Uh, yeah. You're using a Windows media format "driver" under Linux.
a "driver" is a piece of software that communicates with a piece of hardware at a low level and translates higher level system calls into stuff the hardware can understand. a codec is not a driver in any shape or form. a true driver usually needs some semi-intimate to intimate knowledge of the infrastructure it's plugging into (beyond that of just the driver api).
What's so special? Well it doesn't "just work" in Xine and MPlayer, they built a capatibility bridge for Windows drivers. In theory you could do the same thing for many different drivers.
no, they use a subset of wine to load the.dlls. they've implemented what is, in essence, a meta-codec that handles the windows codec and directshow apis. this comes with a not-insignificant performance penalty, i might add. such a penalty would make something like a video driver useless.
agreed. while i may not agree with these virus-writers' methods, and i wouldn't take part in such a thing myself, i tend to believe that people in general deserve what they get. and oh yes, SCO deserves it. yesss precciousssss...
SPF is broken. It breaks forwarding, unless you want to rewrite the From header at every hop.
right - so if i'm understanding this correctly, this totally breaks many kinds of listserv setups, doesn't it? say i'm sending an email to foobar-dev@lists.sourceforge.net. it gets to the sf.net list server, and then starts resending the mail to bunches of other mail servers (where all the various list subscribers live). my email address is brian@foobaz.net. any of the SPF-enabled mail servers that receive my list-distributed email will reject it, since sf.net's list server is certainly not authorised to send mail on behalf of foobaz.net, which is what the From: header still says.
or am i missing something obvious? if not, the only way i can see to fix this is to patch _all_ mailing list software to rewrite the From: header to contain a domain-local address, and then do something like add a Reply-to: with the original address. sounds like a nasty hack to me...
i think you misunderstood what the parent said. he made no claim to the graphics app of choice for professional graphics designers, he meant that out of all the people out there using image editors, most of them are not pro graphics designers. they're just people touching up their photo collection, making simple art for their personal website, etc.
The lack of MDI is typical of Gnome apps. Now that I'm accustomed to Gnome it doesn't bother me.
that's interesting. i guess we just have different usage patterns - i absolutely _despise_ the MDI model that apps like photoshop impose, as most of the time the only natural way to work with them is to maximise the window, thus blocking out everything else i have on that particular desktop. it's not so bad for, say, a tabbed text editor, but when you have an app like the gimp that has several ancillary windows that you need to refer to often to use the app (the main toolbox, layer window, tool options windows), you need more screen real estate to handle these items. and when they all have to be contained within a single large rectangular container, you lose the option of having a funny-shaped container which leaves open 'holes' into which you can see the rest of your desktop workspace.
i dunno, just a personal preference. but from the interface point of view, i'd pick gimp over photoshop any day. i still agree, however, that there are several aspects to the gimp UI that aren't terribly intuitive. and photoshop certainly still has an edge in features (tho not being a graphics-savvy person, the gimp is more than sufficient for my needs).
for some kids, i'm sure a child-lojack is necessary. but not all, and i'd wager not the majority. and to be perfectly frank, a kid's parents are often not objective enough to make the proper decision. the parents that would love this sort of thing are overprotective by definition. notice the "over-" prefix attached to that word. it implies an excess. too much.
the bottom line - people make decisions, some good, some bad. i know when i was a kid, especially in my early- to mid-teens, i learned nothing from what my parents told me what to do and what not to do. by that time i had my own internal reckoning of what was wrong and right, and, for better or worse, that's what guided my decisions. not parental threats of being grounded, not my parents always trying to keep tabs on me and know where i was at all times. no, i'm not going to say i never made bad decisions. but i learned from them, and i learned from their consequences.
there are some decisions that are dangerous, and parents should protect their children from them until they are sure that they can make a good choice. but i don't think a cell phone locator is the answer. parents need to be interested in their children's lives. they need to ask questions - not to be nosy or overprotective, but to make their kids feel like someone cares about their lives.
no, kids don't have a _right_ to watch tv or drive a car. hell, _adults_ don't have a right to drive a car. these things are privileges and are earned. things such as the latter are also responsibilities, and you cannot teach anyone how to handle responsibility if you don't also give them freedom. it just doesn't work that way.
