As I said yesterday in the other ATI story, the radeon's TV output does minimally work in x86 linux despite all of ATI's best efforts to keep it not working.
For the original radeon and close derivatives (radeon mobility M6, M7, mobility 7500, and IGP 320M/340M but not regular radeon 7500 or anything above), the way to get TV output is to boot the computer up with the TV plugged in, and run atitvout. This program clones the normal display onto the TV. All acceleration features that are normally supported on the display are also supported on the TV.
For radeon 7500 and above, a different technique is required: there you simply boot up the computer with the TV attached, and TV output is automatic. But, if you want to run X on the TV output you must use the VESA driver and not the radeon driver. Consequently the card's acceleration features are not available in X on the TV output. However, as a special case, video playback overlay acceleration is available on the TV out using the xvidix driver in mplayer.
Basically, the situation is not ideal, but it is a long way from being hopeless.
TV support (both in and out) doesn't work on either the 7500 or the 9500.
Please check your facts before you make such claims. I own a Radeon 7500 and I assure you the TV output works just fine in Redhat 9.
The biggest catch is that you have to boot up the computer with the TV plugged in. The second biggest catch is that XFree86 on the TV output only works with the VESA driver, not with the radeon driver. Thus neither 2d nor 3d acceleration is available with the TV output.
However, video playback acceleration is available on the TV output: for video playback on a TV, use mplayer on the XFree86 VESA server together with the xvidix video output plugin to get hardware accelerated scaling and colorspace conversion.
I am not sure what the situation is with the all-in-wonder line of cards, but with the non-AIW versions the TV output does work with the caveats above.
Likewise, I did not suggest that choice is a solution for every problem, but I do strongly feel that choice in operating systems in particular is important.
I think that you would find peoples' complaints disappearing if operating systems costed $10 apiece. But the fact is that Windows does not cost $10 apiece. Windows costs more like $50 apiece even for the best OEMs, despite the fact that its per-unit cost is even less than that of a modem.
You give many good economy-of-scale arguments for hardware, but many of them don't apply to software and even the ones that do apply would not be so costly as to exceed the (inflated) per-unit cost of the OS.
Actually, in the past, a lot of people did complain mightily about integrated hardware and the concomitant reduction in configuration choices. Nowadays those complaints have mostly disappeared because the quality of integrated components has risen to a high level while the cost has declined to a negligible level. The same cannot be said for Windows.
Lastly, unlike OEM Windows, your modem most likely did not come with a EULA that contains explicit permissions to return the product for a refund in the event that you refuse the EULA.
At the risk of sounding pretentious, I think I can explain why advocacy for computer platforms is so fierce. It has to do with the network effect.
The more people use your platform, the more valuable your platform becomes. Never before has this principle been more important than right now in the computer industry.
Success of a platform brings hardware support. It brings software support. It brings applications. It raises volumes, lowers prices, and expands the universe of clients that you can communicate with. Almost as importantly, the expectation of future success is nowadays (rightly) an important consideration in any investment decisions one may make concerning future technology commitments.
You have only to look at OS/2 to see how a technically superior platform can lose out and die from lack of users.
Macintosh users are deathly afraid that their platform will be marginalized into irrelevance, not from technical shortcomings, but from lack of a userbase. As much as Apple continues to thump the theme of open source, the fact is that the Mac platform needs healthy corporate support to survive, and the only way companies can make money is if they have users. Of course the exact same thing is also true of the Windows platform, but Microsoft has a lot more money and a lot more users than Apple.
Where do I fit in to all of this? I am a devoted Linux user who used to passionately advocate for Linux. But that was before I realized all of the information that I conveniently gave to you above. Now I don't advocate Linux anymore, because I realize that Linux doesn't need advocacy to thrive.
Why?
Because Linux is not dependent on corporations and does not need revenue to survive. Linux does not need a large userbase to sustain its development. With Linux, even a small userbase can sustain very productive development because such a large percentage of the users are also developers.
I am far more worried now about laws like the SSSCA that would have made Linux illegal. I am worried about companies like SCO that are claiming ownership not just on IBM's infringing code but on all versions of Linux, past present and future. But I am not worried about Linux dying from lack of users, because free software is different and all our old notions about software platforms no longer apply.
