Open Source Worse than Flying

george writes "In an article published on TheRegister, Otto Z. Stern makes the bold statement that "The only thing as goat-rendering awful as flying has to be the progression of open source code." Accusing Open Source of being buggy and its devolopers of preoccupation with mudane details."I'm sitting here...wondering when the Linux freaks are going to solve their Ubuntu versus Mandriva color scheme debate or maybe even write a printer driver so that something I buy actually works with my open sores PC.""

Comments

Otis Stern is just upset because

[Anonymous Coward]

Open Source stole his initials.

Re:Otis Stern is just upset because

[jcr]

Seriously!

Besides, what's this guy's problem anyway? He's got the source, why doesn't he just fix the bugs?

-jcr

Re:Otis Stern is just upset because

[oztiks]

Besides, what's this guy's problem anyway? He's got the source, why doesn't he just fix the bugs?

Maybe this might have something to do with it, too much inflamation made the poor chum a bit moody i recon

http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=169834&cid= 14154307

Re:Otis Stern is just upset because

[Anonymous Coward]

it seems to me that he is mostly upset because software he does not have to pay for is not being developed in exactly the way he would prefer. i for one do not expect people to whom i am not contributing money or help to give a damn what i personally want from the software they are developing. but i prefer to not have to pay $300 for software developed by people who exhibit the same ammount of apathy towards myself as those who give their product away for free.

Re:Otis Stern is just upset because

[cp.tar]

And about the title of the article...

At night, it's colder than outside.
(a rough translation of a graffiti I originally found in Croatian

Re:Otis Stern is just upset because

[menkhaura]

More insightful than funny IMHO. No one is telling this fucktard to use OSS at gunpoint. He is free to drop his money on Microsoft crap, or Apple crap, or whathever the proprietary fuck other corporations have to offer.

Re:Otis Stern is just upset because

[Seumas]

Otto Stern is a thinktank twat. What's more useless than some guy who makes a living as part of a "thinktank"? I'll consider his opinion on Open Source about as much as I'll consider my non-computer-using 90 year old grandmother.

Basically, he is complaining about people who complain about trivial things rather than making something useful in Open Source. Ironic.

Re:Otis Stern is just upset because

[utnow]

So what you're saying is... you'd have no problem eating dog shit as long as you didn't have to pay the chef.

Your position would hold water IF... and this is a big if... the Linux camp would quit trying to shove their collective ePenis down the throat of every other computer user on the planet who has CHOSEN (in the same way that they have chosen) Windows or OSX instead of Linux. If Linux works for you then fine... but why the ever-present cock-fight. I personally hate Linux. I prefer to do things with my computer other than fixing/configing/updating it. I'm not really a Windows fanatic either... but it's what I need to use in order to have access to my software and my work. I would really like to be able to just use a mac. I don't really care how my computer is doing what it's doing as long as it does. I don't need it to be EXACTLY the way I want in every regard (at the expense of usability). This isn't everyone's feeling and that's fine. Different strokes for different folks.

It's like walking into a room full of americans and screaming "I'm French!!! You're all stupid and wrong!!! We're right for the following reasons:...." You might be absolutely right... but the americans don't care. Every word you waste arguing your point simply drives them more to their defensive stance.

It's not a matter of "I just don't like the open source software/model so I won't use it." or "I should fix this". It's a matter of the open source community screaming "THIS IS BETTER!!!!!!! YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND IT BECAUSE YOU'RE DUMB BUT IT'S BETTER!!!!!"

The average person dosen't have the know-how to 'roll their own' anything. If it's not right, then it's just not right and they're not going to fix it. They're going to go back to windows where things feel safe and cozy again, then they're going to be pissed off at the linux fan-boi that told them that Linux was really easy and great since you can just change anything willy nilly.

Ahh... Linux reeks of a dying breed of computer user.... the people who still want to dabble with the way the machine works. The people who still have aspirations of 'changing the world' and being responsible for the next big thing. They've lost touch with the fact that people don't care about any of that anymore. The computer has 'gelled'. There will be some minor changes here and there but for the most part, the days of the 'homebrew' are quickly fading. Slowly but surely you'll start to see the inner workings of the PC hidden behind the glossy panels and wood panels. It happened to the car... You HAD to be an expert on every mechanism of your vehicle if you wanted to get your steam machine moving down the road. There's a decently sized market for people who still tinker in this way, but mostly it's just a tool used by everyone to get from point A to point B. The solenoid has been all but forgotten by the housewives and sorority girls of the planet. It'll happen to the PC (see: Mac) sooner or later.

*I ramble too much...

Re:Otis Stern is just upset because

[haystor]

There is a difference between a thinktank and a shill factory.

Re:Otis Stern is just upset because

[l33tw00t]

he is english [quote]Before pulling away from your crucial Mono project work to write a flame, please hand a normal 25-year-old your Linux box and show them how to connect the system to their bluetooth camera and then smack yourself.[/quote] just handed my lil sister an early xmas gift age=24.5 dell laptop intel centrino 512 mem running suse 10.0 oss no smack needed bluetooth and irda auto config'd and installed w/ out her doing sh!t obsolete stern needs to pull away from his cr-apple and accept that he is english && not be mad about it && embrace that he is a 2nd person

Re:Otis Stern is just upset because

[jsight]

Ahh... Linux reeks of a dying breed of computer user.... the people who still want to dabble with the way the machine works. The people who still have aspirations of 'changing the world' and being responsible for the next big thing. They've lost touch with the fact that people don't care about any of that anymore. The computer has 'gelled'. There will be some minor changes here and there but for the most part, the days of the 'homebrew' are quickly fading. Slowly but surely you'll start to see the inner workings of the PC hidden behind the glossy panels and wood panels. It happened to the car... You HAD to be an expert on every mechanism of your vehicle if you wanted to get your steam machine moving down the road. There's a decently sized market for people who still tinker in this way, but mostly it's just a tool used by everyone to get from point A to point B. The solenoid has been all but forgotten by the housewives and sorority girls of the planet. It'll happen to the PC (see: Mac) sooner or later.

This paragraph sums up everything that you have to say nicely. Do you really believe that this isn't the case already?

Seriously, the scenario that you describe of not knowing the internals is the reality for the overwhelming majority of computer users already (including quite a few Linux users).

Having said that, the power of Linux for those that know more is a serious advantage as well. There will always be a market for mechanics and engineers.

Re:Otis Stern is just upset because

[dpreston]

The computer has 'gelled'? The car is done? This seems like the same type of mentality that is keeping us in a technical dark age, so to speak. Since when has any invention ever been perfect? I'm sorry, but I don't see how computers as they are today are done in ANY way shape or form. Nor are cars. We still have many problems in both fields that need solving: for cars, we need new forms of energy, we need to decrease our dependency on oil. I don't even know where to begin, but the computer is a relatively new technology with a lot of things to discover about it that will take years and years of R+D... I personally don't understand how we can say "enough is enough", the computer is the way it needs to be.

Re:Otis Stern is just upset because

[killjoe]

I hate to break it to you but it is better. It's much better and you are indeed to dumb to understand why or how.

Like the song says, "you can't go on, thinking there is nothing wrong with you".

Lucky thing for you we don't believe in shoving our operating system down your throat. Unlike you I get windows shoved down my throat at work.

Re:Otis Stern is just upset because

[smindinvern]

"I'm French!!! You're all stupid and wrong!!! We're right for the following reasons:...." You might be absolutely right... but the americans don't care. Every word you waste arguing your point simply drives them more to their defensive stance.

And how is that different from what you're doing?

Re:Otis Stern is just upset because

[jhoger]

People like you deserve what you get... PCs that are locked down tighter than a DVD player or X-Box.

What you'll get is a world where freedom means having the freedom to rent your computing time from the man as long as you don't break the EULA.

Sorry, that's not for me (or most engineers, for that matter).

-- John.

Re:Otis Stern is just upset because

[DenDave]

Linux reeks of a dying breed of computer user

hrmm.. I think, sir, you have it the wrong way round. What is dying out is the crook who pretends to know what he is doing clicking buttons on an obscure interface and waves his "certified asshole" certificate demanding big pay.

Re:Otis Stern is just upset because

[BoldAndBusted]

They've lost touch with the fact that people don't care about any of that anymore.

Yes, most people never cared about "any of that", now or ever. But, luckily for all of us, some people happily lose touch, and make interesting things.

If people are screaming at you, and you don't like what they are saying, you should probably hang out with some different people. Or at least walk away.

Re:Otis Stern is just upset because

[Master of Transhuman]

"fictional land where penguins ride horses in the night with white pointy hats and burn microsoft users."

Where is this heaven?! Can I move there tomorrow?!

Death to Microsoft shills! Scumbag morons using Microsoft products should be executed!

Oh, wait, I'm using Firefox on Windows XP right now...let me reboot into Mandriva...

No, wait...Linux sucks! Yeah, that's it! Linux sucks!

Re:Otis Stern is just upset because

[hdparm]

This is you!

Re:Otis Stern is just upset because

[Pieroxy]

So shut the fuck up already

There ya go: All the openness of the open source world right there in your post. Good job.

Re:Otis Stern is just upset because

[SecondHand]

Don't pay too much attention to Mr Stern, he just likes to write flame baits. I guess that's the easiest way to make a living as a journalist.

Re:Otis Stern is just upset because

[James_Aguilar]

Though most people don't know how cars work, there'll still always be mechanics. Linux is already in the state of only being used by the "mechanics" of the computing industry, but since I am one, I'm ok with that. =)

Re:Otis Stern is just upset because

[Lisandro]

So what you're saying is... you'd have no problem eating dog shit as long as you didn't have to pay the chef.

    So, what you're saying is that you have no problem eating dog shit either. After all, millons of satisfied flies can't be wrong.

    If you don't care about much more than using your computer (as you're well entitled to), that's fine. There's much more to the argument besides convenience, as i see it. Most OSS advocates are rather... mmm... fanatical :) in their beleiefs, but they're on the right track IMHO. OSS is more about using your PC in the way you see fit, and that includes being able to modify the software you're using or being able to choose among different software for the same task (open standards et. all). That you may choose not to is of little consequence, as someone might very well do it for you. And this not only applies to Linux as an OS, there's a shitload of perfectly good OSS software for Windows/OSX as well that works and works just fine.

    Now, you want your computer to "just work". In that sense, the Linux desktop has still a lot (a lot!) of work ahead in order to be as dumbproof as, say, Windows or OSX., but i keep finding that when it works, it works just peachy, and even better than their counterparts. I'm constantly reminded of this when i switch to Windows, f.ex.: for every thing that it makes much simpler, there's another that becomes impossible.

    And even considering that, nowadays Linux is damn useable as a "Joe-sixpack" desktop, specially if you choose any of the modern commercial distros available. They take a lot of care in rounding the rough edges, and trust me, you won't even have to bother about fixing/configing/updating it, or more than you would have to with Win/OSX atleast. You should try one - a LiveCDs, for example, lets you boot a complete Linux distro from a CD and take a look at how they work. They might not be for you yet, but i think you'll find them much more usable than you think. We're not all typing obscure commands in consoles all day, you know :)

Re:Otis Stern is just upset because

[squoozer]

Karma be damned I just had to reply and say I agree pretty much completely with what you say. I just wish I had mod points as there are, IMHO, plenty of Linux hackers that need to read something like this. I'm in a really lucky position in that I have time to tinker with and learn about Linux and so I use it as my main OS. If I was deciding on an OS for a business or non-technical user I would choose Windows simply because it's far easier to manage and run.

While most of the people replying have tried to rubbish the car analogy I think it's pretty much spot on. I love the fact that I don't have to know how the internals of my car work (although I know the basic idea). If something goes wrong (and that's rare) I just give it to a garage to fix. I can't wait until computers reach that level of product maturity. Computers should be even better than a car because the software parts don't wear out.

The OS, for most people, is like a tool. People who use tools don't want to waste time configuring and maintaining them. People who build tools have a different view. They are happy to spend time fiddling and improving the tool itself. The Linux world is currently full of tool makers and, since it is all free, there is little driving force to make it easy to use for tool users. I hope it gets there one day though because it's a fantastic project.

Re:Otis Stern is just upset because

[cornjchob]

We're not all typing obscure commands in consoles all day, you know :)

You're right--vim works just as well in X.

Re:Otis Stern is just upset because

[DeafByBeheading]

I only partially agree. Open Source software does have problems. On the other hand, hardware compatibility is hardly a fair target. It's an important issue, but OSS people are reverse-engineering drivers in many cases, instead of having these handed to them by the hardware manufacturer. Actual level of hardware support aside, you can argue, "Oh, Linux is not ready for Joe Consumer because of limited hardware support from manufacturers," but it's just plain ignorant to argue "Oh, Linux is not ready for Joe Consumer because Open Source programmers are teh suck".

And to the editors, please don't post any more articles fromt this guy. This barely contained anything about OSS (certainly nothing intelligent), and he's not nearly as funny and clever as he seems to think he is.

Re:Otis Stern is just upset because

[Kazoo the Clown]

Likely this is just flamebait, as no one so ignorant as this would be likely to find their way to slashdot. Be that as it may...

No, the future will hold at least two separate classes of end-user machines. Limited, easy for morons to use, and something for power users. And the "for dummies" machines have not really arrived yet at all. I expect there will be significant improvements in interface over the next 20 or so years, at least.

My 80 year old mother is a good example-- she has a computer but the toughest part for her is the mouse. She learned to touch-type years ago, and like me, she has 10 fingers that she knows how to use, not just one. The Mouse interface is confusing for many people because the motion you are making is not where the action is, you can't "point-and-click" at what you want, you have to point and click way down and to the right (or left, if you've configured your system for a southpaw) of what it is you are actually looking at. That is not intuitive for many people, it requires the development of some relatively new hand-eye coordination skills. Mom learned to touch-type in her 20's however, so that's not a new skill she needs to learn. Sure, the young won't have that problem, and by the time they get old they'll know how to use a mouse, but mouse-based interfaces remain clumsy, just the same. It's a make-shift solution, not by any means the most efficient, and likely to be a temporary one because of it.

Besides the cognitive disconnect between the intended action and the intending action, there are many shortcomings to the mouse/GUI interface. Among other things, Mouse-based GUI interfaces make you wait for them to finish, while even the old tried-and-true text interfaces didn't make you wait to input, they have a liberating feature known as type-ahead. Even text based menu systems have it-- as you learn the menu options or command line commands, you can type keys far in advance of where the computer is and then walk away, rather than having to wait for the display to come up so you can click on some stupid thing just to get it to go ahead. Future interface designs will no doubt be far more asynchronous, not forcing you to interact with them at their rate, instead interacting with them at your rate. Why not let the computer catch up when it gets around to it rather than slave yourself to its pacing?

Most command line systems have another powerful feature, scripting. The exception to this is Windows, whos native scripting capabilities have been positively Neandertal. And pre OS-X, scripting on the Mac was mostly non-existent. With good scripting capabilities such as on Unix, you can connect together unconnected utilities and iterate, not just macro a sequence of mouse clicks or keyboard entries, or something limited to one application. Need to do something 10,000 times? A recipe for repetitive stress injuries-- start clicking, idiot. Familiarity with command line allows me to do things like that routinely in a short loop. Mice were designed to make the computer "easy-to-use," not because it was a particularly powerful means of control. And while there currently may be many non-textual tasks they are better at, many of those tasks were made non-textual simply because of the mouse/GUI attempt at "easy-to-use." Many of those tasks existed before GUIs, where you didn't need a mouse to perform them. And other tasks such as graphic arts are better performed by a flat panel and pen combination where your action and the computer's reaction are a little more logically connected-- many people are already using them. Mice may seem easy now, but that's because they're pretty simple-minded-- they really don't do all that much and what they do is better tuned for novice tasks, not power-user tasks. But note-- a novice won't necessarily stay a novice forever.

Missing GUI features that are routine in Unix for example-- I can instantly ctl-C interrupt anything that I started running and abort it. Ever accidentally

Re:Otis Stern is just upset because

[Cougem]

So your argument is that he can't moan about open source because he has the choice whether to use it or not?
Fine, well then Linux users should never moan about Windows, since they obviously don't have to use it. And people should never moan about KDE or Gnome either, since they obviously have a choice.

Re:Otis Stern is just upset because

[SilverspurG]

reeks...dying...dabble...lost touch...homebrew...wood panels...steam machine...tinker

Obvious troll.

Woe to you when the day comes that someone ridicules whatever it is that gives you a reason to get out of bed in the morning. At the end of the day everyone is working on something which is arguably useless and anachronistic. Time to wake up and face reality. Life is pointless.

I think you're jealous because you're being forced to admit that you couldn't figure it out even if you wanted to.

Re:Otis Stern is just upset because

[Moflamby-2042]

... The people who still have aspirations of 'changing the world' and being responsible for the next big thing. They've lost touch with the fact that people don't care about any of that anymore.

Wow, that's a stunning statement to read mod'd so high on slashdot (nevermind, upon preview it's knocked to a 2). My comments never clear '1's, but all the same: When I read things like that, I think whatever part of humanity arguing against 'capability for better control over their systems' can keep their fsck'd up propi. OS's and closed softs, and pay for every new capability, and use only software with a tard-GUI slapped on it, buried in EULAs and restrictions and all your programs locked up and drm'd to hell.

'Tinkering' with your system in the way that you misdirect doesn't seem as common. You get drivers you set high level settings in your kernel to pick what you want, etc. Many people aren't attempting mods to drivers or modifying kernel routines or tweaking protocol stacks ever so slightly. (OTOH many are since they can and it is of interest to them).

But the freedom comes both there and much higher levels of control. You can configure the hell out of many software packages, most provide sensible defaults as well. The difference is you have the freedom to alter these. AND if you don't like how it works fundamentally, if you need something more and have the capability or wish to pay somebody who does have the capability, then you/they can change it! It is not illegal to do this w/ OSS. How is seeking this manner of operation everywhere out of touch? It's what should've been done all along. It just takes a while to fix all the mistakes where this isn't done yet.

It is illegal to do w/ proprietary and closed source softs that infest common user's environments. It is this software that will ultimately sink into obscurity hopefully with a kick in its collective ass for all the trouble it's caused as it goes down.

It IS better over here. If scientists have discovered something that 99.99999% of the population do not initially care about and have possibly never heard of but it's achingly better in so many respects, shouldn't they be vocal about it? And when you have defenders of the old crappy ways to do it, who resist this fundamental change in society, shouldn't they be told again and again how this thing that many people do not use is better?

For me I'll stick with the 'lost touch' crowd that hasn't given up to that sad of a state. It's where the stuff with the highest future potential I've seen anywhere is at.

Re:Otis Stern is just upset because

[Zapd]

That's the common reply: "if its buggy, fix it yourself". The common reply to that is :"it's as if i go to that fancy restaurant with my new date where i'm told to go straight to the kitchen and prepare my diner by myself".

I'll gladly cook my own dinner in a restaurant if the food is free :)

Re:Otis Stern is just upset because

[Weedlekin]

"And pre OS-X, scripting on the Mac was mostly non-existent."

Macs have had AppleScript since 1993.

Re:Otis Stern is just upset because

[Floody]

While most of the people replying have tried to rubbish the car analogy I think it's pretty much spot on. I love the fact that I don't have to know how the internals of my car work (although I know the basic idea). If something goes wrong (and that's rare) I just give it to a garage to fix. I can't wait until computers reach that level of product maturity. Computers should be even better than a car because the software parts don't wear out.

Not a problem, that can be done right now. I'll build a computer to your exacting specifications. It will count numbers very slowly, or it will count numbers very rapidly, you control the rate! It can count both positive and negative numbers, and it can use varying increments which again .. all under your control! And it will still be in perfect working order long after your car is broken down by the side of the road.

That work for ya?

Re:Otis Stern is just upset because

[MasterPi]

Actually I'm forced to put up with Windows far more than I'd like. Gates's monopolistic actions and unwillingness to play nice with the other OSes out there have made it the most common annoyance on the market. Even when I'm not fixing somebody's Windows that's gone bad or struggling with the terrible Windows CLI because I'm trying to do something not possible with GUI tools, I still have to write MSIE compatible pages if I want the internet community to put up with them without complaining. Windows is a genuine pain, even to those who would choose not to use it.

Re:Otis Stern is just upset because

[maxwell demon]

We're not all typing obscure commands in consoles all day, you know :)

Indeed, I'm usually typing obscure commands sitting on a chair in front of the monitor and keyboard. I would hate it to be locked into a console when typing obscure commands.

Ah, and of course I'm also not typing obscure commands all day. After all, I need some time to read Slashdot!

Now, having said that, the Slashdot interface clearly leaves something to desire, even when using Lynx. Why is there no true modular command line interface? I would think of something along the lines of

$ slashdot ls
Glide File Sharing Service Debuts
Your Rights Online: Consumer Strikes Back at Crooked Online Retailer
IT: Open Source Worse than Flying
(etc.)
$ slashdot st IT
slashdot: IT: ambiguous story.
$ slashdot ls IT\*
IT: Open Source Worse than Flying
IT: Security Flaws Allow Wiretaps to be Evaded
$ slashdot st 'IT: O'
george writes "In an article published on TheRegister, Otto Z. Stern makes the
bold statement that "The only thing as goat-rendering awful as flying has to be
the progression of open source code." Accusing Open Source of being buggy and
its devolopers of preoccupation with mudane details."I'm sitting
here...wondering when the Linux freaks are going to solve their Ubuntu versus
Mandriva color scheme debate or maybe even write a printer driver so that
something I buy actually works with my open sores PC.""
$ slashdot sl 'IT: O'
total: 1
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/11/29/otto_fl y_open/ Accusing Open Source
$ slashdot cs 'IT: O'
total: 464
-1: 8
0: 102
1: 96
2: 173
3: 21
4: 12
5: 52
$

SCNR

Re:Otis Stern is just upset because

[squoozer]

No, it's not fine, but then nor would a car with only one wheel be fine. The fundamental functions of a car are now highly reliable and abstracted away or hidden to the point where the majority of car owners have little or no understanding of what goes on under the bonnet. A computer should be the same. Windows has been approaching this level of product maturity for years - Linux has a long way to go. What will be hard, and will require a good deal of skill, will be marrying the simplicity of Windows for novice users with the ability to modify the system.

Windows is an unmaintainable car it has a steering wheel and a go pedal. When it goes wrong you throw it away and get a new car. That makes ownership quite expensive.

Linux is a highly maintainable car it has 4 steering wheels, 84 pedals and a little knob to tweek the engine timing while you are driving along. You have to know every damn thing about it before you can drive it and your constantly tweeking it. That makes ownership quite expensive.

I'm sure these arguments are falling on deaf ears so I will give up now.

Re:Otis Stern is just upset because

[Anonymous Coward]

Linux doesn't want anything. It's an operating system.
Linux users are already using Linux, so they don't want anything.
'The corporate space' is already using Linux, so they don't want anything either.

Me? I want another beer.

Re:Otis Stern is just upset because

[TheRaven64]

I think what the grandparent post was, somewhat ineloquently, trying to say was that if he didn't pay for the software, or contribute in some other way, then he is not entitled to complain. If he is choosing a Free Software solution in place of a proprietary system, then he has probably saved enough money to pay for a few hours of developer time. If he created a list of his wants for the software, and offered this money to the person who fixed them, then this would be a valid complaint. I doubt he is the only person with that particular model of printer - if others have the same need, then they can add money to the pot to get a driver written.

Free Software is about freedom, not price. The development model is different - you pay up front for the features you want, and then you and anyone else you distribute the code to, can use them for any purpose in perpetuity. People coming in this late in the game and seeing twenty or thirty years of software funded by other people and then complaining that it doesn't precisely fit their needs, without actually being willing to invest any time or money in improving things are no use to the community. It's like people pirating a copy of Windows, and then complaining it doesn't have a feature they need - would you expect Microsoft to give them any sympathy?

Re:Otis Stern is just upset because

[Anonymous Coward]

Uummm, I hate to tell you this, but OS X uses the cups printer system, the same as most Linux systems. It's just as easy to set up a printer on a Linux system as it is on OS X. Even down to the list of supported printers. I don't think you could have choosen a worse example of unique Mac superiority than their printing system. *LMAO*

The Unofficial CUPS-on-Apple-Mac-OS-X FAQ

CUPS; it just works.

Re:Otis Stern is just upset because

[scoove]

Besides, what's this guy's problem anyway?

You ever go to a large family holiday function and notice there's usually one relative who sits on his/her ass by the TV yelling at everyone else to hurry up with the food? "What's taking so damn long?" "Bring me some of that pie before I starve here!" "As long as you're bringing pie, you could have been less selfish and brought me another beer. Anyone could have noticed I've been done for at least five minutes!"

It's really not worth getting upset about these people, other than kindly smiling at their obnoxious, selfish requests, letting the dog lick a piece of food before serving it to these ingrates. Mr. Stern should be kindly referred to the Microsoft line and suggested that open source is just not ready for exceptional users like hime.

That most of us never have these problems (all of my desktops save a dual-boot laptop necessary to run a few audit tools are Linux/Gentoo) is irrelevant in an era where half of our population is intellectually challenged when presented with a car, a cell phone, a sandwich and the passing lane of the road.

*scoove*

Re:Otis Stern is just upset because

[richlv]

"Windows is an unmaintainable car it has a steering wheel and a go pedal. When it goes wrong you throw it away and get a new car. That makes ownership quite expensive.

Linux is a highly maintainable car it has 4 steering wheels, 84 pedals and a little knob to tweek the engine timing while you are driving along. You have to know every damn thing about it before you can drive it and your constantly tweeking it. That makes ownership quite expensive."

may i offer slightly different analogy ? :)

now, you have two 'types' of cars. one is windows. it is produced by a single company, all spare parts are manufactured by the same company. it comes in slight variety, having several models. you are not able to buy older models, though you can buy a new model, trash it and use some older model.

if something breaks down, it usually is pretty obscure that you get a flashing "service now" that can be deciphered with a specialised hardware that is sold by the same manufacturer.
if some part breaks down, you usually have to change whole lot of parts as they come together and there is no way to exchange smaller parts (for example, no way to exchange wiper arm, you have to exchange whole block). as parts are manufactured by the single company only, they are pretty expensive and obscure (for example, central computer can be changed, but costs quite a lot).
the cars work well on good roads, though breaking down now and then unexpectedly. don't try going offroad, unpaved roads are very, very risku.
it is very easy to service these cars, as kid next doors is ready to help. quality of this kind of service is of a very low level, but readily available. well, sometimes you have to scrap the car after such a service, but it sortaworks most of the time.
all gasoline, windshield fluids, coolants are compatible with this car, though some of them result in breakdown of the car.
the car has some problems with isolation, so you get a lot of different bugs in the car that are annoying at low speeds and often are the cause for the crashes at high speeds.
this car is very easy to obtain, almost all retailers have it.
---------------------

then there's this 'linux' type. they have in common only the engine, all other parts differ. it is offerend by a bunch of vendors, and you can choose any one you like. this might seriously impact the performance, looks and other aspects of the car.
you can get constructor type of the car that you build yourself - involves welding and other obscure things. then you can get one that's pretty complete and polished.
most drivers have difficulties choosing, as there are so many subtypes and vendors.
there are less techies specialised in this type of cars, so their time costs more, but generally they are much better at fixing problems - much of it can be attributes to their enthuasism about these cars (they are builders, owners and drivers at the same time), but having complete information about the car helps a lot. it is also possible to get some handholding when choosing the correct subtype for your needs.

spare parts are available down to every bult&nut, though you have to wait some time for the shipment to arrive.
the car itself is extremly reliable and fast, it can be kept for decades with almost no maintenance.
most liquids are not compatible with it, but careful evaluation when shopping helps to find ones that work. even though gas is available in few selected tanks only, the car uses several times less of it than 'windows' type. also changing colant and other things are very rare.
the car almost never breaks down, and even if it does, it is very easy for a specialised person to diagnose it without that device from the manufacturer and fix it, in most cases even without ordering any spare parts (unlike the other type, where dumping the car is the norm).

also a lot of accessories are manufactured for the 'windows' type only - air refresheners and all that stuff is hard to install in 'linux' type of cars as manufact

Re:Otis Stern is just upset because

[gweihir]

Besides, what's this guy's problem anyway? He's got the source, why doesn't he just fix the bugs?

Bitching is easier than fixing the problem. Especially when you are not too bright.

Re:Otis Stern is just upset because

[Anonymous Coward]

Linux reeks of a dying breed of computer user.... the people who still want to dabble with the way the machine works

You're exactly right. I get the same feeling when I walk into Home Depot and look at all that raw material. WTF are people thinking when they can just go buy a new manufactured home. And what's with all these people called professionals that are out there buying stuff at Home Depot too? Don't they know that trailer homes don't need modification? Just buy them the way they are. Nobody customizes things anymore. You just get it the way the vendor gives it to you and be happy. You eat dog shit AND YOU LIKE IT, as the previous thread poster explained.

No, the whole "customizing and controlling your environment" thing went out years ago. Look at cars. You just buy and drive and when it breaks down, pull into the dealer. Nobody ever shops at auto parts stores, there's no racing industry with millions of people customizing their cars for stock car races, etc., and certainly those ricers must just be some stock Honda model we didn't see in the catalog. Even those commercial fleet pickups with all the different custom boxes must be my imagination, since I know the car lost any customization capability years ago.

People don't like change. All people are the same. All people are like the former poster. Now shut up and smile when you eat your dog shit!

Re:Otis Stern is just upset because

[Transmogrify_UK]

The only thing I can't do on my Windows box that I can do on my Linux box is look at the source code. I'm not interested in the slightest in looking at or doing anything with the source code, so no.. it's not locked down and I've got the freedom to do with it what I wish (except look at and tinker with the source code). I'd like to see Microsoft enforce the EULA on me.

Re:Otis Stern is just upset because

[10Ghz]

Why does he (The Register-guy) think that he's entitled to jack-shit? Seriously? So he uses free software. Does that mean that he can then make demands to the developers? "You gave me this software for free, and I DEMAND that you fix these bugs in your shitty software!". I might understand that line of thinking if he paid for the software. I might understand it if he was forced to use it. But he didn't pay for it, nor is he forced to use it. If it sucks so bad, he could always use something else or fix it himself. But saying something like "hey assholes! Write some drivers so I can use my hardware!" is not very constructive.

It is OK to file bug-reports. It is OK to make suggestions. It is OK to submit patches. It is NOT OK to moan and make demands. Many people just seem to think that by merely using the software, they are somehow entitled to make demands. In reality, they are not entitled to anything. The developers don't owe them anything. In fact, the users owe to the developers! The developers give them great software for free, and some people think that it's the DEVELOPERS who are in debt to the users?!?! Am I in Bizarro-world?

Hell, I even blogged about this just now (not actually related to this story, but another discussion I had just a while ago).

Re:Otis Stern is just upset because

[DarkOx]

He is mostly crying about drivers. That is stupid the vendor likely provided driver software for the other platforms not their developers. He should be mad at who ever it was that made the printer not OSS they should have given him a driver for the platform if his argument holds up at all. I would say he should stop being an asshole and do some research before buying crap. You don't buy parts for your car until you know you have the right ones for your make and model. Why would you buy parts for your computer without makeing sure they are compatible with the rest of the system or if you do out of lazyness why would you come crying about it when it won't work?

Re:Otis Stern is just upset because

[Cougem]

I don't totally agree with that view. I agree that people shouldn't poke fingers at a product which they (in the larger sense) control. But I think what the writer was getting at what the fact that these operating systems are being sold, for money. Not only that, but they're marketing full operating systems without drivers for basic peripherals. He's cheesed off because people are investing in these products (and the packs with the full manuals and so on, which many of the newbies would need are quite expensive!), and then not being able to use the vital (yes, printers are vital, a family wont use linux if children can't print their homework) parts.
 
He's blaming these companies, but I think he's mainly blaming the mind-set of the community, who spend all their time developing new GUIs and ports of windows programs, and virtually no time in allowing people to utilise the computer that they've bought!

Re:Otis Stern is just upset because

[segin]

I had a choice, and I freely used it. I started out with GNOME on DragonLinux, a slackware fork for people that use Windows. Only real difference from main Slack is that it makes a file on a FAT partition for it's root filesystem, and that LILO doesn't work (due to the way the kernel boots). I kept GNOME with Slackware 10.0/10.1. Then I used KDE with Gentoo. It was nice until it got too bloated and slow. Then I finally settled in with Fluxbox, which is wicked fast.

Re:Otis Stern is just upset because

[squoozer]

Yep that pretty much hits the nail on the head and was ammusing to boot. It was what I was trying to get across (although I think it perhaps paints Linux in a slightly too good light). I'm not trying to advocate the use of Windows, in fact I actively try and get people to at least try Linux (2 converts and counting :o)). What really frustrates me though is the lack of polish on Linux. Windows has some really nice features and it's about time the Linux world copied them.

That last sentence will no doubt start a flame. There seems to be a wide spread allergy to copying good ideas with the Linux crowd. A serious not invented here problem. It's like they feel that if they copy one good idea they can't ever innovate again. If I see a good idea I copy it. That's part of human nature.

Re:Otis Stern is just upset because

[RockModeNick]

That the users owe the developers and you can't demand a bug fix is the point. Their's no support, so you can't hold anyone responsible if your decision to use this software creates a problem. So what if it's free instead of a large licensing fee? If a run into a problem 4 months in on my own expensive business venture and my software isn't fixed right away, I'm screwed, and if it's open source, I can't demand it be fixed, and therefor businesses have a lot of trouble being interested in unsuported open source.

Re:Otis Stern is just upset because

[10Ghz]

That the users owe the developers and you can't demand a bug fix is the point

The users don't "officially" owe the developers anything. But it's customary to say "thank you", when you receive something for free. But many people feel that they don't owe even that simple thank you. In fact, they feel that just because they use the software, the developers owe them something.

As to "demanding bug-fixes"... Can you demand bug-fixes from Microsoft? Apple? Oracle? Even though you paid for their software? No? Then what makes you think that you CAN demand bug-fixes when it comes to free software? Besides, you have the source. If you have the skills or know someone who does, you can fix it yourself.

Their's no support, so you can't hold anyone responsible if your decision to use this software creates a problem.

And if you check the EULA that accompanies Windows or any other peice of proprietary software, you would see that they too tell the user that "if this software screws your computer, we are not responsible".

If a run into a problem 4 months in on my own expensive business venture and my software isn't fixed right away, I'm screwed, and if it's open source, I can't demand it be fixed, and therefor businesses have a lot of trouble being interested in unsuported open source.

There are plenty of places that are more than willing to provide support for the software. But that doesn't mean that the developers are required to satisfy your whims. If you want official support, go talk to Red Hat (for example).

Re:Otis Stern is just upset because

[richlv]

i don't think there is something to flame much about here.
people differ - and so do developers ;)

some are maybe too fast to copy behaviour. some are glad to use succesful and good ideas. some just want to do it "my way".

i think there's a lot floating of ideas from one side to another - which is a very good thing (though patents hinder this somewhat)i think, in most cases when you say "you should copy this" it usually either is available in one or another distribution, is not deemed top priority (remember that there are bugs to fix, cool features to implement - that might be better than that particular windows feature).

what particular fetures you feel windows has and linux distributions do not that would seriously improve your experience with linux ?

Re:Otis Stern is just upset because

[Kadin2048]

> And to the editors, please don't post any more articles fromt this guy. This barely contained anything about OSS (certainly nothing intelligent), and he's not nearly as funny and clever as he seems to think he is.

Seriously. I'm really beginning to think that we need some sort of moderation scheme for the articles. This one reeks of "-1, Flamebait" like nothing I've ever seen.

It's ignorant, it's uninsightful, and frankly we're not doing anybody any favors by giving it the additional publicity rather than letting it just slip off into the ether to be forgotten. I'm all for the whole 'marketplace of ideas' philosophy and debating down bad memes when they come up, but do we really need to have a 500+ post discussion ever time some fucktard has a brain fart aimed at Linux?

Re:Otis Stern is just upset because

[mdarksbane]

Am I the only user in the world who almost never feels a need for a script?

Ok, maybe once a month, I'd like a small one... but almost every other task I do either

A. Will only be done once in that exact order, or
B. Is short enough that it's only one extra click over executing a script.

I'm decently well versed in bash and darn near an expert in vbscript and batch, but I still haven't seen a need to write a single script for my home user needs.

And also, stop subscribing to the 1980's idea that a GUI is only for dumbing things down. A good, POWERFUL GUI makes a lot of command line tasks easier. Are there some things that are still easier to do on the command line? Yes. But which is easier, opening a menu to look for the command you want in a new program and then just using it, or scrolling through twenty man pages to find what you needed? A command line is only faster for the subset of things you already have memorized, and I'd rather spend my time getting my work done than memorizing every switch in grep.

Re:Otis Stern is just upset because

[indifferent children]

Unlike you I get windows shoved down my throat at work.

Ooh, that's a pane in the neck.

Re:Otis Stern is just upset because

[XO]

nope, it's because those who design open source programs are usually skilled programmers rather than skilled designers.

Re:Otis Stern is just upset because

[Kadin2048]

I'm not sure why you got modded down; you're absolutely right in that I think that paragraph sums up what is apparently his entire worldview nicely.

I think that at the end of the day he and I (and I assume most geeks and a lot of computer users) have a fundamental disagreement over what he's saying. I do not think that people who want to dabble with the way the machine works are a "dying breed" at all, except insofar as the computer hardware and software companies are forcing such tinkerers out of existence through sealed boxes. That impulse to tinker is founded on an essential human characteristic, curiosity, which in itself might be described as a desire to simply understand things. Although it's obvious that curiosity is not something which the author possesses, at least to any appreciable degree, there are lots of people (particularly younger ones) who do.

His philosophy is frankly disgusting to me, because it seems to be embracing what I find most disturbing about our culture: that many people find it acceptable to ridicule another's desire to understand, and on some level we find a desire for ignorance to be a laudable goal.

While the "housewives" and "sorority girls" (I won't even get into his obvious sexism, it's too easy) of the world may have forgotten the solenoid, the scientists, engineers, and probably even doctors and lawyers have not, and I think one should carefully consider the place of his two example groups within the power structure of our society. Speaking only for myself, I would certainly want my children to aspire for and to have the ability to achieve better than that.

Re:Otis Stern is just upset because

[ultranova]

Their's no support, so you can't hold anyone responsible if your decision to use this software creates a problem.

Actually, quite a few people offer support for open source programs for a price; Red Hat, for example, offers a supported Linux platform, Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

And to the best of my knowledge, it is impossible to hold others legally or morally responsible for the consequences of your decisions, whether you are receiving support from them or not - they are, after all, your decisions, not theirs. Proprietary software vendors certainly disclaim any and all responsibility in their EULA.

If a run into a problem 4 months in on my own expensive business venture and my software isn't fixed right away, I'm screwed, and if it's open source, I can't demand it be fixed, and therefor businesses have a lot of trouble being interested in unsuported open source.

No, you can't demand it to be fixed. You can, however, fix it yourself or hire someone to fix it for you right away. With proprietary software you cannot neither demand it be fixed, fix it by yourself, nor hire any third parties to fix it, and are therefore screwed.

Re:Otis Stern is just upset because

[77mgb]

"Government personnel touch you in gratifying places and force you to remove your shoes. (It's for this reason that I've started selling TSA SUCKS! socks and HANDS OFF, LIBERALS! butt plugs.) The whole process is revolting." What a pussy.

"Then, you get in a plane that flies at pretty much the same speed it was cruising at 20 years ago, if not more." What an idiot.

"The only thing as goat-rendering awful as flying has to be the progression of open source code." What a jackass.

Re:Otis Stern is just upset because

[handslikesnakes]

Interesting idea. rss-fuse anyone?

Re:Otis Stern is just upset because

[mpe]

No, the future will hold at least two separate classes of end-user machines. Limited, easy for morons to use, and something for power users. And the "for dummies" machines have not really arrived yet at all.

I'm not sure that the "morons"/"power users" split makes that much sense. The whole "power user" concept originates from Microsoft wanting to blur the distinction between "user" and "administrator".

Re:Otis Stern is just upset because

[ILikeRed]

I find many FOSS programs very easy and intuitive to use. The only thing in my mind holding back Linux on the desktop is people buying hardware from companies that refuse to release open source drivers and also refusing to release specs for their shitty hardware. Which is the whole issue with the print drivers. And it was print drivers that caused RMS to start the Free Software Foundation.... So welcome to RMS' pain. (It's not nice when you can't use the source code for the hardware you purchased, is it?)

The sooner Linux users stop buying closed driver only crap, the sooner we can all stop suffering.

Re:Otis Stern is just upset because

[MBGMorden]

I must say, this is one of the most intelligent and thoughtful responses I've seen on Slashdot in a long time. I'm out of mod points so I can bump ya up any, but come on people, give the man a +1 Insightful will ya :).

Re:Otis Stern is just upset because

[utnow]

Did I say either of these were 'perfect'? Do you know the definition of gelled? Have you ever SEEN gel?

Sure there will be slight improvements. All of the little things that you mentioned will get fixed and upgraded (by large corporations with money mostly). But the basic idea of the computer (a machine that computes data) has essentially found it's form. Most future changes (quantum computing... whatever the next big thing is...) will reflect the ways of the past... keeping people comfortable with their computers so they don't have to learn something new.

Just look at cars... cars have improved ALOT in terms of speed, areodynamics, and comfort over the years... but it's still a machine that converts chemical energy into translational by way of wheels (generally 4) to move people/things. It really hasn't changed that much... it's just been tweaked in many ways.

The computer is far from where it needs to be... there will be many improvements. But (at least on the desktop) these improvements are going to tend toward usability. Pretty interfaces that cover up the terminal and the 'scary' stuff going on in the background. Generally speaking people don't want to see any of this. It's like having the wires showing. It's ugly, bothersome, and unnessicary to operation of a well designed user interface in the same way that you don't have to see the engine in a well designed car. So they hide it, and focus on the purpose of the car... moving people. Not 'being a mechanic'.

Your mentality is exactly what I was describing though, so bravo.

Re:Otis Stern is just upset because

[utnow]

I in no way mean to insult those who would further their pursuit of understanding or knowledge. I see it as noble in every way.

BUT. If Linux supporters have designs on any kind of desktop adoption (which is nessicary to gain the kind of support for their standards that they need) then they need to keep in mind that not everyone seeks this kind of knowledge. 'Most' people don't care how their computer works (just like most don't care how their car works). They just want it to work... every time.

Most people wouldn't trust their lives to an airplane if all of the internals mechanics were showing.

I agree that we should all "aspire to achieve better than that" but a 'better' computer user could just as easily be defined as one that picks their OS in such a way as to reduce their work later on...

Re:Otis Stern is just upset because

[Slime-dogg]

The other problem with hardware and drivers is that companies are unwilling to put the money into their development on such a fringe platform as Linux. Mix that, with the fact that those same companies are unlikely to release the hardware specifications of the product that they won't write drivers for. Put it all together, and you have OSS devs trying to reverse engineer the hardware, so that they can write a driver.

Much of it, I believe, is like putting together one of those 5,000 peice jigsaw puzzles that are a uniform color of purple, with no edge peices.

Re:Otis Stern is just upset because

[The-Bus]

His statement is patently ridiculous too. That's like the apples and oranges calling the kettle black.

Re:Otis Stern is just upset because

[dwandy]

That the users owe the developers and you can't demand a bug fix is the point. Their's no support, so you can't hold anyone responsible if your decision to use this software creates a problem. So what if it's free instead of a large licensing fee? If a run into a problem 4 months in on my own expensive business venture and my software isn't fixed right away, I'm screwed, and if it's open source, I can't demand it be fixed, and therefor businesses have a lot of trouble being interested in unsuported open source.

Bill? Is that you?
Man, that such FUD is posted here...
If anything the argument only applies to closed-source. Let's do a little comparison.
Closed Source:
- You have no way to verify functionality that is promised, other than 'black-box testing'.
- Since you can't see how funcitonality is implemented, you might be left liable for the software if it (for the sake of random fictional example) installs a rootkit on every PC it comes in contact with.
- The vendor makes you waive liabilty in the license, so there's still no one responsible.
- If there is a bug, you must wait until the vendor releases a fix. Without the source you are locked in to waiting until they fix...if they ever do.
- If the vendor de-supports a version you (typically) can't get support from anyone else. This means you are in a forced-upgrade situation where you have to pay for new licenses.
- If the vendor closes shop, you (typically) can't get support from anyone else.

Open Source:
- You have the source code to verify functionality that is promised...and sure, you can also run it.
- You have the source code to verify implementation to ensure that it's not installing a rootkit on every PC.
- While there is still no 'vendor' responsible for the operation of the code ... you can deterimine what the code does, and how it does it, and whether or not it will leave you screwed. Let's not blame our parents (or Canada) for all of our problems, and take some freakin' responsibility over our lives.
- If there is a bug, you can wait until the 'vendor' releases a fix... or! With the source you can write (or commission to write) your own fix.
- If the vendor de-supports a version you simply hire someone else to support it. This means no forced-upgrade.
- If the vendor closes shop you simply hire someone else to support it.

So explain to me again why having the source code available is a liability?

Re:Otis Stern is just upset because

[VJ42]

Am I the only user in the world who almost never feels a need for a script?

No, I agree 100% My basic home user needs are Word processing, DTP & image editing. A scipt is pointless for all of those. My advanced home user needs are install\uninstall programs, computer config & codeing (mostly XHTML and Java) 99.99% can be acomplished via the gui. If somone can tell me the point of command line for these simple tasks I'll be astonished.

Re:Otis Stern is just upset because

[Ryan Amos]

Old hardware is another story. I have a TV in card that I bought probably 10 years ago. The technology hasn't really changed at all in this timespan. However, it doesn't work in anything past Windows 98. But it works just fine on Linux.

The downside to open source drivers is that it takes a while for the initial drivers to be released. The upside is that even if the company who originally made the hardware is long gone, development can still continue, or at least kept current with OS releases.

Re:Otis Stern is just upset because

[cloudmaster]

I have to use Windows to run Outlook to get Exchange mail (no, IMAP's not enabled, now will it be, and Evolution's support won't work). I guess I could technically get another job, or get fired from this one because I never check my work email...

Presumably this grants me license to moan about Windows?

Re:Otis Stern is just upset because

[mahdi13]

Ya, because we all know that the louder ones make up the majority...

Most Linux users I know are not like that and fully support the 'use the right tool for the right job' even if that includes using MicroSoft products.

Most Open Source projects I know don't have the 'you fix it attitude' but more of a 'let me know what's wrong and I'll add it to the list', they do include their emails for a reason. Most OS developers do it for fun and/or to fill a need (usually their own but are open to suggestions) and don't make any money from what they do.
Do you call people assholes for holding a door open for you when they don't have to?

Don't like it, don't use it is what it all boils down to. Stop the bitching and get on with your life instead of trying to make others miserable for no reason. When some tells you to do something about it, it doesn't mean 'fix it yourself' it means 'help with the direction and make it better with your input' which doesn't mean hack the source yourself

Re:Otis Stern is just upset because

[Wornstrom]

for your converts, you might want to check out XPde, it is a desktop environment that was created to make it easier for windows users to acclimate to using linux. They try to make it similar enough to XP for people to know where to look if they know how to configure anything in windows.

Re:Otis Stern is just upset because

[Dolda2000]

No offence to the content of your post, but I believe you should meet Mr. Period.

Re:Otis Stern is just upset because

[squoozer]

Cheers. That's amazing. I can't believe how much that looks like XP. I'm pretty sure there are a few people that I do maintenence for that wouldn't notice if I switched them over to that. I prefere the telly tubbies background as well.

