Gates's main argument here is basically "if you make a clone of one of our programs, it becomes impossible to keep our code out of your program."
Yeah, I remember that time that I made that clone of IE, and then Gates himself showed up at my home, pointed a gun at my head, and forced me to copy and paste code right from IE into my browser. Right...
Last time I checked, it's not illegal for two programs to do the same thing, while having absolutely no code in common.
Let's think about this, anyway: how the hell does MS code get put into linux? MS's code is closed, we can't access it. I bet Linux gets a lot of kernel patches coming from billg@microsoft.com. On the other hand, Linux code is open, you can see all of it, if you want. It would be trivially easy for some coder at MS to see some linux code, and put it into windows without anybody noticing.
If there is any overlapping code in both linux and windows, it's far, FAR more likely that MS stole it from linux, not the other way around. It's also possible that they both came from BSD.
Every time I've ever used it, on any number of distros, it drops frames like a mofo and segfaults every opportunity that it gets... plus, the UI is UGLY. I'll take mplayer over xine anyday.
No, the trick is to actually read the docs and have an idea of what you are doing. And no, rpm -i *.rpm doesn't qualify.
I've compiled mplayer from source before, and as far as I'm concerned, it's one of the bigger PITAs out there. 'rpm -i *.rpm' has always been the easiest way to install mplayer.
I'm talking about the driver that comes with X 4.3 (as far as I know, it does). It's called 'radeon'.
It's accelerated, in the sense that the 3d opengl screensavers that come with xscreensaver run quickly, but I've never bothered to try playing 3d games with it.
Xine and Mplayer are great, if you can get them to work.
Xine is t3h suck.:)
Mplayer is great, it's managed to play everything I've ever thrown at it.
The trick to installing mplayer is to use an RPM-based distro (RedHat 9 has worked really well for me), then download all the RPMs that their website tells you to. You need the base package, gui, and all the codecs and stuff. Then just 'rpm -i *.rpm' them, and there you go. If you're like me with a radeon card, make sure you're using X 4.3 with the radeon driver loaded (vesa driver is evil), and mplayer should be using the 'xv' output.
For those not in the know, here are some reasons why mplayer kicks WMP's ass:
- sane key bindings. WMP's keybindings are all CTRL + this or SHIFT + that. I've always found it unintuitive; it's like the normal keys have already been used, so they have to resort to using the CTRL key. In mplayer, 'p' is pause, 'f' is fullscreen, etc. It's very simple.
- easy rewind/fast forward. WMP makes you fiddle with the mouse clicking on the stupid progress meter, mplayer lets you easily skip ahead and back with the arrow keys (not that you can't fiddle with a graphical progress bar if you feel like it).
- more codecs. I can use mplayer to watch *everything* that I download; whereas on Windows you need WMP for some files, realplayer, quicktime, WinDVD, and a few others just to have all files covered.
- support of corrupted files. If I download a movie with bittorrent, but I only get 99%, mplayer can play the file (with just a couple skips and jumps from missing pieces), while WMP will just barf and not play the file at all.
I think mplayer is one of the pinnacles of open source development, right up there with Apache and Mozilla.
the Mozilla mailer is the first one to have separate folders for trash and junk.
Oh, it's even better. The icon for junk mail is quite clearly a recycle bin, so you know those tree-hugging hippies over at Mozilla are really thinking about the environment:)
I wonder if this would me more or less expensive than a traditional bicycle? I usually try not to pay more than $200 (CDN) for a bike, because they always get stolen (even if they're locked up... those bastards).
Since bamboo is so plentiful, I hope this would be uber-cheap. It would be great if I could ride around on a $15 bicycle... I wouldn't really care if it got stolen, but then again, nobody would really want to steal it if they knew how cheap it was...:)
Well, I have a 1.4GHz Athlon with 512 MBs of RAM, and Mozilla seems fine to me. I guess it's that last 100 MHz that really makes a difference...:)
Actually, the latest 1.4 was really speedy, relative to 1.3 at least. I admit that mozilla is one of the slower browsers, but every release is faster than the previous one, in my experience anyway. I haven't tried this one yet, but I'm about to.
A week? Jesus christ! I use the blades for at least a month! I don't change the blades until it starts hurting to shave with the things.
Oh, and while I'm on the topic of Gillette razor blades, can anybody explain to me why the eight pack of blades is more expensive than 2 four packs?
Also, the razors themselves come with blades. I've never bothered to figure it out, but I suspect that it might be cheaper per blade to just buy the razor, instead of buying a 4-pack of blades. That would be terrible, treating a $10 razor like a disposable razor.
One reason MS appears to have so many more bugs is that their OS includes a lot more components that are thought of as part of the OS.
That's the biggest load of hooey I've ever heard.