Microsoft tells them they don't want people to have to pirate an OS
We use the word "tax" for the same reason you use the word "pirate": while neither word is literally correct (the OS price is not really required by law, and likewise copyright violation is not really invasion and theft on the high seas), the choice of word serves to further an agenda. In this case, "tax" suggests that the OS license is compulsory, which in many practical situations it is (e.g. laptops).
No matter how passionately you extoll the virtues of your Windows platform, the fact is that different people want different choices and I find it reprehensible that you would suggest lack of choice is a good thing.
Note: I work for Microsoft. I think Windows has many advantages too, but unlike you I do recognize that some people may have valid reasons to choose differently.
Even with all these hassles, there are manufacturers who make Linux based laptops. They are not always top-of-the-line, but they're out there. Buy one of these if you really want to avoid the "microsoft tax."
The majority of new Linux-based laptops on the market are laptops that originally had windows on them. Linux is provided on these laptops by actually removing windows and replacing it with Linux. Needless to say, this operation still results in the payment of a windows "tax" which mostly defeats the point of the entire exercise.
[Under New Logic,] SCO now has "sole right of relicense" to not only this derived work, but as with Sequent, all previous implementations
The problem with New Logic (and I hope and pray that the courts realize this) is that anything and everything in the world now belongs to SCO, even material written by others who have no contract or relationship at all with SCO.
In other words, let's say I write a program called Linnux which IBM (illegally) incorporates into Unix. By New Logic, SCO now controls all versions, including past versions, of Linnux through their contract with IBM, even though
IBM's action was illegal
I have no contract with SCO and I never at any point granted any ownership rights to SCO
The fact that my own work can fall under SCO licensing as a result of an illegal act by an unrelated third party is frightfully wrong.
To put it another way: If IBM illegally included Harry Potter with AIX, does SCO suddenly own Harry Potter? That is what New Logic seems to imply.
Thanks for the advice, but I'm already pretty familiar with public key crypto and SSH.
jmorris does have a valid point here: the design of the ssh2 protocol makes it impossible to forward RSA/DSA user credentials to any party other than the party you have connected to. That means an attacker in the middle cannot intercept credentials from you and then use those credentials to complete a legitimate link to the real server.
ssh1, on the other hand, is a flawed protocol that allows credentials to be replayed to a third party, and therefore is far more vulnerable to man in the middle attacks than ssh2.
Because I don't enter my password over the wire, there's no way for it to be intercepted.
What you say is technically true, but ssh1 users are still vulnerable to man in the middle attacks even if RSA user authentication is used.
The attack relies on an incredibly non-obvious flaw in the ssh1 protocol which was fixed in the ssh2 protocol. While an attacker cannot get your passwords using this attack, he can interpose between the client and server and intercept all traffic for that session. The error message saying the server host key has changed is your only clue that such an attack is going on.
You can read about the details in this paper. Unless you are using ssh2, you should be very wary of sudden changes in the server host key, even if you are using RSA authentication, and even if you appear to be connected to the correct server.
Now, for the reading-impaired, allow me to explain how mozilla's broken GIF support is ironic:
Dozens of messages here lament the fact that IE's PNG support is broken and mozilla's PNG support is correct.
However, contrary to what one might expect in light of the above, it turns out that IE has the correct GIF support, and mozilla's GIF support is broken.
This is a myth. Admittedly, it is a myth with some partial truth, but it is nevertheless a myth.
The images at http://phil.ipal.org/tc.html
demonstrate how a GIF file can contain more than 256 colors. Ironically, mozilla's libpr0n is broken on multi-block GIF files, so mozilla does not display the true-color GIF correctly.
If they're not rewriting the source code, using it in a form that they themselves obtained it in (pre-compiling), they might not have to provide source if they disclose their source location.
False.
You're probably thinking of section 2c of the GPL, which says:
c) Accompany it with the information you received as to the offer to distribute corresponding source code. (This alternative is allowed only for noncommercial distribution and only if you received the program in object code or executable form with such an offer, in accord with Subsection b above.)
Note the phrase "only for noncommercial distribution." Linksys is distributing this software commercially, so section 2c does not apply to them.
Under the terms of the GPL, Linksys must either ship the source code with the product or accompany the product with a 3-year written offer to disclose the source on demand at duplication cost.