Re:Otis Stern is just upset because

[Majik Sznak]

I like that idea, but it's quite a lot of work for someone who just wants to get their stuff working.

Let's set up a website where people who can't use open source software because they're missing drivers, features, etc. can band together and donate money to a pot that, when large enough, will be used to pay someone to do the work. Programmers who wish to be paid to create drivers in a timely fashion can sign up to be developers. They can provide key words to flag themselves as interested in certain types of projects and be automatically notified of new requests. Those who donated are forever immortalized in the code.

Some things are hairy and need to be worked out, but let's get cracking. Talk to me. Within a year, get-oss-drivers.com could cut bitching about missing software by at least 50%.

Re:Otis Stern is just upset because

[Shelled]

I can't speak to printers as I don't have one, otherwise hardware compatibility and sensing has advanced light years since the early days. The second partition of my AMD64 machine is running 64-bit Debian Alioth, a still experimental or developmental OS. Recently the on board sound was upgraded to an Audigy ZS. I did nothing, it just worked. Logitech mouse, same. DVD burner? Installed Gravemen burning software with apt from the repository and it just worked, no messing with grub.conf or editing modules autoload files by hand.

Where it still lacks is in areas where vendors insist. EAX on the Audigy would be a battle for example, if possible at all. Nvidia drivers still require building by kernel version. In terms of common business desktop requirements though Debian is arguably there.

Re:Otis Stern is just upset because

[mahdi13]

Not deaf ears, but now more confused ones :p

Good attempt with the examples but way over exagerated. Windows is not 'locked down' or unconfigurable, just like Linux all the advanced settings are hidden under many obscure, obfuscated and undocumented tools. Between regedit.exe and gpedit.msc you can completely change the behaviour and look of Windows if you know what you are doing. There are even tools available to help you out with a lot of this and even the kernel is hackable. Just that people will usually offer these tools at $19.95 or more so you don't have to learn as much.

There is really not too much difference between Windows and Linux other then the look and feel and how people perceive them. If you don't like to tinker around Windows is for you and so is Linux (pick a distro that is preconfigured and has good hardware support, I hear Ubuntu is good at that). If you like to tinker use Windows or Linux, they both are highly configurable once you know what you are doing

Re:Otis Stern is just upset because

[ece]

RMS should have separated the guidelines and advantages of free software. One guideline for the end-users and the other for developers. Developers want access to the source to study it, modify it, and/or distribute it. End users just want the freedom of using it.

Don't give the end users something they do not understand (code), but make it easily discoverable for the intelligent users (programmers).

I believe this is like giving your restaurant clients a meal that is not fully cooked or lacking spices with the full recipe, but also priding yourself that your food is free.

Re:Otis Stern is just upset because

[Enonu]

This entire not "entitled to complain" thread is bunk because it all reeks of logical falacies related attacking the person rather than attacking the topic at hand: Linux not paying attention to the details for mass-consumer use.

However, if Otis Stern posed this point in a particular trollish way, and one believes the conversation a waste of time because of it, then simply ignore it. Do not even speak of it, and Otis will find himself alone and disregarded. Eventually, like potty training pets, he'll get the point, and he'll think before shiting in the living room again.

Re:Otis Stern is just upset because

[mahdi13]

Copy is a bad word and is what will cause flames, try using "incorporate" or "enhance"

There is nothing wrong with using a good idea. If we didn't we'd all be driving Fords...and personally, that scares me!

Re:Otis Stern is just upset because

[squoozer]

what particular fetures you feel windows has and linux distributions do not that would seriously improve your experience with linux ?

That's a tough question because I use Windows and Linux very differently. I develop on Linux and play games on Windows. I did develop on Windows (2000 + XP) for a few years though so I will compare it with then.

Lack of configuration is the main bonus point of Windows. You just install software and it's ready to go. While I like the configuratability (is that a word?) of Linux I find it makes small common changes slow and painful. I hate installing a big new piece of software because it (often) means digging though a multitude of text files looking for a setting while reading technically complex man pages. A lot of Windows programs have text files for configuration but you never go near them. On Linux your always in there.

Common feel is another advantage. The whole cut and paste disaster on Linux is almost laughable. I know that the Gnome and KDE teams have been working together on cut and paste and drag and drop but there are still numerous places where it doesn't quite work. It might supprise you to know that I don't really care that much about the different widget kits. I run a mixed system of Gnome apps and KDE using whichever is best for the job at hand. The widgets work the same in both kits (for the most part) so I just see the difference as a skin.

The one thing that does bug me about the different widget sets though is the lack of one hit configuration. It's impossible (IMHO) to run a pure KDE or prue Gnome desktop. I find it frustrating that you can't (easily) configure the Gnome L&F and KDE L&F at the same time. Then, of course, there is OOo which is off on a world of it's own and the X apps which I never quite figured out.

Updating the system is quite painful as well. I find it hard to bash Linux about this though as it's fundamentally different to Windows updates which only do there core OS. It would be nice if updates were a bit more reliable. I can only remember one time that a Windows (XP) update borked my machine. On Linux something breaks on a monthy basis (synaptic is broken at the moment for instance).

P.S. Thanks for the non-flame reply :o) makes a change.

Re:Otis Stern is just upset because

[Proc6]

"More insightful than funny IMHO. No one is telling this fucktard to use OSS at gunpoint. He is free to drop his money on Microsoft crap, or Apple crap, or whathever the proprietary fuck other corporations have to offer."

This is precisely why corporations aren't comfortable with free open source software. Because just as soon as there's any criticism, they are told "Hey, fuck you, its free, go use something else if you don't like it.", and comments like that are modded "Insightful".

Re:Otis Stern is just upset because

[illtud]

Now, having said that, the Slashdot interface clearly leaves something to desire, even when using Lynx. Why is there no true modular command line interface? I would think of something along the lines of

How's about a command-line RSS reader?

http://kiza.kcore.de/software/snownews

Slashdot doesn't include the comments in RSS (probably a good thing), but you can get your stories nice and easy. I just tried it after reading your message. I'd have preferred vi keybindings, but you can change them in a rc file. There's a bunch of extension scripts (including some Slashdot ones). JFYI.

Re:Otis Stern is just upset because

[squoozer]

Yeah, fair enough, I could have thought of a less flame inducing word :o). I like to see a good idea and add my own twist to it perhaps improving it along the way. An out and out copy is never as good as the ogirinal. A copy that has been considered and done knowingly can often surpase the original because it brings a fresh set of eyes to the problem.

Re:Otis Stern is just upset because

[EZLeeAmused]

Alas, Windows is an automatic, and most people can't drive a stick.

Re:Otis Stern is just upset because

[6*7]

As always the car analogy is crap. The biggest difference is that you may not use the car in public places without having the correct license.

To get a license you have to show that you can handle the car and cooperate with the other users. And over here "handling the car" includes the most basic maintanence: what do those lights on the dashboard mean, how to check the various fluids etc.

On the other hand any idiot thinks he can use a computer and use the internet without any basic knowledge, totally oblivous to the fact that his machine is a playgorund for malicious software used to annoy other users.

Re:Otis Stern is just upset because

[menkhaura]

The problem is not criticism per se, it is his offensive choice of words. I take it rather personnaly when someone refers to the members of my community (myself included) as "Linux freaks". He doesn't like it? He is free to appoint errors, to criticize, whatever. He is free even to insult me and my community, but he can't expect to do that without taking some heat.

Re:Otis Stern is just upset because

[umbrellasd]

Fine, well then Linux users should never moan about Windows

Windows is going to have to work much harder before it gets even a tiny moan out of me. Oh, baby.

Re:Otis Stern is just upset because

[WaterBreath]

I agree with all of your technical arguments. But I didn't pick up on any claim that "having the source code available is a liability". I also disagree with calling the post FUD. Rather, I picked up on a very common POV among people who have considered using free and/or open source software at one point or another.

What I saw was a claim that the lack of economic incentive on the part of the developers is a liability. If Microsoft's non-developer users aren't getting what they need, they will leave, and MS will make less money than they would if everyone is happy. If Linux's non-developer users aren't getting what they need, they will leave, and... Nothing. No one misses them. Now, I understand your argument is that rather than just give up on OSS, they should take the money they saved by not buying proprietary source and invest it into making the OSS better for their own needs. But when OSS is publicly hailed for the fact that it is so much "cheaper" than OSS, how else should they react when they find out that they won't be able to save as much money as they were led to believe? More on this below...

The problem is that people want all the benefits that are always being extolled by proponents of open source. But they don't want to have to deal with the "hidden costs" (i.e., the personal responsibility for seeing to it that desired features get added) that are less broadcasted. The fact that they are unwilling to deal with these is their own choice. As is the eventuality that they have installed and begun to rely on OSS before they discover them. That should be part of the research that happens before any action is taken. But the fact that these costs are indeed "hidden", is the fault of the OSS evangelists.

I understand the frustration that these costs are not presented "up front" by the OSS proponents in the first place. We all hear "with OSS, you can do this, and that, and you never again have to deal with the other thing." But seldom is it mentioned proximately that to obtain this benefit, you will need to trade in some real, and often very important, benefits of closed/proprietary corporate-funded source. It's essentially a marketing trick, and it's dishonest even if our intentions are "good". We should not be surprised when there is a backlash in response to it. Unless we fix that, it's one way in which we have "stooped to their level" when dealing with closed source, and it undermines the "ethical" justifications that are so often offered up.

If we want to get people to adopt, of course we need to advertise the virtues of OSS. But if we want people to to be satsified and to remain loyal to open source, we also need to have better disclosure on the trade-offs and new responsibilities that the move will require of them.

Re:Otis Stern is just upset because

[gnuorder]

No one is telling this fucktard to use OSS but I bet someone is paying this fucktard to slam it.

He has a point that some printers don't have drivers but the same is true for Microsoft windows. The vendors supply the drivers to microsoft and they generally dont for linux. If the vendors don't supply drivers for windows, windows doesn't support the printer. I found this out when I purchased Win XP 64 for a customer, thinking if MS released it officially, that it must at least support the devices that XP 32 did. I was wrong. Not a single driver for three different printers, all less than a few years old. Email to the vendors went unanswered or a reply that they wont be writing XP 64 drivers for that model. Three different vendors, no drivers. No wrapper from microsoft to use existing 32 bit drivers either.

In all, when a device is supported by linux drivers, they work well and are usually less than 100k and certainly less than 500k. The windows drivers are generally 10meg to 40meg in size and often cause the system to become unstable. And these drivers get carried along with the development of the kernel so devices that were supported 10 years ago are still supported today. I don't have to go out and buy a new printer with every new version of the OS. If you ask me who wins on hardware support, it's OSS.

There are several commercial products that will provide printer drivers under linux if he doesn't like what was provided for free. He should be able to afford it with the money he saved not buying windows. As others pointed out, he can also use the source and fix the bugs or write his own drivers. I suspect finding ways to use OSS is not his motive, though. His descriptions says it all.

"Otto Z. Stern is a director at The Institute of Technological Values - a think tank dedicated to a more moral digital age. He has closely monitored the IT industry's intersection with America's role as a world leader for thirty years. You can find Stern locked and loaded, corralling wounded iLemmings, nursing an opal-plated prostate, spanking open source fly boys, wearing a smashing suit, dropping a SkyCar on the Googleplex, spitting on Frenchmen, vomiting in fear with a life-sized cutout of Hilary Rosen at his solar-powered compound somewhere in the Great American Southwest."

Let's see, a more moral digital age includes shooting people who act like lemmings, spanking boys, spitting on frenchmen and vomiting because someone powers his house with the sun? He strives to be the Bill O'Reilly of IT world for which I say "bullshit doesn't spin." I'm sure he is paid well for his opinions of OSS by it's opponents, just as the real O'Reilly is paid well by the opponents of honest journalism.

Re:Otis Stern is just upset because

[James_Aguilar]

Granted, software *can* be written to be expert friendly and newbie friendly. However, I would submit to you that that is not generally the case. For instance: being a programmer, setting up Linux was not that bad, even when I had to script the actions that would bring up my wireless (the GUI would not do it properly). Not being a "mechanic" of computers would have made this impossible for me. I'm not really as concerned with what is possible as I am with what *is* and probably *will be* in the future -- that is, that Linux and much OSS will be unusable for most people.

Re:Otis Stern is just upset because

[RockModeNick]

All I know is that if I were making a decision for my business and I could get a supported version of a software that was closed source or have to deal with any potential bug fixes myself when I'm with an accounting firm and not a computer firm, and therefor don't have or know anyone that knows anything about code, a supported closed source option is looking like a much less risky choice. Paying someone in house to know about and update soure code is not remotely ecconomically resonable for most small businesses.

Re:Otis Stern is just upset because

[Wandering Idiot]

Linux is a highly maintainable car [...]

Nonsense, everyone knows Linux is a tank.

Re:Otis Stern is just upset because

[zcat_NZ]

Ohh, this is a nice analogy;

Open Source; It's a smorgasboard of over 15,000 different dishes, all free. But you have to bring your own cutlery, and some of the dishes are not very well prepaired. If you're not happy you could pop into the kitchen and suggest improvements or cook it your own way (assuming you know how to cook). Or you can hire a few talented chiefs and have them improve any dishes you think particularly need improving. The only restriction is that everyone else gets to try your improved meal too.

Microsoft; For $200 you get a smorgasboard of about 15 dishes, all entrees and nothing substantial. You can only fill your plate once and you're not allowed to share it with anyone. Some of the dishes are badly prepared, and every time you complain you get told they'll be better next week. They never are. For another $600 you can have the steak meal but the steak is always well done, they claim nobody has ever asked for it any other way. If you ask for your steak rare, the chefs will taunt you and spread nasty rumours about you behind your back.

Did I miss anything?

Re:Otis Stern is just upset because

[kidcharles]

You forgot to mention that the first car costs money, and you essentially have to buy a new one when the company decides it is time. The second car is free and you can exchange it or get a new one at no cost. That's my kind of car!

Re:Otis Stern is just upset because

[dwandy]

Well .. while everyone is entitled to their opinion and entitled to making their own decisions, I think you are making assumptions that are not valid.
To make the decision based on "supported closed source" or "having to fix bugs myself" is not in the open/closed source equation.
As many others (including my own post) have noted, you can buy support from lots of companies. Red Hat is probably the best known, so you can have open-source supported software. These two ideas are not mutually exclusive, and so should not be a pivot point in the decision.
Nowhere in the deal was your accounting firm forced to have in-house programming talent. The point was only that if you want to have this talent in-house, you can.

Open-source is about choice and freedom. Choice that closed-source doesn't give you, and freedoms from which closed-source restricts you.

...and I don't care what any closed-source vendor promises in the glossy: they will fix any given bug you report on their schedule, not yours. And that schedule may preclude your bug from ever getting fixed. They get away with this by de-supporting products, forcing you to upgrade (at your expense), or even stating that your configuration is at fault. When you get into a pissing contest between two closed-source applications that don't work together, both vendors will say that it's the other guy's fault - as the user, you're stuck in the middle, and there is not a thing you can do about it. While OSS doesn't guarantee that someone else will fix your bug the second you report it, it does mean that if you want it faster you can hire someone to do it. This can be a crucial difference when a mission critical system goes down due to an uncommon bug.
There is nothing (other than a price tag) that closed-source offers that you can not get with open source. There are a lot of options and freedoms that you can elect to exercise with open source that are not options in a closed-source environment.

Re:Otis Stern is just upset because

[wbradney]

Most people wouldn't trust their lives to an airplane if all of the internals mechanics were showing.

They would if they had to get across the Atlantic in six hours, and had a hundred years of precedent that showed that flying across the Atlantic in a glass airplane was quite safe, relatively speaking. The point being that people, by-and-large, make decisions based on their innate sense of risk and reward. Linux users are happy to take more risk, and their reward is more knowledge. Windows users want little risk, and find little reward in knowing how their tools work. The dirty little secret is that the risks are actually the same for both user bases, but the perception of risk can be altered by Marketing.

Re:Otis Stern is just upset because

[PurpleWizard]

He can moan but it just makes him a moaner. Why should anyone listen to a moaner?

Instead he could contribute in one of the many ways such as constructive points about why some things are better than others and even better he could fix or improve something.

On a social level it's like him saying district X is rubbish because all its people are unpaid and they don't spend any of the money they have on (oh hang on they don't have any) fixing up their houses to be as pretty as district Y and oh look they have no money but it is all their fault that the roof leaks.

So yes if he doesn't like living under a leaky roof he can either pay to get it fixed, move out or sit there in a puddle moaning. Now I'll leave it to you to decide what sort of neighbours you would prefer to have. What makes it worse is he is a district Y person come in to district X to look around and chooses to sit in the puddle and moan!

And moaning about Windows is quite different as some times it is broken. You have paid for something that works. If you bought a toaster that didn't toast when the fridge door was open you would probably take it back and demand a refund. (Though they would probably say it was the vacuum cleaners fault, if you didn't have that type of vacuum that causes a bad connection between the toaster and fridge the toaster would work fine. And they might be right!)

Re:Otis Stern is just upset because

[General Fault]

Well put. However, I think that all of these arguments fail to take into account truely "new" technology that still is very much in the domain of the homebrew crowd. Home automation, robotics, and other computer controlled technologies can still be freely explored by the those of us that like to dabble. Computer software and hardware may be moving into a closed box world, but this is analogus to ICs in the early days. Most tech geeks stopped playing with specific circuits and moved into a higher level of playing with computers. Now, the next generation of geeks may move away from playing with the computer and start playing with the technologies that are computer controlled.

Re:Otis Stern is just upset because

[leobh]

It could be easy to run Linux on a PC; as easy as it is to buy a PC pre-loaded with Windows. Don't assume that just because it's easy to get a PC running Windows that it's actually easy to install. I'd be surprised if it isn't easier to install, say, Ubuntu than it is Windows if you do it from scratch, not to mention that the Windows PC wouldn't actually have any useful software on it once you'd finished the install.

Re:Otis Stern is just upset because

[An ominous Cow art]

But, luckily for all of us, some people happily lose touch, and make

$ which touch make
/usr/bin/touch
/usr/bin/make

Phew!

Re:Otis Stern is just upset because

[sumdumass]

Thats what i find funny. Big pay isn't really big pay. Most TCO studies cite that even though a linux tech could manage more computers at once, it still costs more to use linux.

Reading between the lines, this means that even with more certified windows techs you still save money by paying them less then if you needed to hire linux gurus. I would like to see this big pay.

Re:Otis Stern is just upset because

[NetRAVEN5000]

"Your position would hold water IF... and this is a big if... the Linux camp would quit trying to shove their collective ePenis down the throat of every other computer user on the planet who has CHOSEN (in the same way that they have chosen) Windows or OSX instead of Linux. If Linux works for you then fine... but why the ever-present cock-fight. I personally hate Linux."

Blow it out your ass.

I've heard way too many of this kind of comment, and it seems to me that the majority of these "cock-fights" are started by people like you. I like Linux, and you like Windows. I see no problem with that. But I do see a problem with you - because you have completely contradicted yourself. You basically say, "Linux, Windows, MacOS. . . to each his own" and then you say

"The average person dosen't have the know-how to 'roll their own' anything."

Well now we all know what you were doing when you read the article. . . you don't 'roll' anything in Linux. I'm not a programmer and I have no problems whatsoever installing programs in Linux - you don't have to compile from source, you know. You can download an RPM file.

"If it's not right, then it's just not right and they're not going to fix it. They're going to go back to windows where things feel safe and cozy again, then they're going to be pissed off at the linux fan-boi that told them that Linux was really easy and great since you can just change anything willy nilly.

The key part here is the part that says, "they're going to go back to windows where things feel safe and cozy again." Give a person who's used MacOS all their life a Windows PC and it'll take them a while to learn to use it. Give a person who's used Windows all their life a Mac and it'll take them a while to learn to use it. Same with Linux or any other OS. Some people take classes on Windows - it's not like they love it because it's easy to learn, they like it because it's familiar.

"Ahh... Linux reeks of a dying breed of computer user.... the people who still want to dabble with the way the machine works."

I don't know about that. Obviously there are some people who want to do that sort of thing - MS and Apple hire people to do that sort of thing. You aren't just "born" into a company, you know - they have to hire you. Helps if you have some of the skills required for the job.

"They've lost touch with the fact that people don't care about any of that anymore."

Don't flatter yourself. The people in the OS community are exactly that - people. Not a big corporation. You're not paying them, and most of them don't specifically care what you want. They care about what works best for them - if you like it too, that's great, but they didn't make it for you.

"There will be some minor changes here and there but for the most part, the days of the 'homebrew' are quickly fading."

No they're not. There's plenty of "DIY"-ers (both the "build the whole PC" type and the "store-bought but I do my own upgrades" type) and modders. And there's also the overclockers and stuff, too.

"see: Mac"

You can buy parts for Mac systems. I'm sure you could build your own Mac, too, if you really wanted to.

Re:Otis Stern is just upset because

[NetRAVEN5000]

"Most TCO studies cite that even though a linux tech could manage more computers at once, it still costs more to use linux."

Most TCO studies are funded by the maker of one of the systems tested in the study. Such as MS. Plus, the reason it costs more is that these people charge more - a Linux expert is harder to find than a Windows expert, so they charge more. How much you want to bet that Mac experts are also more expensive than Windows experts? Because there's not as many experts in that specific field so they can charge more.

Plus, TCO isn't just about how much you pay the guy to set it up - it's also about downtime and other things. My school just got all new computers and they all suck already because they're probably all gunked up with spyware and viruses and could use a defrag. In the business world, having brand-new computers slow down to a crawl (as they have at my school - one kid's PC took about 3 minutes just to log off today!) would result in lower productivity on the employees' desktop PCs and more downtime and slower responses on the servers.

A slow web site can easily turn away someone trying to browse your company's website or purchase products through the site. The "TCO" doesn't account for loss of customers, does it? The Internet might not be so important for big businesses, but for online-only businesses, having a slow web server could be a real killer.

Re:Otis Stern is just upset because

[MasterPi]

Nope ;) Ur an anonymous coward, they aren't allowed to complain. But seriously, linux with bugs is sooo much better than windows with bugs.

Re:Otis Stern is just upset because

[NetRAVEN5000]

You people really like pushing the "most people don't know how cars work" thing, don't you? Most people don't know about physics either but someone in my class actually asked why, if you wanted to stop a car going 45 mph, you would try to get it to decelerate instead of "just stopping it". If you don't understand that just locking up the brakes is a bad idea, then you shouldn't be driving a car. Yes, to stop the car you should apply the brakes - but if you locked up the brakes your car may skid out of control and/or flip, and you would probably get some pretty serious whiplash unless your seatbelt's not on.

People who don't know anything about computers could be helping spam mailers out and spreading viruses. Not that they shouldn't be allowed to use computers at all, but they should be using something better and more secure than Windows.

And you don't have to tweak Linux at all if you don't want to - I just popped in the SuSE DVD and it did the rest for me. I had a harder time setting up Windows on my laptop and figuring out how to get that stupid "MSN Messenger" thing to stop showing up, and got a little angry with all the updates I had to do, and the fact that I had to reboot for every single one of them.

Re:Otis Stern is just upset because

[StikyPad]

I've heard that mouse argument before, but it seems a non-issue to me. A mouse is about as unintuitive as a steering wheel. Sure, it seems easier if you could see exactly where the wheels are pointing when you're first learning to drive, but most people can pick it up in hours, days, or weeks, and it ends up being much better than turning the wheels by hand. Each input device (mouse and steering wheel) is used in almost exactly the same way: by estimating the amount you need to move it, and then fine tuning and adjusting for precision from there. It's much the same way we function and interact with everything around us.

Re:Otis Stern is just upset because

[Kazoo the Clown]

This is a very serial oriented approach. Consider if you were able to group the collection of serialized events you do routinely, rearranging their ordering so that like tasks are accomplished together-- like an assembly line. The script is merely the facilitating conveyor belt.

But perhaps you'll never have your Henry Ford moment, preferring to assemble one car after another each plodding along from start to finish. Maybe you have plenty of time for that, so you don't care much about streamlining the process. Maybe you see yourself as a craftsman who likes to put his personal signature on each and every element. That's all very well and good, but it's a mistake to assume that everyone chooses to work that way...

Re:Otis Stern is just upset because

[rtb61]

It would be far more accurate to say that it is currently gelling rather than having already gelled because Linux has not quite yet taken over. Don't be impatient it will surely happen just like day follows night (welcome to the light ;-)).

You are quite correct it is all about the hardware and the developments in computer hardware, software for by far the majority if people is just something vague, of little value unless it contains some content, you know games, reference material etc. Yeah, so for them the change to Linux will not really be apparent it will just happen when they buy the newest greatest piece of hardware and just expect it to work.

Microsoft had it's run, made some money and now that part of the computer market is dissappearing as the market matures. The vitriol comming from them is growing again as they become ever more desperate as the end is in sight. This after a bried interlude of rather smarmy activity when they tried to get closer to their ex-customer base (not zealots, communists, terrorists, mafiosa, cancers or viruses, just largely dissastisfied ex-customers), this of course failed, don't insult customers and expect them to ever come back.

The finnacial reasons for the change are over whelming, just consider all the money microsoft has extracted from the market not only in their own profits but also the losses suffered by companies as a result of the failures when using their software. Billions of dollars will end up being injected back into the tech sector just by the simple replacement of an often disfunctional operating system produced by a single decietful company, to an open source operating system that will involve the productive efforts of many companies, governments and individuals.

Why bog balls and wee willie like to call their ex-customers religous fanatics when those people are just seeking a software solution that will provide them with the best results over the long term, is just a measure of their own greed and willingness to say and pay others to say anything as long as it will generate even more profit for them (callous stupidity that will earn them nothing but the derision they deserve, what a history for them to look forward to).

Re:Otis Stern is just upset because

[Mika24]

LMFAO

Re:Otis Stern is just upset because

[Temporal]

I actually had Linux shoved down my throat at work. After trying to adjust to it for a few months I switched to using a Windows laptop and just shelling in to the Linux machine to compile and run stuff.

Re:Otis Stern is just upset because

[richlv]

oh, if i had a chance, you would get funny for sure :D

if somebody ever decides to expand this analogy, this should be the one to include.
though lately you can get some distros that are more automatic than windows :)

Re:Otis Stern is just upset because

[richlv]

i'll comment on things from my experience with linux as a primary desktop system for almost three years.

Lack of configuration is the main bonus point of Windows. You just install software and it's ready to go. While I like the configuratability (is that a word?) of Linux I find it makes small common changes slow and painful. I hate installing a big new piece of software because it (often) means digging though a multitude of text files looking for a setting while reading technically complex man pages. A lot of Windows programs have text files for configuration but you never go near them. On Linux your always in there.

but this depends on the manufacturer of that particular software (i assume you are not talking about packages that are supplied by distribution :) ).
yes, a lot of software is pretty hard to get working, especially for people who come from windows - but then there's some that is really easy to get working.

for example, mono is easy to install. nvidia kernel module (!) also is mostly just pressing [enter] repeatedly. (though you have to make some changes manually to xorg.conf, they are well documented and linux newbie could make them easily)

Common feel is another advantage. The whole cut and paste disaster on Linux is almost laughable. I know that the Gnome and KDE teams have been working together on cut and paste and drag and drop but there are still numerous places where it doesn't quite work. It might supprise you to know that I don't really care that much about the different widget kits. I run a mixed system of Gnome apps and KDE using whichever is best for the job at hand. The widgets work the same in both kits (for the most part) so I just see the difference as a skin.

copynpaste - there were problems some years ago, but lately i get kde, gnome and other apps working together, i can cop&paste text, pictures. i can manage both text and pictures with klipper. it's pretty cool :)
even now there are some problems, but they mostly are with some applications - for example, pasting from opera to openoffice.org 2.0 diacritic symbols fscks them up. it works with opera->oo.org1.1 or firefox->oo.org2.0. but these problems are not norm nowadays, they really are exceptions.
i can't comment on dragndrop, as i basically don't use it :)

visual differences - i usually do not notice that a program uses different widgets unless somebody tells me or it is really, really distinctive :)
somehow i concentrate on the task, the functionality of the program, so unless widgets get in my way, they are good for me.

then there are wrappers for qt apps to look like gnome desktop they sit in or gtk apps look like kde desktop they reside.

for different projects on collaboration you might check out some work at http://freedesktop.org/

The one thing that does bug me about the different widget sets though is the lack of one hit configuration. It's impossible (IMHO) to run a pure KDE or prue Gnome desktop.

it is possible :)
it all depends on tasks you want to do - if it's mail, web, office software - you probably can do with a single desktop environment. if you want more, combining best from each probably is a good idea.

I find it frustrating that you can't (easily) configure the Gnome L&F and KDE L&F at the same time.

agree :)
that's where those wrappers come in (this also is sorta covered in freedesktop)

Then, of course, there is OOo which is off on a world of it's own

well, >=1.1, yes. 2.0 can use both gtk and qt widgets in addition to it's own generic widget set. things change to the best ;)

and the X apps which I never quite figured out.

oh, well. you forgot tcl, wx and probably million more ;)

Updating the system is quite painful as well. I find it hard

Re:Otis Stern is just upset because

[nicn]

This guy has some serious issues -> did he consider that non opensource / proprietry software like microsoft and sony usually has as many or more bugs and definitly more vulnrabilities. I think he is threatened by the open source models which are becoming available which are revolutionising the it industry... Adapt or die - there is no more space for propriatry crap anymore... move on.

Re:Otis Stern is just upset because

[RockModeNick]

I don't think a small business wants more options. It wants what it knows works for 100 other small accounting firms, garrenteeing compatiblity, and to be able to make a reasonable assumption that problems will be fixed in short order. The fact that it's more complex and gives you more options is a big part of why some shy from it.

Re:Otis Stern is just upset because

[RockModeNick]

Should have said "the fact that open source is more complex..." etc

Re:Otis Stern is just upset because

[utnow]

Actually the image I was trying to portray was not of a glass airplane but rather one with no skin whatsoever.

But my point still stands. It's ugly. Most users just want a pretty system to sit in their home. Eye candy is NOT just a waste of resources or bloat. It's the part of the OS that makes it look good. It serves a function. Sure there are systems that don't need to look good... but as usual we're talking about *nix on the desktop... and in that case it needs to look good because the average user doesn't need to get across the atlantic in 5.5 seconds and would rather lumber along safely.

Besides... in average tasks, there's really no speed increase with linux (shave off a couple of microseconds when loading mp3s?)

Re:Otis Stern is just upset because

[wurm13]

Microsoft is making the same mistake that Henry Ford did...

"The customer can have any color they want, as long as it's black"

Competing car companies listened to their customers and gave them more options, and eventually, so did Ford in order to remain competitive.

In the future, Microsoft will be the McDonald's of software. It will be simple, cheap and primarily marketed to children.

Re:Otis Stern is just upset because

[GreyArtist]

I felt the need to comment on your glaring contradiction:

Am I the only user in the world who almost never feels a need for a script?
...
I'm decently well versed in bash and darn near an expert in vbscript and batch,...

No one ever becomes a near expert in a scripting language without needing to use it for something. Either you are not even close to being an expert, or you actually do use scripts to accomplish tasks, or you are arbitrarily limiting your discussion to those tasks ("home") for which you don't need scripts, which is uninteresting.

Re:Otis Stern is just upset because

[GreyArtist]

The grandparent of this post was not talking Microsoftese. "Power user" has had a definition long before Microsoft created a user group with that name. The grandparent is simply referring to people who use computers for more than email, word processing, and video games. His definition has nothing to do with their security priveleges, a separate (but somewhat related) subject.

Re:Otis Stern is just upset because

[GreyArtist]

It's much the same way we function and interact with everything around us.

Not everything we interact with is about a decision on how to adjust our horizontal (or even vertical) orientation. Relatively few decisions, in fact, are related to our spatial orientation. I doubt I would consider a steering wheel to be the best interface mechanism for getting in my car (though a lock wheel of some type may actually work). I have always considered substituting a button press on the screen to be an extremely clunky and annoying substitute for pressing a button on the keyboard, yet often I am forced to use the former rather than the latter. The argument isn't about whether a mouse is an effective pointing device, it's about whether pointing devices should be the focus of computer interface design. IMHO, they shouldn't.

Re:Otis Stern is just upset because

[GreyArtist]

So... when you enter a block of text, you click on the on-screen keyboard (or use Character Mapper, etc.) to enter it all. You never use shift-arrow to select text in your WP, and you never italicize or bolden with Ctrl-I or Ctrl-B. Not to mention you never save a document to disk, as that could be considered a script for recreating it.

Somehow I doubt it.

Re:Otis Stern is just upset because

[mdarksbane]

Simple: I script at work because that's what my boss wants me to do. I write automation software for testing. Some of these are easier as simple scripts. most of it would have been easier as something in a more full-featured language.

I still found very few instances where it was helpful for me to write another script to help in my development of these. And as a home user (which is where I spend most of my time on a computer) I have found no tasks where I find myself wishing I had written a script for it. There is just so little repetition.

I was not talking about the needs of a production system, where you want to automate as much as possible because very little of it requires any human interaction, but rather my needs as a computer user, which is almost entirely interactive.

Re:Otis Stern is just upset because

[werewolf1031]

Windows users want little risk, and find little reward in knowing how their tools work.

Thank you for that oh-so-blatent generalization. Where to begin...

First, I'd like to preface this reply with two statements:
1.) Yes, I'm a long-time Windows user.
2.) No, I'm not a Microsoft apologist.
3.) Yes, I've dabbled with other operating systems (esp. Linux).
Having said that...

From my vantage point as an lifelong artist and as a fledgling game programmer, MS has been both a blessing and a curse, for me personally anyway. Here's the thing: At this point in time, all the most powerful apps that are available to me, which are needed in both my fields, are Windows applications (eg. 3D rendering, 2D painting, Visual Studio for my programming, etc.).
(Note: Not looking for a flamewar on which apps are best, 'cause really that's a matter of personal preference and I say 'to each his own' in that respect.)

Here's another thing: The reason I'm a long-time Windows user is, quite simply, I'm accustomed to Windows. Yes, it has many flaws -- believe me, I'm painfully familiar with those (occasional BSOD, etc.). BUT it also has many advantages: A great many applications are available for Windows, far more so than for any other OS in the world. Sad, but true. Also, over the years I've become quite comfortable "hacking" Windows' various subsystems to suit my needs (registry, 3rd-party DLL replacements, etc.). I'd argue that such hacks are very much on the same level as the various Linux customizations, the only difference being a question of legality (a debate for another thread).

Yes, I'm aware that there are many FOSS alternatives out there, but so far none have met my own specific demands. Your mileage may, of course, vary. That's the great thing about our current age, everyone has a huge variety of choices available and they should be able to find a suite of OS+software to meet their specific demands. I certainly won't put someone down for using Linux, I think it's a wonderful idea, as long as you can find OSS apps that meet your particular demands. In that case, I say to each his own.

All I ask is the same non-judgmental courtesy in return. Just because someone uses Windows or Mac OS on a routine basis instead of Linux or any other F/OSS alternative, doesn't mean they can't comprehend the inherance advantages of an open-source OS, it simply means they have different priorities in what they need from the apps available to them. Not better, not worse, just different. Again, 'to each his own'.

Regards,
WeREwOLf

Re:Otis Stern is just upset because

[wbradney]

Admittedly I generalised (but then I'm a programmer -- I'm used to it), but you've taken one line from my post and pegged me a some kind of Linux fanboy. Maybe I should have used the phrase "by-and-large" in there somewhere.

It's ironic, because I started out with a lot of sympathy with the original article, having just recently installed Fedora FC4 on my old Dell Inspiron 9100. That went quite smoothly except for the wireless card, which took me two weeks, a kernel rebuild and some script programming to figure out. I can't imagine my electrician brother being able to do the same, whereas he has installed Windows several times.

My original point (restated) to the parent poster was that most people are Windows people because of the following:
a) most people are Windows people (i.e the phenomena is self-fulfilling)
b) it's easier (probably as a direct result of a.)

It wasn't my intention to be discourteous or judgemental to Windows users, because I am myself predominantly a Windows user, for much the same reasons as you are. I'm just tired of being a Windows user.

Re:Otis Stern is just upset because

[DenDave]

I contend it is still an issue of demand. In almost all the workplaces I have seen the requirements are all "certified gorilla" types, I have yet to see a major linux requirement. One site I know of, a major medical center, uses linux for their Oracle database servers(x3) and there is one part time chap who keeps that afloat. The rest of their infra is MS, they have a full team of full time staff, certified and all, and the service is still crummy..

Re:Otis Stern is just upset because

[NetRAVEN5000]

Well because they don't "have" to switch to Linux. And even if it is more stable, there's plenty of reason for them not to switch if their current infrastructure is working well for them. The cost to switch to any operating system - or even to upgrade - can be quite high.

Until these companies absolutely must switch, they will probably stick with their current infrastructure.

Also, notice that they have hired a single part-time pro to handle their 3 Linux servers. . . yet it takes them a whole team of full-time, certified MS pros, and the service still isn't very good. The Linux guy might only have 3 servers to take care of, but they only need him part-time. I'm sure most of the time he's there he isn't anywhere near as busy as any of the MS team employees - from my experience, Linux has problems once, and that's when you first get it set up. From then on it stays running fine. I'm sure he's mostly just there a) to install updates and b) to make the company feel better just in case something does happen - a database server would be a bad thing for a company to lose.

Which further emphasizes Linux's stability/security - if the company needs these database servers, why does it hire a single part-time employee to keep them up? Makes me think that maybe he doesn't need to be there most of the time - maybe he was full-time at first (or they had another person there working full-time) and they found that he really didn't need to be there most of the time.

Re:Otis Stern is just upset because

[wurm13]

Actually, whether he said it or not can not be proven either way. My point is that a stubborn and arrogant management style will stifle rather than further innovation.

Sore PC

[yuckymucky]

He should get that "open sores" PC checked out. That doesn't sound good at all.

Re:Sore PC

[(H)elix1]

He should get that "open sores" PC checked out. That doesn't sound good at all.

I hear you can get that type of problem if you don't practice safe hex...

Re:Sore PC

[YU Nicks NE Way]

We don't use the phrase "safe hex" any more. The more PC term these days is "safer sectors".

Re:Sore PC

[melikamp]

I don't get it

Re:Sore PC

[kmartshopper]

What's the need when you have AV?

Re:Sore PC

[mahdi13]

AV is used for the infection, safe hex/safer sectors prevents the infection in the first place.

Would you rather have a bottle of penicillin ready for you or avoid having to use it in the first place?

Re:Sore PC

[WNightBlade]

When you root a box, you're rooting every box that box ever handshaked.

Open Sores?

[Frogbert]

If your PC is giving you open sores perhaps you should stop rubbing up against it so hard.

Re:Open Sores?

[somethinghollow]

but UDP never felt so good!

Re:Open Sores?

[Jafar00]

That's funny, but if I ever bumped into this guy, I'd rip him a new open source ;)

Buggy Browsers

[zbuffered]

Open-source Mozilla Firefox 1.5 is out, and it's decidedly less buggy than IE.

Re:Buggy Browsers

[Dante Shamest]

I submitted a patch to fix the Firefox name bug, on the basis that it's hard for someone to tell that it's the name of a browser. I suggested renaming the browser to something more marketable, such as Internet Explorer Improved or Internet Surfer or even Free Money, Click Here!.

Got no replies. =(

Re:Buggy Browsers

[ilyaaohell]

I really don't understand this debate at all, or what comments like yours are meant to prove. Both pieces of software are designed by highly experienced software engineers. The only difference being that one group is employed by Microsoft, and the other likely do it in their spare time (they're usually still employed by some big-ass technology company).

Why do people like you insist that there's some kind of a major difference in professionalism between rank-and-file Microsoft programmers who write their software and between those programmers who choose to work on open source projects? In the end, given enough time, both groups of programmers have equivalent education and experience and, given the right environment, will design similarly competent (or incompetent) code. Why is it some kind of a pro-open source argument to say that Firefox is on par with a program developed by an "evil corporation"?

I do agree somewhat with the idea that, for the most part, open source software development leads to a different kind of program with a different set of goals and accomplishments. Some of these are better for the consumer, some are not. The open source communal development paradigm is not the epitome of software design. It has it's uses, but it is not without it's limitation... as the article clearly pointed out.

Re:Buggy Browsers

[Evil Adrian]

Why do people like you insist that there's some kind of a major difference in professionalism between rank-and-file Microsoft programmers who write their software and between those programmers who choose to work on open source projects? ... Why is it some kind of a pro-open source argument to say that Firefox is on par with a program developed by an "evil corporation"?

Because a lot of pro-Open-Source people are uninformed and brainwashed by the drivel that gets posted here and elsewhere, and they think that any time you try to make some money by writing software you are somehow running a scam because you aren't donating everything you do to everybody else.

Go ahead and mod me down as Flamebait, but honestly what other explanation is there?

Re:Buggy Browsers

[zbuffered]

Internet Explorer has not been improved since the release of Windows XP (with the exception of lame popup blocking and minor security improvements as a part of XP SP2). FireFox undergoes active improvement and supports features (transparent PNGs) that IE does not. I did not make the larger OSS vs Closed Source argument, just that FF is much better today than IE is. And even more so with the release of 1.5.

Re:Buggy Browsers

[coaxial]

Bull-fucking-shit. 1.5 is very unstable, and has many rendering issues.

I take that back. It is better than IE, in the same since that a gunshot to head is better than being vivisectioned to death..

Re:Buggy Browsers

[gnuLNX]

uh...dude have you used both browsers in the last year?

No seriously you are totally righ both browsers were developed by highly skilled engineers... No one is dsputing that. However one group of engineers (for whatever reason...boss said so perhaps) has not been competitive in the last 2.5 years...go download Firefox, you can see for your self.

Re:Buggy Browsers

[ilyaaohell]

Well, in that case, comparing Firefox with IE6 is like comparing the intelligence of a 30 year old to that of a 13 year old. "I'm way smarter than you because I've had more time to acquire knowledge!"

When it comes to open source altenatives of programs that actually, you know, have regular update cycles (Photoshop vs Gimp, OpenOffice vs MS Office, etc), the open source version is always trying to play catch-up and rarely actually matches the quality of the original before that original suddenly gets it's next big update and surges further ahead. What is the reason for this? One reason is focused/centralized design, a concept that (from my understanding, at least) is in conflict with open source development.

As the original article pointed out, open source development is usually obsessed with things that, frankly, don't usually require that level of obsession, while ignoring things that actually do need to be looked at. Yes, it ends up GREATELY excelling at the things it obsesses with (security is usually the big example being touted), and that is an important positive aspect of open source development. However, there's a price that's paid for this, in the area where in-house development picks up the slack.

Re:Buggy Browsers

[MikeFM]

My first explanation would probably sound rather rude and that wouldn't really prove anything other than getting into a name calling fight. So to a more useful argument..

I am a big free software advocate. I am a professional programmer that invests much of my time and money sponsoring free software development. A single person could never create, or pay for, every single piece of software they might need to use in this day and age. By working with others we can share what software we can create, and pay for, so that we all benefit. THAT is the entire basis to the concept of free software. There is no rule that you can't also sell software. Obviously many free software supporters do sell the software to great profit.

What you can't do is continue to sell crap. Crap can be defined as software that doesn't work, can't be made to work, and can't be returned. THAT is exactly what the commercial software industry is. You buy a program and half the time it doesn't work well enough to acomplish the things the box claimed it could do. So.. return it and try something else.. oops that's right. They won't take software returns. You can't see the source code so you can't fix it. You're just fucked.

Please make free software and sell it. Make a profit. Hire more programmers. Sell more software. Make more profit. We, the free software community, want you to do this because it makes more software available to us. It makes better software available to us. We'll even help you add features and fix bugs at no cost to you. Maybe you won't be able to sell a poorly supported crappy product with no documentation for $300 but you will be able to sell a good product with good support and documentation for a reasonable price. Sounds like a lot more work for the buck until you consider that the customer will help improve, document, and support your product.

I REALLY say this to hardware companies. Make your product with good, open source, drivers (or well documented specifications) and I'll buy your products. The drivers don't even need to be for my OS of choice (Linux). If they're open source I'll port them myself if needed. I'll pick your product over cheaper products if you do this because I won't need to worry about the product not having drivers or having drivers that suck or no longer work in the future. (I've had to many bits of perfectly good hardware stop working in Windows because the company didn't release drivers for the new version of Windows.) Money is not a problem. I spend a LOT of money on electronics and software. I just want to know your product will work when I need it to and to me that means having the information to write or fix drivers.

Re:Buggy Browsers

[Ohreally_factor]

Oh, I see you're in the "functionally descriptive" camp. They were all murdered in their sleep right after AOL bought netscape. I wonder how they missed you?

Anyway, you obviously didn't get a response because your name suggestions aren't BRANDABLE and free of trademark baggage. Now, I happen to agree that the developers are off base with "Firefox", and have suggested a few ideas of my own. CutePuppy is my favorite, but I think I got the best response when I suggested PornStar. Jenna Jameson has agreed to lend her image for the logo under a creative commons license, but I think that's only because she, like our dear Otto, is operating under the misapprehension that it's for an "open sores" charity.

Re:Buggy Browsers

[ilyaaohell]

Yes, it's a more modern browser. However, this had NOTHING to do with the fact that Firefox is an open source project. Look at Opera. It, too, is more "modern" than IE6, and that's as much a corporate-produced closed-source program as IE is.

If you really want to start comparing closed and open source accomplishments and try to use web browsers as an example, don't you think that the better comparison would be between Opera and Firefox? I think so. In this case, is Firefox really more advanced? In my personal opinion, it is greately inferior (I use Firefox instead only because I got addicted to some of it's extensions).

In other words... BE FAIR.

Re:Buggy Browsers

[KtHM]

Do you code better when it's something you're interested in, or when you're waiting for 5 o'clock? I think that's what it comes down to.

Re:Buggy Browsers

[marimbaman]

Actually, the fact that Firefox is more modern has EVERYTHING to do with the fact that Firefox is open source. Release early and release often!

Re:Buggy Browsers

[SuperBanana]

Open-source Mozilla Firefox 1.5 is out, and it's decidedly less buggy than IE.

Funny. I just got through restarting Firefox 1.5 because, like every other version of Firefox for OS X, the keyboard shortcuts stop working.

Strong words aside, the guy is right. Open Source authors tend to be rather bad about listening to their user base- the snotty answer is "if YOU want it to do X, then code it yourself", and many times reported bugs that are annoying current users are put off or ignored, often because the development version is almost ready to go stable, and fixing the bug would be "a pain".

Then people wonder why reviews of open source distros get panned, why people try it and often run right back to Windows, etc. Open Source software, at least many of the Linux distros, present a rather half-assed front to the user. I've used Linux since about 1995, and I still can't stand all the -bullshit- that's necessary to get hardware working; I last used Linux as a workstation back in 2000, and a few months ago I found not much had changed.

Want an example? I dropped an Ubuntu 5.10 CD into my athlon workstation which has a Geforce3 card in it, and a 17" Viewsonic monitor. When it finished installing, X came up, but at a resolution and frequency rate the monitor didn't support, so I could barely read the screen. I got that fixed, then discovered OpenGL wasn't hardware accelerated, so I installed the nvidia driver package.

X windows promptly locked up on the next reboot, and did so until I removed all the nvidia-related packages. I downloaded drivers from Nvidia's site, and installed them by hand, and it finally worked.

I then tried to figure out how to change my screen saver. It wasn't in the Gnome menus- I finally found it under a "debian" menu elsewhere. Apparently my system has at least two "system settings" menus. What the...

