But... but... but all the Slashdot talking heads said that the Xbox 360 would kill independent gaming so that only companies that make $200 million sequels can stay in business while everyone else is starving in the streets!
Install Linspire which, unlike every other Linux distro, actually got a license for decoding CSS movies.
It's not *illegal* to play DVDs on Linux, that's a moronic statement. It's just that no Linux developers want to license the encoding scheme from the MPAA and, once licensed, the MPAA's code can't be made GPL. That's the same exact process that every other DVD player on earth used (except maybe Chinese knock-offs), and the same process Apple and Microsoft used, so I don't see why you Linux people think that Linux should deserve a free ride.
(The question of whether DeCSS is illegal or not is an interesting one; arguably, it is reverse-engineering for 'interoperability' purposes, which is legal under the DMCA. But since it's a form of encryption, even a half-assed one, it's illegal under the DMCA...)
You know Microsoft is just a private business. They don't really have any obligation to support every hardware device you buy... they offer a product and then you, as a consumer, decide whether you want to purchase their product or not. It's not a "rights" issue, this is just how the free market economy works.
If you don't like how Microsoft decides which device drivers to include, don't buy their product. But don't fuck up the system and waste everyone's time by making the government *force* them to do something they ordinarily wouldn't do.
Something that isn't even mentioned in the article is this. We know that Microsoft sells the XBox for a big loss- I recall hearing that the number was around $75 per system, initially at launch. I have come to believe that the original plan was to make that money back on XBox Live subscriptions. Think about this- if every XBox user bought Live and paid for four years, Microsoft makes $200 per user just off Live. Heck, if less than half of XBox users paid for a Live subscription and kept it for four years it would pay off the losses incurred from the system. At the same time they could sell a more powerful system for the same price as some of the competition (PS2 and XBox are the same price to this day- interestingly, the GameCube is at a lower price yet is more powerful than the PS2 and sold at a profit).
Do you think that running servers is free?
Seriously, man, I bet Microsoft would give Live away for free if they could. The $50/year is just for server maintainence and bandwidth, and compared to other games that need server maintainence and bandwidth, it's dirt cheap. (World of Warcraft, for instance, charges $180 a year for the service, and World of Warcraft doesn't store voicemails for you.)
I know Slashdot is all about the anti-Microsoft conspiracy theories, but this one doesn't even really make sense.
1) Finder's crappy UI. (Even worse with Spotlight... ugh!) 2) Finder crashing. 3) Apple products (like DVD Player.app) stealing focus away from my typing, constantly, and not being fixed after years and years. 4) iSync somehow *losing* support for my Motorola v180 when upgraded. 5) A bunch of other stuff I can't think of right now.
Yes, I know OS 9 sucked. But at least the Finder in OS 9 had a good UI and didn't crash all the time.
Yeah! Ha ha! Apple should have created their own handhelds, including an OS, from scratch to avoid using Microsoft technology! They could have had this all implemented by 2015 if they were lucky.
Where does this stupid "Apple vs. Microsoft" thing come from? Microsoft makes software for Apple computers. Apple hardware runs on Windows computers. There's no "war" there.
No crap. Even their off-the-shelf software is terrible.
The reason IBM is making tons of support on Lotus Notes is because *normal* email clients don't require support at all. (Note: I know Exchange servers need support, I'm talking about clients.) The stock reply to any gripe about Lotus Notes' crappy featureset or bugs is "your users need more training." Hmm, where do you get training for Notes? Well, IBM offers consultants for it...
Needless to say, I think what IBM is doing is wrong. The real shame is that they have such a strong sales department that they can still sell Notes to companies that should, by this point, know better.
Someone gave me a blog from a baseball fan, a chubby guy in a den surrounded by baseball equipment and yelling about how they were running people going to the ballgame through a metal detector for security, then giving them a free baseball bat! (The promotion was 'bat night' of course.)
It was funny as hell, and it got spread to me virally... I don't remember the site it original came from despite the guy saying it a few different times, but oh well.
I watched a few episodes of Firefly, and the movie.