and just to kill your specious age argument, i'm not a parent, and i'm not a kid. i'm just a couple years older than you are.
i don't think so. if they mean 192kbps, then this is a huge step _down_ from 48kHz, 16 bit audio. while something on the order of a 192kbit mp3 is fine by my tastes, it is a huge reduction in quality from, say, a 44.1kHz, 16bit pcm stream from a CD. you just cannot (with current algorithms) losslessly compress an audio bitstream down to 192kbps without losing a good measure of quality. for reference, a pcm CD audio stream runs you around 700kbps. now, things like FLAC can drop this number a bit while remaining lossless. but not that much.
exactly. that sampling rate is simply overkill. take a look at an application of the nyquist sampling theorem. human hearing maxes out around 20kHz. 44.1kHz is plenty (and with some breathing room) to sample stuff that humans can hear.
now, the increased resolution offered by 24 bits of accuracy per sample could help. but increasing the sampling rate beyond 44.1kHz does nothing: "No information is lost if a signal is sampled at the Nyquist frequency, and no additional information is gained by sampling faster than this rate."
sorry, was i being US-centric? whoops. sorry, but norwegian court rulings don't really hold water here. and yes, i was referring to the fact that it is technically illegal in the US to decrypt a CSS-encrypted DVD using unlicensed hardware/software because of that awful DMCA thing.
am i US-centric? yes. that's where i live, that's where/. is based, and that's where most of/.'s readership lives. forgive me if i don't explicitly state that the information i present is not necessarily applicable outside the US, but that's just how it is. i'm lazy. deal.
SWT does not look native on all platforms, only on Win 2k probably, lol, and it is not FAST.
sorry, wrong, try again. swt on linux can use either motif or gtk. i suppose if you're a kde user neither is quite "native," but tough.
SWT is as sluggish as AWT is. You just dont realize it because your computer is to new and to fast and you only have an SWT app and you never tried Swing on your new computer, because you KNOW that it is sluggish.
once again, wrong. swt (on my machine at least) is _much_ faster than a comparable awt app (no, i haven't benchmarked, this is all anecdotal). as for swing vs. awt, i can't say, as i haven't used many swing apps. not because i "KNOW it is sluggish" and therefore won't try it, but because i haven't seen a swing app that i needed to use for anything.
check your facts, dude. wild sensationalist accusations are a waste of everyone's time.
ogg vorbis is not (or rather need not) be DRM free. the ogg container format can certainly accomodate it, it's just that no one has actually implemented a DRM scheme for ogg. that's a common misconception - ogg is a container format - you can put video, audio, whatever in it (altho the original designers only wanted ogg to hold xvid video and vorbis audio, that's changed), any codec. the container format itself is extensible, and DRM can be built into it.
iirc, the latest wma codecs have compression comparable to vorbis... if not comparable, then i do remember it's definitely better than mp3 (tho perhaps it's not so hot at low bitrates).
right, volume licensing. something like buying in bulk. pledge to buy more, pay less per unit. *snore*
but my point/question is this: these licensing deals are based on some contract that MS has with each hardware vendor, correct? and without this licensing deal, is it not illegal for these hardware vendors to resell windows?
a for-instance. say i started selling computers out of my garage that i built myself. let's ignore the practicality or profitability of this scenario, of course. anyway, one day someone comes to me and says "hey, you sell great machines, but i picked Brand X over yours because they put windows on it for me and i don't like the hassle." so i think, sure, i can do that too. so i buy a bunch of copies of windows, and preinstall them on the machines before i sell, and give the windows cds and licenses to my customers as i sell the machines. now, windows isn't cheap, so i add in the price i pay for windows into the prices i sell the computers for. could microsoft not go after me for doing this, since i have no license to be reselling windows?
now, i'm sure it would take quite an affront, but couldn't MS try to pull this with IBM? after IBM's volume licensing agreement runs out (i presume they are contracts that need to be renewed periodically), can't MS in effect declare it illegal (or whatever) for IBM to preinstall their desktop machines with windows? (not debating the merits or probability of such an action, just the legal possibility.)
