But you're by far in the minority in the Linux community as far as I can tell. If you don't want Linux to be widely-used, that's fine-- you don't have to work towards making it more acceptable if you don't want to. But you also can't whine about all the problems that come along with that (for example, hardware and game compatibility.)
I assume your sig is more a "stop those Nazi evil American bastards from killing everybody!" and less of a humorous, "stop America now-- I want to get off!!"
I have this link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LinDVD Apparently, it comes with Mandriva (the "Power Pack" version) and is also pre-installed on Ubuntu Dells. The big deal when Linspire came out was that you could get LinDVD from their "click n run" software store for $4.95. "Click n run" still exists, but it no longer lists LinDVD. This was only a couple years ago, do you seriously not remember Linspire?
And I'll spell it out for you, since you're a tard:
How do I accomplish my goal without potentially breaking any laws?
You buy a license for the DVD decoder, the same way Microsoft and Apple have. And Linspire did, all those years ago when it came out with a legal and legit DVD player for Linux. If you pay for a license, you're not breaking any laws. This is what I meant when I said: "you might have to buy a *gasp* non-free license".
The DMCA is only involved if you play DVDs using reverse-engineered unlicensed software.
Is it all coming together now? Are the cogs and gears interlocking? Is there a thick cloud of oily smoke now escaping from your dense skull? Are the two brain cells rubbing together? Good.
Your first point is good, and actually pretty relevant to the topic at hand-- if you can run specific software nobody else can, that's a step-up from Windows or OS X. The problem is that that software is pretty tightly-focused, not a lot of people know or care what Cadence or Synopsys does. I consider myself pretty geeky and I've never even heard of any. It's the right idea, just the wrong software products to feature.
As for the free development tools, Visual Studio Express and OS X's developer tools are free (in the practical sense of the word), so that doesn't set you apart from the competition.
Nobody cares why it doesn't work, as long as it doesn't work. Nobody cares why it does work, for that matter. The only thing people care about is having it work-- the sooner the Linux community realizes that, the better. Yes, you might have to buy a *gasp* non-free license for your free OS, but guess what? If you want users, that's the tradeoff-- welcome to the real world. (If you don't want users, then stay the course.)
Blizzard has banned people for "playing" the auction house in a way they don't like. For example, a friend of mine saw the AH had 4 stacks of something (let's say runecloth) for sale at 30g a pop. He bought all five, added 3 more he wanted to sell, and relisted them all at 50g a pop. I call that "free market", but Blizzard banned him for this. (Presumably because somebody who wanted runecloth and was closely watching the AH complained.)
Anyway, point is: be careful.
The new WOW expansions have made gold mostly useless anyway. It used to be that with enough gold you could deck a max-level character with damned good equipment; now you can't even match the equipment you get from normal quests, and can't even get close to even medium-level dungeon armor sets. I assume this is a response to gold farmers, but as a casual player it's really turned me off of the game, (among other things, like the Arena changes) and I don't play anymore.
Wow, it's amazing that an American might not have heard of a site that's not even available in the US! Quick, better act like we're all idiots, instead of checking on that.
Well, apparently Linux can only implement usability features after Microsoft does it...
But seriously, Microsoft and Google are much, much different in size. Even considering Google's DoubleClick acquisition, there's really no valid comparison between the two.
Microsoft's campus is more comparable to, for example, Cisco. If you're going to compare "large corporate campus bar count", pick comparable campuses.
The thought that Mormons would oppose a bar located in a campus that distributes banned beverages (soft drinks, coffee) in literally *thousands* of places is ridiculous.
Yah, and a native Cherokee will consider himself Cherokee and not American. And I'm sure somewhere there's some guy who lives in Hawaii and considers himself Turkish.
The point is, your little anecdote, while interesting, is *completely irrelevant* to the topic being discussed.
I hate this irrational anti-Americanism we see all the time on Slashdot. Get a grip, people.
No this is AMERICA....
Whereas in Europe you can head over to a pub to relax and chit chat, in AMERICA (and English Canada) it is completely frowned upon.
I have idea where you were working, or who's "frowning upon" it, but the US is a big place. I can tell you we do it all the time in Seattle, well, at least once a week or so. Seattle is near where Microsoft is located, to tie this in with the actual story being discussed.
One thing you have to realize about the US is that the eastern half is *completely* different than the western half. Things that apply in, say, New York, don't apply in Seattle or Portland, and vice versa.