And I'm sorry, but BSG is a much better show. For one thing, BSG actually has "actors" who are pretty good at this thing called "acting." Sure the Firefly writing was kind of clever, but the acting was so terrible it made me want to vomit. Effects-wise it's a draw, writing-wise it's a draw, but the actors put BSG ahead.
Who gives a crap what Windows does? This topic isn't about what Windows does, it's about what Linux does!
Look, I get it: The problem exists in Windows as much as it does Linux. But that's no excuse to just dismiss it out-of-hand. It needs to be addressed. If you only addressed problems that Windows has already solved, how could Linux possibly ever be better than Windows? It couldn't.
The one that bothered me (possible spoiler, and it's been a long time so bear with me) is when they found the temple leading them to the lost homeworld. It was so obviously just a soundstage with plastic rocks and holes punched in black canvas for stars that it bothered the hell out of me and, to make things worse, they cheaped out on the special effect of them getting there, and getting back. (Plus, they never explain where the hell it was... was it a hologram of some sort? Did they actually move? If so, where's the teleporter? If so, why didn't they stick around and figure out how to use that technology?)
Also, the prop for the magical arrow was pretty cheap. And they don't decorate the locations to be very future-y at all... and Starbuck's jeep was just... an old jeep. It's pretty obvious it's filmed in Canada and not Caprica.
So yes, the low budget shows in a lot of places, but it's not terrible. And it's not even as bad as the original BSG where they constantly re-used SFX shots, sometimes multiple times in a single episode. (Those three Cylon raiders banking to the left? I must have seen that a thousand times in the course of BSG!)
It's the best NEW shows of 2005. Arrested Development has been running for like 4 seasons now. Galactica barely slides by, since it started in January.
But that's part of the problem. "Most" distros make them friendly, but that makes it impossible for the neophyte to discuss software with anybody else. Say there's a feature in VLC that your buddy was pining for, so you tell him how to run it:
Go to the menu, select "Multimedia" then "Movie Player"
He goes to the menu, selects "Multimedia" then "Movie Player" and gets... Xine. Wait a minute, you made the same menu selection but got a different program? That's a usability problem.
Should Linux distros have friendly menus? Of course. Should software have meaningful and easy-to-remember names? Also of course! If you meet both those requirements, Linux will be substantially easier to find programs in than either OS X or Windows. Unfortunately, Linux programs right now only go half-way.
The topic is NAMING OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE, not remembering punch-cards.
Criminy.
Re:"Most readers have probably heard about Firefox
on
Firefox Secrets
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· Score: 1
Don't forget: In Firefox, the text fields behave strangely. (Text fields are different in OS X from Linux and Windows, that needs to be beaten into every cross-platform developer!) Also: Spell checker! Where's the spell checker in Firefox? Not there.
How come every time someone points out a issue with Linux, the knee-jerk reply is always "well, Windows has problems too!" No wonder Linux is just a pale imitation of Windows, you people are totally completely obsessed with comparisons.
If it's a problem in Linux, fix the problem! It doesn't matter if the problem also exists in Windows, OS/2, BeOS, whatever, just fix it!
Why not treat Linux the same way the Macintosh community treats OS X? You hardly ever seen comparisons between OS X and Windows, and if someone points out a problem with OS X, it gets fixed regardless of whether Windows has the same problem or not.
You think it's bad on Windows? Try it on OS X. I'm still waiting for someone to smack a Firefox developer on the head with a Powerbook and yell, "THIS IS HOW ARROW KEYS IN TEXT BOXES WORK IN MAC OS!" (No, it's not the same as in Windows or Linux. Stop making them the same! Wrong! Ugh!!!)
Sorry. I hate it when my arrow keys are wrong because a program is ported.
Re:With the bazillion GUI toolkits out there..
on
Why Use GTK+?
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· Score: 1
There's Real Basic. Unlike wxWindows, it's actually a *rapid* application development tool... akin to Visual Basic, but supporting all three major OSes.
Slashdot Mirror
No they aren't. Windows Vista is a *DIFFERENT* product than Windows 2000 and Windows XP. They're not removing anything from Windows XP.
I also find this whole debate interesting coming from the "make sure you check the supported hardware list before you buy" Linux crowd.
