Without more details, I don't think everyone should be jumping to the conclusion that this guy is innocent, just because he was possibly using Linux and somebody didn't recognize it. There may in fact be some stupidity involved here with the complaint filed, but that doesn't mean the guy isn't still guilty of something.
That said, computer law in this country is so pathetic that the accusations don't really warrant the degree of search and seizure involved here from what I can figure of the situation.
The problem is that too many people in the open-source community have the "I'm always right" or "my way is better" mentality in the first place. This is why we see so much forking of projects, which usually doesn't benefit anyone except the person who wants to boost their own ego by having their own project.
So even if you had more critics, I don't think a lot of these developers would ever listen. Take GIMP for example. People have complained about the interface for years. But it's still the same as it ever was.
Of course, the "fanbase" is just as guilty, because as someone in these very comments pointed out, if you complain about a piece of open-source software, you get dugg down, marked as a troll, told you're an idiot, etc etc. The open-source world is just very incapable of accepting criticism. Yet they very easily dish it out.
I saw this article last night, and didn't see it was from Stallman at first or I would have immediately dismissed it.
Seriously, who is this concerned over Javascript in their browser, which is there and gone with each mouse click? It's ridiculous.
The thing he wants, the ability to replace Javascript in a website with custom "free" versions for a particular site, is already possible in UserJS with Opera. It was implemented so that users could write their own fixes on sites which don't necessarily work right in Opera, or ones which you want to simply enhance. But since Opera isn't open-source, he's still out of luck.
One day people like Stallman are going to have to realize that proprietary and licensed software is a way of life if you want a modern computing experience. Ubuntu realized it, and look at how much more popular they are now than the distro they're based upon. Debian has a very different opinion on the subject, as evidenced by IceWeasel and such.
Here's a better option for people like him: If you don't like what the website has to offer or how it was written, then don't use it. Period. You could very well be breaking a license or something by thinking you have the right to replace their software with your own version, since many times it still interacts with their site's infrastructure. They might have the right to ban you if they detected you using something else, much like companies such as Blizzard can and will do.
Of course, if you're sane, none of this is an issue anyway, so nothing to see here.
The point is, if x86 is still around in 20 more years, and progresses the way it has been, you'll still be able to run DOS, classic Windows, current day Windows, Linux, OSX, etc, even on those future machines. They won't be lost forever from lack of classic hardware to run them on, much like Apple has done. Twice.
Of course, by that time, they'll probably be fast enough to emulate all of that without much effort. But the point still stands!
x86 competitors come and go. They always have a bit of a warm period where people welcome the competition and product variations. But eventually, the honeymoon is over. AMD had a good run and brought some decent chips, but I won't shed a tear when they disappear. Tis just how things go. Nvidia will apparently be taking their place.
Some people may not like the x86 architecture for whatever silly reasons, but the fact remains that it's going to be around for a long time. It's proven technology that is simply expanded as time goes on. First with 32-bit, now 64-bit. I don't know about you, but I very much enjoy the fact that, at its core, my computer is still the same machine it was 20 years ago, and can still run the same old software if I so chose.
Backwards compatibility is always the key to success. Just ask Microsoft.
Of course Microsoft is gonna say this. And it's absolutely no different than Firefox's slogan of "Faster, Safer, Better". Two of those statements are outright false, and one is complete opinion. Yet people let Mozilla get away with using this line without a single complaint. Apple does the same bullshit with promoting Safari, and we don't hear a peep out of people then either.
Bottom line is, don't be a hypocrite just because of some childish need to hate Microsoft. Apple = Microsoft = Mozilla. There is zero difference when it comes to a company wanting to make money.
These various onboard and compact Linux installations targeting Windows users are okay in thought, but not in practice.
Eventually all of the software would be out of date. And then what? The skype client might not connect, the Firefox might be riddled with vulnerabilities (because yes, its been prone to get them), the kernel itself might get root exploits, etc. Are you going to require the user to perform software updates on a distro which is supposed to allow them to work instantly and without delay? It's hard enough getting them to update their Windows installations.