I know whenever I am stateside and I order a beer I am completely out of the norm!
Where is "stateside?" Nobody would give it a second glance in Seattle.
BUT yet when it comes to drinking while I sip my beer the others get piss drunk, do idiotic things, and generally make a complete a** out of themselves.
This begs the question, is the pub the problem? Or the fact that the culture in this respect has its head up its a**.
Clearly the problem is that all Americans suck at everything and only Europeans are awesome enough to drive responsibly. There couldn't possibly be any other explanation.
BTW I am European, grew up in North America, but now have been living in Europe for 15 years. And while Europeans have their oddities, this aspect of English North American life is really screwed...
If you grew up in North America (presumably "English Canada", whatever that means), then you should know that the US is an extremely large place with more than one culture in it. The average resident of Utah could NOT be more different than the average resident of Florida.
In short, at best you're making wide sweeping generalizations, and at worst you're a liar.
And your post has... what, exactly?... to do with Washington and Microsoft?
Oh wait, nothing. It's about California. California has *nothing* to do with Washington. (Except that we can't get them to stop moving up here.)
I live in Idaho,and just last week, I heard an offensive ad on the radio denouncing some stimulus bill because it relaxes the number of alcohol permits. I wonder who paid for this ad?
Why don't you research it and find the fuck out, instead of just assuming that your personal boogeymen did it? And then shove that supposition all over Slashdot as if it were fact?
It sucks for the people who own and work at the pub, but in a silently ultra-religious state like WA, it's no surprise that on of the largest local employers bows to the commands of the puppet masters.
Dude, WTF?!
I live in Washington, you're full of shit. Please, someone mod this guy down. Are there Mormons in Washington? Yeah, just like every other state in the US. Do they control... well... anything? At all? Not really, no. Would the presence of a bar that they aren't forced to attend offend Mormons? Not any of those I've met.
Just think about the logic of that parent post... he's saying that the Mormon church is totally Ok with the 8,000 free pop coolers sprinkled *all over campus*, the dozens of coffee machines in every building, but a single bar they'd oppose? When you can already *cross the street* from campus and enter a bar anyway? Total bullcrap. Almost offensively stupid.
Look, either way, the point is that stores aren't carrying the Linux versions because the Linux versions don't sell as well. Retailers aren't stupid, and they're not going to waste shelf-space on products that people don't like.
That's "effect", not "cause." 9 months ago, there were tons of Linux netbooks in stores. They've gone away because they're unpopular, and get returned a lot. (Well, I can't speak for Germany, but that's the case in the US.)
I have no idea. All I know is that when I ran version 0.8 on Mac, it worked 100% of the time, and when I tried the newer version (0.9 I think) on Windows, it never worked. (It's been a couple years, I can't even remember how it failed. Sorry.)
That could be because the newer version simply doesn't work, period. Or it could be because the Windows port of it is broken. Or it could be because my Windows box is 64-bit and it doesn't like that, I don't know. Since my media server is a Mac G5, and since 0.8 actually does work, I've never tried to upgrade it.
I'm sure if I uber-geeked-out and edited all the source code, and learned what the 50,000 kajillion options they added all did, and installed yadda yadda yadda I could get it to work, but why bother? I want software that works the first try, so I use the version of Handbrake that works the first try.
Ripping on my PC would be nice, since it's something like 4 times faster than the G5, but oh well.
I really don't know, I only used it when I worked at Microsoft, and obviously when you work for them the licensing isn't that big a deal. I'm nearly 100% sure it was, at the very least, part of the Xbox 360 development kits, which means it could also be a standard component of Visual Studio. But I really don't know.
Also, who cares if the source is available as long as it works?
Slashdot Mirror
Ok Mr. Stop. America. Now.
But you're by far in the minority in the Linux community as far as I can tell. If you don't want Linux to be widely-used, that's fine-- you don't have to work towards making it more acceptable if you don't want to. But you also can't whine about all the problems that come along with that (for example, hardware and game compatibility.)
I assume your sig is more a "stop those Nazi evil American bastards from killing everybody!" and less of a humorous, "stop America now-- I want to get off!!"
I have this link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LinDVD Apparently, it comes with Mandriva (the "Power Pack" version) and is also pre-installed on Ubuntu Dells. The big deal when Linspire came out was that you could get LinDVD from their "click n run" software store for $4.95. "Click n run" still exists, but it no longer lists LinDVD. This was only a couple years ago, do you seriously not remember Linspire?
