Surely using a MAC address, which is supposed to be entirely unique (yes, it can be changed, but it's close enough) and isn't hard to read, would be a more effective route?
It was said quite nicely in an earlier post in this thread, but I'll try to summarise here:
Novell seems to believe that only its patent agreement with MS protects its customers. *If* this is the case, then Novell's customers cannot exercise their rights to redistribute or modify software under the GPL without violating patents. The GPL (yes, even V2) forbids Novell from distributing GPLd software if this is the case.
The FSF is (probably) working out whether this applies in this case.
I'm not afraid of trying new software in general, but I am only now slowly transitioning to using Ubuntu full-time instead of Windows, after first considering it several years ago and trying it out occasionally over those years. It's not always easy.
As said in an earlier post, Novell's continuing distribution of GPLd software may be against the GPLv2. They have patent indemnification licenses with MS. This suggests they believe that without those licenses they would be violating patents. Distributing GPL software that your customers cannot then distribute in turn without violating patents is expressly forbidden by the GPL, and if you violate one section of the GPL you have no right to distribute GPLd software at all. Hence they are violating the GPL and the copyright on the GPLd code.
There are huge advantages to going the driver route rather than wrappers for windows drivers. For a start, the community can update any open drivers, whereas they cannot touch closed windows drivers. There are many to whom open drivers over closed ones is a big deal.
I believe CutePDF has been around for considerably longer than 2 years, although how public it was then I do not recall. I do believe that OpenOffice has had PDF output available for much longer than that, though.
Free software for creating, reading and editing PDFs has been available for years on all platforms. There's a large number of links and products mentioned, open and proprietary, free and commercial, further up this discussion.
There's plugins available for some versions of office, freely, that will print to PDF. There are multiple PDF printers for windows (CutePDF is popular, and (this surprised me at first) installed on all my uni's computers), and free PDF creation programs all over the place. Hell, pdflatex creates PDFs with much better results than you'd get out of a word document.
As with the grandparent, there's many better ways of doing things, in most cases, than the way you've chosen.
On the other hand, if it works for you then great - but you might find it worth trying something else.
My iriver, running rockbox, has no trouble either. It creates the ID3 database in the background, and will even resume if turned off during a database update.
The original firmware had a program to be run on the host computer to create such a database instead. Under both firmware systems, you can put your music wherever you want and use the tag database.
Hard drive players tend to have more powerful processors in many cases than the flash-based ones, so the extra size is less hassle than you might think.
Ubuntu seems to have easier-to-find config GUIs than windows in some ways, although if you're too fixed on "this option is in this control panel section" then naturally you'll have to relearn where it is.
(This it the third post I've made in this discussion praising Ubuntu. This worries me. I'm no fanboy, or at last I thought I wasn't.)
I've had absolutely no trouble getting the binary nvidia driver working under Ubuntu Edgy. Nor any trouble getting Beryl to run. (And the results are most prettiful.)
You know, GoDaddy keeps doing things that make me question whether I should keep my domains registered with them or not. Question? If I had anything registered with them, I'd be gone already. No question about it.
I'm already doing this. Forced myself to use only linux for a couple weeks, ending two days ago. And with the exception of rebooting into windows temporarily and solely to play multiplayer games with my brother.
Slashdot Mirror
ME, or malware-filled 2k? I'm not sure there's a lot to decide between them, really...
Surely using a MAC address, which is supposed to be entirely unique (yes, it can be changed, but it's close enough) and isn't hard to read, would be a more effective route?
It was said quite nicely in an earlier post in this thread, but I'll try to summarise here:
Novell seems to believe that only its patent agreement with MS protects its customers. *If* this is the case, then Novell's customers cannot exercise their rights to redistribute or modify software under the GPL without violating patents. The GPL (yes, even V2) forbids Novell from distributing GPLd software if this is the case.
The FSF is (probably) working out whether this applies in this case.
