For DVD playback? No, you will not get libdvdcss2 (the library required to play DVDs in Ubuntu) by any standard means in Ubuntu, because it is illegal in the US according to the idiotic DMCA. So, no, you will have to jump through the standard hoops (Automatic/3rd party repositories/etc) to get DVD playback.
DVD playback is a huge problem for Linux. Until they figure out a way to fix it, it will be the #1 obstacle to linux adoption on the desktop.
It all depends on the effort required to switch to new software. Switching to a new web browser is easy. But what if switching involves significant effort? Then it makes sense to stick with software that you know you will be able to modify as you see fit (or have someone else do it).
For example, I know that I rely on several Firefox add-ons to manage my information and tasks. It would take significant effort to move my stuff to something else. I know that, if FireFox decides to kill all add-ons in the next release, someone will instantly be able to fork it, so that I don't have to choose between staying with an outdated FireFox or keeping my crucial add-ons.
Suppose Opera had similar functionality. Suppose I was using Opera for the same purposes, and one day Opera kills them all. Then I am left in the cold.
The same thing is what happened to many people with the iTunes 7 update mentioned above. The FOSS community chose DAAP as their streaming protocol, and built software around it. Then hostile forces at Apple decided to update DAAP in a way to render it non-functional with the FOSS software. Users of said FOSS software had to choose with staying with iTunes 6 or leaving the FOSS software behind.
So, it all depends on your needs. It pays to be farsighted sometimes.
...until that best tool for the job forces an upgrade/remove features/breaks compatibility with other stuff that you need. Then you realize that, shit, you should have stuck with the FOSS tools to begin with.
When would this happen in the real world? Am I just theorizing? TryiTunes'supgrade from 6 to 7.
This is only partly true. I am not a big fan of mono (I always make sure not to install anything depending on it); however, it seems that only the parts not submitted for standardization (ASP.NET etc) are liable to patent claims. The other parts, if they are approved as standards, will be non-patentable.
Unfortunately for mono, the parts that could be liable to patent claims are the parts that allow Windows interoperability. Given that interoperability is the chief claim to fame of.net, this seriously reduced the attractiveness of this platform.
The base technologies submitted to the ECMA, and therefore also the Unix/Gnome-specific parts, may be non-problematic. The concerns primarily relate to technologies developed by Microsoft on top of the.NET Framework, such as ASP.NET, ADO.NET and Windows Forms, i.e. parts composing Mono's Windows compatibility stack. These technologies are today not fully implemented in Mono and not required for developing Mono-applications. Not providing a patented capability would weaken the interoperability, but it would still provide the free software / open source software community with good development tools, which is the primary reason for developing Mono. This has been summed up by Richard Stallman[5]:
Mono is a free implementation of Microsoft's language C#. Microsoft has declared itself our enemy and we know that Microsoft is getting patents on some features of C#. So I think it's dangerous to use C#, and it may be dangerous to use Mono. There's nothing wrong with Mono. Mono is a free implementation of a language that users use. It's good to provide free implementations. We should have free implementations of every language. But, depending on it is dangerous, and we better not do that.
Nice job linking to an unconfirmed bug. How do we know this isn't your fubared hardware causing this problem? And based on your sample of one you conclude that all folks with laptops should avoid Feisty? That's a load of bull.
Feisty has worked fine on my laptop for one month since I installed the beta release. These people work very hard testing the kernel on many different systems, including laptops.
Pretty soon yahoo and such will move from storing their ads on ads.yahoo/com/ad/ad.jpg to yahoo.com/$RANDOMSTRING.jpg. That way you won't be able to block them using filters unless you also want to block all images from that site. Which would be kind of annoying, especially if they stored their email interface graphics in the same format.
Hasn't happened yet though... six years ago when I started blocking ads I thought it would become inevitable.
If there weren't comments like this for Vista, that would imply it is a better operating system. If there are as many comments like this for Vista as there were for XP, then that would imply that Vista is as good. If there are many, many, many more comments like this for Vista than there were for XP or 2000, then that implies that Vista is a far, far, far worse operating system.
Agreed. Looking at the comments on the compiz forum, it seems that compiz will stay compiz and the Beryl brand will be destroyed, to be replaced with whatever they decide on when they merge compiz-extras and beryl. This is too bad. Beryl had (a) a cool mineral-themed branding [beryl/emerald] (b) a fast capable development team (c) strong dedication to GPL licensing and (d) was basically responsible for much of at least my excitement around 3D window managers with their outstanding plugins. And (e) their settings manager was always the better one as well.
