If you're not intetrested in recording or cable TV, XBMC is BY FAR the better solution.

XBMC ONLY Uses mplayer on the XBox, under linux it uses its own DVDPlayer software for everything. that being said, DVDPlayer also plays everything that you throw at it, just as well as mplayer. but its not mplayer.

Mod This Man Up! F Spot might be okay for some people, but I for one completely agree with AC's sentiments,nobody wants a photo manager.

You're wrong, because there are plenty of gimp users who have never used photoshop more than a handful of times.. I dont see any appeal in photoshop whatsoever, gimp does everything I need, and I LIKE the UI. I've never found it to be confusing or unintuitive, it works quite well, I probably wont even use single window mode when 2.8 comes out, it just wouldn't be all that useful to me, the current setup works quite nicely.

Not everyone is a recent windows convert who needs to make their linux install function like their windows install used to. I haven't touched in a windows box in 5 or 6 years, I dont miss any of the software I used to use over there.

The first time I ran the gimp a friend of mind gave me the kind suggestion "When you can't find sommething, Right-click on the image" thats all I needed to be a productive gimp user, I find photoshop to be a nightmare to use.

oh and his dad used it to check his email, and didn't even realize it was different, he asked "Did you do something to the computer downstairs?, it seems a lot faster now."

i did a clean install on my laptop (non-essential machine and a clean install goes a lot faster). The process was very quick and painless, by far the most pleasant ubuntu installation yet. the only issue I've had, which seems to have cleared itself up, with some updates, was that ctrl+C wasn't working in my terminal,it wouldn't do anything at all...

overall i think the improvements in karmic are more significant than many of the previous releases, everything looks and feels better. thumbs-up to the chocolate brown color, the orange was starting to get played-out. a friend of mine was here when I did my reinstall, when it booted up to a beautiful, fully functional desktop just 20 minutes after I started the install, he was so impressed he took the live CD home and installed it for himself.

Its been 3 days and I've yet to have a single question or complaint from him.. everything is working including his sound card, which wasn't working under windows. he even figured out how to get mp3/xvid support all by himself. I'm both proud of him and of ubuntu. things have come a long way.

I know that you were saying it was used in normal conversation.. I was disagreeing, I can pretty much assure you that it was used as a joke, probably because they knew Americans were in the game with them. seriously, nobody uses that word, not since Bob and Doug McKenzie themselves and a handful of people who rolled with it for far too long.

Lol, Ok you're right, the only time a Canadian has ever used the word hoser was for the benefit of a listening American, solely to perpetuate that stereotype. we DO say 'eh' all the time though. wtf is a hoser anyway? its such a stupid word..."Check oat the hoser eh?" note the use of 'oat', NOT oot.

contrary to popular belief, Canadians dont use the word hoser, ever.... like seriously, no canadian has ever said it. also the accent is more like "A-boat" then "A-boot"'

My intention wasn't to be rude, only to point out that all of this material that you claim to have no use for really is important, and that the other developers aren't assuming that you have an MIT Education, they're simply using the terminology that they need to in order to properly convey such advanced concepts. They're not going to spoon-feed you because you can't be bother to understand the material.. University education or not, everyone is capable of understanding anything they truly want to understand, and it sounds to me like you were just on IRC looking for shortcuts, didn't get them, and so you managed to get by on your own. I sincerely applaud you for that, I too would be completely lost trying to learn OpenGL, but you are calling people "stubbornly elitist" for no good reason... I truly want to know what you expected from them other than links to advanced reading material, because thats what it takes to understand opengl.

Game programming is a very difficult field, are you expecting these people to just write code for you? sometimes you really do need to understand the fundamentals in order to be able to write the code, If people are giving you links to tons of papers to help solve your problem then I would argue that they are being helpful, its not their fault that you "don't really have an use for" it, or that you don't understand why the background information is important. it sounds to me like you think programming is as easy as "give me teh codez" and then pasting it all together, which may be true for a subset of simple problems, but when developing your own game, its simply not that easy, and you really do need to study and read, a LOT. Even if your game is going to be really similar to some other game out there, you can guarantee that the code is very very different, and nobody can just throw you some code to solve your problems, you need to study and read and understand, and THEN you can write the code yourself... if you need to ask questions in order to create your game, then you don't have enough background knowledge and you really do need to read the materials they're giving you... EVERY programming problem can be solved with enough reading and understanding of the works of the giants whose shoulders you stand on, and nobody will have a more appropriate solution to your problem than you, you just need to find that solution yourself.

Didn't the mythbuster's determine that the moon landing was entirely plausible? They disproved the myth about the lighting not being possible without multiple sources.

> No I can't, I can only watch what the channels show or what tapes and DVD I bought.

..or rented, or borrowed, or downloaded. just because the cable company wont pipe it into everyones homes, don't act like you're somehow being oppressed. "Censorship is bad" is a gross generalization. If the police arrest a man while he is naked and some of that footage is captured by a news crew, would you be angry that they blurred out the man's penis? is it really necessary or appropriate for the general public to see that?

NOBODY is telling you what you can or cannot watch, only what they're willing to pipe directly to your cable box. nothing stops you from renting/borrowing/downloading whatever the fuck you want, whenever the fuck you want, you're just a moron who will never be happy until there are no governments or corporations to speak of (but then where will your cable TV be?)

this thread is way too old now, and I dont want to reply again, you're not bringing anything intelligent to the conversation and you haven't convinced me yet th at you cannot watch everything you want... what are the exceptions? snuff films? you can literally rent or purchase anything you want, just like you purchase your cable service, its just that the cable services doesn't carry all of your favourite pr0n because its not in the best interest of the general public.

here in Canada we have Showcase, and a few other channels that are barely censored, maybe its different in the US.

This is exactly my point, you can watch whatever you want, whenever you want, why do you care that cable TV is censored?