I would guess that Apple would need to remove the DRM bits from their software they distribute with Mac OS X (namely the DRM crap in QuickTime). Microsoft, on the other hand, would have to rewrite Vista again in order to appease our DRM-hating overlords.
Because if I didn't, my ISP would throttle the download to dial-up speeds and I'd be lucky to finish downloading the ISO before the next version was released.
Red Hat is already protected from that via the GPL (and all other open source licenses) that explicitly state that the software comes with no warranty whatsoever of any kind. It's not in all caps just to fit in with EULAs...
Maybe in the Federal elections, but State and Local elections are less popular (even though they're more important since they dictate the policy that affects you most where you actually live) and are thus more influential to third parties.
Besides, WMV sucks.:P But then how can I watch porn on my Wii? Everyone knows that 99% of porn videos on the internet are in WMV format for some reason...
Which would be more unpalettable to consumers: Not being able to watch their High Definition DVDs on their new laptop, or not being able to save the frame buffer? Most consumers don't care about the latter. And judging by the lackluster sales in HD media, I'd also have to say that most "consumers" don't care about the former either.
Well, as a college student without a job right now, I'd have to say that C2D and AFX chips are far too expensive for my tastes, and I'd prefer a lower-performance chip if it meant that it cost less and more importantly preserved my freedom.
Some of the big graphics engine makers continue to support OpenGL, but even so, how do they financially justify spending the time and money to port their games to a platform with a tiny desktop market share, and where a significant percentage of the users expect everything on their machine to be free and open source? Maybe because use of OpenGL and friends will make porting your game to other game consoles (which have a severely higher market share than Windows does for games) so much easier, and the more potential customers the better? Also, game development is easier when you target OpenGL/OpenAL/SDL in my experience, and there are a lot of superb open source libraries of which you can use in your game. Also, hardly any game developers are doing raw graphics stuff anymore; they licence a third-party game engine (e.g., id's Quake/Doom engines, Unreal, Havok) to do all the dirty work for them. These engines commonly have several graphical and library implementations included (e.g., DirectX 10, 9, 8, and OpenGL/SDL), so the developers don't have to worry so much about implementation and can focus on the game itself.
Also, a huge amount of the market share for Windows is with corporate desktops, and I don't know about the companies you've worked for, but you usually can't install and play games on corporate PCs. Just letting you know that you might be violating some employee code of conduct or something if you do install and play games at work.
It is my personal opinion that if you have to do anything on the command line, the software/OS has failed.:words: How long have you been using computers? Two, three years now? How old are you? 14? 15?
Back in my day (I'm only ~19), we used something called "DOS", and it was the shit. We had to configure the crap out of random things just to play games, and we liked it. DOS didn't even have tab-completion (or any implementation worth mentioning when compared to bash, zsh, fish, or anything else people still use). Back in the DOS days, you did everything via the command line, and now that I'm a Linux/BSD/Solaris user, I can look back and laugh at how awful DOS was in comparison with UNIX.
Also, when I was in gradeschool, we took typing classes (it was part of a general "computer" class where we learnt how to do general computer stuff starting with DOS and Windows 3.1), and because of that, I type very well quite fast. I prefer to type what I want to do rather than click on arbitrary, pretty pictures of what the program thinks I want to do. This is especially true on notebooks/laptops when you have to deal with a touchpad or clit mouse (both are a major pain) but have a decent keyboard. Since the positions of the keys on your keyboard never really change, the muscle memory you gain over time will always work when working on the command line, but GUIs change as time goes on.
Any operating system that doesn't let me fully administrate it from the command line has failed in my opinion. Even on Mac OS X I can do all the administration from the command line, and many of the administrative things one does is still done the same was as on BSD or UNIX in general. Even the newer concepts introduced by Apple to the UNIX world (e.g., plist-based configuration) can all be configured via either a GUI or the command line (usually with your favourite text editor). However, when you look at Windows, anything non-trivial must be configured via a GUI be it some random configuration dialogue, regedit, or gpedit.msc and friends. The scripting support in Windows is abysmal (batch files haven't been updated since DOS), so you're always stuck doing it the "Windows way" when administrating (or using) it.
Most [English] Linux distributions are based in the US (or in another country where software patents are enforced), so they try to stay clean. If someone made a Linux distro along the mindset of MPlayer (i.e., fuck patents) in a country where software patents don't exist (e.g., eastern Europe for sure, or the EU in general), that could have the potential to be an "ultimate" distribution.
