a working pirated serial number for QuickTime Pro. Am I close?
And how, exactly, are they making money off the "free" versions they are giving out for all of the other platforms?
Hmm. Another sighting of the infamous non-reading anonymous coward.
Apple gives away the QuickTime Player software for free. This is a neat way to increase awareness of QuickTime technology among Windows and Mac users.
Apple makes money by licensing QuickTime technology to software companies that want to incorporate it into their own products. You find QuickTime technology in apps like After Effects and Premiere from Adobe, Cinestream from Media 100, and (duh) Final Cut Pro. You can also find QuickTime technology embedded in things like digital cameras.
Apple has already done extensive work to port the QuickTime libraries to Windows and to Mac OS X from Mac OS Classic, because third party licensees asked for support for those platforms. It seems that nobody is clamoring for QuickTime for Linux except desktop users who aren't going to be buying anything any time soon.
If you really want QuickTime Player for Linux, offer to buy it from Apple. If you are willing to pay the right price, and lots and lots of other people are also willing to pay, then Apple has a case for doing the port.
It's out for MacOS, MacOS X (BSD), and Windows. Remind me again why we can't have a native Linux version of it?
Same reason you can't have Photoshop for Linux, or Microsoft Office for Linux: because the vendor wouldn't make any money off of a version of their software for Linux.
The Windows port of QuickTime is important primarily because of licensing: Apple licenses the technology to companies like Adobe so they can use it in apps like Premiere, which are more popular on Windows than they are on the Mac.
But Apple knows that Linux users, as a rule, don't buy software. No third party would license QuickTime for Linux, because they couldn't make any money on their product. So there's zero motivation for Apple to port QuickTime to Linux.
You apparently do not get the point. The freedom to hold any idea I wish, and be outspoken about it without being asked to leave the country is the reason this government is so flexible.
The freedom of ideas and expression is a valuable thing. But it carries with it an obligation to exercise wisdom before speaking. The old analogy about yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theater applies.
I believe it's you that doesn't get the point. See, you are indeed free to hold the opinion that the Law doesn't apply to you. But the fact that you can hold, and express, that opinion doesn't mean that you're right. You're just as free to insist that the sky is red.
In other words, our social and governmental system guarantees you the freedom to be an idiot. It does not, however, make it mandatory.
You're using latin debating terms to piss me off. It will work!
Excuse me for using precise terminology. (Except for the typo. It's "reductio," not "reducto." That's my bad.)
Reductio ad absurdum is, first, a very common term. And second, it's clear, both from the term itself and from context, what it means. So quit complaining and crack a book.
You then tried to point out a flaw in my argument. I'm going to try to get all of the relevant context here, while trimming it down for length.
You said "Of course, there's also the fact that, with remarkably few exceptions, commercial software is of higher quality than free software." [...] "So the implication is that commercial software is of higher quality than free software." But you said that the remarkable majority (opposite of remarkably few) of commercial software is of higher quality than free software. You said it. Not me. Either take that or I'm going to call you on it.
Um. Okay. I said that the majority of commercial software is of higher quality than its free software counterparts.
Maybe you were confused by my use of the phrase, "with remarkably few exceptions," although I believe your quote was accurate. My statement meant that, while a few exceptions exist, commercial software products are superior to their free software alternatives.
Now, finally, we get specific.
Sendmail
Okay, that's a good one. I'll give you Sendmail. It's big, and hard to use, but it's just as good as any other small-to-medium email server out there. Exchange server is really in a different class, and fairly crufty. Solutions like Post.Office are designed to deal with hundreds of thousands of users, which puts them in a different league.
So you get Sendmail.
GCC
GCC is an okay compiler, but only if your #1 priority is portability. GCC will, it seems, generate code for damn near anything.