Finally, Linksys must also of course include the GPL with their product and declare that the software is distributed under the terms of the GPL.
Find an appropriate comparison and I may be more receptive to your ideas.
At the risk of drawing more screaming angst, how about this:
Before 1865 a very large number of people in the US relied on the (legal) slave trade for their livelihoods. Was it fair to take that livelihood away from them?
If you were a developer whose livelihood depended on people purchasing your software, I'm sure you'd see this issue very differently.
If you were a slave trader whose livelihood depended on people purchasing your slaves, would you see this issue differently?
The fundamental argument, whether you're willing to admit it or not, is that the creators of software (or music for that matter) should not be paid for their creations.
Should drug dealers be paid for their products?
Whatever justification you believe is a valid defense for illegally obtaining software, it all comes down to the fact that the creator of that product is not being justly compensated.
By the same argument, whatever justification you believe is a valid defense for illegally obtaining drugs, it all comes down to the fact that the creator of that product is not being justly compensated.
If you were a developer whose livelihood depended on people purchasing your software, I'm sure you'd see this issue very differently.
Likewise, if you were a drug dealer whose livelihood depended on people purchasing your drugs, I'm sure you'd see this issue very differently.
The point is that the tired and overused "livelihood" argument does not by itself justify our current software regime. You cannot base software policy on dealer livelihood unless you're willing to do the same for other things like illegal drugs.
What's funny is that everything about that quote is the direct opposite of reality. Dinsdale is either 100% lying or 100% ignorant.
DVD players, now installed in more than 50 million U.S. households, were made possible by agreements in the mid-1990s between software makers, manufacturers and Hollywood that protected prerecorded DVD movies from illegal copying.
In reality, the DVD standard almost never saw the light of day because of bickering from Hollywood over copy prevention. The word "protected" is also incorrect since the resulting schemes didn't actually provide any protection at all.
DVDs are protected to the hilt. It plays by the rules and ends up being a great consumer experience.
In reality, DVDs are not very well protected at all, and they are only a great consumer experience because the protection is so weak.
If DVD protection had actually worked, then we would all be suffering region locks, macrovision, and fast-forward locks, and the experience would be so miserable that few would be able to cope with it (especially outside of the US).
I know for a fact that I didn't buy any DVDs until I totally convinced myself that the copy prevention could be cracked.
Re:Double density floppy anyone?
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dvds are "evil" with the "optional" css and region encoding. CDs at least have none of this shit. So, an increase in the non-restricted media area is a good thing
DVD-Video and DVD-Audio discs have evil stuff, but DVD-R discs don't allow you to write region codes or CSS keys to the discs, unless you pay the 200% price premium for the DVD-R(A) drives and discs that professional studios use (A for Authoring).
Moreover, both audio CDs and software CDs are now also starting to come out with copy protection. I actually have an easier time ripping DVDs than CDs, because DVDs all use the same CSS algorithm which is widely crackable, whereas CDs have a half dozen copy protection methods that you have to sort through before you can get at your data.
Re:Double density floppy anyone?
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(most burners on vcdhelp.com's message boards are lucky if 8/10 are good)
People with problems are far more likely to seek out a message board than people without problems. Therefore the message board is not a good statistical predictor of how prevalent problems are.
I have had a 100% success rate with burned discs so far. Admittedly I have a high end drive (Pioneer A05), but I view that as money well spent.
blank dvds are far less likely to be read if they get a small scratch
Scratch resistance is a little more complicated than you're making it out to be.
A DVD layer is only half as thin as a CD layer. This does hurt DVD scratch resistance on the data side (since a CD can survive a DEEP scratch on the data side). But DVDs have a far superior error correction algorithm (trust me on this one -- I'm a number theorist with a Ph.D in math). So in very rough terms DVDs are good against wide scratches and CDs are good against deep scratches.
The label side is a very different story -- here DVDs are much better than CDs, since the top half of a one-side DVD contains no pits, whereas the top side of a CD is only a hair's breadth away from the data pits.
I'm not actually sure which media type is more scratch resistant, but it's definitely not an issue that can be decided in one line of debate.
Re:Double density floppy anyone?
on
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· Score: 2, Informative
you can easily pick up a set of cd'rs on rebate for FREE.