There are some truly brilliant, talented people working on linux and open-source. Unfortuntely, they're bogged down in nearly useless work, or busy infighting. My favorite time-sinks are the incredibly obscure security holes that are so impractical nobody could ever exploit them...

Ask yourself this: what does Linux do better today compared with in 2000, almost 6 years ago? I'm not talking about crap like antialiased text- I mean things that actually MATTER to users...

Ask yourself this as well: when was the last time an open-source project you help out with surveyed its users to find out what was most important to THEM? And then based your efforts off that survey? The m0n0wall group just did that, and I was very pleased to see it happen.

Re:Buggy Browsers

[Exaton]

My apologies, but it definitely seems to me that you are omitting some essential points in your comparison between Microsoft and (for instance) the Mozilla Foundation. How about :

• Economic pressure to "get the thing out the door" ? Sure, Microsoft deadlines get as bad a treatment as those of Open Source projects, but the stress is surely much heavier on the individual programmers (keeping one's job, etc.).
• Political guidelines / doctrines, by which Microsoft intentionally does not implement some feature sets, or keeps some mistakes up out of principle or backward compatibility considerations.

Open Source programmers are as free as their code, Microsoft employees (be they eminent experts) are not. OK, so the top-level engineers are still defining the main specs, but the setting is not the same : the corporate environment probably does, in my opinion, cause more bugs to arise.

Re:Buggy Browsers

[Anonymous Coward]

"What is the reason for this? One reason is focused/centralized design, a concept that (from my understanding, at least) is in conflict with open source development. "

How about the simplest reason: they have money. They have money to pay many programmers to work full time on the software. They have money to pay QC people to test the software. They have money to create focus groups to test the functionality of the software. They have money to pay managers, who hopefully know how to manage.

Open source development simply means you make an open source product, there are a few commercial companies who do this with a real design team. However, many OSS projects lack the funding required for a proper team and as such make do with what they can. There are advantages as you mentioned to this, and quite a few people who follow this approach would probably not be doing so if it was a traditional system.

Re:Buggy Browsers

[ilyaaohell]

Good, you read the first two sentences of that post before you replied. Unfortunately, that's all you apparently read.

Re:Buggy Browsers

[tsa]

What I don't understand is why you only get 1 point and this lame 'Firefox is better than IE' post is +5, Insightful.

It's a bit weird that in the almost ten years I've been using Linux now they're always going on about how good the open source development model is for innovation, while indeed, just as you say, most programs are not even on par with what's commercially available. Actually, the Mozilla software is the only exception to this I know and use (I haven't tried OpenOffice 2 yet). I must say I am quite disappointed with open source. It's always ready for the desktop in 5 years time, and I don't see that changeing soon. I love Linux because of its configurability, but until the Linux community agrees on a certain standard for the filesystem and the GUI, so companies can easily make software and drivers that work on all distro's, I will use my Mac as my main machine.

Re:Buggy Browsers

[pebs]

In the end, given enough time, both groups of programmers have equivalent education and experience and, given the right environment, will design similarly competent (or incompetent) code.
(bold added by me)

I have one word for you: management. It's probably not the developers at Micosoft that caused Internet Explorer to suck and become outdated. It's the management who decides what recources to devote to further development of it that did that.

The advantage open source has here is that if one group stagnates, another group can take over. Forking of XFree86 into X.org is one example of this. Or someone can take an existing product and refine it (the fork of Mozilla Suite which became Firefox). There is not one "owner" of the software and that is one of the key advantages of OSS.

Re:Buggy Browsers

[Dun Malg]

don't you think that the better comparison would be between Opera and Firefox? I think so. In this case, is Firefox really more advanced? In my personal opinion, it is greately inferior (I use Firefox instead only because I got addicted to some of it's extensions).

Err....got any specifics there, or just random opinion? What so great about Opera? Its failure to gracefully handle non-standard pages? Its immutable toolbars? Its dearth of third-party extensions? I'd love to hear more about Firefox's greater inferiority, since I haven't seen it. I used Opera before I switched to Firefox and I can't think of a single thing that was worse after the switch.

Re:Buggy Browsers

[ilyaaohell]

Yes, I will concede that this is a big advantage for open source developers. They, in fact, have many advantages. I do not dispute these things. However, they have many major disadvantages as well (someone elsewhere replied that they do not have the money or research and focus groups that a corporation has).

These "advantages" combine to produce open source software that is regularly updated and patched, and stays on the bleeding edge of fundamental technological innovation. The "disadvantages" combine to produce software that is often and, in quite a few ways, inferior to commercial software equivalents that share a similar update cycle (IE is obviously a poor comparison then because it hasn't been updated in years, so consider a comparison between Firefox and Opera).

Re:Buggy Browsers

[mabinogi]

If you're not writing code you're interested in for your job, then you need a better job.

Re:Buggy Browsers

[jcr]

Make your product with good, open source, drivers (or well documented specifications) and I'll buy your products.

Get a million people to make the same promise, and you're all set.

Money is not a problem. I spend a LOT of money on electronics and software.

A lot to you, perhaps. Not a lot to a business with employees and shareholders to take care of.

-jcr

Re:Buggy Browsers

[donscarletti]

To quote an old cliche: the proof of the pudding is in the eating. I use both browsers regually and I can say, beyond a doubt that firefox has more useful features, keeps me safer, works far smoother and acts less unpredictably than IE. It doesn't matter who created them, Firefox humiliates IE in every way I measure the two. I have used IE far too much to give any credibility to a claim that it is just as good as firefox. The fact that Firefox is better than IE doesn't need to be debated any further since the answer is painfully obvious. The proponents of IE don't deserve their arguments to be listened to any more than the proponents of inteligent design, or those who claim that global warming isn't really happening. Debating such things and further is a waste of time so I will continue as if it was a given.

Now we have this established, then we can start attributing this difference I have met many programmers (or as the parent puts it: "software engineers") and I can say that I have never met a skillful programmer that programs only because they are payed. The Firefox team is composed wholly of programmers that do their work out of personal passion, this is always going to beat the blend of the two types that you get in corporate environments.

Passion is the only fuel of brilliance. Where there is passion there is accomplishment, where there is no passion there is nothing. Passion exists in corperate environments sometime, like in Bell laboritories during the 70s, in Apple during the 80s, in ID during the 90s and in Google today. But free software is pure passion, distilled and purified by removing everything else like a monk denying earthly distractions to achieve closeness to god. That's why firefox kicks IE's arse dispite being made by people of similar tallent.

Re:Buggy Browsers

[jcr]

I code best of all when I'm seeing my company's stock rising every week.

BTW, my experience in dealing with open source developers is that they're generally somewhat better-than-average coders, and very poorly led. Particularly when they're self-employed.

-jcr

Re:Buggy Browsers

[Monkelectric]

The only difference being that one group is employed by Microsoft, and the other likely do it in their spare time (they're usually still employed by some big-ass technology company).

Apparently you're not a software engineer... because if you were you'd know that the only directive in corporate america is do it as fast as you can with as little resources as you can. There's never time to do it right.

On the opposite end of the scale ... (good) Open Source software happens in its own time, when its ready.

Re:Buggy Browsers

[Ex-MislTech]

Do you code better when it's something you're interested in, or when you're waiting for 5 o'clock? I think that's what it comes down to.

Oh man, this is so true .

During the boom years I worked for a few different companies as I moved up to get paid up .

Cisco Systems was the last one before the crash, glad I was there rather than one of the start ups
my friends ended up, Their last checks bounced .

But at ALL of the companies, cisco included a LOT of ppl were there for the pay not for the job .

Me and my friend rob would stay some nights til 8 pm or later and end up helping out Sustaining,
R&D, or Test with some problem with the test beds that were often rack mounted in different racks
and in different rows and interconnected by copper T1's, T3's, V.35, POTS, and Ethernet for Cisco's
VoIP lab there in Herndon .

In a 5 month time window I recv'd 3 cash bonuses for being there after hours, and was resented by
the 5 o'clockers for it .

When the lay offs came though it did not matter a hill of beans, we all got canned .

Ex-MislTech

Re:Buggy Browsers

[Ambassador Kosh]

I have been using free software for a long time also. Actually my business could not run without it. I challenge you to find another web app server that has even close to as good of a security system as zope does. I have looked very carefully and it is the finest grained I have ever run across. It is stable, fast, secure and easy for me to add new features to.

There are many excellent pieces of free software that I use every day that don't even have closed source equivalents. Python is a very good free software project and I have not run into any other closed source equivelent that is even close to as productive for me. A big one would be kde. I don't know of anything even close to that for the kinds of things that I do. The KDE io slave system means that from any app I use I can open and save to almost any kind of resource possible. So I can use sftp to open a file remotely in my editor and then just save it all transparently. However that is not all that kde has to offer, kde has a great component system. I configure spell check ONCE for all my apps, I configure how my editor functions ONCE, I configure proxy settings ONCE etc etc. These items are reused all over the system and no other environment I have run into so far can do that.

Koffice is also an excellent piece of software. For what I need an office suite for I don't care about word compatibility and I don't need a huge list of features. I just need to be able to make documents and turn them into pdf files and it does a very good job at that and with very low overhead.

If you don't see any good free software out there then the problem is with your outlook now with the software. People that don't think something exists can't see it no matter how much evidence is given.

Re:Buggy Browsers

[LordLucless]

Why is it some kind of a pro-open source argument to say that Firefox is on par with a program developed by an "evil corporation"?

It's not a pro-open source argument. It's a rebuttal of an arguemnt often put forward by anti-open source people, that is, that something free, and written in an uncontrolled environment can never be as good as something that costs money and was written by engineers under the control of central management.

In the end, given enough time, both groups of programmers have equivalent education and experience and, given the right environment, will design similarly competent (or incompetent) code.

The key in that sentance is "given the right environment". Who do you think will do better work? A programmer who is under obligation to program the way someone else thinks it should be done, with little to no say in the overall direction of a product, or a programmer who is doing what he is doing as a labour of love?

That said, I think there's a definite place in the world for corporate development. I just don't think there's much of a place for closed source development. In my ideal world, Open Source would tend to float to the top for aspects of projects that programmers consider "interesting", which seems to me to be the guts of projects. The engines, the APIs, etc. Corporate development could then build on Open Source engines with things that programmers often find boring - like UI design, documentation, etc.

Re:Buggy Browsers

[JamesWJohnson]

I believe that the reason that OSS often plays catch up with proprietary software is that a lot of the OSS people still have the mindset of what RMS was setting out to do with the GNU project: create replacement software, not unique software (a lot of GNU software was better than the alternatives, but the point still stands). OpenOffice basically tries to replace MS Word but doesn't work hard enough to try to innovate in other areas, for example. What made Linux viable in the marketplace? Originally, the Apache project. The reason was that Apache actually created something with OSS that hadn't existed before, and all of a sudden there was a definite benefit to using the software other than cost or some intangible ideological benefit. Firefox is the same thing. The developers added functionality that IE didn't have, and now IE is trying to catch up to them. That's why it's becoming so popular. Bottom line is, when OSS stops trying to just replace the predominant corporate solution and create a better solution that just happens to be free is when we win.

Re:Buggy Browsers

[Stalyn]

You don't get the argument. The argument rests on a principle that software should be free, free as in freedom. That the source code should be made available to anyone who wants to look at it. Also one should be allowed to make changes to the software if they wish.

It has nothing to do with if the programmer gets paid or not. Honestly if the programming task is difficult the paid professionals do a better job. Unless the amateur is of exceptional quality. However there is no paradox in someone being paid to write open source software. Actually it is encouraged.

It has to do with freedom of information. The freedom to look inside how something works. Yes there are advantages of open source code and there are disadvantages. Just like there are advantages/disadvantages to closed source code. But the argument does not rest there. It is an argument based on principle. Those in the open source movement simply believe that code should be free. Binaries can be bought and sold, but the source code should be available to anyone and open to contributions.

Re:Buggy Browsers

[ilyaaohell]

The reason Firefox kicks IE's arse dispite being made by people of similar talent is because IE is 3 YEARS OLD and Firefox 1.5 came out YESTERDAY.

Re:Buggy Browsers

[Seumas]

Likewise, if MSIE could use Firefox's rendering engine, interface, XUL capabilities and extensions - it'd be no contest. Likewise, if I were slender, toned, rich, famous and handsome, I could compete with Brad Pitt.

Re:Buggy Browsers

[ilyaaohell]

Open source developers do not hold exclusivity on innovation. Look at Google and what they've done over the last couple of years, and how other equally capitalistic/greedy corporations now play catch-up.

Many people attribute things to the open source movement that are independent of it. An open source developer's desire to innovate is NOT in any way stronger than the desire of a company to build a better product to compete with it's arch rival. This is why capitalism works, and why monopolies like Microsoft are bad for ANY industry. Open source is not the issue, competition is. Whether companies compete against each other, or individuals compete against companies, the end result will be the same: more cool stuff for us, the consumers.

Re:Buggy Browsers

[Cryptnotic]

I use Firefox instead only because I got addicted to some of it's extensions.

The extensions are the whole point of using Firefox. Adblock and SessionSaver are great. Plus things like gTranslate and Moji and rikaixul are actually amazingly useful things for aspiring bilingual web browsing people.

Re:Buggy Browsers

[biojayc]

I actually switched from firefox to opera awhile back when firefox 1.4 came out due to firefox's bugginess in that version. I was actually very pleased with it. It loaded pages quickly, and went through history much faster. Firefox 1.5 seems to have fixed alot of that though.

Re:Buggy Browsers

[MikeFM]

Very true - but there are a lot of opensource fans that would make the same promise. Compared to the almost zero cost of the company doing this selling a few thousand extra units should easily cover the cost. Meanwhile it should reflect by creating a better experience (higher quality drivers, better documentation, etc) for their existing customers which will likely give those cutomers cause to buy more of the company's products. All in all a lot of cheap advertising.

Seems a pretty good business decision. How much can it cost to pay a technical writer and engineer to clean up the internal product documentation a bit and make it available to the public? Do that and throw up a website for driver development and you've expended your money on the project. A website for a year is less than $1000. A couple days of time from a staff writer and staff engineer is probably again less than $1000. So even if my estimates are way wrong it'd cost the company $5000 or less.

Re:Buggy Browsers

[einhverfr]

When it comes to open source altenatives of programs that actually, you know, have regular update cycles (Photoshop vs Gimp, OpenOffice vs MS Office, etc), the open source version is always trying to play catch-up and rarely actually matches the quality of the original before that original suddenly gets it's next big update and surges further ahead. What is the reason for this? One reason is focused/centralized design, a concept that (from my understanding, at least) is in conflict with open source development.

Ok. How much better was Office 2000 compared to (the proprietary) StarOffice 5.2? How much better is Office 2003 compared to OpenOffice.org 2.0? What is the trend here?

More importantly, how do lesser known productivity suites compare against these two offerings. My point is that you can't compare the market leader against something with a different development model and expect to get anywhere. Otherwise we end up with statements like:

"When it comes to open source altenatives of programs that actually, you know, have regular update cycles (Apache vs. IIS, OpenSSH v. SSH, etc), the proprietary version is always trying to play catch-up and rarely actually matches the quality of the original before that original suddenly gets it's next big update and surges further ahead. What is the reason for this? One reason is decentralized design and customer-centric development, concepts that (from my understanding, at least) are in conflict with proprietary software development."

The basic issue is simply that the market leader has an advantage in terms of pace of development/resources. While I think that Open SOurce is more efficent in this regard, so each user counts more than in the proprietary world, you can't readily compare Microsoft Office (which arguably has market/monopoly power in the industry) and OpenOffice which commands a very small market. The fact that OOo is not falling that much further behind is actually what is noteworthy here, and this spells trouble for Microsoft.

Re:Buggy Browsers

[syousef]

I use to love Firefox. Then I had a problem where I had to alt-tab out and back for basic things like cut and paste, arrow keys, page up/down, and open in new tab to work on the browser. Once is fine but I'm talking 30 times a day. I had this problem on FF 1.0.7 so I downgraded back to 1.0.6 and that was okay. Then yesterday I've upgraded to 1.5, which also seems okay.

But don't tell me open source is more or less buggy. In the end it's all people building something. Sometimes they get it right, sometimes not. Sometimes other people push them to do the wrong thing, sometimes not. Open or closed, free or pay, any system can be affected by bugs. Anyone that tells you otherwise has a political agenda.

Re:Buggy Browsers

[unapersson]

Mozilla kicked IE's arse 3 years ago as well. It had tabs, much better CSS support, Cookie management, Image management, etc. IE has just looked continually worse over that time, but has long played second fiddle.

Re:Buggy Browsers

[mjsottile77]

"The only difference being that one group is employed by Microsoft, and the other likely do it in their spare time (they're usually still employed by some big-ass technology company)." Many of the big OSS projects (Linux kernel, Eclipse, as two huge examples) are predominantly written by people paid to work on the projects. The only difference between those hackers and one at microsoft is the openness of the code - not spare time vs work time. I think the "OSS = programmed in my spare time in the evening" argument went out the window a few years back for most of the truly large projects out there.

Re:Buggy Browsers

[16K Ram Pack]

In my personal opinion, it is greately inferior (I use Firefox instead only because I got addicted to some of it's extensions).

Greatly inferior, but with a feature not found in another browser that you class as being "addicted to".

You aren't making much of a case here.

Re:Buggy Browsers

[Ours]

I think it would be more accurate to say that one of the browsers simply didn't have a boss, or a dedicated developpment team for that matter for several years. After IE 6.0, the team was dissolved, they won the browser war, went to sleep. When they woke up FF was going strong and eating their porigde. So IE got a team back to work on if. They have some big catch-up to do.

Re:Buggy Browsers

[jcr]

Compared to the almost zero cost of the company doing this selling a few thousand extra units should easily cover the cost.

If you really think it would move thousands of units, then become a dealer, and sell the product in question with your linux driver.

-jcr

Re:Buggy Browsers

[killjoe]

"Well, in that case, comparing Firefox with IE6 is like comparing the intelligence of a 30 year old to that of a 13 year old. "I'm way smarter than you because I've had more time to acquire knowledge!""

I don't get what you are saying here. Are you saying firefox is better because it's been around longer? IF so that's wrong. Firefox is mostly new code with very little left over form netscape.

As for other software it seems to be mix and match. Gimp is much better then photoshop in terms of scriptability but it falls behind in other areas. This is because scriptability is very important to a gimp users.

OO started way behind as anybody who ever used the original star office could attest but it's improving faster then ms office is. The question I have is this though. What does MS office do that open office doesn't? It seems to me the only thing it does is open MS office files better, that's it. I have been able to everything I have ever wanted with open office and more (save as PDF, save as flash, text art etc).

On the backend it's MS who is playing catchup. WIth every release SQL server adds features that have been around in postgres for years, visual studio still hasn't caught up to eclipse, IIS is pales in comparison to apache or zope, asp.net has just caught up to where j2ee was year and a half ago (wow we have embraced XML descriptors!)

So you see it's all about priorities. Open source software is more advanced then MS software in the aspects that are important to the open source developers. Once corporations start adopting open office on a larger scale they will pay for features they want by either sponsoring developers or paying bounties, same with all other software.

Re:Buggy Browsers

[16K Ram Pack]

the snotty answer is "if YOU want it to do X, then code it yourself"

So, as well as someone giving you a piece of software for free (often done as a labour of love), you expect them to add in your features? Would you do some work for nothing? People do things for many motivations. If you aren't a friend or a member of my family, I'll do things for you for two reasons - a) because I really want to (like the project might be fun, challenging or for a good cause) or b) because you pay me.

Want an example? I dropped an Ubuntu 5.10 CD into my athlon workstation which has a Geforce3 card in it, and a 17" Viewsonic monitor. When it finished installing, X came up, but at a resolution and frequency rate the monitor didn't support, so I could barely read the screen. I got that fixed, then discovered OpenGL wasn't hardware accelerated, so I installed the nvidia driver package.

Your example being a completely free distro. And it doesn't support your hardware. What have you done to help? Offered a donation? Written some code? This is completely free. Do you think you have some right to complain?

I then tried to figure out how to change my screen saver. It wasn't in the Gnome menus- I finally found it under a "debian" menu elsewhere. Apparently my system has at least two "system settings" menus. What the...

And Windows has how many? Again, Ubuntu is free, it's open source, put them together or suggest a move. I guess you can show that you've already done that and no-one listened?

As for your "surveying users", that's what I'd do if I wanted to have commercial customers. You expect an OSS developer to go asking users what they want, which will cost them time and effort. And for what gain?

Personally, I've downloaded and used OSS software and it's been a big help to me. But I accept it in the spirit it is donated - that often people build something for their own purpose and for some reason decide to give it away. Here's what I feel about OSS:-

It's free and I'm grateful.

I can choose not to use it.

I expect no help (but sometimes people have been good enough to point me to some code). I support it in a production environment, or presume to pay for support.

If I find a bug, I fix it and send back the fix to the author.

Re:Buggy Browsers

[akaariai]

Even if we take your assumption that open and closed ways of programming are equally good, I think there are two important things that make open source software better.

1. Open source products do not have release schedules dictaded by sales department nor do they need to have features needed for marketing purposes. I think these make program quality better. If some feature is buggy when there is going to be a release you either postpone the release or leave the feature out. In microsoft products you are going to have that "feature"...

2. There are many open source projects and only one Microsoft project. Ok, this one isn't generally true about open vs. closed source, but specific to this case. If you have many open source projects (this is usually true) and it happens that some of them are better than the others, then the end user can pick out the best one. If it happens that Microsoft is having problems with their product, then you are screwed. And this is even more true because of locking-in. This problem is actually a problem rising from the monopoly Microsoft has.

Re:Buggy Browsers

[Komarosu]

and goddammit, IE7 supports it...sheesh.

Re:Buggy Browsers

[MikeFM]

If a dealer had access to the information to create drivers I would. Sadly I highly doubt this is the case. You'd have to make the unit yourself which of course has all the costs of entering such a market from scratch.. millions, if not billions, of dollars required.

Re:Buggy Browsers

[baadger]

and don't forget Opera...

Re:Buggy Browsers

[xtracto]

In my opinion, the great caveats of OpenSource are:

1. Every programmer wants to do the cool entertaining nice things in the program. But nobody likes to make documentation. Hence we have programs without proper documentation like

Analysis, Requirements specifications document.
Design: Design Specification document [with or without UML, DTDs, etc].
Quality control/assurance: (Quality testing metrics documents).

Nobody (at least not programmers) likes to spend their time doing that, which results in a lot of good Open Source projects (just look at sf.net) that have only the source code available.

2. Design, yes. Unfortunately, Graphic Designers and man/manchine interface developers do value their time. That is why the design of Oper Source programs is usually terrible. And that is why you can not compare what a bunch of programmers do with their free time with a real product. Hint, the big software corporations products have several different departments besides of the programming department.

Of course there are certain programs which have an Ok design, like OpenOffice, (darn, I could not think of another) but of course the majority of those programs (and of the big good OpenSource programs) had its core donated from a profit organization.

About your comment on the comparison of FF against IE6.
comparing Firefox with IE6 is like comparing the intelligence of a 30 year old to that of a 13 year old. "I'm way smarter than you because I've had more time to acquire knowledge!"

I think it does not hold. If firefox is better than IE6 it is because of the developing model of the two programs and because as everybody knows Microsoft did not cared about updating their product after they killed Netscape. I have just looked at the new features on IE7 and it seems quite nice. I am sure, when it arrives it will be a lot better than Firefox. The same with MS Office new version, after it arrives and people start using the "tabbed" menu interface, OpenOffice will seem archaic with its 10 menu/100 submenues interface.

That Open Source will copy the interface, that, everybody knows. Unless there is some kind of I.P. lock that Microsoft holds (which I hope not).

Re:Buggy Browsers

[Vintermann]

Unfortunately, a lot of people at proprietary for-sale shops do in fact need better jobs, for that reason exactly.

(Let's not forget in this ruckus that not all software that is written is produced for sale)

Re:Buggy Browsers

[ardor]

"So, as well as someone giving you a piece of software for free (often done as a labour of love), you expect them to add in your features? Would you do some work for nothing? People do things for many motivations. If you aren't a friend or a member of my family, I'll do things for you for two reasons - a) because I really want to (like the project might be fun, challenging or for a good cause) or b) because you pay me."

They are working for nothing already, arent they? They ask for suggestions and criticism so they can improve their projects, don't they?

"Your example being a completely free distro. And it doesn't support your hardware. What have you done to help? Offered a donation? Written some code? This is completely free. Do you think you have some right to complain?"

OF COURSE he has the right to complain. Ubuntu is supposed to be an END-USER-DISTRO. NOT a programmer's distro. You expect the average user, who is NOT interested in computers and just uses them to get his work done to learn how to code just to fix the bugs the distro makers should take care of? I repeat: most users don't give a damn how a distro works, they just want to work with the damn computer! They want to write their letters, work on the photos they shot, record and postprocess some music etc. but they do NOT want to dig into the distro itself! Ubuntu exists precisely for these users, in other words, forcing Ubuntu users to become Linux experts just to get things to work is downright insulting.

People like you are a real PITA. So you say free software is a "take-it-or-leave-it" thing, with absolutely no rights for the user to complain? You do realize that this makes free software very unpopular, right? When a company includes a clause in their EULA that the user has no rights to complain everyone (also people like you) here in Slashdot scream how evil this company is. Free software does the same, and its ok? Oh come on.

Re:Buggy Browsers

[MasterDirk]

Ah but why then is the closed-source Opera better than Firefox?

Re:Buggy Browsers

[xtracto]

How much better was Office 2000 compared to (the proprietary) StarOffice 5.2? How much better is Office 2003 compared to OpenOffice.org 2.0? What is the trend here?

Well, I do not know what you where trying to show there but, From this page I got some of the features of Microsoft Office 2003.
Note: If you do not know what any of these features mean, feel free to visit the information page

Connecting People
Collaborating on Documents with Team Members
Document Workspaces
Shared attachments
Shared Workspace task pane
Integration with Windows SharePoint Ser
Exchanging Contact Information
Synchronize contacts
Organizing Meetings and Events
Meeting Workspaces
Side-by-side calendars in Outlook 2003
Events
Share Outlook free/busy information
Managing Document Changes
Word 2003 editing restrictions
Word 2003 formatting restrictions
Reviewing Toolbar
Markup Balloons
Controlling Access to Vital Business Information
Information Rights Management (IRM) in Office Professional Edition 2003 files
IRM document expiration dates
IRM organizational policy templates
Digital Signatures
File password encryption
Connecting Information
Preventing E-Mail Overload
E-Mail Desktop Alerts
E-Mail Reading Pane
Enhanced privacy features
Safe Senders/Block Senders lists
Improved junk mail filtering
Organizing Your E-Mail Inbox
Arranged By conversation
Quick Flags
Search Folders
Saving Time with Tools
Research and Reference task pane
Office Online services
Help improvements available in a task pane
Task panes
Application-Specific Improvements
Word 2003 Reading Layout view
Excel 2003 list integration with Windows SharePoint Services
Excel 2003 enhanced statistical functions

Re:Buggy Browsers

[ardor]

"visual studio still hasn't caught up to eclipse"

Wrong. Try developing a .net or a C++-Application in Visual Studio and in Eclipse. No sir, the CDT is years behind Visual Studio. There is NO free C++-IDE that can beat Visual Studio. (Unfortunately.)

Re:Buggy Browsers

[jcr]

If a dealer had access to the information to create drivers I would. Sadly I highly doubt this is the case.

If you can make the volume commitments for thousands of units, you'll get whatever docs you need.

-jcr

Re:Buggy Browsers

[TempySmurf]

"Well, in that case, comparing Firefox with IE6 is like comparing the intelligence of a 30 year old to that of a 13 year old."

Photoshop - 18 year old
Gimp - 11 year old


MS Office - 25 year old
OpenOffice (as open source) - 5 year old

Re:Buggy Browsers

[SilverspurG]

You missed the part back around 1990 when software producers quit producing quality software and began foisting code which would barely pass as beta-test quality onto consumers--and then doubled the price. The current situation is not acceptable and has not been acceptable for 15 years.

At one time companies actually hired people to break software. Then the stock market investors figured out that the profit margin would be higher if they just sell the beta code and let the consumer deal with it. Alpha and beta testing is currently run on a skeleton crew with a skeleton budget for one purpose... someone else's profit. That's what makes it a scam.

Re:Buggy Browsers

[donscarletti]

They probably just love what they do, that happens in the closed source world as well (as I mentioned before). Anyway, I prefer firefox personally, but opera is pretty good.

Re:Buggy Browsers

[ErroneousBee]

. The question I have is this though. What does MS office do that open office doesn't?

• Import external data from remote CSV sources such as Yahoo finance.
• Take less that 1 minute to open up.
• Mr Clippy.

OK, only the first one is actally a real reason. But I do find I continually bump into walls with OOO, whereas MS Office is like wading through treacle.

Also OOo seems to take on the mistakes of MSO, like that horrible maths language in Excel/Calc. SUM() AVERAGE() UGH!!.

Re:Buggy Browsers

[ardor]

"Ehm? If a company put such a clause in their EULA? If the product in question was a completely free thing, then I don't think Slashdot would scream how evil this company is."

Ahem. This is SLASHDOT. Companies are always evil and sinister here. (Unfortunately, many times this is in fact the truth - look at Disney :( )

"Even if Ubuntu's an end-user distro, nobody's forcing the users to use it."

No, but its goal is to be suitable for average end-users. Nobody is forcing the users to use it. This does NOT give the devs indemnification against listening to the users. Besides, the Ubuntu website explicitely states that support is available.

"You seem to think it's some kind of popularity contest - it's not: people make free software to make their own lives better, and don't mind sharing. Most software projects don't measure themselves by the amount of users they have."

I am not saying that it should be measured by the amount of end-users. But it should be measured in its end-user compatibility. This includes the end-users ability to send complaints. An average joe distro with no possibility for sending suggestions and/or complaints is not an average joe distro, its an average geek distro where you have to code to get some help.

Re:Buggy Browsers

[16K Ram Pack]

They are working for nothing already, arent they? They ask for suggestions and criticism so they can improve their projects, don't they?

Well, firstly, re:"don't they?" I don't know if they do. Secondly, if I asked for suggestions and criticisms, it's my OSS project development. It doesn't mean I have to do any of them. People don't work for free on these projects out of pure altruism (as a rule). They want motivation. They are currently working for free on the projects that suit them. If I build a component for my company and decide to OSS it, I might add some features suggested (either because it will be useful to me, get more users who might buy some support, or it might be fun). But, you want me to get my component to read from say, a database format that you use that is quite obscure - you're going to do it yourself or pay.

Ubuntu is supposed to be an END-USER-DISTRO. NOT a programmer's distro

Which doesn't mean it should do everything that a user expects it to. The GPs comments were not to do with bugs, but hardware compatibility and the existence of two "system settings menus" (both of which I would class as features). Firstly, you cannot expect a bunch of volunteers to support every piece of hardware. Volunteers will support hardware for the reasons I gave before (scratch an itch, fun, pay, self-support). Why should they do otherwise? With regards to the two "system settings menus", that's a configuration issue, which could be resolved with a code change. Again, why should someone who is happy with the control mechanism change it for one user who doesn't like it. No commercial company would without payment, but at least you have the source code.

When a company includes a clause in their EULA that the user has no rights to complain everyone (also people like you) here in Slashdot scream how evil this company is. Free software does the same, and its ok? Oh come on.

Well, what a shocker! Let's start with this word: Free. Got it? It's free. That means that you gave nothing in return for receiving it. So, why the heck do you deserve any guarantees in terms of product quality? On the other hand, an EULA that has no returns is basically saying that even though you've done your half of the bargain, the supplier isn't going to. If a neighbour lent you his drill out of being neighbourly, and it stopped working, do you think you can sue him as you could a hire shop?

Re:Buggy Browsers

[Weedlekin]

Selling shoddy rubbish that doesn't do what it says on the box did not start with the advent of the computer industry -- it is a practice that's probably as old as commerce itself. And even if we restrict ourselves to computing, there were plenty of bits of crapware before the 1990s. IBM's OS for the 370 mainframe is an excellent example: the initial release was both notoriously buggy and lacked many of the features that were promised for it, and it was the end-user community that eventually did most of the work of getting it into a reasonable state. This work was not paid for by IBM (in fact, said community were paying IBM for the privilege of doing their development for them), but IBM were the ones who benefited from it by ending up with a much better OS than the one they'd originally written, and therefore a more stable, capable, and salable computer system.

Re:Buggy Browsers

[ookaze]

Strong words aside, the guy is right

No he's not, he's an obvious troll.

Open Source authors tend to be rather bad about listening to their user base- the snotty answer is "if YOU want it to do X, then code it yourself"

No, you're wrong, they rarely do that in fact. Most are rather good at listening to their user base, in contrary to your belief. The answer you cited comes mostly from other people trying to defend the developers or to shut off trolls or astroturfers. Your straw man is not the truth.
Developers will tell you they don't intend to develop such or such function, they won't tell you harshly to code it yourself, but will ask you gently if you can contribute the code. That's the behaviour I see on the ML.

and many times reported bugs that are annoying current users are put off or ignored, often because the development version is almost ready to go stable, and fixing the bug would be "a pain"

Another straw man, stop it already. Behaviours change greatly depending on size of the project and resources of developers. You try like mad to make FOSS devs look bad, putting them all in the same bag.

And then you add a mix of false facts, false consequences, ...
You're an obvious troll too, sentences like "people try it and often run right back to Windows" are obvious examples of trolling.

I've used Linux since about 1995, and I still can't stand all the -bullshit- that's necessary to get hardware working

That's because you're an astroturfer too. I knew Linux 3 years after you, and I know perfectly well why some hardware don't work on Linux, and sure enough, it's not because of buggy FOSS.

I last used Linux as a workstation back in 2000, and a few months ago I found not much had changed

That's because you're a troll.
The progress has been amazing since 2000 (Gnome 2, KDE 3, kernel 2.6, ...) but only a troll could not see it.

I dropped an Ubuntu 5.10 CD into my athlon workstation which has a Geforce3 card in it, and a 17" Viewsonic monitor. ...I downloaded drivers from Nvidia's site, and installed them by hand, and it finally worked

And during all this time, you never realised :
- How advanced the desktop was compared to 2000
- That you had a menu option to send your hardware config and what went wrong to Ubuntu ?
So of course, you did not contribute anything.

I then tried to figure out how to change my screen saver. It wasn't in the Gnome menus- I finally found it under a "debian" menu elsewhere. Apparently my system has at least two "system settings" menus. What the...

Now you mistake Ubuntu choices with buggy software ...

There are some truly brilliant, talented people working on linux and open-source. Unfortuntely, they're bogged down in nearly useless work, or busy infighting

I think you should leave 2000 behind. Freedesktop is an evidence that what you say is false.

My favorite time-sinks are the incredibly obscure security holes that are so impractical nobody could ever exploit them

Now you assert that you are either a MS shill, a moron or both.

Ask yourself this: what does Linux do better today compared with in 2000, almost 6 years ago? I'm not talking about crap like antialiased text- I mean things that actually MATTER to users...

- Hardware compatibility
- One of the best i18n platform
- Lots of powerful tools available (all I actually need) that where not so good in 2000
- Office
- System efficience
- Live systems
- Multimedia
I forgot a lot, but I think it will be sufficient to debunk your stupid question.

Ask yourself this as well: when was the last time an open-source project you help out with surveyed its users to find out what was most important to THEM?

This week on gnome-desktop.org, there was at least one story on Slashdot too about that. Now go back to other astrotur

Re:Buggy Browsers

[aug24]

Strong words aside, the guy is right. Open Source authors tend to be rather bad about listening to their user base- the snotty answer is "if YOU want it to do X, then code it yourself", and many times reported bugs that are annoying current users are put off or ignored, often because the development version is almost ready to go stable, and fixing the bug would be "a pain".

Just to remind you, the exact same problems occur with proprietary systems, but you can't see the bug reports. I fully expect that systems ship once all bugs affecting over perhaps 2% of users are fixed - all the rest will be considered minority issues.

In fact, I have even found a bug in VBA* that Microsoft wouldn't accept a bug report on unless the business I work for paid them!

Justin
* 'Save sheet' (as CVS) in Excel will sometimes save half the current sheet and half another one if it is followed by a change to the active sheet - even if both are done by name. I think it's some kind of race condition probably caused by a late dereference after blocking on I/O.

Re:Buggy Browsers

[arevos]

I then tried to figure out how to change my screen saver. It wasn't in the Gnome menus- I finally found it under a "debian" menu elsewhere.

Curious. Whilst I'm not at my Ubuntu machine currently, I believe the screensaver configuration for 5.10 is in:
System -> Preferences -> Screensaver Configuration.

I'd have thought that a rather obvious place to put the screensaver configuration, myself.

Re:Buggy Browsers

[10Ghz]

Want an example? I dropped an Ubuntu 5.10 CD into my athlon workstation which has a Geforce3 card in it, and a 17" Viewsonic monitor. When it finished installing, X came up, but at a resolution and frequency rate the monitor didn't support, so I could barely read the screen. I got that fixed, then discovered OpenGL wasn't hardware accelerated, so I installed the nvidia driver package.

I installed Windows a while ago. After the installation was finished, I noticed that the resolution was something like 640x480 with 256 colors! Drivers for the vid-card weren't installed at all, so there was ZERO hope for 3D-acceleration. Sound-card wasn't installed either. I had drivers for the NIC on CD (luckily), so I could install it offline so I could afterwards hunt for drivers online. I also had to sloinstall AGP-drivers, chipset-drivers and the like. All that was handled automatically in Linux.

Ask yourself this: what does Linux do better today compared with in 2000, almost 6 years ago? I'm not talking about crap like antialiased text- I mean things that actually MATTER to users...

Well, I can have fully-functioning (with drivers and apps installed) Linux-installation in about 30 minutes, whereas with Windows I need to hunt for drivers and apps, because the post-install system is 100% un-usable. The system also ships with lots of great software, whereas Windows does not (so Linux can be used for actual work right after the installation, whereas Windows cannot). latest hardware is supported out-of-the-box, whereas W2K does not (I need to feed it driver-FLOPPIES during installation so it will work with my SATA-drive. Since I don't have floppy-drive anymore, that might cause me problems in the future).

I also have great network-integration in my Linux-desktop, something Windows sorely lacks. Remote-admin-capabilites are great on Linux, less so on Windows.

I happen to use the Apple Keyboard as my keyboard. In Linux, I plugged it in while the system was running, and it worked right away. In Windows, I plugged it in, and it didn't work. It wanted to install drivers for it. fair enough, I asked it to get the drivers from the net, and install them, which it did. It then rebooted the machine. But I then noticed that the keyboard didn't work yet, so I had to fetch my old PS/2-keyboard so I could log on. It then installed more drivers, and rebooted the machine. But it still wouldn't work, and it installed some more drivers. After three reboots, it finally started to work.

In Linux, the installation took about 5 seconds. On Windows, closer to 10 minutes.

But the story doesn't stop there! Few weeks later I moved the computer to different location, and I had to unplug everything. AS I plugged things back in, I noticed that the keyboard didn't work in W2K. So I had to fetch my old keyboard from the storage (a separate building), so I could log in to the machine. W2K then proceeded to reinstall the drivers (with reboots and all), even though the keyboard was already installed once! Apparently Windows got confused because the keyboard was on different USB-port! Needless to say, Linux "just worked".

Re:Buggy Browsers

[ardor]

"But, you want me to get my component to read from say, a database format that you use that is quite obscure - you're going to do it yourself or pay."

Bad example. Obscure stuff is of course a problem, but most complaints are NOT about obscure stuff. They are more like "why is the audio out of sync when playing some videos?" (Answer: esd has horrible latency). What is the user supposed to do? Code an entire sound daemon? Also, Kaffeine is buggy for almost a year, there are more than one replacement package available for months now, lots of people complain that this extremely important application isn't treated the way it should be (i.e. fix the bugs, simply by replacing the packages). Right now, the user has to track down the package (assuming he/she knows how to manually install packages). Is this okay?

"With regards to the two "system settings menus", that's a configuration issue, which could be resolved with a code change."

Yes, because users complain about it! But, I forgot, user complaints are ignored.... So become a coder, you l4m0r, and solve it yourself! It will take only a couple of months up to several years (depending on the experience) to understand all the Linux interna from scratch, but people aren't supposed to spend their time with anything else than digging through Linux internals, right?

"Again, why should someone who is happy with the control mechanism change it for one user who doesn't like it. No commercial company would without payment, but at least you have the source code."

One user? Ok. Many users? No. If *many* users are complaining about this control mechanism, then the developer either changes it, or stops calling the distro end-user compatible. As for the company: in this case, the users simply move on to another software. Is this Ubuntu's goal? To scare off the end-users its supposed to target?

"So, why the heck do you deserve any guarantees in terms of product quality?"

Because they promised it on their ads (website counts as advertisement)? If product X is supposed to be ultra-cool, and turns out to be total crap, then its not the user's fault, its simply a shitty product that does not provide what it promises.

This shows the very heart of the problem: even in end-user distros like Ubuntu (and make no mistake, I think Ubuntu is a very good distro, but not perfect) there is the "by-hackers-for-hackers" mentality. This is fine in Debian, but Ubuntu is the distro supposed to be "by-hackers-for-endusers". This changes a lot, since the relationship is totally different. Users dont code, they request, complain, ask. They don't want to hack around, they just want to USE the distro, in fact they dont have the competence to hack around!

Re:Buggy Browsers

[Jackmn]

OF COURSE he has the right to complain. Ubuntu is supposed to be an END-USER-DISTRO. NOT a programmer's distro.

They haven't paid for anything. They are benefitting from the hard work of others at no expense of their own.

Don't like something? Then pay a developer to fix it, or fix it yourself. Unless you've actually invested something into the project, constant bitching makes you nothing more than both a beggar and a chooser.

You are welcome to make suggestions of course, and there is a good chance a programmer will take your suggestion to heart and implement it. But seeing as you've invested nothing, if they choose not to impliment it then you have little reason to complain.

You seem to be of the opinion that OSS owes you something. You are mistaken; they owe you nothing. If you should happen to find OSS offerings useful, then good. If you don't, then tough luck.

Re:Buggy Browsers

[Jackmn]

s/OSS owes/OSS developers owe/ s/impliment/implement/

Re:Buggy Browsers

[ardor]

You are wrong. Ubuntu claims to be end-user ready. End-users CANNOT DEVELOP. End-users CANNOT FIX STUFF. Donate for every bug they find? Suddenly Windows seems to be cheaper, hm.....

The point is that by targeting the end-user (instead of other hackers), they are bound to their word. If it turns out that they don't listen (or only listen when you pay them), then it becomes clear that they are lying; there is no free support then! Read their website.

Re:Buggy Browsers

[Kjella]

Ok. How much better was Office 2000 compared to (the proprietary) StarOffice 5.2? How much better is Office 2003 compared to OpenOffice.org 2.0? What is the trend here?

That's not even the important question. The important question is how much better are the office suites compared to the market's needs? I mean if MS Office goes from 50% to 90% of what the users need, or 90% to 99% or 99% to 99,9%, good for them. Even if they claim OpenOffice isn't catching up to MS Office, it is certainly catching up to the market. Same with GIMP. It might not be catching up to Photoshop any time soon, but for most people it's becoming a very powerful photo editor (though on a personal note, I prefer Paint Shop Pro over either, YMMV). Because ultimately the content is the key, and there's only so much the tool can influence the end result.

The same goes for the desktop, which is really the join of all the applications as well as some system utilities. The free desktop is never going to compare to a "best of breed" desktop where you've put together the most expensive and powerful commercial software available. Does it need to? No. It just needs to fill my needs, which to an ever decreasing degree it does. I don't know where the "cutting edge" is, and I really don't care. And I bet I'm a lot closer to it than 95% of all computer users...

Re:Buggy Browsers

[jcr]

No, you won't.

Oh, yes you will. Money talks, and thousands of units is thousands of units.

Stop bullshitting.

I have some experience as an OEM. Do you?

-jcr

Re:Buggy Browsers

[a_n_d_e_r_s]

You should have suggested "Internet Firefox" since most normal people are used to search for a icon named something with Internet go surf the web.

And also "Internet Firefox" seams to be a direkt descendant of "Internet Explorer" since F comes after E.

Re:Buggy Browsers

[ookaze]

When it comes to open source altenatives of programs that actually, you know, have regular update cycles (Photoshop vs Gimp, OpenOffice vs MS Office, etc), the open source version is always trying to play catch-up and rarely actually matches the quality of the original before that original suddenly gets it's next big update and surges further ahead

Your sentence is true only if you specifically focus on the features where the FOSS projects play catch-up.
It's completely wrong otherwise. For example, the Gimp has numerous features and plugins more powerful than anything on Photoshop (like the one that remove seamlessly objects from an image, better raw support, ...), same for OOo (PDF, works native on Linux, repair MS Office files, ...).
What you say border to the straw man, as Gimp is not an Open Source version of Photoshop, nor OOo is one of MS Office (they use very different ways to handle the document for example).

What is the reason for this?

there is none because it is a straw man.

One reason is focused/centralized design, a concept that (from my understanding, at least) is in conflict with open source development

BS. Look at Inkscape and how their goal for each version, look at KDE and Gnome for some examples too, and then stop the BS.
I look at Pango, and the focused design was not incompatible with the development.

As the original article pointed out, open source development is usually obsessed with things that, frankly, don't usually require that level of obsession, while ignoring things that actually do need to be looked at

What are those things ?

Yes, it ends up GREATELY excelling at the things it obsesses with (security is usually the big example being touted)

BS again, security is not the greatest thing FOSS focus on. Stability, efficiency, accuracy, interoperability, i18n, accessibility are other areas that FOSS is obsessed with. You say all of this does not require such a level of obsession ?!!

Re:Buggy Browsers

[Viol8]

"No he's not, he's an obvious troll."

Oh get over it. Idiots like you are another reason some people
avoid open source. Anyone complains and you can guarantee
some moron shouts "troll!" then proceeds to dish up the usual
"You don't understand" or "you could have easily downloaded XYZ
from www.neverheardofit.com" along with fatuous lists of
applications , as if this proves progress in some way. Moron.

Re:Buggy Browsers

[Viol8]

Not defending windows in any way and perhaps this is just a
tangetial question , but why not just stick with the PS/2
keyboard? Is what port a keyboard plugs into really that
important to you? They're just keyboards for chrissake.

Re:Buggy Browsers

[Jackmn]

The end-users are still getting something for free, meaning they have lost their right to bitch. If they don't like it they are welcome to make suggestions - not demands. If they still don't like it, then nobody is forcing them to run Ubuntu.

There is a difference between listening and implementing everything people want. They certainly listen - you can talk to them, and be heard. Some suggestions are implemented. Most are not.

Re:Buggy Browsers

[10Ghz]

Not defending windows in any way and perhaps this is just a
tangetial question , but why not just stick with the PS/2
keyboard? Is what port a keyboard plugs into really that
important to you? They're just keyboards for chrissake.

Well, that keyboard is used in both Mac Mini and my tower-PC. The Mac does not have PS2-ports, only USB. And since the Mini has so few USB-ports in it, the fact that the Apple Keyboard has a built-in USB-hub was an added bonus. And I wanted a small-footprint keyboard, and Apple Keyboard was pretty small. And it's convenient to use with the Mini, because it has built-in button for volume and ejecting optical media.

So while USB-connectivity was a requirement (for the Mini), there were other factors besides the connection-type that tilted the favour towards the Apple Keyboard.