Then what happens? They come up with an agreement that destroys the Beryl brand and remerges essentially back into compiz? If they are in their right minds, they will at least insist on keeping the beryl name.
I would gladly pay $1.50 for DRM-free Lossless-encoded tracks, though. One day they will offer that format too. Why else create yet another Lossless codec?
Right. Why don't people here on mention the fact that the DMCA safe harbor clause specifically says that the infringing entity must not gain financially to qualify for safe harbor? Check it out for yourselves on this DMCA faq right here:
The service provider must not gain any financial benefit that is attributable to the infringing material. [512(c)(1)(B)], [512(d)(2)].
I hate the DMCA. I hate the copyright cartel. However, the DMCA is on the cartel's side here. Google is in trouble, because they are in fact gaining financially through the copyright violation. Their only hope is to somehow argue that "financial gain" in the DMCA means only "selling the copyrighted material," which is far-fetched.
The problem is that he told the newbie to use Synaptic at all. Synaptic is not the right tool for newbies. This is the mistake experts make when trying to "help" their friends learn Linux: they tell their friends how to do things the complicated way, and then when their friends can't figure it out, they conclude that linux isn't ready for prime time.
The proper way for a newbie to install software is Add/Remove programs right off the ubuntu menu... just like in fracking Windows, for Pete's sake.
Re:Does Vista have anything we need?
on
Is Vista a Trap?
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· Score: 1
OK, well how long until someone comes up with software that modifies Direct X 10 or XP (or both) so that Direct X 10 can be installed and run on Windows XP? Or is there some kind of insurmountable barrier that prevents Direct X 10 from even theoretically running on XP?
How about sharing your playlists over the network, eh? It looks like you'll have to build amarok from SVN to kinda sorta get it to work.
This, and database-like support for querying song tags, is why iTunes still rules all. Too bad it's closed-source.
I would really like to use iTunes in Ubuntu
Pfft. Amarok beats everything. The only things it can't do is update your iPod firmware and download stuff from iTMS.
Er, C is in "limited use?" How about all of GNU software, the linux kernel, and all of GNOME, which are written in C (not C++ or anything else), and even large parts of Apple's OS X Darwin kernel?
Regarding multicore CPUs, there already plenty of parallelization packages linkable directly into C (e.g. the various MPI implementations). All you have to do is structure your for loops to make use of it. Once you do that, you can run each iteration of the loop on a separate core via MPI or something similar, thus fantastically improving your code execution time and making full use of all your cores.
Heck, with your OS's built-in threading calls, you can do this even without MPI, as long as you can make your for loops thread-safe. Interestingly, OS X does this all the time---in Activity Monitor you can see the number of threads your processes have spawned. The kernel usually has the most, and iTunes, iMovies, etc usually have a few as well. Expect this number to go up when cpus with dozens of cores come out. And, of course, linux has the same functionality, though I've seen fewer linux apps that actually make significant use of multiple threads. They'll come soon, as long as the GNOME, etc. authors
Well, programming languages come and go...of course, some of the "classics" are still in limited use (cobol, Pascal, C) but for the most part programming languages go the way of the dodo eventually.
I would imagine that if these new multi-multi core procs are released into the wild in mass numbers, new programming languages will be developed that will enable things to be done more efficiently and easier....or perhaps a hybrid language: One half of the language is for writing processes for individual cores, while the other half acts as a "hub"....or even better, say you have 16 cores, and then one "central" core that acts like a post office...it doesn't actually create any of the mail, it just makes sure it gets delivered to the correct place.
There is no way that the hardware would advance without the programming ability to back it up
I'm surpised no one has mentioned gnome-app-install. At least from Ubuntu Edgy (and I'm pretty sure Dapper too), I can select "Add/Remove Software..." from the main menu, and it pretty much is a one-step process to getting the software installed. Pretty nice menu, see other users' ratings, navigate categories: it has everything but screenshots (which I think would be a nice addition, by the way).
The only potentially confusing part is that it offers you KDE apps for install, which means (if you're running default Ubuntu) that all those KDE libraries will get installed the first time around, leaving you to wonder why you're downloading a 100MB text editor...
Anyway, from the command line you can run it via gnome-app-install.