Rebates aren't free. You still pay sales tax on the unrebated price. The vendor gets to float your money for months before giving back the rebate. And (although this is illegal) oftentimes they make you hassle them for the rebate or don't give you back the rebate at all.
Even at 6.6 cents per gig, you will need to buy at least 500 gigs worth of data before you save a whopping $30.
A single 100-pack of DVD-R discs is already almost 500 gigs.
Now, of course, the advantadge to a drive that can write 1.4 gig at will is that you have something you don't with dvd's - a choice. A good migration path.
The same choice is available with DVD, since DVD burners can also burn CDs. I burn CDs when CDs are appropriate, and I burn DVDs when DVDs are appropriate.
The sanyo 1.4 GB CDs are actually quite terrible as a migration path, since CD-ROM drives can't read them and DVD-ROM drives need a firmware upgrade. Compare this with DVD-R which is readable right now in almost all DVD-ROM drives. The Plextor 1.0 GB CDs are better for migration, but they have less than the 1.4 GB of space that you've been using.
Re:Double density floppy anyone?
on
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· Score: 5, Insightful
at the moment few people i know use DVD media for back-up storage, since the cost is prohibitive.
I don't know where you're getting your numbers from.
On pricewatch I find prices to be the following:
DVD-R: $76 for one hundred 4.7GB discs, or 16 cents per gigabyte
CD-R: $17 for one hundred 700MB discs, or 23 cents per gigabyte
So, media-wise, DVD-R is actually cheaper than CD-R.
for the average user the largest single file they'll burn on a CD is usually a divx movie, and that doesn't usually exceed 800 megabytes.
You've got the relationship backwards. Divx filesizes are being held back to under 800 megabytes by the constraints in CD capacity. I no longer limit myself to 800 MB divx files now that I have a DVD burner.
Just because current CD burners limit you to 800 MB doesn't mean you should be so short sighted as to assume that the 800 MB limit is actually desirable.
another pitfall of using DVD media is the different standards available from different manufacturers, unlike blank CDs
You are correct that the DVD standards war is very damaging to DVD. But then in the next paragraph you advocate using nonstandard double data density CDs!
If you're gonna troll, at least try to keep your position consistent.
A comment was just made that "some users really are better off not using Linux." Now correct me if I am wrong, but if a company, a store, or corporation, a home-business is to to survive, does it not need "customers"?
The opposite of "some users really are better off not using Linux" is "all users should be using Linux", which, I think, is ridiculous.
Eventually Linux will take over the world, but it is not ready right now. It is way too rough around the edges. For evidence I submit your own experience as well as the experience of the article writer.
Linux does not need "customers" to survive either. Linux is not a company, or a store, or a corporation, or even a home-business. Linux is developed by its own users. The open source code of Linux makes this possible, and the high technical ability of its users makes this effective.
I want Linux to have non-Expert users just as badly as you do, but I don't think that Linux will die without them. I would rather be patient and let it take over when its ready, rather than push it prematurely.
What really bothers me is that people who aren't ready for Linux have not got the choice of a halfway ethical solution to their problem. It's basically either use-Microsoft-or-use-nothing.
Perhaps you are overlooking MacOS? Yeah yeah Apple is partly 0wned by MS, and I'm actually not an Apple fan myself, but the Macintosh platform makes a lot of sense for many people.
By the way, if there's a single decent word processor in existence, it's escaped my radar. The last pretty-good one I used was Microsoft Word 6.
I don't think they exist. The word processing paradigm is fundamentally flawed -- I don't care about words, I care about entire documents. For this reason I don't use word processors.
I use software like LaTeX or (rarely) LyX to create documents. However, if you're used to word processors, you'll probably have a terrible time with these too, at least at first.
If Linux "sucks so much" then why do you still "use it every day"?
This question is rhetorical. You probably use it every day for the same reason I use it every day--that being, although it sucks, everything else sucks more.
But different people have different needs. I'm one of the biggest Linux fans in the world. However, I happen to think after reading the article that the writer would be better off using Windows.
This is not because of l33tness, or because I want to be an asshole. The simple fact is that Linux is not yet ready right now for what our writer needs. The most distressing part of the article to me is that it took the writer 18 months to figure this out.
