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Grosse Pointe Quickies
Nostradumbass told us about HandHeldCrime. This is cool for people that like to read on their Palm.
jleader shared a link to a revolutionary new airplane design
being built at the Van Nuys airport in Los Angeles.
As if you couldn't tell from his name, linuxsucks_dot_com thinks that Linux Sucks! Use it as a tool, not as flamebait.
SEWilco told us about a little cyber kid-leashing, and while you?re making sure the kids are where they need to be,
kawlyn told us about the x86 Still.
Beinoni shared a link to some interesting nonlinear emergent phenomena.
An Anonymous Coward sent in a link to an interesting Scientific American story about anti-aging.
dolanh sent in a cool question: What was your first computer? Okay, you caught me. My first real computer of note was an Apple //c. Still have the monitor.
Zeitgeist gave us a link to a tool for the paranoid, Mindguard.
Okay, this is pretty funny.
First off, Let me start off by saying that I'm a Win2K user. I used to run NT 4.0, but replaced it with an errant install of Redhat 6.2 (see some of my previous postings for that). So, I more or less tried to use Redhat 6.2 for about a month.
Now, why am I back to Win"blows"?
Simple:
1) The applications I use are here today, not tomorrow, not next year. I got tired of trying out really beta software for Linux for the stuff I use, and the stuff that wasn't beta was very unpolished, very cluttered, very unfocused. Think GNUCash vs. Quicken or even Money and you'll see what I mean.
2) X is slow and crappy and unresponsive. I run a dual CPU system and it annoys the hell out of me. X likes to crash, taking my whole system with it, usually. It just sucks balls. I stated before that the client-server architecture inherent in X is NOT NEEDED for typical home/end users. BeOS does the GUI right. You want to beat the GUI experience that Win2K gives? Ditch X and come up with something new.
3) I've not *touched* my registry since installing Win2k. I had to "touch" all kinds of config files weekly under Linux, just to install stuff.
4) Who cares about freedom to do with the software? Can't you see that RMS wants you to be paid MINIMUM WAGE for your work? How dare you code for money! nono, that was a rant, sorry. Rather, most users don't give a rat's ass about GPL or whatever. They want to install a software package and then use it. They don't want to have to search freshmeat.net for some obscure graphics lib or a specific version or whatever. Win2K at least halfway has this right. how many updates have I done to Win2K? Two or Three, the security update patch, couple drivers. And they installed *smoothly* with a double click. Every week I was scouring for the latest glibc or whatever to get whatever to work. Too much of a hassle.
4. Linux just felt too beta to do anything that I would want to do. The feel is not right on the OS. I don't care how smooth the architecture is or how stable it is (to an extent). Think of it this way: My Ti Graphing Calculator I had for engineering never crashed on me, but you don't hear me extolling it's stability virtues. Win2K didn't crash on me until I installed EverCrack.
5. i won't go into the games rant, because games are not important to me.
Does Linux suck? Hell fuck no. I've got two linux machines in my living room routing mail, etc. They are *great* for that. But for everyday using, Win2K provides me with the best experience, freedom be damned. BeOS has a better "experience" than linux, and I'd really like to see it take off. Will I ever use Linux as my everday OS again? If they can fix X so it doesn't run so slow and get some real apps that don't require 3 hours of searching to find that obscure library (hey, freedom has its price), then maybe. Until then, I'm sticking with something I know and somewhat trust. Fuck, guys, it's just a goddamned OS. Go outside and see the real world every once and awhile.
If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
It has a lot of well reasoned, well documented complaints about the suckage of various Unix flavors. It is mostly pre-Linux, (and Linux and friends have fixed a lot of the problems) but many of their complaints are applicable.
Top Unix problems, IMHO:
But hey. For a lot of things, Unix is great! I run my home server with Mandrake 7.1, but my workstation usually runs Windows 2000. At work I use FreeBSD, and my firewall is OpenBSD.
And, free software is slowly but surely fixing most of those problems. Just don't forget: it isn't there yet. For some people, and some things, Linux still sucks.
Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
"HTML needs a rant tag" - Alan Cox
...but I have nothign to say about that.
/. crew for not giving this the big, bold, badass headline that it deserves. this is probably one of the most important things that you will ever read on /., and it's somethign that every human over 16 in the US sould be forced to read.
Instead, I thought I'd comment on the nonlinear emergent whatevers - if you did not take the time to read that because it looked like some wierd math thing you couldnt understand, I urge you to read it. In fact, shame on the
I suffered through weeks of drivers education classes and learned nothing. if driver's education taught you NOTHING other than the contents of this link, america would be reshaped permanently, forever.
Go read the link. now. seriously. do it.
99% of traffic problems in this country can be SOLVED by following one simple rule - LEAVE SOME FUCKING ROOM BETWEEN YOU AND THE GUY IN FRONT OF YOU. enough room for some jackass to jump in between without you getting all hot an bothered about it. traffic sucks in this country for the simple fact that people ride each others' asses everywhere they drive. well, that and retards driving slow in the fastlane, but tailgating is a far more terrible problem.
go read this link. learn to drive like this. spread the word; spread this link. let's use the slashdoteffect for the powers of good just once, mmkay?