Although, I just recently tried out Ubuntu 7.04 (I typically use Kubuntu or Debian with KDE), and the ease of which you can install patent-encumbered codecs (e.g., gstreamer-ffmpeg, faad, libmad) and other "Grandma can't install this" bullshit is astounding. For instance, I open an Xvid/MP3 video file in Totem (the default media player), and it asks if I would like to search for a codec to play it. It opens up a Synaptic-like thing with a choice of codecs of which I can tick (only shows codecs relevant to the video in question), click OK, wait for it to download and install the codecs, and be on my merry way. It's almost like what WMP could have been like if it was able to find codecs for anything, but it can never find them in my experience (which is why I recommend installing CCCP if you want codecs for Windows, or VLC for a general-purpose media player that doesn't need extra codecs).
Also in Ubuntu/Kubuntu (and probably other derivatives) is the option to enable subpixel font anti-aliasing, and it's pretty straightforward. I'm not sure if it's enabled by default if your monitor is detected as an LCD monitor, but I always enable it to its strongest hinting. It also looks a lot better than the Windows ClearType implementation (which uses font-specific hinting rather than autohinting like FreeType2 does); in fact, it looks very similar to how it's done on Mac OS X, and I only hear good things from people about it (and I agree).
Have you tried online gaming with your real life friends? Most of my friends are in college (as am I), so the only way to play games outside of summer and other breaks is via online. Maybe you should try playing some more social online games like WoW to see what online gaming should be like (the same as it is offline except without physical barriers).
Have you heard of that new KDE 4 email application that's been developed for IMAP exclusively? It looks pretty interesting, but I don't remember what it's called.
If you're referring to top posting, then you can kindly avoid doing that. Not only do you quote the entire damn email 99.999999% of the time (where most of the time that is unneeded), but many times you will not even mention other parts of the quoted email. For instance, if I emailed you a list of complaints, and you only responded to the first one yet quoted the entire email, I'd be pissed.
I'm not sure if Microsoft invented it, but they surely made it the huge nuisance that it is and completely destroyed the concept of "netiquette" when it comes to email and mailing lists.
Ubuntu does enable it in libfreetype2, but you need to enable subpixel rendering in the options. Subpixel font hinting doesn't work on CRTs (you get a rainbow effect of sorts), so it's not the best thing to assume. Although, it might be able to detect if you're on an LCD properly and enable it.
It does enable normal antialiasing by default, however.
A lot of people out there (inexperienced with typography of course) prefer Arial over any other font, and it baffles me as well. I'd rather use circa-1990 X bitmap fonts than deal with Arial. Arial is a ripoff of Helvetica with a few cosmetic changes that just make it look worse so that it doesn't look good on paper (the goal of Helvetica IIRC) nor on screen (the goal of Arial in the first place).
With the use of live.xbox.com, it should be fairly trivial to integrate your friends list with any instant messenger program that's either open source or pluginable. So, let's find some programmer to do it!
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I would guess that Apple would need to remove the DRM bits from their software they distribute with Mac OS X (namely the DRM crap in QuickTime). Microsoft, on the other hand, would have to rewrite Vista again in order to appease our DRM-hating overlords.
VLC should work fine. You can use VLC to transcode it to a more modern format like Xvid or H.264 to save space as well.
Because if I didn't, my ISP would throttle the download to dial-up speeds and I'd be lucky to finish downloading the ISO before the next version was released.
Don't forget that IBM makes the CPUs for the Sony Playstation 3, the Microsoft Xbox 360, and the Nintendo Wii. Aiee, the confusion!!
Red Hat is already protected from that via the GPL (and all other open source licenses) that explicitly state that the software comes with no warranty whatsoever of any kind. It's not in all caps just to fit in with EULAs...
Nope, you can't do it on UNIX systems. Ports 0-1023 are all reserved and require root to bind to.
- Deputy CEO for Public Affairs, DNC
Maybe in the Federal elections, but State and Local elections are less popular (even though they're more important since they dictate the policy that affects you most where you actually live) and are thus more influential to third parties.
What does it matter if your karma is already maxed out and has been for several months (if not years)?
Well, as a college student without a job right now, I'd have to say that C2D and AFX chips are far too expensive for my tastes, and I'd prefer a lower-performance chip if it meant that it cost less and more importantly preserved my freedom.
Also, a huge amount of the market share for Windows is with corporate desktops, and I don't know about the companies you've worked for, but you usually can't install and play games on corporate PCs. Just letting you know that you might be violating some employee code of conduct or something if you do install and play games at work.
Back in my day (I'm only ~19), we used something called "DOS", and it was the shit. We had to configure the crap out of random things just to play games, and we liked it. DOS didn't even have tab-completion (or any implementation worth mentioning when compared to bash, zsh, fish, or anything else people still use). Back in the DOS days, you did everything via the command line, and now that I'm a Linux/BSD/Solaris user, I can look back and laugh at how awful DOS was in comparison with UNIX.