First of all, it is easily demonstrable that any open source distro has more reported bugs than MS Windows. This is for a number of reasons:
1. A Linux distro comes with so much more than a windows install does (windows comes with IE, linux comes with mozilla, galeon, konqueror; linux comes with koffice, abiword, openoffice, windows doesn't; etc etc etc. There's a reason that debian is 8+ CDs and Windows is 1 CD).
2. The whole bit about the code being open and easier to scrutinize, thus easier to find and report the existing bugs. The openness also makes it easier to fix the bugs.
How many times does RMS have to tell you. IT'S GNU/linux.
Watch Revolution OS. Linus clearly states that the idea of taking Linux and calling it GNU/Linux is "ridiculous".
Personally, I'm neutral on the subject. Yes, Stallman did a lot of work and deserves credit for GNU. On the other hand, 'linux' is simply the popular term used to describe a GNU system running the Linux kernel. Stallman wants to call it GNU/Linux, and Linus thinks is silly to waste time arguing about it. I sort of agree with both of them -- GNU/Linux is a good name, but convincing the entire world to stop calling it 'linux' is a waste of time.
And BTW, the kernel is just 'Linux', no matter what. RMS only insists on GNU/Linux when you're talking about the whole system, not just the kernel.
Slashdot Mirror
Gates's main argument here is basically "if you make a clone of one of our programs, it becomes impossible to keep our code out of your program."
Yeah, I remember that time that I made that clone of IE, and then Gates himself showed up at my home, pointed a gun at my head, and forced me to copy and paste code right from IE into my browser. Right...
Last time I checked, it's not illegal for two programs to do the same thing, while having absolutely no code in common.
Let's think about this, anyway: how the hell does MS code get put into linux? MS's code is closed, we can't access it. I bet Linux gets a lot of kernel patches coming from billg@microsoft.com. On the other hand, Linux code is open, you can see all of it, if you want. It would be trivially easy for some coder at MS to see some linux code, and put it into windows without anybody noticing.
If there is any overlapping code in both linux and windows, it's far, FAR more likely that MS stole it from linux, not the other way around. It's also possible that they both came from BSD.
IMHO one of the best open source projects around
Every time I've ever used it, on any number of distros, it drops frames like a mofo and segfaults every opportunity that it gets... plus, the UI is UGLY. I'll take mplayer over xine anyday.
No, the trick is to actually read the docs and have an idea of what you are
doing. And no, rpm -i *.rpm doesn't qualify.
I've compiled mplayer from source before, and as far as I'm concerned, it's one of the bigger PITAs out there. 'rpm -i *.rpm' has always been the easiest way to install mplayer.
I'm talking about the driver that comes with X 4.3 (as far as I know, it does). It's called 'radeon'.
It's accelerated, in the sense that the 3d opengl screensavers that come with xscreensaver run quickly, but I've never bothered to try playing 3d games with it.
Xine and Mplayer are great, if you can get them to work.
:)
Xine is t3h suck.
Mplayer is great, it's managed to play everything I've ever thrown at it.
The trick to installing mplayer is to use an RPM-based distro (RedHat 9 has worked really well for me), then download all the RPMs that their website tells you to. You need the base package, gui, and all the codecs and stuff. Then just 'rpm -i *.rpm' them, and there you go. If you're like me with a radeon card, make sure you're using X 4.3 with the radeon driver loaded (vesa driver is evil), and mplayer should be using the 'xv' output.
For those not in the know, here are some reasons why mplayer kicks WMP's ass:
- sane key bindings. WMP's keybindings are all CTRL + this or SHIFT + that. I've always found it unintuitive; it's like the normal keys have already been used, so they have to resort to using the CTRL key. In mplayer, 'p' is pause, 'f' is fullscreen, etc. It's very simple.
- easy rewind/fast forward. WMP makes you fiddle with the mouse clicking on the stupid progress meter, mplayer lets you easily skip ahead and back with the arrow keys (not that you can't fiddle with a graphical progress bar if you feel like it).
- more codecs. I can use mplayer to watch *everything* that I download; whereas on Windows you need WMP for some files, realplayer, quicktime, WinDVD, and a few others just to have all files covered.
- support of corrupted files. If I download a movie with bittorrent, but I only get 99%, mplayer can play the file (with just a couple skips and jumps from missing pieces), while WMP will just barf and not play the file at all.
I think mplayer is one of the pinnacles of open source development, right up there with Apache and Mozilla.
the Mozilla mailer is the first one to have separate folders for trash and junk.
:)
Oh, it's even better. The icon for junk mail is quite clearly a recycle bin, so you know those tree-hugging hippies over at Mozilla are really thinking about the environment
I wonder if this would me more or less expensive than a traditional bicycle? I usually try not to pay more than $200 (CDN) for a bike, because they always get stolen (even if they're locked up... those bastards).