Worse yet, what happens when something goes wrong? How do they reinstall it? Would they even bother?
I know that these aren't definite issues, but they're things to take into consideration when you're trying to pass off a compact operating system environment to people who are used to powerful ones with plenty of storage available and everything.
Anyway, that aside, the article is a bit extreme about startup times. Booting your computer will not take anymore than 30 seconds or so if you don't have it packed down with a bunch of shit. And the fact they even mentioned those lawsuits of taking 30 minutes is ludicrous exaggeration of a non-issue. If you're so impatient that you can't wait less than a minute, then computers are definitely not for you in the first place.
The solution to instant-on computing is taking better advantage of standby mode. It's entirely possible to have instant-on right now. It just depends on what your definition of the term is. There's no reason why it can't mean the same Windows/Linux/Mac installations we already have.
Finally! A comparison which not only checks every major browser out there, but also checks both the current and future versions. I was getting pretty tired of these "reviews" and "benchmarks" leaving out certain ones, or using certain beta versions of some and not of others. It wasn't very heavy on the actual speed benchmarks, but at least it was something.
That said, I have to say I'm disappointed in Opera. It used to be the fastest, but I don't know what happened with them lately. I've never been as satisfied ever since 9.5 hit. I've gradually shifted away from it handling my email so that I'm not as dependent on it, and have been using a toss-up between it and Chrome lately. I'm in Chrome as we speak, even. Once they have better Greasemonkey/UserJS support (currently it's pretty terrible in the trunk build), I may be fully on-board.
"Mozilla is resolving eight critical vulnerabilities found in the current version of Firefox â" a move sure to garner applause from devoted Firefox users."
Yeah, because in the world of fanboys, this is just terrific news. Where as, if IE fixed 8 serious flaws before IE8 came out, they'd be all "LOL MICRO$OFT". Hypocrisy is grand, aint it?
If you want a secure browser, blasting IE and then looking towards Firefox is incredibly naive and shows ignorance to the facts.
Perhaps you've never used Windows to see how it evolved over the versions. Or the major interface shift when they went from Win3.1 to Win95. And then the major Start button redesign with Vista. And now the task bar shift with Windows 7. That's just to name the major noticable things.
Now, look at the file menu at the top of OSX. That was created back when a Mac (and most computers at the time in general) were pretty much only capable of running one app at a time. You could switch to another one, sure, but it was very slow, because it was basically task switching, paging the other one(s) out to the disk. So a single file menu, which changed per application, was a good way to save screen real estate, because you really weren't actively using more than one thing at a time.
Over twenty years later, OSX still has a single file menu along the top. Through ten major iterations of the operating system, and when computers can truly multitask applications, they still left a single file menu, just like version one.
Have you ever noticed that no other operating system out there mimics that functionality? The next biggest contender, Linux, generally mimics Windows, because the Windows interface is functional. There is nothing functional nor efficient about the single file menu design.
Now sure, when they bought NeXTStep and put the pretty OSX layer on top to resell it, they brought the dock over with it, and prettied that up too. But this was still really no major innovation in the interface per se. You can still start your apps the way you always did in Mac OS, via the finder and such. It was just something new to look at, with bouncing icons and all that pretty stuff.
Also, it doesn't have to be thinly disguised, as I will outright say that Macs are just overpriced toys. If you want a computer to do work, you buy a PC. If you want a computer to play games, you buy a PC. What does that leave Macs for? Just people who want to be different, while they use the web and some email.
Enjoy Steve Jobs conning you into buying a whole new computer with every few OS versions.
Why should Microsoft feel threatened by a rehashed version of NextStep, which hasn't really evolved its modern interface since the first version of OSX, and despite the dock and shiny colors, is yet still the same interface from 20 years ago? At least Microsoft and Linux try new things, and learn from mistakes and consumers.