Sarcasm well taken, but it seriously is amazing how little Yahoo has bothered to evolve since, oh, about 1999. I can bear text ads but I cannot stand graphical ones. I started using adblock on Yahoo (with my own rules) as soon as it came out (was it around 2002?). And that was with phenomenal success---I blocked all incoming ads with about 15 minutes worth of detective work. Back then I figured it'd only be a few months till they figure it out; and then they will somehow block the blocking. Guess what, five years later I'm still blocking all their ads. Not that I visit their site that often anymore---GMail is my default mail account now.
Here's a few reasons why noone should use Yahoo as their mail system:
Messages dated to the year 2038 appear in my Inbox rather than getting filtered to Bulk Mail. Huh? Isn't date filtering the most obvious filtering you can do? Turns out you have to pay $20/yr for their "best" Spam filter.
You still have to pay $20/yr for POP access. GMail is free.
You get 1GB of space, and have to pay $20/yr for 2. GMail has almost 3GB for free.
Graphical and flash ads are plentiful in Yahoo mail. You have to pay $20/yr to rid yourself of them. GMail has text ads only.
Don't even get me started on GMail vs. Yahoo maps. Or GCal vs. Yahoo Calendar.
Yahoo are not innovating; they are riding the pure inertia of their 1996 early start.
Oh, here's a word for those of you who are moaning about unethical users blocking ads: some of us are truly incapable of tuning out obnoxious banners and flash animations. It realy ruins our internet experience. Don't worry. The sheep will always be there to provide you with advertising revenue. As for the rest of us, if you want to win us over, use text ads only. You will get many more clicks from us, that's for sure.
But Apple says Yahoo mail is the best and they even included it on their new phone. Everyone knows Jobs wouldn't lead us astray.
Here's a very good article from Slate discussing this point in detail. It is quite well written, and despite being a Harry fan myself, I really have to say it highlights the things that bother me about Rowling's writing. What's neat about the article is that it takes the viewpoint of someone who is enamoured of the world Rowling created, but not of Harry himself.
My biggest issue with Harry Potter series is that it depicts the protagonist as one who has no genius, is not hard-working by any standards, has bigotry - in short - an absolutely average person.
No. The fan speeds do not change, and there is no change (relative to the default enon-nvclocked state) even when I manually set the fans continuously to their maximum setting using i8kfan.
Those drivers are out. And yes, somewhere in an obscure forum post on nvnewst.net ( a post that I can no longer find, by the way), they said they were considering enabling mobile powermizer/coolbits in the 9xxx drivers. They have not done so. I am running the 9625 drivers and there is no Coolbits and no powermizer on my laptop. And they don't have it in 9631 either.
I heard back in March/April or so that NVidia was planning on enabling CoolBits for mobile GPUs on Linux some time during the 9x.xx series of drivers, which I don't believe are out for Linux yet. (Nope, looks like 87.76 is the latest...)
This has been a big complaint of mine for a long time. We all know that under Windows, NVidia has had this PowerMizer thing that allows you to lower GPU power consumption. And we all know about Coolbits, which allows you to over/underclock your GPU in both Windows and desktop linux.
Now here's the thing. Both Coolbits and PowerMizer are disabled for mobile GPUs under Linux. So when you're not needing full 3D performance, that NVidia card is sitting there sucking up your laptop battery power. Might as well load up Beryl and go nuts.
Oh, and nvclock does not work on all GPUs. My mobile QuadroFX GPU, for example, seems particularly immune to it. When I run it nvclock seems to think it is underclocking my GPU, but I see no effects whatsoever---no reduction in the GPU temperature, for example, which is constantly sitting at 85C. Any other suggestions?
I keep on hearing about how bad the binary linux ATI drivers for linux are, but hey, at least they've got their PowerPlay (GPU downthrottler) thing working in Linux. Maybe for my next laptop I'll consider an ATI card.
Maybe that's true in Nova Scotia, but not everywhere else in Canada. In British Columbia you actually have to pay a premium to the province in addition to your taxes. If your income is $0 your premium is $0 but it goes up as your income goes up. Plus no medications are covered under the plan. So you also have to shell out extra for a private plan which does cover them.
I don't understand. Doesn't your employer require your family to be enrolled under you in order for you to give them the group benefits?
Here in BC I've got my family under my provincial health care and the employer group plan. I'm pretty sure the employer group plan (which covers medications) requires my dependents to be registered at the provincial level under me.