The reason why no one has tried to make a *good* distribution is that the set of people capable of making distributions (call this set A) is not a representative sample of the population of people who need a *good* distribution. Members of set A tend to be just fine with using command lines and writing printer magicfilters.
People often lose track of the following two points:
This problem is *hard* to solve. It is a classic chicken and egg. You can't create a distribution until you enter set A, but by the time you've entered set A what's good for you is no longer what's good for average joe.
There's no rush to solve this problem. People often fall into the trap of thinking that Linux has to grow in order to survive. But Linux is not like other commerical platforms. Linux is the most successful user-developed platform in history. Because Linux development is so open and accessible, Linux does not need popular success in order to thrive.
While I certainly agree that Linux should suck less, I also don't think that Linux can be all things to all people. Some users really are better off not using Linux. In time this problem may be solved, but that hasn't happened yet.
What is the point of having a project if one does not distribute it?
I don't suppose anyone has told you yet that
... only a small percentage of programmers are employed by companies that produce software for sale. The great majority work for non-software businesses developing software for internal use.
I do not see anyone in this thread restricting discussion to public projects. Indeed, the entire thread started with a discussion of MS Office documents, and I can assure you the vast majority of Word documents are not intended for public distribution.
The reason Microsoft's own licensing is relevant is that your practice of railing against the horrors of GPL licensing while completely ignoring the evils of Microsoft licensing renders you nothing but a hypocrite.
Slashdot Mirror
Technically, yes, but it falls short of the parent post's requirement for "impeccable 2d tv out quality".
Same goes for the Apple ][ and friends.
For the original radeon and close derivatives (radeon mobility M6, M7, mobility 7500, and IGP 320M/340M but not regular radeon 7500 or anything above), the way to get TV output is to boot the computer up with the TV plugged in, and run atitvout. This program clones the normal display onto the TV. All acceleration features that are normally supported on the display are also supported on the TV.
For radeon 7500 and above, a different technique is required: there you simply boot up the computer with the TV attached, and TV output is automatic. But, if you want to run X on the TV output you must use the VESA driver and not the radeon driver. Consequently the card's acceleration features are not available in X on the TV output. However, as a special case, video playback overlay acceleration is available on the TV out using the xvidix driver in mplayer.
Basically, the situation is not ideal, but it is a long way from being hopeless.
I agree with you, which is why I don't have a Radeon 9800. However, the Radeon 7500, which I do have, does not cost anywhere near $400.
Why wouldn't you then just buy a card that's a bit older and actually works 100%?
You'd be hard pressed to find a TV-out equipped video card older than the Radeon 7500.
Please check your facts before you make such claims. I own a Radeon 7500 and I assure you the TV output works just fine in Redhat 9.
The biggest catch is that you have to boot up the computer with the TV plugged in. The second biggest catch is that XFree86 on the TV output only works with the VESA driver, not with the radeon driver. Thus neither 2d nor 3d acceleration is available with the TV output.
However, video playback acceleration is available on the TV output: for video playback on a TV, use mplayer on the XFree86 VESA server together with the xvidix video output plugin to get hardware accelerated scaling and colorspace conversion.
I am not sure what the situation is with the all-in-wonder line of cards, but with the non-AIW versions the TV output does work with the caveats above.
I think that you would find peoples' complaints disappearing if operating systems costed $10 apiece. But the fact is that Windows does not cost $10 apiece. Windows costs more like $50 apiece even for the best OEMs, despite the fact that its per-unit cost is even less than that of a modem.
You give many good economy-of-scale arguments for hardware, but many of them don't apply to software and even the ones that do apply would not be so costly as to exceed the (inflated) per-unit cost of the OS.
Actually, in the past, a lot of people did complain mightily about integrated hardware and the concomitant reduction in configuration choices. Nowadays those complaints have mostly disappeared because the quality of integrated components has risen to a high level while the cost has declined to a negligible level. The same cannot be said for Windows.
Lastly, unlike OEM Windows, your modem most likely did not come with a EULA that contains explicit permissions to return the product for a refund in the event that you refuse the EULA.
The more people use your platform, the more valuable your platform becomes. Never before has this principle been more important than right now in the computer industry.
Success of a platform brings hardware support. It brings software support. It brings applications. It raises volumes, lowers prices, and expands the universe of clients that you can communicate with. Almost as importantly, the expectation of future success is nowadays (rightly) an important consideration in any investment decisions one may make concerning future technology commitments.