Macs have a niche user base of people with a lot of money to spend on pretty machines, regardless of how much they can really do. Linux users are generally considered power users, therefore making them the people having more of an impact on technology, such as in the server market. Linux is free, too, which is a huge contrast to overpriced Apple gear.
From a strictly consumer-based standpoint, Apple is competitive. But from a technology and user base position, Linux is the threat.
Considering the usually exceptional service they offer, and for free, you can't hardly complain. Everybody has downtime sooner or later. That's why they include that %0.01 chance of it happening.
Just consider it a two hour break from the computer.
I decided a few months ago when I was doing a site redesign that there was no reason to continue supporting IE6. It simply lacked too many things now to make it worth wasting my time and effort on to continue making complicated workarounds for. IE7 is a fine browser, and IE8 will be even better and is quickly approaching, so there's no reason for anyone to have not upgraded by now.
Don't get me wrong though, I feel it's very important for any developer worth their salt to support EVERY major browser. I don't care if you don't like Opera or Safari or whatever the case may be, you should code your site to work right in everything. It's really not very hard, assuming you know what you're doing. I use very little workarounds (none this last time) to make sites render properly in everything these days.
When someone visits a website and their browser isn't supported, it is simply a major turn-off. More people should realize that.
This whole thing is a complete mess. What's the point in delaying the mandatory switchover when all the companies who would have already ugpraded their equipment by now can go ahead and switch anyway? It's just costing them money to run the old stuff, so why would they care if a few people out there never got boxes to keep watching? The majority of their viewers aren't using the broadcast version anyway.
Of course, you could argue that there's no excuse for anyone to not be ready for this switch by now considering how long the country has prepared for it. And in my opinion that's true too. But the fact remains that making this switch optional for the next few months was just nonsensical. It should have been all or nothing.
Slashdot? Allowing the posting of an unverified anti-Microsoft story? Who would have expected that!
The rest of the internet and commenters here have pretty much already proven half of this untrue and/or stuff existing already in Vista, with the rest of the claims unproven. No shock there.
Seriously people, you really should expect a little more proof of things than to just blindly listen to internet "news". Being a Linux zealot is no excuse. You're supposed to be the "smart" ones, after all.
It's things like this that really bug me about the open-source zealot mentality of "Oh yeah? What about Windows?" Well who cares about Windows? Windows isn't your problem at the moment.
Linux has had quite a lot of security flaws over the years, especially important ones like privilege escalation in the kernel, which makes people defending its architecture compared to Windows a moot point. It's been a server OS for a long time, making it a valuable target in that respect much like Windows is on the web front.
The point is, as is commonly acknowledged, if Linux had a user base large enough to warrant it, it would have just as many problems with web vulnerabilities as Windows. Especially when people still use software like Firefox, which is also known to have had many buffer overflow problems over its lifespan. So boasting about Linux being the safest OS is just hogwash. Only an incredibly naive and/or ignorant person would say that Linux is outright safe.
It presently boils down to the mindset of the Linux user base, and its size. That is all. A smart Windows user will very rarely, if ever, get infected with anything. I can vouch for that personally.
A stupid user of any popular OS is going to have problems as long as there is bad coding done by developers. And every OS has shown evidence of that. Microsoft isn't any better or worse in that respect. You can look at changelogs for lots of open-source software for plenty of proof in that department. And don't give me the "Windows takes XXXX amount of time to fix it blah blah they suck most", because there's been open-source projects with problems for just as long.
People talk as if this is a bad thing. Having actually used the beta myself, unlike many of the people commenting here I'm sure, I can say that IE8 is in fact better than IE7. If Apple or Linux distributed the newest versions of their software in this same fashion, this would be a non-issue.
Pretty much your typical response from the MPAA, really. The sad part is that bittorrent is actually one of the most beneficial p2p technologies to hit the net, yet here they are just trying to villify the whole thing just over its ability to transfer movies.