Re:Buggy Browsers

[SilverspurG]

it is a practice that's probably as old as commerce itself

I agree. It is a quantifiable characteristic. At one time the electronics industry was at an acceptable level. When I was a young child I had an electronic basketball game. Four directions, one shoot button, and players small red blips on a screen. For all practical purposes it was a solid state device. If I played it for five or six hours at a time, though, every once in a while it would lock up and I'd have to turn it off and back on. If the battery was getting weak this would happen more often. Early Atari and Colecovision game systems were similar. They worked but, if played for 10-12 hours at a time, they might start to exhibit bugs. As operating systems gained complexity the level of acceptable bugs and the frequency with which an application or even the whole system would crash was adjusted accordingly.

After 1990, however, is when quality went WAY down. Coding was a mature enough field by then. There is no excuse for the crap that came out of the proprietary software (and hardware) makers after 1990. It happened abnormally quickly. By 1995 with the commercialization of the internet well underway quality was at an all-time low--and the people still bought it (mostly because tax dollars were being thrown into it like water over Niagara Falls but that's an entirely separate scam rant). Software quality is no longer at an acceptable level. Most software which is sold, for a price, is somewhere between alpha and beta stages and the consumers are used as the beta testers--and they pay for it. Linux users are beta testers as well but at least we don't have to shell out hard earned cash for the privelege of doing someone else's troubleshooting work for them.

I'm not asking for zero bugs. I'm asking for an acceptable cost:quality ratio. Quality is a combination of bugs, features, size, and speed. After enduring 10 years of completely piss poor quality from Microsoft I don't think they'll ever be able to salvage their reputation.

Personally I'd like to see Microsoft (and most proprietary software companies) get their asses handed to them on a silver platter. With them gone OSS could get some decent funding. With decent funding and a polished product I'd voluntarily pay $50/year for something like Debian Sid.

Re:Buggy Browsers

[Anonymous Coward]

With Microsoft's position being, "You'll use it whether it's useful or not because we'll do everything that we can to ensure that you need it."

But then, who cares about the corporate desktop, anyway? It seems like the only reason it's ever targeted by Linux people is that getting it there can be done by fiat rather than end-user choice, and because it consists of a much smaller set of software problems.

I've worked on a lot of free software projects over the years, and I for one don't care whether "Linux" becomes ubiquitous on the corporate desktop or not. It has never been my goal to conquer the world, or one particularly boring part of it. If that sort of thing mattered to me, I could just write spyware for Windows and find a much larger install base than most legitimate desktop software could dream of.

In other news, software developed for your PDA will never take over the corporate desktop, Office will never take over gaming consoles, QNX won't dominate HPC, and you'll never contribute anything significant to humanity. Let's pack everything up and die. Thank you for helping us see the light.

Re:Buggy Browsers

[16K Ram Pack]

Ahem. This is SLASHDOT. Companies are always evil and sinister here.

Back that up then. Find me a number of posts on slashdot complaining about the EULA terms of a free piece of software.

Re:Buggy Browsers

[daoine_sidhe]

Want an example? I dropped an Ubuntu 5.10 CD into my athlon workstation which has a Geforce3 card in it, and a 17" Viewsonic monitor. When it finished installing, X came up, but at a resolution and frequency rate the monitor didn't support, so I could barely read the screen. I got that fixed, then discovered OpenGL wasn't hardware accelerated, so I installed the nvidia driver package.

X windows promptly locked up on the next reboot, and did so until I removed all the nvidia-related packages. I downloaded drivers from Nvidia's site, and installed them by hand, and it finally worked.

So it's the community's fault that nVidia won't opensource their drivers or release technical documentation for their hardware? Please, chalk that one up to where it belongs...nVidia.

I then tried to figure out how to change my screen saver. It wasn't in the Gnome menus- I finally found it under a "debian" menu elsewhere. Apparently my system has at least two "system settings" menus. What the...

It's right under System, then I believe preferences, top left, third from the corner. Look next time.

Ask yourself this: what does Linux do better today compared with in 2000, almost 6 years ago? I'm not talking about crap like antialiased text- I mean things that actually MATTER to users...

Automatic hardware detection that is far superior in every way to Windows, hardware support, stability, productivity (Open Office, Evolution, etc.), multimedia support, security, ease of use (yes, I know, two menus are awfully deep to navigate to for a screensaver), game support...Do you see my point here? Instead of ranting against the developers, why don't you try reverse engineering hardware to write a driver for it, and then when you whip one (with full 3D support) out in about 15 minutes, which is obviously what you, the consumer, have a right to expect, then come back here and post again about this topic. Instead, why don't you talk to people who do use it on a regular basis every day instead of dipping their toes in once every 6 years.

Re:Buggy Browsers

[ILikeRed]

SuperBanana wrote:

... so I installed the nvidia driver package.

No, you should have said:
so I got rid of the opensource driver, (and my freedom) and installed the closed source nvidia driver package.

Please stop blaming FOSS software for the troubles caused by you purchasing hardware from crappy companies like nvidia who refuse to support your hardware purchases by either releasing open source drivers for your hardware or even releasing the hardware specs for your purchases.

Thanks!

In case you did not know, this is mostly funny because it was exactly this issue of closed source drivers that caused RMS to start the Free Software Foundation. (Actually it was the driver to a Xerox printer - which makes the rant about open source printer drivers in the Register article so bitter for people who know the history.) The sooner Linux users stop buying such unsupported crap the sooner we will all have to stop suffering.

Re:Buggy Browsers

[Evil Adrian]

A single person could never create, or pay for, every single piece of software they might need to use in this day and age.

Excuse me? I need:
* An operating system (Microsoft Windows XP)
* DigiDesign Pro Tools
* Microsoft Office
* Adobe Photoshop
* Textpad
* Quicken

To get my work done. I paid for all of those. Maybe a no-job-having 12 year old can't afford all of the software they "need", but it is ridiculously farfetched to say that no one can.

Second of all, sure, maybe no single person could create all of that software. That's why there are software companies that hire developers to create the software and sell it to you -- because there is a market for it!

What you can't do is continue to sell crap. Crap can be defined as software that doesn't work, can't be made to work, and can't be returned. THAT is exactly what the commercial software industry is. You buy a program and half the time it doesn't work well enough to acomplish the things the box claimed it could do. So.. return it and try something else.. oops that's right. They won't take software returns. You can't see the source code so you can't fix it. You're just fucked.

OK. Following your definition... none of the software that I listed is crap. It all works as advertised. My computer never crashes. I never have problems rendering artwork, recording music, typing things up and printing, or managing my finances. If you are one of those people that is stuck in the 90's pointing out how terrible Windows 95 is, you need to take a good long look at Windows XP and Windows Server 2003. They work as advertised, they are reliable, stable, and easy to use.

Sounds like a lot more work for the buck until you consider that the customer will help improve, document, and support your product.

The problem here is that you assume all of your customers want to help improve, document, and support your product. Most people do not want to buy software, and then fix bugs themselves and report them back to you. They view it as the developers job to fix any bugs that are found, not offer solutions themselves. If my car has a faulty exhaust system, it isn't my responsibility to implement a fix, document it, and send it off to the car company -- that's their job! My job is to drive the car!

I REALLY say this to hardware companies. Make your product with good, open source, drivers (or well documented specifications) and I'll buy your products...

Most other people say "make it work easily". That is why most people use Windows, where they can plug in their printer, mouse, video card, etc. and it usually works. If it doesn't, they pop in a disc, click "Next", and the drivers install.

Don't get me wrong, I see the advantages of open source, but you are crazy if you think that just because that's what you want, that's what everyone wants. "Open source" doesn't even have an easy-to-use windowing system, yet Open Source advocates keep screaming about how much better it is. Until regular people can use it, it's just not good enough.

Re:Buggy Browsers

[Intrigued]

At the karma risk of agreeing with a post...

I absolutely concure!

I just took back a brand new HP scanner because it wouldn't talk to my Linux and I bought a comparable priced Epson because they open up their specs to the public.

The message to hardware manufacturers is simple - we want to give you money for hardware - please include the information to use your hardware on whatever system we have. I don't need the 3 cd's of software included in your packaging, just give me the interface specs handwritten on a napkin in the package and I will happily give you my money! Please, one manufacturer, dump your licensing purchases and software design overhead and try releasing a product with full specs, maybe some rough interface code, and see how fast the open source community makes interfaces for every OS available (even the more popular ones)

Re:Buggy Browsers

[tehshen]

The reason Firefox kicks IE's arse dispite being made by people of similar talent is because IE is 3 YEARS OLD and Firefox 1.5 came out YESTERDAY.

And tell me, whose fault is it that IE is stagnating? I want a better browser, I'm not going to say "IE sucks, but it's old, so that's ok" because that is nonsense.

Re:Buggy Browsers

[RedHat Rocky]

Of course, the manufacturers, especially HP, can't do this as then you would find out how little their hardware actually does and how much they leech off your system.

Re:Buggy Browsers

[RedHat Rocky]

The REAL problem is there aren't "customers" and "developers". There are only users. Some of those users know how to code, some of those users only know how to complain.

Seriously think about this. Complaining gets you no where, sponsoring code or learning to do it is much more useful. At some point users need to invest in their software, whether it's money, time or skull sweat.

I see your complaint and raise you a whine!

Re:Buggy Browsers

[16K Ram Pack]

Is this okay?

No, it's not. But the people looking after this aren't earning. Put yourself in their shoes. If I was on this project, and I wanted a media player to work, I'd fix it and release it. If however, a media player wasn't an issue to me, why should I fix it? So I can keep everyone who isn't paying my bills happy? Pay for it to be fixed, do it yourself, or accept it as is. You are asking a lot from a project that has cost you nothing.

Yes, because users complain about it! But, I forgot, user complaints are ignored.... So become a coder, you l4m0r, and solve it yourself! It will take only a couple of months up to several years (depending on the experience) to understand all the Linux interna from scratch, but people aren't supposed to spend their time with anything else than digging through Linux internals, right?

Not what I'm saying at all. What I am saying is: Donate or fix it. Maybe even get involved in a capacity where you contribute something back which means that you become part of the team and get listened to. And how many people are actually complaining about this issue you have?

Because they promised it on their ads (website counts as advertisement)?

So? They don't owe you anything. What are you going to do? Quit using it? They'll miss you. Find another distro and move on.

Re:Buggy Browsers

[wolf31o2]

Ask yourself this as well: when was the last time an open-source project you help out with surveyed its users to find out what was most important to THEM?

About 24 hours ago.

http://article.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.releng /375

I also did it about 36 weeks ago.

http://article.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.releng /174

In fact, it is very common for us to do this between all of our releases. We take these feature requests, along with the bug reports generated between the release, and try to work towards resolving every last one that we can before we release.

Re:Buggy Browsers

[Jackmn]

It really doesn't matter if it beats out Windows. Honestly, who cares?

If people are willing to subject themselves to the pains of Windows licence restrictions, then that's their own problem. It is not the problem of OSS developers.

It's useful to those working on it, and people willing to put in a little effort. That is all that matters.

Re:Buggy Browsers

[MikeFM]

I do have experience as an OEM. What your talking about isn't practical for even a midsize dealer. All in all it'd be much cheaper for the manufacturer to open the specs or drivers than it is for the average dealer to do so. For the investment required for a dealer it'd be cheaper to develop your own product in many cases.

Maybe if you're talking Walmart or Amazon levels of volume it'd be easy. I highly doubt an order for even 5000 units would get you much. It'd take a pretty big amount of leverage to get the information and a lot more to get permission to release that information to the public at large. Not very likely for a small new dealer. I doubt I could get a bank loan for enough money to buy 5,000,000 units of much of anything.

Re:Buggy Browsers

[ilyaaohell]

Ok, so how about instead saying, "IE sucks BECAUSE it's old, so instead I will compare Firefox to a more recent piece of proprietary software called Opera?"

Re:Buggy Browsers

[Jason Hood]

So let me get this straight, if you are a user and do not plan to contribute you are not allowed to complain or point out faults. For after all you could fix them, even if you are an 80 year old grandma who can barely write emails. Everyone has the right to suggest changes, but they may not have the ability.

Sorry, I dont buy it. If people write software for the public domain than the public domain has every right to promote it or critisize it with absolutely no formal contributions. If OOS projects were smart (a few are), they would realize that these comments whether positive or negative could be used to better the project. The users that need to be polled are not the ones that know how to use IRC, forums or write their own code. Its the real users. KDE for example should have regular polling and provide a easy to use web based mechanism that allows regular users to see concepts and give feedback on what they want or need. Programmers do not make good usability analysts since they are be definition technical and have the skillset to avoid usability issues. Programmers should be implementors, not necessarily designers or dictators. Unfortunately, programmers are notoriously ego centric. This is no different in the open source community, however there are many notable exceptions.

By the way, I use an open source OS on my desktop every day.

Re:Buggy Browsers

[ilyaaohell]

I concede that your first point is true. I reject your second point as it is based on an open source VS Microsoft debate. Everybody on Slashdot LOVES fighting Microsoft, and for the reasons you cited that is often a very appropriate response. HOWEVER, this debate is not centered exclusively around Microsoft. Almost everyone who replied to my posts keeps dragging Microsoft into it. They're changing the discussion from open source VS proprietary to competition VS monopoly. One would be stupid toargue that a monopoly produces better software than competition.

The only reason Microsoft is involved in this discussion AT ALL is because they create well-known programs. If you want a true debate on the merits of open and prorietary development, consider a comparison between Firefox and Opera instead. I keep bringing out this point in reply after reply after reply, and people either ignore it, try to go around it ("Well, you can't ignore Internet Explorer because everyone uses it." -- THIS ISN'T THE POINT OF THIS DISCUSSION!) or start modding me down.

Re:Buggy Browsers

[DrugCheese]

Why not ask yourself, what have other (read Microsoft) OS vendors done in the last 6 years? .... kindergarten themed GUIs on top an old NT kernel ...

Thats the only thing I can think of.

Re:Buggy Browsers

[ilyaaohell]

A worker's philosophy on life, the universe, and everything matters not when it comes to a product they create. There are only two things worth considering if you are to debate the merits of the finished product:

1) Expertise and professionalism of the worker. (I believe both open source and proprietary developers are equivalent here.)

2) How the workers function as a group (and lead) to deliver their finished product. (For this point, both camps have SIGNIFICANT disadvantages and SIGNIFICANT advantages, and one would be stupid to say that either camp is the end-all be-all of perfection.)

Re:Buggy Browsers

[cloudmaster]

You didn't pay for all that software. You paid for one license to use the software. If you paid for it, you'd be able to redstribute as many copies as you want, and charge money for that. But no, the company that *made* the software paid for it. I'm pretty confident that it took more than $200 to make Windows XP, and that you only paid a small fraction of that cost.

Compare that to a car or box of cereal, which you pay for in entirety, plus a profit margin.

Re:Buggy Browsers

[ilyaaohell]

"I don't get what you are saying here. Are you saying firefox is better because it's been around longer?"

No. I'm saying that Firefox is better because it had three years of continual development while IE was stagnant. For this reason, the comparison isn't fair (the fact that IE is so widely used is IRRELEVANT to our theoretical discussion on the merits of open source VS proprietary code). This is why I keep saying that the best comparison would be Firefox and Opera. Yes, monopolies are bad. No, this discussion is not about monopolies.

As for your very last point, that is exactly what the article was saying. Open source developers choose to obsess over very particular things while neglecting many other things. Those things that they obsess over result in things like high security, up-to-the-minute advances in underlying computing technologies, etc. Those things that they end up neglecting as a result are the areas where proprietary developers usually thrive and pick up the slack.

Re:Buggy Browsers

[cloudmaster]

As long as they tell me how to do the leeching, I can't say that I give a damn. In fact, I'd buy one, and I don't really even need a new printer too badly. My computer has a processor capable of doing way more than I ask from it, asking it to control a printer wouldn't be a big strain.

Re:Buggy Browsers

[MikeFM]

I must not have been clear enough. Nobody could afford to pay to have developed every piece of software they might need.

Even in your case though I doubt you could afford your software if many pieces you use without knowing it weren't opensource or otherwise free. The Internet would be ungodly expensive if every bit of software that drives it was commercial. We're talking $.10/min just to use the network and a charge for using every website. Probably something like AOL, Compuserve, etc used to be where every email you sent was $.25. It'd really add up quickly. I have dozens of free websites on my servers. I couldn't afford to make them free to others if I had to pay per site I hosted for a commercial webserver or OS.

No single company, not even Microsoft, could have created all the software people need.

If you're claiming you never have problems with your software you're either in denial, live in some void where you don't do anything with your software, or most likely you just are so used to those problems that you no longer notice them. XP does crash and even more often it gets bogged down by processes not working properly - not third-party software only either - Windows Explorer and built-in Windows programs like ping are some I see hang and leak memory a lot. Funny that I didn't see being infected with spyware, software crashing, and data loss advertised on the boxes. Given that those are on the box I'll give to you that all commercial software runs as advertised.

Customers each assist in product improvements in their own way. A few may not want to be involved at all, and with opensource that is totally allowed, but most customers want a problem to be fixed when they report it. They don't want to have to pay for a new version in the hopes of getting that fix. THAT is a customer providing useful feedback. A smaller fraction of customers do want more active involvement. They may write docs on how to use the software (this happens for both open and closed source software), they will provide patches, etc. The small percentage of users that want to do this is usually enough to help a lot.

If a car has a problem and the user has no way of reporting it and getting a response then they will be frustrated. Again for the majority that is all they want to do but they do want to be able to do that. Again, the few will be of the type that they'll enjoy fixing the problem and letting others know how it can be done. Many others will enjoy just adding on cool new features to their car and letting others know what they did and how. Or maybe you've not noticed the HUGE market for after market and custom mods for cars. Very few people will just let the car break and be content not to have any involvement in doing something about it.

Have you used Windows? It isn't easy. I have almost everyone I know constantly asking me to install this, fix that, etc because it isn't easy for them. Granted it is easier to add drivers for odd ball hardware because usually none exists at all for Linux. Hard to add what doesn't exist. Most drivers in Linux are easier though as you plug the device in and the drivers are either there or can be added in seconds with no wondering if you'll have to install it through a wizard or some other weird ass interface (why driver provides can't decide on a single interface for installation I dunno) or fixing incompatibilites with other software. The Linux ones require more knowledge up front (because the quickstart manual rarely has Linux directions) but are quicker and easier to do if you have that knowledge. No stupid reboots required for Linux installation either. ;)

Most users don't care about open specs and drivers or open software because they want everything easy now even at the expense of it being really hard later. Ooops my scanner no longer works because I switched from 2000 to XP.. totally screwed now. Bitch bitch bitch. Ooops I have 10 years of financial records in this proprietary format that only works with this program that has been discon

Re:Buggy Browsers

[Zantetsuken]

the only thing I can think of MS office does that OOo doesnt is a good auto-correct (minor feature) which is simply somebody developing for OOo with no life entering a dictionary into a database, however, OOo does recognize which ones you've spelled wrong and offer to auto-complete them later on the other side, one feature OOo does have I haven't seen (at least noticed) in MS Office is the ability to one-click convert the document into a PDF (horrible memory leech format fars I care)

Re:Buggy Browsers

[MikeFM]

The people that could read the specs already know. I don't care if my printer I just paid $200 for only has $5 of parts in it or that my new video cards achieves it's speed by switching into a special mode when I start Doom 6. These are things I expect. I just want their damn product to work when, where, and how I need it to work and that means open specs so if I need to use it somewhere or somehow they can't be expected to design for that I can make the needed changes.

Yes, I bought my car in San Diego knowing it didn't come with snow tires. I'm okay with that so long as I can put snow tires, chains, or whatever on it should I need to take it to Maine. Same thing.

Re:Buggy Browsers

[ilyaaohell]

I entirely agree with everything you said... except that I continue to think that a comparison between Firefox and Opera is much more fair than between Firefox and IE6.

Re:Buggy Browsers

[revengance]

How much of these actually interest me? If I only need a small set of functionalities, why do m$ has to shove those useless (at least to me) features down my throat and have the audacity to make me paid for them? On top of that, from past experiences, there are *so many* potential exploit just by looking at the list of functions alone. If I have any complains about open source, it is now getting too bloated. I think OSS should focus on simplity and just provide a means to give advance users only what they actually need.

Re:Buggy Browsers

[Zantetsuken]

this idiot doesnt realize that Linux isnt the only open source software out there, theres firefox (we all know how much of a relief it was when it was first released, what a break from IE, and how much it has grown and is so MUCH insanely more adaptable than IE), and the OpenOffice.org "productivity suite" (it just feels better than MS office), and the GIMP if you guys haven't heard, there were articals a few months ago about the whole state of Massachusets switching to OOo (last I heard, now they got some idiots in the state govt that dont even have the authority to do so trying to keep it from happening), whats that try to tell you about OOo the only thing I can think of MS office does that OOo doesnt is a good auto-correct (minor feature) which is simply somebody developing for OOo with no life entering a dictionary into a database, however, OOo does recognize which ones you've spelled wrong and offer to auto-complete them later on the other side, one feature OOo does have I haven't seen (at least noticed) in MS Office is the ability to one-click convert the document into a PDF (horrible memory leech format fars I care)

Re:Buggy Browsers

[tehshen]

Nothing wrong with that.

Re:Buggy Browsers

[ilyaaohell]

My whole point was that Open Source has advantages AND disadvantages. It always will. It will always play catch-up in particular areas of software design (as it has been for at least a decade now) and it will always be far, far AHEAD of proprietary software in yet other areas of software design (Stability, efficiency, accuracy, interoperability, i18n, accessibility).

People like you simply baffle me. No, Open Source development will NEVER create software that is, in EVERY WAY, ahead of proprietary software. You know why this is impossible? Because it takes more than programmers to create software. It takes a research budget, graphic departments, focus groups, customer surveys, management, etc. Things that most open source projects lack. They create things that they want (leading to some highly advanced feature sets). When they look at other areas, they become arrogant and simply don't care. ("Who needs flashy GUIs? Command lines are way more efficient.")

Important note: all my points would be entirely irrelevant if said "open source" software was developed in-house by an actual business entity, as I know a few projects already are.

Re:Buggy Browsers

[ProZachar]

I think you're talking to a brick wall. Along the way, it seems some members of the open source community forgot that if you want people to use your widget you have to be responsive to those people.

Some members of the OS community(SMOTOSC): We want people to have the freedom to use their computer however they choose! Our software helps them do that. We like it when people can use our software; it makes us feel warm and fuzzy on the inside.

User: Yeah, that's great! By the way, Program X doesn't do task Y correctly, could you fix it?

SMOTOSC: FIX IT YOURSELF OR SHUT THE HELL UP! YOU DIDN'T GIVE US ANY MONEY!

User: I thought you liked it when people used your software and that it made you feel warm and fuzzy...

SMOTOSC: You gave us no money. We don't have to listen to your tripe.

User: ...

If you want more users, you don't get them by treating your existing users like crap. I thought that was common knowledge.

(And yes, I realize that not all members of the OS community act like this)

Re:Buggy Browsers

[Jackmn]

There's a difference between constructive criticism and complaining.

If you receive something for free, then you are within your rights to offer criticism for the project. However, you have no right to complain unless you are giving something back to the project. If you hire some developers then you have every right to complain that they are not meeting your requirements.

Re:Buggy Browsers

[JamesWJohnson]

I know that proprietary software companies are capable of making excellent stuff. However, to me it doesn't look like there is a proprietary alternative to Microsoft that stands a chance of breaking their monopoly lock on the market just yet. When Apple releases their OS for the i386 architecture, maybe some of the OEM's will start offering PC's with OS X on them, but until then it's pretty much Windows or Linux/BSD.

My interest in open source, other than the fact that it's such a good development model, is that the cost and quality of it will either make it the predominant solution, or it will force MS to write better stuff in order to compete.

Re:Buggy Browsers

[Jason Hood]

However, you have no right to complain unless you are giving something back to the project.


And that is exactly where I dissagree. If people are dissatisfied with a product they have every right to complain about it since they are using "public software". My point is that developers too frequently disregard complaints and give the typical response rather than catalog and create metrics. This is a severe problem with the OSS model. Complaints and Contrstuctive Criticism are often the same thing. There is usually no good way for actual users (people that only use software) to voice their concerns for many projects and even if there was, developers are normally too hard headed to listen with the two most common excuses - "Fix it yourself" or "give me money". Not everyone can code and no one likes to have money extorted from them. If people complain, its because they care in one way or another. Otherwise they would just not move on and not say a word. As a developer, the latter is absolutely the worst case senario - people not telling me when something isnt up to par.

In my opinion, OSS has never been able to break to mold due to this simple fact. Most of the truely successful OSS projects are commercialized (or at least heavy influence such as Qt, firefox, khtml, evolution). Notable exceptions include amarok, kopete, gthumb and gaim. Nautilus and Debian (2 years ago) are easy examples of what I am talking about.

Re:Buggy Browsers

[PitaBred]

So, what you're saying is that graphic designers and UI designers are greedy, self-serving bastards, while open source programmers are benevolent, generous people with their free time? I'll agree with that.
Or maybe it's just that UI and graphic design is hard. A lot of open source is actually designed quite well. Just not intuitive, or what you'd expect from your previous experiences. Takes a moment to see the brilliance of how KDE's ioslaves are hooked up. They seem like a toy, a useless feature until you've actually used them.
I'm sure IE seems nice, but it's "features" are shit like the blink tag, and ActiveX, and opening your system to anyone who can code some nasty JavaScript. That's a real win over Firefox there. Not to mention that Firefox is user extensible, whereas IE isn't, not even to the same degree.
And I'm not sure the vaunted "tabbed" interface will help a lot in Office. Especially if they organize things like they do in the rest of Windows (Why the fuck is the computer network identification info under the My Computer settings? Everything else network related is under My Network Places!)

Re:Buggy Browsers

[einhverfr]

I am not an OOo fanboy. Indeed, I avoid OOo whenever I can. Personally I think that the office suite paradigm is deeply flawed and harms productivity. And I am not even sure I know what you are trying to show by merely listing Office 2003's features.

However, for the vast majority of my customers OOo does everything they need. Need a better spreadsheet? Don't even look at Excel. Gnumeric is technically so far ahead of Excel it isn't funny. Gnumeric is far and away the best spreadsheet I have ever used. And I am starting to like Abiword 2.0 better the more I use it (though for heavy duty document processing needs, nothing beats VIM and LaTeX for productivity and maintainability of huge documents).

But to be frank, StarOffice 5.2 sucked. It was hard to use, way too context-sensitive, and ugly. Sure you could get things done but it was not peasent. OOo 1.0 was a *huge* step in the right direction (probably like the jump from Word 5.0 to Word 97). OOo 2.0 is another large step in the right direction, if you think that office suites are what you want to be using.

Another important thing to note about your list is that 14 of your items are about Outlook, and no such equivanet is provided with OOo. For a better example, I would suggest looking at something like OOo vs. MSOffice without including these areas. You can then basically assume that one can add an alternative program set like Mozilla Thunderbird and Sunbird and compare them that way.

Also, OOo has many of these features too. So... since this is not a comparison matrix, it shows nothing except what MS says Office 2003 can do.

My point was and is that market leaders are often able to leverage more resources for further development than competitors. THis means that in order to compete you either have to have a *much* better at leveraging existing resources of have a truly disruptive technology. The fact that OOo seems to be catching up to the capabilities that customers want and ask for seems to prove that they are at least one of these things. In another five years, it will be interesting to have this conversation again.

Re:Buggy Browsers

[einhverfr]

You have a point. However, I think you missed mine.

Resources are required to further develop software. Analyzing pace of development can tell you a lot about where a product is going, how many people think it does meet their needs, etc. So if we compare the pace of development in OOo from StarOffice 5.2 to OOo 1.0 to OOo 2.0 to that of Word Perfect or MS Office during the same period, it can tell us a lot about the relative success that these players are having at meeting market needs.

Re:Buggy Browsers

[Nevyn]

Open Source authors tend to be rather bad about listening to their user base- the snotty answer is "if YOU want it to do X, then code it yourself", and many times reported bugs that are annoying current users are put off or ignored, often because the development version is almost ready to go stable, and fixing the bug would be "a pain".

Open Source is not a religion, Open Source is not a social way of life and Open Source is not a development methodology ... all it signifies is that you can see and alter the source to some degree Many companies provide services for Open Source projects, and I can guarantee that if you goto Sun, Novel or Red Hat with a large pile of money and say "I want X" they will be happy to provide that service for you. If you only want to spend a small amount of money, then expect similar treatment from any proprietary software company ... of course with the later you have no other options if they refuse.

Oh ... you meant you wanted it for zero cost, like maybe you imagine this slave state of Open Source people where we all jump to do your bidding? That's certainly an interesting perspective, and I can see how you get disappointed.

And, yes, if you ask nicely for a feature that can be implemented well in an Open Source project you'll often get it for relativly zero cost (just the price of asking nicely and waiting) ... however this isn't the same as paying for a service, or expecting a slave state to do your bidding.

Re:Buggy Browsers

[killjoe]

OO opens up super fast for me because I pre-load it.

I haven't run into the other problems you mentioned.

Re:Buggy Browsers

[Ambassador Kosh]

So would that be similar to a footnote and endnote bug that has existed since word 2.0 through word 2000 at least? I know it has been reported many times and I have even found documentation on it on the ms web site at one point.

My point is that I have run into exactly that same problem with proprietary software. By your logic since ms is a proprietary software company and they have obligations to users and would have fixed the bug but that is not the case.

How about the IE rendering engine? I am not sure it is possible to end up any buggier then it has been. Look up things like the "peekaboo" bug in IE and see how long they have been in there and reported and still not fixed.

Go play a massive multiplayer game some time and see some of the bugs that have been in those games for years. You pay a monthly fee to play those games and many of them are very buggy and rarely do the bugs get fixed unless they are so bad that they stop people from playing.

You are holding open source software up to a standard that proprietary software does not meet either. I don't know why you are assuming that proprietary vendors actually do care that much about their customers and fix all of these issues but my experience has been that when I report bugs they are far more likely to get fixed in a free software project then a proprietary one. That is not to say that all of them are fixed, just that I have had a higher percentage fixed in free software.

Re:Buggy Browsers

[Weedlekin]

Then why bother claiming that it's for end users and that it has free support? If the Ubuntu guys just want to piss around, then they should tell people that in the first place:

Ubuntu Linux

We put this distro together because we get hard-ons doing that sort of thing.
Anyone who was thinking of contacting us with a suggestion or a complaint
should consider that sad, pathetic individuals usually become extremely hostile
when responding to any form of criticism, no matter how mild. Add to this the
fact that we are also seething with resentment because we have to do all this
quality work for free and pay our way by flipping burgers, while talentless bozos
are earning fat salaries at Microsoft and Apple, and you will see why learning C
and fixing any problems yourself is preferable to interacting with such profoundly
disturbed excuses for people.

We hope you enjoy Ubuntu Linux,

the Ubuntu Team.

Re:Buggy Browsers

[rtechie]

No, it's not. But the people looking after this aren't earning. Put yourself in their shoes. If I was on this project, and I wanted a media player to work, I'd fix it and release it. If however, a media player wasn't an issue to me, why should I fix it? So I can keep everyone who isn't paying my bills happy? Pay for it to be fixed, do it yourself, or accept it as is. You are asking a lot from a project that has cost you nothing.

IOW, a REQUIREMENT for using OSS is the ability to code and install and design every single feature of every single piece of OSS, otherwise you can't complain, make bug reports, etc.

This is crap. The "reward" for the programmer in your example is FAME. He gets to hear people say "thank you" for coding the software. He gets to brag about it to his friends. And (pay close attention to this one) he gets to put it on his resume. If you don't think having a reputation of working on popular and successful open source projects doesn't help you get programming jobs, think again.

Users don't give a rat's ass about the "wonder of OSS", nor should they. If you wish to push OSS as a religion, you had best make it attractive.

Re:Buggy Browsers

[rtechie]

I installed Windows a while ago. After the installation was finished, I noticed that the resolution was something like 640x480 with 256 colors! Drivers for the vid-card weren't installed at all, so there was ZERO hope for 3D-acceleration. Sound-card wasn't installed either. I had drivers for the NIC on CD (luckily), so I could install it offline so I could afterwards hunt for drivers online. I also had to sloinstall AGP-drivers, chipset-drivers and the like. All that was handled automatically in Linux.

Who made your video card? Ati, Nvidia, S3, Trident, Via, Intel, and most of the other major chipset vendors have downloadable drivers for almost everything on Windows Update, these automatically install if you let the driver wizard do so. Maybe you're using a piece of very new and/or obscure hardware. If so, how is that the fault of Windows?

And if you don't think this isn't a problem on Linux, think again. I've found only ONE recent distribution that will install on my home PC, Gentoo, and that's only through an FTP install. Everything else I've tried (Mandrivia, Redhat, Slackware, Ubuntu, Debian, Linspire, Xandros, Suse) pukes during the install because it won't see my RAID array, despite the fact it's a Promise card that has been available WITH LINUX DRIVERS for over 5 years. And god forbid you might want to install using JFS, XFS, or another non-shitty filesystem, all the installers I've seen insist on ext2 (again, except Gentoo).

Well, I can have fully-functioning (with drivers and apps installed) Linux-installation in about 30 minutes, whereas with Windows I need to hunt for drivers and apps, because the post-install system is 100% un-usable. The system also ships with lots of great software, whereas Windows does not (so Linux can be used for actual work right after the installation, whereas Windows cannot).

So now "bundling" is a GOOD thing? Microsoft gets slammed either way.

latest hardware is supported out-of-the-box, whereas W2K does not (I need to feed it driver-FLOPPIES during installation so it will work with my SATA-drive. Since I don't have floppy-drive anymore, that might cause me problems in the future).

Apparently, according to you, Windows should include drivers for products that don't exist yet. Unless you can name me a Linux distribution released in 1999 that had SATA support.

Re:Buggy Browsers

[rtechie]

Ok. How much better was Office 2000 compared to (the proprietary) StarOffice 5.2? How much better is Office 2003 compared to OpenOffice.org 2.0? What is the trend here?

As a basic office suite there is not much difference, but the Windows world has moved on. Nowadays all the big Office features are about communication, server integration and document collaboration, all features that are incredibly important in the corporate world and where Office is light years ahead of the competition, and none of them work without a Windows server backend.

And remember that it is (shock! surprise!) the corporate world that drives office suites. MS really doesn't give a fuck what home or academic users want in an office suite, and they shouldn't because such users will barely use most of the functionality anyway.

Re:Buggy Browsers

[16K Ram Pack]

Looks like you missed the part about "Pay for it to be fixed".

I'm not pushing it as a religion. I'm trying to be realistic about people's expectations with regards to it.

Even if you are seeking fame, are you going to look after every single users needs? Of course not. You will look after a broad range of customer needs.

Re:Buggy Browsers

[killjoe]

"No. I'm saying that Firefox is better because it had three years of continual development while IE was stagnant. For this reason, the comparison isn't fair (the fact that IE is so widely used is IRRELEVANT to our theoretical discussion on the merits of open source VS proprietary code)."

It's completely relevent. The fact that IE has been stagnant for years has everything to do with open source vs closed source development processes.

Re:Buggy Browsers

[Jackmn]

Complaints and Contrstuctive Criticism are often the same thing.

Complaints are demands, or just flat out insults. Constructive criticism is simply politely pointing out any issues or problems, and moving on if your request doesn't get implemented.

Complaining / bitching simply gets you ignored. Nobody wants to deal with asshats, and considering these people are working on their own free time, they don't have to.

Re:Buggy Browsers

[ilyaaohell]

"It's completely relevent. The fact that IE has been stagnant for years has everything to do with open source vs closed source development processes."

No. That's relevant to the discussion between monopolies vs competition. Closed source development does not lead to monopolies. Microsoft is in it's position because of numerous historical developments, they are the exception. There is only one Microsoft in the world. This is an entirely different debate. There are THOUSANDS of closed source development companies in the world, many of which compete with each other. The great majority of them routinely update their software. They are the majority, and therefore they are far more relevant than the exception that is Microsoft.

There is a downright obsession on Slashdot to turn EVERY argument around on it's head to somehow shove Microsoft right in the middle of it. It annoys me so much. It's impossible to have an intelligent debate here without resorting to childish "Micro$suck" crap.

Re:Buggy Browsers

[Rick and Roll]

Got no replies. =(

That's surprising. If it were OpenBSD, you would have got an off-list email from Theo De Raadt asking you to stop wasting the developers' time.

Re:Buggy Browsers

[10Ghz]

Who made your video card?

NVIDIA

Ati, Nvidia, S3, Trident, Via, Intel, and most of the other major chipset vendors have downloadable drivers for almost everything on Windows Update, these automatically install if you let the driver wizard do so. Maybe you're using a piece of very new and/or obscure hardware. If so, how is that the fault of Windows?

It's a NVIDIA GeForce 7900, so it's not obscure. And the point is that after the installation of the OS is done, the system is not usable, I have to download additional drivers. The original poster complained that after he had installed Ubuntu, he had to install drivers for his vid-card. Well, after I have installed Windows, I have to install drivers for my vid-card. What's the difference? And, at least in my case, the drivers were installed in Linux for my vid-card. It used the free drivers that shipped with X.org by default. If I wanted the binary-drivers, I had to install them separately. But I did have fully working desktop with high resolution and millions of colors, whereas W2K was stuck at VGA.

And if you don't think this isn't a problem on Linux, think again. I've found only ONE recent distribution that will install on my home PC

And I have seen computers where Windows would not install. So what's yout point? Linux sucks because on your particular machine only Gentoo seems to work?

So now "bundling" is a GOOD thing? Microsoft gets slammed either way.

Well, MS COULD bundle software that was not made by them. Red Hat is not hell-bent on bundling only "made by Red Hat"-software. In fact, they will happily bundle third-party software. But, you are right in a way. Microsoft is a monopoly, and that means limitations to the things they can ship with Windows. Monopoly has it's advantages, and it's disadvantages. This is one of the disadvantages. Tough.

And, again: you are missing the point. The question was: "what does modern Linux do better than W2K does?". Default functionality and installed apps is one of those advantages Linux has. It's completely irrelevant why Linux is better. the only thing that matters is that it is better.

Or is this something like out of Monty Python? "Besides hardware-support, functionality, performance, user interface, installed applications and stability, how exactly is modern Linux better than Windows 2000?". "It's free?". "Oh free... SHUT UP!"

Apparently, according to you, Windows should include drivers for products that don't exist yet. Unless you can name me a Linux distribution released in 1999 that had SATA support.

You are missing the point. The original poster asked things that modern Linux-distro does better than W2K does. Like it or not, hardware-support is one of those things. He didn't ask us to compare W2K to contemporary Linux. He asked us to compare W2K to MODERN Linux.

And yes, W2K could accept CD's besides floppies. But for some weird reason it insists on floppies. CD's are out of the question. Would it been really that hard to support driver-CD's besides floppies?

Re:Buggy Browsers

[killjoe]

"There is a downright obsession on Slashdot to turn EVERY argument around on it's head to somehow shove Microsoft right in the middle of it. It annoys me so much. It's impossible to have an intelligent debate here without resorting to childish "Micro$suck" crap."

OF course not. Microsoft is the enemy of linux. They have said so. Their aim is the destruction of open source (GPL particularly). Most people here love linux and love the ideals of the open source and the free software movements. Why would we be thinking kindly thoughts about a company who is bribing politicians to enact draconian laws, paying journalists to write crappy FUD articles about linux, paying research companies to lie about linux and calling us communists and anti american? In a nutshell they do indeed suck and I have a perfect right to tell the world they they do.

If you think it's hard to have a intelligent debate here go to gotdotnet.com or the Ms forums and see what they are like. Well strike that gotdotnet will erase posts that are critical of MS and the Ms forums frewuently won't even let them hit the web.

I'll put it another way. How many times has an astro turfer or a shill has called linux users zealots and religious bigots because they state that their windows machines crash more often then their linux machines?

Why is it all cool for Microsoft to call their enemies zealots, communists, and other crap, why is it OK for them to curse and throw chairs around but it's not OK for me to say that my windows machine crashes a alot and that MS is a sleazy, unethical, mean, dangerous and allaround SUCKY corporation run by slimy people?

Re:Buggy Browsers

[Viol8]

Umm , why not just have a keyboard for each machine? Who on earth
carries around a keyboard to plug into different machines??

Re:Buggy Browsers

[Viol8]

Thank you for proving my point. Though you're probably too stupid
to realise it.

Re:Buggy Browsers

[rtechie]

I think we're talking past each other, or maybe the question itself is the problem. You're comparing Win2k to MODERN Linux distributions, which I think is a little unfair. Linux has improved since 2000, but so has Windows. Most of your complaints have been addressed in WinXP.

And yes, W2K could accept CD's besides floppies. But for some weird reason it insists on floppies. CD's are out of the question. Would it been really that hard to support driver-CD's besides floppies?

Um, Win2K does indeed support driver CDs. The only exception is that during install if you need a third-party driver for your storage controller you can install it using a floppy, but oddly, only a floppy (technically you can substitute a CD-ROM or a text file, but only if you're clever). This is due to some sort of "lowest common denominator" driver spec by Microsoft (so you can install on systems without CD-ROMs, presumably). Considering that this is ONLY during install and only affects odd storage controllers, it's not the end of the world. It's an improvement over most Linux installers I've seen because at least adding a third-party driver during install is an OPTION. This is EXACTLY why most flavors of Linux I've tried won't install on my home system.

Re:Buggy Browsers

[10Ghz]

You see, we have these little gizmos available these days...

Re:Buggy Browsers

[10Ghz]

I think we're talking past each other, or maybe the question itself is the problem. You're comparing Win2k to MODERN Linux distributions, which I think is a little unfair. Linux has improved since 2000, but so has Windows. Most of your complaints have been addressed in WinXP.

I thought that the original poster was asking for comparison between modern Linux and Windows 2000, but it seems now on second re-read that he was talking about the year 2000, not Windows 2000. So it's my mistake.

Um, Win2K does indeed support driver CDs. The only exception is that during install if you need a third-party driver for your storage controller you can install it using a floppy

And I was talking about installation of the OS! I even said in one of my posts how I installed my NIC from a driver-CD after the OS-installation. I'm well away that W2K supports driver-CD's but NOT DURING THE INSTALLATION OF THE OS. And that was what I said!

Considering that this is ONLY during install and only affects odd storage controllers

The "odd storage controller" was the VIA-controller on my consumer-lever motherboard... Hardly anything exotic.

It's an improvement over most Linux installers I've seen because at least adding a third-party driver during install is an OPTION. This is EXACTLY why most flavors of Linux I've tried won't install on my home system.

IIRC I have seen Linux-installers with options for third-party driver-CD's. And in any case, those drivers are usually fetched automatically from the net during the installation.

Re:Buggy Browsers

[Viol8]

So you carry a monitor around with you as well do you? Still don't
see why you have to carry a keyboard around with you but each to
their own.

Re:Buggy Browsers

[10Ghz]

*sigh*... I'll try to keep this simple, OK? I have one monitor, keyboard and mouse. And I have two computers. The keyboard and the mouse are connected to the two computers via KVM. And the display has two inputs, with one computer (a Linux/W2K tower-PC) is connected to one input, and the Mac is connected to the other input. That display is on my work-desk, as is the keyboard, mouse and the Mac. The PC is under the desk. I do not carry the monitor (or the keyboard, or the mouse, or the PC's) around, they all stay put. No matter which computer I use, I sit by my desk, so I don't have to carry anything around. I switch between the two computers with a button on the display, and a button on the KVM.

Clear now? Or do I have to draw you a picture?

"Do you carry a monitor around with you as well do you?" Sheesh. I really don't understand what makes you think that I'm required to carry ANYTHING around.

Re:Buggy Browsers

[ilyaaohell]

Thank you for proving EXACTLY what I was talking about. You attempted to push a debate between the underlying nature of proprietary and open source software development paradigms even FURTHER into a Windows vs Linux flamefest. You even dedicated an additional 4 paragraphs to this cause. Do you even remember what the original topic of discussion here was?

I won't be wasting any more time here on you. Good day, sir.

Re:Buggy Browsers

[killjoe]

Bullshit. I know exactly what the topic was about. You yourself bought the fact that there is a lot of anti Ms sentiment here and I was simply pointing out that there is a perfectly good reason for that. Now you want to pretend you never bought MS into it.

So to recap.

1) IE stagnated because it was closed source. SOmetimes it's in the interest of corporations to let their code rot (see netmanage and ecco for another example). If it was open source it would not have rotted like that.

2) MS sucks. They are slimy, unethical, sleazy corporation who does an amazing amount of vile things. They are a vile corporation run by vile men. They have also taken upom themselves to destroy the free software movement often resorting to the worst tactic imaginable like funding a bogus lawsuit against IBM by SCO and paying some right wing thinktank to say that linus stole the code for linux.

Both of these are well established facts. I am sorry the facts are so biased against you. Well not really sorry.

Re:Buggy Browsers

[rtechie]

And I was talking about installation of the OS! I even said in one of my posts how I installed my NIC from a driver-CD after the OS-installation. I'm well away that W2K supports driver-CD's but NOT DURING THE INSTALLATION OF THE OS. And that was what I said!

This isn't true, BTW. You have to know what you're doing (like assigning drive letter A: to the CD-ROM drive) but you can use CD-ROMS to load those storage drivers. Or if you're doing an install off the network or hard drive you can put them in a special directory (this is typically what I do). You can do the same thing if you build a custom Windows CD.

Considering that this is ONLY during install and only affects odd storage controllers

The "odd storage controller" was the VIA-controller on my consumer-lever motherboard... Hardly anything exotic.

It was indeed odd in 1999. It's a SATA controller which didn't exist then. It's almost certainly supported in XPSP2 and if it's not then it's really, really new. Most manufacturers ship floppys with new motherboards for this reason. If you insist on using bleeding-edge storage hardware and running Win2k, buy yourself a USB floppy drive, $20.

Basically what you're saying is that the Windows installer should do an online check for updated software during the install process. Win2K doesn't do this, WinXP does. Progress.

IIRC I have seen Linux-installers with options for third-party driver-CD's. And in any case, those drivers are usually fetched automatically from the net during the installation.

I haven't, and I've installed a lot of Linux distributions. I've found lots of Linux distributions that will allow you to download "stuff" (rarely proper drivers) from the net during install, which doesn't do you any good if you're installing onto a system without an Internet connection. Actually, this feature has NEVER solved any of the driver problems I've had with Linux installation. Usually if it's not on the install CD/DVD it's not easily available, certainly not through the installer. What if you need a kernel patch? The only exception I've seen is FTP installs of "snapshots" (and Gentoo).

I know it seems like I'm harping on this, but it's just FUD. The installer, in particular the driver support for the installer, is one of the very BEST parts of Windows relative to most Linux installers. The only advantage most Linux installers have is granularity, which is completely unrelated to the issue we're discussing.

Wow, what an ass

[Zencyde]

Isn't it the responsibility of the hardware manufacturer to provide drivers? Perhaps I am just crazy...but aren't generic drivers a godsend in themselves?

Re:Wow, what an ass

[Leroy_Brown242]

It's the hardware manufacturer's responsibility to provide driver's for a minority operating system?

Re:Wow, what an ass

[Mistshadow2k4]

It should be, but it isn't. Almost all of the drivers for PC hardware for any other operating system were coded by others, not those working for the manufacturers themselves (although I've heard that a few these guys coded such drivers outside of company time, but this is a rare thing). Hardware compatibility is still a major hurdle for all other PC OSes; not just because of that, but because the companies themselves will not give out enough info on the specs of the hardware. So much of the time, someone coding a driver has to figure it's specs by observing it and making gueses.

