Linux Foundation Announces 2010 "We're Linux" Video Contest 460
prourl writes "The Linux Foundation (LF), the nonprofit organization dedicated to accelerating the growth of Linux, today announced the 2010 'We're Linux' video contest. The contest seeks to find the best user-generated videos that demonstrate what Linux means to those who use it and inspire others to try it." Sadly, the winner will almost certainly be edited in Final Cut Pro on a Mac ;)
Re:Smashing my keyboard! (Score:5, Insightful)
Sounds like you had no clue what you were doing.
Can we *please* stop... (Score:5, Insightful)
... with the damned "I'm a" bullshit? It's getting really old.
I'm a PC! Well I'm a Mac!
And back there you have Linux who is insecure and just has to jump onto the bandwagon.
Re:Smashing my keyboard! (Score:3, Insightful)
You shouldn't have to know what you're doing to install an OS.
Linux community? Ha! (Score:2, Insightful)
Linux was a community many years ago, but the days of songs around a camp fire are over. These days when I think of Linux, I think of:
Tivo
Apache Web Server
Android phones,
WiFi routers,
OLPC
Portable media players
Server Farms
Linux has really come into it's own, but I don't think anybody will ever mistake it for a hobbyist niche again.
Final cut pro == sad (Score:5, Insightful)
Why is that sad? It's a great program that puts world class non-linear editing within reach of most everybody. What is sad, is the insanely expensive and fiddly avid workstations and non-linear editors of the past.
Linux is just like macs in that there are huge disciplines where no applications exist. For example there is no credible 3D solid modeling programs or printed circuit board layout on the Mac. Now there is no credible non-linear video editing program for linux. Both platforms are a niche market, both excel in ways that windows does not, and both are a victim of that nitch-i-ness.
It's only sad if people tried to make a video editor for linux and somehow were denied by forces outside their control. If the only reason is that nobody has bothered to write a good one, then that's not sad.
Sheldon
Another OS copy job by Linux (Score:0, Insightful)
Seriously, can't these Linux guys ever come up with an original idea? First Apple comes out with "I'm a Mac... and I'm a PC" ads. Then Windows comes out with it's "I'm Windows" campaign. Not satisfied with copying the entire GUI for XP, Vista, OS X, and Windows 7, now Linux nerds are even copying the advertisements? How about some freaking originality once in a while? Where's all this creativity that the community is supposed to engender? So many eyeballs, but the only thing those eyeballs can do is Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V.
Re:Smashing my keyboard! (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes you do. You need to know how a computer works on a rudimentary level, you also need to know how to install an OS.
If you really think that you don't need to know what you are doing, give the first six-year old you can find a computer and a windows installation cd/dvd. Have fun!
"The winner" = Exactly (Score:3, Insightful)
I was perfectly happy with Linux until I wanted to start editing video. Most Linux video editing apps while "free" and do a basic job, they IN NO WAY compare with even iMovie that comes included with your Mac.
"I'm a PC... (Score:1, Insightful)
And I chose Windows because Linux is still too obtuse for the average user."
Wake me up when it's actually the Year of the Linux Desktop. These false alarms are getting old.
Re:Smashing my keyboard! (Score:5, Insightful)
I can point out a handful of people with (n) years of experience putting mirrors on a car, but that doesn't mean they are an expert car builder. Being "in IT" anymore could be someone that runs Ethernet cable to someone that processes orders for NewEgg. It could even be someone that works at Best Buy in the support section. It doesn't mean they know how a computer works and can install an operating system. (Although, every version of Linux I've installed recently has pretty much just worked so I can't see the problem here...)
No Ogg/Theora support for videos (Score:4, Insightful)
Can we at least get the Linux Foundation to support Ogg/Theora as a supported format to upload videos in. Ideally they would accept only Ogg and use HTML5 to show the videos instead of Flash..
I'll take "retarded snowclone" for 500, Alex! (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm a Mac
I'm a PC
I'm IBM
I'm a Windows
Got milk?
Can't we just trash all these? Also, the annoying commercials where lots of multi-culti people finish each other's sentences. Exactly what are you trying to say, that using your product will turn you into a hivemind? Well, isn't that neat.
How about we get more creepy children whispering about mirrors, or babies making stock trades. Babies talking like adults is PURE ADVERTISING GENIUS.
Re:Smashing my keyboard! (Score:1, Insightful)
And you shouldn't have to learn how to drive a car to drive it.
No mention of last year's contest? (Score:2, Insightful)
The Linux Foundation also did this in 2009. Here [linuxfoundation.org] are last year's winners.
Also, I'm pretty sure that good results come from people who know their tools, and not from the tools themselves. A large amount of the video-editing tools on Linux leave a lot to be desired, but they're still light-years ahead of what was available, say, 20 years back. People made (and still make) good videos/movies without any kind of digital intervention, so that snide remark is probably debatable.
Re:Smashing my keyboard! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Smashing my keyboard! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:"The winner" = Exactly (Score:5, Insightful)
SO wrong it is not even funny. Never mind the 100's of cameras iMovie supports natively.. and ignoring the 70+ formats QuickTime supports there are DivX plug-in, Windows Plug-In for both import and export. Worse case you pass it though StreamClip (free) and convert it to QT. About the hardest thing to convert is muxed MPEG-2.
