That stuff is exactly what the "ubuntu-restricted-extras" package is for.
Rather than screw around with Automatix, perhaps someone should post the following script instructions:
Enable the universe and multiverse repositories. (System -> Administration -> Software Sources ; Check the "Universe" and "Multiverse" checkboxes. ; Press the "close" button. )
Install the ubuntu-restricted-extras package. (Applications -> Add/Remove... ; Set the "show" drop down in the top right to "All available applicatons. ; Type "ubuntu-restricted-extras" into the search box. ; Check that package. ; Press OK. )
(Optional) Activate encrypted DVD support. (Open a terminal window. Type "sudo/usr/share/doc/libdvdread3/install-css.sh" and press enter.)
I really don't see how installing some random script off a website and then messing with a new GUI program is any easier than that.
When Linux distros finally sort out the farce that is installing vendor provided graphics card drivers, software and codecs etc, then tools like Automatix won't be needed.
Ubuntu handles all that stuff with less problem than finding and installing Automatix.
The problem's that Automatix was designed to solve no longer exist. Installing all that stuff the official way is trivial in any recent version of Ubuntu.
The only reason people still use Automatix is this: Either they remember using it before when it served a purpose and don't know any better, or someone who doesn't know any better tells them to use it.
It's not a school policy. It's the law. Break the law, and you (usually) suffer consequences.
It's not the law that's causing the problem here, it's the school policy. If someone actually sues the student for copyright infringement and a court gets involved, so be it. Until a court has actually ruled against the student, they shouldn't be severely penalized for an alleged civil infraction.
I know it's an old-non-exact analogy, but if the same kid shoplifted a CD or DVD from a store and got caught, it too would tend to "mess up" their education.
Probably not. Probably they'd get fined $100 and have to do 10 hours of community service or something. The punishment for actual theft definitely wouldn't be as bad as getting cut off from the internet for a term.
I think actions have consequences. You seem to think that we should slap their wrist, then pat them on their head, and send them off to do it again.
Actions do have consequences. For example, setting an unreasonable policy in relation to internet file sharing at a university will disrupt students educations unnecessarily.
When I said "wasteful", I wasn't thinking solely in terms of monetary value.
If you're worried about wasting the old card, give it to a friend who runs Windows. Or sell it on eBay.
If you're worried about the environmental impact of being involved in the purchase of an "unnecessary" wireless card, then maybe you should chose to put more effort into getting it to work. It doesn't mean that you deserve any more sympathy if your attempt fails. Or sell the old card on eBay, and replace a new card sale that way.
As for the kids who made the card in China - I don't see any harm to them from you buying a new wireless card. The kids who get OLPC XO's - they'll get supported hardware, and nicer stuff than we'll see for years at that.
But seemly you fail to understand that some people have fun tinkering with hardware and/or software, and if they can make a living from their "hobbies" they are happy.
I fall in that category myself. I've spent many afternoons installing Gentoo or whatever simply for the fun of it. I just hate listening to people complain when they 1.) make the choice to solve a problem the "hobbyist" way and 2.) post a giant rant on the internet when they fail. Supported wireless cards work perfectly under Linux. If you screw up and get an unsupported one your error will cost $30 to fix. Anything else is a hobbyist project that you chose to take up.
I'm not seeing how they would cleanly construct such an attack. The patent license restrictions in GPLv3 are very specific - I don't think that Microsoft can come up with a licensing setup that would run into trouble with the GPL and still be considered distributable by "Open Source" type vendors.
Even if they did come up with such a patent license, the vendors can simply ship libjpegxr as a platform library and still not have any trouble with the GPLv3.
What makes it a proprietary format is that it's so complicated that it's nigh-impossible to write a second complete implementation of it. This can be seen easily in the cases where they've put in undefined modes like "do margins like Word Perfect 1.1", but even without those things the "standard" is still an utter mess.
Basically, for a format to be a legitimate standard, it needs to be possible for there to be multiple "perfect" implementations. That will never happen with OOXML.