Re:Wow, what an ass

[Halfbaked Plan]

If it were, I'd put an OS/2 Warp system up on my KVM switch in a heartbeat.

Re:Wow, what an ass

[J. T. MacLeod]

It could be argued, but honestly, all that's needed is a published specificatin or adhering to a known standard. Not that hard.

Re:Wow, what an ass

[Leroy_Brown242]

BeOS would live on in my world, that's for sure!

Re:Wow, what an ass

[MikeFM]

If they want my business then I'd say it is their responsibility to either make their product compatible with an existing standard, which a generic driver can support, or provide the information needed to make custom drivers for their product. They don't have to write the driver I need, they just need to let me write the driver I need.

There really is no reason for every damn product on the market to need a custom driver though. There should be one interface for a printer, one for a camera, one for a video card, one for a joystick, one for a modem, etc. The consumer needs to demand this. Not only will it give us choices as to what OS and software we use with these products but it'll also make computers a lot more stable. A lot of crashes and other common problems are the result of minor incompatibilities between different drivers on the system. Standard drivers can be well tested. A mish mash of random drivers can't be tested well at all.

Re:Wow, what an ass

[Osty]

There really is no reason for every damn product on the market to need a custom driver though. There should be one interface for a printer, one for a camera, one for a video card, one for a joystick, one for a modem, etc. The consumer needs to demand this.

There already are such standards: printer = postscript, camera = FAT (filesystem for flash memory), video card = VESA, joystick = USB HID, modem = Hayes, etc. The problem is that these either cost way too much (postscript printers, real hardware modems) to be viable in the current consumer market (different from the business market, which is why you should have no problem using multi-thousand dollar "enterprise" printers but can't use your $50 inkjet), or they don't let you use the advanced functionality of the device (video card, joystick). In the first case, consumers aren't going to go back to paying $500 for a printer or $100 for a modem when they can get a $50 printer and $10 modem that work with the 90%+ majority OS. In the second case, while you may get your hardware working, you're going to bitch that you can't use higher resolutions at proper refresh rates or take advantage of all of that hardware acceleration in your $200 video card, or that you can only use two of the ten buttons on your joystick. There's simply no way to design a standard driver that will allow designers to continue to advance their product and still remain competitive (even "standards" like OpenGL allow for extensions, because if it didn't it would've been dead years ago).

Not only will it give us choices as to what OS and software we use with these products but it'll also make computers a lot more stable. A lot of crashes and other common problems are the result of minor incompatibilities between different drivers on the system. Standard drivers can be well tested. A mish mash of random drivers can't be tested well at all.

We'd also be stuck in the early 90s, technology-wise, because nobody could or would advance the state of the art. Standards are all well and good, but you have to be able to extend them for them to remain viable. Look at HTML for example -- the deliberate snubbing of standards by Microsoft and Netscape forced the standard to move forward. Yes, it resulted in crap like <blink> and <marquee>, and it caused a lot of compatibility pain (do you use iframes or layers? IE events or Netscape events?), but if that hadn't happened we'd still be stuck in the days of HTML 3.x, using tables for layout and not having anything close to CSS (or worse, we'd have Netscape's javascript-based style sheet language instead).

Standards are defined by committee, which the absolute worst way to innovate.

Re:Wow, what an ass

[MikeFM]

My experience is that hardware compatibility is hard on ALL computers.

Your video driver might be incompatible with your network driver or your camera driver and there is nothing you can do about it. You might not notice other than just complaining at normal Windows bugginess but that is part of why Windows is so buggy.

Your scanner or camera might work fine but be incompatible with your new computer because those items simply don't have drivers that work with the newest version of Windows. So you either have to stay behind the curve until your hardware all wears out or buy a whole new computer and all new hardware whenever a new version of Windows comes out.

Fun. All because hardware companies think standardizing and open specs will hurt their profits and Microsoft encourages their misbehavior to keep the OS market cornered.

Re:Wow, what an ass

[MikeFM]

Postscript isn't a good standard for printers. It offers flexibility that printers just don't honestly need 99% of the time. It's a fine standard for the 1% that do need it but really shouldn't there be a standard for the other 99% of printers? No fancy communications are needed to print. All you really need to do is select a few printing options and transfer raw image data. Heck, get fancy and make it transfer compressed raw image data to speed up printing. Not at all hard - they just don't want such a standard. This would not make printing any worse or more expensive.

FAT isn't a camera standard. It's the filesystem that is used on most memory cards. It's a default standard because it's simple enough to fit within that small space and work in that price of hardware and it works well with Windows. It tells the camera nothing about how to communicate with the computer. Actually a lot of newer cameras are becoming standardized in how they communicate (showing up as a removable drive) which is good. There is no reason for any camera not to follow this standard for still photos. Streaming cameras could use some work on a standardized interface though.

VESA is a loose standard. It's more of a video API than a real driver. It doesn't support required modern features. Video cards need basically the same information to do what they do. Most software already uses standard API's such as DirectX or OpenGL to access these cards. There is no reason that the drivers can't be as standardized as these API's. Doing so might raise the price slightly by moving processing that goes on on the CPU to the card but I doubt it'd be much because the processors of modern video cards are already extremely powerful and flexible.

USB has nothing to with joysticks other than being the generic method by which they connect. It doesn't tell the computer how to understand the joysticks input. Joysticks are fairly standardized but they are growing less standardized and that is bad for stability. Do you want your game to crash in the middle of a firefight because it has a non-standard driver that doesn't work with your video card? Do joysticks even need to be recognized as different from a mouse? Standard mouse drivers understand multiple axis at a high precision and many buttons. What else does a joystick need?

Modems were mostly standardized until some moron invented the concept of a winmodem. Winmodems NEVER work well. They offload hardware processing to the CPU which has the mixed effect of slowing the computer and making the modem less reliable. Brilliant. The difference in price between a real hardware modem and a winmodem? About $10 back in the day - probably less now.

All in all I see no argument for not standardizing. You can allow standards that allow extensions. As you say OpenGL and many others allow that. The difference between that and no standards is that with extensible standards there are fewer places for problems to develop and as standards grow to support new concepts products can be adapted to follow those standards in new versions.

Without standard interfaces the PC probably wouldn't have made the huge impact on our society it did. By following standard interfaces the consumer has choices and can expect things to work together even when made by different manufacturers. The trend towards no standardization is hurting choice and reliability. Would you buy a harddrive that instead of following a SCSI standard decided to implement their own LUCI (Less Universal Connection Interface) interface that wouldn't work with your PC or only if you jumped through a lot of hoops? Probably not.

We are stuck in the 90's technology wise because of lack of standards. Has IE improved since the 90's? Not much. We should have rich interactive websites that degrade cleanly but Microsoft doesn't see supporting these as worth their effort so they've pretty much killed the market. They knew they couldn't compete with the web so they killed the web's development. Yeh, great! IE still doesn't support decent CSS or

Re:Wow, what an ass

[Osty]

Point by point (skipping some that I don't have an argument with):

FAT isn't a camera standard. It's the filesystem that is used on most memory cards. It's a default standard because it's simple enough to fit within that small space and work in that price of hardware and it works well with Windows. It tells the camera nothing about how to communicate with the computer. Actually a lot of newer cameras are becoming standardized in how they communicate (showing up as a removable drive) which is good. There is no reason for any camera not to follow this standard for still photos. Streaming cameras could use some work on a standardized interface though.

FAT is a de facto standard now, which is how standards should be created IMHO. Even my 4.5 year old digital camera hooks up just fine as a USB storage device. There's nothing more that a camera needs to do in terms of PC interaction, and almost every decent camera can do this. And even if your camera doesn't, you should buy a camera that uses removable media so you can always pull the card out and use it in a standard reader instead.

VESA is a loose standard. It's more of a video API than a real driver. It doesn't support required modern features. Video cards need basically the same information to do what they do. Most software already uses standard API's such as DirectX or OpenGL to access these cards. There is no reason that the drivers can't be as standardized as these API's. Doing so might raise the price slightly by moving processing that goes on on the CPU to the card but I doubt it'd be much because the processors of modern video cards are already extremely powerful and flexible.

The problem is that drivers are the abstraction layer for the hardware. By moving to a standard like this, you're essentially saying that your abstraction layer needs to be built into the hardware itself (like nVidia already does to support their unified driver model, where a single driver binary will work for everything from an ancient TNT to the latest GeForce 78xx). Depending on the complexity, you're talking about a lot of added cost for an already expensive product (if you buy bleeding edge, anyway), and don't think for a second that the manufacturers won't pass that cost on to the consumer. At least for video cards, I think the model we already have (standard APIs like DirectX, SDL, and OpenGL to abstract away the hardware) is the right way to go. It may not be 100% perfect, but it's a damn sight better than the old DOS days where every video card had its own special interface.

USB has nothing to with joysticks other than being the generic method by which they connect. It doesn't tell the computer how to understand the joysticks input. Joysticks are fairly standardized but they are growing less standardized and that is bad for stability. Do you want your game to crash in the middle of a firefight because it has a non-standard driver that doesn't work with your video card? Do joysticks even need to be recognized as different from a mouse? Standard mouse drivers understand multiple axis at a high precision and many buttons. What else does a joystick need?

You missed three important letters -- HID, or Human Interface Device. Theoretically, all input devices (keyboards, mice, joysticks, even webcams) should adhere to the HID spec and at least provide basic functionality with a proper generic USB HID implementation. That they don't is a problem, but the standard already exists. Perhaps this is a case where the standard is "bad" (too strict, too vague, not extensible, etc).

Modems were mostly standardized until some moron invented the concept of a winmodem. Winmodems NEVER work well. They offload hardware processing to the CPU which has the mixed effect of slowing the computer and making the modem less reliable. Brilliant. T

Re:Wow, what an ass

[killjoe]

Since both linux and Mac use CUPS it would seem to be a good idea to provide a cups driver, unless of course you are being threatened or bribed into not doing it.

Think of it this way. If ran a corner grocery store would you turn away 10% of your customers? How about 5%? Most business people I know would do a lot to get another 5 or 10 percent more customers.

Re:Wow, what an ass

[ajpr]

I agree with most of what you say apart from the winmodem price comment. In the UK, sofware modems were generally 40-50 pounds cheaper than a good hardware modem. So that's around 60-70$ cheaper (inc tax). Winmodems were also awful for generating ping spikes and dropped packets, which I found mostly due to playing Quake online. The difference between hardware and software modem pings were about 200ms. So obviously 500ms to a server was unplayable and therefore (for me) the modem was useless.

Standards are all good as long as they are "open". I don't think anyone wants a .Net based standard to take over application development as that will hurt OSS. And I don't think Java is the way to go either, as Sun make it difficult to use Java on free OS's like Ubuntu...

Re:Wow, what an ass

[Halfbaked Plan]

Yes, definitely BeOS, too. I'd probably have to buy a new 8-way KVM switch.

Where is...

[Anonymous Coward]

Where is the foot icon?

Ugh.

[Anonymous Coward]

Another thing that is goat-rendering awful is this story.

Re:Ugh.

[Skowronek]

Well, the story is submitted by Stern. This means enough - isn't he the same guy that advocated dressing in suits for geeks? I think he's really a half-joke alter-ego of somebody else :)

Trolla-trolla-la, and the ad money rolls in...

Re:Ugh.

[kelnos]

On that topic, goat-rendering? Is it a 2D or 3D rendering of goats? Methinks he means goat-rending? It's hard to take someone seriously when they can't even use English properly when insulting your work.

Obligatory: "You keep using that word. I don't think it means what you think it means."

Re:Ugh.

[desplesda]

Look at the last paragraph of this:

I'll leave you with one thought. Finns are socialists. Linus Torvalds is Finnish. Linus Torvalds got here on an airplane.

Huh?

Re:Ugh.

[Ohreally_factor]

It's a nice change to see a joke crash land into someone's forehead rather than fly over his head. =)

Re:Ugh.

[Skowronek]

I actually enjoy reading most of Otto Stern's rants. There are two possibilities:

1) The guy is genuine. Perverting the phrase: with enemies like this, who needs friends?
2) The guy is a joker. Most people that reply to his arts and don't get them make themselves look even funnier.

I strongy suspect 2) is true, as he published a few really sarcastic replies to his article on "geeks in suits" in the "positive responses" section.

Re:Ugh.

[Ohreally_factor]

Seriously, it's #2. It's a parody of John C. Dvorak and the like, if nothing more. There are so many clues.

Otto comes across as a very mean spirited David Sedaris. He's wincingly over the top, and his articles are like train wrecks still trying to make it into the station. I feel compelled to watch (or read, as it were) and find out where he's going to end up.

I'm pretty sure that much of the motivation for this style is page hits, but perhaps he is also trying to set himself apart, to get noticed among the din of everyone else vying for attention on the web. And I have no doubt that garnering page hits was Samzenpus's motivation. Slashdot is all about "monetizing the product" these days, if you haven't noticed.

Re:Ugh.

[Demerara]

First of all, it should read "goat-renderingly awful".

And, with a line like:

Before pulling away from your crucial Mono project work to write a flame, please hand a normal 25-year-old your Linux box and show them how to connect the system to their bluetooth camera and then smack yourself.
 
...how could you not laugh out loud?

Linux will never progress very far

[Anonymous Coward]

When the ones developing it are the ones using it all the time. The closer to things you are, the easier it is to lose track of how bad they suck (there's a reason the first thing apple removed from their unix was X11).

Re:Linux will never progress very far

[nukem996]

Whats so bad about X11? Im using x.org right now and everything is working fine. If I loaded KDE on here I could customize it to look basicly like OSX. I never understood why they took out X11, seems like it would make more sense to keep it.

Re:Linux will never progress very far

[Lord Kano]

(there's a reason the first thing apple removed from their unix was X11).

Namely that they wanted add "Apple's" look and feel to the OS. Since they were breaking new ground, they didn't have to worry about backwards compatibility with thousands of existing apps. It may not be perfect, but it's what we have. If someone did do away with X11, the naysayers would be bitching about how unreliable Linux developers are for breaking compatibility with all of those apps.

LK

Re:Linux will never progress very far

[photon317]

He's not just speaking crap. There's a whole lot of "layers" within X11 itself, although in recent times xorg still manages to perform reasonably well. The X11 architecture is quite dated - especially wrt to extensions (not that everything under the sun hasn't been hacked onto the side of it anyways), widgets, and the assumptions that underly X11 (and therein, especially its assumptions about networking). The *nix world is due for a better windowing system sometime Real Soon Now. Either the xorg/fdo guys will revamp X11 to the point of being nearly unrecognizable and keep around a backwards-compatible api layer for legacy X11 apps, or some startup similar in nature to Y-windows will take hold (Y-windows was a really nice concept, but it died an early death due to lack of interest from some of the main developers because xorg/x11 started to tack on the features that were the partial impetus for the project).

Re:Linux will never progress very far

[Milo77]

Wow. I kinda think that this post proves the previous guy's point exactly. Specifically, where you say that you can configure KDE to basically look like OSX. If you think that a KDE theme is all you need to get the user experience of OSX you're just being silly. If it's "good enough" for you, then you are exactly the person too close to things to see how bad they suck. Further backing up the original guys post is the fact that you are modded so high. I am not sure there is an easy way to cure what appears to be an epidemic of "bad taste" among *nix users. I don't think there is a pill or anything :)

Re:Linux will never progress very far

[scott_karana]

All the open source X11 clients I've seen are just noticably slower than their rivals on low-end systems, i.e. my systems.
This is intolerable for me, even considering that X11 can work over the Internet out of the box. I'm still a huge Linux fan, but I've become a console-freak or just worked on Linux over ssh because of both the low speed and instability of Xorg and XFree86 alike.

Please don't bother refuting this on the grounds of Distro or WM; I'm hardly inexpereienced, as I've used X11 on Debian, Fedora, Mandrake, Gentoo, Ubuntu, Knoppix, and a few more, using TWM, FVWM, WindowMaker, {Flux,Black,Open}box, IceWM, Kwin (KDE), Metacity (Gnome), Enlightenment (Both E16 and E17), AfterStep, ratpoison, Ion, Xfwm (XFCE), et al.
I've tried using a whole plethora of Xorg.conf files too, but I've never gotten satisfactory results even with minimal services and a tiny kernel.
In fact, help would be appreciated... :(

Re:Linux will never progress very far

[scott_karana]

I don't understand the phrase "worse than flying". I've never found flying anything worse than passable, though admittedly I go on twenty-four hour straight road-trips, so perhaps I'm not your usual customer... Can someone fill me in?

Re:Linux will never progress very far

[pebs]

If it's "good enough" for you, then you are exactly the person too close to things to see how bad they suck.

I own a Mac and thing OS X is highly overrated. Does that mean all those people claiming OS X is the best thing since sliced bread are wrong?

I actually thought my opinion on OS X was more due to me not spending enough time learning it, and for being to way too familiar and efficient with Linux to adapt to something different, but hey.. Maybe all the Macheads are in denial and I'm the one who is seeing OS X for the mediocre software that it really is.

(personally I think all operating systems and their GUI's suck these days, but that's another discussion)

Re:Linux will never progress very far

[jcr]

If I loaded KDE on here I could customize it to look basicly like OSX

The phrase "lipstick on a pig" springs to mind...

-jcr

Re:Linux will never progress very far

[Oscar_Wilde]

there's a reason the first thing apple removed from their unix was X11
 
The operating system Apple turned into MacOS X didn't use X11 so they didn't really need to "remove" it at all.

Re:Linux will never progress very far

[MikeFM]

Funny then that Linux with X still draws faster with less processor use. OS X is freaking slow even on new hardware. Linux/X runs fine on my 5 year old hardware. X certainly has problems but they are problems best addressed by refactoring and not by reinventing the wheel. Most of them are being addressed.

Re:Linux will never progress very far

[MikeFM]

You mean those crazy ideas that let me effeciently run X apps on one computer and see them on another? Crazy assumptions about networking there.. OSX and Windows have to tack on crappy alternatives to do the same and those don't work well at all.

Re:Linux will never progress very far

[pingveno]

That's the problem: You can customize it to look like Mac OS X. Mac OS X is Mac OS X without even trying. The main thing about Mac OS X is that it has more than just a pretty face (though it certainly has that :-). There's a standard toolkit for applications to access the functionality of the Operating System. There's very little set up, the user doesn't have to even touch a text configuration file or a tar command. And there are subtle things that make the basic Macintosh configuration just.... work. Apple was able to concentrate on making a full toolkit because they didn't have to bend over backwards to work with X11. The Linux desktop has some wonderful features, but I have yet to have everything working together smoothly.

The major problem with X11 is standards. Or rather, lack thereof. X11 started as a research project with no toolkit and no definition of other necessary standards. There have been a host of toolkits built on top of X11; GTK, QT, Motif, Athena, and many others. The more popular ones are reasonably well built and robust, but they will continue having interoperability problems. Copy-and-paste doesn't work consistently, the look and feel of applications varies vastly (compare XPDF to KOffice to Firefox), and there is absolutely no specter of a standard on sound.

When all of these factors come together, they can create a user experience that is almost as painful as flying by commercial jetliner on December 23. But just as I would brave holiday traffic to get to family, I'm willing to work on Linux because

This guy elaborates nicely on the subject: http://www.tgr.com/weblog/archives/000271.html

Re:Linux will never progress very far

[pingveno]

The last time I tried using X11 over the Internet, I had the inefficient experience of having to wait a few seconds every time the program decided to refresh. After that, I suddenly discovered that TightVNC is really, really nice....

Re:Linux will never progress very far

[i_finally_got_an_acc]

Why is this an argument? I've never used this feature on linux. I've never used this feature on OS X. I've used it on Windows, and I liked it a lot! Worked great! But 99.9% of the time, when I use my computer, I'm actually AT my computer. Therefore, it seems to me like this is implemented in the wrong place. I don't get why people get boners from the fact that X11 is a client/server system.

Re:Linux will never progress very far

[zos]

Too bad my mod points expired yesterday, or I would mod you up. As a user of almost every OS and major application mentioned on Slashdot, I find your statement spot on. Score: 5 Funny but true.

Re:Linux will never progress very far

[MikeFM]

Of course. X wasn't designed to go over that slow of a link. Over a fast network though X is way better than VNC.

Re:Linux will never progress very far

[MikeFM]

If you'd grown up with a real OS instead of on Windows you'd use this feature a lot more. Just because you don't think of using this kind of feature doesn't mean it isn't useful. An example from my life. I have a set-top box that runs Linux. Rather than having a hot noisy powerful system in there I chose something quiet which is less powerful. It runs the apps on the server in another room but displays them on the set-top box exactly as if they were local. If I switch rooms I can bring the desktop up on the set-top in that room instead without any problem. All the same files, the same apps, no complex configuration, and no fan noise in any of them. That's just one example of where I use this ability.

Re:Linux will never progress very far

[commodoresloat]

Wow. I kinda think that this post proves the previous guy's point exactly.

Wow. Nothing gets by you, does it?

Re:Linux will never progress very far

[harmic]

Amen to that.

Back before Windows had terminal server, and before products like Citrix got popular, we *nixers proudly declared the advantages of a network-transparent display system. The world has moved on: Windows has it; plus a host of add-ons that make the whole thing seamless, efficient and fast.

Meanwhile I find it is faster to use VNC over a slow link than raw X protocol... what's with that? VNC is just sending raw graphics updates, you'd think X would be much faster since it could send drawing commands.

In reality, although the X networking was originally designed to allow sending of drawing primitives over the wire, most toolkits work these days by rendering everything at the client end and sending it as bitmaps of one kind or another to the X server. This is largely because of the lack of standardisation and old-fashioned extension methods X makes available.

Sooner or later it will be time to chuck the bathwater out. The baby long since grew into something else.

Re:Linux will never progress very far

[jejones]

Eh? What was all the brouhaha about "eating your own dogfood", then?

You have it exactly wrong. The closer to things you are, the more you have your nose rubbed in the places where it sucks.

Re:Linux will never progress very far

[Dr. Manhattan]

If you think that a KDE theme is all you need to get the user experience of OSX you're just being silly.

How long do you need to use OSX to be sucked into a Nirvana-like state of union with the machine? I spent about an hour and a half with one about a month ago, and didn't make it. I was trying to download and install Xcode so I could test a POSIX program I wrote. Used my aunt's iMac.

Safari locked up so bad (on Apple's website, mind you) that I had to totally log out and log back in again - "Force Quit" had no effect. I can't blame OSX for Apple's poor site design (took forever to find the right package, it was running 10.3.something, not 10.4) but it wasn't a magic, blissful frolic with the Aqua interface or anything. I had a hard time finding the way to fire up a terminal.

Once I got Xcode installed, and got a terminal up, it only took about five minutes to run the actual test. Worked just fine, thanks to ./configure and friends. Maybe I'm "just being silly", but I wasn't so utterly impressed with OSX vs. the Ubuntu I normally use. Can you tell me what I missed?

Re:Linux will never progress very far

[martin-boundary]

That's a ridiculous argument. How is this proving the original point? You're saying if someone uses X11 they're incapable of "getting" OSX, and that means they're too close to X11 to see its flaws? Welcome to 1984, you've just redefined "flaw" to mean whatever doesn't work like OSX Quartz.

Re:Linux will never progress very far

[Mad Merlin]

Not surprisingly, not everyone likes the OS X interface. The fact that KDE can be made to look and act very similarly to OS X is a footnote for most, rather than a compelling feature. I certainly have no interest in OS X.

I notice that the AC got modded up for mindlessly flaming X11, not even attempting to point out any flaws (most likely because he doesn't know of any). There is absolutely nothing that Apple has done with OS X that they couldn't have done more easily with an already existing system such as X11. Of course, they also would have gained a lot of things by using X11, but apparently they didn't realize that until too late, merely tacking on X11 at the end. Why they didn't just use X11 from the start is anyone's guess, especially when they were already borrowing heavily from open source. Perhaps they just like reinventing the wheel?

Re:Linux will never progress very far

[SubtleNuance]

If you think that a KDE theme is all you need to get the user experience of OSX you're just being silly.

And, please, other than a theme what pray-tell is this magical OSX experience? Im a medium-term GNU/Linux user. I use various UNIXs @ work.

Why do I always find OSX uncomfortable and strange?

Oh, its because of farmiliarity. Im sure OSX is lovely, but, at first, second and third blush, its not exactly welcoming.

Re:Linux will never progress very far

[khallow]

there's a reason the first thing apple removed from their unix was X11

I hate to break it to you, Virginia, but they left X11 on the Apple. It's used for programs like Open Office that expect it to be there.

Second, your argument is bunk. There's plenty of evidence that "eating your own dogfood" is an excellent way to find bugs and other flaws. And no matter how you spin it, a programmer is always going to get "too close" to the code. Otherwise, they won't understand how it works.

Re:Linux will never progress very far

[10Ghz]

Well, since the discussion was about X, it's safe to assume that we are indeed talking about how things look. Of course there's more to OS X than Aqua. But there's more to Linux (and KDE in this case) than the way it looks. But since the discussion was about the GUI, the point that KDE can be made to look like OS X is valid.

I use both Linux and OS X at home. And while I can understand why many think OS X is the best thing since sliced bread, I don't think it's THAT great. There are many things in Linux (and KDE) that I prefer over their OS X counterparts.

Re:Linux will never progress very far

[Viol8]

"And there are subtle things that make the basic Macintosh configuration just.... work. "

Yeah , its called standardised hardware. Getting an OS to work
nicely isn't too hard if you dictate what gets plugged into the
motherboard.

Re:Linux will never progress very far

[hey!]

Well, I would keep two things in mind.

The first is that one lesson we can learn from Apple is that attractiveness counts for more than 0. I agree it's not the beginning and end of the Mac interface, but it's significant. Hell, I spend more time looking at my computer screen than I do my wife's face, so it's arguably more important that it be pretty.

The second is that the market has shown that kind of HCI focus that you are referring to doesn't pay in and of itself. Even Apple has learned this lesson, and has committed many sins against usability in its Job II era products. At one time every Mac bigot could explain Fitt's law to you, but clearly that and other research driven design principles are taking a back seat. It's not that they've forgotten usability, but they're focused on area such as their music business where it gives them a competitive edge in a profitable market. The competition is in general so weak that Apple is quite able to trim the steak in order to put in more sizzle.

Re:Linux will never progress very far

[MuMart]

X11 will be replaced when a better alternative is available.

Re:Linux will never progress very far

[ratboy666]

And why did Apple remove X11?

I don't understand. AFAIK, the replacement is not networkable. I can't run GUI jobs from my mid-range, and display on the Apple -- UNLESS I use X11 -- which I then have to install. Worse, how do I run Apple stuff, and have it display on my workstation of choice.

So can you explain how X11 "sucks" as compared with the Apple drawing layer? Yes, I know that the Apple stack uses compositing, and a 3D render pipeline, &etc. But does it support multiple visuals? Does the 3D support depth queued Z shaded lines? Aside from the obvious networking issue. I can't just drop in a bunch of Apple gear unless it can interoperate with the SUN, IBM and HP gear in place.

The common language is X11, NFS, ethernet (&etc.). Did Apple open their drawing layer so that multiple vendors can implement and interoperate? If no, then why not? Are they (Apple) afraid of competition?

Personally, I like the idea of compositing -- but why didn't Apple instead support the efforts of XFree86/Xorg?

And now on to the rest of the comment. I use X11 as a "GUI" (drawing layer). As a GUI, I use GNOME, or mwm. Every day. Yes, I may be too close to see how badly it "sucks". But it really is the only point of consistency. I deal with Solaris Sparc, Solaris Intel, HP/UX, AIX, and Linux on Intel, Sparc and PowerPC. I even use Windows Intel. X11 is available across all of these -- but the Windows platform is a sore point (cygwin allows X11 clients to run, though). OS X would be sore point, for the same reason. But the "sucky" features of X11 allow operation across almost all (except Windows) of my platforms. If Apple wants to drive a "GUI" standard, either they would have to support, or allow to be supported, the same breadth of systems, or kill off the "legacy" systems, or open up their "GUI".

Ratboy.

Re:Linux will never progress very far

[Seanasy]

There are some short commings though (like having to use your mouse to select Application Menus) but over all, I find it the best Desktop experience for my needs regardless of cost.

Use Control+F1 to toggle full keyboard access on/off. Use Control+F2 to focus the menu bar. With the menu bar focused, use the arrow keys to navigate the menus. You can use the keyboard, too. Try typing this (just an example, the shortcut is obviously easier) with full keyboard access on:

• Control+F2
• f
• return
• new w
• return

It's worth exploring System Preferences -> Keyboard and Mouse -> Keyboard Shortcuts

jeeesus

[know1]

what is this, an attemt to start the biggest flame war ever? we all know this isn't news, it's just the opinion of one idiot. what the hell is it doing on slashdot?

Re:jeeesus

[dada21]

You didn't notice that the copyright below changed from OSTN to MSTN, eh?

Re:jeeesus

[Comatose51]

I deserve to be heard because I'm an idiot too so mod me up!

All I have to say is close source is better than getting branded by a hot iron. If it was a choice between close source and being branded by a hot iron, I would take close source. At least proprietary software have progressed faster than hot iron branding. Hot iron branding have progressed little since the days of cowboys. You still apply fire to a piece of metal that gets applied to the skin. Proprietary software has definitely progressed beyond that stage.

Re:jeeesus

[plover]

Yeah, the whole article was Troll +5.

Consider your hornets' nest kicked.

Re:jeeesus

[JanneM]

The Register runs this kind of stunt from time to time. The whole point is just to boost readership. They don't care if people come there for something insightful or because it's utterly moronic; the page hits are the same after all. And it works too - as I write, they're probably high-fiving themselves as they see the hit counters spin from the slashdotting.

Re:jeeesus

[David M. Sweeney]

it's just the opinion of one idiot. what the hell is it doing on slashdot?

Man, you MUST be new here.

Re:jeeesus

[Lord Kano]

Hot iron branding have progressed little since the days of cowboys.

There's always cold brass iron branding.

LK

Re:jeeesus

[pchan-]

You have it wrong. The Reg is a very Open Source friendly publication. They often post about the evils of Microsoft and others. This is just their way of balancing out. Instead of posting an anti-open source article every so often, they just post one huge flaming pile of crap to get it all to balance out in the end. It's like when you help a dozen old ladies across the street, you get to murder one bum and your karma breaks even.

Re:jeeesus

[jasontheking]

take a look at one of his earlier rants
"Quite frankly, I'll happily cheer a room full of Indians who just took your jobs - if they're well-dressed. There's a certain dignity to outsourcing. It's called a tie."
fsck you otto. I hope you choke on that tie.

Re:jeeesus

[Soko]

Slashdot runs this kind of stunt from time to time. The whole point is just to boost ad hits. They don't care if people come there for something insightful or because it's utterly moronic; the page hits are the same after all. And it works too - as I write, they're probably high-fiving themselves as they see the hit counters spin.

...and now we know why it was re-posted on /. Those over at elReg responsible for this little jest are likley staggering home from the pub, still laughing "Hehehe, those Slashbots rose to the bait like a pirranah to a steak. Wankers!"

Soko

Re:jeeesus

[SeaFox]

what is this, an attemt to start the biggest flame war ever? ... what the hell is it doing on slashdot?

Generating a heck of a lot of hits for the advertising on this page, of course.

Re:jeeesus

[1u3hr]

The Register runs this kind of stunt from time to time. The whole point is just to boost readership. They don't care if people come there for something insightful or because it's utterly moronic; the page hits are the same after all.

The Register does run articles like this -- as a joke. And regularly they're picked up by irony-deficient Americans and posted as if they were real. Otto Z Stern is basically a combination of Hunter S Thompson and Jerry Pournelle. Look at the tag to the story:

Otto Z. Stern is a director at The Institute of Technological Values - a think tank dedicated to a more moral digital age. He has closely monitored the IT industry's intersection with America's role as a world leader for thirty years. You can find Stern locked and loaded, corralling wounded iLemmings, nursing an opal-plated prostate, spanking open source fly boys, wearing a smashing suit, dropping a SkyCar on the Googleplex, spitting on Frenchmen, vomiting in fear with a life-sized cutout of Hilary Rosen at his solar-powered compound somewhere in the Great American Southwest.

Re:jeeesus

[Cally]

Lordy, lordy, I'm alnmost lost for words. None of you seem to have realised that the piece is what we in the UK call "satire". That's right, someone's making it up in order to try to be amusing or humourous. Does the name not give that away?! God only knows what the American readership are going to make of Verity Stob...

Re:jeeesus

[know1]

god know what his problem is. maybe he thinks he's being the simon cowell of I.T. whereas instead he's being the g.w. bush of I.T.

Re:jeeesus

[JanneM]

None of you seem to have realised that the piece is what we in the UK call "satire". That's right, someone's making it up in order to try to be amusing or humourous.

I know well what satire is (I'm not American). The piece does miss the "humourus" part by a mile or so, though. Just calling people names in the most mean-spirited way is not exactly challenging and not great writing. This piece is satire the way Benny Hill was humour - easily mistaken for the real thing just as long as you don't actually look at it too closely.

And the ulterior motive for this "satire", as for the occasional other rants, are still to get a rise out of people, since it's an easy way to gather page hits without having to actually produce anything worthwile.

Re:jeeesus

[strider44]

There's a difference between balanced reporting and posting a huge flaming pile of crap to "get it all to balance out in the end", the difference being why I stopped reading the Register a while ago. I didn't mind their neutral articles one bit but when they drag out their flaming pile of crap it sets my teeth on edge. Ever since their flame-fest on the Wikipedia that lasted for weeks I just stopped reading because it was just too stupid. I don't care for such a holier than thou attitude even if they only bring it out every once in a while.

Re:jeeesus

[arkhan_jg]

"Otto Z. Stern is a director at The Institute of Technological Values - a think tank dedicated to a more moral digital age. He has closely monitored the IT industry's intersection with America's role as a world leader for thirty years. You can find Stern locked and loaded, corralling wounded iLemmings, nursing an opal-plated prostate, spanking open source fly boys, wearing a smashing suit, dropping a SkyCar on the Googleplex, spitting on Frenchmen, vomiting in fear with a life-sized cutout of Hilary Rosen at his solar-powered compound somewhere in the Great American Southwest."

I think you've missed that The Register is a british publication. This article is sarcastic satire, nothing more. It might raise page views, but it's not meant as a troll to be take seriously.

I laughed when I read the article. I laughed even louder when I saw how many slashdotters have taken it seriously and leapt to linux's defence, and I say that as a user of linux for 7 years. I mean, come on -

"Meanwhile, I'm sitting here typing away on a 128-processor Unix SMP armed with an ultrasonic file system and jet-fueled partitioning system, wondering when the Linux freaks are going to solve their Ubuntu versus Mandriva color scheme debate" - how could anyone NOT see this is a joke?

Re:jeeesus

[NickFortune]

mmm... the letter from Otto's mum at the start should have been a dead giveaway. Especially given the gloating about the New York Times having taken him at face value.

That said, El Reg prints enough play-for-play corporate propaganda these days that I can understand how someone could have jumped to conclusions here.

Re:jeeesus

[daliman]

For the love of god children, look at his other posts if you aren't a regular reader of el reg. All of his stories are piss takes, anybody taking him even slightly serious is a fucking nutbar. You've been trolled, it's just a (very vaguely) reputable site that did it.

Re:jeeesus

[lisaparratt]

Dude, this isn't even close to Commodore 64 vs. Timex/Sinclair Spectrum!

Re:jeeesus

[know1]

SPECTRUM FTW

Re:jeeesus

[CitizenJohnJohn]

Being too clueless to realise that a story is satire is *insightful*? If anyone doubted that the moderation system here is completely broken, here's Exhibit A.

Re:jeeesus

[Spiked_Three]

"it's just the opinion of one idiot. what the hell is it doing on slashdot?"

Man it's hard to resist obvious responses.

Re:jeeesus

[VdG]

I find myself bemused at the outraged responses. Maybe I was deluding myself but I thought that there was a marginally more insightful audience round here.

Oh well; another Merkin stereotype confirmed.

Re:jeeesus

[theEd]

Don't forget...

I'll leave you with one thought. Finns are socialists. Linus Torvalds is Finnish. Linus Torvalds got here on an airplane. ®

Although I wonder if Otto Z. Stern is related to T. Herman Zweibel

Re:jeeesus

[Art Tatum]

There's a difference between balanced reporting and posting a huge flaming pile of crap to "get it all to balance out in the end"

I like to think of this as the "Bill O'Reilly comment generator." It's like he has this scorecard on his desk, with two columns: L and R. When he criticizes somebody or some idea on the Left, he puts a check in the L column. When he criticizes something on the Right, he puts a check in the R column. His statements at any given moment seem driven by a desire to make the columns match up.

Re:jeeesus

[aftermath09]

I think the parent has this completely right. "Otto" is just "winding you guys up" by "taking the piss". ;)

Next week is Microsoft's turn

Re:jeeesus

[Cally]

And the ulterior motive for this "satire", as for the occasional other rants, are still to get a rise out of people, since it's an easy way to gather page hits without having to actually produce anything worthwile.

Trolls are only funny when people take them seriously. Today, Slashdot was the punchline.

Re:jeeesus

[Cally]

ROTFLMFAO!

Re:jeeesus

[know1]

maybe if it was satire it would be funny, but the writer is just a tool

what a flamer

[John Frink]

"The only thing as goat-rendering awful as flying has to be the progression of open source code." I'm a pilot who happens to like flying as well as open source so screw him!

Re:what a flamer

[FryerTuck]

yes, but do you render goats?

Re:what a flamer

[oztiks]

Okay okay, i have to ask the questions on everyones mind after your statement? Are you a goat aswell?

Re:what a flamer

[FireBreathingDog]

I'm a pilot who happens to like flying as well as open source so screw him!

Well, I'm a flying goat who hates being rendered and is ambivalent about open source, so there!

Re:what a flamer

[BACbKA]

I can't identify with the author either, because I am both a pilot and a developer in a free software flight simulation project. He has definitely chosen a strange metaphor to make his point with me :-)

Re:what a flamer

[Zebra_X]

Hi, RTFA.

He wrote about how the EXPERIENCE of flying is god awful. He's right too.

RTFA.

Re:what a flamer

[berbo]

I'm a rendered goat, you insensitive clod!

Re:what a flamer

[chickenmonger]

As an aerospace engineering student who codes most or all of his assignments in Linux, I'd agree. His comments on flying show his complete lack of knowledge about the subject. I stopped reading right then.

Accusations.

[Southpaw018]

Exactly. Accusations. He doesn't really know what he's talking about...and his article speaks for itself in that context. He really comes off like a fanatic, but I would say: you have an "open source PC." I do too. Mine works. Lots of peoples' do. So...either you're doing something wrong, or perhaps you're a rambling, fanatical curmudgeon. Regardless, have you bought Windows?

Oh, it doesn't appear that you did. At least, if you have, it isn't good enough for you to mention.

Re:Accusations.

[just_another_sean]

"...but I would say: you have an "open source PC." I do too. Mine works. Lots of peoples' do."

Agreed. And I dare say you could easily change this sentence slightly and it would not lose a bit of accuracy...

"...but I would say: you have an "Windows PC." I do too. Mine works. Lots of peoples' do."
Sometimes shit works, sometimes not. If you are an end user and don't won't to research which hardware you should buy for an OS or can't be bothered to figure out why something doesn't work then either pay someone to do it for you or buy an OS from a manufacturer who will support you because you paid for it. (Of course that's no guarantee the support is any good).

What I wonder is if it is all as bad as he says why does he still have this "sore" PC? If that's how he feels he should go fork over the $ for XP or something. Shameless anti-os plug if you ask me.

Re:Accusations.

[DaveCar]

But true audiophiles want iTunes

Wow! Who changed the definition of "audiophile" whilst I wasn't reading the Hi-Fi rags for the last 8 years? The audiophiles must have really lowered their game, seeing as CDs were never really good enough for them, and now they are content with 128kbps lossy compressed versions of said CDs. Maybe the compression makes it "warmer" and more like vinyl or something ;)

Re:Accusations.

[gosand]

Exactly. Accusations. He doesn't really know what he's talking about...and his article speaks for itself in that context. He really comes off like a fanatic, but I would say: you have an "open source PC." I do too. Mine works. Lots of peoples' do.

Actually, I have had many of the same feelings, and I have been using Linux since Redhat 5.1. I use it at work, and at home, and it still frustrates me to this very day. But I love it, and will continue to use it. I guess I can't really explain why. To be fair - Windows and every Mac ever produced is frustrating as well, just in different ways.

Ah, the smell of a failing cause

[schmidt349]

This article reminds me of a fake letter in Monty Python's Flying Circus. Anyone with a good knowledge of politics in the UK at the time should get a kick out of how its tenor is very close to this article.

Dear David Jacobs, East Grinstead, Friday. Why should I have to pay sixty-four guineas each year for my television licence when I can buy one for six. Yours sincerely, Captain R. H. Pretty. PS Support Rhodesia, cut motor taxes, save the Argylls, running-in please pass.

Re:Ah, the smell of a failing cause

[regress]

Dear David Jacobs, East Grinstead, Friday. Why should I have to pay sixty-four guineas each year for my television licence...Support Rhodesia, ...save the Argylls, running-in please pass. and anyone not from the UK will obviously need an interpreter.

Re:Ah, the smell of a failing cause

[brpr]

and anyone not from the UK will obviously need an interpreter. Or alternatively, a passing knowledge of "history" and "geography" (if you are an American, you may wish to look up those words in the dictionary).

Re:Ah, the smell of a failing cause

[brpr]

Awww, c'mon. Can't we just skip the foreplay and go straight to the felatio?

Boooooorriinnnnnnng.

[Chmarr]

Yet another shill trying to get hits by rubbishing Linux/OpenSource, even if done in jest. Hohum. As interesting as watching Laura Didio or Marueen O'Gara.

Re:Boooooorriinnnnnnng.

[Halfbaked Plan]

Except, it's the slashdot editors, trying to get hits by posting this same old same-old yet again.

It gets boring. Can't articles like this be restricted to an 'advocacy' section so we can block it from our front page? (similar to the *.advocacy usenet newsgroups)

oblig

[niXcamiC]

I'm a pilot you insensative clod!

Cringely

[quokkapox]

This guy is loonier than Robert X. Cringely. I think you can tell somebody has finally lost it when they adopt a pseudonym with a middle initial that occurs late in the alphabet.

one thing's for sure...

[pohl]

If this were fark, this would be the perfect thread to link to the 'attention whore' girl in the bikini doing hand-stands on the beach.

Re:one thing's for sure...

[An Onerous Coward]

link plz thx!

Re:one thing's for sure...

[complete loony]

Just Fn Google It

Re:one thing's for sure...

[BorgCopyeditor]

Well, you're certainly failing to sound like you know anything about anything, so I guess you belong here, too.

Re:one thing's for sure...

[Seraphim_72]

Sigh Nice try man. Too bad for the troll mods and troll responses, I laughed when I saw your post.

<insert> Ha Ha Guy /They don't get your post!</insert>

Re:one thing's for sure...

[digable]

heh i assumed pretty much everyone knew the fark cliches - i assumed WRONG... at least it gave one person a laugh before the moderatorlords got freaky...

Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

This man must be the UK's answer to John Dvorak!

Who is Otto Z. Stern?

[CyricZ]

Who exactly is Otto Z. Stern? What is his background, credentials, past software development involvement, and so on?

Re:Who is Otto Z. Stern?

[GreyWolf3000]

It's funny. I know you're a troll. I know you repost the same stuff on every article.

But I don't care. You fukn rock, man.

By the way, rpm rules! :P

Re:Who is Otto Z. Stern?

[CyricZ]

Indeed, I enjoy reading thoughts from relatively unknown individuals, as well. However, often times having some background or accomplishment(s) relating to the topic one is discussing help add credence to what is said.

At the end of the article it mentions that he is part of some thinktank. If that's all he has accomplished, then his opinion probably is quite worthless. After all, anyone can claim to be part of a "thinktank".

Re:Who is Otto Z. Stern?

[PAjamian]

Why he gives his full credentials in his article! He even used up the first half of his article by showing the feedback from his only^h^h^h^hgreatest fan ... dear old mom! Well if you can't believe a guy's mom who can you believe?

...and what astounding modesty! Let dear ol' mom tell everyone how you got published in the New York Times so that you can stand back and say, "aw shucks mom, it wasn't really *that* big of a deal".

...I mean, a guy like that has to be a first rate, knowledgable journalist, if you've got any doubts, just ask his mom, she'll clear them right up!

Re:Who is Otto Z. Stern?

[Mike Peel]

He's an experimental scientist, no? Won a Nobel Prize. Unfortunately, he died in 1969...

Re:Who is Otto Z. Stern?

[TrappedByMyself]

Who exactly is Otto Z. Stern? What is his background, credentials, past software development involvement, and so on?

Only software developers can criticize OSS?

Re:Who is Otto Z. Stern?

[Anonymous Coward]

Otto Z. Stern is a character created by The Register to post humorous, trolling, sarcastic or satirical articles. His articles are always over the top, and intended to provoke flames or make a point in a humorous manner. The character is intended to be an angry, bigoted loudmouth, sort of like Maddox (of "The Best Page In The Universe" fame), and anyone who takes his articles seriously and posts them on Slashdot is a fool.

Re:Who is Otto Z. Stern?

[jhermans]

Nobody here seems to realize that Ottot Z. Stern is just a joke. A fictional character.

Re:Who is Otto Z. Stern?

[tree_frog]

Imagine the Hunter S Thompson of tech journalism....

regards, treefrog

Re:Who is Otto Z. Stern?

[Gideon]

A troll, written by one of the regular Register staffers, for the apparent purpose of attracting flames from the gullible.

He doesn't exist.

His sole raison d'etre is to get a rise out of people.

For the love of Om, don't feed the troll any more, people!

Re:Who is Otto Z. Stern?

[MrCopilot]

According to the TFA Otto Z. Stern is a director at The Institute of Technological Values - a think tank dedicated to a more moral digital age. He has closely monitored the IT industry's intersection with America's role as a world leader for thirty years. You can find Stern locked and loaded, corralling wounded iLemmings, nursing an opal-plated prostate, spanking open source fly boys, wearing a smashing suit, dropping a SkyCar on the Googleplex, spitting on Frenchmen, vomiting in fear with a life-sized cutout of Hilary Rosen at his solar-powered compound somewhere in the Great American Southwest.

Not clear enough?

Acoording to a Jinx Forum Post entitled "I'd like to kick Otto Z. Stern in the balls "https://www.jinx.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=417 30: All i can say to desribe this guy, is he is just a rat bastard. I'd like to fight him, and show him how 'tuff us "geeks' ARE. Throw him through a g0dd@/\/\n window.

So, he is universally loved by all.

As an aside, I found the piece sarcastically funny.

Bad code?

[ClamIAm]

What is this guy's problem? Someone who compares supercomputing to a Linux distribution's choice of color scheme to further his argument isn't exactly who I'd call on the next time I want a rational argument.

Fffft.

[lifebouy]

Sounds like somebody's "Waaah" meter is pegged out. Go cash that Microsoft check and shut up, Otto.

mudane details?

[degreseven]

"Accusing Open Source of being buggy and its devolopers of preoccupation with mudane details." Something the author of this post is obviously not concerned about either.

What is the obsession with printers??

[ACK!!]

I am mean come on this is an alternative OS people !!!!

Give the Open Source guy a few months and generally you will get a driver for your all-in-one printer/fax/washes my car printer thingee. Sometimes yes it takes longer but that is the rub folks you are working off of an alternative OS that most hw manufacturers are never going to directly support. Sometimes the new driver is easy and sometimes without specs... its damn nearly impossible to reverse engineer all of the features. Oh, you don't like that?