But if you don't care about portability, then GCC is really a substandard compiler. It's okay for C, and utterly unacceptable for C++. Of course, it also tries to compile languages like Fortran, Objective C, and Java, but these are even worse disappointments. SGI's C, C++, and Fortran compilers for MIPS are the best I've used personally. I hear great things about Intel's compilers for IA-32 and IA-64, too.
So GCC is marginal at best. It's got some things going for it, but on the whole it's not too great.
Cygwin
Cygwin is something of a one-trick pony. I suppose it's fine for what it does, but I'm having a hard time understanding why it exists at all, except as a novelty. I consider Cygwin to be inconclusive.
KDE
Are you serious? KDE is awful in comparison to the Windows, Mac OS Classic, or Mac OS X desktops. It's ugly, slow, and incomplete. Please don't try to hold up KDE as some kind of example of open source excellence.
GhostScript
GhostScript is neat because it works at all. But there is a lot of PostScript and PDF code out there that GhostScript can't handle. It's woefully incomplete when compared to Adobe's PostScript and PDF interpreters. Compare the number of RIPs that use GhostScript to the number that have licensed Adobe's interpreter to get a feel for how good GhostScript really is.
Mozilla
Every commercial browser currently available is superior to Mozilla. On Windows and Mac, IE is a lot faster. On Mac OS X, OmniWeb is prettier. Opera, although I don't use it myself, also has a lot going for it.
We can talk all you want about how neat Mozilla may or may not be at some indefinite time in the future. As of right now-- and by "right now" I mean 1.0 RC 3, the version I have on my computer-- it's too buggy and too slow to be useful.
So, what you're saying is that commercial software beats free software because it does a better job at accounting systems and ERP systems (which are often interrelated)? I think you'll need to do far better than that, especially as projects like GNUCash gain steam.
Nope. I'm saying that commercial software beats free software because, as a rule, it does. Period. Accounting, databasing, ERP, CRM, and so on are just examples of things that lots of people use computers for.
And GnuCash? It's trying to be Quicken for Linux. Only it's not as good as Quicken. If you insist on running Linux on your desktop (a mistake any way you slice it), then I guess you have no alternative but to use tools like GnuCash. In that situation, you're really comparing GnuCash to nothing at all, because that's what you'd be using otherwise.
Depending on your needs, GnuCash may be superior to using nothing at all. But no promises.
The laws of this country were created in such a way as to protect people who aren't sheeplike in beliefs from people like you.
You think people need to be protected from me? I'm not the one advocating lawlessness and mob rule. You are.
I'm just going to reiterate my point from a previous post, as you seem to be ignoring it.
Our culture is based on the twin principles of individual liberty and universal equality. No single person has the authority to tell any other person what to do. But left by itself, that state of affairs would inevitably lead to anarchy and chaos and rule by force, and no man would be able to exercise the liberty that we hold so dear. So we all, collectively and willingly, subject our selves to the rule of an abstract entity, the Law. We have established, thanks to our founding fathers, a system for creating, testing, and revising the individual laws that make up the Law, and we put our trust in it.
This system will only work if we all respect and obey the Law, even when we disagree with it. Casually ignoring the Law will, without fail, lead to the ultimate collapse of our system from within.
I'll ask you again. Please leave this country immediately, and move someplace where the stability and continued health of society doesn't depend on a respect for the Law.
I mean, with a polished and perfected piece of software there'd be no security or usability problems, right?
Wrong. You're trying to use a reducto ad absurdum argument on be. It won't work.
I didn't say that commercial software is always perfect all the time, like you seem to wish I had. I said exactly what I mean: if you try to turn software into a business, you're probably going to spend more time and energy on your software than if you just do it as a hobby. If you fail to do this, then you'll be out of business. So the implication is that commercial software is of higher quality than free software.
This implication is strengthened by the fact that, in most cases, commercial software is of higher quality than comparable free software.
A poster said that the person who said that Sun's selling of StarOffice is a sign of maturity was an idiot. I'm refuting that. While not a guarantee, it is entirely reasonable to consider commercial sale of a piece of software to be a sign of maturity.