Is there a regularly-updated list around, anywhere, of what wireless hardware is well supported under particular distributions, and whether it has drivers in the kernel, or from some additional source, or requires binary blobs?
The major distros all provide hardware compatibility info. Here's the page for Ubuntu:
On the other hand, if you already own a fully functional but non FOSS-friendly equipment, why be wasteful?
How much of your time is it worth to avoid spending $30 on a new wireless card? Are you going to waste other people's time too by complaining on the community support forums that your known-dysfunctional card doesn't work?
If you're actually going to personally reverse engineer the card and write a FOSS driver, that's great. My guess is that you're not going to do that - instead you're going to spend two days discovering new and interesting bugs in ndiswrapper, and then you're going to post a four page rant on the Ubuntu forums (or Slashdot) about how "Linux isn't ready for the desktop" because you wasted 2 days on dysfunctional hardware. If I'm right, just go buy the supported hardware now - seriously.
I'm not sure why you're here on Slashdot if you don't want to see "OS wars" type articles. What next, you going to complain about office jokes in Dilbert?
IBM pushes Linux because as a hardware vendor / service provider they make the most possible money in a world with a commodity standard OS with no licensing cost. They put PR resources towards hyping Linux so that when they say "and this awesome system we've built you runs Linux" the PHBs say "awesome, that's the gold standard of operating systems" rather than "why are you using that hobbyist crap? You're IBM".
I am the proud owner of a D-Link wireless card, and as much as I love this card, I hate having to use a binary blob to make it work.
Have you considered replacing your poorly-supported hardware? Fully functional hardware is readily available and cheap, there's no reason to futz with hardware from companies that don't really want your business.
Do you really *want* your resume in their database? Personally, I'd much rather send my resume to a person who can ignore it because they're busy rather than to a database where it will be ignored because I forgot to mention the keyword "AJAX".
From what I've heard, Loki didn't die due to a lack of customers. They died because of personnel problems, and because their profit margin wasn't good enough to make up for their other shortcomings.
Beat out at *framerate*, which isn't the same thing as responsiveness, although those two things are generally positively correlated.
The numbers that would really help in this argument are things like "standard deviation of inter-frame delay". If you can come up with a good way of measuring that, that'd be great.
The purpose of an operating system is to allocate memory, schedule processes, handle networking, manage filesystems, and other I/O, etc.
The purpose of an operating system is to provide that set of functionality necessary to run applications. You can't run Firefox on the Linux kernel, but you sure can run it on a GNU+Linux system. Even if you just limit yourself to allocating memory and doing IO, you generally use a C library - which on GNU/Linux is GNU libc. Generally people who plan to use an operating system want some other stuff.
I guess this is an easy way to look at it:
Was AT&T Unix an operating system?
Would Linux alone be an operating system in the same way AT&T Unix was?
How about Linux with the "operating system components" produced by the GNU project?
My answers are "yes", "not even close", and "a lot of them - including things like gcc".
Here's another question: If Linux is an operating system, then what other operating systems are available that don't include C libraries and basic tools? I mean, even *MS-DOS* has a shell...
Because, if it were truly dangerous to human life, then humans would avoid it the same way we avoid other poisons and strong hallucinogens. If it truly were evil then it wouldn't have a world-wide reputation (among actual users, as opposed to ignorant witch-hunters) as a peaceful drug, as a way to relax, and as a way to enjoy life.
Just because the government lies about the harmful effects of marijuana does not mean that it's a good idea to be high all the time. There are two very real side effects of marijuana that you should keep in mind at all times:
If you've smoked in the last day or so, logical reasoning becomes more difficult. If you're a scientist or technician, this is really critical - but for any sort of normal lifestyle / normal job this has a detrimental effect on performance.
If you've smoked in the last week or so, your ability to retain new information suffers. The major effect of this is that some new skills that you would have learned easily you instead don't learn because they're "too much work". This is compounded by the time you spend actually high instead of doing something useful.
I guess an easy way to think about it is this: Getting high is no worse than goofing off at school / work and spending all your free time watching reruns of lame shows on TV. It won't immediately and directly harm you, but you're still wasting your life.