a fine example of taking a *part* of a sentence out of context and totally missing the point. IBM sells desktop and laptop machines bundled with windows. as such, they get hardware-related tech support calls where it's really nice to have a windows machine around to make it easier to walk a customer through some bit of troubleshooting.
i take the ps/2 case as a bit different. desktop hardware becomes obsolete all the time - in the ps/2 days IBM may not have had such a firm grasp of that concept. i'd bet IBM doesn't offer free lifetime support on anything that's hardware specific anymore. but as for OS lines, they generally don't go away, at least for a while. as much as many of us want MS to die a horrible death, MS and windows will be around for quite a few years to come.
regardless, if something truly is "obsolete," then there shouldn't be a need to support it. the only place you see the opposite is in the open source world, where if there's even one person interested in supporting something (who has the technical know-how), he/she will support it him/herself, obsolete or not.
The high end cards are just for reputation and bragging rights.
and market share. scenario:
ATI: we have the best graphics cards in the business! our top of the line card costs $500! nvidia: our cards aren't as good, but our best card is as good as the one from ATI that you're going to buy anyway, you cheapskate, so get our card anyway. mid-range customer: yeah, right.
i suppose "reputation" covers that sort of thing, but i'm bored and feel like posting needlessly.
I really can't imagine why they wouldn't be posting it on billboards.
i can imagine quite well. whatever IBM wants to use internally, they still have to sell their desktop and laptop systems with windows preloaded (or at least as an option). while they do have a firm grasp of the server market, a loss of windows on their desktop would be a huge hit. and if MS hears definitively that big blue has a nefarious plot afoot to destroy windows, i'd bet MS would find a way to get out of their contracts to IBM and disallow them to sell machines with windows bundled. at the very least, i wouldn't be surprised if they just resolved to not renew any contracts with IBM. but whatever, IANACP (corporate player), i don't know how these things work.
regardless, i'm not so sure that IBM would move away from windows internally anyway. sure, there might be a move to replace a lot of workstations with linux, but at the very least they need to keep some around, e.g., for customer support calls. <tongue-in-cheek>but hey, they're probably all in india already anyway, so no one can understand their customer support and they might as well have them run liunx.</tongue-in-cheek>
funny, that's the same thing people say about watching their legally bought dvds on linux, but (though it hasn't been tested in court iirc) it is technically illegal to do so.
not saying i don't totally agree with you; i'm just playing devil's advocate.
A lot of those delays stem from the simple fact that legal staff usually haven't got the vaguest understanding of how software is architected or compiled. They don't know that half the headers mentioned are part of ANSI and ISO C/C++ standards.
that is, unfortunately, irrelevant. if the file was blatantly copied from someone else's copyrighted implementation, then that does indeed constitute infringement. i don't think this is the case, i'm just playing devil's advocate.
They don't know that every single platform with a C compiler since the early '80s has had an "errno.h" header file.
i think you're confusing the compiler-supplied/usr/include/errno.h with the file that SCO is claiming is infringing. this file is a part of the kernel source, and would usually live at/usr/src/linux/include/asm-*/errno.h. (same or similar goes for the other allegedly-infringing files.)
now, the compiler-supplied errno.h in/usr/include contains a prominent copyright notice by the free software foundation. somehow i doubt they falsified that, and, even if they did, SCO would/should be going after the FSF and glibc and not linus torvalds and linux.
looking at the errno.h included with kernel source, it looks like a relatively boilerplate file. just a bunch of #defines for error codes. the only way you could really infer copyright infringement is from the comments on each line that says what the error code means. however, i would think that all these are documented somewhere, so even if SCO's file is identical, it's still arguable that in both cases the comments were copied verbatim from some specification document (where copying is possibly allowed).
looking through the files listed, it seems like all of them fall under this general premise - boilerplate kernel constants and macros for very basic stuff that's really hard and silly to try to implement any other way.
