There is no shortage of 3rd party utilities to modify a your desktop to your liking. Keep everything modular and people can add what they need when they need it.
This is so true and the reason that I use BlackBox, most anything you want is there you just have to install it. And if there is something that you can't find its not all that difficult to write since the vast majority of BlackBox configuration is written in text files (I've actually written some Perl scripts that dynamically update my menu based on certain actions)
In fact I think that an interface like blackbox would be great for new users because it is so simple and stays out of the way. All that's needed is some more user-friendly tools that combine both BlackBox configuration and system administration.
And before someone pipes up and tells me to write it, I have actually worked on the idea some in my spare time but there isn't really enough to release. However if anyone is interested I have some very decent Perl scripts that.
1. Monitor a directory for new images that can be used as backgrounds
2. Change the background image (and save the change so its persistant the next time you start X)
And another one that initiates a dial-up connection (all I have at home) and if it succeeds, starts bbppp to monitor it as well as change its menu item to reflect the action it will take. It works but it needs some work, (the way it keeps track of PIDs is a bit funky, I've learned more since I wrote it)
Reply if you're interested and I'll throw them up on a webpage somewhere.
Its a conspiracy because many of us used hotmail before it was bought out by the Borg. I used it for 2 years and got maybe 5 spams. It wasn't more than a week after MS bought it and it started getting flooded with spam. At that point I quit using it. I don't remember what the password to the account is now (and MS in their infinate monopoly spirit will only let you retrieve your lost password if you have IE), I shudder to think of what is in that account now.
I was picked on in HS not by the football team (some of whom were actually pretty cool) but from the group of losers that didn't want to be in school in the first place, dropped out and got GEDs or even finished but went on to be ranchers (HS was in rural Texas for me). I remember one incident in particular where such problems occured unprovocted. Were the people who did that wrong? Certainly and something should be done about it... (shooting anyone who takes education for granted into the sun would be a good start... okay I'm kidding).
However looking back at HS I realize that other than one or two incidents I brought a lot of it on myself. I was an arrogent SOB, I prided myself on being so much smarter than everyone else that I couldn't make friends, and I couldn't understand why no one just wanted to sit and listen to my superior intellect.
By my junior year I got over it, some significant wake-up calls got me to realize that I'm not God's gift to the universe. By that summer I made real friends and my senior year was actually quite smooth.
I think that if geeks would take a step back and be themselves instead of trying to impress people with their smarts they would be a lot better off.
Is "ls" a part of the OS? I see the arguments on/. about GNU/Linux and such.
No. You can do 'rm/bin/ls' and your machine will still boot. Try that with Internet Explorer.
At any rate comparing ls to IE is comparing apples to oranges, why not compare things like browsers. My Linux Distro came with Galeon, Konquerer, Lynx, Links, and Mozilla... (Not to mention wget, curl and the LWP library for Perl), so not only do I have a choice of 5 different browsers, I even have the tools to create my own if I so choose. All of these browsing tools are written by different organizations or individuals. Also every last one of them follows W3C standards for rendering HTML. And as a web developer I couldn't care less if IE is bundled with Windows I care about wheither or not it follows the same standards as everyone else.
Also I can simply delete any of the above browsers and my machine will still boot.
So to answer your question, no if Linux and Windows changed market share Linux would not be violating laws by shipping with lots of software, that's not the point, in fact they would be going above and beyond fair competition as several competing softwares exist on the same machine. I don't believe its illegal for MS to include their own titles, its illegal for telling OEMs they can't include titles and illegal to make it difficult for the consumer to remove titles that MS has added.
Read The Findings of Fact by a US judge in court. Just because the DOJ got cold feet and decided to let them off with a slap on the wrist doesn't make it less true.
Also go ask random Joe Blow on the street if he knows what Solaris is.
And finally no one is suing the worlds largest zipper company because its not illegal to have a monopoly, its illegal to leverage that monopoly into other markets, You don't see ZippyCo trying to buy out all Velcro and button manufactuerers do you? And its also illegal to price fix based on that monopoly. MS has done both.
I don't care how user friendly you think a *nix install is, the home user would never be able to do it! It's only the geeks and the techs that have the skills to install complex pieces of software.
a.) How many home users do you know that can install Windows?
b.) Have you tried intalling Mandrake? Mandrake installed on my machine, detected all of my hardware, found my printer on the network, it can if you want it to partition your drive. Put it on easy and it asks you 4 or 5 questions and on a fast machine installs in 40 minutes. Contrast to Windows which requires reboots in the middle of the install, comes with almost no software bundled and requires installing a ton of drivers to get half the hardware working after the OS is installed. As a geek I find it easier to install Linux.
Where would the state of computing be if Linux came preinstalled on your Dell instead of Windows? Where would the state of computing be if God-forbid the customers could choose?