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For DVD playback? No, you will not get libdvdcss2 (the library required to play DVDs in Ubuntu) by any standard means in Ubuntu, because it is illegal in the US according to the idiotic DMCA. So, no, you will have to jump through the standard hoops (Automatic/3rd party repositories/etc) to get DVD playback.
DVD playback is a huge problem for Linux. Until they figure out a way to fix it, it will be the #1 obstacle to linux adoption on the desktop.
It all depends on the effort required to switch to new software. Switching to a new web browser is easy. But what if switching involves significant effort? Then it makes sense to stick with software that you know you will be able to modify as you see fit (or have someone else do it).
For example, I know that I rely on several Firefox add-ons to manage my information and tasks. It would take significant effort to move my stuff to something else. I know that, if FireFox decides to kill all add-ons in the next release, someone will instantly be able to fork it, so that I don't have to choose between staying with an outdated FireFox or keeping my crucial add-ons.
Suppose Opera had similar functionality. Suppose I was using Opera for the same purposes, and one day Opera kills them all. Then I am left in the cold.
The same thing is what happened to many people with the iTunes 7 update mentioned above. The FOSS community chose DAAP as their streaming protocol, and built software around it. Then hostile forces at Apple decided to update DAAP in a way to render it non-functional with the FOSS software. Users of said FOSS software had to choose with staying with iTunes 6 or leaving the FOSS software behind.
So, it all depends on your needs. It pays to be farsighted sometimes.
...until that best tool for the job forces an upgrade/remove features/breaks compatibility with other stuff that you need. Then you realize that, shit, you should have stuck with the FOSS tools to begin with.
When would this happen in the real world? Am I just theorizing? Try iTunes's upgrade from 6 to 7.
Unfortunately for mono, the parts that could be liable to patent claims are the parts that allow Windows interoperability. Given that interoperability is the chief claim to fame of
From wikipedia:
Nice job linking to an unconfirmed bug. How do we know this isn't your fubared hardware causing this problem? And based on your sample of one you conclude that all folks with laptops should avoid Feisty? That's a load of bull.
Feisty has worked fine on my laptop for one month since I installed the beta release. These people work very hard testing the kernel on many different systems, including laptops.
Pretty soon yahoo and such will move from storing their ads on ads.yahoo/com/ad/ad.jpg to yahoo.com/$RANDOMSTRING.jpg. That way you won't be able to block them using filters unless you also want to block all images from that site. Which would be kind of annoying, especially if they stored their email interface graphics in the same format.
Hasn't happened yet though... six years ago when I started blocking ads I thought it would become inevitable.
If there weren't comments like this for Vista, that would imply it is a better operating system. If there are as many comments like this for Vista as there were for XP, then that would imply that Vista is as good. If there are many, many, many more comments like this for Vista than there were for XP or 2000, then that implies that Vista is a far, far, far worse operating system.
Agreed. Looking at the comments on the compiz forum, it seems that compiz will stay compiz and the Beryl brand will be destroyed, to be replaced with whatever they decide on when they merge compiz-extras and beryl. This is too bad. Beryl had (a) a cool mineral-themed branding [beryl/emerald] (b) a fast capable development team (c) strong dedication to GPL licensing and (d) was basically responsible for much of at least my excitement around 3D window managers with their outstanding plugins. And (e) their settings manager was always the better one as well.
Then what happens? They come up with an agreement that destroys the Beryl brand and remerges essentially back into compiz? If they are in their right minds, they will at least insist on keeping the beryl name.
I would gladly pay $1.50 for DRM-free Lossless-encoded tracks, though. One day they will offer that format too. Why else create yet another Lossless codec?
The problem is that he told the newbie to use Synaptic at all. Synaptic is not the right tool for newbies. This is the mistake experts make when trying to "help" their friends learn Linux: they tell their friends how to do things the complicated way, and then when their friends can't figure it out, they conclude that linux isn't ready for prime time.
The proper way for a newbie to install software is Add/Remove programs right off the ubuntu menu... just like in fracking Windows, for Pete's sake.
OK, well how long until someone comes up with software that modifies Direct X 10 or XP (or both) so that Direct X 10 can be installed and run on Windows XP? Or is there some kind of insurmountable barrier that prevents Direct X 10 from even theoretically running on XP?
Cat ate my post.
meant to say...as long as GNOME authors can make the necessary revisions.
