You may think that whooshing noise just above your head is a plane, perhaps a helicopter, but you'll be surprised to hear it's something entirely different.
He wasn't able to do it because he was using HP desktop restore CDs to build a server upon and because Promise's driver CDs didn't work for him. Windows' ease of use doesn't come into it, he never even got that far.
The same thing is happening to publishers as is happening to other media - they just don't realize it yet, but physical books are obsolete. Their business model is going to have to change just like the music industry - except I suspect they're going to find it a lot harder to accept that than even the music business has.
Their business model must change to cope with freeloaders like you. Presumably, the new business model will be "give everything you invest money in away for free", as the "new business model" mooted for the music industry is.
Considering that he was trying to run XP as a server OS, something only the truly moronic would consider doing (incredibly, he blames Microsoft for HP's shitty restore CD and Promise's shitty driver CD), I very much doubt this sort of thing will be a shining beacon of hope to anyone.
Not that this has anything to do with Vista or Microsoft, and everything to do with one very silly man doing some very silly things indeed.
Twitter has posted stupid cookie-cutter posts which will blame Microsoft for any real/perceived (mostly perceived) injustice against him or the world. Where's the (stupid) requests for an administrator to step in in that case then?
The nice thing about Slashdot's mod system is that you can post whatever shit you like (within reason) and have only the moderation system affect it; no administrators involved.
if you use XP's media-player to rip your CD's, you should check the configuration because it defaults to infecting your rips with DRM.
BZZT. Wrong. It gives you a choice between adding DRM and not adding DRM, in a clear dialog box the moment you try to rip a CD for the first time. I will screenshot this if you like, considering that most people who criticise WMP haven't used it for years.
You are confusing incompetence for malice yet again. It has long gone past pure incompetence and a wilful spreading of FUD, judging by the number of bullshit Vista articles that get posted daily and do little but offer yet another opportunity for the pale-skinned "Linux-uber-alles" crowd to shoot off another creamy load over just how disgusting Microsoft is.
The BBC's news forums are a mess precisely because they don't have the sort of moderation system Slashdot affords. I blogged about the problems with the BBC forums...to summarise; the moderation isn't restrictive as to who can moderate (every registered user can) and there's only one moderation option (moderate up, or "recommend"). That and a lack of decent threading or quoting makes it hell to be on.
Because a legal disclaimer inspires confidence, doesn't it? People are already scared of trying Linux, waving a bit of legalese in their faces saying "If this fucks up your PC, you're on your own" is not going to help.
So, Nvidia drivers aren't all that bad. There's a nice installer for them nowadays that you can download from their site. Same for ATI. Not really that big of a deal; you have to do it on Windows, too.
Installing the drivers on Linux using NVidia's installer requires dropping down to a console (already a daunting prospect for a newbie), making sure you have all the correct kernel sources/headers (non-trivial on Debian, considering the number of linux-headers packages available), and then running the installer. If the system GCC version and the kernel GCC version agree, then the drivers will install, otherwise it's more non-obvious apt-getting for Joe User. Of course, Debian provides packages for the NVidia drivers; they're just broken packages though, because nvidia-kernel-common doesn't appear to exist on apt. Ubuntu's packages, admittedly, work, but this is Debian we're talking here, not Ubuntu.
On Windows, you go to Nvidia's site, choose Download Drivers, choose your version of Windows and your card, click Download and then run the file and follow the prompts. Again, in terms of ease, Windows wins.
You can add sources to your APT list from within most package managers (in a GUI), and you only have to add one source to make it work.
I know full well that you can add sources in Synaptic etc, but how is a newbie supposed to know this? How is someone who has just hopped over from Windows or Mac supposed to know jack shit about source lists and how to add sources? They want to download applications, they won't care what a source list is! It may be obvious for you or me, but it won't be for someone whose idea of software installation is "download, click next a few times and run".
If your 5.1 actually works magically in Windows XP, then I congratulate you, because my nice SB card never bothered to correctly work in Windows.
Admittedly, my SB Live never worked on Windows XP either (I ascribe this to the complete and total suck of Creative in not allowing free download of their drivers, so I had to use shitty and likely incompatible drivers).
