That's ridiculous. You can use that to argue against the adoption of anything.
Exactly! now you see the value of the patent system for companies such as Microsoft and Apple.
Linux gaining too much ground on the corporate arena? "the Linux kernel may or may not infringe on over 200 of our patents, and we may or may not decide to sue everyone that uses it". VP8 threatening their plan for dominance of the online video market? "VP8 may or may not infringe on our patents, and we may or may not decide to sue people over it, eventually".
And the best part? given how corrupt the system is, approving patents left and right regardless of how vague they are or how much prior art there may be, chances are they're actually right and you are infringing on *something* of theirs.
What reeks of conspiracy theory is your idea that Google released WebM only to benefit Adobe. The logic is so twisted there's no way a normal, rational person could believe that for a second. Stop drinking Apple's kool-aid and you may see it for yourself.
Furthermore, the simple, undeniable facts are that the standard was pretty much settled on Theora until Apple raised a bitchfest, so if you dislike the current format war blame them, not Google. All they did was to give us an alternative to Theora that's just as Free but somewhat more efficient, nothing more.
And frankly, I'm amazed that you could have kind words for h.264 given your apparent hatred of the RealMedia/WMV era, as without a single format codified into the standard that's exactly what we'll get, and h.264's licensing has been found insufficient for such position already. So your options are pretty much Theora, WebM or bringing down the entire patent system in the United States. And if you go with the latter, remember to do so *before* asking us to consider h.264 again, empty promises for a nebulous future are wholly insuficient.
They do own patents over it. Though their main objective doesn't seem to be the money, per se, as much as simply raising the barriers of entry so they get less competition.
Such blantant revisionism. The one who got greedy was Apple, when they thought "why can't I take advantage of this HTML5 thing and make users pay for every implementation, ever?", they were the ones to splinter off from the standards group in order to push for their own format at the expense of everyone else.
Google only came into the picture because, while all that crap went on, they decided they could get a better format than Theora that was still free of Apple's desired royalties for cheap. But the status quo was always Theora, always a Free codec, regardless of what Apple's kool-aid may have made you hallucinate.
The argument should be HTML5 versus proprietary plugins. This is the whole point.
No, the whole point is free implementation by anyone willing, as all other standards before it have been, and "the other side" corresponds to anything that'd stand in the way of such ideal, be it a plugin or a patented-to-hell-and-back format.
Google (among others) is trying to re-frame the debate as a war between different video CODECs, when HTML5, as a standard, should be CODEC-neutral.
It shouldn't, as otherwise it is effectively no better than the old 'object' tag, which was so fucking lousy it was the reason Developers and Users alike hailed Flash as their savior when it came.
Basically, partisan forces are fucking with HTML5, and HTML5 will suffer because of it.
Yeah, and you can blame Apple and their greed for that.
Funny, but I've always considered that attitude rather arrogant for the "other" side, so to say. Essentially, a not-so-hostile way of saying "nyuk nyuk, you're still a dirty, smelling geek and as such unfit to tell us, normal people what to do, because we matter and you don't".
Just like I'm willing to give up my mouse wheel in exchange for getting clear sound out of my speakers.
Seriously, WTF? software upgrades and patches are completely orthogonal to having an open or closed OS, and I truly cannot grasp the logic of why you'd think otherwise. Are you, perhaps, working under some obscenely twisted version of "security through obscurity", thinking that if you can't freely write apps (actually, this only concerns alternate OSes) any exploit will stay hidden and therefore keep you safe? it's the closest I can get to a logical argument, and it still doesn't make a bit of sense whatsoever.
You may notice how, as upset as they may get, they don't call for the government to intervene in such situations. You may also notice how, when asked as to how such things would get solved under a free market, they specifically cite customers complaining to the manufacturers about their perceived problems with the products.
I'd suggest Achtung Panzer, though if it proves too complex for you I guess you could try the original Supreme Commander and its expansion too, they're the closest there is to a mainstream Wargame.
It's been long known that the C&C-derived subgenre of RTSs of which the *craft series are a part of is little but the RTS equivalent of "run and gun" FPSs, except without the explosions and the shiny graphics to compensate for its stupidity, so you have nobody to blame but yourself if you went with Starcraft 2 hoping for actual strategy.
There are, but yet they're both still forms of "papers, please", and you pretending one isn't just because you happen to support it won't change that fact.