I'm not afraid of trying new software in general, but I am only now slowly transitioning to using Ubuntu full-time instead of Windows, after first considering it several years ago and trying it out occasionally over those years. It's not always easy.
I still miss foobar.
As said in an earlier post, Novell's continuing distribution of GPLd software may be against the GPLv2. They have patent indemnification licenses with MS. This suggests they believe that without those licenses they would be violating patents. Distributing GPL software that your customers cannot then distribute in turn without violating patents is expressly forbidden by the GPL, and if you violate one section of the GPL you have no right to distribute GPLd software at all. Hence they are violating the GPL and the copyright on the GPLd code.
There are huge advantages to going the driver route rather than wrappers for windows drivers. For a start, the community can update any open drivers, whereas they cannot touch closed windows drivers. There are many to whom open drivers over closed ones is a big deal.
I believe CutePDF has been around for considerably longer than 2 years, although how public it was then I do not recall. I do believe that OpenOffice has had PDF output available for much longer than that, though.
I may be wrong. I often am.
There's no need to license PDF binaries. Plenty of free and open PDF implementations exists for all platforms.
Free software for creating, reading and editing PDFs has been available for years on all platforms. There's a large number of links and products mentioned, open and proprietary, free and commercial, further up this discussion.
You're doing things the very hard way.
There's plugins available for some versions of office, freely, that will print to PDF. There are multiple PDF printers for windows (CutePDF is popular, and (this surprised me at first) installed on all my uni's computers), and free PDF creation programs all over the place. Hell, pdflatex creates PDFs with much better results than you'd get out of a word document.
As with the grandparent, there's many better ways of doing things, in most cases, than the way you've chosen.
On the other hand, if it works for you then great - but you might find it worth trying something else.
My iriver, running rockbox, has no trouble either. It creates the ID3 database in the background, and will even resume if turned off during a database update.
The original firmware had a program to be run on the host computer to create such a database instead. Under both firmware systems, you can put your music wherever you want and use the tag database.
Hard drive players tend to have more powerful processors in many cases than the flash-based ones, so the extra size is less hassle than you might think.
Ubuntu seems to have easier-to-find config GUIs than windows in some ways, although if you're too fixed on "this option is in this control panel section" then naturally you'll have to relearn where it is.
(This it the third post I've made in this discussion praising Ubuntu. This worries me. I'm no fanboy, or at last I thought I wasn't.)
On some distros, there *IS* an add new printer option in the system menu. Ubuntu, for example.
'Course, clumsy users can still cock things up, but they do that on whatever OS.
(I misconfigured a printer recently and couldn't work out why; I actually found it EASIER to fix the problem within the CIPS web interface)
I've had absolutely no trouble getting the binary nvidia driver working under Ubuntu Edgy. Nor any trouble getting Beryl to run. (And the results are most prettiful.)
If Google was doing that now and we knew about it, China would know and would kick Google out.
If Google were doing that now and we didn't know about it... well, you wouldn't know.
The last few sentences of this post can be summarised in a much clearer fashion:
"Think of the children!"
If only they WOULD release foobar for linux...
(Yes, I know you were using it as a meta-name. So?)
There's others, too. Magnatune, eMusic...
So's the 360, no?
And either way, MS/Sony/whoever may make a loss but unless you go out and buy games, eliminating their loss, you've made a bigger loss.
I'm not certain I have the desk space for a console. And definitely not for a TV, at the moment. That's not an option for me, really.
I'm already doing this. Forced myself to use only linux for a couple weeks, ending two days ago. And with the exception of rebooting into windows temporarily and solely to play multiplayer games with my brother.
There are many things I prefer about it, too.
Ooooh. Damn good idea!
Hmm... we need a way to add politicians to the mix, though. Especially presidents and prime ministers.
"Except windows". There you have the problem.
I represent the guild of sewer-cleaners, and I'd like to point out that my members would not even consider touching the filth that makes up the RIAA.