Load the fglrx kernel module, and restart the X server. (You could reboot instead, but my BIOS is too slow to boot for my patience.) Add VLC's repository to APT sources from KPackage.
Uh-huh, but, did you have to quit X? If so, how is a newbie supposed to know how to stop GDM/KDM, install the drivers and restart the X server? How do they know if they have the kernel headers installed or not? If not, how would they know how to install them?
Do they actually know what a repository is? Do they know what goes in which box? How do you expect them to do this? All this is *not obvious*. On Windows, again, you go to NVidia/ATI/VLC's shiny website, click a download link, run the file you've downloaded and boom, you can now play DVDs/use 3D graphics (hell, I didn't even need to install extra video drivers to get tolerable video playback under XP!). None of this repository/killing X/kernel header business will make any sense to a newcomer. It's convoluted and longwinded. A typical user (as well as myself) would rather just click and go.
Oh, also, it says on the download page for VLC that you cannot play DVDs in Linux without libdvdcss. I'm not really sure how you missed that the first time...
Because I was using APT. The be-all-and-end-all for software installation, remember?
Using an apt frontend of your choice really is that easy though.
If, however, the app you want isn't available via apt in the way you like (e.g. you want to use Firefox and not Firepandadovebollocks that Debian ships now...dunno why but last time I tried Linux that really irritated me, possibly a bit more than not being able to get my surround sound working properly) or it isn't available in apt at all (mplayer anyone?), or you need to add extra repositories (which is NOT going to be easy to do for a newbie)...you may be slightly fuct.
Put it another way: if I want to play DVDs in 5.1 surround in VLC, here's how it works on Windows XP:
1. Download VideoLAN installer 2. Run VideoLAN installer 3. Click Next a few times until the installer finishes 4. Go into Windows' speaker settings and change the speaker type to 5.1 surround (which has a little descriptive picture to make it nice and clear) and click OK a few times. 4. Run VideoLAN and play my DVD, with surround sound working
I recently tried to do the same on Debian, and this is precisely how it went:
1. apt-get install vlc 2. Run VideoLAN client, try and play DVD 3. Notice that it crashes every time giving no cause or reason 3a. Smash with hammer 4. Google with the only real error message I get, which has nothing to do with DVDs 5. Find out that libdvdcss is required, and it's on an additional repository, so edit sources.list and apt-get update 5a. Realise that any sane person would have given up at step 3 6. Apt-get install libdvdcss (or whatever the precise package name is, I forget) 7. Run VLC, find out that my DVD plays now...in stereo 8. Play with volume settings and read lots of stuff about alsa.conf via Google 9. After much futzing, work out that ALSA outputs the rear to the subwoofer and vice versa for no explicable reason, so I had to swap the cables round 10. Watch my DVD, only with a pisspoor slow CPU-intensive picture because I haven't installed the NVidia drivers yet, which is yet another rigamarole
For its part, Xine (or at least Kaffeine) was even worse; that just crashed whenever I tried to play a 5.1 DVD. Now; which will be easier for a new person? For most people, over the phone I could tell them to go to VideoLAN.org and click the big Download link, and then tell them where in the Control Panel to go to enable surround. Can I do that on Debian? No. I'd have to explain to them how to edit sources.list, which commands to type in, when to type them in...you get my point.
This isn't just APT though, it's a lot of things. Why does ALSA change the subwoofer and rear plugs around for example? Where is the simple clicky box that changes the speaker settings from Stereo to 5.1? And I understand the licensing implications of including libdvdcss, but...well, who outside Slashdot is going to take "Well, it's the big bad mean MPAA" as an explanation for why getting DVDs working is such a pain in the ass?
Sorry for the length, it being Christmas I may have drunk a little bit too much Hobgoblin (or, I'm sure a few people are lining up to say, "the Kool-Aid");)
In the UK, they rejigged the NHS a bit, introducing an "internal market", where hospitals would be in competition with one another and would bid against each other for things.
From Wikipedia: In 1990, the National Health Service & Community Care Act (in England) defined this "internal market", whereby Health Authorities ceased to run hospitals but "purchased" care from their own or other authorities' hospitals. Certain GPs became "fund holders" and were able to purchase care for their patients. The "providers" became independent trusts, which encouraged competition but also increased local differences.