It's like how downloading an MP3 off the net and selling bootlegs on the street are both forms of copyright infringement: you can argue all you like about whether either should be legal or not based on potential benefits and costs to society and all that, but you can't pretend one of them is somehow *not* a form of copyright infringement.
Font problems are a common problem when dealing with WYSIWYG word processors, not only with OpenOffice but also between different versions of Office itself, or even installs on different computers.
It's been long known that, if you want your document to look exactly as intended everywhere else, you make a PDF out of it. Or use baseline TeX, Knuth was pretty good about backwards compatibility when designing it.
Agreed. Xubuntu was not light enough. Among the many advantages of Linux that is trumpeted, particularly around the time of the advent of Windows Vista, is the ability to make old computers usable again. But it rings hollow. Seems a lot of desktop environments, including XFCE, do font work on the fly, and that's a real drag on old systems. If you turn off the anti-aliasing, the environment looks horrible unless you switch to a fixed or terminal font.
No, not really. I use Debian with LXDE on a Pentium II 300mhz with 160 MBs of RAM for University, and it has worked perfectly so far other than the lack of integrated wifi. Used to run fairly well with Xfce too, except the lack of available RAM hurt when trying to browse more than ~7-8 webpages at the same time.
Do keep in mind as well that Xubuntu is known for being the 'heaviest' Xfce distro around, vanilla Xfce on top of Arch or Debian is much lighter.
A while ago, I tried Firefox 3.5 on a 133 MHz Pentium. Took 30 seconds just to come up. How the heck did we ever surf the Internet on 40MHz 486s with VGA graphics?
Poorly.
Still, as you should know Linux is heavily RAM-dependant and trying to run a GUI on anything less than 128 MBs is for masochists only, which was likely your case. And then you went ahead and made it worse by using the single, most RAM-heavy web browser on the face of Earth. Upgrade that thing to 128 MBs of RAM, put Opera or a Webkit-based browser like Arora or Midori and you'll get much better results, trust me.
Sure, as long as you adjust the laws to account for crap like Steve Jobs' "one dollar sallary and make the company pay for everything I do", or Bill Gates' "allow charities to use Office for free, then claim a donation equal to the number of copies used times Office's MSRP" schemes.
Though, as another poster once said, as long as the potential savings of tax evasion are higher than the rates of lawyers and accountants, stuff like this will inevitably continue to happen.
Really? between all the victims of rape, murder and lethal accidents that occur worldwide every minute, I'm amazed that you could find enough time to write here on Slashdot between all the crying.
You say "straw man", I say "critical research failure". For my evidence, I submit every other science-related Slashdot article ever published, of which all have at least one post starting with "I have a PhD in the field and..." followed by an in-depth analysis of all the ways the article is wrong, regardless of the subject's notoriety.
When journalism gets even the facts about journalism itself wrong, you can't expect much from them with regards to accuracy. Or as a wise man once said, "never blame malice for that which can be adequately explained by incompetence".
Sorry but, unfortunately, the world runs on marketing, not freedom. These propietary monopolists will continue being successful regardless of what competition we bring to the table, as long as they've got the money to make people believe they're the superior (or only) choice.
Sooo... according to you, the reason Apple didn't accept the HTML5 standard was that web developers would be unsure that a codec whose support was required by all HTML5 implementation would be supported by all HTML5 implementations? I'd love it if you could give us a source for that, I could use a laugh.
Sorry, but outside your broken logic, Apple is the reason we're in this mess and it's Google, along with Opera and Mozilla, who are trying to fix the damn problem they created.
And BTW, I've never said that the HTML5 standard was going to be Theora only, you may want to read my post again before blaming me for your own misconceptions.
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That's ridiculous. You can use that to argue against the adoption of anything.
Exactly! now you see the value of the patent system for companies such as Microsoft and Apple.
Linux gaining too much ground on the corporate arena? "the Linux kernel may or may not infringe on over 200 of our patents, and we may or may not decide to sue everyone that uses it". VP8 threatening their plan for dominance of the online video market? "VP8 may or may not infringe on our patents, and we may or may not decide to sue people over it, eventually".
And the best part? given how corrupt the system is, approving patents left and right regardless of how vague they are or how much prior art there may be, chances are they're actually right and you are infringing on *something* of theirs.
God were those bribes well spent.