:)
Since bamboo is so plentiful, I hope this would be uber-cheap. It would be great if I could ride around on a $15 bicycle... I wouldn't really care if it got stolen, but then again, nobody would really want to steal it if they knew how cheap it was...
That's what I thought, too, but what's with the color choices? Normally, red means bad and green means good. But in this case, it's the opposite.
Or am I missing something?
France bans left turns.
In Germany, you are no longer allowed to stand up.
Italy has illegalized the wearing of clothes on Teusdays.
Kon't Kou Kust Kate Kt Khen Kll Khe Ktupid Kords Ktart Kith K?
Email containing words with your name in it, or words relating to your life or work, would be given a higher probability of being called spam.
:)
Gee, I hope not
their IP is no longer a secret, but which IP rightfully belongs to Linux and which is SCO's is the secret :)
Seems faster to me.
The tarball was smaller...
That is all.
Well, I have a 1.4GHz Athlon with 512 MBs of RAM, and Mozilla seems fine to me. I guess it's that last 100 MHz that really makes a difference... :)
Actually, the latest 1.4 was really speedy, relative to 1.3 at least. I admit that mozilla is one of the slower browsers, but every release is faster than the previous one, in my experience anyway. I haven't tried this one yet, but I'm about to.
Why do I infringe on copyrights? Because it makes me feel good knowing that my actions are helping to bring down drug kingpins around the world!
A week? Jesus christ! I use the blades for at least a month! I don't change the blades until it starts hurting to shave with the things.
Oh, and while I'm on the topic of Gillette razor blades, can anybody explain to me why the eight pack of blades is more expensive than 2 four packs?
Also, the razors themselves come with blades. I've never bothered to figure it out, but I suspect that it might be cheaper per blade to just buy the razor, instead of buying a 4-pack of blades. That would be terrible, treating a $10 razor like a disposable razor.
More and more of a problem as Linux development is locked into BK.
I can download a tarball of the kernel source, and I don't need BitKeeper to view it, edit it, redistribute it, etc. How are we being locked in?
Worst case scenario; Linus gets fed up with the license, checks his source out of BitKeeper and checks it into CVS or something else.
Linux is probably the reason the vast majority of Slashdot readers have even heard of BitKeeper.
I was under the impression that Linus was the only person using BitKeeper.
Would anybody care to enlighten me -- what exactly is it that BitKeeper does that CVS (etc) don't?
You seem to be forgetting one thing: Red Hat is not Linux. Red Hat is but one of many distributions of Linux.
SuSE and Mandrake will still have boxed sets on the shelves for people to buy.
He's linked to the old screenshots! I won't rest until this guy is Score -1, Uninformative
:)
Would you settle for -1, Informative?
Just
a note, in junior high, a vice principle tried to break up a fight. He got
tossed out of a second floor window for his trouble.
Makes me glad to be Canadian. You see, it's very difficult to built igloos more than one storey high, so most schools only have the one floor.
In copyright infringement, the victim has no less after the crime than before.
I think you mean 'after the infringement than before.'
I truly get tired of the 'remove IE' comments. IE is just a browser that uses the HTML engine in Windows - PERIOD.
I guess it's settled, then. A bug in IE is a bug in Windows.
One reason MS appears to have so many more bugs is that their OS includes a lot more components that are thought of as part of the OS.
That's the biggest load of hooey I've ever heard.
First of all, it is easily demonstrable that any open source distro has more reported bugs than MS Windows. This is for a number of reasons:
1. A Linux distro comes with so much more than a windows install does (windows comes with IE, linux comes with mozilla, galeon, konqueror; linux comes with koffice, abiword, openoffice, windows doesn't; etc etc etc. There's a reason that debian is 8+ CDs and Windows is 1 CD).
2. The whole bit about the code being open and easier to scrutinize, thus easier to find and report the existing bugs. The openness also makes it easier to fix the bugs.
How many times does RMS have to tell you. IT'S GNU/linux.
Watch Revolution OS. Linus clearly states that the idea of taking Linux and calling it GNU/Linux is "ridiculous".
Personally, I'm neutral on the subject. Yes, Stallman did a lot of work and deserves credit for GNU. On the other hand, 'linux' is simply the popular term used to describe a GNU system running the Linux kernel. Stallman wants to call it GNU/Linux, and Linus thinks is silly to waste time arguing about it. I sort of agree with both of them -- GNU/Linux is a good name, but convincing the entire world to stop calling it 'linux' is a waste of time.
And BTW, the kernel is just 'Linux', no matter what. RMS only insists on GNU/Linux when you're talking about the whole system, not just the kernel.