Well, yes, I don't think many people but the most hardcore of standards purists could claim that IE isn't pretty good at following the rules. Thats not the issue.
Call me a standards purist, but last time I tried to make web pages work in IE6, I had a hell of a time. I ask it to draw a dotted border, it draws a dashed border. I scroll down and up again, lo, the border has become partially solid (a rendering bug).
So I say, okay, screw that, back to solid borders. Then I find it doesn't do transparent PNGs. One evil DirectX-using hack later, that's working too.
Next up is the fact that it doesn't seem to like XHTML, or I was doing something wrong. It worked just fine in Mozilla though, so I'd guess I'd got it at least mostly right, as Gecko is fairly strict. So I drop the XHTML aspect of it.
Finally I find the text is too big, IE doesn't understand the "small" text sizing keyword, so I have to specify it in point sizes, which is now too small on Linux.
No, though 6 is much better than 5, IE is still a long long way off being anything other than a half-arsed attempt to follow the rules.
Sorry, rant over:) Other than that, yep, agree 100% with your post.
Here's a tip - go look at the results of the current poll. About a third of voters are looking for love. That probably means they're quite young but look at all the bile, outrage and debate on slashdot!
Okay, now go research the May Day protests and riots in Europe, dunno if they exist in America, but when George Bush came to lecture Europe on the "War on Terror", there were huge protests against his policies. So who the hell are you to tell me that I suck because I'm too conformist? Drag yourself out of this stupid adolescent mood swing, and start angrily debating and yes, even doing something about those issues.
What a fine Root you are. Maybe, just maybe, you should think about using:
- different passwords for your mail,
- different passwords for your root accounts.
I did, my point is, most don't.
Maybe I don't understand it, but why do you have SSH installed if you never login from a remote machine?
It was installed by default
And how about a firewall? Deny all traffic to port 22 and you're almost done.
I'm a modem user and don't have a firewall setup.
Are you a windows user? All your passwords are the same, so it seems you are. Did you know mail passwords go over the internet unencrypted?
I was, and yes I do.
Furthermore, if you log and someone is trying to hack your account you'll see a message '132 unsuccessful login attempts since you last logged in'.
Not if you use XDM, which is the default on this distro.
You know, I think us Linux users are in for a nasty shock, especially as it becomes less the domain of developers and geeks and more the mainstream crowd. I'm a geek and I'll admit it, and I also write software, so I have a pretty good understanding of how things work, but I only just thought of this...
1) SuSE sets up ssh automatically so I can login from remote machines. I never do this, but it's there and figuring out how to switch it off takes too much effort, so I never bothered. It won't allow root logins, but because I use the same password for my root account as for my email, and because my mail program saves my password, anyone who logged in as me could find out my root password easily enough.
2) Most users aren't used to the idea that they need to choose good passwords for local machines. Especially users coming from windows, which has virtually no remote access features, are quite likely to set their user passwords to something obvious, safe in the knowledge that the only person that has "physical" access to their box is them.
3) Combine this with an open ssh/xdm system, and you're asking for trouble. You don't even need to get a virus, just run a portscanner for SSH, then start a password cracking system. Most users don't pick good passwords, this is well known, and unless distributors take care to lock down systems SSH/XDM will come and bite their asses.
As long as there are clients that need customized solutions, there will be programmers getting paid. As long as there are general solutions that everyone agrees on, open source will be squeezing out the closed source producers. I, for one, hope that Microsoft continues to "innovate", pushing computers into new territories, and creating homogenized landscapes in it's wake that the open-source virus can take over. Because, at my heart, I'm a programmer, and I hate the thought of doing something twice...
Exactly - I agree with this totally. People seem to be getting a bit confused about what the goals of the "open source movement" really is. The fact is, like most revolutionary movements, everyone in it has different ideas and goals.
I have written and will probably continue to write open source software, but does that mean I want all software to be free/libre? No, it doesn't. My view is simple: the platforms should be free. I use Linux, partly because it rocks, and partly because of ideology: I don't think anyone should control the platform (of which the OS is a part) because that gives them too much power - ie Microsoft. But if I was an artist, I'd pay for Photoshop quicker than you can say jack flash.
