Here, here!!! Without a doubt, MPlayer is the most complete media player available on ANY platform and, yes, that includes Windows. I hope somebody as dedicated as Arp'i steps in to fill his shoes!
For example, the Redmond, Wash.-based company estimates that about half the copies of Office in
use worldwide are pirated.
Guess they should just stick with the copy of Works or Corel Word that came with their PC right? I love the hypocrites that post here that Linux and OpenOffice are "not good enough, have too small a user base, etc" and then turn around and type away on their pirated copies of WinXP Pro and MS Office. Windows users who pirate ANYTHING have no right to defend MS, in fact, they should have a contingency plan in place to defend THEMSELVES if MS ever decides to make a role model out of them.
Also, so-called "average" users aren't always going to know, or care, what a security bulletin is, let alone how to go about getting and installing the patches. On the other hand, certain large proprietary vendors make it easy and painless to point-and-click your way to a more secure (note: not totally secure) system.
These are exactly the kind of people who should not be in charge of corporate hardware and is part of the MS "misconception" that "point-and-click" is all you need to know. Click based administration is dangerous because it conveys a false impression of total control. I'd bet that the majority of servers implicated in DOS attacks are due to proliferation of this class of unskilled admin. However, they work cheap (with good reason) so we won't be getting rid of them anytime soon.
From the SOHO perspective where the $$$ for skilled admins simply isn't there, pretty much all Linux distributions offer a point and click update facility. I know for a fact that SuSE, RedHat, and Mandrake do. In fact, SuSE has an MS-like autoupdater that requires no use interaction.
Anyhow, this conversation is so far off topic that it's time to put this thread to rest!
My "desert island" kit includes:
Partition Magic
SuSE Pro DVD
SuSE Pro CDs 1-4
Win98 Boot Disk
as well as a home made util CD (not DVD since a surprising amount of machines don't have a DVD reader) with Win and Lin versions of:
OpenOffice
Mozilla
Netscape (rare but still) also
Latest 2.4 Kernel Sources
nVIDIA XF86 and NIC drivers
With these, I can pretty much get anything reset or at least get on the net and download the rest in a reasonable amount of time. This reminds me that it's time to update my ISO image with Moz 1.4 and the new NV drivers.
The tactic is not what's illegal, it's using the software they gave out that is. The point people are trying to make is that IF the BSA audits, you CAN be fined for having unlicensed software installed. That said, you are right that it's not that big of a deal. If you have one of these CDs just don't install the software and simply throw the CD in the trash, problem solved. If you simply MUST have the software, crack open your wallet and go buy a copy. Reality is that Microsoft makes proprietary software so you shouldn't expect to get any of it for free under any circumstances regardless of what anybody tells you.
Actually, I just built 1.4a from source with the spellchecker patch. Took a bit to get the configure options and "hidden" RPM patches applied just right but now I'm styling with a GCC 3.2 compiled, customized splash screen version of 1.4a and loving it.
Ok Troll, I'll bite. Please do tell exactly which feature is missing on your specific sound card in ALSA (OSS is dead). I don't really expect you to reply to this because I don't believe you. Besides, all the Win users that use Win specifically for making music that I know of use Win2K and NOT WinXP so I immediately find your post suspicious. The only thing I heard that's lacking in Linux from these folk is on the music APPLICATION side, not the driver side. Now get back to work before Ballmer catches you goofing off.
What is it going to take to get them to add the spellchecker from mozdev to the main Mozilla CVS. Smooth scrolling, great fantastic but where's the spellchecker?!?. I'm getting really tired of the "oh... next release" promises. Stop adding menial improvements and get this moved to the main!!! Even Slashdot is a perfect example, imagine... right click, check spelling your posts. It's certainly a hell of alot more important than "oh look, the redraw is somewhat less jerky when you scroll", wow, fantastic. Come on, somebody with a say get this moved in PLEASE!
Holy crap, you're right! They even TASTE like almonds, only crunchier! Oh man this makes a great snack food. Whoa... not feeling so good all of a sudden...
Price-gouging is also called profiteering.
Merriam-Webster uses this definition:
one who makes what is considered an unreasonable profit especially on the sale of essential goods during times of emergency
Ok, LCD screens are not an essential good and even though this is this a time of emergency for some, it's hardly relevant to the need for an LCD monitor. I'm not even sure they're making that much profit since there's such a high waste ratio in making LCDs. Besides, LCDs are just priced at what CRTs used to be... so in retrospect were CRTs being price gouged?