What happened was that nobody provided the best healthcare, they provided the cheapest healthcare possible, fund holders bought that healthcare (where corners had obviously been cut) and the hospitals got less funding because they could "provide" "healthcare" so cheaply.
If you want another example of private ownership completely fucking up a formerly public service in the name of profit, then I invite you to read up on British Rail and its dismantling, and its replacement with a system of about 348420 "competing" train companies sharing the same track and none of the maintenance duties, where train companies run services in the cheapest possible way (usually meaning hell for passengers) and collect government subsidies for fucking up the service even further.
Did "competition" help the NHS or British Rail? No, it fucked them up, subjecting them to undue internal and external pressures. My point is this: FREE MARKETS AND COMPETITION ARE NOT A PANACEA. If you are providing a public service then trying to fit that public service into a free market model, or trying to make it make a profit, simply will not work without some drastic corner cutting.
You make up statistics (80%?! please) and then babble on about "the botnet", this presumably being the same botnet that posts nasty things about you on Slashdot, sends spam emails, DDOSs websites and brought the Third Reich to power which you so lovingly reference all the time.
Really, I have no idea how you have any credibility. Oh wait, you don't. Sorry.
Slashdot Mirror
You may think that whooshing noise just above your head is a plane, perhaps a helicopter, but you'll be surprised to hear it's something entirely different.
$1.65trillion is a fair bit more than the GDP of Russia as a whole.
How fucking ludicrous and excessive. Jesus.
He wasn't able to do it because he was using HP desktop restore CDs to build a server upon and because Promise's driver CDs didn't work for him. Windows' ease of use doesn't come into it, he never even got that far.
The same thing is happening to publishers as is happening to other media - they just don't realize it yet, but physical books are obsolete. Their business model is going to have to change just like the music industry - except I suspect they're going to find it a lot harder to accept that than even the music business has.
Their business model must change to cope with freeloaders like you. Presumably, the new business model will be "give everything you invest money in away for free", as the "new business model" mooted for the music industry is.
*sigh*
Considering that he was trying to run XP as a server OS, something only the truly moronic would consider doing (incredibly, he blames Microsoft for HP's shitty restore CD and Promise's shitty driver CD), I very much doubt this sort of thing will be a shining beacon of hope to anyone.
Not that this has anything to do with Vista or Microsoft, and everything to do with one very silly man doing some very silly things indeed.
Twitter has posted stupid cookie-cutter posts which will blame Microsoft for any real/perceived (mostly perceived) injustice against him or the world. Where's the (stupid) requests for an administrator to step in in that case then?
The nice thing about Slashdot's mod system is that you can post whatever shit you like (within reason) and have only the moderation system affect it; no administrators involved.
Prerelease is giving me no trouble as it is...
if you use XP's media-player to rip your CD's, you should check the configuration because it defaults to infecting your rips with DRM.
BZZT. Wrong. It gives you a choice between adding DRM and not adding DRM, in a clear dialog box the moment you try to rip a CD for the first time. I will screenshot this if you like, considering that most people who criticise WMP haven't used it for years.
You are confusing incompetence for malice yet again. It has long gone past pure incompetence and a wilful spreading of FUD, judging by the number of bullshit Vista articles that get posted daily and do little but offer yet another opportunity for the pale-skinned "Linux-uber-alles" crowd to shoot off another creamy load over just how disgusting Microsoft is.
The law doesn't make something so. I could legislate that a reindeer was a tree and reindeers wouldn't suddenly become trees.
Its not even been announced publicly yet...how the hell is it vapourware?
I'd rather have the picture in my wallet, tbh. Least then I can still see it if my iPod is out of battery...
THE least clearly being the Diana Excess...
Congratulations, you've created the 4chan generation.
The BBC's news forums are a mess precisely because they don't have the sort of moderation system Slashdot affords. I blogged about the problems with the BBC forums...to summarise; the moderation isn't restrictive as to who can moderate (every registered user can) and there's only one moderation option (moderate up, or "recommend"). That and a lack of decent threading or quoting makes it hell to be on.