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agreed. while i may not agree with these virus-writers' methods, and i wouldn't take part in such a thing myself, i tend to believe that people in general deserve what they get. and oh yes, SCO deserves it. yesss precciousssss...
hmm, my first question when i read the article blurb was... "yeah, right, you want us to believe dubya knows how to use a computer?" ^_~
it's just humor folks, put down those flame throwers...
or am i missing something obvious? if not, the only way i can see to fix this is to patch _all_ mailing list software to rewrite the From: header to contain a domain-local address, and then do something like add a Reply-to: with the original address. sounds like a nasty hack to me...
touche... that'll teach me to read only the first couple lines of a post and make assumptions...
having and understanding a sense of humour is good for your mental health. seriously, is this "i don't get sarcasm" day on /.?
just a data point for your consideration ^_~
hear that? that's the sound of the joke flying _completely_ over your head ^_~
i think you misunderstood what the parent said. he made no claim to the graphics app of choice for professional graphics designers, he meant that out of all the people out there using image editors, most of them are not pro graphics designers. they're just people touching up their photo collection, making simple art for their personal website, etc.
i dunno, just a personal preference. but from the interface point of view, i'd pick gimp over photoshop any day. i still agree, however, that there are several aspects to the gimp UI that aren't terribly intuitive. and photoshop certainly still has an edge in features (tho not being a graphics-savvy person, the gimp is more than sufficient for my needs).
that's a load of crap.
for some kids, i'm sure a child-lojack is necessary. but not all, and i'd wager not the majority. and to be perfectly frank, a kid's parents are often not objective enough to make the proper decision. the parents that would love this sort of thing are overprotective by definition. notice the "over-" prefix attached to that word. it implies an excess. too much.
the bottom line - people make decisions, some good, some bad. i know when i was a kid, especially in my early- to mid-teens, i learned nothing from what my parents told me what to do and what not to do. by that time i had my own internal reckoning of what was wrong and right, and, for better or worse, that's what guided my decisions. not parental threats of being grounded, not my parents always trying to keep tabs on me and know where i was at all times. no, i'm not going to say i never made bad decisions. but i learned from them, and i learned from their consequences.
there are some decisions that are dangerous, and parents should protect their children from them until they are sure that they can make a good choice. but i don't think a cell phone locator is the answer. parents need to be interested in their children's lives. they need to ask questions - not to be nosy or overprotective, but to make their kids feel like someone cares about their lives.
no, kids don't have a _right_ to watch tv or drive a car. hell, _adults_ don't have a right to drive a car. these things are privileges and are earned. things such as the latter are also responsibilities, and you cannot teach anyone how to handle responsibility if you don't also give them freedom. it just doesn't work that way.
and just to kill your specious age argument, i'm not a parent, and i'm not a kid. i'm just a couple years older than you are.
no, no... the question is... but will it run linux?
i don't think so. if they mean 192kbps, then this is a huge step _down_ from 48kHz, 16 bit audio. while something on the order of a 192kbit mp3 is fine by my tastes, it is a huge reduction in quality from, say, a 44.1kHz, 16bit pcm stream from a CD. you just cannot (with current algorithms) losslessly compress an audio bitstream down to 192kbps without losing a good measure of quality. for reference, a pcm CD audio stream runs you around 700kbps. now, things like FLAC can drop this number a bit while remaining lossless. but not that much.
exactly. that sampling rate is simply overkill. take a look at an application of the nyquist sampling theorem. human hearing maxes out around 20kHz. 44.1kHz is plenty (and with some breathing room) to sample stuff that humans can hear.
now, the increased resolution offered by 24 bits of accuracy per sample could help. but increasing the sampling rate beyond 44.1kHz does nothing: "No information is lost if a signal is sampled at the Nyquist frequency, and no additional information is gained by sampling faster than this rate."
sorry, was i being US-centric? whoops. sorry, but norwegian court rulings don't really hold water here. and yes, i was referring to the fact that it is technically illegal in the US to decrypt a CSS-encrypted DVD using unlicensed hardware/software because of that awful DMCA thing.