Basically, if bittorrent didn't exist, the movie would have circulated via gnutella and kazaa, and the MPAA would be blaming them instead. It makes no difference how it was distributed.
Besides, with all the media attention surrounding the release of this particular movie on the net, you'd be pretty crazy to try and download it right now anyway, cause you know they're gonna have their lawsuit tentacles out in full force.
I pretty much boycotted G4 after they raped TSS to death. Thank goodness they finally took the name off that piece of crap show they replaced it with. Ironically, they replaced it with a totally stupid name!
But this is great, we get some of the best of the TechTV staff in a radio show. I'll definately be tuning in. No greedy executives involved!
I just meant kernel bloat in general, without any of those media-related modules compiled into it. I assume some kind of additions and/or changes are being made to the core kernel itself to support some of these new things, even if the modules mentioned aren't used.
I honestly don't think Linux will ever be an OS for the masses, due to what it is and has always been (which is primarily for administrators and power users), but there are many people constantly trying to push it as a replacement for Windows. But the primary reason for this, of course, is profit.
Every year at least one free Linux distro switches to having a retail version, or to ONLY having a retail version. It just doesn't even seem right to me, really, since they didn't even make it (only customize it), but yet they can somehow profit from what others can find for free. Of course the power users I mentioned above probably wouldn't be buying it, only the Linux newbies who think it can actually replace Windows and want to save some bucks. That is, until they realize it's not all it's cut out to be, and won't run all those Windows apps that their friends do. Or when it breaks, or when they run into dependency hell, etc etc etc.
I can see why some people would have a problem with this, such as those that see Linux as a networking OS or for more of an embedded system. But if Linux folks ever want to see Linux as an OS for the masses, you have you cater to the average joe, and offer all of these features for games and video and the like, if it's ever to compete with the media abilities of Windows and Mac.
Slashdot Mirror
Without more details, I don't think everyone should be jumping to the conclusion that this guy is innocent, just because he was possibly using Linux and somebody didn't recognize it. There may in fact be some stupidity involved here with the complaint filed, but that doesn't mean the guy isn't still guilty of something.
That said, computer law in this country is so pathetic that the accusations don't really warrant the degree of search and seizure involved here from what I can figure of the situation.
The problem is that too many people in the open-source community have the "I'm always right" or "my way is better" mentality in the first place. This is why we see so much forking of projects, which usually doesn't benefit anyone except the person who wants to boost their own ego by having their own project.
So even if you had more critics, I don't think a lot of these developers would ever listen. Take GIMP for example. People have complained about the interface for years. But it's still the same as it ever was.
Of course, the "fanbase" is just as guilty, because as someone in these very comments pointed out, if you complain about a piece of open-source software, you get dugg down, marked as a troll, told you're an idiot, etc etc. The open-source world is just very incapable of accepting criticism. Yet they very easily dish it out.
I saw this article last night, and didn't see it was from Stallman at first or I would have immediately dismissed it.
Seriously, who is this concerned over Javascript in their browser, which is there and gone with each mouse click? It's ridiculous.
The thing he wants, the ability to replace Javascript in a website with custom "free" versions for a particular site, is already possible in UserJS with Opera. It was implemented so that users could write their own fixes on sites which don't necessarily work right in Opera, or ones which you want to simply enhance. But since Opera isn't open-source, he's still out of luck.
One day people like Stallman are going to have to realize that proprietary and licensed software is a way of life if you want a modern computing experience. Ubuntu realized it, and look at how much more popular they are now than the distro they're based upon. Debian has a very different opinion on the subject, as evidenced by IceWeasel and such.
Here's a better option for people like him: If you don't like what the website has to offer or how it was written, then don't use it. Period. You could very well be breaking a license or something by thinking you have the right to replace their software with your own version, since many times it still interacts with their site's infrastructure. They might have the right to ban you if they detected you using something else, much like companies such as Blizzard can and will do.
Of course, if you're sane, none of this is an issue anyway, so nothing to see here.