I know you're joking but for those that haven't had the thrill of working a debug queue, 200000 is the number of bugs submitted. However, a lot of these are duplicate submissions, not bugs, fixed etc. Not to say there AREN'T bugs in Mozilla but I'd bet any amount of money anyone is willing to put up that there aren't 200000 distinct bugs.
They use a DVD decoder embedded into the BIOS, the MPAA gets their cut for the decoder. It's not watching DVDs on Linux that's illegal, it's using an unlicensed DVD *decoder* that's illegal.
As for Lindows, I fully agree. I like what Lindows is trying to do for Linux but I wouldn't pay $99 a year to be able to download otherwise free software. There may be a few exceptions (StarOffice) that are non-free and available with their service but in general you're right. I think a "pay-as-you-go to download certified software" option might have wider acceptance than a subscription but if MS moves towards a subscription model for the home (and based on what they're doing for businesses this is a possibility) then it's no longer such a bad idea.
Personally, I buy a distro DVD twice a year for $50, stage it on my webserver, and use it to update a dozen boxes I watch over. So my way runs $8/year/PC which is right where I want it.
As for the "average Joe", I like to use my dad as a point of reference. He is from the "pen and paper" crowd. I installed Linux on his PC and he doesn't even know that the OS has been replaced. What he DOES know is he wants a word processor, a spreadsheet program, email, and a browser. Well, he has those and he's perfectly happy. Would he have switched on his own? I can safely say never, because he just wants to get work done... period. If what is already on the PC is sufficient to accomplish what he wants to do, then that's what he'll use.
Lindows is smart in this respect because they understand this "joe user" inertia. If somebody walks into BestBuy and walks out with a Lindows PC, in 99% of the cases it will be left with exactly what came preinstalled pretty much until the PC needs to be replaced. I don't think they seriously expect "savvy" Linux users to start switching to Lindows in droves. Personally, I think they're helping bring additional OEM support for Linux and that's a good thing. However, I doubt they'll sell many boxed copies of their distro because savvy folks would rather use RedHat/Mandrake/SuSE/etc and "joe users" wouldn't know how to begin comtemplating an OS switch.
Offtopic but isn't it ironic how the NullPointerException has become the segfault of Java. Yeah you can't send pointers off into deep space but NullPointerException really is just a fancy wrapper for what would otherwise be a segfault. Ok, so it lets you do a little cleanup and possibly recover... still food for thought.
"Is it really that serious? Worth spending a significant portion of the GDP (trillions) on?"
I remember reading something in university along the lines that the US government "acts" in such a way that the value preventing road fatalities is somewhere around $10M given the probability of being involved in a fatal car accident. Extrapolating that to meteorites, if the odds of getting fatally hit by a meteor is 1 in a billion, there is now way ANY government money is going to get spent based on historic government behavior.
Not only that, but is the satellite imaging data going to be in real time? You could easily walk into the path of a tank that changed heading 30 seconds ago.
XML is great when it's properly formatted. We accept 3rd party XML as input into one of our apps and dealing with out of whack XML is a bloody nightmare. Most of the pre-built XML parsers don't make assumptions on formatting so I had to override, mod, etc... to allow for some of the crap people think is XML. Beyond the bitching though, it's still the most logical alternative for data interchange and works very well so long as you check for "garbage in".
You beat me to it, exactly right. When MS releases the source code to NT 4.0, then the comparison to RH will be valid. I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for that code though, even though the product is being obsoleted. If I had mod points today, you'd get a +1 informative!
"I've spent the last two years being subjected to biased slashdot propaganda. I couldn't hack into a properly configured windows system if my life depended on it."
Just because YOU can't doesn't mean others can't. Yes, getting a remote shell on Win2K is very difficult but using a documented exploit to run remote code is just a matter of following instructions.
Now that's really interesting! It will be a dedicated use machine in my case anyway, not a whole lot of compilation if I can help it. I'll definitely give it a try. Mind if I ask where you bought the board (if online)? newEgg has a board that sounds like the one you used. I didn't find any with the M-moniker in particular in the 600Mhz range but there are some "fanless" boards in the M900 line for about $60 more.
I have trouble believing that a 600Mhz EDEN proc compares to an AMD XP 2200+. I'm not egging you on here. I am seriously considering one of these VIA chips for a "media center" project because it can run fanless but I'm concerned about this chip's ability to perform under load. Most of the net talk appears to discourage using these chips for anything beyond running a browser.
Most of the bogomips numbers for the EDEN I've seen are around 1200. My XP 2000+ runs just shy of 3400 (133). I imagine an XP 2200+ would be around 3800 (133). That's not really close at all.
Mind if I ask if you'd consider using it for a media center. Here's what I'm looking at: MP3 decoding / DVD decoding/ NFS server / Video streamer (WinTV PVR card). It's a bit of a tall order.