Try using a high resolution theme for your windowing system and cranking up the font sizes. You'll run into weird graphical glitches because your apps suck, but you'll also get to see how much better higher resolution can look with fonts the same size on screen.
Some company had a bunch of money and used it to convince ATI to give out specs under NDA to a couple DRI developers. This resulted in the ATI 7000/8000 series cards having reasonably good open source drivers. None of those developers work on X anymore, so no one even has access to those specs any more - much less any recent specs.
You're getting owned just as much as the people who want high end phones. When you get a cellphone plan, you pay $200+ (over two years) to get a phone that should cost $50. The phone you want should cost $20, but you're still paying $200+ and getting the $50 phone.
Why do manufacturers lock phones and reduce features? Because consumers in America want free or cheap phones with long contracts.
You can't say that people prefer that unless you can show another option. As far as I can tell, there isn't one - all that providers offer are two year contracts with a phone included. You can't get anything else without far more effort than most people even realize is possible.
Slashdot Mirror
That stuff is exactly what the "ubuntu-restricted-extras" package is for.
Rather than screw around with Automatix, perhaps someone should post the following script instructions:
I really don't see how installing some random script off a website and then messing with a new GUI program is any easier than that.
Ubuntu handles all that stuff with less problem than finding and installing Automatix.
Automatix *isn't* needed.
The problem's that Automatix was designed to solve no longer exist. Installing all that stuff the official way is trivial in any recent version of Ubuntu.
The only reason people still use Automatix is this: Either they remember using it before when it served a purpose and don't know any better, or someone who doesn't know any better tells them to use it.
Why'd you give her 64 bit Linux? Does her computer have more than 3 gigs of RAM?
In a year or two we may be to the point where a 64 bit OS is essential, but we're not there yet. Give your non-technical friends the 32 bit version.
There need to actually be drugs involved though. If there were no drugs, then no one's getting convicted for selling drugs.
It's not the law that's causing the problem here, it's the school policy. If someone actually sues the student for copyright infringement and a court gets involved, so be it. Until a court has actually ruled against the student, they shouldn't be severely penalized for an alleged civil infraction.
Probably not. Probably they'd get fined $100 and have to do 10 hours of community service or something. The punishment for actual theft definitely wouldn't be as bad as getting cut off from the internet for a term.
Actions do have consequences. For example, setting an unreasonable policy in relation to internet file sharing at a university will disrupt students educations unnecessarily.
If you're worried about wasting the old card, give it to a friend who runs Windows. Or sell it on eBay.
If you're worried about the environmental impact of being involved in the purchase of an "unnecessary" wireless card, then maybe you should chose to put more effort into getting it to work. It doesn't mean that you deserve any more sympathy if your attempt fails. Or sell the old card on eBay, and replace a new card sale that way.
As for the kids who made the card in China - I don't see any harm to them from you buying a new wireless card. The kids who get OLPC XO's - they'll get supported hardware, and nicer stuff than we'll see for years at that.
I fall in that category myself. I've spent many afternoons installing Gentoo or whatever simply for the fun of it. I just hate listening to people complain when they 1.) make the choice to solve a problem the "hobbyist" way and 2.) post a giant rant on the internet when they fail. Supported wireless cards work perfectly under Linux. If you screw up and get an unsupported one your error will cost $30 to fix. Anything else is a hobbyist project that you chose to take up.
It's entirely possible that Microsoft could offer reasonable patent licensing terms. They do, for example, with the SOAP specification.
I'm not seeing how they would cleanly construct such an attack. The patent license restrictions in GPLv3 are very specific - I don't think that Microsoft can come up with a licensing setup that would run into trouble with the GPL and still be considered distributable by "Open Source" type vendors.
Even if they did come up with such a patent license, the vendors can simply ship libjpegxr as a platform library and still not have any trouble with the GPLv3.
