If all my purchases are from the iTunes Store, then for purposes of playing my purchases, iTunes is a better player.

It is if you can convince substantially more publishers to sell through your store than through competing stores.

I wasn't referring to them. I thought we were talking about people who care enough about iTunes to complain about it stopping working. They probably still use iTunes because in the past they have bought something from the iTunes Store.

He did say, "my old roommate", which could be taken to mean he doesn't have one any longer. And one might have a roommate for any numbers of reasons. Not that any of this makes me any more inclined to believe him, just that you seem to pick an odd point to dwell upon.

Then you're not really looking, or you're trolling.

http://www.sagernotebook.com/Notebook-NP8652-S.html

I think it refers to the fact that not all builds of HandBrake for all variants of all platforms include the DVD and BD decryption code. This page states that Windows users have to install Kodi (formerly XBMC) and dig the CSS library out of that. On which platform are you running HandBrake?

What does Xubuntu 15.04 leak back to Canonical or any other "home base"?

I suffered through Ubuntu Unity on my laptop for one month until I did sudo apt-get install xubuntu-desktop. I wonder what'll break in a year once I upgrade from what amounts to Xubuntu 14.04 LTS to 16.04.

And expensive connections. The going rate for a cellular Internet connection in the United States is $10 per GB uploaded or downloaded.

I agree with you that copyrights are too broad. Now how should I go about convincing a majority of American voters to remove from office all representatives and senators who support keeping copyrights too broad?

Because that would require national legislatures to actually do non-trivial work. They're already busy enough deciding whether and how much to spend on particular military, entitlement, and military entitlement projects. Nor have they seen any evidence that reforming overly broad copyright would win them more votes, especially when Hollywood promises them essentially free ad time to reach their constituents during election season but only if they "behave" (FOX News; The Hollywood Reporter).

From the FAQ: "For best results, you should feed HandBrake unprotected video." Yet the vast majority of DVDs and all BDs are protected.

Does Winamp work with movies purchased through iTunes Store without having a working copy of the iTunes client on the PC?

Such a copyright term applied to works with an individual author would violate the Berne Convention, which all World Trade Organization members must adopt. The Berne Convention requires a minimum term of 50 years after the death of the last surviving author or 50 years after publication for works with a corporate author. A country adopting such a copyright term for works with an individual author would get kicked out of the WTO and see its exports in unrelated industries become subject to prohibitive import duties.

Pink Floyd's first studio album is close to 50 years old. Bootlegs of their early gigs are often included in unauthorized box sets and some of them are now 50 years old. Yes, many old recordings are still bringing in buttloads of revenue.

I have a Dell Precision Mobile Workstation M6400 that is still going strong (although last summer I did finally have to replace the motherboard). It was knocked off a 4' high ledge onto a asphalt-tiled concrete floor while running and you can't tell it was ever dropped. The thing is a tank - and yes it's heavy but it has a fast chipset. The thing was a beast when it was new. The only reason I haven't upgraded is that newer models have a downgraded screen (1200p to 1080p). I'm hoping the next M6x00 refresh will include a 1440p or better screen. :)

Why I like the Dell Precision Mobile Workstation line:

* Discrete graphics card (they use mobile video chipsets though but that's kind of unavoidable)
* Fast I/O
* Built like a tank
* Excellent screens
* Great full keyboards - for a laptop. I'd prefer mechanical, but no way will a Cherry MX switch fit into a laptop
* multiple hard drive bays (RAID capable although I use it in AHCI mode because I dual boot Windows and Linux)
* Very easy to service and upgrade - no glued-together crap and everything is accessible. I can disassemble it to upgrade a processor and have it back up and running in an hour (upgraded from a Core 2 Duo to a Core Quad Extreme)
* Again, easy to service, so every once in a while I open it up and clear all the dust out of the fans, heat sinks and heat pipes
* no-compromise performance so yes it's heavy

I've had clients who asked about my laptop and switch to these workstation replacement laptops instead of buying desktops any more after seeing my laptop. Their concern was ability to run multiple monitors so I explained displayport to them, and the order them with Quadro video cards for CAD.

Oh and as far as enterprise hardware goes - Dell is pretty okay there. Their documentation is dead wrong on some items (particularly the Perc cards) but if you know LSI controllers you know how to work with them. Dell enterprise support is actually pretty darn good, and don't demand you reinstall Windows for every little problem. Tell them the motherboard died and they'll send someone on site with the replacement part the next day without forcing you to run through their stupid phone script like you would if you had bought an Inspiron... and unlike HP they do not demand you upgrade the firmware on a dead motherboard (???) when discussing the hardware failure.

When it comes to HP I like their chassis and blades but their support folks are generally condescending AND stupid (although I have had very good experiences with HP as well, to be fair but the good techs with them is like panning for gold - you get a lot of crap with a nodes on rare occasion) with most reading from a script. I never encounter that with Dell enterprise support; they're always interactive AND friendly.

Oh.... and HP laptops are crap. I don't like Lenovo either because it is difficult to order replacement parts through their web site, but when it comes to Dell it is almost always very easy to order replacement parts - and if a part replacement is obscenely priced they will often offer you a warranty renewal on the product which is much cheaper than the cost of a brand-new replacement board or screen.