I mean really, there is a post earlier that makes the point that some/most software will never be open sourced, because nobody really cares. At the end of the day, do I care whether my painting program is open source? No, not really. Yes, the fact that the gimp is free is nice, especially since I don't have much money, but it's not necessary.
This leads me to confidently predict that commercial software on Linux will begin to thrive shortly, as people take advantage of an open platform, in the same way that the open nature of the IBM PC caused the hardware industry to thrive. There'll always be people who think that ALL software should be free, but they'll be the distinct minority.
Finally, to all the people I see posting here saying "Oh my god, OSS is going to put all programmers out of a job", I implore you to read the parent post. If there's a good piece of open sourced software that does the job, then use it, improve it, benefit from it and go make your money by pushing things forward. If the only open source piece of software that exists doesn't meet peoples needs, then make it and sell it. But please remember, operating systems, text editors, painting programs and web servers are all tiny parts of the whole computer market.
Indeed, Cyc have already made money from some commercial implementations.
For instance, they deployed the technology to an image library owned by a news company. The company had lots of images, all with different captions. The thing was, there was no fixed system for the captions, they were just english descriptions (short) of what was in the photo.
So Cyc analysed all the captions, and turned them into CycL (it's own logic language). It then used its rudimentary natural langauge capabilities to figure out equivalents, so if you asked for "frightened child" it would match to "girl with gun held to her head" even though they contained no equivalent words. Pretty clever stuff, though they're a long way from being able to make it formulate sentances itself.
A quick tip if you're somebody who likes to customise things, try entering about:config into the URL bar. Warning: on my (fast) PC that kills performance for some reason, but you'll get a list of every "hidden" pref you can use. Look at the prefs.js file in your profile, and you'll discover about a million different things to play with that aren't exposed via the GUI.
I've been told that soon about:config will be fast, and you'll be able to edit settings from it as well. Mondo cool:)
Yeah, unless you're trying to write pages. That earlier comment about it being painful is just too true. I've spent the last week redesigning theoretic.com, and each time I changed one little thing, it became b0rked in IE.
Firstly it was the borders. IE's development team are lazy asses and can't be bothered rendering dotted, so they just do dashed instead. Except that when it renders boxes with a dashed border, if you scroll they become solid! ARGH!
Next up was fonts. Despite claiming support for CSS, IE6 doesn't appear to recognise the keywords small, smaller etc, which means I have to hardcode point sizes, which then means that on Mozilla/Linux the text looks too small.
I could go on, but writing web pages for Mozilla was great, it just worked, but I was soooo tempted to leave IE users out in the cold. As it is an open sourceish type website that wouldn't have been a huge loss.
This source code is subject to the U.S. Export Administration Regulations and other U.S. law, and may not be exported or re-exported to certain countries (currently Afghanistan (Taliban controlled areas)
Last time I checked, the Taliban didn't control any areas.... still, what with the red star and all it'd probably be seen as a symbol of communism anyway:)
Moz binaries aren't fully optimised, at least not on Linux: they're compile with -O rather than a higher level for one thing. Time to look into compiling my own version methinks...
The problem with SVG is that virtually no browsers support it. Although you can get the Adobe plugin, it's very slow even compared to Flash. Also, you don't get one of the chief advantages of SVG being XML: that is, you can't embed it into your actual document.
Mozilla is the only browser I know of (perhaps now Konqueror too?) that actually supports SVG natively - embedded SVG in mozilla is part of the standard document tree, can be styled, transformed, manipulated etc all using the standard tools. I've seen some pretty impressive demos, transforming ChemML into SVG etc to form chemical diagrams. Mozilla has nowhere near complete support for it though, SVG is a huge spec.
Thing is, IE doesn't support the technology necessary to make it work. You can't write COM objects for instance that plug directly in to the Trident rendering engine, it's based on Mosaic which was already out of date even when MS screwed over its creators to get hold of it. Unless Microsoft does a Gecko-style rewrite so people can plug in support for new XML namespace renderers, the only support for SVG on Windows will be from the Adobe plugin, which doesn't really give you all the benefits.
Mark my words, SVG has an uphill struggle against Flash. Flash is here, it works, millions are familiar with it, and it has a truckload of features. SVG embedded using a standard plugin doesn't offer any real advantages over Flash, which is a real shame.
Man, you're really bothered about this. I think you're being silly.