Yast actually works relatively well in 8.1. I haven't seen the overwrite problem in this release. However, the TERRIBLE (tm) package manager has no qualms about overwriting my newer custom RPMs with older ones, doesn't bother respecting any taboo settings I setup, has a conflict resolution mechanism that can't take no for an answer, and lastly, you can't even get a friggen list of what you have already installed. I only hope they listened to the bitches and moans about this and FIXED IT in 8.2 because it's certainly no better in their latest patch build. Other than the package manager, I disagree with you. I think Yast is quite well done, it makes mundane admin tasks quick and easy, it also works quite well as an installer, and best of all, the ncurses version has all the features of the GUI version.
The main advantages of SuSE over Mandrake (in my eyes) are the full-featured ncurses based YaST and the more affordable DVD based format. Granted, Mandrake offers the ProSuite CD/DVD combo for $70 but I can get the same setup and software for $50 from SuSE. Don't get me wrong, there's still some things to dislike about SuSE, like the particularly crappy package manager (anybody from SuSE listening?) but until Mandrake knocks $20 off their DVD offering and puts out a FULL (not the limited version in 9.0) terminal/ncurses/newt based port of drakconf, I can't see a compelling reason to switch to Mandrake from SuSE.
Yep... I don't see what the bitching is all about. I actually like X. Yeah, I said it. Why? Because I like being able to, and often do, display windows from the several machines I access regularly on my main workstation. If people don't like X, then use XDirectFB or a KGI based windowing system and quit whining. I'll grant the nay-sayers that there are more enjoyable things in life to do than tweaking an XF86Config file to get it just right, but you very rarely need to touch it afterwards. Got a laptop? Then configure 2 XFConfigs, one for docked and undocked and swap then in an out. I really do fail to see what these people find so terrible about XFree86.
Bingo... compared to OfficeMax and Staples, the are really pretty bad. Let them knock their own teeth out. I can honestly I have never purchased anything there. Besides, from what I can see on bottom right of their home page, and the following from Netcraft:
The site www.officedepot.com is running Microsoft-IIS/5.0 on Windows 2000
... they're pretty much in MS's pocket anyhow. Good riddance.
Slashdot Mirror
Here, here!!! Without a doubt, MPlayer is the most complete media player available on ANY platform and, yes, that includes Windows. I hope somebody as dedicated as Arp'i steps in to fill his shoes!
For example, the Redmond, Wash.-based company estimates that about half the copies of Office in use worldwide are pirated.
Guess they should just stick with the copy of Works or Corel Word that came with their PC right? I love the hypocrites that post here that Linux and OpenOffice are "not good enough, have too small a user base, etc" and then turn around and type away on their pirated copies of WinXP Pro and MS Office. Windows users who pirate ANYTHING have no right to defend MS, in fact, they should have a contingency plan in place to defend THEMSELVES if MS ever decides to make a role model out of them.
Also, so-called "average" users aren't always going to know, or care, what a security bulletin is, let alone how to go about getting and installing the patches. On the other hand, certain large proprietary vendors make it easy and painless to point-and-click your way to a more secure (note: not totally secure) system.
These are exactly the kind of people who should not be in charge of corporate hardware and is part of the MS "misconception" that "point-and-click" is all you need to know. Click based administration is dangerous because it conveys a false impression of total control. I'd bet that the majority of servers implicated in DOS attacks are due to proliferation of this class of unskilled admin. However, they work cheap (with good reason) so we won't be getting rid of them anytime soon.
From the SOHO perspective where the $$$ for skilled admins simply isn't there, pretty much all Linux distributions offer a point and click update facility. I know for a fact that SuSE, RedHat, and Mandrake do. In fact, SuSE has an MS-like autoupdater that requires no use interaction.
Anyhow, this conversation is so far off topic that it's time to put this thread to rest!
My "desert island" kit includes:
Partition Magic
SuSE Pro DVD
SuSE Pro CDs 1-4
Win98 Boot Disk
as well as a home made util CD (not DVD since a surprising amount of machines don't have a DVD reader) with Win and Lin versions of:
OpenOffice
Mozilla
Netscape (rare but still)
also
Latest 2.4 Kernel Sources
nVIDIA XF86 and NIC drivers
With these, I can pretty much get anything reset or at least get on the net and download the rest in a reasonable amount of time. This reminds me that it's time to update my ISO image with Moz 1.4 and the new NV drivers.