And all shareware is worth its registration price. Heh. If you believe that, I've got a bridge to sell ya.
I'm not sure I understand. Are you trying to say that commercial software is not, as a rule, better than comparable free software? If so, I'd like to get specific, please.
I can think of one example of free software that's as good as or better than commercial software of the same type: Apache. Apache is the reference standard web server, and while there are other outstanding servers, none other seems to be quite able to balance portability, performance, and flexibility. So that's one.
On the other hand, I can't think of any databases that are as good as or better than Oracle, DB2, or Sybase. I also can't think of a free ERP or AR/AP package the compares to SAP, or a free CRM package that compares to Siebel or Salesforce.com, or a free HR package that compares to Peoplesoft.
Hell, I can't even think of a small business accounting application that compares to QuickBooks, or to Peachtree!
So I'm really having a hard time understanding your argument, here.
I'd have mentioned something about developers getting paid, but that's just me...
Doh! How could I have forgotten that little tidbit! As a rule, developers who get paid to work on software will produce better, higher quality code, with fewer bugs and tighter design, than developers who do it in their spare time. Yet another reason why commercial software implies better, more mature code.
Explain to me how selling a piece of software is "maturity". Idiots.
Any slack-jawed mouth-breather can give software away. In fact, if you look at Freshmeat, it appears that most of them do.
But if you expect somebody to give you money for software, it implies that you've spent some time polishing and perfecting that software. It implies that you've got some pride in that software, and that that software is worth something. In sort, it's a sign of maturity, just like the article said.
That's why commercial software will always be perceived to be of higher quality than free software.
Of course, there's also the fact that, with remarkably few exceptions, commercial software is of higher quality than free software.
Slashdot Mirror
One - I am a modem user. Downloading the high res version would have taken way too long anyway.
Two - I prefer watching trailers at the cinema.
Therefore being asked to pay for features I don't want, because Apple paid off LucasFilm, just in order to see a promotional video pisses me off.
First of all, do you have any evidence to back up that "Apple paid off LucasFilm" assertion? PPOR.
Aside from that, you (1) can't and (2) wouldn't watch the high-res trailers at home, but you're all offended that you've been asked to pay for them. Sounds like your opinion on this subject doesn't really matter very much. Apple isn't asking you to pay for anything, since you're not interested in watching the high-res trailers on the web site anyway.
So why are you all up-in-arms, again? Is it just about the principle of the thing? Angels and ministers of grace, defend us from a Slashdotter with his back up against a principle.
I am telling you and repeated stories have shown that enterprises ARE deploying linux on the desktop, in fact right now we have about 5,000 desktops running linux, true that is compared to about 45,000 running either win2k or solaris, but it is still quite a few seats!
You seem to be ignoring one important fact that most people seem to have realized: Linux on the desktop does not work. If the desktop experience itself were acceptable-- it isn't-- then you'd run into the application gap. If it weren't for the application gap, you'd run into the untold thousands of compatibility and consistency problems.
The fact that your company-- whatever it is; you seem to have neglected to mention-- is experimenting with Linux on the desktop simply means that you folks haven't yet realized the error of your ways.
Budget system users want to be able to get on the internet, write some documents and maybe play some games. They can do that just as well if not faster with a $599 Dell system as they can with a $1100+ Apple system.
If your premise were correct, your conclusion would undoubtedly be correct, too. But as it is....
I think Apple's biggest success over the past two years has been marketing the idea of the digital hub. While it used to be true that the average first-time computer buyer was interested only in email, surfing, and Quicken, today's newbies want to play MP3s, connect their digital cameras, and make DVDs out of their home movies.
Keeping up with these new trends just isn't practical with PC hardware running either Windows or Linux. Have you ever tried to capture video, edit a movie, and burn a DVD with either of those platforms? Nightmare!