You have only to look at OS/2 to see how a technically superior platform can lose out and die from lack of users.
Macintosh users are deathly afraid that their platform will be marginalized into irrelevance, not from technical shortcomings, but from lack of a userbase. As much as Apple continues to thump the theme of open source, the fact is that the Mac platform needs healthy corporate support to survive, and the only way companies can make money is if they have users. Of course the exact same thing is also true of the Windows platform, but Microsoft has a lot more money and a lot more users than Apple.
Where do I fit in to all of this? I am a devoted Linux user who used to passionately advocate for Linux. But that was before I realized all of the information that I conveniently gave to you above. Now I don't advocate Linux anymore, because I realize that Linux doesn't need advocacy to thrive.
Why?
Because Linux is not dependent on corporations and does not need revenue to survive. Linux does not need a large userbase to sustain its development. With Linux, even a small userbase can sustain very productive development because such a large percentage of the users are also developers.
I am far more worried now about laws like the SSSCA that would have made Linux illegal. I am worried about companies like SCO that are claiming ownership not just on IBM's infringing code but on all versions of Linux, past present and future. But I am not worried about Linux dying from lack of users, because free software is different and all our old notions about software platforms no longer apply.
We use the word "tax" for the same reason you use the word "pirate": while neither word is literally correct (the OS price is not really required by law, and likewise copyright violation is not really invasion and theft on the high seas), the choice of word serves to further an agenda. In this case, "tax" suggests that the OS license is compulsory, which in many practical situations it is (e.g. laptops).
No matter how passionately you extoll the virtues of your Windows platform, the fact is that different people want different choices and I find it reprehensible that you would suggest lack of choice is a good thing.
Note: I work for Microsoft. I think Windows has many advantages too, but unlike you I do recognize that some people may have valid reasons to choose differently.
Even with all these hassles, there are manufacturers who make Linux based laptops. They are not always top-of-the-line, but they're out there. Buy one of these if you really want to avoid the "microsoft tax."
The majority of new Linux-based laptops on the market are laptops that originally had windows on them. Linux is provided on these laptops by actually removing windows and replacing it with Linux. Needless to say, this operation still results in the payment of a windows "tax" which mostly defeats the point of the entire exercise.
The problem with New Logic (and I hope and pray that the courts realize this) is that anything and everything in the world now belongs to SCO, even material written by others who have no contract or relationship at all with SCO.
In other words, let's say I write a program called Linnux which IBM (illegally) incorporates into Unix. By New Logic, SCO now controls all versions, including past versions, of Linnux through their contract with IBM, even though
- IBM's action was illegal
- I have no contract with SCO and I never at any point granted any ownership rights to SCO
The fact that my own work can fall under SCO licensing as a result of an illegal act by an unrelated third party is frightfully wrong.To put it another way: If IBM illegally included Harry Potter with AIX, does SCO suddenly own Harry Potter? That is what New Logic seems to imply.
jmorris does have a valid point here: the design of the ssh2 protocol makes it impossible to forward RSA/DSA user credentials to any party other than the party you have connected to. That means an attacker in the middle cannot intercept credentials from you and then use those credentials to complete a legitimate link to the real server.
ssh1, on the other hand, is a flawed protocol that allows credentials to be replayed to a third party, and therefore is far more vulnerable to man in the middle attacks than ssh2.
The location of the paper is here.
(damn google for giving me an old link)
What you say is technically true, but ssh1 users are still vulnerable to man in the middle attacks even if RSA user authentication is used.
The attack relies on an incredibly non-obvious flaw in the ssh1 protocol which was fixed in the ssh2 protocol. While an attacker cannot get your passwords using this attack, he can interpose between the client and server and intercept all traffic for that session. The error message saying the server host key has changed is your only clue that such an attack is going on.
You can read about the details in this paper. Unless you are using ssh2, you should be very wary of sudden changes in the server host key, even if you are using RSA authentication, and even if you appear to be connected to the correct server.
Troll bashing time.
(source: wordnet)Now, for the reading-impaired, allow me to explain how mozilla's broken GIF support is ironic:
- Dozens of messages here lament the fact that IE's PNG support is broken and mozilla's PNG support is correct.
