David:
"I think without question if you want to go mainstream you have to recognize that people want to watch Flash movies or play MP3 tracks or Windows Media Tracks, you have to see that and if you dont, youre simply hurting yourself. The purists have really protested any sort of mainstreaming of Linux"
Oh! That's why most Linux distros don't come with support for patent encumbered media formats out of the box!
Its because purists don't WANT support!
Its nothing to do with the legal issues at all!
ats: So why bother to give him more publicity?
David: Ranting is fun
ats: Well, yeah.
David: " And so that leads to the question: how do you make Flash, MP3, Quick Time, how do you make it work on any Linux computer?"
ats: I can't say that I really want Flash to work on any machine I'm near, thankyouverymuch.
David: But for those who do, then its just a matter of http://ubuntuguide.org/wiki/Dapper#How_to_use_Easy_Ubuntu
ats: Wikibooks Haskell tutorial.
It's quite good -- I'm finding it a useful reference for monad/data type stuff.