The point is, if x86 is still around in 20 more years, and progresses the way it has been, you'll still be able to run DOS, classic Windows, current day Windows, Linux, OSX, etc, even on those future machines. They won't be lost forever from lack of classic hardware to run them on, much like Apple has done. Twice.
Of course, by that time, they'll probably be fast enough to emulate all of that without much effort. But the point still stands!
x86 competitors come and go. They always have a bit of a warm period where people welcome the competition and product variations. But eventually, the honeymoon is over. AMD had a good run and brought some decent chips, but I won't shed a tear when they disappear. Tis just how things go. Nvidia will apparently be taking their place.
Some people may not like the x86 architecture for whatever silly reasons, but the fact remains that it's going to be around for a long time. It's proven technology that is simply expanded as time goes on. First with 32-bit, now 64-bit. I don't know about you, but I very much enjoy the fact that, at its core, my computer is still the same machine it was 20 years ago, and can still run the same old software if I so chose.
Backwards compatibility is always the key to success. Just ask Microsoft.
Congratulations, you're the exact kind of hypocrite I was referring to!
Of course Microsoft is gonna say this. And it's absolutely no different than Firefox's slogan of "Faster, Safer, Better". Two of those statements are outright false, and one is complete opinion. Yet people let Mozilla get away with using this line without a single complaint. Apple does the same bullshit with promoting Safari, and we don't hear a peep out of people then either.
Bottom line is, don't be a hypocrite just because of some childish need to hate Microsoft. Apple = Microsoft = Mozilla. There is zero difference when it comes to a company wanting to make money.
These various onboard and compact Linux installations targeting Windows users are okay in thought, but not in practice.
Eventually all of the software would be out of date. And then what? The skype client might not connect, the Firefox might be riddled with vulnerabilities (because yes, its been prone to get them), the kernel itself might get root exploits, etc. Are you going to require the user to perform software updates on a distro which is supposed to allow them to work instantly and without delay? It's hard enough getting them to update their Windows installations.
Worse yet, what happens when something goes wrong? How do they reinstall it? Would they even bother?
I know that these aren't definite issues, but they're things to take into consideration when you're trying to pass off a compact operating system environment to people who are used to powerful ones with plenty of storage available and everything.
Anyway, that aside, the article is a bit extreme about startup times. Booting your computer will not take anymore than 30 seconds or so if you don't have it packed down with a bunch of shit. And the fact they even mentioned those lawsuits of taking 30 minutes is ludicrous exaggeration of a non-issue. If you're so impatient that you can't wait less than a minute, then computers are definitely not for you in the first place.
The solution to instant-on computing is taking better advantage of standby mode. It's entirely possible to have instant-on right now. It just depends on what your definition of the term is. There's no reason why it can't mean the same Windows/Linux/Mac installations we already have.
Finally! A comparison which not only checks every major browser out there, but also checks both the current and future versions. I was getting pretty tired of these "reviews" and "benchmarks" leaving out certain ones, or using certain beta versions of some and not of others. It wasn't very heavy on the actual speed benchmarks, but at least it was something.
That said, I have to say I'm disappointed in Opera. It used to be the fastest, but I don't know what happened with them lately. I've never been as satisfied ever since 9.5 hit. I've gradually shifted away from it handling my email so that I'm not as dependent on it, and have been using a toss-up between it and Chrome lately. I'm in Chrome as we speak, even. Once they have better Greasemonkey/UserJS support (currently it's pretty terrible in the trunk build), I may be fully on-board.
"Mozilla is resolving eight critical vulnerabilities found in the current version of Firefox â" a move sure to garner applause from devoted Firefox users."
Yeah, because in the world of fanboys, this is just terrific news. Where as, if IE fixed 8 serious flaws before IE8 came out, they'd be all "LOL MICRO$OFT". Hypocrisy is grand, aint it?
If you want a secure browser, blasting IE and then looking towards Firefox is incredibly naive and shows ignorance to the facts.