- However, contrary to what one might expect in light of the above, it turns out that IE has the correct GIF support, and mozilla's GIF support is broken.
Hence, irony.This is a myth. Admittedly, it is a myth with some partial truth, but it is nevertheless a myth.
The images at http://phil.ipal.org/tc.html demonstrate how a GIF file can contain more than 256 colors. Ironically, mozilla's libpr0n is broken on multi-block GIF files, so mozilla does not display the true-color GIF correctly.
False.
You're probably thinking of section 2c of the GPL, which says:
Note the phrase "only for noncommercial distribution." Linksys is distributing this software commercially, so section 2c does not apply to them.Under the terms of the GPL, Linksys must either ship the source code with the product or accompany the product with a 3-year written offer to disclose the source on demand at duplication cost.
Finally, Linksys must also of course include the GPL with their product and declare that the software is distributed under the terms of the GPL.
At the risk of drawing more screaming angst, how about this:
Before 1865 a very large number of people in the US relied on the (legal) slave trade for their livelihoods. Was it fair to take that livelihood away from them?
If you were a developer whose livelihood depended on people purchasing your software, I'm sure you'd see this issue very differently.
If you were a slave trader whose livelihood depended on people purchasing your slaves, would you see this issue differently?
The point is that the tired and overused "livelihood" argument does not by itself justify our current software regime. You cannot base software policy on dealer livelihood unless you're willing to do the same for other things like illegal drugs.
DVD players, now installed in more than 50 million U.S. households, were made possible by agreements in the mid-1990s between software makers, manufacturers and Hollywood that protected prerecorded DVD movies from illegal copying.
In reality, the DVD standard almost never saw the light of day because of bickering from Hollywood over copy prevention. The word "protected" is also incorrect since the resulting schemes didn't actually provide any protection at all.
DVDs are protected to the hilt. It plays by the rules and ends up being a great consumer experience.
In reality, DVDs are not very well protected at all, and they are only a great consumer experience because the protection is so weak.
If DVD protection had actually worked, then we would all be suffering region locks, macrovision, and fast-forward locks, and the experience would be so miserable that few would be able to cope with it (especially outside of the US).
I know for a fact that I didn't buy any DVDs until I totally convinced myself that the copy prevention could be cracked.
DVD-Video and DVD-Audio discs have evil stuff, but DVD-R discs don't allow you to write region codes or CSS keys to the discs, unless you pay the 200% price premium for the DVD-R(A) drives and discs that professional studios use (A for Authoring).
Moreover, both audio CDs and software CDs are now also starting to come out with copy protection. I actually have an easier time ripping DVDs than CDs, because DVDs all use the same CSS algorithm which is widely crackable, whereas CDs have a half dozen copy protection methods that you have to sort through before you can get at your data.
People with problems are far more likely to seek out a message board than people without problems. Therefore the message board is not a good statistical predictor of how prevalent problems are.
I have had a 100% success rate with burned discs so far. Admittedly I have a high end drive (Pioneer A05), but I view that as money well spent.
blank dvds are far less likely to be read if they get a small scratch
Scratch resistance is a little more complicated than you're making it out to be.
A DVD layer is only half as thin as a CD layer. This does hurt DVD scratch resistance on the data side (since a CD can survive a DEEP scratch on the data side). But DVDs have a far superior error correction algorithm (trust me on this one -- I'm a number theorist with a Ph.D in math). So in very rough terms DVDs are good against wide scratches and CDs are good against deep scratches.
The label side is a very different story -- here DVDs are much better than CDs, since the top half of a one-side DVD contains no pits, whereas the top side of a CD is only a hair's breadth away from the data pits.
I'm not actually sure which media type is more scratch resistant, but it's definitely not an issue that can be decided in one line of debate.
Rebates aren't free. You still pay sales tax on the unrebated price. The vendor gets to float your money for months before giving back the rebate. And (although this is illegal) oftentimes they make you hassle them for the rebate or don't give you back the rebate at all.
Even at 6.6 cents per gig, you will need to buy at least 500 gigs worth of data before you save a whopping $30.
A single 100-pack of DVD-R discs is already almost 500 gigs.
Now, of course, the advantadge to a drive that can write 1.4 gig at will is that you have something you don't with dvd's - a choice. A good migration path.