If all you're interested in is surfing and email, by all means, buy the Dell. But Apple's contention-- rightly or wrongly-- is that you should expect to be able to do more than that with your home computer. And I think they're doing a great job of promoting that point of view.
Cheap powerful machines == more opportunities for Linux on the desktop. Thanks Apple!
You've got a lot of nerve, coming to an apple.slashdot.org article and posting a comment about Linux on the desktop. Are you wearing your asbestos underwear, or what?
Then again, looking at your posting history, it appears that you may just be a subtle and effective troll.
Certainly all the comments about RAM and OS X I've seen indicate that running it with less than 256MB significantly affects performance. My own experience is in line with that.
Mine is, too, but I suspect that this was more true under 10.0 than it is under 10.1. I upgraded my laptop and my desktop to 256 MB and 640 MB, respectively, back in the 10.0.4 days. It made a noticable, although not astonishing, difference. But I've never seen 10.1.n run with 128 MB, so I can't say how it performs.
wow way to latch on to one point and ignore everything else I said!
That's because the rest of what you said is irrelevant to the subject at hand. You are an exception, a data point way outside the normal curve. So what you do with your computers isn't representative of what most people do with them. What's your point?
Quicktime could potentially be usefull to a corporation as a multimedia delivery tool, and I therefore think that apple could potentially make $ off of a linux offering.
There you go again, making that leap between one isolated data point and the rest of the distribution. Yes, QuickTime is a useful intranet media delivery tool for corporations. But corporations do not typically deploy Linux on the desktop. Period. So jumping to the conclusion that Apple should port QuickTime to Linux for corporate customers just doesn't make any sense at all.
It's DVD quality in the same vein that mp3 is cd quality.
Oh. You mean it's DVD quality in the sense that it's not.
Just to clarify the point here, DVDs are encoded with MPEG-2 at variable bit rates that average between five and eight megabits per second, depending on the disc.
A Sorensen or MPEG-4 stream encoded at between one and two megabits per second is not, and cannot be considered, "DVD quality."
You're going to have to back that up for me to believe you, I'm afraid.
:/
Can't do it. As I said, my information comes from inside sources within Alias|Wavefront. Since I can't back it up without getting myself or somebody else in trouble, I'll just retract my statement. My bad.
You reject three paragraphs of example and evidence without any counterclaim? You're better than Bush, Hollings, and Gates.
I'm just not all that interested in covering a subject that's off topic, and that's already been beaten to death elsewhere. With very few exceptions-- exceptions whose origins are mostly historical or marginal-- open source software is not as good as similar commercial software. Your examples are neither interesting nor significant, so I just don't feel like rehashing this old argument with you over them.
I think the opposite is true. Obviously not every Linux user is a die-hard zealot, but there are quite a few of them, and they're afraid that the rest of us will choose pragmatism over religion and migrate to OS/X.
;-)
I was trying to think of a way to say that very thing when I posted. Anecdotal evidence indicates that there's a lot of momentum behind Mac OS X in the fringes. People who reject Windows on religious grounds used to flock to Linux because it was the only appealing alternative: BSD is too mature (read "slow moving"), BeOS is marginalized to the point of irrelevance, and Mac OS Classic just wasn't that great. But Mac OS X is truly wonderful, and it sounds like lots of Linux users are coming to realize this.
Apple's even marketing OS X to UNIX users directly, in some of their print ads. They're well aware of the possibility of turning Linux or other UNIX users to Mac OS X.
So thanks for saying what I wanted to say, only better.
I am fairly certain that Microsoft is the
reason - one part of their support of Apple,
financially and by producine IE and Office,
is that Apple must do whatever they can to
not support Linux.
This doesn't sound right. Microsoft entered into their agreement with Apple years ago, before Linux was even on anybody's radar. Doesn't sound to me like such a clause is very likely to exist.
Even if this were true, Microsoft's agreement with Apple has expired. The field is wide open now.
That's funny since I just got done building a couple linux workstations for software that costs 10's of thousands of dollars per seat!
