Well this all started with someone saying the format kicks arse and this is why the player kicks arse. I said this was a mute point because basically the format blows chunks (something your not disputing).
So the thread is on topic, because it's discussing one reason why the player does or does not suck arse. Your post was on article topic, just not on thread topic.
Although if it makes it better, I think the player sucks arse too;) Real, quicktime and winamp pretty much suck arse as well. mplayer is superior to all of the above IMHO. Honestly windows media player was fine circa v6 I believe, at which point it had all the functionality which it contains now that is actually relevant or wanted. Since version 6 they've just added bloat that is worthless and DRM.
If they were bundling v6 with windows I'd complain a bit on principle but wouldn't make nearly so much noise. I don't know if you remember an old windows program called ICQ, it was a similar story, about Icq98 they had a nice trim fully featured Instant Messanger with plugins for voice, video etc. Then AOL bought them out and they added bloat upon more bloat without a single additional feature of use...
fly fly away grammar and spelling trolls. If you would like to solicit my opinion by reading my posts you'll just have to live whatever I wish to say in them however I wish to say it.
What constitutes the OS is an entirely different matter. Dir is not part of the OS. The OS is the kernel. Everything else is an application sitting on top of the OS including dir and the media player.
What home desktop users do is irrelevant. Manually tinkering with the filesystem certainly makes the cut when you consider ALL users instead of just home users. The operating system need not include anything that isn't neccesarily to install the apps the user wishes to run, including a web browser and media player. Explorer.exe is a graphical counterpart to dir but there is no reason whatsoever it needs to share functionality to internet explorer. They are different functions.
Microsoft did NOT develop the concept of an operating system if that whats you mean. They didn't develope the concept of personal computers. They didn't develope the concept of operating systems for personal computers. They didn't develop the concept of a windowing system and graphical interface. They didn't develop the concept of a web browser. They didn't write the code that formed MS-DOS, they didn't write the code that formed NT, they didn't develope the concept of a media player. They didn't develope the concept of a terminal server, mail server, games, dialer, card games, command line, batch files, file system permissions, compression, acl's, networkable drives, web server, ftp server, text editor the list goes on and on.
The list of things that weren't microsoft's idea goes forward to encompase every concept and application you will find produced by Microsoft (not just all the ones in the operating system).
They invented... NONE of it. They innovated... NONE of it. They developed... NONE of it.
They may have written some fringe code themselves (not sure it can be proven microsoft itself has even written a line to be honest), but they certainly didn't write any of the core functionality.
Who knows it might be a mistake to say microsoft writes bad code, if they ever actually wrote some it might be pretty good stuff. But it's all theory until they do, for now I expect they'll continue to get it all via subcontracting and stealing the produce from business deals in which they screw the other party (*cough* NT *cough*).
dir is required to view a listing of files. An essential function to actually use the operating system and bundled applications along with any 3rd party software in pretty much any fashion at all.
A media player serves no vital function to the operation of the system whatsoever. It is needed for a small fraction of users a small fraction of the time. Even less so than a web browser.
"I know this goes against the grain of what most Slashdotters believe, but Microsoft is not a monopoly. A monopoly is a company that gets exclusive market rights from the government. The US Postal Service is a monopoly, because (IIRC) the US government forbids anyone from charging lower postage for first class mail within the US, for example."
Wrong, a government granted monopoly is only one type of monopoly, it's the specific type that is outright banned in the Constitution. A monopoly is any entity which has a large enough dominance in a market that it single handedly controls it to the exclusion of competition.
"Customers who aren't satisfied with Microsoft don't sue them. They simply switch to a better solution. Microsoft simply does not have the legal ability to force alternatives out of existence. They are not a legal monopoly."
Again, a monopoly need not have government backing. While it's true that microsoft cannot have it's competitors jailed and such, they have enough power to have laws passed to effectively eliminate competition. They have de facto supremecy. They can require stores carry only their product if they want to carry it at all. With 90+% of the market using their product that doesn't leave the stores a REAL chance of staying in business.
I agree governments should stop wasting money on lawyers. Simply pass a law dispersing microsoft and divying up the proceeds from all assets and cash holdings to the share holders and bill collectors. Much cheaper. Then start investing all that saved legal money into open source.
Yes aside from giving linux the opportunity to PROVE in a real production environment of continental scale that it's up to the task (something MS does NOT want to do, facts interfere with their fud), it would also in the same stroke drive home the danger of getting tied into a proprietary closed source vendor instead of open source.
This really wouldn't be as big a deal as you make out. It's not like existing copies and pc's would suddenly vanish having to be replaced instantly. When it comes time for an upgrade businesses and users would simply use linux instead of windows.
Actually I'm contemplating moving to europe. Capitalism in it's maturity is turning out to be another system that makes for a great ideal and is pure shit when played out to conclusion. Just like communism.
Maybe socialism like they have in europe IS the better way to go. Would it really be suprising to discover that just like virtually every other thing in creation, moderation is really the best answer?