Citation needed. But given that Broadcom doesn't even offer indemnification over their own codec, BV16, I wouldn't be too hopeful.
What reeks of conspiracy theory is your idea that Google released WebM only to benefit Adobe. The logic is so twisted there's no way a normal, rational person could believe that for a second. Stop drinking Apple's kool-aid and you may see it for yourself.
Furthermore, the simple, undeniable facts are that the standard was pretty much settled on Theora until Apple raised a bitchfest, so if you dislike the current format war blame them, not Google. All they did was to give us an alternative to Theora that's just as Free but somewhat more efficient, nothing more.
And frankly, I'm amazed that you could have kind words for h.264 given your apparent hatred of the RealMedia/WMV era, as without a single format codified into the standard that's exactly what we'll get, and h.264's licensing has been found insufficient for such position already. So your options are pretty much Theora, WebM or bringing down the entire patent system in the United States. And if you go with the latter, remember to do so *before* asking us to consider h.264 again, empty promises for a nebulous future are wholly insuficient.
They do own patents over it. Though their main objective doesn't seem to be the money, per se, as much as simply raising the barriers of entry so they get less competition.
So let's include it 20 years from now, if anyone still cares.
Until then, however, let's just play it safe with WebM and Theora.
Video compression is a patent minefield, and indemnity is pretty much an absolute requirement these days if you expect to be taken seriously.
Alright then, name one format that does offer indemnity.
Here's some help: MPEG LA doesn't.
Such blantant revisionism. The one who got greedy was Apple, when they thought "why can't I take advantage of this HTML5 thing and make users pay for every implementation, ever?", they were the ones to splinter off from the standards group in order to push for their own format at the expense of everyone else.
Google only came into the picture because, while all that crap went on, they decided they could get a better format than Theora that was still free of Apple's desired royalties for cheap. But the status quo was always Theora, always a Free codec, regardless of what Apple's kool-aid may have made you hallucinate.
The argument should be HTML5 versus proprietary plugins. This is the whole point.
No, the whole point is free implementation by anyone willing, as all other standards before it have been, and "the other side" corresponds to anything that'd stand in the way of such ideal, be it a plugin or a patented-to-hell-and-back format.
Google (among others) is trying to re-frame the debate as a war between different video CODECs, when HTML5, as a standard, should be CODEC-neutral.
It shouldn't, as otherwise it is effectively no better than the old 'object' tag, which was so fucking lousy it was the reason Developers and Users alike hailed Flash as their savior when it came.
Basically, partisan forces are fucking with HTML5, and HTML5 will suffer because of it.
Yeah, and you can blame Apple and their greed for that.
They said the same thing when they came with their "copyleft" with respect to commercial UNIXen, and yet here we are.
Remember the "lesser evil" is still a form of evil, and in this case it's not even clear that h.264 is the lesser one of the two either.
Funny, but I've always considered that attitude rather arrogant for the "other" side, so to say. Essentially, a not-so-hostile way of saying "nyuk nyuk, you're still a dirty, smelling geek and as such unfit to tell us, normal people what to do, because we matter and you don't".
I agree with the rest of your comment, though.
Just like I'm willing to give up my mouse wheel in exchange for getting clear sound out of my speakers.
Seriously, WTF? software upgrades and patches are completely orthogonal to having an open or closed OS, and I truly cannot grasp the logic of why you'd think otherwise. Are you, perhaps, working under some obscenely twisted version of "security through obscurity", thinking that if you can't freely write apps (actually, this only concerns alternate OSes) any exploit will stay hidden and therefore keep you safe? it's the closest I can get to a logical argument, and it still doesn't make a bit of sense whatsoever.
You may notice how, as upset as they may get, they don't call for the government to intervene in such situations. You may also notice how, when asked as to how such things would get solved under a free market, they specifically cite customers complaining to the manufacturers about their perceived problems with the products.
That's not a coincidence.
Play better RTSs.
I'd suggest Achtung Panzer, though if it proves too complex for you I guess you could try the original Supreme Commander and its expansion too, they're the closest there is to a mainstream Wargame.
It's been long known that the C&C-derived subgenre of RTSs of which the *craft series are a part of is little but the RTS equivalent of "run and gun" FPSs, except without the explosions and the shiny graphics to compensate for its stupidity, so you have nobody to blame but yourself if you went with Starcraft 2 hoping for actual strategy.