The tactic is not what's illegal, it's using the software they gave out that is. The point people are trying to make is that IF the BSA audits, you CAN be fined for having unlicensed software installed. That said, you are right that it's not that big of a deal. If you have one of these CDs just don't install the software and simply throw the CD in the trash, problem solved. If you simply MUST have the software, crack open your wallet and go buy a copy. Reality is that Microsoft makes proprietary software so you shouldn't expect to get any of it for free under any circumstances regardless of what anybody tells you.
Actually, I just built 1.4a from source with the spellchecker patch. Took a bit to get the configure options and "hidden" RPM patches applied just right but now I'm styling with a GCC 3.2 compiled, customized splash screen version of 1.4a and loving it.
Ok Troll, I'll bite. Please do tell exactly which feature is missing on your specific sound card in ALSA (OSS is dead). I don't really expect you to reply to this because I don't believe you. Besides, all the Win users that use Win specifically for making music that I know of use Win2K and NOT WinXP so I immediately find your post suspicious. The only thing I heard that's lacking in Linux from these folk is on the music APPLICATION side, not the driver side. Now get back to work before Ballmer catches you goofing off.
What is it going to take to get them to add the spellchecker from mozdev to the main Mozilla CVS. Smooth scrolling, great fantastic but where's the spellchecker?!?. I'm getting really tired of the "oh ... next release" promises. Stop adding menial improvements and get this moved to the main!!! Even Slashdot is a perfect example, imagine ... right click, check spelling your posts. It's certainly a hell of alot more important than "oh look, the redraw is somewhat less jerky when you scroll", wow, fantastic. Come on, somebody with a say get this moved in PLEASE!
This wouldn't happen to be an expansion of the "Little Lisa Slurry Factory" would it?
Holy crap, you're right! They even TASTE like almonds, only crunchier! Oh man this makes a great snack food. Whoa ... not feeling so good all of a sudden ...
Oh crap ... do you mean to say that I just bought 3 "April Fools Jokes" at $99 a pop? :D
Price-gouging is also called profiteering. Merriam-Webster uses this definition:
... so in retrospect were CRTs being price gouged?
one who makes what is considered an unreasonable profit especially on the sale of essential goods during times of emergency
Ok, LCD screens are not an essential good and even though this is this a time of emergency for some, it's hardly relevant to the need for an LCD monitor. I'm not even sure they're making that much profit since there's such a high waste ratio in making LCDs. Besides, LCDs are just priced at what CRTs used to be
I know you're joking but for those that haven't had the thrill of working a debug queue, 200000 is the number of bugs submitted. However, a lot of these are duplicate submissions, not bugs, fixed etc. Not to say there AREN'T bugs in Mozilla but I'd bet any amount of money anyone is willing to put up that there aren't 200000 distinct bugs.
They use a DVD decoder embedded into the BIOS, the MPAA gets their cut for the decoder. It's not watching DVDs on Linux that's illegal, it's using an unlicensed DVD *decoder* that's illegal.
... period. If what is already on the PC is sufficient to accomplish what he wants to do, then that's what he'll use.
As for Lindows, I fully agree. I like what Lindows is trying to do for Linux but I wouldn't pay $99 a year to be able to download otherwise free software. There may be a few exceptions (StarOffice) that are non-free and available with their service but in general you're right. I think a "pay-as-you-go to download certified software" option might have wider acceptance than a subscription but if MS moves towards a subscription model for the home (and based on what they're doing for businesses this is a possibility) then it's no longer such a bad idea. Personally, I buy a distro DVD twice a year for $50, stage it on my webserver, and use it to update a dozen boxes I watch over. So my way runs $8/year/PC which is right where I want it.
As for the "average Joe", I like to use my dad as a point of reference. He is from the "pen and paper" crowd. I installed Linux on his PC and he doesn't even know that the OS has been replaced. What he DOES know is he wants a word processor, a spreadsheet program, email, and a browser. Well, he has those and he's perfectly happy. Would he have switched on his own? I can safely say never, because he just wants to get work done
Lindows is smart in this respect because they understand this "joe user" inertia. If somebody walks into BestBuy and walks out with a Lindows PC, in 99% of the cases it will be left with exactly what came preinstalled pretty much until the PC needs to be replaced. I don't think they seriously expect "savvy" Linux users to start switching to Lindows in droves. Personally, I think they're helping bring additional OEM support for Linux and that's a good thing. However, I doubt they'll sell many boxed copies of their distro because savvy folks would rather use RedHat/Mandrake/SuSE/etc and "joe users" wouldn't know how to begin comtemplating an OS switch.
Offtopic but isn't it ironic how the NullPointerException has become the segfault of Java. Yeah you can't send pointers off into deep space but NullPointerException really is just a fancy wrapper for what would otherwise be a segfault. Ok, so it lets you do a little cleanup and possibly recover ... still food for thought.