Slap on the wrist? Absolutely nothing changed in any way about how they do business. They've handed out some coupons and free offers they'd been sent over the years and kept in the basement. Does that even qualify as a slap on the wrist?
I see your point. MOST people really seem to use the inferior solutions, like windows. I mean, MOST human beings are dumb as fucking cattle. Among them you find the MOST subset (MOST = dumb majority) using windows. And among them, MOST use windows media player.
So you see, we've distilled several steps to get the dumbest fucking human beings on earth... and their still the majority. Sad isn't it?
Cost of what? The price hp and dell pay is 99.9999% profit in MS's pocket. How much profit do you think it is when you buy an off the shelf copy for 10x that?
although it has nothing to do with the magic discs. I swore as an employee of sony I'd never tell anyone this if they didn't figure it out on their own. Sony's software which actually rips the songs and gives you the capability to transfer them to magic gate and sony portable players, limits you to "checking out" 5 copies of each song you rip. However, if you rip an identical song twice it considers it a different song.
heh, I doubt it would even pass that inquiry, we all know bill and steve run linux on their own machines.
They both have billions, surely you don't think the best their billions can buy is windows? I bet billyboy have a private copy of wine with a fully implemented win32 api and directx too;)
It is derived from Unix in every sense but actually using the same source code. It's a unix clone, or rather it's "based-on" a unix clone. So umm, what's your point?
I'll make it easier on you. If you want to name the kernel (the operating system), you call it "Linux". If you want to name the gui and other packages besides the kernel, but include all the stuff that came on the cd's you call it "X Linux Distribution", if you want to speak of any individual app that runs on the Linux operating system, possibly in conjunction with other applications included in your Linux distribution, you would name that application with it's given name. Be it GNU something or other, or X Windows, or whatever the case may be.
Some open source does not run on the linux operating system. And of course the terms GNU/Linux should never be used since that is the not the name the author of the operating system gave it.
I didn't know an apt repository counted as "Going to the store, picking any random title off the shelf". You have a limited selection of freely downloadable software. Yes it's easy to install, but it hardly qualifies as the answer for the user who wants to go to walmart and grab a title and know it's designed for their system without looking.
Slashdot Mirror
You think they spent 2yrs developing win2k? Dunno that might be pushing it, 2months, maybe i'd give ya. But 2yrs? come on.
I dunno, $17-$19 CANADIAN???
Well this all started with someone saying the format kicks arse and this is why the player kicks arse. I said this was a mute point because basically the format blows chunks (something your not disputing).
;) Real, quicktime and winamp pretty much suck arse as well. mplayer is superior to all of the above IMHO. Honestly windows media player was fine circa v6 I believe, at which point it had all the functionality which it contains now that is actually relevant or wanted. Since version 6 they've just added bloat that is worthless and DRM.
So the thread is on topic, because it's discussing one reason why the player does or does not suck arse. Your post was on article topic, just not on thread topic.
Although if it makes it better, I think the player sucks arse too
If they were bundling v6 with windows I'd complain a bit on principle but wouldn't make nearly so much noise. I don't know if you remember an old windows program called ICQ, it was a similar story, about Icq98 they had a nice trim fully featured Instant Messanger with plugins for voice, video etc. Then AOL bought them out and they added bloat upon more bloat without a single additional feature of use...
I wasn't talking about the app itself. I was talking about the WM video format.
fly fly away grammar and spelling trolls. If you would like to solicit my opinion by reading my posts you'll just have to live whatever I wish to say in them however I wish to say it.
What constitutes the OS is an entirely different matter. Dir is not part of the OS. The OS is the kernel. Everything else is an application sitting on top of the OS including dir and the media player.
What home desktop users do is irrelevant. Manually tinkering with the filesystem certainly makes the cut when you consider ALL users instead of just home users. The operating system need not include anything that isn't neccesarily to install the apps the user wishes to run, including a web browser and media player. Explorer.exe is a graphical counterpart to dir but there is no reason whatsoever it needs to share functionality to internet explorer. They are different functions.
Actually no, one might purchase bandwidth in socialist europe just like here in the capitalist US.
Yes do a little research for YOURSELF, on IBM and OS/2 and you'll find out who wrote NT.
Microsoft did NOT develop the concept of an operating system if that whats you mean. They didn't develope the concept of personal computers. They didn't develope the concept of operating systems for personal computers. They didn't develop the concept of a windowing system and graphical interface. They didn't develop the concept of a web browser. They didn't write the code that formed MS-DOS, they didn't write the code that formed NT, they didn't develope the concept of a media player. They didn't develope the concept of a terminal server, mail server, games, dialer, card games, command line, batch files, file system permissions, compression, acl's, networkable drives, web server, ftp server, text editor the list goes on and on.
The list of things that weren't microsoft's idea goes forward to encompase every concept and application you will find produced by Microsoft (not just all the ones in the operating system).
They invented... NONE of it. They innovated... NONE of it. They developed... NONE of it.
They may have written some fringe code themselves (not sure it can be proven microsoft itself has even written a line to be honest), but they certainly didn't write any of the core functionality.