But... but... but all the Slashdot talking heads said that the Xbox 360 would kill independent gaming so that only companies that make $200 million sequels can stay in business while everyone else is starving in the streets!
Install Linspire which, unlike every other Linux distro, actually got a license for decoding CSS movies.
It's not *illegal* to play DVDs on Linux, that's a moronic statement. It's just that no Linux developers want to license the encoding scheme from the MPAA and, once licensed, the MPAA's code can't be made GPL. That's the same exact process that every other DVD player on earth used (except maybe Chinese knock-offs), and the same process Apple and Microsoft used, so I don't see why you Linux people think that Linux should deserve a free ride.
(The question of whether DeCSS is illegal or not is an interesting one; arguably, it is reverse-engineering for 'interoperability' purposes, which is legal under the DMCA. But since it's a form of encryption, even a half-assed one, it's illegal under the DMCA...)
You know Microsoft is just a private business. They don't really have any obligation to support every hardware device you buy... they offer a product and then you, as a consumer, decide whether you want to purchase their product or not. It's not a "rights" issue, this is just how the free market economy works.
If you don't like how Microsoft decides which device drivers to include, don't buy their product. But don't fuck up the system and waste everyone's time by making the government *force* them to do something they ordinarily wouldn't do.
What about Boeing and Nintendo of America?
Might wanna rethink that...
And anyway, St. Helens is closer to Portland than Seattle.
Something that isn't even mentioned in the article is this. We know that Microsoft sells the XBox for a big loss- I recall hearing that the number was around $75 per system, initially at launch. I have come to believe that the original plan was to make that money back on XBox Live subscriptions. Think about this- if every XBox user bought Live and paid for four years, Microsoft makes $200 per user just off Live. Heck, if less than half of XBox users paid for a Live subscription and kept it for four years it would pay off the losses incurred from the system. At the same time they could sell a more powerful system for the same price as some of the competition (PS2 and XBox are the same price to this day- interestingly, the GameCube is at a lower price yet is more powerful than the PS2 and sold at a profit).
Do you think that running servers is free?
Seriously, man, I bet Microsoft would give Live away for free if they could. The $50/year is just for server maintainence and bandwidth, and compared to other games that need server maintainence and bandwidth, it's dirt cheap. (World of Warcraft, for instance, charges $180 a year for the service, and World of Warcraft doesn't store voicemails for you.)
I know Slashdot is all about the anti-Microsoft conspiracy theories, but this one doesn't even really make sense.
Why would he care? He already got their money.
Top 10 OS X disappointments?
How about:
1) Finder's crappy UI. (Even worse with Spotlight... ugh!)
2) Finder crashing.
3) Apple products (like DVD Player.app) stealing focus away from my typing, constantly, and not being fixed after years and years.
4) iSync somehow *losing* support for my Motorola v180 when upgraded.
5) A bunch of other stuff I can't think of right now.
Yes, I know OS 9 sucked. But at least the Finder in OS 9 had a good UI and didn't crash all the time.
I could see emailing an installer (an .exe) to a client, if he has some kind of special need or feature not on the FTP/web copy.
Yeah! Ha ha! Apple should have created their own handhelds, including an OS, from scratch to avoid using Microsoft technology! They could have had this all implemented by 2015 if they were lucky.
Where does this stupid "Apple vs. Microsoft" thing come from? Microsoft makes software for Apple computers. Apple hardware runs on Windows computers. There's no "war" there.
No crap. Even their off-the-shelf software is terrible.
The reason IBM is making tons of support on Lotus Notes is because *normal* email clients don't require support at all. (Note: I know Exchange servers need support, I'm talking about clients.) The stock reply to any gripe about Lotus Notes' crappy featureset or bugs is "your users need more training." Hmm, where do you get training for Notes? Well, IBM offers consultants for it...
Needless to say, I think what IBM is doing is wrong. The real shame is that they have such a strong sales department that they can still sell Notes to companies that should, by this point, know better.
Someone gave me a blog from a baseball fan, a chubby guy in a den surrounded by baseball equipment and yelling about how they were running people going to the ballgame through a metal detector for security, then giving them a free baseball bat! (The promotion was 'bat night' of course.)