If your alternative was to buy Sun workstations with 4 GB of RAM, then you're clearly not a typical computer user, are you? You have built, in your words, "a couple" of workstations. "A couple" does not a market make.
Sorry. You're a niche.
So apple, deciding they cannot make money on it, does not realease anything for Linux. Then codeweavers releases the crossover plugin and does :).
I guess you missed the part in the middle, about third-party licensees. Apple doesn't consider QuickTime Pro licenses to be a significant revenue source. The revenue from QuickTime comes from third parties, which license QuickTime for use in their own commercial products.
Since nobody is asking to license QuickTime for Linux for commercial use, Apple has no motivation to port QuickTime to Linux.
Ta-da.
Yet you can buy Maya for Linux, which costs just a hair more than Photoshop or Microsoft Office.
I can speak to this. Are you aware that, according to insider information from Alias|Wavefront, Maya for Linux has lost more money for Alias than it has made? It cost more to port Maya to Linux than it has ever made back in sales.
It goes right back to what I said. People who use Linux-- as a gross but useful generalization-- don't buy commercial software. People who buy commercial software-- again, a useful generalization-- will not use desktop Linux.
As for the other items you mentioned, I reject your assertion that free software "kicks the hiney of its commercial counterparts." But that's an argument for another thread.
Ah, but it's not just about making sales to earn revenue. The other real reason for making a linux port available is that is would help them keep their market share.
According to everything I've read, desktop Linux has an even smaller market share than the 3-5% that goes to desktop Mac users.
I don't think Apple is quaking in their boots about a mass migration of Mac OS X users to Linux.
George Lucas and his best mate Steve Jobs unfortunately.
Gasp! Choke! Those bastards! Asking you to pay them money in return for getting something you want!
Sounds like it boils down like this. You wanted to watch the Episode II trailers in high resolution, and you got pissed off that you couldn't find a working pirated serial number for QuickTime Pro. Am I close?
And how, exactly, are they making money off the "free" versions they are giving out for all of the other platforms?
Hmm. Another sighting of the infamous non-reading anonymous coward.
Apple gives away the QuickTime Player software for free. This is a neat way to increase awareness of QuickTime technology among Windows and Mac users.
Apple makes money by licensing QuickTime technology to software companies that want to incorporate it into their own products. You find QuickTime technology in apps like After Effects and Premiere from Adobe, Cinestream from Media 100, and (duh) Final Cut Pro. You can also find QuickTime technology embedded in things like digital cameras.
Apple has already done extensive work to port the QuickTime libraries to Windows and to Mac OS X from Mac OS Classic, because third party licensees asked for support for those platforms. It seems that nobody is clamoring for QuickTime for Linux except desktop users who aren't going to be buying anything any time soon.
If you really want QuickTime Player for Linux, offer to buy it from Apple. If you are willing to pay the right price, and lots and lots of other people are also willing to pay, then Apple has a case for doing the port.
Combined with an Xserve dishing out >500 simultaneous DVD-quality quicktime streams....
You can't be serious. I've never even seen a DVD-quality stream-- 5-8 megabits per second, that is.
Surely you mean something around or less than 1 megabit per second.
It's out for MacOS, MacOS X (BSD), and Windows. Remind me again why we can't have a native Linux version of it?
Same reason you can't have Photoshop for Linux, or Microsoft Office for Linux: because the vendor wouldn't make any money off of a version of their software for Linux.
The Windows port of QuickTime is important primarily because of licensing: Apple licenses the technology to companies like Adobe so they can use it in apps like Premiere, which are more popular on Windows than they are on the Mac.
But Apple knows that Linux users, as a rule, don't buy software. No third party would license QuickTime for Linux, because they couldn't make any money on their product. So there's zero motivation for Apple to port QuickTime to Linux.
You apparently do not get the point. The freedom to hold any idea I wish, and be outspoken about it without being asked to leave the country is the reason this government is so flexible.