Sorry man maybe its time to go back to Windows or Mac OS X.

The linux freaks you see arguing over color schemes are not writing that neat new program or usually that device driver.

Those are fans for the most part not developers.

Yes, in a free world where there are no central authority forcing people to code but folks doing what they want yes sometimes the development process can seem slow and other times there is a burst of activity (note Rhythmbox as of late adding a ton of features after a ton of time where little seemed like it was going on).

Maybe people need to stop criticizing the Open Source community and start focusing on the corporations that make money off of linux and ask why RedHat and Novell and the folks behind Mandriva are not forcing some of their employees to do some of this coding.

But then again what is the obsession with printers?? I have seen this mentioned in a few criticisms of desktop linux but rarely if ever have a problem with Fedora or Suse or Ubuntu anymore. Now, sound in Gnome? That is where I am pulling my hair out!!! Someone replace ESD pleeeeeeeeze.

But I am still grateful for a free OS and all the people using their own time to contribute.

Re:What is the obsession with printers??

[pavera]

I agree what is the obsession with printers?
I mean yeah I guess he's a journalist but wait he's on ONLINE JOURNALIST, how often does he really need to print?
I haven't printed a page of paper since I got out of college. Even then at least 75% of my work was handed in electronically.
My company delivers invoices electronically, we pay invoices electronically, we have 1 printer for 100 people, and most of the time it just sits there idle.

The Open Source solution to printers is to get rid of them and make everything electronic. That's where everything is going, and his rant is calling for open source to stay compatible with 20 year old technology, not move forward to the 21st century. Right now I'm working on a document management system for law offices that will make it so they don't have to have a single piece of paper. If I can get rid of paper in a law office, I can get rid of it anywhere. This should be the goal, not making it easier to make more paper.

Re:What is the obsession with printers??

[Anonymous Coward]

I heard of this one hippie guy who was obsessed with buggy printer drivers, but that was something like 30 years ago.

Re:What is the obsession with printers??

[Halfbaked Plan]

People like printers and they like hard copy. This really isn't the place to start a flamewar about pro- and con-printer things. So why are you starting one?

I strongly disagree with the whole 'paperless office' scheme, but am not going to get into it. Please take your off-topic ideology elsewhere.

Re:What is the obsession with printers??

[Yrrebnarg]

For those of you not in the know, he's not just a hippie, but a bit of an icon of the cause. In fact, it was printer drivers that started the Free Software movement. Mod the parent up. That one was more than just funny.

Re:What is the obsession with printers??

[Cochonou]

Paradoxically, the electronic/digital age has increased the consumption of paper, if anything. People find a lot of content and information on the internet or stored in a digital form, when they would find this content on books previously. The problem is that most of the people still want to read this on paper (I can hardly blame them), which causes a huge waste of paper.
Anyway, printing is nowhere near to extinction.

Re:What is the obsession with printers??

[Jussi K. Kojootti]

Right now I'm working on a document management system for law offices that will make it so they don't have to have a single piece of paper.

Ok. Nothing personal here, just an opinion based on knowing some lawyers (and people too): You will fail. If you think that poor document management is the reason they use paper, you're wrong. It's not that they don't need better document management, it's that they read a lot and they don't like using a computer to do it -- it's that simple. Electronic document management might mean less paper lying on tables, but it'll probably mean even more printing...

Personally, if you want me to stop printing, you'll first have to give me a light, portable, high resolution, wireless, easy-on-the-eyes screen.

Re:What is the obsession with printers??

[pavera]

Well I guess we know different lawyers.
I'm building this system not as a write now get customers later scheme,
I am building it on a contract basis for a nationwide law firm with more than 300 lawyers.
I also have another 10 firms contributing ideas and feedback on the system.
This system is being developed by lawyers for lawyers... The pain of reading on the computer screen is outweighed by (at least to these attorneys) the pain of carting around 100 pound plus boxes of paper to trials, hearings, etc. Now they can take their 5 pound laptop, and they have all the files for all the cases they are working with (not just the 1-2 boxes of paper that constitute 1 case). Also it outweighs the more than $150,000/mo these firms are paying for storage space for these paper files. I'm replacing nearly 200,000 sq ft of document storage with a redundant 5TB SAN (triple redundant mirrors, still all fits easily in a 42U rack)...

Some attorneys might not like reading on a computer screen... but in my experience they like saving money and portability and convienience more.

Re:What is the obsession with printers??

[pavera]

Oh yeah one more thing... You know of course that all Federal courts are requiring all cases to be electronically filed as of Jan 1 2006 right?
So all attorneys files will need to be scanned and accessible in electronic format by then (if they are federal cases). Most states also have electronic filing available, and will mandate usage within the next 3-5 years. The Federal Courts are all going paperless, why shouldn't the attorney's follow suit? Also, all courts that I've dealt with in the last year are already paperless, if you file a piece of paper it gets scanned and stored electronically, and they throw out the piece of paper. Judges for the most part read their cases in electronic format.

what?

[teklob]

are you a troll?
*makes a cross with fingers*

Isn't a little childish to post troll stories...

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

As something serious? Printer drivers are not the problem. It's all the oddball stuff. I'm sitting here trying to make a Corex business card scanner work in linux (anyone good with usbsnoop and usbrobot?).

It takes me longer to look up what chipset a new motherboard has, than it does to do "modprobe blah.ko". And if he'd stop using fruity-assed distros and desktop environments, there might be less debate about color schemes... or maybe he wants all the graphic designers (whose only way to constructively contribute is to give us fancy eye candy) to start writing printer drivers. That's right out of the microsoft playbook, I think.

The Man is an Idiot

[eno2001]

Mr. Otto Z. Stern has a few lessons to learn about life on the internet and the cause of Free/Open Source software. For one... I take issue with his assertion that a "normal" 25 year old with a blue tooth device should even be allowed to put that anywhere near a computer unless he's a Linux user. Can you imagine what kind of havoc we'll see when the first bluetooth capable virus hits? Can you say "Beowulf cluster of all Nokia cell phones on the planet DDoSing the US DOD via bluetooth"?

Next, the guy talks about free/open source coders like they're here to solve his personal problems. Look Otto... if you can't be arsed to hit the man pages, edit a few thousand text config files and generally RTFM, then you have no business EVER using a computer for anything. Keep your interaction with technology where it should be: With ATMs and game consoles. In fact I fear that ATMs might even be too complicated for you.

How is it that someone like Otto can get in print at the Register and I can't rub two fity cent pieces together for all the writing I've done on Slashdot? I'll tell ya what Mr. Register, if ya give me a temporary writing gig, I'll take my payments in 10 packs of Cadbury Cherry Ripe Slices from down under. Do we have a deal or what?

Re:The Man is an Idiot

[Leroy_Brown242]

"The Man is an Idiot"

I need not read the rest of your post.

Only a fellow idiot would lead anything with an insult.

Re:The Man is an Idiot

[NineNine]

Sorry, but you couldn't write yourself out of a paper bag.

I'll eat karma on this post. People need to know. I know I'm not a writer, but I'm not assuming that my writing is worth shit.

Re:The Man is an Idiot

[nutbar]

With the extreme bent and phrasing used, it's pretty bloody obvious that the grandparent was being SARCASTIC.

Re:The Man is an Idiot

[eno2001]

Wait a minute. Are you telling me that you took my request to write for the Register SERIOUSLY? You must be on some really powerful mind-altering drugs to not be able to read between the lines there NineNine. Let me give you a tip. NEVER take anything I write on Slashdot seriously unless I SOUND serious. The only thing you can take seriously is when I'm sharing scripts in my JE. My main purpose for being here, If you'd bother to read my Profile is pretty much to entertain. Apparently you have no wit and I can't afford to pity you. Better luck next time and take care... you need to.

Re:The Man is an Idiot

[Dun Malg]

"The Man is an Idiot" I need not read the rest of your post. Only a fellow idiot would lead anything with an insult.

What, you think this is the Harvard debate team or something here? It's slashdot, for cripes sake. Getting on your high horse over arrogance here is a waste of your time. And for that matter, telling the rest of us when you're getting on your high horse is a waste of our time. You really think he cares that his post title turned you away? You really think the rest of us care ?

Otto, Your Fly is Open

[Rayaru]

The Register's URL is http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/11/29/ otto_fly_open/ Hehe.

Re:Otto, Your Fly is Open

[Short Circuit]

Fixed link.

From the bottom of the page:

Otto Z. Stern is a director at The Institute of Technological Values - a think tank dedicated to a more moral digital age. He has closely monitored the IT industry's intersection with America's role as a world leader for thirty years. You can find Stern locked and loaded, corralling wounded iLemmings, nursing an opal-plated prostate, spanking open source fly boys, wearing a smashing suit, dropping a SkyCar on the Googleplex, spitting on Frenchmen, vomiting in fear with a life-sized cutout of Hilary Rosen at his solar-powered compound somewhere in the Great American Southwest.

Sounds like an all-around troll. Great URL, though. More descriptive.

Okay, WTF is going on?

[Pantero Blanco]

Is someone just trying to provoke Slashdotters into an absolute frenzy lately? I've been seeing a flamebait, as-offensive-as-possible anti-F/OSS story every couple of days, and not the same one over and over again.

I'm all for showing both sides of the fence, but damn, choose people closer to the center instead of moonbat extremists.

Re:Okay, WTF is going on?

[Halfbaked Plan]

No. It's nothing that complex. VA Doorstops, (or whatever the heck the overlords who pay for Malda's anime are calling themselves now) is trying to prevent another dip in their stock price.

Banner Hits. It's like the dude who says 'Plastics' in the movie The Graduate.

Re:Okay, WTF is going on?

[just_another_sean]

...choose people closer to the center instead of moonbat extremists.

Where's the fun in that? ;-)

MOD STORY DOWN: FLAMEBAIT

[Anonymous Coward]

This story deserves nothing more than a -5 flamebait. Discuss.

Re:MOD STORY DOWN: FLAMEBAIT

[maxwell demon]

You cannot moderate lower than -1.

Doubleyou tee eff?

[jleq]

This is news? I don't think so. Maybe a troll or flame at most, but there is absolutely NO content in that story. Unless you already have, don't bother to RTFA. Stories like this are very embarrassing for those of us (such as myself) who stand on the Windows/Closed Source side of the debate.

Re:Doubleyou tee eff?

[Pantero Blanco]

I understand what you're saying, though I lean pretty far to the open source side. Unfortunately, you don't see opponents of a particular point of view quoting the moderates of that point of view...They quote the worst examples they can find in order to make the point of view that they don't like look as ridiculous as possible. I've talked to closed-source people who have the idea that all OSS advocates are zealots, because that's the only type that gets talked about in the magazines they read and the forums they frequent. And, of course, it holds true in other debates. Left and Right wing political forums are generally full of posts about stupid or horrible things people on the Other Side have said or done.

Oh look.

[Flower]

A COLA troll got a piece on The Register. So very 1996. How quaint that it made it to the front page.

commentary

[brennz]

I read the article. Afterwards though, I am more confused.

Was it an overdone example of poor writing, or posing-at-witty critique of OSS?

In the former, it succeeded brilliantly, and the latter, failed just as dramatically.

At least it was more entertaining than another paid microsoft shill's bogus study.

3/10 because I feel generous.

Re:commentary

[fatrat]

It's *humour*. As ever, British humour proves too subtle for Americans....

Printer Drivers

[Anonymous Coward]

Tell him to get a Samsung ML-1610, comes with the Linux drivers right in the box! As do most of their other models, works like a charm.

A self-righteous asshole

[symbolic]

or maybe even write a printer driver so that something I buy actually works with my open sores PC.

Excuse me, but isn't it the vendor that's respsonsible for providing drivers? If you want to place some blame, jump on their ass.

Linux contributors have tried to pick up some of the slack, but because of the fact that everything that isn't open-source is most likely proprietary, this is not an easy hurdle to overcome.

It's obvious that the Register was looking for filler, because this article wastes a good deal of space with absolutely NOTHING of substance.

Re:A self-righteous asshole

[oglueck]

There are stilll many vendors that do not provide hardware documentation so that it is just very very hard if not even impossible to write driver for their hardware. Best example is nVidia and ATI graphics boards or Cannon scanners. All drivers we have for them are made from reverse engineering the hardware! Goodness, I remember the times when my Star 9-pin printer came with a book that contained a detailed description of the printer protocol. Or a OKI laser printer whose user manual documented PCL!

Re:Full of hot air

[johnd]

It's not a problem if he buys it or codes it his damned self instead of complaining.

And this is the attitude that will cause Open Source/Linux to be nothing more than an interesting sidebar in computing history. Why should I have to code a printer driver myself? It's stupid to suggest that I should. It distracts from the main game which is using Open Source/Linux to actually do things.

Why is it so hard to understand that one of the reasons Windows is so popular is that it handles all of this automatically. I know I can connect my bluetooth camera to it and it will just work.

complain to your h/w manufacturer

[smash]

Microsoft don't write drivers, why should open source coders?

They give the MS the code for their drivers to package with Windows, MS doesn't write them.

If they did that for Linux as well, no problem.

As it is, open source programmers do more than Microsoft's programmers - the whole hardware rant is a little unfair.

smash.

Maybe he should...

[greg_barton]

...talk to the printer manufacturer and ask them to support Linux? Maybe?

Printer drivers??????

[zappepcs]

Okay, the original post is a troll, but seriously, so many big names in the computer industry have been spouting paperless office drivel for so long that I can't really believe that people want to print stuff?

Yeah, ok, there are some things, maybe a buss card printer or photo printer, but really, printing is the LAST thing I'm worried about. I believe in the paperless office, and I take that practice home with me too.

He might have a point about coordinated application integration, but if printing is all he is worried about, I say we pitch in and buy him a 128 box of crayons and some paper!

Re:Printer drivers??????

[TrancePhreak]

How about lame PDF files that don't let you edit and you need to print one to put notes on it.

Re:Printer drivers??????

[maxwell demon]

Just print them into a postscript file which you can edit in any editor of your liking :-)

Cowboyneal Wants Flame Wars!

[woolio]

Flame wars generate a lot of messages...

Each posted message requires several page views (login/preview/confirm,etc)

Articles with high message counts seem likely to attract readers (the count gives a rough measure of how interesting/controversial the topic is)..

More readers means more page views... (have to click on messages to view threads/etc)

In short, it is in SlashDot's FINANCIAL interest to periodically let an imflammatory 'article' "slip by". I bet a ton (long/short/metric/etc) of money is made just from advertising / pay-per-click revenue...

Such pieces of crap mean $$$$ for CowboyNeal.

Satire in a serious journal. Yawn.

[schmidt349]

A Google search confirms that Mr. Stern is a prolific writer for the Rock All Times, http://www.therockalltimes.co.uk/information/, which the BBC describes as "An anarchic and hilarious website featuring highly satirical articles on the world's current affairs." The Register calls it "our new, new favourite site...", which is a dead giveaway. Mr. Stern has also commented that:

• Hilary Rosen is a lesbian.
• Carli Fiorina is a man.
• Only a sniping blogger militia can protect us from exploding Chinamen.

I rest my case.

Otis likes it dry

[marnues]

I've been reading some of this guys other articles, and I'm pretty sure he either feeds on flamefests like demons feed on souls, or the guy really loves dry humor. At first I thought it was the former, but after reading an article where he openly asks for a date from the chair of the RIAA(who is a lesbian), I firmly believe he just thinks the brits are a bit too wet for his funny bone.

Re:Otis likes it dry

[SquadBoy]

It's satire. Have you never read El Reg before?

WTF is the world coming to?

The Real Identity of Otto Z. Stern is...

[Teh_monkeyCode]

Ashley Vance of The Register
proof

On a side note, where can I find a flamebait-free slashdot?

That is exactly the type of attitude

[mattbot 5000]

...that keeps open source OSes from hitting mainstream desktops. You know there's something seriously flawed with the software development process when someone resorts to "you're doing something wrong" as an explanation for why a piece of software isn't easy or enjoyable to use.

The software should accommodate the user, not the other way around.

Re:That is exactly the type of attitude

[Rakishi]

So who is the user? Should high end cad programs be written so anyone who starts it up knows exactly how to use it?

Also why? Why should someone doing an open source project in their free time give a rats ass about Joe Average.

In other words: if you can't get it to work then you're not the intended user. Some projects want to aim at more people and others at less, there are advantages to both approaches. OSS is free and as such there is no direct material reason why an OSS programer has to accomodate the largest possible group of users.

Re:That is exactly the type of attitude

[Rakishi]

You don't understand humans very well then it seems.

Re:That is exactly the type of attitude

[Ohreally_factor]

At best you get a "you're doing something wrong". Most of the time you get no response at all, which I guess is a way of saying, "Figure it out yourself."

I don't have time to figure it all out myself every time I have a crappy software experience. That's why I don't mind paying for some of the tools I use.

Re:That is exactly the type of attitude

[FireBreathingDog]

Since the mid-1990s, I have installed and/or configured the following packages on multiple Linux versions/distributions:

• MySQL
• bind
• Apache
• lighttpd
• PHP
• FastCGI
• Postfix
• sendmail
• qmail
• Postgresql
• ...to name a few

Despite the fact that I have been using computers since the early 1980s, have programmed everything from 6502 assembler to C, C++, Java, Pascal, PHP and Ruby, every fucking time I have to install and configure something on Linux, it is a major pain in the ass. There are different package systems for (nearly) each distro, and for software that's not packaged, I have to screw around with make and configure for an hour just to get the thing to compile. Forget the dependency hell and the mismatched shared libraries. Different patches have to be applied for different distros, and in most cases, the documentation from the provider of the software is not quite complete (to be charitable).

Let's face it, even for a relative expert like me, Linux is a ballbuster when you're trying to get the environment exactly the way you want it. Sure, it runs great after that, efficiently and with stability, but it should not take me over a week to get a functioning web server + PHP + mail server + database engine up and running exactly the way I want it. And yes, it can take a week...when you're like me, and you have to deal with several Linux distros at once, it is very difficult to become an expert in each one or even to keep straight which ones have which quirks, which ones store files where, etc. Most of my time is spent digging up relevant info out of mailing list archives that are several years old.

All I know is, if I am ever in the position of specifying hardware, I will get an Apple Xserve running OS X Server. All the flexibility of Linux with the ease-of-use of a Mac. It may not be a "free" OS, but my time isn't free either, even though the Linux community often treats people that way.

Re:Full of hot air

[Asprin]

Why is it so hard to understand that one of the reasons Windows is so popular is that it handles all of this automatically. I know I can connect my bluetooth camera to it and it will just work.

You mispelled 'Macintosh'.

Just thought you should know.

Re:Who is Otto Z. Stern? ...some kind of fetishist

[Prairiewest]

Who exactly is Otto Z. Stern? What is his background, credentials, past software development involvement, and so on?

Actually, I'm always open to reading opinions and ideas from people that I have never heard of. Sometimes I'm pleasantly surprised that these "unknown" people can have truly inspiring or insightful commentary.

No so with Mr. Stern.

I checked out "My prostate's as hard as an opal" and was similarily disappointed with his fetish around his own ass and related body parts. "Big Google is much worse than Big Oil" manages to mention herpes in the first line, and never does get around to making a solid case against Google apologists.

So, it's good that I read through some of his drivel, now I'll know to avoid anything written by him in the future.

The Register

[Wyatt Earp]

Is it just me or is the Register getting worse by the week with it's "reporting"? I just RTFA and it's terrible writing. I mean, I couldn't hand that in for Freshman English class.

Other "stories" are just press releases, and wow they get honked off at Google.

Not to obsess with details...

[adlib24]

But is goat-rendering worse than pig...or cow-rendering? Apparently these is a whole set of farm animal related benchmarks that I just haven't tried on my graphics card.

On a related note, cow-RENDING is definately harder than goat-RENDING...I am told it has something to do with the extra stomachs.

Cheers,

Adam Wayment

p.s. we all know open source security is better than...well, any thing else...so maybe we should start an open source TSA initiative and solve Holiday flying woes. ;)

I don't know

[rsilvergun]

I've read studies where Hot Branding compares favorably against Microsoft's latest license agreement. But maybe they were funded by Hot Branding Zealots.

Re:I don't know

[Groghunter]

Why, oh Jebus why, is this modded + 4 INFORMATIVE?! I mean, I love a hot branding as much as the next guy, but come on.

Oops

[marnues]

of course, Otis = Otto...

Re:my stuff works

[Anonymous Coward]

i'm also very grateful to all of the opensource developers, great apps like gimp, scribus, firefox, bluefish, endless list these days...

perhaps this moron is too dumb to remember 30 years ago, most software came out of universities ...now said universities are all on Microsoft contracts

He hits the nail on the head

[Clockwurk]

Whats the use of pointless eye-candy (like compositing and transparent xterms) when the underlying windowing system (X) is more broken than a New Orleans levee. The big problems in Linux won't ever be addressed because you can't get enough people to agree on a common vision and work to achieve it (well that and the hostility towards commercial developers).

Linux is a lot like windows, each new version is a little bit better, but it is chained to doing many of the important (and broken) things the same as every version before it. Linux won't ever be great when it gets developed a lot like a katamari, layers of hacks that get thicker and thicker as time goes on.

Only Apple (and Steve Jobs) has the guts to throw out all the old garbage (X windows, the many start up daemons, unix copy/paste, gtk) and replace it with fresh new ideas (quartz, launchd, xcode).

Re:He hits the nail on the head

[ChaosDiscord]

...throw out all the old garbage (X windows, the many start up daemons, unix copy/paste, gtk)

What's wrong with X-Windows? The old "It's too slow"? Because locally it's working all in memory, no network, and nice and zippy. What's wrong with the start up daemons? There are lots of them, but you can tweak and tune them. The typical daemons started on a system configured for "workstation" or "desktop" tends to be similar to the number of processes I end up running in Windows XP or Mac OS X. Or is it the method daemons start up with? I find it no more or less confusing the mess that is the combination of Windows services and startup programs. Mac OS X has something similar; it may not be rc scripts, but they're launching stuff like Samba and CUPS just like my Linux box does. Unix copy/paste? What's wrong with it? I copy stuff to and fro quite happily. Or are you whining about the "select is copy, middle click is paste"? Because while you were apparently sleeping, the mainstream stuff all started supporting Ctrl+C/Ctrl+V. Select-paste still works, but if you don't like you don't have to use it. GTK? Ummm, right.

The reality is that you don't have the foggiest idea what you're talking about.

Re:He hits the nail on the head

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

Hah. Name these horrible, life-threatening flaws to linux/X11/whatever that you see going unfixed because of "lack of common vision".

I'd like to hear them.

Re:He hits the nail on the head

[TorKlingberg]

Unix copy/paste? What's wrong with it? I copy stuff to and fro quite happily. Or are you whining about the "select is copy, middle click is paste"? Because while you were apparently sleeping, the mainstream stuff all started supporting Ctrl+C/Ctrl+V.

Let me see,
gnome-terminal: No
emacs: No
Ctrl+C never work in terminal applications, and I don't think emacs have ever cared about any kind of UI standards.

Re:He hits the nail on the head

[MrCoke]

This is like complaining that an old Windows 3.1 program doesn't follow the offical Windows XP UI guidelines. Emacs comes from a time when there were no UI standards available. Not important ones anyway.

Besides, the code is available. If it bothers you that much, send in patches.

Re:He hits the nail on the head

[Kaali]

No such thing as ctrl-c copying on Windows Command Prompt either, why? Because ctrl-c is the default key on every OS i have used to interrrupt running software on a command-prompt/terminal. Even if you mark the text on Windows Command Prompt you can't copy it with ctrl-c, you press enter. So actually NOT supporting ctrl-c on the terminal is quite a standard way of behaviour.

Re:He hits the nail on the head

[Stalyn]

X isn't as bad as you say. It is improving. The next release of X.org 6.9/7.0 (monolith/module based) has various improvements. The most important is the new module based structure in 7.0. This should improve not only the installation procedure but also making the code more accessible to would-be developers. The most important next step is trying to come up with a new accelerated arch based on modern day GPUs. I refer you to Jon Smirl's paper

Jon himself left his project because the little attention it was receiving from other xorg developers. However his work was not unnoticed and him leaving actually stirred up some debate on the future of Xorg. Check the mailing lists for some interesting debate.

Anyway there is a group of developers who will continue Jon's work after the new Xorg is released. It is that right now everyone is trying to push 6.9/7.0 out the door.

Honestly, if Red Hat or some other Linux companies invested in more X coders and hired more developers to work on this project. We could have a modern desktop comparable to OS X and Vista within a year. However I doubt this will ever happen.

Re:He hits the nail on the head

[Clockwurk]

Ok, off the top of my head, try having a mouse with more than 3 buttons, or setting X to use multiple resolutions or refresh rates, or creating a binary program that can run on different distros (or getting a binary from a third party if you don't have fedora or mandriva), or creating a device driver that doesn't require a kernel patch. Or copy/pasting to and from any app with multiple data types (I can select lines and points in autocad and paste them into word, or paste a bitmap into a cad drawing).

Here are some braindead things I noticed last time I use linux.
* Using Konqueror (file browser), double clicking on a text file opened it in read-only preview mode, to actually edit a file, you had to right-click then open with.
* Also, I couldn't figure out how to create a desktop shortcut to an app (that might have been me).
* If you select copy and then close the app you copied from, the selection disappears.
* I detailed my experiences with a linux install (SuSE) here

Re:He hits the nail on the head

[fatboy]

Unix copy/paste? What's wrong with it? I copy stuff to and fro quite happily. Or are you whining about the "select is copy, middle click is paste"? Because while you were apparently sleeping, the mainstream stuff all started supporting Ctrl+C/Ctrl+V.

Let me see,
gnome-terminal: No
emacs: No
Ctrl+C never work in terminal applications, and I don't think emacs have ever cared about any kind of UI standards.

Funny, it don't work in cmd.com either!

Re:He hits the nail on the head

[TrancePhreak]

"Select-paste still works...."

This means select, replace is broken! The often more usefull version of pasting, at least for code.

Re:He hits the nail on the head

[chthonicdaemon]

Unix copy/paste? What's wrong with it? I copy stuff to and fro quite happily. Or are you whining about the "select is copy, middle click is paste"? Because while you were apparently sleeping, the mainstream stuff all started supporting Ctrl+C/Ctrl+V.

Let me see, gnome-terminal: No emacs: No Ctrl+C never work in terminal applications, and I don't think emacs have ever cared about any kind of UI standards.

You cannot expect emacs to adopt Ctrl+C for copying (or any of the other 'UI standards') when it runs on many, many different platforms and has a large user base that likes the bindings just the way they are. Of course, you could re-assign the bindings, or use an emacs that has bindings you like (Aquamacs allows 'normal' Mac bindings). Of course, in terminal Ctrl+C has a predefined meaning (to kill the currently running process). I would feel quite lost of I tried to kill a running console app and got no response.

Your point is probably that we should change from the way that feels natural to us to something that seems natural to other people. Honestly though, the kind of person who likes using Mac shortcuts is not very likely to fire up Emacs or gnome-terminal. If they want to learn these things, surely a natural thing to learn are the keybindings? I guess this just goes back to the point that Linux developers are largely in this to make life better for themselves. It is ok to make things better for other people in the process, but it becomes really difficult to motivate when people want you to do things that are good for them but bad for you.

Re:He hits the nail on the head

[agk02017]

Linux is opposed to Unix (BSD for example) in the kernel design, but accepts old solutions like X. Linux is too crude for that task. Its documentation is bad (GNU license for documentation is Bad Thing (TM), so new license will be generated by FSF). CUPS is hard to configure, hackers have no time to print stuff, no reasons to write printer drivers, slow progress in this area. Thus Linux will never win the desktop struggle against MS.

I had not read about new ideas of Apple, but gtk is backward step anyway. It's a MS Windows-like interface (same scrolling vs. old good 3-button classic Unix style). BTW roller on mouse was devised because MS editors have poor moving commands (only arrow keys or infinite mouse clicking). GTK has the same poor design, so my opinion correlates with yours.

Re:He hits the nail on the head

[pebs]

Honestly, if Red Hat or some other Linux companies invested in more X coders and hired more developers to work on this project. We could have a modern desktop comparable to OS X and Vista within a year. However I doubt this will ever happen.

True enough. Unfortunately Red Hat is too interested in the server market and not-so-interested in the desktop market.

Re:He hits the nail on the head

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

*Mouse with 3+ buttons - works great on up til 5 buttons. I think things get hairy after that, though.

*X multiple refresh rates/resolutions - Works great. A keystroke that I can't rememer cycles through them.

*Binary program for multiple distros? Duh, make a source tarball.

*Device driver without a kernel patch - May be some difficulties here, but the drivers for both my 8port serial card and 4port ethernet card (intel e100) required no patch or kernel rebuild.

* Copy/paste - Touche. It's all too window manager dependent, and poorly implemented. We either have some very weird ideas from the early X11 days, or unashamed copycatting of microsoft.

*Konqueror - Installed this just a few weeks ago, to check if my site looked decent outside of firefox. As a web browser it's ok, but as a file manager? Eek. There is only one file manager, it's called xterm/bash.

*Desktop shortcut - Why are you using some ass-tasting window manager that has such a concept? WindowMaker is nice, docking an appicon is easy. And pretty. Still, not enough room, so I've started using kxdocker for launching apps. Still keep my favorite dockapps, wmCalClock and such, so I've got that whole NextStep/OSX fusion thing going on (I even use an expose close!)...

*Closing the app that you've copied from kills its clipboard entry - Again, touche.

*Suse - Well, at least it's not Mandrake. (What's their new name again, mandrivel?)

Re:He hits the nail on the head

[smindinvern]

1. multiple refresh rates, and resolutions, while stupid, is possible, Ctrl+Alt+(+/-) 2. binary to run on multiple distros... tar -xvzf binary.tar.gz -C / - you'll still have to meet dependancies, but you would have to do that with windows too (95/98/2000/Me/XP/Vista) 3. Device driver that doesn't require kernel patch... easy, a module 4. copy/pasting multiple data types... easy, each app just has to be able to read the data itself 5. konqueror sucks, don't use it, it's too much like ie... use nautilus/rox/bash 6. Desktop icons suck, but you can click and drag from the (start?) menu iirc 7. true, linux doesn't have the clipboard, but that can be a good thing (clip board gets congested, and confused sometimes) 8. you either don't know what you're talking about, or you refuse to accept it, or maybe you're just one of those Microsoft lover script-kiddies

Re:He hits the nail on the head

[MonMotha]

While others have indicated the old ctl/alt/+ and ctl/alt/- hotkeys for X mode switching, I'm guessing that doesn't QUITE do what you want. That will create a virtual desktop who's logical size is as large as the largest defined mode.

However, the X RandR extension allows for on-the-fly resizing of the root window, as well as selecting just about any valid defined mode.
I can select from the following:

SZ: Pixels Physical Refresh
*0 1280 x 1024 ( 325mm x 260mm ) *75 60
1 1152 x 864 ( 325mm x 260mm ) 75
2 1024 x 768 ( 325mm x 260mm ) 75 70 60
3 800 x 600 ( 325mm x 260mm ) 75 72 60 56
4 640 x 480 ( 325mm x 260mm ) 75 73 60
5 512 x 384 ( 325mm x 260mm ) 75 70 60
6 400 x 300 ( 325mm x 260mm ) 75 72 60 56
7 320 x 240 ( 325mm x 260mm ) 75 73 60
8 1280 x 960 ( 325mm x 260mm ) 60
9 1280 x 800 ( 325mm x 260mm ) 60
10 1280 x 768 ( 325mm x 260mm ) 60
11 832 x 624 ( 325mm x 260mm ) 75
12 640 x 512 ( 325mm x 260mm ) 75 60
13 720 x 450 ( 325mm x 260mm ) 60
14 640 x 400 ( 325mm x 260mm ) 60
15 576 x 432 ( 325mm x 260mm ) 75
16 640 x 384 ( 325mm x 260mm ) 60
17 416 x 312 ( 325mm x 260mm ) 75
Current rotation - normal
Current reflection - none
Rotations possible - normal
Reflections possible - none

Note that your window manager has to handle the resize sanely. Unfortunately, few do (but then most window managers suck, especially the default ones that come with most distributions). My preferred window manager, FVWM, has some support for it. The reason is that this exention, while not new (I used it on my ipaq over 3 years ago), is still relatively new to the desktop crowd due to the XFree86/X.Org fiasco. Hopefully window manager support will catch on soon.

As far as copy/paste, I just copy/pasted that list up there from my xterm. It seemed to work OK. The biggest problem I have is apps that try to adopt the windows copy/paste paradigm of ctl+c/ctl+v instead of sticking with the normal X one of highlight/middle click.

I use all 5 buttons on my mouse, just tell xorg that you have 5 buttons in the config file. After 5, you have to do some hackery with xmodmap (and that is NOT fun...) if you want your wheel to still work right. Someone should fix that.

I've had mixed experiences with binary applications and drivers in Linux. Drivers that have wrappers that are maintained usually work OK (like the nVidia driver). "Hostile" binary drivers usually are pretty much stuck on whatever kernel they were built against. This sucks, though MODVERSIONS helps with this. I've had binary applications that work fine (Eagle CAD, UT2003, UT2004), work fine once you manually install them since their installer was broken (Maple 9, original UT), and applications linked against a glibc from 1997 that I'm too lazy to hunt down and install (Xilinx ISE 6). Let's face it, Win32 binary compatibility from 1997 or so is kinda iffy with XP. How many complex apps (and you're kidding yourself if you don't think Xilinx is complex) built for Win95 will work on XP?

Things certainly need fixed, but a lot of the problems people have is just breaking out of the Windows paradigms and getting used to the UNIXish ones. I personally can't stand hunting my way through badly designed GUIs in Windows anymore (a recent patch broke my DCOM, I finally ended up just reinstalling windows after the MSDN instructions failed to fix the problem). Give me my plain text config files!

Re:He hits the nail on the head

[porttikivi]

Otto and Clockwurk are right, but Linux is still "good" for many things, and getting better faster than Windows is.

Otto's anyway has two very good main points:

Point 1:

Linux has not reached the "it 'just works' for everyday people on everyday needs" state. Today, n people in the world are capable of doing m everyday things on Windows (or a Mac) without trying very hard. For Linux the n x m is just orders of magnitude less than for Linux. Be it lack of standards in UI, lack of standards in package management and distribution, bugs, limitations in applications (I am switching back to IE on Windows because Firefox offline features suck), hardware interfacing, lack of vendor support, lack of helpful colleagues or whatever, but the end result is that for some 6 billion people and for a half of everyday computing needs (how do I enable WLAN on this laptop using Linux, in Windows I activate it by a hardware button?) work, not at least without major pain.

Point 2:

The most visible Linux people like the Slashdot crowd are unfriendly and fanatic: they don't want to consider a view of a person who hates computers and just wants them to work with as little as possible hassle.

Re:He hits the nail on the head

[fatrat]

What's wrong with /etc/init.d/* startup scripts? Speed and lack of dependencies for starters. Sun has done more-or-less the same as Apple in Solaris 10 with their new svc stuff.

Have a look at it before you rant.

Re:He hits the nail on the head

[Mr_Silver]

Whats the use of pointless eye-candy (like compositing and transparent xterms) when the underlying windowing system (X) is more broken than a New Orleans levee. The big problems in Linux won't ever be addressed because you can't get enough people to agree on a common vision and work to achieve it (well that and the hostility towards commercial developers).

Actually, I'd say the biggest problem with Open Source is that people who work on it generally want to work on the cool, fun, high profile (ie. visible to the end users) and interesting stuff. Transparent xterms fall into this category.

Unfortunately the essential stuff (like drivers) is considered considerably "less cool" and attract fewer hackers.

Corporate environments don't have this problem quite so much because there are plenty of people happy to do the boring stuff as long as they get paid (which they do). When you're doing it for free in your own time, that incentive is not there.

ps. I find it interesting that some of the people who complained about his term "open sores" use "M$" frequently. Horses for courses...

Re:He hits the nail on the head

[jrumney]

If it bothers you that much, send in patches.

No need. In the current CVS version of Emacs, it's a case of going to the Options menu and selecting C-x/C-c/Cv Cut and Paste (CUA). In released versions, Kim Storm's CUA mode is a simple add-on.

Re:He hits the nail on the head

[TheOrquithVagrant]

Well...

No problems with my 4-button wireless trackball here.
Multiple resolutions/refreshates in X, fixed with xrandr, and available through Preferences->Screen resolution in Gnome. Works better than in Windows as far as I'm concerned, since unlike Windows, Linux/X doesn't forget my f*ing choices and customizations every time I upgrade the display driver.
Binary programs that can run on different distros doesn't seem to be a problem. Just look at the linux versions for ported games, such as UT, quake3/4, DoomIII, etc. Building an LSB-compliant rpm should also do the trick, although admittedly, the LSB isn't enough for desktop apps. As a last resort, you could always build a statically linked binary.
Copy paste of mixed data... grant you that one. It's not something I can remember even trying to do, but I would assume it won't work with the current clipboard implementation in gnome, at least.

Further:

* Using Konqueror (file browser), double clicking on a text file opened it in read-only preview mode, to actually edit a file, you had to right-click then open with.

I don't use KDE, but in Gnome/Nautilus, this behavior is easily configurable, and I would assume the same is true for KDE. Default behavior in gnome is to open in an editor.

* Also, I couldn't figure out how to create a desktop shortcut to an app (that might have been me).

Again, gnome user here, not kde. If it's in the app menu, just left-click and drag to desktop. Otherwise, right click desktop and "Create Launcher". Pretty intuitive if you ask me.

* If you select copy and then close the app you copied from, the selection disappears.

Yes, this IS an annoyance, and still there by default in FC4's version of gnome. If I remember right, it's finally fixed in Gnome 2.12, though. There used to a little util named "gnome-clipboard-demon" you could install to fix it, but really... that ought to have been fixed by default long ago.

Re:He hits the nail on the head

[DashEvil]

Calling a design poor without providing ideas for how you would improve it is generally pretty lame.

Re:He hits the nail on the head

[Eudial]

Only Apple (and Steve Jobs) has the guts to throw out all the old garbage (X windows, the many start up daemons, unix copy/paste, gtk) and replace it with fresh new ideas (quartz, launchd, xcode).

What is wrong with you!? Unix copy/paste is the best thing that has happened to humanity since the lightbulb!

Re:He hits the nail on the head

[OneSeventeen]

Once again, enter the opinion. I would choose X11/xorg over the OSX interface any day. I spend a week really trying my hardest at OSX, but it just wouldn't click. I am much more productive on my Ubuntu box than I am Windows or OSX.

I've got a Mac Fanatic friend who can work much faster on OSX than X11 or explorer.exe. I've also met people who find the explorer interface to be easier than OSX or X11. So, apparently the end user's comfort level with the OS/interface matters more than opinions about the code behind the scenes.

Apple did do a great job at making a smooth interface. I could minimize/maximize screens with full animation and it ran smoothly and looked cool. However, when responding to a slashdot article, I would finish typing my sentence long before it appeared on the screen, because Apple seems to have invested more in the interface than in other areas, such as processing data I put into it. (once again, merely opinion)

What we need to realize, is this article is coming from a guy who uses butt-plugs to make political statements against airlines and just felt like ranting about the airline service, and needed to throw something geeky in to get it posted on the register. I'm sure he is very well spoken and has written nice articles in the past, but this is not one of them.

If you want to complain about OSS, then state the development methods that do not work, and maybe offer a better way of doing things. Citing an argument about colour schemes as one of your two major points on what is wrong with an operating system is rather weak.

I'm typing this from a windows machine, and I have a windows machine at home. Unfortunately my vinyl cutter's manufacturer decided to support Windows and OSX, but not linux. That's their decision, and I won't complain, because I bought the product knowing it would only work with Windows for me. If I seriously cared, I could probably find a way to write an application that would send an SVG file to the plotter via the serial port, but I'm lazy and find it hard to point the finger when I know its my own laziness/unwillingness/lack of knowledge and experience that is keeping me from having working hardware.

In short, the best OS is the one you work the best with. If that's Windows XP, then go for it. If that's OSX, fine. If that's Linux, BSD, or Unix, then who am I to judge? Linux will survive not on technological advances, but on business model advances. While Vendor lock-in is crippling some businesses, low hardware support will be crippling others. As Linux gains in popularity, hardware manufacturers will listen and start developing linux drivers. But linux still won't have vendor lock in =).

Re:He hits the nail on the head

[ookaze]

Stop making a fool of yourself please !!!

Mouse of more than 3 buttons : Check ! Next XOrg will allow a lot more than you can actually. You can even use several pointing devices simultaneously at present.
setting X to use multiple resolutions or refresh rates : Check. The big desktops even have applets for this.
creating a binary program that can run on different distros : Check. Try any Loki game, or to have something free, just try the latest Privateer Remake.
creating a device driver that doesn't require a kernel patch : Check. Most comes as modules, which don't require any kernel patch.
copy/pasting to and from any app with multiple data types : Check. It's up to the application to do sth with it then. What you say is useless though. More useful would be to have uniform mime types between apps.

As for your braindead things, they are indeed braindead:
- A preview mode, of course, should be read-only. FYI, in KDE, you can choose what to do when clicking or double-clicking a file, it's written in the help accessible with the big rescue icon. You just showed that you are ignorant and don't want to learn.
- You could not figure out how to create a desktop shortcut to an app !! Same answer as above. FYI there are several ways, one of them is to just drag and drop the icon from the menu to the desktop
- The copy, close app, copy disappear was a known problem and is now fixed
- Your detailed experience shows you were inexperienced and chose to use a FTP Install (!!!) of a downloaded distro (!!!), and then had install problems because you did everything like in Windows. Summary : a moronic choice for a beginner. Perhaps you thought you were a computer expert.

Re:He hits the nail on the head

[ChaosDiscord]

Select then replace isn't broken. I use it all the time. Select the text I want to copy. Ctrl+C. Select the text I want to replace. Ctrl+V. Pretty much just like Mac OS X and Windows. The existance of the kinda weird selection buffer doesn't harm the more common copy buffer. A point can be made for retiring the selection buffer because it confuses the average person, but it's hardly breaking functionality.

Re:He hits the nail on the head

[ChaosDiscord]

You'll notice I said, "mainstream stuff". I said that for a reason. Terminals and Emacs (and my preference Vim) are hardly mainstream. They're weird and Joe Random User probably shouldn't use them. For that subset of us who need to use a terminal, we'll have to live with right clicking and selecting Copy or Paste. I'll admit a little bit of jealously for Apple's Option key. Copy and Paste is Option-C/V and works just fine in their terminal application, just like every other Mac OS X app. As for Emacs and Vim; sadly their days are numbered. Us diehard fans will keep using it, but for a new developer I can't honestly recommend them. Yes, Vim is very powerful. But was it really worth the time it took me to learn it? Probably at the time, because there wasn't really much better. But now various graphical editors are getting complete enough to satisfy even me.

Re:He hits the nail on the head

[ChaosDiscord]

What's wrong with /etc/init.d/* startup scripts? Speed and lack of dependencies for starters.

*eh*

Yeah, something with dependencies (which allows parallel startups, which increases speed) would be nice. It's a bit unfortunate that my machine takes a minute to get through starting up the various services instead of 10 seconds. Yet somehow I struggle on. The worst you can charge System V init scripts with is being annoyingly slow. For something you do relatively infrequently, it just hardly seems worthy of being labelled a "big problem" like the person I was originally responding to did. It's a nuisance.

Re:Full of hot air

[BrainInAJar]

Assuming you run around the internet for hours trying to dig up the precise driver for your piece of hardware, or else windows won't recognize it, then when you do find it you realize that you're in canada, so it's not REALLY the right driver. And you're looking for an ethernet driver so you have to do it all at a friends' house... etc.

What I think is one of linux's most powerful features is that almost all hardware that *IS* supported comes with the kernel

Congratulations Otto

[Paul Carver]

That article is one of the least coherent things to appear on Slashdot, and that's quite an achievment. I never really liked stream of conciousness in high school and I can't say that I like it any better on a web page than in paperback. I can't imagine what posessed anyone to submit that story or what caused an "editor" to post it. It just doesn't have any content.

John Dvorak

[Cave_Monster]

Sounds like the stuff Dvorak would say. It's really boring reading this crap, yet I think it's on slashdot because it's a guaranteed story to generate posts which surely helps slashdot's income.

Re:Full of hot air

[joelsanda]

It's not a problem if he buys it or codes it his damned self instead of complaining.

I tried three Linux distributions in an attempt to shed Windows (I eventually did and moved back to MacOS). In all three cases the following four things did not work:

• Video Card
• Sound Card
• Printer
• Modem

What was the solution when I called Redhat (for the first distro install) and then posted messages (from my work PC because that one could connect to the Internet) to boards with all the distros? "Just recompile the kernel for your model video card, sound card, and modem."

Yeah. You can imagine how long an OS operating system stayed installed on my home computers.

That's no different than taking a hammer back to the hardware store because the head is loose and having the hardware salesman say "Just reforge the hammer and carve a new handle." I'm interested in computers as a tool, not a way of life.

Having said that, I'm commited to Firefox and had nothing but great luck running Apache (on Windows, not Linux ;-) - so OS is slicker than glossy marketing materials from M$ in many cases, but my experience with Operating Systems is to treat them like guys in suits carrying Bibles and ringing my doorbell.

Re:Full of hot air

[Leroy_Brown242]

This is one reason Apple has survived as long as they have.

Stuff just works!

The only reason I boot into Win is to print

[BerntB]

I think the guy has a point.

The only time I boot into Windows is when I need to print.

Is there a neat, flexible way to get the same control of a Samsung ML-1451N? I want to print 2 and 4 pages onto one page of paper, etc.

(The description said "Linux compatibility", sigh. Wonderful printer, I literally don't know how often paper jams, since I haven't seen it yet. But I won't buy another Samsung product without checking carefully first.)

Re:The only reason I boot into Win is to print

[laptop006]

Try the kprinter frontend, it's pretty nice. I use it talking to a network'd cups backend and never had a problem. It offers multi-up, control of duplexing etc.

ratio of key words to rational content is 10000/1

[rcpitt]

But then it's the ads that pay the bills, not the writer ;)

OTOH - I might want one of those butt plugs - I have a bit of travelling to do...

The article is a waste of time

[n54]

Don't bother reading it as it will not give you anything but a grumpy old man act (if this Otto is 25 then that's just twice as bad).

Quick summary:
- introductionary rambling quote by Thomas Jefferson that doesn't add anything
- introductionary (yup it reads like introduction number two) rambling quote by Ottos mom (I'm not sure if would be worse or better if it in fact was ghostwritten by Otto) praising her son in the most pompous way and mentioning that Otto was referred to by the New York Times
- Otto making a point about not caring about being mentioned by the New York Times (we're almost halfway through the "article" by now)
- trashtalking airlines and flying
- trashtalking Burt Rutan with some mumbeling about a meditation capsule
- some more airline trashtalking
- trashtalking about open source
- trashtalking about Finland and Linus Torvalds (hey Otto come to Norway: a country jokingly (and sadly with a grain of truth) referred to as one of the last communist states by Swedes)

That's it, really. Not a shred of intelligence, just whining from someone who either must be insanely spoilt (I blame his mom) or totally fails at some kind of attempt at elitist wittiness.

Why the fuck would george (submitter) or samzenpus (editor) think anyone would find this article interesting? Perhaps it would be for psychology students trying to profile Otto but somehow I imagine not many would waste time doing that ("whining asshole" isn't much of a scientific diagnosis anyway).

Nah the only likely reason this appeared is for the purpose of some kind of link-exchange deal.