It was funny as hell, and it got spread to me virally... I don't remember the site it original came from despite the guy saying it a few different times, but oh well.
I watched a few episodes of Firefly, and the movie.
And I'm sorry, but BSG is a much better show. For one thing, BSG actually has "actors" who are pretty good at this thing called "acting." Sure the Firefly writing was kind of clever, but the acting was so terrible it made me want to vomit. Effects-wise it's a draw, writing-wise it's a draw, but the actors put BSG ahead.
Do people not watch music videos anymore?
I would if any channels showed them. (If you're lucky, you can get a music channel called Fuse which isn't terrible.)
Who gives a crap what Windows does? This topic isn't about what Windows does, it's about what Linux does!
Look, I get it: The problem exists in Windows as much as it does Linux. But that's no excuse to just dismiss it out-of-hand. It needs to be addressed. If you only addressed problems that Windows has already solved, how could Linux possibly ever be better than Windows? It couldn't.
Then I get modded down when I point it out. Criminy.
The one that bothered me (possible spoiler, and it's been a long time so bear with me) is when they found the temple leading them to the lost homeworld. It was so obviously just a soundstage with plastic rocks and holes punched in black canvas for stars that it bothered the hell out of me and, to make things worse, they cheaped out on the special effect of them getting there, and getting back. (Plus, they never explain where the hell it was... was it a hologram of some sort? Did they actually move? If so, where's the teleporter? If so, why didn't they stick around and figure out how to use that technology?)
Also, the prop for the magical arrow was pretty cheap. And they don't decorate the locations to be very future-y at all... and Starbuck's jeep was just... an old jeep. It's pretty obvious it's filmed in Canada and not Caprica.
So yes, the low budget shows in a lot of places, but it's not terrible. And it's not even as bad as the original BSG where they constantly re-used SFX shots, sometimes multiple times in a single episode. (Those three Cylon raiders banking to the left? I must have seen that a thousand times in the course of BSG!)
It's the best NEW shows of 2005. Arrested Development has been running for like 4 seasons now. Galactica barely slides by, since it started in January.
But that's part of the problem. "Most" distros make them friendly, but that makes it impossible for the neophyte to discuss software with anybody else. Say there's a feature in VLC that your buddy was pining for, so you tell him how to run it:
Go to the menu, select "Multimedia" then "Movie Player"
He goes to the menu, selects "Multimedia" then "Movie Player" and gets... Xine. Wait a minute, you made the same menu selection but got a different program? That's a usability problem.
Should Linux distros have friendly menus? Of course. Should software have meaningful and easy-to-remember names? Also of course! If you meet both those requirements, Linux will be substantially easier to find programs in than either OS X or Windows. Unfortunately, Linux programs right now only go half-way.
Why is this modded anything but off-topic!?
The topic is NAMING OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE, not remembering punch-cards.
Criminy.
Don't forget: In Firefox, the text fields behave strangely. (Text fields are different in OS X from Linux and Windows, that needs to be beaten into every cross-platform developer!) Also: Spell checker! Where's the spell checker in Firefox? Not there.
How come every time someone points out a issue with Linux, the knee-jerk reply is always "well, Windows has problems too!" No wonder Linux is just a pale imitation of Windows, you people are totally completely obsessed with comparisons.
If it's a problem in Linux, fix the problem! It doesn't matter if the problem also exists in Windows, OS/2, BeOS, whatever, just fix it!
Why not treat Linux the same way the Macintosh community treats OS X? You hardly ever seen comparisons between OS X and Windows, and if someone points out a problem with OS X, it gets fixed regardless of whether Windows has the same problem or not.
More importantly, where's my coffee, Matt? I put in that order over a half hour ago!
You think it's bad on Windows? Try it on OS X. I'm still waiting for someone to smack a Firefox developer on the head with a Powerbook and yell, "THIS IS HOW ARROW KEYS IN TEXT BOXES WORK IN MAC OS!" (No, it's not the same as in Windows or Linux. Stop making them the same! Wrong! Ugh!!!)
Sorry. I hate it when my arrow keys are wrong because a program is ported.
There's Real Basic. Unlike wxWindows, it's actually a *rapid* application development tool... akin to Visual Basic, but supporting all three major OSes.