The same choice is available with DVD, since DVD burners can also burn CDs. I burn CDs when CDs are appropriate, and I burn DVDs when DVDs are appropriate.
The sanyo 1.4 GB CDs are actually quite terrible as a migration path, since CD-ROM drives can't read them and DVD-ROM drives need a firmware upgrade. Compare this with DVD-R which is readable right now in almost all DVD-ROM drives. The Plextor 1.0 GB CDs are better for migration, but they have less than the 1.4 GB of space that you've been using.
I don't know where you're getting your numbers from. On pricewatch I find prices to be the following:
- DVD-R: $76 for one hundred 4.7GB discs, or 16 cents per gigabyte
- CD-R: $17 for one hundred 700MB discs, or 23 cents per gigabyte
So, media-wise, DVD-R is actually cheaper than CD-R.for the average user the largest single file they'll burn on a CD is usually a divx movie, and that doesn't usually exceed 800 megabytes.
You've got the relationship backwards. Divx filesizes are being held back to under 800 megabytes by the constraints in CD capacity. I no longer limit myself to 800 MB divx files now that I have a DVD burner.
Just because current CD burners limit you to 800 MB doesn't mean you should be so short sighted as to assume that the 800 MB limit is actually desirable.
another pitfall of using DVD media is the different standards available from different manufacturers, unlike blank CDs
You are correct that the DVD standards war is very damaging to DVD. But then in the next paragraph you advocate using nonstandard double data density CDs!
If you're gonna troll, at least try to keep your position consistent.
The opposite of "some users really are better off not using Linux" is "all users should be using Linux", which, I think, is ridiculous.
Eventually Linux will take over the world, but it is not ready right now. It is way too rough around the edges. For evidence I submit your own experience as well as the experience of the article writer.
Linux does not need "customers" to survive either. Linux is not a company, or a store, or a corporation, or even a home-business. Linux is developed by its own users. The open source code of Linux makes this possible, and the high technical ability of its users makes this effective.
I want Linux to have non-Expert users just as badly as you do, but I don't think that Linux will die without them. I would rather be patient and let it take over when its ready, rather than push it prematurely.
Perhaps you are overlooking MacOS? Yeah yeah Apple is partly 0wned by MS, and I'm actually not an Apple fan myself, but the Macintosh platform makes a lot of sense for many people.
I don't think they exist. The word processing paradigm is fundamentally flawed -- I don't care about words, I care about entire documents. For this reason I don't use word processors.
I use software like LaTeX or (rarely) LyX to create documents. However, if you're used to word processors, you'll probably have a terrible time with these too, at least at first.
This question is rhetorical. You probably use it every day for the same reason I use it every day--that being, although it sucks, everything else sucks more.
But different people have different needs. I'm one of the biggest Linux fans in the world. However, I happen to think after reading the article that the writer would be better off using Windows.
This is not because of l33tness, or because I want to be an asshole. The simple fact is that Linux is not yet ready right now for what our writer needs. The most distressing part of the article to me is that it took the writer 18 months to figure this out.
The reason why no one has tried to make a *good* distribution is that the set of people capable of making distributions (call this set A) is not a representative sample of the population of people who need a *good* distribution. Members of set A tend to be just fine with using command lines and writing printer magicfilters.
People often lose track of the following two points:
- This problem is *hard* to solve. It is a classic chicken and egg. You can't create a distribution until you enter set A, but by the time you've entered set A what's good for you is no longer what's good for average joe.
- There's no rush to solve this problem. People often fall into the trap of thinking that Linux has to grow in order to survive. But Linux is not like other commerical platforms. Linux is the most successful user-developed platform in history. Because Linux development is so open and accessible, Linux does not need popular success in order to thrive.
While I certainly agree that Linux should suck less, I also don't think that Linux can be all things to all people. Some users really are better off not using Linux. In time this problem may be solved, but that hasn't happened yet.I don't suppose anyone has told you yet that
SourceI do not see anyone in this thread restricting discussion to public projects. Indeed, the entire thread started with a discussion of MS Office documents, and I can assure you the vast majority of Word documents are not intended for public distribution.
The reason Microsoft's own licensing is relevant is that your practice of railing against the horrors of GPL licensing while completely ignoring the evils of Microsoft licensing renders you nothing but a hypocrite.