/. is based, and that's where most of /.'s readership lives. forgive me if i don't explicitly state that the information i present is not necessarily applicable outside the US, but that's just how it is. i'm lazy. deal.
am i US-centric? yes. that's where i live, that's where
check your facts, dude. wild sensationalist accusations are a waste of everyone's time.
ogg vorbis is not (or rather need not) be DRM free. the ogg container format can certainly accomodate it, it's just that no one has actually implemented a DRM scheme for ogg. that's a common misconception - ogg is a container format - you can put video, audio, whatever in it (altho the original designers only wanted ogg to hold xvid video and vorbis audio, that's changed), any codec. the container format itself is extensible, and DRM can be built into it.
iirc, the latest wma codecs have compression comparable to vorbis... if not comparable, then i do remember it's definitely better than mp3 (tho perhaps it's not so hot at low bitrates).
right, volume licensing. something like buying in bulk. pledge to buy more, pay less per unit. *snore*
but my point/question is this: these licensing deals are based on some contract that MS has with each hardware vendor, correct? and without this licensing deal, is it not illegal for these hardware vendors to resell windows?
a for-instance. say i started selling computers out of my garage that i built myself. let's ignore the practicality or profitability of this scenario, of course. anyway, one day someone comes to me and says "hey, you sell great machines, but i picked Brand X over yours because they put windows on it for me and i don't like the hassle." so i think, sure, i can do that too. so i buy a bunch of copies of windows, and preinstall them on the machines before i sell, and give the windows cds and licenses to my customers as i sell the machines. now, windows isn't cheap, so i add in the price i pay for windows into the prices i sell the computers for. could microsoft not go after me for doing this, since i have no license to be reselling windows?
now, i'm sure it would take quite an affront, but couldn't MS try to pull this with IBM? after IBM's volume licensing agreement runs out (i presume they are contracts that need to be renewed periodically), can't MS in effect declare it illegal (or whatever) for IBM to preinstall their desktop machines with windows? (not debating the merits or probability of such an action, just the legal possibility.)
a fine example of taking a *part* of a sentence out of context and totally missing the point. IBM sells desktop and laptop machines bundled with windows. as such, they get hardware-related tech support calls where it's really nice to have a windows machine around to make it easier to walk a customer through some bit of troubleshooting.
i take the ps/2 case as a bit different. desktop hardware becomes obsolete all the time - in the ps/2 days IBM may not have had such a firm grasp of that concept. i'd bet IBM doesn't offer free lifetime support on anything that's hardware specific anymore. but as for OS lines, they generally don't go away, at least for a while. as much as many of us want MS to die a horrible death, MS and windows will be around for quite a few years to come.
regardless, if something truly is "obsolete," then there shouldn't be a need to support it. the only place you see the opposite is in the open source world, where if there's even one person interested in supporting something (who has the technical know-how), he/she will support it him/herself, obsolete or not.
ATI: we have the best graphics cards in the business! our top of the line card costs $500!
nvidia: our cards aren't as good, but our best card is as good as the one from ATI that you're going to buy anyway, you cheapskate, so get our card anyway.
mid-range customer: yeah, right.
i suppose "reputation" covers that sort of thing, but i'm bored and feel like posting needlessly.
regardless, i'm not so sure that IBM would move away from windows internally anyway. sure, there might be a move to replace a lot of workstations with linux, but at the very least they need to keep some around, e.g., for customer support calls. <tongue-in-cheek>but hey, they're probably all in india already anyway, so no one can understand their customer support and they might as well have them run liunx.</tongue-in-cheek>
funny, that's the same thing people say about watching their legally bought dvds on linux, but (though it hasn't been tested in court iirc) it is technically illegal to do so.
not saying i don't totally agree with you; i'm just playing devil's advocate.
now, the compiler-supplied errno.h in
looking at the errno.h included with kernel source, it looks like a relatively boilerplate file. just a bunch of #defines for error codes. the only way you could really infer copyright infringement is from the comments on each line that says what the error code means. however, i would think that all these are documented somewhere, so even if SCO's file is identical, it's still arguable that in both cases the comments were copied verbatim from some specification document (where copying is possibly allowed).
looking through the files listed, it seems like all of them fall under this general premise - boilerplate kernel constants and macros for very basic stuff that's really hard and silly to try to implement any other way.
blah, SCO can bite me.