"Is it really that serious? Worth spending a significant portion of the GDP (trillions) on?"
I remember reading something in university along the lines that the US government "acts" in such a way that the value preventing road fatalities is somewhere around $10M given the probability of being involved in a fatal car accident. Extrapolating that to meteorites, if the odds of getting fatally hit by a meteor is 1 in a billion, there is now way ANY government money is going to get spent based on historic government behavior.
Not only that, but is the satellite imaging data going to be in real time? You could easily walk into the path of a tank that changed heading 30 seconds ago.
XML is great when it's properly formatted. We accept 3rd party XML as input into one of our apps and dealing with out of whack XML is a bloody nightmare. Most of the pre-built XML parsers don't make assumptions on formatting so I had to override, mod, etc ... to allow for some of the crap people think is XML. Beyond the bitching though, it's still the most logical alternative for data interchange and works very well so long as you check for "garbage in".
You beat me to it, exactly right. When MS releases the source code to NT 4.0, then the comparison to RH will be valid. I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for that code though, even though the product is being obsoleted. If I had mod points today, you'd get a +1 informative!
"I've spent the last two years being subjected to biased slashdot propaganda. I couldn't hack into a properly configured windows system if my life depended on it."
Just because YOU can't doesn't mean others can't. Yes, getting a remote shell on Win2K is very difficult but using a documented exploit to run remote code is just a matter of following instructions.
Now that's really interesting! It will be a dedicated use machine in my case anyway, not a whole lot of compilation if I can help it. I'll definitely give it a try. Mind if I ask where you bought the board (if online)? newEgg has a board that sounds like the one you used. I didn't find any with the M-moniker in particular in the 600Mhz range but there are some "fanless" boards in the M900 line for about $60 more.
I have trouble believing that a 600Mhz EDEN proc compares to an AMD XP 2200+. I'm not egging you on here. I am seriously considering one of these VIA chips for a "media center" project because it can run fanless but I'm concerned about this chip's ability to perform under load. Most of the net talk appears to discourage using these chips for anything beyond running a browser.
Most of the bogomips numbers for the EDEN I've seen are around 1200. My XP 2000+ runs just shy of 3400 (133). I imagine an XP 2200+ would be around 3800 (133). That's not really close at all.
Mind if I ask if you'd consider using it for a media center. Here's what I'm looking at: MP3 decoding / DVD decoding/ NFS server / Video streamer (WinTV PVR card). It's a bit of a tall order.
Yast actually works relatively well in 8.1. I haven't seen the overwrite problem in this release. However, the TERRIBLE (tm) package manager has no qualms about overwriting my newer custom RPMs with older ones, doesn't bother respecting any taboo settings I setup, has a conflict resolution mechanism that can't take no for an answer, and lastly, you can't even get a friggen list of what you have already installed. I only hope they listened to the bitches and moans about this and FIXED IT in 8.2 because it's certainly no better in their latest patch build. Other than the package manager, I disagree with you. I think Yast is quite well done, it makes mundane admin tasks quick and easy, it also works quite well as an installer, and best of all, the ncurses version has all the features of the GUI version.
The main advantages of SuSE over Mandrake (in my eyes) are the full-featured ncurses based YaST and the more affordable DVD based format. Granted, Mandrake offers the ProSuite CD/DVD combo for $70 but I can get the same setup and software for $50 from SuSE. Don't get me wrong, there's still some things to dislike about SuSE, like the particularly crappy package manager (anybody from SuSE listening?) but until Mandrake knocks $20 off their DVD offering and puts out a FULL (not the limited version in 9.0) terminal/ncurses/newt based port of drakconf, I can't see a compelling reason to switch to Mandrake from SuSE.
Yep ... I don't see what the bitching is all about. I actually like X. Yeah, I said it. Why? Because I like being able to, and often do, display windows from the several machines I access regularly on my main workstation. If people don't like X, then use XDirectFB or a KGI based windowing system and quit whining. I'll grant the nay-sayers that there are more enjoyable things in life to do than tweaking an XF86Config file to get it just right, but you very rarely need to touch it afterwards. Got a laptop? Then configure 2 XFConfigs, one for docked and undocked and swap then in an out. I really do fail to see what these people find so terrible about XFree86.
Bingo ... compared to OfficeMax and Staples, the are really pretty bad. Let them knock their own teeth out. I can honestly I have never purchased anything there. Besides, from what I can see on bottom right of their home page, and the following from Netcraft:
... they're pretty much in MS's pocket anyhow. Good riddance.
The site www.officedepot.com is running Microsoft-IIS/5.0 on Windows 2000