David Boles wrote:
All of these are like the famous 'third party' programs that Linux is famous for here. Windows can play mp3 files 'out of the box' on install. Why? Microsoft paid for the license so that they could include that codec in the OS.
Since Linux is free and Windows can just pass on the cost to the consumer it does not cost them for enhancing their media player. They do not pay directly for it and their media player is in the forefront. mp3 used to be available for Linux until dangers arose considering costly lawsuit possibilities.
Zip archive is kinda' free for home use. Rar archive is pay-for-me period from Russia, I think, unless it changed. If you find a 'free' 'Rar' utility be concerned. *It* might be a 'bug'. ;-) If you deal with Windows archive files a lot try - 7-Zip. It works on just about anything and it is open source. Can't say for Mac, never looked, but there is one for Windows and Linux.
I hope the program is not a bug. All I wanted was to extract a BIOS file. It now concerns me if the extracted BIOS contains malware. Neither the original BIOS or the downloaded and extracted version work correctly. Why a file as small as a BIOS update is RARed is bad enough. You bring forth a good point that anything that you can find to run on windows for no cost is probably a virus. :-)
The pirated porn movies and music usually come as muti-part .rar files. The virus and stuff hide there. Among other places.
Porn and Music file transfer is not a worry for me. I am worried now that the RAR extraction program could be malware.
I don't want to start a flame-war here... but... about 90% of the world uses Windows of some kind and *all* of us Linux users, total - all distributions, is something like 3.3%. Mac is 3.9%. Do you really think that almost everyone uses Windows because it does *not* work? ;-)
No flame war needed. I don't even try to convince people to use Linux vs. Windows any longer. I just install Linux on the computers and let them battle away with it.
OS Platform Statistics http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_os.asp - --
Jim -- When in doubt, tell the truth. -- Mark Twain