Propaganda is refusing to spend time and resources on enforcing an idiotic law of the US government, passed only for political reasons?
Good fucking lord, the Google haters around here are becoming as bad as the "M$" crowd.
There are, but yet they're both still forms of "papers, please", and you pretending one isn't just because you happen to support it won't change that fact.
It's like how downloading an MP3 off the net and selling bootlegs on the street are both forms of copyright infringement: you can argue all you like about whether either should be legal or not based on potential benefits and costs to society and all that, but you can't pretend one of them is somehow *not* a form of copyright infringement.
Can be implemented by anyone willing, with no payment of royalties, NDAs or reverse-engineering needed.
By that standard WebM is open, while OOXML and h.264 are not.
Font problems are a common problem when dealing with WYSIWYG word processors, not only with OpenOffice but also between different versions of Office itself, or even installs on different computers.
It's been long known that, if you want your document to look exactly as intended everywhere else, you make a PDF out of it. Or use baseline TeX, Knuth was pretty good about backwards compatibility when designing it.
Well... yeah, it is. Somehow, "it's the law" is not considered a good refutal of a "the law requires you to do $X" statement.
Agreed. Xubuntu was not light enough. Among the many advantages of Linux that is trumpeted, particularly around the time of the advent of Windows Vista, is the ability to make old computers usable again. But it rings hollow. Seems a lot of desktop environments, including XFCE, do font work on the fly, and that's a real drag on old systems. If you turn off the anti-aliasing, the environment looks horrible unless you switch to a fixed or terminal font.
No, not really. I use Debian with LXDE on a Pentium II 300mhz with 160 MBs of RAM for University, and it has worked perfectly so far other than the lack of integrated wifi. Used to run fairly well with Xfce too, except the lack of available RAM hurt when trying to browse more than ~7-8 webpages at the same time.
Do keep in mind as well that Xubuntu is known for being the 'heaviest' Xfce distro around, vanilla Xfce on top of Arch or Debian is much lighter.
A while ago, I tried Firefox 3.5 on a 133 MHz Pentium. Took 30 seconds just to come up. How the heck did we ever surf the Internet on 40MHz 486s with VGA graphics?
Poorly.
Still, as you should know Linux is heavily RAM-dependant and trying to run a GUI on anything less than 128 MBs is for masochists only, which was likely your case. And then you went ahead and made it worse by using the single, most RAM-heavy web browser on the face of Earth. Upgrade that thing to 128 MBs of RAM, put Opera or a Webkit-based browser like Arora or Midori and you'll get much better results, trust me.
Sure, as long as you adjust the laws to account for crap like Steve Jobs' "one dollar sallary and make the company pay for everything I do", or Bill Gates' "allow charities to use Office for free, then claim a donation equal to the number of copies used times Office's MSRP" schemes.
Though, as another poster once said, as long as the potential savings of tax evasion are higher than the rates of lawyers and accountants, stuff like this will inevitably continue to happen.
Really? between all the victims of rape, murder and lethal accidents that occur worldwide every minute, I'm amazed that you could find enough time to write here on Slashdot between all the crying.
You say "straw man", I say "critical research failure". For my evidence, I submit every other science-related Slashdot article ever published, of which all have at least one post starting with "I have a PhD in the field and..." followed by an in-depth analysis of all the ways the article is wrong, regardless of the subject's notoriety.
When journalism gets even the facts about journalism itself wrong, you can't expect much from them with regards to accuracy. Or as a wise man once said, "never blame malice for that which can be adequately explained by incompetence".
rather than the Excalibur-wielding badass? crap.
Well, at least I'm not a chick, so there's that. Sucks to be you, Ophiuchus!
Sorry but, unfortunately, the world runs on marketing, not freedom. These propietary monopolists will continue being successful regardless of what competition we bring to the table, as long as they've got the money to make people believe they're the superior (or only) choice.
Sooo... according to you, the reason Apple didn't accept the HTML5 standard was that web developers would be unsure that a codec whose support was required by all HTML5 implementation would be supported by all HTML5 implementations? I'd love it if you could give us a source for that, I could use a laugh.
Sorry, but outside your broken logic, Apple is the reason we're in this mess and it's Google, along with Opera and Mozilla, who are trying to fix the damn problem they created.
And BTW, I've never said that the HTML5 standard was going to be Theora only, you may want to read my post again before blaming me for your own misconceptions.