And I think you're not bothered enough. The laissez-faire attitude is fine when things are going well, but the who-gives-a-damn attitude is why Windows now dominates the market, and IE hasn't significantly improved for a whole generation.
First of all, you don't have to pay Apple a dime. I have two Macs-- a laptop and a desktop-- and I watch movie trailers in QuickTime on both. Because I don't have a QuickTime Pro license for the laptop, I watch only the lower resolution versions. I still get to watch the trailers for free, and you could, too. Apple doesn't charge a penny.
Sure that's the case now.. but it sets the precedant: who's to say that Apple won't decide that if you want to watch any res of trailer at all, you need to buy the Pro version. They probably won't because of the negative PR, but they're already treading that path.
You are no more or less excluded than people who have no computers at all. Just like people who own no television are excluded from seeing Buffy the Vampire Slayer. If you want to see the content, get a Mac or a PC and watch all you want. Poof. Problem solved.
The difference is that televisions are made by more than one company, and are based on open standards. Maybe now QuickTime has finally dropped the dependancy on proprietary codeces it'll be a fully open format and we'll start seeing other companies/organisations produce quicktime players. That hasn't happened yet though.
Have you so little faith in free market economics? If what you say had even the slightest grain of truth to it-- if the slippery slope were anything less than a rhetorical trick to play upon the weak-minded-- then we'd all have been prisoners of monopoly after monopoly long ago. It just doesn't work that way, dude.
Funny - tell the 90% of people who use Windows because that they're not prisoners of a monopoly. I think you'll find that difficult to argue. The slope is very slippery indeed, which is why platform companies go to such lengths to try and lock people in to their own products. Most people believe (and for many quite rightly) that in order to use their computer, they must have Windows. I'd state that makes Windows roughly equivalent to a tax. It could so easily become the same for video.
You're right about the bean counter issue, but I'm not sure it'd be a huge effort. Presumably QuickTime is already a largely cross platform product as there are Mac and Windows versions available. Perhaps (hopefully) there won't even be a need for it, as Apple will make it a fully open format allowing open sourced software to read Quicktime files, in which case it all becomes something of a moot point anyway. Whether that'll happen or not I don't know, historically this hasn't been made very easy by Apple. Maybe the fact that they dropped the proprietary codecs will make the difference.
Well to a certain extent you're right, but it's causal: using Linux doesn't mean you're cheap, sometimes you're using Linux because you are cheap. For instance - me. I'm a classic case of this. I don't own any commercial Linux software other than my distro, because being a student I'm constantly poor. I want to be able to do lots of things with my computer, but I can't afford Photoshop/OfficeXP/WindowsXP etc. So part of the attraction of Linux was that it'd free up my meagre funds for non-computer related stuff. There were plenty of other attractions of course, but that was one of them.
On the other hand, as Linux gains wider acceptance, becomes higher quality etc, the people using it just because it costs nothing will become an ever decreasing minority. I would be quite happy to buy software for Linux, but it'd have to be really good, something I really needed and was much better than the free version (or there was no free version). Because commercial software is relatively new to Linux though, that often isn't the case.
That'll change as Linux becomes more mainstream of course, then maybe Apple would be able to make a profit selling QuickTime Pro - but really I'd love to see their sales figures for that software. I've never actually met anyone who has it, although I've met many people who use the standard QuickTime. Considering that most people are not content creators, it seems the market for it would be fairly limited anyway.
So what you're saying is, my opinion doesn't matter, because I'm commenting on something that doesn't directly affect me? If everyone thought like that, slashdot wouldn't exist.
And you seem to be missing the point - I'm offended and annoyed because I'm being asked to pay Apple for a trailer being produced by LucasFilm. Why is this? Do I have to buy three pints of milk before I'm allowed orange juice? Do I have to pay for new vacuum cleaner if I want to change my door locks? No, I don't, because they are not related.
So when LucasFilm announce that they're abandoning their policy of making trailers available in several different formats, and is taking the unique move of going Apple only, it annoys me, because it means I am excluded. Steve Jobs then goes and rants on about how great this is, as if forcing people to use QuickTime to view an arbitrary piece of video is progress. It's no better than Microsoft locking people out of MSN unless they use IE. Everybody condemned it, even though they are unlikely to use MSN themselves.
