Actually it happened in every class that I can remember. In math it was IBM and how computers were used to count the dead. In history ... well that's obvious. In literature it was personal accounts of suffering. In ethics and philosophy the word Nazi was used daily. In science and medicine they said of many advances that came via Nazi experimentation, but it came at a very high price. In most classes they never failed to mention the Jewish scientists who all were affected and narrowly escaped Nazi Germany.

^ no offence, but that is kinda' weird.

Maybe he attended a yeshiva?

I suspect it's teachers of a certain age. Most of my teachers were either born during or directly after WW2 or had parents born at that time. As we move on, fewer people have that link. But yeah, IBM did a great deal for the Nazis - the Nazis encouraged towns to provide a census prior to the Nazis moving in. IBM computers compiled that data and so the Nazis had a very detailed breakdown of who was Jewish, gypsy, etc etc. This made the job of rounding them up very easy.

mplayer can not play DVDs or VCDs without external codec. that is part of the full media experience the average user expects from a media player/OS today.

again the problem with this is propitiatory codecs that are illegal to use in the US without paying for them. thankfully the WORLD does not revolve around those horrid US laws.

[edit to add]

the only way to gain full access to the codecs to play all of the relevant media via mplayer is to install the win32codec family. read that windows 32bit. those are codecs that MS and Apple pay royalties for in order to gain access to, at least in the US.

Actually all you need is libdvdcss.

that will not give you support for mpg4 or avi or wmp files though. it will give you access to unencoded(think that is the correct term) DVDs.

No, it will allow you to decrypt encrypted DVDs. You still have to be able to play them with an appropriate codec.

ahh nice they have updated that since i messed with it. nice to know.

Thank you jim.

What?

Hmmm... I said "encrypted", when perhaps I should have said "scrambled".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libdvdcss

i read that linux mint from ireland is one of the few distros that come with codecs/ dvd playback preconfigured (because the fbi cannot prosecute in ireland).

I did already state that what you said is factually accurate. But when you speak in the world wide web, you must realize that you are speaking to both Tech people and non Tech people alike. People examining Linux or seeing if they are able to use it or not. When someone who is not familiar with the legal issues reads your post, they assume that they have to go out of your way to play a basic format. While this is true in some sense, it leaves the impression that it is difficult. I know you didn't say that directly, but with language, things can be interpreted differently through ignorance or deliberate. I know this isn't exactly your fault, but if you do make statements that would damage Linux for any newcomer (On a site dedicated to people asking questions on Linux, not to be misled.)

I do agree I was a bit harsh with you and I do apologize, at least with your first post. I just felt that someone could misuse that post and read into it, so I tried to clarify. I did throw around the word misleading a bit too much on your first post I agree. I simply wish that you would attempt to provide more detailed information on what you mean, instead of believing that everyone who is reading is a tech individual. Being misleading doesn't simply mean that you give false information, but also that you might not provide full information and leave a negative idea in peoples mind. By simply stating that things may be different now with your mp3 experience would have cleared this whole thing up. With the current version, I believe there is no need to visit the commandline in order to do such a basic task.

The other part of information that you seemed to leave out in your first post, was the fact that Windows does not come with a complete multimedia compatibility as well. So your wording should have been that Linux doesn't come preshiped with the current most POPULAR formats.

The fact is, though this is more of a clarification, not exactly having to do with you Jim. Mplayer does have much more support for any type of format than MS Mediaplayer has. This is a simple fact too. Though a few libraries must be installed, it is usually childsplay to install them. A few, such as special dvd encrypted files can be a bit difficult due to legal issues, but once they are installed, Mplayer will run circles around MS Mediaplayer. Now I admit I haven't tried Mediaplayer to its full compatibility in some time, so things might have changed with this.

And the maturity part had more to do with your tone that you seem to use when speaking to people. When talking to people on the internet you must understand that people come from different environments and might have a different way of looking at things than you do. You present things with full factual, while only providing information for one quick point that could be seen as something different than someone who looks more at the broad picture. To them it may seem misleading and not reading comprehension. I understand your side of the issue, but I would ask for enough respect for you to try to understand what I am saying too.

-Jessica-

Sorry about your classes H_TeXMeX_H, where do you go to school?

In addition to simple indoctrination, I feel compelled to point out that this particular statement of yours that I quoted seems unsubstantiated. Not very much useful to medicine or science came out of Nazi labs; I guess people like to believe the opposite, perhaps it makes them feel it wasn't just a waste on top of everything else. If you can give a particular example they give you, I'd like to know it.

Wasn't going to post this thread otherwise, the whole thing is a waste of time, so if this counts as a hijack, it's an improvement.

Well, many places actually, like many people.

They said they now know more about hypothermia because of those experiments. They said that in one of my classes, I believe it was physiology.

Luckily I don't believe any of it, really almost all of history, but especially anything about what happened during war. What happened is written by the victor, what really happened is something completely different. That's the way it's always been.

Actually those are supported by default if you compile it properly. I can play all those without any external codecs.

The only external codecs I have are:
cook.so drvc.so sipr.so