Now I know why I'm not reading the Register but I can't comprehend why I'm reading Slashdot, perhaps it's time to find somewhere else to hang out on the net. Feel free to suggest replacements to Slashdot (Digg ain't it and it should have a varied technology-interested userbase numbering above three digits).

And Otto if you're reading this please go buy a hooker (I'm sad to say this seems like the only likely option for you) and break up with your mom - you'll thank me afterwards. Not trying to insult Otto, just trying to convey to him and any reader what kind of impression he gives of himself.

Disclaimer: I'm Norwegian but not a communist (I'd vote Bush/republican if I was American), I enjoy flying as long as I can look out of a window, I'm aware that almost all F/OSS is unpollished and that there's lots of stuff to improve radically but I still love F/OSS both because of the ideals and the results so far. Last but not the least I've never heard of this Otto before and hope I never will again.

Re:The article is a waste of time

[arcade]

I'm sad to see that you, my fellow countryman, is a fine example of a person not able to understand satire.

Otto Z. Stern is a pseudonym. El reg runs a lot of satirical stories with him as the author.

Others of his excellent stories are:
"Big Google is much worse than Big Oil"
"CEOs should follow NBA and make geeks wear real clothes"
"Geeks agree - 'We need to dress better'"

Seriously - if you don't understand satire .. then you're losing out. On the other hand, if you remember newspaper articles in VG/Dagbladet/Aftenposten - then they write about how norwegian youths don't understand the satirical articles when doing their Exams in the end of Upper Secondary School.

It's tragic, really.

Re:The article is a waste of time

[CitizenJohnJohn]

YHBT

Re:The article is a waste of time

[arcade]

Replying as AC, please don't mind.

No problem at all. Only negative thing about it is that it might be that you don't check your posting to check for a response - as you won't have a link to it from your profile. ;-)

or watch Knut Nærum in Nytt På Nytt or Jon Stewart in The Daily Show.

I don't have a television, but I've watched The Daily Show several times at a friends place who records them. It's a great show.

I would like to know if you can actually make a case for Otto being satirical, what or who exactly is it that you think he's satirizing?

He's mostly making satire out of the anti-linux crowd, with a few good punches thrown at "us" in between. From what I can gather from the wikipedia article, he's using "high burlesque" style. I quote from the theregister article:

"Worn down with labors from morning to night, and day to day; knowing them as fruitless to others as they are vexatious to myself, committed singly and in desperate and eternal contest against a host who are systematically undermining the public liberty and prosperity"

Use of semicolon, use of words/phrases such as 'vexation', 'eternal contest' 'undermining the public liberty and prosperity". He's taking a very, very lofty view of things - lifting himself above others.

Then goes on to:

"Before I get started, my mother asked to have a few words with you this week" .. oooh, a cute story, to make people feel at home!

"While impressive, being featured in the New York Times means nothing to me."

Lofty ... and then he does a switch right into low burlesque style for a few paragraphs.

And then we have a kick against 'us':

"wondering when the Linux freaks are going to solve their Ubuntu versus Mandriva color scheme debate or maybe even write a printer driver so that something I buy actually works with my open sores PC."

While the first thing is a cute thing about open source development - that is - long debates about totally irrelevant things such as color schemes .. he does have a very, very good point about plug-in devices. Printers / other USB devices .. which often isn't supported. .. and the end is just more fun.

I find the writing style hilarious. From writing in a lofty and "I'm high above others" style to lowering himselves into butt plugs, and then going on to actually point out something - for then to end it all with a complete logical fallacy.

Re:The article is a waste of time

[n54]

Don't worry I've read your reply :)

I think we're in agreement about having opposite views and that it's not really a problem but I've got to ask: is that NWO site you link to (yours I presume?) also highly burlesque?

Just curious (and since I'm not a cat...) ;)

Re:The article is a waste of time

[arcade]

is that NWO site you link to (yours I presume?) also highly burlesque?

Burlesque? NWO? No, we're one hundred percent serious ... haven't you read Principia Discordia yet?

Open source and politics

[basic0]

On the topic of the Open Source community nitpicking the details of everything, I'd have to agree. There always seemed to be more politics in Open Source than in the United Nations, and with few rare exceptions, most Open Source software that I've used have communities that seem incapable of just sitting down and making something that works. So much of the debate and bickering is completely unnecessary. Now I'm no software developer, but here's a short list of things I'd consider in an Open Source software project:

a) Why in the world would anyone want to use this software? Does something else currently available do the same thing? Does your open source solution do it faster? easier? How is the user rewarded (in a way meaningful to an average user) for using your open source solution over the existing competition?

b) Does the world really need your open source solution? Yes, choice is good, but if 25 other open source projects exist that offer audio file playback with an attractive UI, will your idea offer something new, or just make the open source audio player software community more complex and confusing? Is your new idea worth starting a new project, or could you just contribute to an existing one?

c) Do you have clear direction in your open source project? Do you have realistic goals to aim for? Will you stick with those goals or will you keep changing them whenever you get halfway there? (I'm looking at you GNOME)

d) Can you and your project's team create software for COMPUTER USERS? Can you get some average Joes to try your software and give you input? Computer users understand things like the "go" button, "the start bar thing" and "x-ing out of programs". Does your software cater to this, or does it ask your user if they'd like to "Terminate this process and it's child processes"? You might know what a PID is, but to a computer user, "PID" is the end of the word "stuPID", which is what they'll be calling your software if you throw terms like that at them.

These points are worth discussion in an open source community, as opposed to licensing issues, color schemes, neato animations, our-software-won't-interoperate-with-yours-cause-y ou-guys-are-dicks arguments, and the like. All these things only take time away from creating valuable, useable software.

Re:Open source and politics

[man_ls]

I'd love for error messages to include both "user" and "professional" components, maybe something like:

[ERROR]
We're sorry, but the task you tried to perform could not be completed because of an error on the network. Please try again later.

Detailed information:
Method updateFromResource() returned "500 Internal Server Error" in response to an XML-RPC call to SERVERNAME.
[/ERROR]

This gives a technician an idea of what is going on (the server went down, the resource doesn't exist, the network stack is broken and can't open the socket, etc.) and the usergets a friendly message saying what happened.

This approach would, in fact, not be psychologically intimidating: people, once they have obtained information one way, ignore redundancies of that information immediately following it. Thusly, for people whom "there was an error" is an informative error, they would just ignore the second part. For people that can understand the error codes, the first part gives no information, so only the second part is relevant and understood.

Brilliant, really.

Re:Open source and politics

[basic0]

One or two versions of Windows tried something like this (98 and 2000 I believe?) and I've seen a few programs offer a "details" button in their error dialogs, but I'm not convinced on the effectiveness of presenting error information in this way. I hold a diploma in Network Administration, and both A+ and Linux+ certifications (read: work at a community centre doing menial labor), so I've had the opportunity to observe a lot of people use a lot of computers with a lot of different OSes on them running a lot of different software. I've come to realize something of computer users: they ask stupid questions where there should be no questions.

Give a user a message that says "Program X caused an error" and they will be sent into a downward spiral of non-constructive rhetoric such as "Does that mean it won't work? Why won't it work? What did I do wrong? I didn't do anything to it! This thing just hates me! What a stupid piece of shit! Fuck computers! Fuck 'em in the ear! *sigh* Ok, fine, I guess I'll try again."

Nobody uses phrases like "caused an error" in real life, and these messages would be easier to understand if they were phrased like "Program X screwed up." or (for the kids) "OMFG! ur sooo fux0red if u didnt save that file u were werkin' on d00d! :(". Unfortunately, any error message you give to a computer user will bring on the aforementioned rash of cursing and projected self-hate.

The ideal solution is software that kills itself and starts back up right where it was so quickly that the user doesn't hardly notice, with NO error messages (unless they're turned on in "advanced settings" somewhere). The user never has to see an error message again unless the software gets caught in a loop of startup-error-shutdown, in which case it detects the loop, shuts down with no restart, and tells the user to contact a tech person. The tech person then changes a "0" to a "1" in a plaintext config file somewhere to turn on "advanced features" and goes under the hood to see what error(s) is happening and fix it.

I bet he's a Libra

[Mr2cents]

He must be a Libra. The match with this horoscope is really stunning.

Re:Full of hot air

[KylePflug]

Having said that, I'm commited to Firefox and had nothing but great luck running Apache (on Windows, not Linux ;-) - so OS is slicker than glossy marketing materials from M$ in many cases, but my experience with Operating Systems is to treat them like guys in suits carrying Bibles and ringing my doorbell.

You spray your operating system with mace and call the police?!?

Linux, not open source

[Spy der Mann]

His problem is with Linux fundies, then. But we can't compare the Mandriva color schemes with Bittorrent, PHP, or Apache.
And yes, Linux has been famous for its poor hardware support.

Replacing ESD

[natbudin]

Funny you should mention this. The GStreamer folks currently are working on getting the infrastructure in place to replace ESD with GStreamer.

See this page for more details.

Re:Who is Otto Z. Stern? ...some kind of fetishist

[jrwall0318]

I also read some of Mr. Stern's other articles, and as well as being obsessed with STDs and his ass, I think he might be a little schizophrenic. From his articles:

"Big Google is much worse than Big Oil":
Another part of the problem here is that Google pitches this whole open source love thing. ... It pays people to love Firefox and does something or other with OpenOffice.

"Fears rise as Google tries to emulate Microsoft" :
Having Google dominate the browser is just like Microsoft dominating the desktop. Let's get an open source search engine going right now.

So let me get this straight. We should be mad that Google pays people to create software to be used by anybody for free, and we need to take over because Google is a big, evil corporation by creating an open source search engine?

I know that it's probably taken a bit out of context, but I'm really having a hard time reading any of his articles and discerning a cohesive thought, much less a consistent one.

Get to work, Otto

[FuryG3]

Has he contributed any of his time, money, or skills towards developing open source software? If not, he should shut up.

Look, I'm not trying to say that you have to be a programmer in order to criticize software, but you can't just flame "Open Source" like this. The whole idea is that bugs, when discovered, can be fixed, and that new features can be contributed by users. Can't say that about Closed-source.

If he has a beef with a particular peice of software, let him criticize that particular component, and offer meaninful assistance in the form of time or money.

In flying (to continue his analogy), the airlines are obligated to provide you with a level of service, since they don't allow you to jump into the conference room and set prices or decide whether to serve peanuts or not. Your choice is to deal with it, or start walking.

With Open Source, you're getting it free. It's not Otto-matic, and if the Ottos of the world have have a problem with that, they should get in on the action and lend a hand.

So shut up and start walking, or help push.

Stupid article, but...

[Pedrito]

there are some valid points to be made.

This guy did a very poor job of it and it wasn't even long enough to even be considered a rant. He didn't make many points beyond what was summarized in the Slashdot post.

For myself, I could go on about a number of problems that seem to plague many open source projects. The focus for many seems to be on adding features at the expense of usability. There are exceptions, obviously. But many open source apps simply aren't that intuitive or easy to use.

As a simple example, several months back, I wanted to find out the temperature of the CPU on my Linux box. A trivial task on a Windows box, as there are a number of tools that provide this information. I installed an app that could supposedly provide this information. It, in turn, depended on me installing several other libraries. After 3 hours of trying and running into nothing but problems, I finally gave up. I mean, come on, why does a simple app to tell you the CPU temperature have to be more difficult than setting up iptables?

This all might not be so bad if the support on many of these projects weren't loaded with arrogant jerks whose response is usually a cacaphony of RTFM and basically treating you like an idiot if you don't have intimate knowledge of their particular software (the mencoder support mailing list comes to mind).

And this, in turn, wouldn't be so bad were the FMs not so poorly organized and written (in this case, mencoder doesn't come to mind as they have excellent documentation, but a very complex piece of software). Again, I'm not saying all projects have these problems, and oftentimes better support can be found from other users rather than the actual developers. For example, the help on LinuxForums.org tends to be quite helpful, though you tend to get less detail on the more obscure products.

All that said, there's been great progress in many areas of OSS and I suspect, with time, it will continue to improve.

While that may be true....

[truckaxle]

I like bad analogies so let me try.... Committing yourself and your business to Microsoft is like Skydiving without a parachute.

mod down the story, flamebait

[swschrad]

I'm guessing it took ol' Otto ten hours to write his screed because he had to wait for his machine to reboot over and over....

What happened to the right to say it?

[JPriest]

It is nice to hear an alternitave opinion once in a while. Open Source is not a cure-all, it has a dark side too.

So what

[the_womble]

The Register, which regularly publishes misinformation about open source, publishes a misinformed rant about open source. Who cares?

My favourite recent example of The Register misinformation: it is "difficult or impossible" to use "mainstream" websites with Firefox!

Incidentally for people who believe that FUD here are some facts:

1) I had someone working for me make a list of the investor relations sections of the websites of all FTSE350 companies (UK listed blue chips and mid-caps). He used Firefox, he only had problems with one site (Rank).

2) In the last year a team that has varied between two and four heavy users of the web found only one other site (apart from Rank) that failed to work with Firefox or Opera: a third world branch of HSBC.

I emailed this to The Register, and did not get a reply. The Register is true to its tabloid roots and just wants to put stuff up, without regard to facts. I only read it for BOFH stories - The Inquirer has a lot more actual news content and it recently replaced The Register in my live bookmarks (next, I am going to replace /. with Digg for carrying time-wasting stories like this).

The Register has always been like this. I remember a review of Red Hat a few years ago that gave the impression that, ext 3 was too unstable for use on a desktop (not by the time it was an option in RH it wasn't) and that an ext2 file system would be irretrievably broken if you pulled the power cable. Combining these two "facts" it came to the conclusion that Linux (unlike Windows!) did not have a file system that was ready for the desktop.

I do not think that They are MS shills. It is simply not possible to report accurately on something as complicated as an OS without ever using it yourself.

My prostate's as hard as an opal

[oztiks]

Congratulations Mr Stern for such a Vivid description of your prostate:

http://www.therockalltimes.co.uk/2005/10/10/stern- opal.html

Can we really rely on this mans advice to influence us? I did after reading this artical and the mental imagery wasnt all that great.

Re:Full of hot air

[freeweed]

Why is it so hard to understand that one of the reasons Windows is so popular is that it handles all of this automatically.

It's not hard to understand that at all. Well, it wouldn't be if it were actually true. Windows and its predecessor MS-DOS got popular even though they DIDN'T handle all of these things automatically.

Microsoft had well over 90% of the desktop market long before Windows 98 came along with decent driver support. History shows that their marketshare has little to do with things "just working". People stick with it because its familiar.

"Otto Z Stern" is a troll

[Knackered]

Anyone who reads The Register regularly would know, Otto Z. Stern is a troll, "his" columns are probably not even written by the same person from week to week. It's quite funny watching how easily the Slashdot crowd rise to such obvious bait.

Re:"Otto Z Stern" is a troll

[ian_mackereth]

What? WHAT?! How dare you cast nasturtiums on this esteemed gathering of minds!

To even suggest that Slashdotters would fall for trollish statements and react hotly to perceived criticism of things we hold dear is... is....

...apparently just what we do.

Re:"Otto Z Stern" is a troll

[smallguy78]

The moment this article was posted, 50,000 sweaty bearded zealots broke out in a sweat and became enranged.

Nobody shall criticise the religion of the Open Source. No one I tell you! Hail to the saviour, Linus, the pickled-egg headed one! Hail!

Apple never removed X11, never had it either...

[green pizza]

I never understood why they took out X11, seems like it would make more sense to keep it.

Apple / NeXT never really had X11 to remove. It's always been available, but never a key part by any means.

Apple's first unix, A/UX back in the late 1980s, had X11 but it also ran normal Mac apps. I'm not exactly sure of the architecture of it, but I know Apple's X11 implementation was later spun off as an X11 client/server for the regular MacOS called "MacX". (Apple also made a Mac emulator for SunOS and HPUX called MAE: Macintosh Application Environment).

Mac OS X is basiclly the next version of NeXTstep/OpenStep... recall that NeXT bought Apple for negative $400 Million. NeXTstep was based on 4.2BSD and Display Postscript. X11 support came from third party vendors and freeware projects. These days Apple has X11 on the Mac OS X installer (it might still be an optional install, but it's there and it's supported).

Check the URL?

[ian_mackereth]

//yadayada/otto_fly_open

That has to be deliberate!

Bluetooth cameras and Windows

[Trejkaz]

Okay, Otto... before bitching that Linux can't easily configure and use a Bluetooth camera, how about we point out that neither can Windows? Been there, done that, driver didn't support it.

kinkos/school printing

[Maglos]

in my opinion, home users should be the target of hardware manufacture supported linux. I dont realy care about the average user, i have little incommon with them, accept perhaps games, p2p, msn and internet. And games is the only that would realy benifit from wider use. Printing out of home, seems to me to be cheaper/better quality and easyer.

HP supports an excellent OSS driver project

[wemgadge]

HP has an excellent printer drivers project complete with a working GTK toolbox program: http://hpinkjet.sourceforge.net/> Just install CUPS and then follow the instructions here: http://hpinkjet.sourceforge.net/install.php> as for the Article.. Zern tends to write with his tongue in cheek.

Not so fast...

[pomo monster]

Careful whose illiteracy you're so hasty to imply. He presumably means "goat-rendering" in the sense of rendering fats (definition 1a here).

Re:Not so fast...

[kelnos]

Interesting. I actually did a quick search for definitions before posting (I was pretty surprised that someone would make a mistake like that), and didn't come up with that definition. Thanks, I am thus enlightened.

Re:Not so fast...

[Sheridan]

I read it as a typo/thinko for "gut-rending" (or perhaps the effect poorly trained speech recognition software on it!) which is a commonly mistaken attempt at "gut-wrenching" (perhaps mixing it up with "heart-rending").
--
This isn't right. This isn't even wrong. -- Wolfgang Pauli

Re:Not so fast...

[pomo monster]

Yeah, that whole foot-in-mouth thing. Sucks, huh? :-)

He did neglect to turn "goat-rendering" into an adverb (it should have been "goat-renderingly awful", so I guess we can still fault him on that.

Speaking of Goats

[WindBourne]

it sounds like this guy has spent way tooo much time looking at Goatse. He was incoherient and made little to no sense.

Driving

[NuShrike]

I thought driving a car was worst than flying. It's some health condition many of us are afflicted with, and has the highest death toll of them all.

Double Standards

[Some Programmer]

In his article Fears rise as Google tries to emulate Microsoft Stern writes

Let's get an open source search engine going right now.

And after two weeks the guy suddenly feels that Open Source = Open Sores

You answered your own question.

[aussersterne]

"In the end, given enough time... given the right environment..."

Corporate America does not give enough time, and is not the right environment. Having recently stopped working in a corporate environment just for that reason, I can tell you that Quality is NOT Job #1 at most corporations. In fact, you're likely to get laughed at if you even suggest that you privelege quality over, say, deadlines, quantity, marketing strategy, or six dozen other business interests.

When you're working for your own ego, your own pleasure, and your own interests, however, rather than for shareholders, mid-level management, and upper management, you are likely to do INFINITELY better work. At least, I know I do.

This is an obvious case of ...

[DrJimbo]

At first I couldn't understand where Otto Z. Stern's venom was coming from (assuming he was not a payed stooge) then it hit me ... this is an obvious case of Stockholm syndrome.

For those that can't bother to follow the link:

The Stockholm syndrome is a psychological response of a hostage, or an individual in a hostage-like situation (e.g. dependent child, battered wife, etc.),
[...]
The main symptom of the syndrome is the individual's seeming loyalty to the more powerful person in spite of the danger (or at least risk) in which they are placed as a result of this loyalty.

HAHA

[krappie]

Hah. This is the biggest piece of shit I've ever seen. I can't believe it actually got published on The Register.

It seems like the major complaint of Linux, and really this guys ONLY complaint is about Linux support for random hardware. I guess he's never thought about it. He expects all these linux people to write drivers for vast amounts of hardware? Does Microsoft write drivers for all these pieces of hardware? The answer is "No." Microsoft barely writes any drivers. The hardware makers provide drivers for Windows. And hardware makers today dont provide ANY information about their crazy hardware. Does this mean Microsoft Windows is better than Linux? I think Linux is doing a damn good job at supporting the amount of hardware it does! Whatever..

You cant judge the greatness of an operating system by comparing the amount of manufacturer made drivers to the amount of reverse engineered ones.

No.

[lukOh]

Otto Z. Stern is sitting there...wondering when the Linux freaks are going to solve their debate about Otto Z. Stern

Wacom Drivers

[Slur]

Ultimately, it's the hardware manufacturer's responsibility to provide drivers for those systems they feel they can profit from. And they have no obligation to support hardware they label as "obsolete." Take the case of Wacom. They never provided any drivers for Linux at all, so a project called "linux-wacom" had to take the reigns there. And as much as I wish Wacom would support their old serial tablets under Mac OS X they absolutely refuse to do so. So it fell to me to step up and start my own open source project to get my perfectly-good serial Wacom tablet working.

Incidentally my project needs help with the preference pane, ADB, and Intuos components... any takers?

http://tabletmagic.sourceforge.net/

Re:Wacom Drivers

[jcr]

And as much as I wish Wacom would support their old serial tablets under Mac OS X they absolutely refuse to do so.

Of course they do! You're asking them to spend money to let a vanishingly small portion of their installed base put off buying a new tablet.

Incidentally my project needs help with the preference pane, ADB, and Intuos components... any takers?

Umm... Nope.

My Wacom tablet is USB, and it works just fine with OS X.

-jcr

A more apt analogy

[Quiet_Desperation]

Yeah, but at least with something like Linux, you *are* flying... eventually.

Windows is the expensive corporate jet that you get limoed directly to on the tarmac, and it then craters into a mountain 20 minutes into the flight.

Mac OS X is like riding on the back of an angel. A beautiful and sexy angel. :)

Well, at least it's not a car analogy.

rendering goats[e.cx]??

[Darthmalt]

Maybe we've finally found the origin of goatse.cx

Commercial Flight Speeds?

[ChristopherEddie]

From the article: "Seriously, open source software progresses at commercial flight speed."

350 - 750 Mph? Thats not bad! FLY OPEN SOURCE! FLY DAMN YOU!

TheRegister.co.uk

[timerider]

... there's only ONE thing I actually read there.

guess what?

yep. its simon.

I liked it!

[hacksaw56]

Oh! You thought I was talking about TFA? Haha, nah. Reading TFA smacks of effort. With a summary like that, why bother?! I have better things to do, like sawing my legs off with a dull hacksaw and pouring lemon juice in my eyes. Ah... memories.

Insensitive clod...

[Mathiasdm]

I'm trying to port Linux to an Airbus, you insensitive clod!

Re:Who is Otto Z. Stern? ...some kind of fetishist

[1u3hr]

I know that it's probably taken a bit out of context, but I'm really having a hard time reading any of his articles and discerning a cohesive thought, much less a consistent one.

He's a joke, nothing "he" writes is meant to be taken seriously.

Re:Full of hot air

[roman_mir]

Man, I hate Bible carying, doorbell ringing suits as much as the next guy, but what's the point of calling the police? Just spray them with mace, wait until they turn the other cheek, then spray with some more mace. If they are still there after that, bring out the cross and the nails.

Re:Wow ... printer drivers?

[cab15625]

What I don't understand is why he chose to pick on printers for that section of his rant. Every single printer that I've ever tried to hook up to a Linux box has worked without a hitch. If checking to see if your printer is post-script compatible is too complicated for you then you probably need help with more than just your computer.

But then, the guy does work for a Think Tank afterall, so what do you expect?

My Issues With OSS

[Jekler]

I love OSS. At least half the applications on my computer are OSS, I'm writing this from FireFox, in the background I have Eclipse and OpenOffice open too. But I still have some issues with OSS.

It's not the quality of what OSS projects produce, it's the difficulty of getting involved. It's like a rite of passage. You can't just open up a compiler, read the source, and start typing code. Getting started is a complicated process. There are numerous OSS projects I'd love to get involved in, but actually setting up my computer to have a functional environment is frequently more work than I can stomach. In comparison, designing and writing code is far easier than configuring my system to prepare to join an OSS project. Some people have said that it's no more difficult than understanding the system at a commercial project, but I disagree. Any commercial projects I've been involved in usually have their computers already configured so you can just start working, no break in stride.

For the most part, the thought of how much work it's going to be to get started keeps me from even taking the first step to get involved. I spent many hours just trying to configure my system to get involved with the Mozilla project, and didn't even get to the point I could review the code because of build problems. And of course real life intervenes so the amount of time I can spend at once trying to configure my system is limited.

Maybe this is a necessary hazing ritual, but in my opinion, the day that software developers don't also need to be System Configuration Experts, the progress of OSS will skyrocket. If there were simply an executable file that you run and it setup a complete environment where you can just start typing code and contribute, OSS would progress at light speed because much less capable developers could still contribute with small bug fixes, or even clarifying comments, adding comments, or just restructuring code modules.

Some people might think that's a bad idea because complete idiots could try to participate, but there's numerous ways around that like ranking/priority systems attached to code reviews (i.e. Positively ranked developers would have their code reviews take precedence over unknown developers, and trolls who not only didn't produce anything valuable, but even wasted reviewers time with complete nonsense pseudo code could have rankings knocked down so they wouldn't even be visible to review)

Re:My Issues With OSS

[xtracto]

I Agree with you.

One of the reasons of this difficulty (at least for me) is in software documentation:

Analysis, Requirements specifications document.
Design: Design Specification document [with or without UML, DTDs, etc].
Quality control/assurance: (Quality testing metrics documents).

Nobody (at least not programmers) likes to spend their time doing that, which results in a lot of good Open Source projects (just look at sf.net) that have only the source code available. So, when/if someone wants to start helping (be it a programmer or a non programmer) they must dive into the source code, reverse engineer it and (to their better understanding) see how is the program working.

When developing a propietary software for anyone, documentation is the one most important thing, and often the one that programmers hate to do. That is why System designers are better paid than programmers.

In open-source world, nobody cares about documenting [and mantaining the domcumentation] of their software. My personal experience is with VirtualDimension [sourceforge.net] multi-desktop software. I wanted to enhance the program with some ideas I had, but I hated that the only place to understand how it worket was the CVS repository C++ files. Although I know C++ (and I am good at it if-u-ask-me) it is the "logic" of the program what I wanted to find and, well, my time is worth more than what I needed to understand the inners of the program.

The same happened with jabref [slashdot.org]. I would like to contribute to those projects with programming, but bah, at the end, all of them are just a mess.

Re:My Issues With OSS

[ookaze]

At least half the applications on my computer are OSS

There lies your problem. The other half of your app do not allow you to develop FOSS software easily.
Most of my computer is OSS, and guess what, I have very little to set up to start working on a FOSS project.

It's not the quality of what OSS projects produce, it's the difficulty of getting involved. It's like a rite of passage

Actually it's not. There are several initiatives meant to help you getting involved from several big projects, which are the ones hard to get into, due to their size.

You can't just open up a compiler, read the source, and start typing code

You don't open up a compiler in FOSS. You open up an editor or an IDE. That's if you want to write code, and it's very easy. However, there are other ways to contribute to FOSS : documentation, tutorials, translations, studies, performance testing, ...

Getting started is a complicated process

Of course, especially if you start from nothing. In fact, it's not complicated, there's a learning curve though.

In comparison, designing and writing code is far easier than configuring my system to prepare to join an OSS project

It just shows your system is really bad at these things. Setting a CVS or a SVN is really not difficult, IDEs on Linux manage this without problem.

Any commercial projects I've been involved in usually have their computers already configured so you can just start working, no break in stride

See ? Now, take a computer not pre configured like yours, and it's the same problem again.

For the most part, the thought of how much work it's going to be to get started keeps me from even taking the first step to get involved

So, the logical step is to create some documentation explaining all the steps required to get involved in the project. We call that a Howto or a Tutorial in FOSS. Thus, all your hard work is not lost once you give up. That's how FOSS makes progress.

I spent many hours just trying to configure my system to get involved with the Mozilla project

So start small. The Mozilla project for Christ's sake !!! When you can't even build it properly !!!
The first step should of course, to have a system which can at least compile things correctly.

the day that software developers don't also need to be System Configuration Experts, the progress of OSS will skyrocket

They just need to be developers. Setting up a development environment is not being a System Configuration Expert.

If there were simply an executable file that you run and it setup a complete environment where you can just start typing code and contribute, OSS would progress at light speed

Wrong. If you don't understand the dev environment, I fail to see how you could improve anything.

because much less capable developers could still contribute with small bug fixes, or even clarifying comments, adding comments, or just restructuring code modules

How could they do that without inderstanding the dev environment ?
How could they improve anything, if they don't even have the incentive to set up a dev environment ?
Developing FOSS is harder than setting the environment really.

Some people might think that's a bad idea because complete idiots could try to participate, but there's numerous ways around that like ranking/priority systems attached to code reviews

So you ask "why do things the simple way if we can do it the hard way" ? This is nonsense.
I'm no developer and I can set up a development environment and contribute to FOSS projects, and I don't always propose sane or useful patches. Imagine if people less knowledgeable than me could do the same !!

Re:My Issues With OSS

[Jekler]

You thought you might like to contribute to Free Software, you'd never set up a build environment before and the first package you thought of was.. Mozilla? And by the sounds of it, on Windows too.

I have setup other build envirionments and contributed to other projects. Mozilla was not the first project I tried, but it is a perfect example of a stupidly complex project to get involved in. Every project is always a lengthy process, and very little of the preperation is transferrible between projects.

I use both Windows and Linux, I use Windows more because it's pure gaming here. I like to think I have pretty decent programming skills. But that's just it, I enjoy programming, not system configuration.

Maybe you're just a genius and you can always do it perfectly. Build instructions seep into your mind like no other mortal. But that's not me, when I setup build environments, no matter what platform it is, I make a lot of mistakes, and those mistakes take time to correct. All for the sake of contributing to a project which wants my help but doesn't want to make it easy for me to help them.

Story a hoax

[gtoomey]

Here Otto Z. Stern call himself Ashlee Vance. I can find nothing on "The Institute of Technological Values".

This trash is about as irrelevent as Robert Cringely.

Okay, wait..

[Arivia]

Otto Z. Stern's articles appear in the Register's humor section as just that-humor articles. Does no one check these things anymore?

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Get a life, man ... and contribute

[haraldm]

The Good Thing [TM] with Open Source Software [TM] is - nobody requires you to use it (least of all Microsoft). But you are heartily invited to contribute. OSS is a community thing, not a "I buy this CD and I can blame the vendor for everything else" thing. If you want a product that you can blame a vendor for, get Windows, and hell, there's a lot to blame Microsoft for in Windows. Maybe you like this game better.

Next time do some research before you buy the hardware, and support those vendors that provide working and recent drivers, and tell them about it. Even if you can't program yourself, that would be supporting OSS. As long as you buy stuff from vendors that don't even manage to release the specs (because they are afraid that somebody could clone their crap), shut up and buy proprietary stuff.

Re:Get a life, man ... and contribute

[16K Ram Pack]

I wish I had mod points...

I'm amazed at how many people look at the free lunch of OSS and complain that it's a burger and not the filet mignon they get from the $100 a plate restaurant.

My attitude to OSS is that it's free, and I'm grateful for what I've been given. I contribute bug fixes back, I give feedback, I've made suggestions and donations, and I've provided low-level support (like telling Firefox users to retry their problem using the latest browser, but at least it lowers the queue).

I'm grateful because when I choose to use OSS, it's mostly because of massive cost savings - I got some shareware and some OSS software working together and saved me a few hundred over buying Visio. In addition, it's given me flexibility. I found a .net web control that saved me a few hundred, but I decided that an extra feature was required. I got in there and changed it. Try getting a vendor to make a small change for one customer and see how much it costs you.

You are right about hardware, and even though I've only used Linux a little, I now choose hardware in part on this basis - that it gives me flexibility. My next laptop will probably be Lenovo because they get written up well for Linux compatibility. You can even buy machines like Shuttles that have been tested with Mandrake.

Barbarians just want the cash with no effort

[dbIII]

we all know this isn't news, it's just the opinion of one idiot.

It is the opinion of many idiots. Open source software is really just a subset of wide publication of innovation which has got us to our current level of technological development.

I'll make a stretch and say this is yet another example of the widespread anti-science attitude railing against the dread spirit of innovation.

For crying out loud

[Cally]

What wrong with you people?! don't you know irony or satire when you see it? Oh, ... wait. No 'Private Eye' in the land of free speech... Just think of it as IT journalism by Monty Python. I'm really looking forward to seeing the "FotW" and what the Register cha;ps have to say about this mass sense-of-humour failure. Let's just say that I think they might just be ever-so-slightly slightly taking the piss out of the Slashbots...

You know, I think this inability to distinguish irony from sincerity explains a lot about the success of Dubya in hoodwinking Americans into voting for him. He'd've got nowhere in Europe, because he's obviously a clown - obvious to anyone equipped with a sense of humour or of irony, anyway.

Re:For crying out loud

[Lewisham]

I'm rather upset I had to scroll all the way to the bottom of my +4 threshold comments page before *someone* understood what was going on.

El Reg are going to have a field day.

I mean, it's just a little sad that everyone here thought it was real, isn't it?

Re:For crying out loud

[Eunuchswear]

Not sad, screamingly funny!

The OZS article was slightly funny, the Slashdot response is hilarious!

Re:For crying out loud

[kamikasei]

Actually, I would say the main problem is that people just have hideously low expectations of journalism. I'm Irish, hardly the most irony-deficient nation by stereotype. I thought the article was sincere (if not serious). If I were more familiar with the usual tone at The Register, or if I'd initially read parts like the 'letter from mom' at the start which I skipped to get to the claims mentioned in the writeup, then I suspect I'd have caught it. But instead I simply saw it as another piece of uninformed twittage finding its way into an op-ed, and it didn't stand out from any number of stupid pieces you'd find on the net or even in print. That's what's really sad here.

Re:For crying out loud

[bs7rphb]

Blimey, I thought no-one was going to get it!

Re:For crying out loud

[berbo]

Agreed. Its funny. And its funny because wrapped up in the rant is a kernel of truth that hits too close to home for the Linux zealots.

If you don't care whether or not 'Otto' is happy about Linux, go ahead and tell him to fuck off. But if you're serious about this whole World Domination thing, if you really want to put Micro$oft out of business, then you'll have to learn how to make Otto Stern happy.

Re:For crying out loud

[Jearil]

You of course assume that the posting /.ers actually read the article.

Man, you must be new here.

Re:For crying out loud

[Cally]

it didn't stand out from any number of stupid pieces you'd find on the net or even in print. That's what's really sad here.

One hallmark of brilliant satire is that it's sometimes only obvious once you are aware of it's true nature. Art holds up a mirror to reality. Have you seen 'The Day Today'? (I think there's a similar series running on one of the beeb's digital channels or some similarly obscure slot at the moment, actually, sorry I don't recall the name...)

Re:For crying out loud

[Cally]

Agreed. Its funny. And its funny because wrapped up in the rant is a kernel of truth that hits too close to home for the Linux zealots. If you don't care whether or not 'Otto' is happy about Linux, go ahead and tell him to fuck off. But if you're serious about this whole World Domination thing, if you really want to put Micro$oft out of business, then you'll have to learn how to make Otto Stern happy.

ExACTly! Thank you!

Re:Full of hot air

[relifram66]

Not that I'm a rabid linux fan, in fact I don't recommend linux to the average computer user, but I think you missed the point of OSS OSes.

It's more like taking the free Lexus that you just got from a friend back to him because there is something wrong with the engine. He tells you to go ahead and take the spare engine that he has sitting in his garage and install it. Oh by the way, the installation manual is sitting on top of it, go ahead and take that with you too.

OSS isn't for everybody, but you really shouldn't complain about slight losses of functionality or the little extra work you have to put into it, considering all the gains you can possibly receive from it.

Of course I guess bitching about stuff IS the American way....

Re:Linux is like Slashdot's website

[moro_666]

but like slashdot, you can get it for free without paying any $ to bill or steve.

and unlike steve's and bill's initiative, if linux is broken, YOU CAN CODE AND FIX IT, unlike windows, where you just bash your head against the wall trying to figure out what ERROR 123DEAD means ....

linux is not perfect, none claims it is, but it is pretty good and stable stuff compared to it's commercial alternatives.

What is innovation anyways?

[ringe82]

Innovation is the Act of Sharing Knowledge. Any invention is based on existing knowledge of some kind, or input if you wish. Sharing knowledge between more people means more people will get new ideas. Then the more you share, the faster the progression. Given that you're able to make use of the new knowledge developed. Now, software is pure knowledge. Not a product.

OSS is definitely as bad as flying!

[mnmn]

I've model airplanes and am hoping to get my flying license soon. I have (www.zenithair.com) airplane kits in mind for later. Up here in Canada, you have huge expanses of wilderness to fly about and thousands of lakes to land in, if you can land in water.

OSS and flying... nothing like it.

MOD PARENT UP

[LardBrattish]

Otto Stern is a spoof column... DUH!

Flying's too good for him.

[ewe2]

You know it's serious budget justification time when /. will link to this kind of crap.

What's that middle initial all about?

[mattr]

Sounds like a three sheets to the wind, through and through damned Yankee or desert resident, or maybe he's just a sophmore at a community college in Chicago? Some people say it's just some jerk called Ashlee Vance at the Register, never heard of him..

Anyway, yup, searched for "Otto Z. Stern" on google and the blog entry was just so funny. The gift that keeps giving for sure! Like Otto's herpes? The blog attack on Otto did indeed show up on top. Can you say "obsessive-compulsive"?

I think that bit with Otto and his mom running on extolling the virtues (or lack) of his prostate was hysterical. (If he exists, it's too good to be true how outthrust he is about everything.) Though I think I have a right to demand that he disclose the nature of his middle initial (is it a Heinlein's Number of the Beast reference?) and post a pho-to! (Of your face, silly!) And stop sitting on the copying machine you can get badly hurt.

Also had a lot of fun with those responses Otto posted in this thread under pseudonyms, I laughed my ass off! The people next to me even laughed and they had no clue! Can you spot them?

Honestly his rant about useability was useful if not quite digestible, he is certainly smart enough to get a retainer from Microsoft. My hat's off to you Otto (or whoever you are)! The prostate bit's getting old fast though! And no I don't want to hear about butt plugs or whatever it is you're selling! Ack!

12 Old Ladies per Murdered Bum

[theguywhosaid]

I never knew about that rule! Now I finally have free reign to really shorten the lines at soup kitchens.

Re:12 Old Ladies per Murdered Bum

[commodoresloat]

Yes! And now I have free rein to help hundreds of old ladies across the street.

Yes and no

[jd]

Yes, it is their responsibility, in the sense that they're selling a product to be used - and you can't use that product if there are no drivers for it. On the other hand, no, unless they specifically advertise the product as being designed for Linux. If they say that, then a lack of drivers would fall under any trades description act, as it cannot then be used in the manner for which it was designed.

In practice, most users with a decent Linux distro should have the majority of drivers (especially printer drivers) they need. The commercial version of CUPS adds a whole bunch more. Hey, "Open Source" doesn't mean you don't have to pay for things. Nobody, after all this time, has any business confusing Open Source with "free as in beer".

If there is a device that you need kernel-level support for, then there's a pretty decent chance the kernel will have support. It just might not be compiled in. Again, "Open Source" doesn't mean "lazy". You may need to put in some work, but it's not going to kill you. There is a big difference between coal mining in China and running a makefile.

Finally, there's this matter of what is trivial. When was the last time you decorated the foundations of your house for Christmas? How many Slashdot readers can say for certain what type of cement and/or rock was used? How many have directly observed the foundations of their house? Never and none? Then surely they must also be trivial. Or maybe - just maybe - there are details which are extremely important, they just don't appear to be to the casual, ill-informed user.

From the article

[kan0r]

I'll leave you with one thought. Finns are socialists. Linus Torvalds is Finnish. Linus Torvalds got here on an airplane.

Finns are socialsts? My timemachine finally works!

it's proof!

[kwikrick]

if dear Otto can't get his printer working, that's proof! The whole open source community is scheming against him by delaying his flights. Luckely I wasn't mislead by the offending language and in the article into thinking Otto is just some dim wit who's ravings should be ignored. These accusations will no doubt be the end of open source and then... no more delays at the airport. Thank you for saving the world, Otto.

Surging Ahead?

[16K Ram Pack]

Surges Further Ahead?

What's so original in Office 2003 that it deserves the credit of "surging ahead"?

Oh my god...

[Pathway]

Oh my god... he doesn't get it.

I don't know what else to say.

Re:Oh my god...

[Eunuchswear]

Um, who doesn't get it exactly?

Re:Ugh. - You said it

[multisync]

I couldn't get past the quote from Thomas Jefferson, followed by the quote from his mother and his own gushing on about the New York Post or something to actually read much of his blog entry, but glancing at the titles of some of his other ... pieces ... I get the feeling he has an axe to grind against google, open source and "geeks." Why are we feeding his hunger for attention?

So...

[mfukar]

...is that what "think tanks" are? :p Personally, I feel Mr.Otto's articles are generally a step backwards in the human way of thinking. Everything, from structure to content, makes me think this guy writes whatever is on his mind at the time. Back to the point, open source software has advantages & disadvantages (so obvious to us, not Mr.Stern), and the truth is that it has brought radical changes to computing. If Mr.Stern can't see that, I suggest he proceeds to live in a world where Microsoft builds his house, and wait until winter.

WFM (Works for Me)

[jgardn]

I'm running FC4 which is stable and has a pretty recent KDE.

* If you double click on a text file, it opens a new window (KWrite) which is a much better editor than Notepad. (I personally prefer GViM, and it's not too hard to configure it to use that.)

* I hit the red hat (start menu), clicked and held on an app, and dragged it to my desktop. It asked if I wanted to copy or link to it. Either way, it works.

* I just opened a text file in KWrite (double clicking from konqueror), copied text (CTRL-C), and then closed it. Then I created a new text file (in Konqueror - right click->Create New->Text File), double-clicked it, and I pasted with CTRL-V. It worked.

* Your review is over a year and a half old. You should try out the latest version. A lot happens in a year in the OS world.

YHBT

[kwoff]

You Have Been Trolled

Why...

[Lost Found]

...is Slashdot posting trolls on the front page?

Have you seen what is moderated funny here?

[Per Abrahamsen]

It should be obvious that the /. meanstream has no sense of humor. Unless something is explicitly marked as humor, they will never realize it. The troll subpopulation is no better, there endless repetition is considered the high point of humor.

Re:Can't you f*ckers laugh?

[Eunuchswear]

Hey, way to spoil the joke.

(The joke being that nobody seems to have realised the "Otto Z. Stern" article is a joke).

Honestly...

[capkanada]

IMO, the OSS community could use more people like this guy.

Yeah. That's my opinion on the matter.

Yes, interface and appearance are important, but functionality and actual improvements on programs do need some attention. Myself, I currently couldn't program my way out of a wet paper sack. I am learning (a lot...yay Gentoo. ;) ) though. Those of us that don't know much as far as that can at least do as much as bug reports (responsible ones, not "I used all the optimilizations and now nothing works *waaaah*" or "My finger itches when I right click my desktop") or perhaps give suggestions as to a programs future functionality. Personally, I wouldn't mind if everything was in Motif and grey; as long as it did what was necessary. Things like drivers are, sadly, scarce for people who are stuck with things like Lexmark printers, etc. Focus does need to be put on that kind of stuff.

Anyhoo... yeah. Long time reader, first time poster.
Hi.

:D

yeah I don't get it

[commodoresloat]

Really -- flying is cool. It's not awful and it's certainly doesn't render goats. So open source is worse than flying, which is really cool. I guess this means open source is only pretty cool. Thank god I don't actually read the articles here; I have a feeling this one would get me really mad.

Come on...

[AlXtreme]

This is satire people. Have a laugh and stop crapping your pants because of it.

Only on slashdot could people take this seriously...

That's what we call...

[sita]

...open tsores!

He's probably not real

[craXORjack]

I mean, come on, Otto Z. Stern? It sounds too much like Alfred E. Neumann.

be grateful, or don't use it

[ericcantona]

why do people expect things to work.?
I try to avoid this way of thinking. I think it is extremely ungrateful
If things do work : one should thank the efforts of those who have given their time to make it so.
Anyway, there is usually a choice ; If one doesn't like some software one can:
either:
1- be constructive. help improve the OSS in question. this is how we work and grow OSS. make the world a better place ...
2 - use something else, e.g. os X

Why does Open Source exist in the first place?

[lightweave]

This article seems pretty strange to me. After all, the author is complaining that open source is buggy. And if this is true, so what? What is the motivation of an open source developer? Obviously I can't answer for all of them, but I can make my motivation known.
For me there are multiple reasons why I code for open source:

1) I wrote a little tool for myself, which I think might be usefull for others too. So instead of keeping it on my harddisk, I can just as well register it on sourceforge and put it up there.
2) Somebody (or I myself) has started a project that interests me (curiousity, education, etc.), so I take a look at it and contribute to it.
3) An open source project, that I use has some bugs or missing functionality and if it is annoying enough for me, I fix it and submit the changes.
4) Since I have only limited time and knowledge in other areas, I can offer my service as a programmer and team up with a modeler, soundengineer and other artists sharing a mutual interest (like a game concept). I can code the game but I can't model, so in order to play the game that I coded, I would need to hire a modeler to make it look good. The modeler has the same view the other way around. He can't code so in order to make his game come to life he needs a coder. Obviously open source is a good alternative, because both offer their services for free and get the other service in return.
5) I'm using free software a lot, so I want to give something back in return

Now when I look at all these reasons, it is always me who is at the center of it. I don't code for others, I code primarily for myself and then share it. So even if the code is buggy by SOME OTHER standards, this would not really matter to me, because obviously, as long as I'm satisfied with the performance I don't have any reason to change it so that it matches some OTHER requirements. Of course I MIGHT do this, but I don't have an obligation to do so.
That's the nature of open source. If you don't like it, grab the source and change it yourself. No use in complaining to others what they should or should not do, because NONE of the open source developers have an obligation to any other one except themselve. Unless they get paid for, which is an entirely different matter.

(Technicolor) Yawn...

[jejones]

World to Otto Z. Stern: GOAT.

Mr. Stern is John Dvorak without the talent.

Re:The Finnish are Not Socialist

[nickos]

I'm assuming he means social democrat. Many americans seem to get the terms confused...

Calm down Otto

[Linker3000]

OK, I'll start with the assumption that I should know this 'Otto' guy and that he is so revered in the IT world that his word is law and I should hang on his every saying. Congratulations, Otto, you have discovered that people who work on Open Source software development projects, sometimes more for love than money, take longer to develop stuff than full-time programmers working as part of a major development team within the same physical organisation, and/or building.

You have also found out that such developers are more accessible so some of the issues they deal with are 'customer' driven or become transparent to the outside world - I'm sure Microsoft's development teams have anguished over ergonomics, colour schemes, button locations too - but without it becoming public or subject to third party input. Count yourself lucky you might be able to contribute to a project with a simple email or forum post.

So why do you despair?

Can you see a way to make the whole process better? OK, get involved.

Do you hate the way it has screwed up your system? OK, go install Windows XP and live a happy life with no compatibility problems, buggy printer drivers or other such troubles (that's ironic, by the way).

Do you just want to publish 'talking point' articles to satisfy the needs of your followers? OK, mission completed - can I go now?

Oh, yes - I *did* read the article - did he get paid for those ramblings? Someone woz robbed! Oh, and by the way, Otto, I am NOT one of your 'wonderful friends' - how presumptuous!

Re:So.. kill X-Windows through obsolesence?