The freedom of ideas and expression is a valuable thing. But it carries with it an obligation to exercise wisdom before speaking. The old analogy about yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theater applies.
I believe it's you that doesn't get the point. See, you are indeed free to hold the opinion that the Law doesn't apply to you. But the fact that you can hold, and express, that opinion doesn't mean that you're right. You're just as free to insist that the sky is red.
In other words, our social and governmental system guarantees you the freedom to be an idiot. It does not, however, make it mandatory.
You're using latin debating terms to piss me off. It will work!
Excuse me for using precise terminology. (Except for the typo. It's "reductio," not "reducto." That's my bad.)
Reductio ad absurdum is, first, a very common term. And second, it's clear, both from the term itself and from context, what it means. So quit complaining and crack a book.
You then tried to point out a flaw in my argument. I'm going to try to get all of the relevant context here, while trimming it down for length.
You said "Of course, there's also the fact that, with remarkably few exceptions, commercial software is of higher quality than free software." [...] "So the implication is that commercial software is of higher quality than free software." But you said that the remarkable majority (opposite of remarkably few) of commercial software is of higher quality than free software. You said it. Not me. Either take that or I'm going to call you on it.
Um. Okay. I said that the majority of commercial software is of higher quality than its free software counterparts.
Maybe you were confused by my use of the phrase, "with remarkably few exceptions," although I believe your quote was accurate. My statement meant that, while a few exceptions exist, commercial software products are superior to their free software alternatives.
Now, finally, we get specific.
Sendmail
Okay, that's a good one. I'll give you Sendmail. It's big, and hard to use, but it's just as good as any other small-to-medium email server out there. Exchange server is really in a different class, and fairly crufty. Solutions like Post.Office are designed to deal with hundreds of thousands of users, which puts them in a different league.
So you get Sendmail.
GCC
GCC is an okay compiler, but only if your #1 priority is portability. GCC will, it seems, generate code for damn near anything.
But if you don't care about portability, then GCC is really a substandard compiler. It's okay for C, and utterly unacceptable for C++. Of course, it also tries to compile languages like Fortran, Objective C, and Java, but these are even worse disappointments. SGI's C, C++, and Fortran compilers for MIPS are the best I've used personally. I hear great things about Intel's compilers for IA-32 and IA-64, too.
So GCC is marginal at best. It's got some things going for it, but on the whole it's not too great.
Cygwin
Cygwin is something of a one-trick pony. I suppose it's fine for what it does, but I'm having a hard time understanding why it exists at all, except as a novelty. I consider Cygwin to be inconclusive.
KDE
Are you serious? KDE is awful in comparison to the Windows, Mac OS Classic, or Mac OS X desktops. It's ugly, slow, and incomplete. Please don't try to hold up KDE as some kind of example of open source excellence.
GhostScript
GhostScript is neat because it works at all. But there is a lot of PostScript and PDF code out there that GhostScript can't handle. It's woefully incomplete when compared to Adobe's PostScript and PDF interpreters. Compare the number of RIPs that use GhostScript to the number that have licensed Adobe's interpreter to get a feel for how good GhostScript really is.
Mozilla
Every commercial browser currently available is superior to Mozilla. On Windows and Mac, IE is a lot faster. On Mac OS X, OmniWeb is prettier. Opera, although I don't use it myself, also has a lot going for it.
We can talk all you want about how neat Mozilla may or may not be at some indefinite time in the future. As of right now-- and by "right now" I mean 1.0 RC 3, the version I have on my computer-- it's too buggy and too slow to be useful.
So, what you're saying is that commercial software beats free software because it does a better job at accounting systems and ERP systems (which are often interrelated)? I think you'll need to do far better than that, especially as projects like GNUCash gain steam.
Nope. I'm saying that commercial software beats free software because, as a rule, it does. Period. Accounting, databasing, ERP, CRM, and so on are just examples of things that lots of people use computers for.
