Newsflash: Communism doesn't work in practice. Competition is the biggest motivation for improvement; with only one OS, we'd have all the problems of a monopoly, but worse~
FLOSS has a lot of internal competition. Even if there was no Windows or Apple, KDE and GNOME would be in competiton, as would OpenOffice and KOffice, also VLC/Noatun/XMMS..., even Emacs and Vim, plus many other situations.
Competition is good, and monopoly is just as bad as communism. With monopolies, barriers to entry are built to maintain the monopoly, and motivation to develop and improve diminishes. Just look at how Internet Explorer stagnated before Firefox came along, or how Microsoft uses its large market share to alter standards to fit their own needs.
I'd like to see the other OSs getting a bit more market share, as this would help competition, not hinder it.
For the millionth time, that act only requires you to provide passwords and keys which you may reasonably expected to know. So if you use a password every time you log into your computer, you would be expected to provide it, and if you forget a PGP key you haven't used in years then they won't put you in prison for it.
Microsoft support legacy customers to the detriment of new ones. Most of the problems with each release of their OS comes from trying to support old old old apps.
Last year MS dropped support for all operating systems except XP SP2 and Vista. This includes security patches.
notepad.exe? You're joking right. No syntax highlighting, no regex search, no choice of newline character, no nothing. At least use notepad2.exe, it is much better.
The few execs who get millions also screw over the artists. The artist makes 10-15% of cd sales, minus the cost of recording the album (which is very expensive). If the album doesn't make the cost of recording, the artist doesn't get paid anything (but doesn't owe anything for the cost of recording either).
This means returns from CDs for the artists are tiny, except for big-name artists. Most small-time artists make money from live gigs - where music sharing will help the numbers.
*Some* piracy helps the music industry, especially small artists. The last CD I bought was because of a song on an MP3 podcast - basically a mix tape. I could listen a few times and search for the lyrics (lyrics are copyright too, according to the RIAA), find the CD and buy it (after checking riaa-radar, of course).
Even if you accept the infringement hurts sales argument, the big 4 labels make $billions - notably on re-releasing old songs - while artists struggle to survive. Something is very wrong here.
FFMpeg does MPEG1/2, MPEG4 (aac, divx, etc), WMV1/2/3, H.263 (flv6), VP6 (flv8), and frankly god knows what else.
Who in there right mind would think that releasing proprietory codecs for exactly the same to linux to do the same thing is in any way a good business plan!? If it was encoding these video formats, there may be some merit (eg: better encoding techniques), but playback!? The only possible advantage is it can be used in non-GPL'd programs.
Found the actual suggestion, which is here. It actually suggests it for a university.
If you see any chance that your school might refuse to allow your program to be released as free software, it is best to raise the issue at the earliest possible stage. The closer the program is to working usefully, the more temptation the administration might feel to take it from you and finish it without you. At an earlier stage, you have more leverage.
So we recommend that you approach them when the program is only half-done, saying, "If you will agree to releasing this as free software, I will finish it." Don't think of this as a bluff. To prevail, you must have the courage to say, "My program will have liberty, or never be born."
Hope that clears it up, my paraphrasing was fairly crap
Paraphrasing the FSF's recommendations: * Write a little bit * Go to your boss and say "I'll write the rest if you allow it to be Free Software" * Get that in writing * Be prepared to say "good luck getting someone else to finish the project" as you walk away
That's one second, the same as in the good old imperial measurements. Wikipedia suggests older definitions - such as "the fraction 1/31,556,925.9747 of the tropical year for 1900 January 0 at 12 hours ephemeris time" - which are hardly any better.
Slashdot Mirror
Google doesn't serve different pages to bots - look at Google's cached version, or Yahoo's cached version. The text is a feature added on their search results.
FLOSS has a lot of internal competition. Even if there was no Windows or Apple, KDE and GNOME would be in competiton, as would OpenOffice and KOffice, also VLC/Noatun/XMMS..., even Emacs and Vim, plus many other situations.
Competition is good, and monopoly is just as bad as communism. With monopolies, barriers to entry are built to maintain the monopoly, and motivation to develop and improve diminishes. Just look at how Internet Explorer stagnated before Firefox came along, or how Microsoft uses its large market share to alter standards to fit their own needs.
I'd like to see the other OSs getting a bit more market share, as this would help competition, not hinder it.
That'll be the copy protection
Tell that to SCO
For the millionth time, that act only requires you to provide passwords and keys which you may reasonably expected to know. So if you use a password every time you log into your computer, you would be expected to provide it, and if you forget a PGP key you haven't used in years then they won't put you in prison for it.
Last year MS dropped support for all operating systems except XP SP2 and Vista. This includes security patches.
You better get some antivirus for that.
notepad.exe? You're joking right. No syntax highlighting, no regex search, no choice of newline character, no nothing. At least use notepad2.exe, it is much better.
The few execs who get millions also screw over the artists. The artist makes 10-15% of cd sales, minus the cost of recording the album (which is very expensive). If the album doesn't make the cost of recording, the artist doesn't get paid anything (but doesn't owe anything for the cost of recording either).
This means returns from CDs for the artists are tiny, except for big-name artists. Most small-time artists make money from live gigs - where music sharing will help the numbers.
*Some* piracy helps the music industry, especially small artists. The last CD I bought was because of a song on an MP3 podcast - basically a mix tape. I could listen a few times and search for the lyrics (lyrics are copyright too, according to the RIAA), find the CD and buy it (after checking riaa-radar, of course).
Even if you accept the infringement hurts sales argument, the big 4 labels make $billions - notably on re-releasing old songs - while artists struggle to survive. Something is very wrong here.
But etcetera is one word. Confusion!
At this point, I think the judiciary are just playing it for laughs.
http://riaaradar.com/
There is a reason for using Flash 8 for video - VP6 video support which is much better than the H.263 video in Flash 6.
Can't get it to work in WINE for some reason though. Perhaps it's my uni proxy.
Exactly. The mistake is not exploiting it (you could probably get away with that). The mistake is telling them that there is a problem.
Hey, I'd not pay some money to not have that feature
FFMpeg does MPEG1/2, MPEG4 (aac, divx, etc), WMV1/2/3, H.263 (flv6), VP6 (flv8), and frankly god knows what else.
Who in there right mind would think that releasing proprietory codecs for exactly the same to linux to do the same thing is in any way a good business plan!? If it was encoding these video formats, there may be some merit (eg: better encoding techniques), but playback!? The only possible advantage is it can be used in non-GPL'd programs.
Hope that clears it up, my paraphrasing was fairly crap
Paraphrasing the FSF's recommendations:
* Write a little bit
* Go to your boss and say "I'll write the rest if you allow it to be Free Software"
* Get that in writing
* Be prepared to say "good luck getting someone else to finish the project" as you walk away
Hmmm... website http://www.xbox.com/
Shill, anyone?
Goodness, just use metric already! It only has one definition of meter.
By the way, for the weather forcast always uses celcius - except for really high temperatures, when we claim "it's 100 degrees!"
That's one second, the same as in the good old imperial measurements. Wikipedia suggests older definitions - such as "the fraction 1/31,556,925.9747 of the tropical year for 1900 January 0 at 12 hours ephemeris time" - which are hardly any better.
That's the best character to mod point ratio I've ever seen
Well, 4 MB should be enough for anybody
Or as the FSF calls it, Cranial Restrictions Management.
^ What he said. I don't know what computer GP has, but I'm sure it can use at least one of vlc or mplayer.