What makes it a proprietary format is that it's so complicated that it's nigh-impossible to write a second complete implementation of it. This can be seen easily in the cases where they've put in undefined modes like "do margins like Word Perfect 1.1", but even without those things the "standard" is still an utter mess.
Basically, for a format to be a legitimate standard, it needs to be possible for there to be multiple "perfect" implementations. That will never happen with OOXML.
The major distros all provide hardware compatibility info. Here's the page for Ubuntu:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/HardwareSupport
How much of your time is it worth to avoid spending $30 on a new wireless card? Are you going to waste other people's time too by complaining on the community support forums that your known-dysfunctional card doesn't work?
If you're actually going to personally reverse engineer the card and write a FOSS driver, that's great. My guess is that you're not going to do that - instead you're going to spend two days discovering new and interesting bugs in ndiswrapper, and then you're going to post a four page rant on the Ubuntu forums (or Slashdot) about how "Linux isn't ready for the desktop" because you wasted 2 days on dysfunctional hardware. If I'm right, just go buy the supported hardware now - seriously.
I'm not sure why you're here on Slashdot if you don't want to see "OS wars" type articles. What next, you going to complain about office jokes in Dilbert?
IBM pushes Linux because as a hardware vendor / service provider they make the most possible money in a world with a commodity standard OS with no licensing cost. They put PR resources towards hyping Linux so that when they say "and this awesome system we've built you runs Linux" the PHBs say "awesome, that's the gold standard of operating systems" rather than "why are you using that hobbyist crap? You're IBM".
Have you considered replacing your poorly-supported hardware? Fully functional hardware is readily available and cheap, there's no reason to futz with hardware from companies that don't really want your business.
Do you really *want* your resume in their database? Personally, I'd much rather send my resume to a person who can ignore it because they're busy rather than to a database where it will be ignored because I forgot to mention the keyword "AJAX".
From what I've heard, Loki didn't die due to a lack of customers. They died because of personnel problems, and because their profit margin wasn't good enough to make up for their other shortcomings.
Beat out at *framerate*, which isn't the same thing as responsiveness, although those two things are generally positively correlated.
The numbers that would really help in this argument are things like "standard deviation of inter-frame delay". If you can come up with a good way of measuring that, that'd be great.
The purpose of an operating system is to provide that set of functionality necessary to run applications. You can't run Firefox on the Linux kernel, but you sure can run it on a GNU+Linux system. Even if you just limit yourself to allocating memory and doing IO, you generally use a C library - which on GNU/Linux is GNU libc. Generally people who plan to use an operating system want some other stuff.
I guess this is an easy way to look at it:
My answers are "yes", "not even close", and "a lot of them - including things like gcc".
Here's another question: If Linux is an operating system, then what other operating systems are available that don't include C libraries and basic tools? I mean, even *MS-DOS* has a shell...
I'm not sure why you need a dedicated employee in order to run Open Office on a bunch of school machines...
Just because the government lies about the harmful effects of marijuana does not mean that it's a good idea to be high all the time. There are two very real side effects of marijuana that you should keep in mind at all times:
I guess an easy way to think about it is this: Getting high is no worse than goofing off at school / work and spending all your free time watching reruns of lame shows on TV. It won't immediately and directly harm you, but you're still wasting your life.
Try using a high resolution theme for your windowing system and cranking up the font sizes. You'll run into weird graphical glitches because your apps suck, but you'll also get to see how much better higher resolution can look with fonts the same size on screen.
Some company had a bunch of money and used it to convince ATI to give out specs under NDA to a couple DRI developers. This resulted in the ATI 7000/8000 series cards having reasonably good open source drivers. None of those developers work on X anymore, so no one even has access to those specs any more - much less any recent specs.
You're getting owned just as much as the people who want high end phones. When you get a cellphone plan, you pay $200+ (over two years) to get a phone that should cost $50. The phone you want should cost $20, but you're still paying $200+ and getting the $50 phone.
You can't say that people prefer that unless you can show another option. As far as I can tell, there isn't one - all that providers offer are two year contracts with a phone included. You can't get anything else without far more effort than most people even realize is possible.