It's a shame that Slashdot can't just have news stories and leave opinion for the comments. Things like "the so-called software giant" just irk me.
But I suppose if I'm looking for news that isn't open-source biased, I shouldn't be at Slashdot!
Perhaps you've never used Windows to see how it evolved over the versions. Or the major interface shift when they went from Win3.1 to Win95. And then the major Start button redesign with Vista. And now the task bar shift with Windows 7. That's just to name the major noticable things.
Now, look at the file menu at the top of OSX. That was created back when a Mac (and most computers at the time in general) were pretty much only capable of running one app at a time. You could switch to another one, sure, but it was very slow, because it was basically task switching, paging the other one(s) out to the disk. So a single file menu, which changed per application, was a good way to save screen real estate, because you really weren't actively using more than one thing at a time.
Over twenty years later, OSX still has a single file menu along the top. Through ten major iterations of the operating system, and when computers can truly multitask applications, they still left a single file menu, just like version one.
Have you ever noticed that no other operating system out there mimics that functionality? The next biggest contender, Linux, generally mimics Windows, because the Windows interface is functional. There is nothing functional nor efficient about the single file menu design.
Now sure, when they bought NeXTStep and put the pretty OSX layer on top to resell it, they brought the dock over with it, and prettied that up too. But this was still really no major innovation in the interface per se. You can still start your apps the way you always did in Mac OS, via the finder and such. It was just something new to look at, with bouncing icons and all that pretty stuff.
Also, it doesn't have to be thinly disguised, as I will outright say that Macs are just overpriced toys. If you want a computer to do work, you buy a PC. If you want a computer to play games, you buy a PC. What does that leave Macs for? Just people who want to be different, while they use the web and some email.
Enjoy Steve Jobs conning you into buying a whole new computer with every few OS versions.
Why should Microsoft feel threatened by a rehashed version of NextStep, which hasn't really evolved its modern interface since the first version of OSX, and despite the dock and shiny colors, is yet still the same interface from 20 years ago? At least Microsoft and Linux try new things, and learn from mistakes and consumers.
Macs have a niche user base of people with a lot of money to spend on pretty machines, regardless of how much they can really do. Linux users are generally considered power users, therefore making them the people having more of an impact on technology, such as in the server market. Linux is free, too, which is a huge contrast to overpriced Apple gear.
From a strictly consumer-based standpoint, Apple is competitive. But from a technology and user base position, Linux is the threat.
All I'll say is that Apple sure makes grandiose claims for a browser that takes 25MB to download.
Considering the usually exceptional service they offer, and for free, you can't hardly complain. Everybody has downtime sooner or later. That's why they include that %0.01 chance of it happening.
Just consider it a two hour break from the computer.
I decided a few months ago when I was doing a site redesign that there was no reason to continue supporting IE6. It simply lacked too many things now to make it worth wasting my time and effort on to continue making complicated workarounds for. IE7 is a fine browser, and IE8 will be even better and is quickly approaching, so there's no reason for anyone to have not upgraded by now.
Don't get me wrong though, I feel it's very important for any developer worth their salt to support EVERY major browser. I don't care if you don't like Opera or Safari or whatever the case may be, you should code your site to work right in everything. It's really not very hard, assuming you know what you're doing. I use very little workarounds (none this last time) to make sites render properly in everything these days.
When someone visits a website and their browser isn't supported, it is simply a major turn-off. More people should realize that.
This whole thing is a complete mess. What's the point in delaying the mandatory switchover when all the companies who would have already ugpraded their equipment by now can go ahead and switch anyway? It's just costing them money to run the old stuff, so why would they care if a few people out there never got boxes to keep watching? The majority of their viewers aren't using the broadcast version anyway.
Of course, you could argue that there's no excuse for anyone to not be ready for this switch by now considering how long the country has prepared for it. And in my opinion that's true too. But the fact remains that making this switch optional for the next few months was just nonsensical. It should have been all or nothing.
