Re:stuff you can't do with Linux burning software
on
Nero Burning for Linux
·
· Score: 1
I'm sure some have been known to distribute warez in this fashion, yes;)
In any case, linux software already supports cif and nrg formats, as well as of course iso and bin/cue. CloneCD is missing...I do believe the Windows version of Nero can write this format natively.
stuff you can't do with Linux burning software
on
Nero Burning for Linux
·
· Score: 3, Informative
This is a good thing. I love competition. I'm glad that there are several mpeg encoders, for example, and at least two major general transcoding packages for linux (mencoder and transcode)...
I also think it's pretty damn cool that despite all of the cool front-ends out there, basically just a handful of the same utilities are used.
I can think of a few things that the current linux combos of those utils can't accomplish, however, at least the last time I looked into each one:
Writing clone-cd image files. Many off-site archival backups of Playstation games come in this format. There is no native linux utility of which I'm aware that can handle these. In any case, it's a bullshit format - the very good Windows utility CDMage can convert them to bin/cue format, which cdrdao-using programs can then burn. The conversion works 100% of the time, and CDMage runs in linux via WINE very well - still, this is an extra and time-consuming step...
Writing cd+g (or is it +eg?) formats - Karoke cd's, that is. I wonder if Nero can do this?
Writing an mp3 file on the fly in DOA mode. I haven't tested the DAO mode in cdrecord - but in my experience, most front-ends use cdrdao to burn DAO, and cdrdao can't be fed an input-stream (last I checked, anyway), because it needs a cue file as well as the bin-data. So, you must convert the mp3 files into waves first and then burn them in DAO mode. If you use cdrecord with a pipe (or a front end) to do this in real time, the result will be TAO.
So I for one welcome some new blood/competition (sorry, no 'overlords' joke), assuming Nero will write code from mostly-scratch (which I don't know because I didn't RTFA). BTW, I thought the Windows version of Nero ran under WINE, so this might be a way to handle some of the above anyway.
gloom and doom: Is it just me, or is this just one more reason why America feels like it's in decline? In the 90s, it seemed like the world was heading in a positive direction, and the US was a player...
Now, it seems as if most of scifi tv/movies had it wrong - that in fact, English speaking Americans will not be flying starships. They will be flown by Chinese and Indians...
Not that I have a problem with this in one sense - being a humanist...but it does kind of suck living in an age where a country once known for being a world leader, is making itself, with all haste, a second-rate power...
rant: We had a 30+ year head start on the world in space, and we blew it! We fucking blew it! Too many shallow and near-sighted politicians, and too many apathetic Americans famous for quotes such as, "why should we study the jumps of grasshoppers?"
I think the "webstore" issue is more or less solved for non-commercial software. And, I think that most (non-Linux users) people don't realize just how much you can accomplish by this free software. I mean of course GUI-interfaces to package manager software. You pretty much just click your way to installing something...
We both seem to agree that third party support is weaker than it should/could be. Certainly this is due to the whole catch-22 deal - "we'd make nicer installers if more people used Linux on the desktop" - "more people might use Linux on the desktop, if the installers were nicer".
Summary: if the software is free and within the package system, installation is easier, safer and more lovely than in a Windows environment. If not, it may be really easy, or, it may require a newbie pasting commands into the command line (open source, cross-distro, installation software is required here!)
I've been using Linux as a Desktop OS about as long as you, also during the Win9x days.
It's more than ready. The main issue IMO is also it's main strength - third party commercial support.
The bad: A more limited set of apps to choose from, some pains to get commercial windows apps running via WINE, etc.
The good: rather HQ free software, that does what most people need most of the time, with the ability to run much commercial windows software, making linux the platform capable of running the most software overall. This ties in with a lack of dependence on commercial software - no Norton firewall/spyware/anti-virus required for basic secure operation. To a newbie, these security issues and updates, etc., take the ease right out of windows in my experience [1]...
I never get complaints about the GUI, for example. I also never get complaints about installing most software - GUIs for apt-get are often easier than hunting down software from the WWW, and much safer too (especially for a newbie) (with the less-choice proviso mentioned above, of course).
The complaints are about the inability to run software application x, y and z, which run fine in Windows. This issue affects OSX as well for many applications.
The issue hasn't been the desktop for a long while now (in computer time), but the rest of the world;) (that last statement is not as fanatical as it seems;) )
[1] "I didn't know I had to update my spyware software!", "I tried to install spyware, but my system is so slow and unresponsive, I couldn't", "I had no idea that Windows updates were that important", "what do you mean I should disable the Windows firewall and use a commercial firewall software instead?!", "What do you mean that two of my 5 concurrently-running anti-spyware programs are actually spyware programs posing as anti-spyware programs!?!"
btlaunchmanycurses.bittornado specifically. You give it a folder and it downloads all torrents in that folder. This way, you can use the file manager to add or remove torrents...and since this flavor runs from the shell, I can run it on older hardware on another machine, so the hit on my desktop is nil. Normally, I run it via the wonderful "screen" utility.