Sorta on-topic I suppose...
I am including sales staff ofr retail stores as reps. They all lie also.
And we all love you for saying so.
Now THAT was a lie.
Because a legal disclaimer inspires confidence, doesn't it? People are already scared of trying Linux, waving a bit of legalese in their faces saying "If this fucks up your PC, you're on your own" is not going to help.
Name 1 (ONE) programming language or software that you can run on Linux that can NOT be run on Windows XP. ...
Amarok. Would probably be pretty easy to compile using Cygwin or something though.
So, Nvidia drivers aren't all that bad. There's a nice installer for them nowadays that you can download from their site. Same for ATI. Not really that big of a deal; you have to do it on Windows, too.
Installing the drivers on Linux using NVidia's installer requires dropping down to a console (already a daunting prospect for a newbie), making sure you have all the correct kernel sources/headers (non-trivial on Debian, considering the number of linux-headers packages available), and then running the installer. If the system GCC version and the kernel GCC version agree, then the drivers will install, otherwise it's more non-obvious apt-getting for Joe User. Of course, Debian provides packages for the NVidia drivers; they're just broken packages though, because nvidia-kernel-common doesn't appear to exist on apt. Ubuntu's packages, admittedly, work, but this is Debian we're talking here, not Ubuntu.
On Windows, you go to Nvidia's site, choose Download Drivers, choose your version of Windows and your card, click Download and then run the file and follow the prompts. Again, in terms of ease, Windows wins.
You can add sources to your APT list from within most package managers (in a GUI), and you only have to add one source to make it work.
I know full well that you can add sources in Synaptic etc, but how is a newbie supposed to know this? How is someone who has just hopped over from Windows or Mac supposed to know jack shit about source lists and how to add sources? They want to download applications, they won't care what a source list is! It may be obvious for you or me, but it won't be for someone whose idea of software installation is "download, click next a few times and run".
If your 5.1 actually works magically in Windows XP, then I congratulate you, because my nice SB card never bothered to correctly work in Windows.
Admittedly, my SB Live never worked on Windows XP either (I ascribe this to the complete and total suck of Creative in not allowing free download of their drivers, so I had to use shitty and likely incompatible drivers).
Load the fglrx kernel module, and restart the X server. (You could reboot instead, but my BIOS is too slow to boot for my patience.)
Add VLC's repository to APT sources from KPackage.
Uh-huh, but, did you have to quit X? If so, how is a newbie supposed to know how to stop GDM/KDM, install the drivers and restart the X server? How do they know if they have the kernel headers installed or not? If not, how would they know how to install them?
Do they actually know what a repository is? Do they know what goes in which box? How do you expect them to do this? All this is *not obvious*. On Windows, again, you go to NVidia/ATI/VLC's shiny website, click a download link, run the file you've downloaded and boom, you can now play DVDs/use 3D graphics (hell, I didn't even need to install extra video drivers to get tolerable video playback under XP!). None of this repository/killing X/kernel header business will make any sense to a newcomer. It's convoluted and longwinded. A typical user (as well as myself) would rather just click and go.
Oh, also, it says on the download page for VLC that you cannot play DVDs in Linux without libdvdcss. I'm not really sure how you missed that the first time...
Because I was using APT. The be-all-and-end-all for software installation, remember?
Using an apt frontend of your choice really is that easy though.
;)
If, however, the app you want isn't available via apt in the way you like (e.g. you want to use Firefox and not Firepandadovebollocks that Debian ships now...dunno why but last time I tried Linux that really irritated me, possibly a bit more than not being able to get my surround sound working properly) or it isn't available in apt at all (mplayer anyone?), or you need to add extra repositories (which is NOT going to be easy to do for a newbie)...you may be slightly fuct.
Put it another way: if I want to play DVDs in 5.1 surround in VLC, here's how it works on Windows XP:
1. Download VideoLAN installer
2. Run VideoLAN installer
3. Click Next a few times until the installer finishes
4. Go into Windows' speaker settings and change the speaker type to 5.1 surround (which has a little descriptive picture to make it nice and clear) and click OK a few times.
