Date: Mon, 2 Jul 2001 12:19:17 -0400
From: Shannon Hendrix <shannon@widomaker.com>
To: freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject: Re: Lets not bash Windows or M$ at every opportunity {was: FreeBSD and Microsoft}
Message-ID: <20010702121916.B17119@widomaker.com>
In-Reply-To: <000f01c10126$10525220$1401a8c0@tedm.placo.com>
References: <000f01c10126$10525220$1401a8c0@tedm.placo.com>
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On Fri, Jun 29, 2001 at 10:32:33PM -0700, Ted Mittelstaedt wrote: > No, that's not it - the problem here is that every company in the Multimedia > game thinks that creating a proprietary media format is their ticket to > riches. If Microsoft had anything to say about it there would be only one > media format - they are just being dragged along like the rest of the users. They are just as much a part of the black-box data formats as anyone else. Microsoft has more than enough mind share to force a single media format if they wanted to, or to force them to be open. In fact, their one media format idea is wmv files. They are evil, totally black box, and the conversion tools are one-way only. I think if you want to make a data format standard, it should be completely open, or it's not really a standard. > Frankly, I fail to see what is so exciting about Multimedia on a PC anyway. It's useful for creating your own movies, and editing home movies. Lot's of people can use things like that. Yet another reason why black-box data formats are bad. I can't even see a lot of clips that friends send me. Even I like to watch the occasional movie trailer, or home movie from a friend. Most of the time I can't. Recently, there is a new program called mplayer, which the author has written to use Microsoft DLLs, and it works pretty well. I have been able to watch movie trailers, videos from friends, and game cut scenes. Unfortunately, some of my Windows-using friends create files in Microsoft's wmv format which it cannot handle so far. It seems to be Linux only right now, but I don't know that all output options it uses need Linux. For example, it has an XFree DRI driver. > me that so far the only people that have ever built a sustainable business > model with multimedia are the porno sites. Perhaps that is who is really > secretly funding all of the development on the new streaming video formats > because there's nobody else in the business that is making any money doing > it. I actually worked for a company where we set up streaming audio for news information, and the servers were running FreeBSD. This was around 1996 I think. It seems like we got the rights to do some NBA games too, and they might have had video. In any case, it was all a mess and didn't really work that well. Even if streaming audio/video were perfect, I would still rather just buy a CD/DVD and have a local copy for most things. > Actually the sums probably would get larger because if you bust up one big > company you get several smaller ones all of whom are competing with each > other and so they all now have to pay the congresspeople to lobby against > each other. It depends on how it works out. I was only joking anyway: Congress has more than enough table money from people other than Microsoft that they could do without. I think a breakup of Microsoft should be more than just a simple split. I think each division should be geographically seperated. Internet or not, companies tend to diverge when divisions are seperated by distance. > I don't think that anyone can quite imagine what will happen if in the next > 5 years Microsoft is back in anti-trust court again, but I can say that > nobody then will stick their necks out for them. I rather they just died on their own myself. It would be better that way than to have Uncle Sam come down on them again. If people would use their head, they government would never have had to do anything in the first place. > Their fate is equivalent to the criminal who was about to be executed in the > electric chair, and in the final hour the governor pardoned them. If they > so much as step out of line again, they are dead. I would like to think so, because they are going far, far out of line already. If you are right, they should not have long to live. -- shannon@widomaker.com _________________________________________________ ______________________/ armchairrocketscientistgraffitiexistentialist "There's music along the river For Love wanders there, Pale flowers on his mantle, Dark leaves on his hair." -- James Joyce To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message
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