About time the official client stores some basic information...when I stop and restart tornado, it doesn't waste time re-checking the download - something that can take quite a while if it's dvd sized content...
I understand that the very pretty java client out there does all this and more - but not on ancient hardware from the command line;)
Exactly. I especially agree with the "defense" deal. I often do not start linux vs windows debates, but I do try to finish them;)
When I hear stuff like "windows is easier" or "linux is a joke" or "no one takes linux seriously", I feel the need to provide evidence to the contrary. I'm often labeled a fanatic afterwards...
Well, I apologize for not just using what comes standard on most pcs. I apologize for the fact that like most any other product known to mankind, there are other alternatives. I apologize for the fact that I do not believe that just because almost everyone has used/is using windows and knows windows, that this automatically makes windows better.
When I tell folks this, they label me a fanatic - and I label them conformists.
It reminds me of kids that defend their toys because they happen to have those toys, for example, folks that, back in the day, knew nothing about the hardware specs of the SNES vs the Genesis, yet vehemently defended whatever system they happened to have against the other. Childish silliness.
My opinions might be non-standard, but at least they are informed. I actually find that most people do not like to hear that the OS which they use and know and, yes, even love, is, IMO, the worst OS available, especially in terms of the three known OSes for the desktop...
I use GNOME, KDE and Mozilla apps, and I don't have these problems these days. crtl-c, crtl-x and crtl-v all pretty much work as expected. So does highlighting something with the mouse and using middle-button to paste.
Sometimes, an app seems to have two clipboards at times - however, in my experience, if someone wants to use the "windows" way exclusively, they can. Almost any app has a right-click menu, and there is always the Edit menu as well.
I use them both - perhaps I've just gotten used these "quirks" - I admit that this may be the case;)
A pre-installed windows system against a pre-installed linux system sort of ties - windows may be easier to stick new hardware into, but linux is easier to maintain and won't "degrade" in 6 months...take your pick...
Now, take an empty PC and stick an OS on it - Linux wins HANDS-DOWN. Linux, out of the box, gives you a secure environment and fucntional environment.
Windows out of the box is a joke, requiring third-party utilities to give you a basic measure of safety and even basic functionality - driver disks, office-suite disks, etc.
Right, right - most soccer moms won't attempt to install their own OS, however, if such soccer moms would be given a pre-configured linux system, they would also do quite well.
Apples to apples (all things considered), linux is easier. I'd even venture to say MUCH easier in many cases - for example, how many soccer moms realize the pitfalls of SP2? How many realize that "experts" suggest turning OFF the new standard firewall in favor of third party firewalls? (and so forth, and so on, etc.)
Enterprise is a weak show. I really liked TNG and DS9, so I guess I might be called a "trekker" of sorts - never been to a convention, but wouldn't mind going to one...
But Enterprise is dribble - it needs to be killed. I'm not such a fanatic that I just love anything and everything "trek". I'd rather read some of the trek books than watch a piece of shit just because it takes place in the Trekverse. I basically like that universe, but alas, it's big enough for some real sad shait, lol...
If there was a gaming console based on linux tech (openGL, SDL, Linux the OS, etc), then games could be easily cross-ported to the linux PC I would think, a bit like XBOX and Windows...
I think that a linux console would be the single best way to slap the world and jump-start linux native gaming. To most ordinary folk, the OS running under the hood wouldn't matter - as a console, it would be: load the dvd, turn on...
KDE does it for me - I'm running it on a Linux box. There are still things I always do from the command line (like check disk space, for example: df -h), but for the most part, I've come to love and adore KDE and it's file manager. I love clicking the gear icon in the corner, duplicating the window, draging files to make links or move them, etc.
Until very recently. I always uncompressed tarbals from the command line, but I do this in KDE now too (then I hit F4 to open a terminal there, for compiling, etc.) - I click to enter the tarball as a folder, then I hit the gear to duplicate the window, then hit the UP-Folder icon and "copy" the files over. I also love being able to right-click and zip up files to send to windows friends/clients...fish:// is also EXTREMELY handy at times...
I have a little LAN with multiple Linux machines - I really like ssh and love being able to run commands off of other machines; GUI apps act just as if they were run locally, they even dock into the system tray if they are dockable apps. This is much better than vnc (or rdesktop), IMO, most of the time - extremely productive.