Regarding multicore CPUs, there already plenty of parallelization packages linkable directly into C (e.g. the various MPI implementations). All you have to do is structure your for loops to make use of it. Once you do that, you can run each iteration of the loop on a separate core via MPI or something similar, thus fantastically improving your code execution time and making full use of all your cores.
Heck, with your OS's built-in threading calls, you can do this even without MPI, as long as you can make your for loops thread-safe. Interestingly, OS X does this all the time---in Activity Monitor you can see the number of threads your processes have spawned. The kernel usually has the most, and iTunes, iMovies, etc usually have a few as well. Expect this number to go up when cpus with dozens of cores come out. And, of course, linux has the same functionality, though I've seen fewer linux apps that actually make significant use of multiple threads. They'll come soon, as long as the GNOME, etc. authors
Well, programming languages come and go...of course, some of the "classics" are still in limited use (cobol, Pascal, C) but for the most part programming languages go the way of the dodo eventually.
I would imagine that if these new multi-multi core procs are released into the wild in mass numbers, new programming languages will be developed that will enable things to be done more efficiently and easier....or perhaps a hybrid language: One half of the language is for writing processes for individual cores, while the other half acts as a "hub"....or even better, say you have 16 cores, and then one "central" core that acts like a post office...it doesn't actually create any of the mail, it just makes sure it gets delivered to the correct place.
There is no way that the hardware would advance without the programming ability to back it up
I'm surpised no one has mentioned gnome-app-install. At least from Ubuntu Edgy (and I'm pretty sure Dapper too), I can select "Add/Remove Software..." from the main menu, and it pretty much is a one-step process to getting the software installed. Pretty nice menu, see other users' ratings, navigate categories: it has everything but screenshots (which I think would be a nice addition, by the way).
The only potentially confusing part is that it offers you KDE apps for install, which means (if you're running default Ubuntu) that all those KDE libraries will get installed the first time around, leaving you to wonder why you're downloading a 100MB text editor...
Anyway, from the command line you can run it via gnome-app-install.
Here's a few reasons why noone should use Yahoo as their mail system:
Don't even get me started on GMail vs. Yahoo maps. Or GCal vs. Yahoo Calendar. Yahoo are not innovating; they are riding the pure inertia of their 1996 early start.
Oh, here's a word for those of you who are moaning about unethical users blocking ads: some of us are truly incapable of tuning out obnoxious banners and flash animations. It realy ruins our internet experience. Don't worry. The sheep will always be there to provide you with advertising revenue. As for the rest of us, if you want to win us over, use text ads only. You will get many more clicks from us, that's for sure.
My goodness, $50 for a radio attachment is rather steep. This brings your total iPod cost to what, $300?
No. The fan speeds do not change, and there is no change (relative to the default enon-nvclocked state) even when I manually set the fans continuously to their maximum setting using i8kfan.
This has been a big complaint of mine for a long time. We all know that under Windows, NVidia has had this PowerMizer thing that allows you to lower GPU power consumption. And we all know about Coolbits, which allows you to over/underclock your GPU in both Windows and desktop linux.
Now here's the thing. Both Coolbits and PowerMizer are disabled for mobile GPUs under Linux. So when you're not needing full 3D performance, that NVidia card is sitting there sucking up your laptop battery power. Might as well load up Beryl and go nuts.
Oh, and nvclock does not work on all GPUs. My mobile QuadroFX GPU, for example, seems particularly immune to it. When I run it nvclock seems to think it is underclocking my GPU, but I see no effects whatsoever---no reduction in the GPU temperature, for example, which is constantly sitting at 85C. Any other suggestions?
I keep on hearing about how bad the binary linux ATI drivers for linux are, but hey, at least they've got their PowerPlay (GPU downthrottler) thing working in Linux. Maybe for my next laptop I'll consider an ATI card.
Taxes are lower, though. Looks like at my income level I pay about 4% less tax total than those in Nova Scotia. So it all adds up.
Maybe that's true in Nova Scotia, but not everywhere else in Canada. In British Columbia you actually have to pay a premium to the province in addition to your taxes. If your income is $0 your premium is $0 but it goes up as your income goes up. Plus no medications are covered under the plan. So you also have to shell out extra for a private plan which does cover them.
I don't understand. Doesn't your employer require your family to be enrolled under you in order for you to give them the group benefits?
Here in BC I've got my family under my provincial health care and the employer group plan. I'm pretty sure the employer group plan (which covers medications) requires my dependents to be registered at the provincial level under me.