But the insults are much more amusing, blockhead.
And I'll spell it out for you, since you're a tard:
How do I accomplish my goal without potentially breaking any laws?
You buy a license for the DVD decoder, the same way Microsoft and Apple have. And Linspire did, all those years ago when it came out with a legal and legit DVD player for Linux. If you pay for a license, you're not breaking any laws. This is what I meant when I said: "you might have to buy a *gasp* non-free license".
The DMCA is only involved if you play DVDs using reverse-engineered unlicensed software.
Is it all coming together now? Are the cogs and gears interlocking? Is there a thick cloud of oily smoke now escaping from your dense skull? Are the two brain cells rubbing together? Good.
Are you implying that there's a way to pay for a way to watch DVDs on your desktop running Ubuntu in a way that doesn't make the DVD Forum cry?
Linspire managed it.
BTW, I don't think buying a brand new machine from Dell would be a viable option for many.
Uh, ok? What's your point?
What BAC level do they use to judge "drunk" in Europe? (Or a representative sample country.)
Here in the US, I think every state does 0.08% now, although it used to be pretty universally 0.1%.
Your first point is good, and actually pretty relevant to the topic at hand-- if you can run specific software nobody else can, that's a step-up from Windows or OS X. The problem is that that software is pretty tightly-focused, not a lot of people know or care what Cadence or Synopsys does. I consider myself pretty geeky and I've never even heard of any. It's the right idea, just the wrong software products to feature.
As for the free development tools, Visual Studio Express and OS X's developer tools are free (in the practical sense of the word), so that doesn't set you apart from the competition.
The Linux motto:
The buck stops somewhere else.
Nobody cares why it doesn't work, as long as it doesn't work. Nobody cares why it does work, for that matter. The only thing people care about is having it work-- the sooner the Linux community realizes that, the better. Yes, you might have to buy a *gasp* non-free license for your free OS, but guess what? If you want users, that's the tradeoff-- welcome to the real world. (If you don't want users, then stay the course.)
Because he believes their product is better than the competition? I dunno, that's the only "reason" he gave in that weirdly-written little diatribe.
Blizzard has banned people for "playing" the auction house in a way they don't like. For example, a friend of mine saw the AH had 4 stacks of something (let's say runecloth) for sale at 30g a pop. He bought all five, added 3 more he wanted to sell, and relisted them all at 50g a pop. I call that "free market", but Blizzard banned him for this. (Presumably because somebody who wanted runecloth and was closely watching the AH complained.)
Anyway, point is: be careful.
The new WOW expansions have made gold mostly useless anyway. It used to be that with enough gold you could deck a max-level character with damned good equipment; now you can't even match the equipment you get from normal quests, and can't even get close to even medium-level dungeon armor sets. I assume this is a response to gold farmers, but as a casual player it's really turned me off of the game, (among other things, like the Arena changes) and I don't play anymore.
Wow, it's amazing that an American might not have heard of a site that's not even available in the US! Quick, better act like we're all idiots, instead of checking on that.
This system uses an english hidden markov model sentence constructor to generate plausible comment text and save it as reply's on slashdot.
Unfortunately, it has bugs related to apostrophes.
They should just take matters in their own hands and create their own bar at work. Like this one: http://razorfishmonkeybar.com/
Well, apparently Linux can only implement usability features after Microsoft does it...
But seriously, Microsoft and Google are much, much different in size. Even considering Google's DoubleClick acquisition, there's really no valid comparison between the two.
Microsoft's campus is more comparable to, for example, Cisco. If you're going to compare "large corporate campus bar count", pick comparable campuses.
Why does this keep getting modded up?
The thought that Mormons would oppose a bar located in a campus that distributes banned beverages (soft drinks, coffee) in literally *thousands* of places is ridiculous.
Yah, and a native Cherokee will consider himself Cherokee and not American. And I'm sure somewhere there's some guy who lives in Hawaii and considers himself Turkish.
The point is, your little anecdote, while interesting, is *completely irrelevant* to the topic being discussed.
I hate this irrational anti-Americanism we see all the time on Slashdot. Get a grip, people.
No this is AMERICA....
Whereas in Europe you can head over to a pub to relax and chit chat, in AMERICA (and English Canada) it is completely frowned upon.