Slashdot? Allowing the posting of an unverified anti-Microsoft story? Who would have expected that!
The rest of the internet and commenters here have pretty much already proven half of this untrue and/or stuff existing already in Vista, with the rest of the claims unproven. No shock there.
Seriously people, you really should expect a little more proof of things than to just blindly listen to internet "news". Being a Linux zealot is no excuse. You're supposed to be the "smart" ones, after all.
It's things like this that really bug me about the open-source zealot mentality of "Oh yeah? What about Windows?" Well who cares about Windows? Windows isn't your problem at the moment.
Linux has had quite a lot of security flaws over the years, especially important ones like privilege escalation in the kernel, which makes people defending its architecture compared to Windows a moot point. It's been a server OS for a long time, making it a valuable target in that respect much like Windows is on the web front.
The point is, as is commonly acknowledged, if Linux had a user base large enough to warrant it, it would have just as many problems with web vulnerabilities as Windows. Especially when people still use software like Firefox, which is also known to have had many buffer overflow problems over its lifespan. So boasting about Linux being the safest OS is just hogwash. Only an incredibly naive and/or ignorant person would say that Linux is outright safe.
It presently boils down to the mindset of the Linux user base, and its size. That is all. A smart Windows user will very rarely, if ever, get infected with anything. I can vouch for that personally.
A stupid user of any popular OS is going to have problems as long as there is bad coding done by developers. And every OS has shown evidence of that. Microsoft isn't any better or worse in that respect. You can look at changelogs for lots of open-source software for plenty of proof in that department. And don't give me the "Windows takes XXXX amount of time to fix it blah blah they suck most", because there's been open-source projects with problems for just as long.
People talk as if this is a bad thing. Having actually used the beta myself, unlike many of the people commenting here I'm sure, I can say that IE8 is in fact better than IE7. If Apple or Linux distributed the newest versions of their software in this same fashion, this would be a non-issue.
Pretty much your typical response from the MPAA, really. The sad part is that bittorrent is actually one of the most beneficial p2p technologies to hit the net, yet here they are just trying to villify the whole thing just over its ability to transfer movies.
Basically, if bittorrent didn't exist, the movie would have circulated via gnutella and kazaa, and the MPAA would be blaming them instead. It makes no difference how it was distributed.
Besides, with all the media attention surrounding the release of this particular movie on the net, you'd be pretty crazy to try and download it right now anyway, cause you know they're gonna have their lawsuit tentacles out in full force.
I pretty much boycotted G4 after they raped TSS to death. Thank goodness they finally took the name off that piece of crap show they replaced it with. Ironically, they replaced it with a totally stupid name!
But this is great, we get some of the best of the TechTV staff in a radio show. I'll definately be tuning in. No greedy executives involved!
I just meant kernel bloat in general, without any of those media-related modules compiled into it. I assume some kind of additions and/or changes are being made to the core kernel itself to support some of these new things, even if the modules mentioned aren't used.
I honestly don't think Linux will ever be an OS for the masses, due to what it is and has always been (which is primarily for administrators and power users), but there are many people constantly trying to push it as a replacement for Windows. But the primary reason for this, of course, is profit.
Every year at least one free Linux distro switches to having a retail version, or to ONLY having a retail version. It just doesn't even seem right to me, really, since they didn't even make it (only customize it), but yet they can somehow profit from what others can find for free. Of course the power users I mentioned above probably wouldn't be buying it, only the Linux newbies who think it can actually replace Windows and want to save some bucks. That is, until they realize it's not all it's cut out to be, and won't run all those Windows apps that their friends do. Or when it breaks, or when they run into dependency hell, etc etc etc.
I can see why some people would have a problem with this, such as those that see Linux as a networking OS or for more of an embedded system. But if Linux folks ever want to see Linux as an OS for the masses, you have you cater to the average joe, and offer all of these features for games and video and the like, if it's ever to compete with the media abilities of Windows and Mac.