Who knows it might be a mistake to say microsoft writes bad code, if they ever actually wrote some it might be pretty good stuff. But it's all theory until they do, for now I expect they'll continue to get it all via subcontracting and stealing the produce from business deals in which they screw the other party (*cough* NT *cough*).
dir is required to view a listing of files. An essential function to actually use the operating system and bundled applications along with any 3rd party software in pretty much any fashion at all.
A media player serves no vital function to the operation of the system whatsoever. It is needed for a small fraction of users a small fraction of the time. Even less so than a web browser.
For the last time, legal compulsion is not required for a monopoly. Their market share IS de facto compulsion.
"I know this goes against the grain of what most Slashdotters believe, but Microsoft is not a monopoly. A monopoly is a company that gets exclusive market rights from the government. The US Postal Service is a monopoly, because (IIRC) the US government forbids anyone from charging lower postage for first class mail within the US, for example."
Wrong, a government granted monopoly is only one type of monopoly, it's the specific type that is outright banned in the Constitution. A monopoly is any entity which has a large enough dominance in a market that it single handedly controls it to the exclusion of competition.
"Customers who aren't satisfied with Microsoft don't sue them. They simply switch to a better solution. Microsoft simply does not have the legal ability to force alternatives out of existence. They are not a legal monopoly."
Again, a monopoly need not have government backing. While it's true that microsoft cannot have it's competitors jailed and such, they have enough power to have laws passed to effectively eliminate competition. They have de facto supremecy. They can require stores carry only their product if they want to carry it at all. With 90+% of the market using their product that doesn't leave the stores a REAL chance of staying in business.
I agree governments should stop wasting money on lawyers. Simply pass a law dispersing microsoft and divying up the proceeds from all assets and cash holdings to the share holders and bill collectors. Much cheaper. Then start investing all that saved legal money into open source.
Yes aside from giving linux the opportunity to PROVE in a real production environment of continental scale that it's up to the task (something MS does NOT want to do, facts interfere with their fud), it would also in the same stroke drive home the danger of getting tied into a proprietary closed source vendor instead of open source.
This really wouldn't be as big a deal as you make out. It's not like existing copies and pc's would suddenly vanish having to be replaced instantly. When it comes time for an upgrade businesses and users would simply use linux instead of windows.
Actually I'm contemplating moving to europe. Capitalism in it's maturity is turning out to be another system that makes for a great ideal and is pure shit when played out to conclusion. Just like communism.
Maybe socialism like they have in europe IS the better way to go. Would it really be suprising to discover that just like virtually every other thing in creation, moderation is really the best answer?
Slap on the wrist? Absolutely nothing changed in any way about how they do business. They've handed out some coupons and free offers they'd been sent over the years and kept in the basement. Does that even qualify as a slap on the wrist?
I see your point. MOST people really seem to use the inferior solutions, like windows. I mean, MOST human beings are dumb as fucking cattle. Among them you find the MOST subset (MOST = dumb majority) using windows. And among them, MOST use windows media player.
So you see, we've distilled several steps to get the dumbest fucking human beings on earth... and their still the majority. Sad isn't it?
Cost of what? The price hp and dell pay is 99.9999% profit in MS's pocket. How much profit do you think it is when you buy an off the shelf copy for 10x that?
I have, it sucks arse. Windows media video is shit played locally, let alone streamed.
Nope only for anyone who owns an illegal monopoly and wants to use it to gain yet more monopolies.
although it has nothing to do with the magic discs. I swore as an employee of sony I'd never tell anyone this if they didn't figure it out on their own. Sony's software which actually rips the songs and gives you the capability to transfer them to magic gate and sony portable players, limits you to "checking out" 5 copies of each song you rip. However, if you rip an identical song twice it considers it a different song.
Hardly what I'd call effective DRM.
heh, I doubt it would even pass that inquiry, we all know bill and steve run linux on their own machines.
;)
They both have billions, surely you don't think the best their billions can buy is windows? I bet billyboy have a private copy of wine with a fully implemented win32 api and directx too
It is derived from Unix in every sense but actually using the same source code. It's a unix clone, or rather it's "based-on" a unix clone. So umm, what's your point?
I'll make it easier on you. If you want to name the kernel (the operating system), you call it "Linux". If you want to name the gui and other packages besides the kernel, but include all the stuff that came on the cd's you call it "X Linux Distribution", if you want to speak of any individual app that runs on the Linux operating system, possibly in conjunction with other applications included in your Linux distribution, you would name that application with it's given name. Be it GNU something or other, or X Windows, or whatever the case may be.
Some open source does not run on the linux operating system. And of course the terms GNU/Linux should never be used since that is the not the name the author of the operating system gave it.
I didn't know an apt repository counted as "Going to the store, picking any random title off the shelf". You have a limited selection of freely downloadable software. Yes it's easy to install, but it hardly qualifies as the answer for the user who wants to go to walmart and grab a title and know it's designed for their system without looking.