And finally, although LucasFilm have never admitted being paid off, they have never denied it either, only saying that "they work extremely closely with Apple". Strange though that they should restrict an -advert-, ie something they WANT people to see to drum up enthusiasm for the film, to a certain select group of people who have bought another companies product.
So finally, yes it is about principles. When all's said and done, it doesn't affect me, and probably never will as I don't use QuickTime. But you've got to have principles, otherwise a few years from now we'll wake up and find QuickTime's got a monopoly and that if we want to watch movies on our computer, we have to pay a tax to Apple. It's already happened with Microsoft, and I'm sure Apple would love to be in the same situation.
Gasp! Choke! Those bastards! Asking you to pay them money in return for getting something you want!
Not at all, I just think it's rather pathetic that Apple feels they have to pay people to use QuickTime in order to prop up sales of QT Pro. Being denied content, because I don't care to pay Apple (not Lucas bear in mind, Apple) is something that I don't like.
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?
Wrong again actually, I love the way you jump to conclusions. I don't like being asked to pay for an advert, ergo I must be a failed software pirate.
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.
Three - I have never used QuickTime Pro because I have never needed/wanted to create QuickTime content. 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.
Oh please, Loki was riddled with financial fraud and had a stupid business model. People didn't pay for Lokis games usually because they already had a copy. Linux users are just like everybody else, they won't pay for things they already own - would you?
One of the coolest things they demoed for Quicktime 6 was no-wait streaming, where there's no pause while the frames get buffered.
Huh? All streaming players support this to some extent, you just switch the buffering time to be very low, or zero. Are you sure you're not getting confused with very fast streaming, over a LAN? That would look like no wait.
Combined with an Xserve dishing out >500 simultaneous DVD-quality quicktime streams, Quicktime is looking pretty sweet. Now why don't more sites start using it?
That situation would require approximately 5 gigabits of outgoing bandwidth (a DVD uses about 10mbit/s of bandwidth). Are you insane? Nobody apart from people in large corporations or universities could watch that. QuickTime doesn't really have any major advantages over other technologies as far as I can tell, other than it being made by Apple and therefore given lots of marketing. Why should I choose QuickTime over Real, or Windows Media, or hell even standard MPEG?
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.
Wrong, the QuickTime port is primarily important on Windows because otherwise it'd be a niche technology with no media available in the format. Apple have to pay for most of the cool stuff to be encoded (exclusively) in it anyway.
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.
Apple don't make huge amounts of money from it anyway, why do you think they charge for the player, something unheard of in other media formats. Also I get sick and tired of this Linux users don't pay for anything mantra, this is not true. Many if not most serious Linux users actually pay for their distro, from that point onwards it's pretty cheap because you don't NEED to buy software, not because we won't. As it happens, I wouldn't but QuickTime even if I could (and I could, because I also use Windows), because it's basically just a media player. Why should I buy a copy of Pro when I won't need its features?
All most people use QuickTime for is playing movie trailors and the occasional "enhanced" CD. To me, that isn't worth any money, especially as the alternatives work just as well for nothing.
Actually, the 1.0 API freeze is permanent, from this point on if an API needs to change, a new one will be created. As far as I'm aware, 1.0 is the point at which permenance is guaranteed.
Slashdot Mirror
Call me a standards purist, but last time I tried to make web pages work in IE6, I had a hell of a time. I ask it to draw a dotted border, it draws a dashed border. I scroll down and up again, lo, the border has become partially solid (a rendering bug).
So I say, okay, screw that, back to solid borders. Then I find it doesn't do transparent PNGs. One evil DirectX-using hack later, that's working too.
Next up is the fact that it doesn't seem to like XHTML, or I was doing something wrong. It worked just fine in Mozilla though, so I'd guess I'd got it at least mostly right, as Gecko is fairly strict. So I drop the XHTML aspect of it.
Finally I find the text is too big, IE doesn't understand the "small" text sizing keyword, so I have to specify it in point sizes, which is now too small on Linux.
No, though 6 is much better than 5, IE is still a long long way off being anything other than a half-arsed attempt to follow the rules.
Sorry, rant over :) Other than that, yep, agree 100% with your post.
Here's a tip - go look at the results of the current poll. About a third of voters are looking for love. That probably means they're quite young but look at all the bile, outrage and debate on slashdot!