Where as on of Linux best Editors, Cinelerra, still needs about $30 of plug-ins to do Windows media and MP3 audio correctly.
Re:Here's a theme (Score:2, Insightful)
Who cares? Most people don't want a bezel in the middle of their desktop. It's just not something they would be into.
So this whole idea that "multi monitor is a killer" is just PC gamer wannabe nonsense.
Re:Here's a theme (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm actually using a multi monitor setup on my Ubuntu system, don't suffer of 'driver breakage', know where to find the related documentation and have received plenty of friendly help from fellow linux users.
Why, you ask?
Because i'm not a douche, that's why.
Re:"The winner" = Exactly (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Smashing my keyboard! (Score:3, Insightful)
Not necessarily. By now most people who have more than a few years of computer experience also have a lot of experience (re)installing Windows. Simply due to necessity. And it can be very frustrating to try to install a new system, even if it is easier to install than Windows, simply because they already know all the quirks and kinks of the Windows installer. Practice makes perfect, ya know...
Get real (Score:3, Insightful)
Sounds like you had no clue what you were doing.
I have computers that run Windows XP, OS X and Fedora. Each one is particularly good at one set of tasks while not so good at others so I switch around as needed. From my experience of installing different operating systems over the past fifteen years, the only one that goes without a hitch every time is OS X, mainly because there's a limited amount of hardware it's expected to support. I've run into install problems with Linux (various distros), Free BSD and Windows and it's always been related to drivers for some obscure piece of hardware. Free BSD, in particular, is very fussy about Ethernet cards.
While I'm not a huge fan of Windows, given the huge variety of hardware out there it's probably not reasonable to expect any OS that's intended to be installed on a generic PC to install flawlessly every time.
Re:Smashing my keyboard! (Score:3, Insightful)
Divisible by 3 and 2, both easy to "eyeball".
This is silly. This only works for whole units. One could easily say the same thing about metric, 12cm and 1.2 meters, and so on.
Besides, since division by 3 only works once in imperial units. Interestingly, it's actually *easier* to divide by 2 in metric. 1 meter / 2 is 0.5m or 500cm. It's simply a matter of moving a decimal point, whereas in imperial units, you have to convert between feet and inches to go from 0.5 ft to 6 inches (not that that's hard, just that it's even *easier* in metric).
Ever tried to split something up into 5 equal parts without the aid of a scale?
You can do that easier somehow in imperial units?
Rationales always depend on context and not all contexts are interchangeable.
Sort of, but there are so few contexts in modern life where imperial units are superior, that it's not worth degrading performance in all other contexts.
Some methods are better for machines, and some are better for people.
N.B., computers don't deal with KiB or KB. They deal exclusively in binary. KiB and KB (and MiB and MB, etc.) are what the computer tells us instead of something like, "101101010010".
The only situation where KiB has any direct connection to what the computer is doing is in terms of addressing capabilities, as addressing naturally falls into binary-based boundaries.
Re:Smashing my keyboard! (Score:5, Insightful)
Could someone with modpoints hand that guy a few? It's hitting the nail so hard on the head that I'd guess the poor piece of iron needs a pack of Aspirin.
I've seen far too many claims along the lines of "I've been in IT for (n) years and so I should be able to figure this out if it was well done". Nope. You don't. I've been in IT for about 20 years by now. Still I would be hard pressed to compare two graphics cards sensibly or actually put together a state of the art machine. Why? Because I know jack about hardware. I also still owned until about a month ago a Nokia 6070. Why? Because I know shit about cellphones either. And I'm still struggling to figure out how to use my new N97 (took 2 days to figure out how to accept a call...).
I'm fairly sure even the average shelf monkey at Best Buy knows more about hardware than me. Hell, maybe even about cells.
And I sure as hell am no Linux wizard either. I can use it, I can write software for it, but I still use the standard KDE desktop simply because I don't want to spend the time figuring out how to configure it. And I'm fairly sure I still do a lot of things "wrong" and in a way that waste a heck of a lot of time.
But even I managed to install Kubuntu easily. Even though I could probably not put a current CPU into a socket without doing some damage in the process.
IBM Commercial (Score:4, Insightful)
Can we please have more IMB-like ethereal commercials [youtube.com] showcasing how Linux is growing and is ultimately unstoppable because it represents the collective knowledge of the world?
These guys really want to be an example? (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm using Linux. And I'm boycotting flash. So I'm here on an Ubuntu Linux (my home computer) and can't watch the videos on http://video.linuxfoundation.org/category/we-are-linux-foundation-video-contest [linuxfoundation.org] the linuxfoundation is talking about. WTF? You people should try to make some accessibility example for OSS folks if you want to be taken seriously. What is this carp??
On the other hand, reading about the content of the videos, maybe it's better this way..
Re:Smashing my keyboard! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Smashing my keyboard! (Score:3, Insightful)
People appearantly want their OS like their politicians: Making decisions for them.
Exactly, because the average end user wants a computer that just works, and they don't care about the specifics of how it does.
Imagine you take your car to the dealer for service and the technician asks you: What would you like to set the spark plug gap to? What would you like the ignition timing to be? Would you like the tires to be rotated in a cross or mirror pattern? You would give him a funny look and say "I don't know, I just want it to drive like it's supposed to."