I also really depend on multiple Desktops. I always keep most apps full-screen, especially the web-browser. I hate resizing windows all the time...
Also just recently, I figured out how to do something snazy like this (I should have figured this out years ago *sheesh* - I would sometimes do this by hand using NetCat):
This is GREAT. This lets me write files remotely to the machine (fred) I use as a CD-burner...my last solution was to load the command-line version of Midnight Commander on the remote machine (it's an OLD Pentium 166 with only 48 megs of ram) within an ssh remote login shell - I set it up (via the menu config files, etc) to load simple scripts I wrote to write bin/cue files, mpg files, folders, and it has access to shared drives. I was using this setup to write files on my network from the remote machine.
Now I plan to incorporate this into the KDE right-click menu, and I will be able to simply and easily, from the file manager, write cd's to the remote machine (I wish network block devices (or whatever it's called) would hurry up and make this entirely transparent with cd/dvd drives!).
I'm extremely productive - as long as I avoid the temptation to click on KNewsTicker and read Slashdot stories such as this one;)
I've never lived there, but according to the CIA World Fact Book and WikiPedia - if you want to move to Central America, Costa Rica is probably the best candidate.
My sister was there recently for a college Spanish project - she stayed with an avarage family. Some aspects were still a bit primative, yes, they had no hot water...then again, it's much closer to the equator - they did have electricity, phone service, and a dvd-player for their tv.
This wasn't a city, either. It was a small town with no public transportation. The family she stayed with owned no car, but their grown son did. She described a friendly and almost idealic little town, where everything is in walking distance...
She could picture herself living there at some point she said.
Anyone that has watched much scifi can pick up on the "that's old" stuff - that's not what sucked about B5. What sucked was the _horrible_ acting.
Don't get me wrong - I enjoyed it - when you think about the whole story, you think, "gee, that's pretty cool"...but each individual episode - man, most of them were just not that good! Good acting and realistic emotional responses, at least from humans, _matter_. Scifi needs to be held to a higher standard.
Even TNG, which I loved, suffered from this a bit. Firefly and Farscape show that _even_ scifi can have humans acting like humans probably really would, given those situations.
B5 as a whole, and many individual TNG episodes had _really_ deep and profound ideas. Firefly and Farscape lack this to an extent, but they more than make up for it in other ways...
Good acting isn't a "new" thing - watch some highly rated classic old movies. The second-in-command, Yivanva (sp?) for example - that woman couldn't express emotion if her head was set on fire.
Maybe it follows the same general premise as the original because it's a REMAKE of sorts?;)
But, I doubt you've seen the whole season...
What Cylon "queen", for example? Her interaction with the male cylon on Caprica would indicate that she's his subordinate.
The Caprica plot was merged back with the main plot in the last few episodes - I won't mention what happened to avoid spoling it for you, since you obviously haven't seen it and seems to be _key_ to the entire story thus far.
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In any case, linux software already supports cif and nrg formats, as well as of course iso and bin/cue. CloneCD is missing...I do believe the Windows version of Nero can write this format natively.
I also think it's pretty damn cool that despite all of the cool front-ends out there, basically just a handful of the same utilities are used.
I can think of a few things that the current linux combos of those utils can't accomplish, however, at least the last time I looked into each one:
- Writing clone-cd image files. Many off-site archival backups of Playstation games come in this format. There is no native linux utility of which I'm aware that can handle these. In any case, it's a bullshit format - the very good Windows utility CDMage can convert them to bin/cue format, which cdrdao-using programs can then burn. The conversion works 100% of the time, and CDMage runs in linux via WINE very well - still, this is an extra and time-consuming step...
- Writing cd+g (or is it +eg?) formats - Karoke cd's, that is. I wonder if Nero can do this?
- Writing an mp3 file on the fly in DOA mode. I haven't tested the DAO mode in cdrecord - but in my experience, most front-ends use cdrdao to burn DAO, and cdrdao can't be fed an input-stream (last I checked, anyway), because it needs a cue file as well as the bin-data. So, you must convert the mp3 files into waves first and then burn them in DAO mode. If you use cdrecord with a pipe (or a front end) to do this in real time, the result will be TAO.
So I for one welcome some new blood/competition (sorry, no 'overlords' joke), assuming Nero will write code from mostly-scratch (which I don't know because I didn't RTFA). BTW, I thought the Windows version of Nero ran under WINE, so this might be a way to handle some of the above anyway.Now, it seems as if most of scifi tv/movies had it wrong - that in fact, English speaking Americans will not be flying starships. They will be flown by Chinese and Indians...
