yes, i know i could look on google, but that's not an excuse <br>to using such a formats that only Windows users can read, isn't it?<br>in fact, i was offline, when i ran across this file (i downloaded it on my linux<br>
laptop and when i was doing my reading, i found out that i can't open it),<br>and as i thought - i raised this issue, because when i only got to uni i was <br>always expecting something like that to happen. and it happened.<br>
alan, would you believe, that before i came to study in liverpool<br>i was quite happy with one of my laptops running on redhat without <br>any proprietary codecs or drivers - i simply never needed them<br>as i am not a youtube addict and tend to keep my music in ogg vorbis <br>
format. but in a uni you just don't have time to convert all the files<br>to open formats. i sincerely think (what i never mentioned in my letter,<br>as it is down to my personal beliefs), that this kind of attitude is a <br>
disregard to me as a linux user. it's an attitude like:<br> - i can't read this proprietary format<br> - oh, don't try to find a problem that doesn't exist - use windows.<br>i don't want to use windows and i don't want to spend money on it!<br>
they spend big money to make all the places in uni accessible to <br>disabled people and don't bother to make electronic documents<br>"accessible" to other other Operational Systems' users. literally making<br>
them (well, that's us) "disabled". but even worse - treating us like misfits<br>after all of that. in the end of the day - i am paying my money for education<br>(and all other taxes), and it's £3K a year. i am not expecting to be sent to <br>
google to find the stuff on my own. yes, it was the first result in google search,<br>but not the second example. <br>what makes the situation ridiculous - is that it's not that the file was just stored<br>on computer in this kind of format (some people due to lack of computer<br>
knowledge have all of their music in wma format - what wmedia player <br>gives them), it <span style="font-style: italic;">was converted </span>to it, before uploading. and it is not that<br>i (as a linux user) don't want to open, let's say mp3 and write back - <br>
could you please send it to me in other format. no, i really can't open this file.<br>yes i could search for the first article on google - it's not hard. but wouldn't <br>it be easier in the first place not to convert it to some weird archives,<br>
but just leave it as is. we are talking less than 1 mb. i don't think that <br>we have that many people on dial-up nowadays (the .mht was eventually <br>bigger than the original twice the size). or to simply post a link :)<br>
<br><div><span class="gmail_quote">On 06/03/2008, <b class="gmail_sendername">Alan Pope</b> <<a href="mailto:alan@popey.com">alan@popey.com</a>> wrote:</span><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
On Thu, Mar 06, 2008 at 02:49:00PM +0000, Vladimir wrote:<br> > Week 4 reading, the article: Copying music legally in the digital age<br> > Technology The Guardian.mht was posted on VITAL in a proprietary web page<br>
> archive format that can't be opened by<br> > either Mozilla Firefox Web Browser nor by KHTML [open source] engine<br> > driven ones, like Safari on Mac OS X platform. Indeed to read this article<br>
> I had to go down to a place with Windows machine that had Microsoft<br> > Internet Explorer 7 (that was struggling to open it indeed and crashed 2<br> > times before opening the article).<br> <br> <br>
Alternatively you could have just looked at the name of the file and figured<br> out that it's an article saved from The Guardian website:-<br> <br> <a href="http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=%22Copying+music+legally+in+the+digital+age%22">http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=%22Copying+music+legally+in+the+digital+age%22</a><br>
<br> The first hit:-<br> <br> <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/jan/09/copyrightlaws">http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/jan/09/copyrightlaws</a><br> <br> Whilst I agree that using non-free formats is bad, I think you could<br>
possibly have approached this in a somewhat less confrontational manner.<br> <br> Cheers,<br> Al.<br> <br><br> _______________________________________________<br> Liverpool mailing list<br> <a href="mailto:Liverpool@mailman.lug.org.uk">Liverpool@mailman.lug.org.uk</a><br>
<a href="https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/liverpool">https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/liverpool</a><br> </blockquote></div><br><br clear="all"><br>-- <br>Support Underground!