Okay, now go research the May Day protests and riots in Europe, dunno if they exist in America, but when George Bush came to lecture Europe on the "War on Terror", there were huge protests against his policies. So who the hell are you to tell me that I suck because I'm too conformist? Drag yourself out of this stupid adolescent mood swing, and start angrily debating and yes, even doing something about those issues.
I did, my point is, most don't.
Maybe I don't understand it, but why do you have SSH installed if you never login from a remote machine?
It was installed by default
And how about a firewall? Deny all traffic to port 22 and you're almost done.
I'm a modem user and don't have a firewall setup.
Are you a windows user? All your passwords are the same, so it seems you are. Did you know mail passwords go over the internet unencrypted?
I was, and yes I do.
Furthermore, if you log and someone is trying to hack your account you'll see a message '132 unsuccessful login attempts since you last logged in'.
Not if you use XDM, which is the default on this distro.
1) SuSE sets up ssh automatically so I can login from remote machines. I never do this, but it's there and figuring out how to switch it off takes too much effort, so I never bothered. It won't allow root logins, but because I use the same password for my root account as for my email, and because my mail program saves my password, anyone who logged in as me could find out my root password easily enough.
2) Most users aren't used to the idea that they need to choose good passwords for local machines. Especially users coming from windows, which has virtually no remote access features, are quite likely to set their user passwords to something obvious, safe in the knowledge that the only person that has "physical" access to their box is them.
3) Combine this with an open ssh/xdm system, and you're asking for trouble. You don't even need to get a virus, just run a portscanner for SSH, then start a password cracking system. Most users don't pick good passwords, this is well known, and unless distributors take care to lock down systems SSH/XDM will come and bite their asses.
Exactly - I agree with this totally. People seem to be getting a bit confused about what the goals of the "open source movement" really is. The fact is, like most revolutionary movements, everyone in it has different ideas and goals.
I have written and will probably continue to write open source software, but does that mean I want all software to be free/libre? No, it doesn't. My view is simple: the platforms should be free. I use Linux, partly because it rocks, and partly because of ideology: I don't think anyone should control the platform (of which the OS is a part) because that gives them too much power - ie Microsoft. But if I was an artist, I'd pay for Photoshop quicker than you can say jack flash.
I mean really, there is a post earlier that makes the point that some/most software will never be open sourced, because nobody really cares. At the end of the day, do I care whether my painting program is open source? No, not really. Yes, the fact that the gimp is free is nice, especially since I don't have much money, but it's not necessary.
This leads me to confidently predict that commercial software on Linux will begin to thrive shortly, as people take advantage of an open platform, in the same way that the open nature of the IBM PC caused the hardware industry to thrive. There'll always be people who think that ALL software should be free, but they'll be the distinct minority.
Finally, to all the people I see posting here saying "Oh my god, OSS is going to put all programmers out of a job", I implore you to read the parent post. If there's a good piece of open sourced software that does the job, then use it, improve it, benefit from it and go make your money by pushing things forward. If the only open source piece of software that exists doesn't meet peoples needs, then make it and sell it. But please remember, operating systems, text editors, painting programs and web servers are all tiny parts of the whole computer market.
For instance, they deployed the technology to an image library owned by a news company. The company had lots of images, all with different captions. The thing was, there was no fixed system for the captions, they were just english descriptions (short) of what was in the photo.
So Cyc analysed all the captions, and turned them into CycL (it's own logic language). It then used its rudimentary natural langauge capabilities to figure out equivalents, so if you asked for "frightened child" it would match to "girl with gun held to her head" even though they contained no equivalent words. Pretty clever stuff, though they're a long way from being able to make it formulate sentances itself.
I've been told that soon about:config will be fast, and you'll be able to edit settings from it as well. Mondo cool :)
Firstly it was the borders. IE's development team are lazy asses and can't be bothered rendering dotted, so they just do dashed instead. Except that when it renders boxes with a dashed border, if you scroll they become solid! ARGH!
Next up was fonts. Despite claiming support for CSS, IE6 doesn't appear to recognise the keywords small, smaller etc, which means I have to hardcode point sizes, which then means that on Mozilla/Linux the text looks too small.