Not that I have a problem with this in one sense - being a humanist...but it does kind of suck living in an age where a country once known for being a world leader, is making itself, with all haste, a second-rate power...
rant: We had a 30+ year head start on the world in space, and we blew it! We fucking blew it! Too many shallow and near-sighted politicians, and too many apathetic Americans famous for quotes such as, "why should we study the jumps of grasshoppers?"
We both seem to agree that third party support is weaker than it should/could be. Certainly this is due to the whole catch-22 deal - "we'd make nicer installers if more people used Linux on the desktop" - "more people might use Linux on the desktop, if the installers were nicer".
Summary: if the software is free and within the package system, installation is easier, safer and more lovely than in a Windows environment. If not, it may be really easy, or, it may require a newbie pasting commands into the command line (open source, cross-distro, installation software is required here!)
It's more than ready. The main issue IMO is also it's main strength - third party commercial support.
The bad: A more limited set of apps to choose from, some pains to get commercial windows apps running via WINE, etc.
The good: rather HQ free software, that does what most people need most of the time, with the ability to run much commercial windows software, making linux the platform capable of running the most software overall. This ties in with a lack of dependence on commercial software - no Norton firewall/spyware/anti-virus required for basic secure operation. To a newbie, these security issues and updates, etc., take the ease right out of windows in my experience [1]...
I never get complaints about the GUI, for example. I also never get complaints about installing most software - GUIs for apt-get are often easier than hunting down software from the WWW, and much safer too (especially for a newbie) (with the less-choice proviso mentioned above, of course).
The complaints are about the inability to run software application x, y and z, which run fine in Windows. This issue affects OSX as well for many applications.
The issue hasn't been the desktop for a long while now (in computer time), but the rest of the world ;) (that last statement is not as fanatical as it seems ;) )
[1] "I didn't know I had to update my spyware software!", "I tried to install spyware, but my system is so slow and unresponsive, I couldn't", "I had no idea that Windows updates were that important", "what do you mean I should disable the Windows firewall and use a commercial firewall software instead?!", "What do you mean that two of my 5 concurrently-running anti-spyware programs are actually spyware programs posing as anti-spyware programs!?!"
btlaunchmanycurses.bittornado specifically. You give it a folder and it downloads all torrents in that folder. This way, you can use the file manager to add or remove torrents...and since this flavor runs from the shell, I can run it on older hardware on another machine, so the hit on my desktop is nil. Normally, I run it via the wonderful "screen" utility.
About time the official client stores some basic information...when I stop and restart tornado, it doesn't waste time re-checking the download - something that can take quite a while if it's dvd sized content... I understand that the very pretty java client out there does all this and more - but not on ancient hardware from the command line ;)
When I hear stuff like "windows is easier" or "linux is a joke" or "no one takes linux seriously", I feel the need to provide evidence to the contrary. I'm often labeled a fanatic afterwards...
Well, I apologize for not just using what comes standard on most pcs. I apologize for the fact that like most any other product known to mankind, there are other alternatives. I apologize for the fact that I do not believe that just because almost everyone has used/is using windows and knows windows, that this automatically makes windows better.
When I tell folks this, they label me a fanatic - and I label them conformists.
It reminds me of kids that defend their toys because they happen to have those toys, for example, folks that, back in the day, knew nothing about the hardware specs of the SNES vs the Genesis, yet vehemently defended whatever system they happened to have against the other. Childish silliness.
My opinions might be non-standard, but at least they are informed. I actually find that most people do not like to hear that the OS which they use and know and, yes, even love, is, IMO, the worst OS available, especially in terms of the three known OSes for the desktop...
I use GNOME, KDE and Mozilla apps, and I don't have these problems these days. crtl-c, crtl-x and crtl-v all pretty much work as expected. So does highlighting something with the mouse and using middle-button to paste.
Sometimes, an app seems to have two clipboards at times - however, in my experience, if someone wants to use the "windows" way exclusively, they can. Almost any app has a right-click menu, and there is always the Edit menu as well.
I use them both - perhaps I've just gotten used these "quirks" - I admit that this may be the case ;)
A pre-installed windows system against a pre-installed linux system sort of ties - windows may be easier to stick new hardware into, but linux is easier to maintain and won't "degrade" in 6 months...take your pick...
Now, take an empty PC and stick an OS on it - Linux wins HANDS-DOWN. Linux, out of the box, gives you a secure environment and fucntional environment.
Windows out of the box is a joke, requiring third-party utilities to give you a basic measure of safety and even basic functionality - driver disks, office-suite disks, etc.