Also, when I was in gradeschool, we took typing classes (it was part of a general "computer" class where we learnt how to do general computer stuff starting with DOS and Windows 3.1), and because of that, I type very well quite fast. I prefer to type what I want to do rather than click on arbitrary, pretty pictures of what the program thinks I want to do. This is especially true on notebooks/laptops when you have to deal with a touchpad or clit mouse (both are a major pain) but have a decent keyboard. Since the positions of the keys on your keyboard never really change, the muscle memory you gain over time will always work when working on the command line, but GUIs change as time goes on.
Any operating system that doesn't let me fully administrate it from the command line has failed in my opinion. Even on Mac OS X I can do all the administration from the command line, and many of the administrative things one does is still done the same was as on BSD or UNIX in general. Even the newer concepts introduced by Apple to the UNIX world (e.g., plist-based configuration) can all be configured via either a GUI or the command line (usually with your favourite text editor). However, when you look at Windows, anything non-trivial must be configured via a GUI be it some random configuration dialogue, regedit, or gpedit.msc and friends. The scripting support in Windows is abysmal (batch files haven't been updated since DOS), so you're always stuck doing it the "Windows way" when administrating (or using) it.
Most [English] Linux distributions are based in the US (or in another country where software patents are enforced), so they try to stay clean. If someone made a Linux distro along the mindset of MPlayer (i.e., fuck patents) in a country where software patents don't exist (e.g., eastern Europe for sure, or the EU in general), that could have the potential to be an "ultimate" distribution.
Although, I just recently tried out Ubuntu 7.04 (I typically use Kubuntu or Debian with KDE), and the ease of which you can install patent-encumbered codecs (e.g., gstreamer-ffmpeg, faad, libmad) and other "Grandma can't install this" bullshit is astounding. For instance, I open an Xvid/MP3 video file in Totem (the default media player), and it asks if I would like to search for a codec to play it. It opens up a Synaptic-like thing with a choice of codecs of which I can tick (only shows codecs relevant to the video in question), click OK, wait for it to download and install the codecs, and be on my merry way. It's almost like what WMP could have been like if it was able to find codecs for anything, but it can never find them in my experience (which is why I recommend installing CCCP if you want codecs for Windows, or VLC for a general-purpose media player that doesn't need extra codecs).
Also in Ubuntu/Kubuntu (and probably other derivatives) is the option to enable subpixel font anti-aliasing, and it's pretty straightforward. I'm not sure if it's enabled by default if your monitor is detected as an LCD monitor, but I always enable it to its strongest hinting. It also looks a lot better than the Windows ClearType implementation (which uses font-specific hinting rather than autohinting like FreeType2 does); in fact, it looks very similar to how it's done on Mac OS X, and I only hear good things from people about it (and I agree).
That's how it used to be. Nowadays, WINE is overtaking the throne as the Linux DX implementation.
Or modded up because you're, well, popular around these parts. ;)
Have you tried online gaming with your real life friends? Most of my friends are in college (as am I), so the only way to play games outside of summer and other breaks is via online. Maybe you should try playing some more social online games like WoW to see what online gaming should be like (the same as it is offline except without physical barriers).
Have you heard of that new KDE 4 email application that's been developed for IMAP exclusively? It looks pretty interesting, but I don't remember what it's called.
If you're referring to top posting, then you can kindly avoid doing that. Not only do you quote the entire damn email 99.999999% of the time (where most of the time that is unneeded), but many times you will not even mention other parts of the quoted email. For instance, if I emailed you a list of complaints, and you only responded to the first one yet quoted the entire email, I'd be pissed.
I'm not sure if Microsoft invented it, but they surely made it the huge nuisance that it is and completely destroyed the concept of "netiquette" when it comes to email and mailing lists.
Ubuntu does enable it in libfreetype2, but you need to enable subpixel rendering in the options. Subpixel font hinting doesn't work on CRTs (you get a rainbow effect of sorts), so it's not the best thing to assume. Although, it might be able to detect if you're on an LCD properly and enable it.
It does enable normal antialiasing by default, however.
A lot of people out there (inexperienced with typography of course) prefer Arial over any other font, and it baffles me as well. I'd rather use circa-1990 X bitmap fonts than deal with Arial. Arial is a ripoff of Helvetica with a few cosmetic changes that just make it look worse so that it doesn't look good on paper (the goal of Helvetica IIRC) nor on screen (the goal of Arial in the first place).
If I want to support the site, I contribute time and money (notice the asterisk next to my name), not eyeballs.
With the use of live.xbox.com, it should be fairly trivial to integrate your friends list with any instant messenger program that's either open source or pluginable. So, let's find some programmer to do it!