Hi,
--- Florin Andrei <florin(a)andrei.myip.org> wrote:
  On Thu, 2004-11-25 at 11:20 +1100, Dan Harper wrote:
 I will also make my official statement to all 
 sound card manufacturers.
  I will only buy sound cards that are fully 
operational with my operating
 > system of choice - Linux. 
It seems we have three people that have made their
official position known. That speaks volumes; very,
very low volume. How many RME cards have been
purchased by by Linux audio users? Maybe 50, 100 or
200. That's not enough to purchase a years worth of
toilet paper for a well fed family.
I know absolutely nothing about RME. I'm guessing
there's an engineer who started the company and does
at least %75 of all design work. I imagine the first
thing he does when arriving at the office in the
morning is check the phone messages, vacume the floor
and empty the ashtrays. I suspect RME is a very small
company and like every other small business in the
world it's 30 days away from being bankrupt.
  I'm thinking - if someone could put together (and
 maintain! that's the
 hard part) a simple web page, containing just one
 table with four
 columns:
 1. Manufacturers of sound cards supported by Linux
 2. Feed-back addresses and contacts for said
 manufacturers
 3. Manufacturers of sound cards not supported by
 Linux (well, at least
 the major players, there's no point in listing every
 single microscopic
 company)
 4. Feed-back addresses and contacts of said
 manufacturers
 Then, whenever a Linux user buys a card supported by
 Linux, it would be
 very simple to send a thank you to the respective
 manufacturer ("hey
 guys, i'm buying this card because it's supported by
 Linux, thanks") 
I think that's a great idea.
 and
  send a f*** you to all manufacturers in column #3
 ("hey guys, i bought a
 card made by XYZ instead of you, because your cards
 are not supported by
 Linux, no thanks"). 
I get as much juice from flippin the bird as the next
guy but in this instance I think it would do more harm
than good.
  Put that page on a prominent Linux multimedia site,
 advertise it and
 encourage everyone to use it. If thousands of people
 do that, i betcha
 we will see some changes. 
Therein lies the problem, we do not number in the
thousands. Well, according to the stats for
subscribers to LAU and LAD there's a couple thousand
of us. Our day in the sun hasn't arrived but I think
it will because the energy of the LAU/LAD community is
very positive.
Alwright, I'm as frustrated as anyone else and love
flippin the bird. Count me in under one condition; we
flip off someone from whom we want nothing. Deal?
ron
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
The all-new My Yahoo! - Get yours free!
http://my.yahoo.com