I have idea where you were working, or who's "frowning upon" it, but the US is a big place. I can tell you we do it all the time in Seattle, well, at least once a week or so. Seattle is near where Microsoft is located, to tie this in with the actual story being discussed.
One thing you have to realize about the US is that the eastern half is *completely* different than the western half. Things that apply in, say, New York, don't apply in Seattle or Portland, and vice versa.
I know whenever I am stateside and I order a beer I am completely out of the norm!
Where is "stateside?" Nobody would give it a second glance in Seattle.
BUT yet when it comes to drinking while I sip my beer the others get piss drunk, do idiotic things, and generally make a complete a** out of themselves.
This begs the question, is the pub the problem? Or the fact that the culture in this respect has its head up its a**.
Clearly the problem is that all Americans suck at everything and only Europeans are awesome enough to drive responsibly. There couldn't possibly be any other explanation.
BTW I am European, grew up in North America, but now have been living in Europe for 15 years. And while Europeans have their oddities, this aspect of English North American life is really screwed...
If you grew up in North America (presumably "English Canada", whatever that means), then you should know that the US is an extremely large place with more than one culture in it. The average resident of Utah could NOT be more different than the average resident of Florida.
In short, at best you're making wide sweeping generalizations, and at worst you're a liar.
And your post has... what, exactly?... to do with Washington and Microsoft?
Oh wait, nothing. It's about California. California has *nothing* to do with Washington. (Except that we can't get them to stop moving up here.)
I live in Idaho,and just last week, I heard an offensive ad on the radio denouncing some stimulus bill because it relaxes the number of alcohol permits. I wonder who paid for this ad?
Why don't you research it and find the fuck out, instead of just assuming that your personal boogeymen did it? And then shove that supposition all over Slashdot as if it were fact?
It sucks for the people who own and work at the pub, but in a silently ultra-religious state like WA, it's no surprise that on of the largest local employers bows to the commands of the puppet masters.
Dude, WTF?!
I live in Washington, you're full of shit. Please, someone mod this guy down. Are there Mormons in Washington? Yeah, just like every other state in the US. Do they control... well... anything? At all? Not really, no. Would the presence of a bar that they aren't forced to attend offend Mormons? Not any of those I've met.
Just think about the logic of that parent post... he's saying that the Mormon church is totally Ok with the 8,000 free pop coolers sprinkled *all over campus*, the dozens of coffee machines in every building, but a single bar they'd oppose? When you can already *cross the street* from campus and enter a bar anyway? Total bullcrap. Almost offensively stupid.
Wow, another Mr. Monospace with a reading comprehension FAIL.
Try reading the post you're replying to, eh? You'll look less stupid next time.
Ok, Mr. Monospace! Hyuk!
Look, either way, the point is that stores aren't carrying the Linux versions because the Linux versions don't sell as well. Retailers aren't stupid, and they're not going to waste shelf-space on products that people don't like.
Why the hell should anybody care what a "print spooler" is, except the guy whose job it is to make it work?
The point here is that Microsoft's view is *correct*, and Linux's is not.
That's "effect", not "cause." 9 months ago, there were tons of Linux netbooks in stores. They've gone away because they're unpopular, and get returned a lot. (Well, I can't speak for Germany, but that's the case in the US.)
I have no idea. All I know is that when I ran version 0.8 on Mac, it worked 100% of the time, and when I tried the newer version (0.9 I think) on Windows, it never worked. (It's been a couple years, I can't even remember how it failed. Sorry.)
That could be because the newer version simply doesn't work, period. Or it could be because the Windows port of it is broken. Or it could be because my Windows box is 64-bit and it doesn't like that, I don't know. Since my media server is a Mac G5, and since 0.8 actually does work, I've never tried to upgrade it.
I'm sure if I uber-geeked-out and edited all the source code, and learned what the 50,000 kajillion options they added all did, and installed yadda yadda yadda I could get it to work, but why bother? I want software that works the first try, so I use the version of Handbrake that works the first try.
Ripping on my PC would be nice, since it's something like 4 times faster than the G5, but oh well.
I really don't know, I only used it when I worked at Microsoft, and obviously when you work for them the licensing isn't that big a deal. I'm nearly 100% sure it was, at the very least, part of the Xbox 360 development kits, which means it could also be a standard component of Visual Studio. But I really don't know.
Also, who cares if the source is available as long as it works?
Ah, I think we've reached the middle of the conversation.