Right, right - most soccer moms won't attempt to install their own OS, however, if such soccer moms would be given a pre-configured linux system, they would also do quite well.
Apples to apples (all things considered), linux is easier. I'd even venture to say MUCH easier in many cases - for example, how many soccer moms realize the pitfalls of SP2? How many realize that "experts" suggest turning OFF the new standard firewall in favor of third party firewalls? (and so forth, and so on, etc.)
But Enterprise is dribble - it needs to be killed. I'm not such a fanatic that I just love anything and everything "trek". I'd rather read some of the trek books than watch a piece of shit just because it takes place in the Trekverse. I basically like that universe, but alas, it's big enough for some real sad shait, lol...
If there was a gaming console based on linux tech (openGL, SDL, Linux the OS, etc), then games could be easily cross-ported to the linux PC I would think, a bit like XBOX and Windows...
I think that a linux console would be the single best way to slap the world and jump-start linux native gaming. To most ordinary folk, the OS running under the hood wouldn't matter - as a console, it would be: load the dvd, turn on...
Until very recently. I always uncompressed tarbals from the command line, but I do this in KDE now too (then I hit F4 to open a terminal there, for compiling, etc.) - I click to enter the tarball as a folder, then I hit the gear to duplicate the window, then hit the UP-Folder icon and "copy" the files over. I also love being able to right-click and zip up files to send to windows friends/clients...fish:// is also EXTREMELY handy at times...
I have a little LAN with multiple Linux machines - I really like ssh and love being able to run commands off of other machines; GUI apps act just as if they were run locally, they even dock into the system tray if they are dockable apps. This is much better than vnc (or rdesktop), IMO, most of the time - extremely productive.
I also really depend on multiple Desktops. I always keep most apps full-screen, especially the web-browser. I hate resizing windows all the time...
Also just recently, I figured out how to do something snazy like this (I should have figured this out years ago *sheesh* - I would sometimes do this by hand using NetCat):
This is GREAT. This lets me write files remotely to the machine (fred) I use as a CD-burner...my last solution was to load the command-line version of Midnight Commander on the remote machine (it's an OLD Pentium 166 with only 48 megs of ram) within an ssh remote login shell - I set it up (via the menu config files, etc) to load simple scripts I wrote to write bin/cue files, mpg files, folders, and it has access to shared drives. I was using this setup to write files on my network from the remote machine.
Now I plan to incorporate this into the KDE right-click menu, and I will be able to simply and easily, from the file manager, write cd's to the remote machine (I wish network block devices (or whatever it's called) would hurry up and make this entirely transparent with cd/dvd drives!).
I'm extremely productive - as long as I avoid the temptation to click on KNewsTicker and read Slashdot stories such as this one ;)
involves a complex conspiracy having something to do with nearby, unhinhabited islands, and dinosaurs .
My sister was there recently for a college Spanish project - she stayed with an avarage family. Some aspects were still a bit primative, yes, they had no hot water...then again, it's much closer to the equator - they did have electricity, phone service, and a dvd-player for their tv.
This wasn't a city, either. It was a small town with no public transportation. The family she stayed with owned no car, but their grown son did. She described a friendly and almost idealic little town, where everything is in walking distance...
She could picture herself living there at some point she said.
It's a pile, dude, get over it.
A better effort would be to make a DS9 movie or series of movies...
Peace and long life,
Anyone that has watched much scifi can pick up on the "that's old" stuff - that's not what sucked about B5. What sucked was the _horrible_ acting.
Don't get me wrong - I enjoyed it - when you think about the whole story, you think, "gee, that's pretty cool"...but each individual episode - man, most of them were just not that good! Good acting and realistic emotional responses, at least from humans, _matter_. Scifi needs to be held to a higher standard.
Even TNG, which I loved, suffered from this a bit. Firefly and Farscape show that _even_ scifi can have humans acting like humans probably really would, given those situations.
B5 as a whole, and many individual TNG episodes had _really_ deep and profound ideas. Firefly and Farscape lack this to an extent, but they more than make up for it in other ways...
Good acting isn't a "new" thing - watch some highly rated classic old movies. The second-in-command, Yivanva (sp?) for example - that woman couldn't express emotion if her head was set on fire.
Maybe it follows the same general premise as the original because it's a REMAKE of sorts? ;)
But, I doubt you've seen the whole season...
What Cylon "queen", for example? Her interaction with the male cylon on Caprica would indicate that she's his subordinate.
The Caprica plot was merged back with the main plot in the last few episodes - I won't mention what happened to avoid spoling it for you, since you obviously haven't seen it and seems to be _key_ to the entire story thus far.
Far from useless, it's _damn cool_.