[jrumney]

And I'm sorry that I still find it a complicated hassle trying to edit multiple Linux .rc files by hand - in 2005. You haven't had to do that for over 10 years on Windows. I don't miss not playing the game of "guess which copy of xf86config the system is actually using".

I'd much rather use Emacs to edit my config files than regedit. And I'd much rather the rest of my system kept working if some program decided to crash while writing its config file. And why do you have multiple copies of xf86config anyway? You should have one copy of XF86Config with symlinks pointing to it from the other locations that older pre-LSB programs might expect to find it.

Re:Full of hot air

[Alioth]

I don't know how long ago this was, but none of those things require recompiling the kernel. (What hardware did you have? I've not come across a PC that won't run Fedora Core with all devices working in the last couple of years - the exception being winmodems because these rely on proprietary drivers on WIndows and often haven't been reverse-engineered to run on anything other than Windows).

It's a parody, folks

[nagora]

Otto's articles in the Reg are always like this because they're humorous. Calm down!

TWW

Wah!

[Kludge]

Wah! Wah! Wah!

My free software won't work with every piece of bleeding edge and extremely proprietary piece of hardware I buy on a whim.

Wah Wah wah.

Open source programmers need more support?

[Futurepower(R)]

There's definitely a problem with open source development. My guess is that more emphasis should be place on raising money. Maybe open source programmers need more support than they are getting.

There is a HUGE, well-known bug in Firefox 1.5, the CPU and Memory Hogging bug. Developers refuse to fix it, even though anyone can demonstrate the bug easily. Apparently there is some kind of social problem. Maybe no one has the authority to deal with a major bug.

This bug has been reported to Bugzilla, and is very easy to reproduce (see below), but Firefox developers have marked it invalid because there is not enough specific information! The bug has existed in Firefox for more than 2 years, and several people report that it is worse in Firefox 1.5. Firefox's Bugzilla does not allow direct links from Slashdot, so copy and paste Bugzilla URLs into a new tab. Remove the space:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=131 456
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=222 660

The huge memory use, and 94% CPU use with no activity, occur after opening and closing many Firefox windows and tabs, as happens when researching something on the internet over a period of hours or days. The bug symptoms are worse after putting the computer on standby or after hibernating. My experience has been that the memory and CPU hogging always occur together, so they appear to be the same bug. However, the CPU hogging symptom takes longer to appear.

You can demonstrate the memory use problem quickly by loading and closing the following large web page into multiple Firefox tabs a few times:
http://www.gnu.org/software/libc/manual/html_mono/ libc.html

To see the memory and CPU percentage used in Windows, right-click on the Taskbar and choose Task Manager. Choose the Processes tab.

The bug has often been reported on Slashdot. Here are a few examples:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=169676&cid=141 43632
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=168683&cid=140 62501
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=168683&cid=140 62671
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=168683&cid=140 66613

I posted the bug numbered 222660 in Bugzilla. It is interesting to note that apparently no developer has bothered to read the entire bug report and take the time to understand it. For 2 1/2 years, developers have been saying things like this: 1) Maybe this bug is fixed in the nightly version. 2) Yes, this bug exists, but it isn't important. 3) No one has posted a TalkBack report. (If they read the bug report, they would know that there is never a TalkBack report, because the bug crashes TalkBack, too.) 4) If you would just give us more information, we would fix this bug. 5) This bug report is a composite of other bugs, so this bug report is invalid. The other bugs aren't specified. 6) You are using Firefox in a way that would crash any software. 7) I don't like the way you worded your report. 8) Often someone uses the subject to act out anger; that person pretends to be interested in the subject.

I doubt this subject will just go away, not after more than 2 1/2 years of discussion. There has been a Slashdot story about it: Reducing Firefox's Memory Use. There's a lot of discussion in the comments to the story that the problem is a bug, rather than just something that needs improving.

Other people have raised the issue, all somewhat inaccurately, since the "memory leak"

Re:Open source programmers need more support?

[ednopantz]

>There's definitely a problem with open source development. My guess is that more emphasis should be place on raising money. Maybe open source programmers need more support than they are getting.

So the problem with free software is that people don't get paid? There is another model, you know.

Flight of of the penguin

[FishandChips]

It's all psychology. Otto Stern used to be the keenest of open saucers and went so far as to wear a full Tux suit including headpiece wherever he went. Reader, this man was Tux. Then one day in New York his tail became hopelessly wedged in the back seat of a taxi driven by a new arrival from Turkey who spoke no English at all. Despite his sqwarks for help, Stern was unable to free himself until the meter on the cab had run up a bill for $6583.29. He's been looking for a free ride ever since, not to mention donations for medical assistance to his tail which now hangs off centre by a shameful 60 degrees.

Re:Full of hot air

[duplo]

I partially agree.

There are two type of people - those who install linux and those who use it. I used to be the first, but ever since my windows partition has utterly died I have had to convert to the second - although it has had its fair share of difficulties. I am using gentoo from stage3 and find it very interesting to read through the countless docs and howto's on the gentoo forums explaining the intricate details of how things work so I can set up my PC exactly how I want it, running very slick. Mind you I have been using linux on and off for server related tasks (not desktop) for the last 5 or 6 years so I am what you would call an intermediate or 'normal' linux user.

However things like printing are utterly hopeless. It took me the best of 5 hours to get my unsupported canon i250 printer working today and browsing countless forums I discovered many users had similar problems. I personally do not think linux should be aiming for the mainstream market for the sake of it, and I would much rather edit my apache configuration in a text editor rather than a GUI, however doing everyday tasks like printing should be way less painful to configure than they currently are.

Blaming Ubuntu for NVIDIA's faults

[Johan Palmqvist]

Isn't it a bit ironic that you're bashing open source when you're also telling us that you're having the hardware related problems with NVIDIA's open source hostile hardware (which they don't release specifications for) and their own CLOSED SOURCE proprietary drivers? Blame NVIDIA for that, not Ubuntu.

Re:Blaming Ubuntu for NVIDIA's faults

[Johan Palmqvist]

Sorry, my mistake... It's not NVIDIA's fault. It's the ignorant users fault.

Fuck you too, Otto

[theolein]

FTFA: I'll leave you with one thought. Finns are socialists. Linus Torvalds is Finnish. Linus Torvalds got here on an airplane.

Nice one there, Otto. Make analogies that are about as fitting as the buttplug you currently have up your arse, and make a 2003-esque snide swipe at anything European as being Sociamalist or whatever.

Congrats, it's people like you that give Americans the reputation of being loud-mouthed, overweight, dumb-as-shit, opinionated bullies with an attitde problem, while they certainly aren't, at least not all.

Now, fuckwad, did, you have anything real to say, or were you just trolling for attention again?

Re:Fuck you too, Otto

[nagora]

Make analogies that are about as fitting as the buttplug you currently have up your arse, and make a 2003-esque snide swipe at anything European as being Sociamalist or whatever.

It's a joke. Read all the Otto pieces, they're actually quite funny. If you realise they're meant to be,

TWW

into the deep end

[ebooborg]

I have been reading slashdot for a while now (usually with my morning cuppa tea) but this time i decided to sign up and join in the fun. After reading this LINUX vs. EVERYOTHER OS thread (and many other threads along same lines) heres my opinion; Your average John Doe will never switch over to linux! Why? 1. People dont like being degraded and feel dumb 2. Command line interfaces and inconsistent ways to install programs / access options on linux make people feel dumb (see 1 above) and they get frustrated 3. I personally use linux daily to run my dedicated servers, everything has to be done thru putty, and after spending alot of my precious time in "RPM hell" and resolving dozens of dependencies or spending hours on end sifting thru mailing lists to find some obscure command that was never added or explained in the official documentation. Heck all that carry on makes windows installer look sexy. 4. Im discusted by how some devlopers cry "open source", but once they see a profit to be made they sell out (examples Mysql / RedHat / Invision etc). Heck Google are paying me $1 everytime someone downoads Firefox from my site! 5. I cant say "If thats bug is bothering you, fix it yourself!" to my boss or customers! That sort of arrogant attitude will get me fired or loose me customers 6. Not all computer users are geeks, if you dont take their needs into account ur not going anywhere, be it Plug and Play printers, Recording TV, playing with tunes for their their ipods (i do hate ipods) 7. Not all people are connected to the internet! (many developing countries and even developed ones!) or have high speed internet! people dont have time to patch their systems and resolve a zillion dependecies or spend hours sifting thru groups looking for help 8 as someone before said "people just want things to work" and they want to be listened to give people what they want and they will switch to linux, once again people want to play their mp3s / pRon / graphics intensive games, chat to their family on the other side of the globe, edit their digital photographs They dont want spending days on end patching bugs, figuring out how something that should be simple works well thes my 2 euro cent :)

Re:into the deep end

[nagora]

1. People dont like being degraded and feel dumb

Actually, some do.

5. I cant say "If thats bug is bothering you, fix it yourself!" to my boss or customers!

Then fix it yourself or pay someone to do it for you. The point of couse is that without the source you still can't tell your boss or customer to fix it and you can't have a go at it either, and neither can any consultant you bring in. So exactly what is your problem with having extra options?

TWW

Re:into the deep end

[joeldg]

"RPM hell"?
going to attempt to not be a 'typical gentoo spaz' here.. but:

install gentoo, might take a few minutes longer to install but you will never need to deal with rpm's again which is pure beauty...
need to install mysql? type `emerge mysql` and all your dependencies are done for you, while you can sit and drink your cup of coffee and read the garbage posted here...

boss says "is our sshd up to date, there was a bug released the other day?" you say "yes, was patched last week." because you know that you cron'd up `emerge -U world` to run every sunday at 2am and you know that emerge will not clobber your config files.. boss looks at you, smiles in appreciation of all your hard work and says "good job, glad you are so on top of all these things"..

you go back to reading slashdot and finish your coffee as you get an email from the redhat admin down the street who will have to work late while he has to upgrade 15 redhat boxes and has numerous issues with dependencies to resolve..

ahhh.. life is good..

Re:into the deep end

[ebooborg]

actually one is Suse 9.1 the other is Fedora Core 3 (i promised to myself never to use Red Hat again)
and yes i found yum to be quite usefull on fedora while yast is ok for suse
unfortunately the datacenter/server provider does not offer gentoo
my friend recomended FreeBSD and that will be next in line ill play around with

all i wanted was to express my opinion that most people out there use pc's for work and leisure NOT spending days trawling thru help usegroups and installing rpms or trying to get their printers working, also linux world is spending too much time trying to catch up with OSX/Windows instead of releasing any Killer apps or anything thats stands out (hmmm now that i think of it Apache and PHP are exeptions! i love both)

Re:into the deep end

[joeldg]

hi joe ;)

yes, but centOS does not have the most active online forum on the planet (see forums.gentoo.org) *and* have the massive documentation and user support (see gentoo-wiki.org) etc etc..
I am sure it is great, but you will still find yourself looking over the gentoo forums to get answers when you have a question about something :) :P

Re:into the deep end

[joeldg]

catch up?
I would say that yes, some people are playing catch up.. but for the most part (in my experience) linux users don't want to use a system that runs like windows.. I know I don't..
With things like cedega where you can play windows games under linux (I have noticed huge speed/framerate increases) all the emulation etc there is not much reason to *need* to use windows anymore.. besides, if you want an upgrade you need to send info to MS and have a verified install etc..
For end users, Ubunto is supposed to be very easy on installation etc.. Gentoo admittedly is a bit of a poweruser/tweakers distribution.. They need a nice alternative graphical install with base packages and a graphical emerge tool.
as for "killer apps" linux is where killer apps are born and is still the number one server software in the world.. there and also MacOS (windows copied them) and they are always one step ahead of windows..
anyway..

Re:into the deep end

[Ash-Fox]

If you're having issues, spending days and such.. Are you sure you had the propper training for using Linux?

I mean for example with SuSE Linux, theres the CLP and the CLE certifications...

I tend to often hear all these issues from people who have gone without training or have had training long ago in a quite different system, so, I'm quite curious if this is the case here.

Re:The Finnish are Not Socialist

[Kjella]

I'm assuming he means social democrat. Many americans seem to get the terms confused...

Not to say all Americans are like that, but some seem to refuse to acknowledge there's a difference. It's like "you're not properly free until you've trashed your universal healthcare system", nevermind that we're fully functional democracies with a market economy. Yes, it's a huge tax on our economy, but it is worth it. Maybe your system is more cost-efficient, but it is certainly a lot crueler. I think the USA just can't accept that the general population is better off here in Europe, and would rather we became just like them. I'm sorry but I'd rather have one Bill Gates less and have everyone's life be a little better.

Who cares?

[smcdow]

From TFA: Before pulling away from your crucial Mono project work to write a flame, please hand a normal 25-year-old your Linux box and show them how to connect the system to their bluetooth camera and then smack yourself.

My response: Who cares what the non-techie, point-and-drool end-user wants or needs? Let the commercial people worry about that stuff.

Re:article: -1, troll

[ebooborg]

at least im not afraid to discuss open source problems OPENLY anonymous coward

Apple-sectarian alert

[jesterpilot]

Let me guess, the reason is they wanted to build in their own look-and-feel? So X sucks?

This would only mean Linux sucks for Apple-addicts. For other people, Linux with X might be very fine. For people who can't stand the Apple look-and-feel, it might be a relief.

Apple is not the best for all. It's the best for a certain amount of users. They choose to serve this group well, better than everybody half. A good choice. A pity Apple-users generally don't understand this choice.

RTFA people.. it's supposed to be funny..

[tobe]

The article, I believe, is intended to be humourous. As you'd expect from the less than serious Reg.

Damnit!

[CitizenJohnJohn]

With the 20 second delay that Slashdot enforces between hitting 'Reply' and 'Submit', it's going to take me at least two hours to post "You have been trolled" to everyone who took this utterly obvious piece of satire at face value.

Re:The Finnish are Not Socialist

[i41Overlord]

Not to say all Americans are like that, but some seem to refuse to acknowledge there's a difference. It's like "you're not properly free until you've trashed your universal healthcare system", nevermind that we're fully functional democracies with a market economy. Yes, it's a huge tax on our economy, but it is worth it. Maybe your system is more cost-efficient, but it is certainly a lot crueler. I think the USA just can't accept that the general population is better off here in Europe, and would rather we became just like them. I'm sorry but I'd rather have one Bill Gates less and have everyone's life be a little better.

The makeup of your population is different than the US's. Your population is more homogeneous than ours. In the US, we have many more deadbeats who just live off welfare. If we had a more socialist system it would be a HUGE drain on the people who make good money while they pay for all the welfare queens in the inner city and trailer parks. I don't want to give them any more money than I already do.

The smart shouldn't have to pay for the stupid to exist. It drags the productive people down and weakens the human race as a whole. The dirt poor have many more kids than the rich. As you can see, in short order, the few smart rich people would be paying for the many poor dumb people to exist.

what an ass ,if he dont like it

[bxbaser]

he doesnt have to buy it.

Re:Ugh. - You said it

[nagora]

I get the feeling he has an axe to grind against google, open source and "geeks."

Or perhaps, you never know, it was a JOKE article? Huh? Surely the quote from his mother was a clue?!

TWW

Disgusting topic!

[Adnans]

Open sores worse with flies??!!!

sure...

[jesterpilot]

Like any normal user ever get's to use emacs or gnome-terminal.

Oblig. Spelling Nazi

[goldspider]

"one is windows. it is produced by a single company, all spare parts are manufactured by the same company. it comes in slight variety, having several models. you are not able to buy older models, though you can buy a new model, trash it and use some older model."

You misspelled "Mac".

Re:Oblig. Spelling Nazi

[Reverend528]

Cars produced by apple all have 2 engines, one big one kludged onto a smaller one. Apple's cars have many of the features of a linux vehicle, but you wouldn't know, because everything is hidden under a dashboard that can only be removed with excessive force. The only thing that drivers are granted access to is a steering wheel, which is located in the upper left corner of the car. Because there are no pedals, all apple vehicles drive at the same speed all the time. Apple drivers insist that the speed is "fast" because there are two engines, but many windows and linux drivers debate this.

Despite the absurd usability problems that are created by having only one poorly-placed steering wheel, many Apple users insist that their cars are "more user-friendly". They also insist that they are "thinking differently", despite the fact that all of their cars look exactly the same.

Linux does mobile computing better

[SpooForBrains]

Ask yourself this: what does Linux do better today compared with in 2000, almost 6 years ago? I'm not talking about crap like antialiased text- I mean things that actually MATTER to users...

There are myriad examples. KDE makes Windows 2000 look like a dinosaur. I shall give you one example where Linux makes my life about a thousand times easier:

Mobile computing. Linux ROCKS the laptop, and here's why. I have to make frequent site visits. Each site I visit has a different network infrastructure. So I use SCPM, which is basically profile management. When I visit a new site, I create a new profile and set up all the networking settings, file shares and so on. So then, when I visit that site, I just have to choose that profile, and SCPM transparently swaps out all my configuration files, restarts all the networking services, and I'm up and running in about fifteen seconds.

Quetion answered?

Flamebait

[bertvv]

Whay can't we moderate an article -1 Flamebait...? ;-)

I (heart) Satire

[Mr_Tricorder]

It's amazing how many people don't recognize this article for what it is.
Anybody here ever read Jonathan Swift's A Modest Proposal? Have you ever seen a Gilbert and Sullivan production?

In case you didn't realize, this article is SATIRE.
It's not meant to be taken seriously. He's making fun of people who argue against Open Source, so calm down, reread this article, and have a good laugh at the expense of M$ and everyone else who hates Open Source.

An Open Source Spellchecker?

[SkyDude]

" Accusing Open Source of being buggy and its devolopers of preoccupation with mudane details.

He's confusing his terminology

[greendot]

Flying is fun. It's the crashing part that sucks.

"Skyhawk 87E, you are cleared for the option..."

his problem

[tomcres]

I think he really needs to see a doctor about those open sores. From his tone, it sounds like he might have advanced syphilis. He needs antibiotics stat!

It's funny.

[Laplace]

Because it's true.

Bible 2: Jebus Ressurected

[Jack Zombie]

The Register/The Inquirer is just The Sun for geeks.

Re:The Finnish are Not Socialist

[nickos]

"The smart shouldn't have to pay for the stupid to exist."

Did you choose to be smart? If not, don't you think social democracies are fairer?

wow

[elmegil]

Nothing like the smell of a front page troll in the morning.

Excactly!

[Steeltoe]

You got the point! ;-)

Either you come up with constructive critisism, or you're moaning. If you're moaning, you're not contributing and you can just as likely shut up. In fact, by moaning you are pulling the project down..

Neither Microsoft or the OSS community is helped with: This interface sucks! The people who made this are losers.

What helps is: This button can be named "Ok" according to standard Window-management pratices, so as to avoid confusion over what it really does (save the work and close the dialog). The navigation list can with advantage display the items in a hierarchical manner. etc..etc..

Instead of saying: This shit just doesn't work! (You can say it when home alone, but it just doesn't help when you yell it across the globe..)

This helps: I have a Megablaster nVidia 256MB card with 1 S-Video output blablabla. The arts-daemon fails to recognize it at start-up giving an error-message: etc...etc..

Searching on the internet and special forums for clues helps.

Even being polite and not expecting anyone to do free work for you, helps alot.

Step 2: Smack Otto

[quakeroatz]

Step 1:
Before pulling away from your crucial Mono project work to write a flame, please hand a normal 25-year-old your Linux box and show them how to connect the system to their bluetooth camera and then smack yourself.
Step 2: Allow Open Source user to beat your unmercifully for buying a Bluetooth camera which serves little practical use when flash media is cheap, universally compatable. Why use a USB cable or flash drive when you can tell all you friends your camera is wireless. Rejoice as you transfer your pictures using 1/2 your battery, using a slow, insecure, outdated techonlogy using an overpriced adapter on your PC that costs as much as a 1gb flash card. YAY for Otto!!!

Re:Step 2: Smack Otto

[smack.addict]

A typical open source dork response. It's the user's fault for wanting to do some particular thing, not the software's fault.

Re:Step 2: Smack Otto

[quakeroatz]

Typical ignorant comment assuming the user should be able to be exhibit the intelligence of a gerbil yet be able to perform complex tasks easily.
Hey let's nurture idiocy and let it spread! We could breed an army of fools and take over the world!

You, will be their leader.

Re:Step 2: Smack Otto

[Harv]

He's right, you know. Your reaction is one reason I've stayed away from Linux, despite dabbling with it. You may not want to hear this sort of thing, but it's why Linux has not yet made it above 1% marketshare on the desktop, despite it's 'superiority'. Insulting thA little humility and the abilty to listen are still the two biggest things missing from any distro.

Re:Step 2: Smack Otto

[smack.addict]

Typical ignorant comment assuming the user should be able to be exhibit the intelligence of a gerbil yet be able to perform complex tasks easily.

Remind me.... What exactly is a computer for?

I thought it was to enable people to perform complex tasks quickly and simply.

It seems to me that you think a computer is some sort of demonstration tool for one's intelligence.

Re:Step 2: Smack Otto

[Ash-Fox]

Because, as we all know, this one person who represents the entire Linux community, and every single developer, the attitude of the community. ...

I could play generalizations from a few users I've met too if I wanted, but I see this as pointless.

Re:Step 2: Smack Otto

[quakeroatz]

In your world, a first time user edits video with multiple audio/video tracks in 15 minutes, they buy gadgets without understanding the basic underlying formats, they ram mini VHS cassettes into VCRs and of course they expect their new Bluetooth camera to just work without any intervention.

In the real world, people need a basic understanding of what they're trying to do before they do it. It's step #1 in problem solving (understanding the problem). They need to know what they want to do, and how to find help (it's there!). I think your ideal world doesn't exist and never will, never mind Linux, can you do the Bluetooth thing with Windows or OSX? I can't speak for OSX, but I'm sure in Windows you'll be installing drivers for your Bluetooth card (pesky basic steps). Ya Linux may suck for new users, you have to have a clue... so don't use Linux if you don't have the will or time to find one. Were not talking climbing Everest here, but many discouraged Linux attempters like to blame their own lack of trying on the 1000s of experts (not me) who donate their valuable time to give away code. That's just petty rationalization.

I'm no Linux expert, which is funny because I've nearly always been able to do what I wanted using Linux, after using basic finding skills, man, google groups? This isn't rocket science. And I'm not your Linux poster boy, I just think you and the rest of the Linux "try once and give up quickly" are either really impatient, lacking free time or just plain fucking lazy.

Re:Step 2: Smack Otto

[quakeroatz]

Linux isn't an entity with one goal, it's not a corporation with a guiding mission. It doesn't want to be superior, although some beleive certain things it does, it does better than any other alternative.

And look at server statistics, you'll see something other than 1% maketshare, all without a unified marketing department!

Since when does Microsoft listen?

And is my "tough talk" really the reason you've stayed away from linux? When you post questions to a linux help board, did people really flame you? Or did you never get to that step? I've never had a hostile response to a simple inquiry, (but then again thats not a reliable statistic), in fact the reponses have been patient, helpful and speedy.

There are a volumes of sites DEDICATED to answering the most basic beginner questions, with thousands of Linux users waiting to help you! Help me, help you!

http://www.linuxquestions.org/
http://www.justlinux.com/

If you can post a basic question and get a negative response, I'll eat my shirt.

Re:Step 2: Smack Otto

[quakeroatz]

What exactly is a computer for?
I thought it was to enable people to perform complex tasks quickly and simply.
Without a basic understanding of how to use a PC, a computer does not do this for a new user. It's marketing hype.

It seems to me that you think a computer is some sort of demonstration tool for one's intelligence.
No, but couple a small bit of intelligence with a bit of work and the world is your oyster.

Hardware Drivers for Linux

[dwandy]

The sooner Linux users stop buying closed driver only crap, the sooner we can all stop suffering.

I doubt that 5% of the PC market will have any impact on hardware vendors.
I would argue quite the opposite: We need to write our own drivers where and whenever possible, as this makes more hardware Linux compatible. The larger the compatibility list, the more people will want it on their desktop, the more people using it, the more likely that a hardware mfg decides that writing and supplying drivers is a competative advantage they can use to sell their product.

I think the lack of drivers has two sources:
(1) - 5% market share. As a 'producer' it doesn't make necessarily make sense to spend time capturing such a small percentage of the market - write for Windows and you get in the order of 90% of the market.
(2) - OSS people do the work for you. As a 'producer' having someone else 'pay' for the work means more profit for you.

The closed-source option has neither of these two disadvantages ... and in my opinion the only way to overcome them is to play along with #2 until #1 is no longer true ...

Re:Hardware Drivers for Linux

[Frank T. Lofaro Jr.]

#2 may be true but hardware manufacturers don't see it that way.

One can get sued for reverse engineering to write a driver, and with the DMCA it is even more likely one will lose if one decides to fight.

Losing means hundreds of thousands of damages or more in many cases, even against an individual.

Get a judgement against you like that and 25% of your wages for many years or perhaps even your whole life will go to some court judgement - also your house will be sold, etc in many cases.

You have no company to protect you if your are an independent open source programmer.

Re:Hardware Drivers for Linux

[ILikeRed]

First, I don't believe your 5% figure....

Secondly, even if your figure is correct, it is obvious that the number is significant enough right now that many companies have decided not to ignore the Linux market. Sure, some companies are going to feel they can ignore the market (e.g. nvidia, ASUS is another bad example), but continuing to purchase from them, or help them with their drivers is just stupid, especially since the Linux users numbers are big enough to make a diference to some companies, and there are companies like "VIA, Realtek, RALink and MSI showing an interest in cooperating."

Re:Hardware Drivers for Linux

[metamatic]

Some hardware vendors seem to do quite nicely targeting the Mac market. 5% of the PC industry is still an awful lot of potential customers.

I agree with the idea that the Linux community really needs to start voting with its wallet and not buying hardware that lacks open source drivers. Sure, it's a pain, but it's the only way we'll keep the freedom to tinker.

Re:Hardware Drivers for Linux

[XO]

hell, VIA, Realtek, etc are still maintaining their OS/2 drivers last I went driver shopping.

I haven't seen an article this badly written...

[PrescriptionWarning]

since the college newspaper. "I'll leave you with one thought. Finns are socialists. Linus Torvalds is Finnish. Linus Torvalds got here on an airplane." need i say more about the ignorant stupidity of this writer

Essentially a Desktop Linux rant

[DCheesi]

And he's got a point, although things are a lot better than they used to be. The fact is that Linux, like most Open Source projects, suffers from the lack of a Marketing Department. Without it, us geeks are free to work on the technical details that interest us (which is why OSS is so great for back-office server utilities, etc.); but there's also no guidance or focus in supplying the features users want.

It's not just a matter of *understanding* what non-techies want. You also have to have the motivation and committment to actually implement the features in a timely manner, rather than drifting onto technical tangents and minutiae. OSS suffers from the lack of a business end; or more simply, the lack of someone breathing down your neck, applying pressure to do the things that are most needed, not what's most interesting.

Torvalds nasty socialist ?

[stock]

I'll leave you with one thought. Finns are socialists. Linus Torvalds is Finnish. Linus Torvalds got here on an airplane. ®

That's quite a suggestion by Otto Z. Stern, and a nasty one for sure. All Torvalds did was put in practice the things he learned inside CS class, what he admired the most: an open system, and what he was inspired by: the approach of Operating Systems Design as taught by Andy Tanenbaum, who has been decorated for his work numerous times. Mister Stern should maybe focus his attention at designing the new generation aviation machinery again, instead of putting down the work of individuals outside his field of expertise.

Robert

Linux has Arrived

[4of12]

"I'm sitting here...wondering when the Linux freaks are going to solve their Ubuntu versus Mandriva color scheme debate or maybe even write a printer driver so that something I buy actually works with my open sores PC."

When clueless newbies are complaining about drivers for Linux in the same way that they have complained for years under Windows (maybe not printers, but something), I take it as a sign that Linux has arrived.

Clearly this guy...

[Liam Slider]

...is giving a fair, and balences critique of Open Source. Wait, what? You say he isn't? Let me read that again? My you are right....he's just some loudmouth asshat. Why the hell did this even make slashdot?

We all knew this before...

[JollyFinn]

Open source BLEEDS!!!!

Doubly Offensive

[Lordofohio]

Wow, as a Linux geek and an airline employee, I find that doubly offensive :-)

Not looking at the big picture

[Sierpinski]

Accusing Open Source of being buggy and its devolopers of preoccupation with mudane details.

Uhhh, yeah. Microsoft has NEVER done that. If you're going to point the "bug" finger at anyone, point it at everyone who deserves it, which is, well, every company that's ever made software. Bugs are a fact of life in programming. The only difference being the frequency and severity of them, and how quickly they are fixed.

Oh God I'm Having 1979 Flashback!

[LifesABeach]

My eyes stopped working while reading output from a command line console! I was reminded why "Menu Driven" systems were fantastic back then.

Re:Full of hot air

[DrMorris]

If you buy a Mac, you get only compatible (to MacOS X) hardware. If you buy a PC, you get hardware that is compatible to Windows. Linux supports both to a degree, but to be sure, you should check hardware compatibility _before_ buying/building a computer. By the way, some vendors offer PCs preinstalled with GNU/Linux, I guess these only contain compatible hardware.

Wow this article is retarded

[namain]

OK first off, I am a pilot, I support and use many common Open Source projects (Fedora, Mozilla Firefox/Thunderbird, OpenOffice.org) and I read the full article.

Now on to the rant!

This guy doesn't even attempt to understand the mechanics behind the scenes of an airline. There are anywhere from 20 to 550 people on a single flight. The fact that there are so many people alone is reason enough for so much security on an airline. As soon as you step onto the aircraft your safety is that airline's reasonability. The long wait is also caused by the number of people that are all on one flight. You if you can only process 5 people a minute, with the larger flights that means that it will take nearly an hour to process them all at peak efficency. Unfortuantly people show up late and not everything is going to happen at peak efficency, so you have to show up early if you want to make it to the aircraft still feeling safe. As far as making you wait in the terminal with stupid people, well he must just get bad flights. I have made a few good friends in my travels.

Now to the open source issue. The problems that he described aren't so much with the acutal process of open source but rather with people arguing over insignifigant things which leads to delays in parts of the programs that really matter. This unfortunatly is a problem that cannot be helped in a large democratic like environment. With any majority rules system of decision there will be conflicts of interests between the participants. I have not had any real problems with drivers on my own linux box, granted I do have some pretty old hardware. But the Linux environment is still under heavy development so I would let that slide. Mozilla Firefox has already become far better than their Microsoft IE and with Sunbird well on the way the Tunderbird/Sunbird combo will be much better than Outlook.

Re:Full of hot air

[joelsanda]

By the way, some vendors offer PCs preinstalled with GNU/Linux, I guess these only contain compatible hardware.

Yeah - I've been keeping an eye on those for a future computer purchase. I also know most Linux distros are not more compatible than when I tried them - which was right after I bought a PC with Windows 98. The thing was about as stable as a person with bipolar - up and down more than a teeter totter - even with nothing by the OS installed.

Shut up already!

[psyon1]

...maybe even write a printer driver so that something I buy actually works with my open sores PC.

I think 90% of the Linux/FreeBSD/Other complaints I hear, is about hardware not working properly. People seem to blame the operating system for the lack of drivers for their hardware. Last I looked, hardware manufacturers are responsible fro writing the drivers. Hardware is NOT submitted to Microsoft for drivers to be made. We are fortunate enough that we have some very talented developers who DO make drivers for hardware, not because they have to, but because they can. Someday maybe people will call manufacturers and complain there is not a driver for other operating systems, but until then, I hope they at least realize, its not the fault of the operating system.

Can we mod the source article as a TROLL?

[ivanmarsh]

Do we really need to have some whining troll as a topic of conversation on Slashdot? Doesn't that happen enough already by itself?

Use whatever OS you want to and STFU.

Best Quote Ever

[MrCopilot]

My objective has never been to perpetuate the myth of goodness within the annals of respectability but rather to grab goodness by the gonads and then splatter these nuts of decency against the public wall of justice. In short, I'm after progress, while these others are happy to wallow in the filth of achievements past.

Ewwwwwwwwww. Amusing but ewwww.

Re:It's so, so simple

[aventius]

the average 25 year old couldn't setup bluetooth on Windows either.

Re:Ugh. - You said it

[multisync]

Yeah, I suppose you're right. I guess I was too tired to appreciate the subtlety of his humour.

Quit Getting Defensive

[dartarrow]

He is right anyway. I use it, i love it, but oss can get pretty petty. Just look through all the 'my distro can kick your distro's ass' talk in /. and u see.

What's so bad about windows?

[gr8_phk]

Millions of people use Windows every day and don't see anything wrong with it. They think getting viruses is normal. They think Spyware is normal. They think paying for software to fix problems with other software they paid for is normal. They're in that mindset where they can't really see how an alternative could be better. Much like you with X.

BTW, I don't think X is bad either. Nor is it all that precious.

Re:Full of hot air

[Toby_Tyke]

I know you were only joking, but I really am sick to death of hearing Mac users going on and on about how intuitive and easy to use their OS is, and how everything "just works".

My wife does desktop support for a living, and naturally, a lot of work colleagues ask her for support with their home machines. One such lady is a graphic designer who, surprise, is a longtime mac user, having been using Macs in one flavour or another since the early nineties.

Over the last 12 months or so, my wife has had to show this lady how to:

Set up her Airport wireless network

Hook up her Ipod Nano

Use Itunes

To the average joe or jane sixpack, I really don't think Mac OS is any more intuitive than windows.

Warm and Fuzzy

[sgt scrub]

It makes me feel warm and fuzzy whenever I see this type^1 of user dislike Linux. To me it means that one more person capable of believing they can delete the internet from their computer^2 will not be asking me the most stupid fucking questions of all times.

1 An individual that believes double clicking on "their" icon is using a computer.
2 Usually referred to as a "hard drive" by this type of user.

Re:I work at NASA ... and still can't spell

[beer_maker]

I hate to go all spelling & grammer Nazi on you, but anybody citing their scientifically-gifted workplace to shore up their anecdotal "evidence" ought to be able to spell and/or use spelling & grammer checker software:

• thermaldynamics - thermodynamics is a word, thermal dynamics is two words - and I imagine you meant the other.
• teh - I know, the IRC-style spelling is popular here at /. but it seems a poor choice for a purported NASA rocket scientist ...
• relase - letter dropping, to match the name dropping?

I'm cool with a claim of authority, but then I claim you ought to take the time to write it right. Mmmkay?

What is this guy smoking? Crack? Linux Rules!

[MrJerryNormandinSir]

I Care about any desktop theme. Get over it. I use my
box for software development (I can't wait for my Nokia 770 to show up, I've got the development kit loaded and I wrote
an app to test). I also use my box for creating family videos. Kino is great and my Cannon Elura 70 works great
with it. Blender... heck what an excellent 3D Animation tool. And network hacking on a Linux box is a piece of cake.
Nessus, nmap, kismet.

The guy who put up the post regarding this must have had his windoqze box gpf one too many times.

Wrong about 16-bit math being slow

[p3d0]

This is because the machine code has to use a prefix operator that says "the following operation is on a 16-bit number, not a (native) 32-bit one". A simple 16-bit add is twice the instruction count of a 32-bit one.

This is false. The operand size prefix has very little overhead on modern processors. (You are talking about x86 right?) They only cause problems if they lead to false dependencies, which would be a compiler bug, not an inherent limitation with 16-bit operations. On Pentium 4, they can also cause decoding bottlenecks if they make the instruction more than 7 bytes long, but obviously this only affects instructions that would otherwise be exactly 7 bytes long. Opterons can eat operand size prefixes as though they weren't even there. Both processors will also suffer slightly worse i-cache performance because the code is a bit bigger, but I bet you'd have a pretty hard time noticing that in practice (and the Opetron has the exact same problem with 64-bit instructions, due to the Rex prefix).

The point is, I dislike X as much as the next guy, but the operand size prefix certainly doesn't count as a whole separate instruction. That's not the source of X's slowness.

Re:USB keyboard blues

[beer_maker]

Were you on a Dell, by any chance? They have a real issue with not seeing a USB keyboard unless it is in the first USB slot. I have seen this behavior on most Precison and Optiplex models for the last several years - the easy fix has been to just use that port for the keyboard as a matter of course.

Were you honestly surprised that the default (Microsoft) drivers did not include those for an Apple keyboard? That seems a teensy bit disingenuos of you.

Trollicious!

[neomunk]

This is a neat-o point of view, at freedom means being allowed (by your superiors) to do things that they have prescribed as acceptable. Rock on!

Would you buy a car that had the hood welded shut because they were kind enough to supply you with a couple extra holes in your gas-door for oil, transmission fluid, etc?

Or even better, we can take the ingrediants lists and nutrition labels off the food. If our Masters tell us it's what we want to eat then it's our duty to eat. Besides, whatever it is they're putting in there sure makes me want MORE! Not to mention the shakes I get if I don't get it every few days...

You may think I'm trolling with that analogy, but it's all too apt. I don't remember if the NSA_KEY bit back in WinNT 3.5(?)SP3(?) was a hoax, but that's just the kind of danger that closed source represents. If you don't know what the computer is doing with the information you give it (even worse, when you're not ALLOWED to know), then feed it with all kinds of personal and financial information, well, that's just foolish. It's just like depantsing bending over for a stranger that comes up to you and tells you that he's a proctologist, and that you need an exam, but you're not allowed to see his credentials. He IS wearing a doctor's coat tho...

Here comes the choo-choo!!!

Re:Trollicious!

[Transmogrify_UK]

No, it's not really an apt analogy because they simply don't make cars with hoods welded shut. Your ingredients/nutritional information label analogy doesn't really work either, because I can't buy food without nutrional information or ingredients in this country (the UK), although you can in France interestingly enough. I know exactly what my computer is doing with the information I give it. I control what information goes in and what goes out. I don't disagree with open source software and the movement, in fact most of the applications I use on a day to day basis (firefox, open office, thunderbird among others) are open source, but my operating system of choice is windows because I'm comfortable with it, it lets me do exactly what I want to do and not concern myself with anything else and I know EXACTLY what is happening with the information I give it. I'd know in an instant if data I'd supplied it with is going to some spurious target I hadn't allowed. With 15 years of Windows experience, I'd like to think I'm pretty competant and aware of the pitfalls of using Windows.

Re:Trollicious!

[Transmogrify_UK]

I do, mate! None at last check. Do you know how many cookies you have stored on your machine that are tracking your movements throughout the web, and feeding some marketeer with your web browsing habits?

Re:Trollicious!

[sumdumass]

I know. but my question is what ius microsoft realy doing with all the information it colects about the site you watch video from or the list of music being playe don your computer? There is realy nothing you can do to stop that except disconect from the internet.

Ya'know what i mean?

Re:Trollicious!

[utnow]

"Or even better, we can take the ingrediants lists and nutrition labels off the food. If our Masters tell us it's what we want to eat then it's our duty to eat. Besides, whatever it is they're putting in there sure makes me want MORE! Not to mention the shakes I get if I don't get it every few days..."

Windows has a list of ingredients... there's 1's and 0's here and there. You can see all of the executables...

What Windows dosen't do (and most foods don't either) is tell you HOW to make them. You'll find it a difficult job to find a commercial food product with a publicaly available recipie. I'm sure there's one out there (open cola?) that you'll use in your effort to blast me, but it's not the norm.

Re:Trollicious!

[neomunk]

THe only problem with your analogy-on-top-of-my-analogy is that you CAN'T see the executibles, at least not in any way that would allow you to understand them, when you try and do that, it becomes illegal.

Re:Open your eyes, people

[Ash-Fox]

I honestly haven't seen any 'average' user that uses bluetooth.

NineNine: And another thing...

[eno2001]

Learn about something called sarcasm. It's one of the greatest comic devices and something sorely lacking in American culture.

Re:He's right, except DVD/CD-RW drivers are worse

[Ash-Fox]

It's the first time I hear someone complaining about configuring a server from a webbrowser...

And err.. You don't burn disks, you just copy content onto them and vice-versa usually.

File System Model? You mean POSIX? I do believe DVD/RW drives behave correctly to POSIX standards.

I typed "man The DVD/CD - RW application" and no manual could be found... So then I looked in my package repository database using 'urpmq'.. Still found nothing, then I googled. Still couldn't find it.

Re:Open source is great, but can do MUCH better

[Ash-Fox]

Generic hardware isn't the issue.

Those are easilly supported with VESA, ndiswrapper etc. etc.

It's when you want to have all the specialized features for your hardware, that your hardware manufactorer didn't provide the drivers/kernel modules for is when I see people generally start having problems. And some of those that do, don't keep it upto date as much as they should.

In this case, I see no real difference in hardware support from windows. Many people install the manufactorer's drivers or such on windows rather than using the generic drivers to handle it (Although windows does actually lack a lot more in generic driver support, so in some cases it's a absolute must). If your manufactorer doesn't provide drivers/kernel modules for your OS to support the hardware, don't assume that's because it just works on the platform.

Re:Eclipse vs VS

[ardor]

Intellisense and error decorators are offered by Visual Assist. Yeah, Intellisense is pretty bad in VS, but thats not a killer argument for me. But toolkits, libraries etc. in Windows often include a VC-binary *only*, i.e. nothing for mingw. (Conversion .lib->.a can be very very tricky.) This is a result from the fact that VS is the #1 C++ platform in Windows, thus if you want to reach the maximum amount of devs in Windows, use VS. With mingw, you are pretty much isolated, and so are you with Eclipse. Also, Visual Studio works out-of-the-box, with Eclipse I have to download and configure cygwin and the CDT. The online MSDN help is very, very useful, I have yet to find something comparable (no, manpages are not comparable, neither is devhelp).

I cannot say anything about the RAD builder for .net stuff since I never used it, but a lot of people really like it (and C#). But yes, the VB devs are less than pleased with VB.net.

Besides, UI is NOT a small part of development. People who think that UI development is secondary and just a small part know absolutely nothing about good UI design & development. A good UI can decide over success or failure of a product. Examples? Have a look at most applications out there. Its even worse with Open Source-applications.

I'll reconsider Eclipse when they include proper CL support (CL.exe is the VS C++ compiler & linker).

Our morals are doing just fine then.

[Kaptain Kruton]

Otto Z. Stern is a director at The Institute of Technological Values - a think tank dedicated to a more moral digital age. He criticizes the fact that planes don't fly faster without stopping to think why that is. He criticizes the people that promote opensource. He criticizes opensource, while doing it in a way that seems to say opensource is linux. Open sourced includes a lot more things than that. After all of the insults, the article states he is a director at a think tank dedicated to a more moral digital age. There is a difference between insulting and informing on the negative aspects and, apparently, he does not know it.

Re:I've moved to Windows XP Pro

[Ash-Fox]

You might want to take a look at MacOSX, some consider it being somewhat the best of both windows and *nix operating systems.

(The large amount of hardware support availible of MacOSX and the ability of the POSIX-like enviroments).

Mod parent up - insightful

[Optic7]

Well put!

Programmers don't care either

[Goldarn]

'Most' people don't care how their computer works (just like most don't care how their car works). They just want it to work... every time.

Indeed, most programmers I know don't care how some stuff works. They're happy to use previously-built libraries in their programs, without ever once asking to see the source code. I would be terribly surprised if Linux programmers were different, as a whole.

Saying that things should always be transparent (in whatever sense of the word) so that people can always see everything about them is absurd. It wouldn't surprise me if you could look around your office/home/wherever-you-are right now and find 10 things, about which you have no idea of their construction, use, components, etc.

My point is that I never needed to take all those physics classes to use a light switch.

Re:Programmers don't care either

[Kadin2048]

Saying that things should always be transparent (in whatever sense of the word) so that people can always see everything about them is absurd.

Although I speak only for myself, I think that the open source movement is a request (demand?) not for transparency per se, but for the ability to examine something if the user so chooses. In fact many of the "advances" Linux has made in the past few years has actually hidden much of that complexity -- and are great steps forward.

It would be analogous not to having a house full of appliances without any covers and with exposed internals, but to appliances on which the covers can -- with the appropriate tools and basic knowledge -- be removed at all. And perhaps more importantly, even to the user who has no interest in ever taking the cover off themselves, appliances which can be taken to any neighborhood repair shop as opposed to sending it back to the manufacturer for repair.

Re:The Finnish are Not Socialist

[i41Overlord]

You know, I think you might be able to pay for an expensive drug habit for every "welfare queen" in the country with the money that you're now pumping into Iraq.

Don't worry- we'll be able to pay for their drug habit and more with the oil that we'll be pumping out of Iraq.

Re:The Finnish are Not Socialist

[i41Overlord]

Did you choose to be smart? If not, don't you think social democracies are fairer?

I wouldn't mind paying for people who are honestly unable to make enough money for themselves, but I think those people are vastly outnumbered bypeople who are simply lazy and want a free ride. In a social democracy, they'll get their free ride.

Re:USB keyboard blues

[10Ghz]

Were you on a Dell, by any chance? They have a real issue with not seeing a USB keyboard unless it is in the first USB slot.

It was self-built machine. And it was not a question of computer not recognizing the keyboard. It recognized it just fine. Linux worked right away, and it even worked in GRUB! W2K was the only piece of the computer which would not work with the keyboard automatically. So I would chalk this one as a Windows-problem and not hardware-problem.

Open Source vs. Free Software

[CarpetShark]

Sometimes I think these things get raised once in a while just to keep the Open Source term popular. Open Source is much less strong, conceptually speaking and in terms of future-proofing, against proprietary software than Free Software is. Free Software is about principles, which will never change, while Open Source is just about economics which can be changed with a price drop in proprietary software. As it stands, about 2 thirds or 3 quarters of open software is GPL'd Free Software, not Open Source. We really should refer to it as Free Software, if we're too lazy to use terms like FOSS. So, articles like this are harmful to us. Please be more careful, and at least use the term FOSS. (FLOSS isn't so good, because it isn't a unique word for search engines, if people want to find out what we're talking about).

Re:Another self-righteous asshole

[oglueck]

Yes they are. And they are closed source. And the nVidia ones don't work well with newer kernels. And they stopped supporting them. And the nv open source driver does not have accelerated OpenGL. :-(

Guys - It's a joke!!! Do you not get it???

[colin_s_guthrie]

I find it incredibly funny that all the slashdotters here are far to wound up in their own little defensive worlds to spot a joke when they see it. The Reg runs Otto Stern and Verity Stob and numerous other "joke" stories from time to time as a break from the us from the normal monotony of the usual *real* corporate attacks on Linux etc.!! Get a life. Col

Goat rendering awful?

[Busy]

Wasn't that taken down a long time ago?

Funny, Open Source works for me.

[john666seven]

Open Source software always works for me, I've never had a problem with it. I find that (in Windows XP) Open Source is "just as good" and more stable than what comes from Redmond (in theory Redmond, in most cases it was written elseware). There were some buggy Linux printer drivers a few years ago, but the ones that I use at home on my 7 computers (and Ubuntu Linux)in the past two years, are not buggy, and often do a better job imaging than the ones that Windows uses. The only real "bug" in Ubuntu (that I have found)is installing the printer drivers (they might have changed that in this release)--they don't install "like Windows" and not quite like the GUI indicates.

The "Bill O'Reilly Comment Generator" project

[yuna49]

Sounds like a great student project for someone in political AI.

Re:USB keyboard blues

[10Ghz]

Were you honestly surprised that the default (Microsoft) drivers did not include those for an Apple keyboard?

It's not a _MAGICAL_ keyboard. It's just a USB keyboard. So it happens to be made by Apple, so what? And the point was that it required several reboots to get something like keyboard to work! And it took several reboots to get it working again after switching the port it was connceted to!