And GnuCash? It's trying to be Quicken for Linux. Only it's not as good as Quicken. If you insist on running Linux on your desktop (a mistake any way you slice it), then I guess you have no alternative but to use tools like GnuCash. In that situation, you're really comparing GnuCash to nothing at all, because that's what you'd be using otherwise.
Depending on your needs, GnuCash may be superior to using nothing at all. But no promises.
The laws of this country were created in such a way as to protect people who aren't sheeplike in beliefs from people like you.
You think people need to be protected from me? I'm not the one advocating lawlessness and mob rule. You are.
I'm just going to reiterate my point from a previous post, as you seem to be ignoring it.
Our culture is based on the twin principles of individual liberty and universal equality. No single person has the authority to tell any other person what to do. But left by itself, that state of affairs would inevitably lead to anarchy and chaos and rule by force, and no man would be able to exercise the liberty that we hold so dear. So we all, collectively and willingly, subject our selves to the rule of an abstract entity, the Law. We have established, thanks to our founding fathers, a system for creating, testing, and revising the individual laws that make up the Law, and we put our trust in it.
This system will only work if we all respect and obey the Law, even when we disagree with it. Casually ignoring the Law will, without fail, lead to the ultimate collapse of our system from within.
I'll ask you again. Please leave this country immediately, and move someplace where the stability and continued health of society doesn't depend on a respect for the Law.
I mean, with a polished and perfected piece of software there'd be no security or usability problems, right?
Wrong. You're trying to use a reducto ad absurdum argument on be. It won't work.
I didn't say that commercial software is always perfect all the time, like you seem to wish I had. I said exactly what I mean: if you try to turn software into a business, you're probably going to spend more time and energy on your software than if you just do it as a hobby. If you fail to do this, then you'll be out of business. So the implication is that commercial software is of higher quality than free software.
This implication is strengthened by the fact that, in most cases, commercial software is of higher quality than comparable free software.
A poster said that the person who said that Sun's selling of StarOffice is a sign of maturity was an idiot. I'm refuting that. While not a guarantee, it is entirely reasonable to consider commercial sale of a piece of software to be a sign of maturity.
And all shareware is worth its registration price. Heh. If you believe that, I've got a bridge to sell ya.
I'm not sure I understand. Are you trying to say that commercial software is not, as a rule, better than comparable free software? If so, I'd like to get specific, please.
I can think of one example of free software that's as good as or better than commercial software of the same type: Apache. Apache is the reference standard web server, and while there are other outstanding servers, none other seems to be quite able to balance portability, performance, and flexibility. So that's one.
On the other hand, I can't think of any databases that are as good as or better than Oracle, DB2, or Sybase. I also can't think of a free ERP or AR/AP package the compares to SAP, or a free CRM package that compares to Siebel or Salesforce.com, or a free HR package that compares to Peoplesoft.
Hell, I can't even think of a small business accounting application that compares to QuickBooks, or to Peachtree!
So I'm really having a hard time understanding your argument, here.
I'd have mentioned something about developers getting paid, but that's just me...
Doh! How could I have forgotten that little tidbit! As a rule, developers who get paid to work on software will produce better, higher quality code, with fewer bugs and tighter design, than developers who do it in their spare time. Yet another reason why commercial software implies better, more mature code.
Explain to me how selling a piece of software is "maturity". Idiots.
Any slack-jawed mouth-breather can give software away. In fact, if you look at Freshmeat, it appears that most of them do.
But if you expect somebody to give you money for software, it implies that you've spent some time polishing and perfecting that software. It implies that you've got some pride in that software, and that that software is worth something. In sort, it's a sign of maturity, just like the article said.
That's why commercial software will always be perceived to be of higher quality than free software.
Of course, there's also the fact that, with remarkably few exceptions, commercial software is of higher quality than free software.
Please put down your mouse and move to a country where respect for the law is not a core value.
No one here will miss you.