I could go on, but writing web pages for Mozilla was great, it just worked, but I was soooo tempted to leave IE users out in the cold. As it is an open sourceish type website that wouldn't have been a huge loss.
They used to do this, but basically there are so many bugs fixed etc that it's easier to check bugzilla, or the status reports.
Last time I checked, the Taliban didn't control any areas .... still, what with the red star and all it'd probably be seen as a symbol of communism anyway :)
Moz binaries aren't fully optimised, at least not on Linux: they're compile with -O rather than a higher level for one thing. Time to look into compiling my own version methinks...
For they're all jolly good fellows, For they're all jolly good fellows, For they're all jolly good fellows .....
And so say all of us!
Mozilla is the only browser I know of (perhaps now Konqueror too?) that actually supports SVG natively - embedded SVG in mozilla is part of the standard document tree, can be styled, transformed, manipulated etc all using the standard tools. I've seen some pretty impressive demos, transforming ChemML into SVG etc to form chemical diagrams. Mozilla has nowhere near complete support for it though, SVG is a huge spec.
Thing is, IE doesn't support the technology necessary to make it work. You can't write COM objects for instance that plug directly in to the Trident rendering engine, it's based on Mosaic which was already out of date even when MS screwed over its creators to get hold of it. Unless Microsoft does a Gecko-style rewrite so people can plug in support for new XML namespace renderers, the only support for SVG on Windows will be from the Adobe plugin, which doesn't really give you all the benefits.
Mark my words, SVG has an uphill struggle against Flash. Flash is here, it works, millions are familiar with it, and it has a truckload of features. SVG embedded using a standard plugin doesn't offer any real advantages over Flash, which is a real shame.
And I think you're not bothered enough. The laissez-faire attitude is fine when things are going well, but the who-gives-a-damn attitude is why Windows now dominates the market, and IE hasn't significantly improved for a whole generation. First of all, you don't have to pay Apple a dime. I have two Macs-- a laptop and a desktop-- and I watch movie trailers in QuickTime on both. Because I don't have a QuickTime Pro license for the laptop, I watch only the lower resolution versions. I still get to watch the trailers for free, and you could, too. Apple doesn't charge a penny.
Sure that's the case now.. but it sets the precedant: who's to say that Apple won't decide that if you want to watch any res of trailer at all, you need to buy the Pro version. They probably won't because of the negative PR, but they're already treading that path. You are no more or less excluded than people who have no computers at all. Just like people who own no television are excluded from seeing Buffy the Vampire Slayer. If you want to see the content, get a Mac or a PC and watch all you want. Poof. Problem solved.
The difference is that televisions are made by more than one company, and are based on open standards. Maybe now QuickTime has finally dropped the dependancy on proprietary codeces it'll be a fully open format and we'll start seeing other companies/organisations produce quicktime players. That hasn't happened yet though. Have you so little faith in free market economics? If what you say had even the slightest grain of truth to it-- if the slippery slope were anything less than a rhetorical trick to play upon the weak-minded-- then we'd all have been prisoners of monopoly after monopoly long ago. It just doesn't work that way, dude.
Funny - tell the 90% of people who use Windows because that they're not prisoners of a monopoly. I think you'll find that difficult to argue. The slope is very slippery indeed, which is why platform companies go to such lengths to try and lock people in to their own products. Most people believe (and for many quite rightly) that in order to use their computer, they must have Windows. I'd state that makes Windows roughly equivalent to a tax. It could so easily become the same for video.
You're right about the bean counter issue, but I'm not sure it'd be a huge effort. Presumably QuickTime is already a largely cross platform product as there are Mac and Windows versions available. Perhaps (hopefully) there won't even be a need for it, as Apple will make it a fully open format allowing open sourced software to read Quicktime files, in which case it all becomes something of a moot point anyway. Whether that'll happen or not I don't know, historically this hasn't been made very easy by Apple. Maybe the fact that they dropped the proprietary codecs will make the difference.
On the other hand, as Linux gains wider acceptance, becomes higher quality etc, the people using it just because it costs nothing will become an ever decreasing minority. I would be quite happy to buy software for Linux, but it'd have to be really good, something I really needed and was much better than the free version (or there was no free version). Because commercial software is relatively new to Linux though, that often isn't the case.