4. Run VideoLAN and play my DVD, with surround sound working
I recently tried to do the same on Debian, and this is precisely how it went:
1. apt-get install vlc
2. Run VideoLAN client, try and play DVD
3. Notice that it crashes every time giving no cause or reason
3a. Smash with hammer
4. Google with the only real error message I get, which has nothing to do with DVDs
5. Find out that libdvdcss is required, and it's on an additional repository, so edit sources.list and apt-get update
5a. Realise that any sane person would have given up at step 3
6. Apt-get install libdvdcss (or whatever the precise package name is, I forget)
7. Run VLC, find out that my DVD plays now...in stereo
8. Play with volume settings and read lots of stuff about alsa.conf via Google
9. After much futzing, work out that ALSA outputs the rear to the subwoofer and vice versa for no explicable reason, so I had to swap the cables round
10. Watch my DVD, only with a pisspoor slow CPU-intensive picture because I haven't installed the NVidia drivers yet, which is yet another rigamarole
For its part, Xine (or at least Kaffeine) was even worse; that just crashed whenever I tried to play a 5.1 DVD. Now; which will be easier for a new person? For most people, over the phone I could tell them to go to VideoLAN.org and click the big Download link, and then tell them where in the Control Panel to go to enable surround. Can I do that on Debian? No. I'd have to explain to them how to edit sources.list, which commands to type in, when to type them in...you get my point.
This isn't just APT though, it's a lot of things. Why does ALSA change the subwoofer and rear plugs around for example? Where is the simple clicky box that changes the speaker settings from Stereo to 5.1? And I understand the licensing implications of including libdvdcss, but...well, who outside Slashdot is going to take "Well, it's the big bad mean MPAA" as an explanation for why getting DVDs working is such a pain in the ass?
Sorry for the length, it being Christmas I may have drunk a little bit too much Hobgoblin (or, I'm sure a few people are lining up to say, "the Kool-Aid")
And a merry Christmas to you too.
In the UK, they rejigged the NHS a bit, introducing an "internal market", where hospitals would be in competition with one another and would bid against each other for things.
From Wikipedia:
In 1990, the National Health Service & Community Care Act (in England) defined this "internal market", whereby Health Authorities ceased to run hospitals but "purchased" care from their own or other authorities' hospitals. Certain GPs became "fund holders" and were able to purchase care for their patients. The "providers" became independent trusts, which encouraged competition but also increased local differences.
What happened was that nobody provided the best healthcare, they provided the cheapest healthcare possible, fund holders bought that healthcare (where corners had obviously been cut) and the hospitals got less funding because they could "provide" "healthcare" so cheaply.
If you want another example of private ownership completely fucking up a formerly public service in the name of profit, then I invite you to read up on British Rail and its dismantling, and its replacement with a system of about 348420 "competing" train companies sharing the same track and none of the maintenance duties, where train companies run services in the cheapest possible way (usually meaning hell for passengers) and collect government subsidies for fucking up the service even further.
Did "competition" help the NHS or British Rail? No, it fucked them up, subjecting them to undue internal and external pressures. My point is this: FREE MARKETS AND COMPETITION ARE NOT A PANACEA. If you are providing a public service then trying to fit that public service into a free market model, or trying to make it make a profit, simply will not work without some drastic corner cutting.
See also that "first they came for the..." poem, which crops up in every single Slashdot thread even remotely related to censorship and/or minorities.
When I allow you to download a file from my computer, I am in effect transfering ownership of the data in that file to you. Something to think about.
No, you're not, you're giving someone else ownership of an identical file. Your ownership of the original one doesn't alter or diminish in any way.
This, by the way, is the same argument every single Slashbot uses to say that P2P != theft every single time that someone dares call P2P stealing.
Yet more than 80% of windows computers are part of the botnet.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAAHAHAAHAHAHA!!!
You make up statistics (80%?! please) and then babble on about "the botnet", this presumably being the same botnet that posts nasty things about you on Slashdot, sends spam emails, DDOSs websites and brought the Third Reich to power which you so lovingly reference all the time.
Really, I have no idea how you have any credibility. Oh wait, you don't. Sorry.