That'll change as Linux becomes more mainstream of course, then maybe Apple would be able to make a profit selling QuickTime Pro - but really I'd love to see their sales figures for that software. I've never actually met anyone who has it, although I've met many people who use the standard QuickTime. Considering that most people are not content creators, it seems the market for it would be fairly limited anyway.
And you seem to be missing the point - I'm offended and annoyed because I'm being asked to pay Apple for a trailer being produced by LucasFilm. Why is this? Do I have to buy three pints of milk before I'm allowed orange juice? Do I have to pay for new vacuum cleaner if I want to change my door locks? No, I don't, because they are not related.
So when LucasFilm announce that they're abandoning their policy of making trailers available in several different formats, and is taking the unique move of going Apple only, it annoys me, because it means I am excluded. Steve Jobs then goes and rants on about how great this is, as if forcing people to use QuickTime to view an arbitrary piece of video is progress. It's no better than Microsoft locking people out of MSN unless they use IE. Everybody condemned it, even though they are unlikely to use MSN themselves.
And finally, although LucasFilm have never admitted being paid off, they have never denied it either, only saying that "they work extremely closely with Apple". Strange though that they should restrict an -advert-, ie something they WANT people to see to drum up enthusiasm for the film, to a certain select group of people who have bought another companies product.
So finally, yes it is about principles. When all's said and done, it doesn't affect me, and probably never will as I don't use QuickTime. But you've got to have principles, otherwise a few years from now we'll wake up and find QuickTime's got a monopoly and that if we want to watch movies on our computer, we have to pay a tax to Apple. It's already happened with Microsoft, and I'm sure Apple would love to be in the same situation.
Not at all, I just think it's rather pathetic that Apple feels they have to pay people to use QuickTime in order to prop up sales of QT Pro. Being denied content, because I don't care to pay Apple (not Lucas bear in mind, Apple) is something that I don't like.
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?
Wrong again actually, I love the way you jump to conclusions. I don't like being asked to pay for an advert, ergo I must be a failed software pirate.
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.
Three - I have never used QuickTime Pro because I have never needed/wanted to create QuickTime content. 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.
Most didn't. And didn't you just contradict yourself: Linux users expect everything to be free, yet I was/am a Linux user and paid for something. ??
Oh please, Loki was riddled with financial fraud and had a stupid business model. People didn't pay for Lokis games usually because they already had a copy. Linux users are just like everybody else, they won't pay for things they already own - would you?
Huh? All streaming players support this to some extent, you just switch the buffering time to be very low, or zero. Are you sure you're not getting confused with very fast streaming, over a LAN? That would look like no wait.
Combined with an Xserve dishing out >500 simultaneous DVD-quality quicktime streams, Quicktime is looking pretty sweet. Now why don't more sites start using it?
That situation would require approximately 5 gigabits of outgoing bandwidth (a DVD uses about 10mbit/s of bandwidth). Are you insane? Nobody apart from people in large corporations or universities could watch that. QuickTime doesn't really have any major advantages over other technologies as far as I can tell, other than it being made by Apple and therefore given lots of marketing. Why should I choose QuickTime over Real, or Windows Media, or hell even standard MPEG?
Strange, Real have managed to produce a Linux version of their player for ages, and Yahoo do a version of Yahoo! Pager for Linux.
Wrong, the QuickTime port is primarily important on Windows because otherwise it'd be a niche technology with no media available in the format. Apple have to pay for most of the cool stuff to be encoded (exclusively) in it anyway.
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.
Apple don't make huge amounts of money from it anyway, why do you think they charge for the player, something unheard of in other media formats. Also I get sick and tired of this Linux users don't pay for anything mantra, this is not true. Many if not most serious Linux users actually pay for their distro, from that point onwards it's pretty cheap because you don't NEED to buy software, not because we won't. As it happens, I wouldn't but QuickTime even if I could (and I could, because I also use Windows), because it's basically just a media player. Why should I buy a copy of Pro when I won't need its features?
All most people use QuickTime for is playing movie trailors and the occasional "enhanced" CD. To me, that isn't worth any money, especially as the alternatives work just as well for nothing.
Actually, the 1.0 API freeze is permanent, from this point on if an API needs to change, a new one will be created. As far as I'm aware, 1.0 is the point at which permenance is guaranteed.