That's the problem, that's why governments keep bringing up these lawsuits because the home user doesn't have a choice and it shouldn't be that way.
As for MS's success there are tons of cases where they have bought or outright stolen all their "innovations", usually by using their massive market share to stifle the real innovators (usually by undercutting on price and the buying out the bankrupt company).
MS has show time and time again that they can't just be the biggest OS/software vendor for home users, they have to be the only one.
Crystalis Rocked... however it belonged to a friend so I never got the chance to beat it. It was difficult for an 11 year old to play as well... oh well
Because that's the way its set up. The only way 3rd party cookies work at all is if an ad or even a one pixel image from another domain is on the page you're looking at.
I use Mozilla and I trust that it implements the spec correctly. I'm a web developer as well, the problem I most often have with IE is not accepting valid cookies. So maybe now IE reads what type of server is sending information to it and only accepts cookies from Windows servers?
Ummm who modded this up? With DirectTV you do get the networks (often you get their broadcasts from both the east and west coasts, which is kind of cool if you miss something).
What you don't get is your local TV station's programming. So you miss your local news, and things like local information on the Weather Channel, as well as independent stations in your area. That's a long way from saying you don't get the Simpsons.
Also, a friend of mine who has had DirectTV in the past (I don't) told me that you can petition them to carry local channels in certain areas and that they'll usually do it if enough people are interested.
And while we're at it, let's ban political contributions (because you can't be sure that your canidate won't do a 180 on every issue once he's in office) and political parties (because you can't be sure that everone will follow the party line.)
Actually I think that would be very helpful to America. Too often politicians (no matter what their intentions) just go along with what the Party wants rather than what is best for their constituants. Interestingly enough Washington didn't want there to be mulitple parties (for thos of you who want something to back that up do a quick search of google there are lots of references to that), he was afraid that it would divide the nation. I think in some respects he was right.
So is it also unethical to take time to go to the restroom or get a drink of water?
Seriously most companies have broadband connections, how much bandwidth are you really using?
I agree it can become a problem if that is all you are doing, but how can an employer complain if I get my work done in a timely manner and read up alittle on technology, news, whatever on the side? Arguably it would take longer to do my work if I don't get breaks and I would certainly be much less happy if I couldn't take that time and surf a bit.
but more along the same lines as Clive Cussler, Douglas Adams, or Neil Stephenson.
Douglas Adams? You're comparing manga to the Douglas Adams??? I help with an online comic that is in partly inspired by Hitchhikers (just inspired the story is no where near the same). And even we don't claim to have literacy standards anywhere near Douglas Adams.
Don't get me wrong while manga is not really a style I enjoy, some of it is quite good in terms of stories and in artwork, but Douglas Adams was perhaps one of the greatest writers in our time, comparing him to manga is like comparing Archie to Shakesphere.
Plus being married has at least a few added benefits (especially if you haven't been married long)... though I suppose we'll start getting marches on Washington for the rights of Robosexuals any day now.
-Assuming Picard's clone-guy is at least 25 or so, that means they had to start cloning Picard back when he was just some random captain of a random ship (Stargazer?) Why'd they pick him?
This was explained. The Picard clone's growth was accelerated for the first several years of his life (until the Romulans dropped the program). The whole reason he was dying was because of the growth speed ups had torn up his body and he never received the treatment to stop that (which had to do with Picard's DNA).
Silly plot if you ask me, but yes I did see it. Personally I was rather suprised that Berman didn't roll all 4 star trek plots into one, now that would have been a blockbuster!:)
Are you kidding? What are those commercials about linux on TV then?
I think you are badly mistaken about the role that IBM wants to take with Linux. They aren't interested in putting Linux on the desktop for the same reasons they never put AIX on the desktop. For them (and for most people) its a server OS.
I agree it would be nice for them to push it on the desktop as well, but saying they don't support it just because that isn't the role they are taking with it is irresponsible.
We are too stupid to mind our own business, so we let the government do everything for us. Now that those in power have taken the next logical step (raise our kids, run our lives, make decisions FOR us) everyone is getting upset.
I don't think so. I don't see any massive protests about the way the gov has been running things. The reason that this sort of legislation gets by is because people want to hear it. Just like the original poster said, everyone wants to blame someone else for their problems instead of taking responsibility for themselves.
Revolution is not the answer. Not only because I seriously doubt you'd find more than a handful of people who would support such a thing but because believe it or not our government still works. What's needed is a change in the thinking of general populace. When people in this country as a whole take responsibility for their actions the gov will change. When people in general start complaining about copyright issues, stupid wars, the UN, and a whole host of other things, it will change.
last I checked officials are still voted into office and no amount of money from corporations is going to stop an informed populace from getting rid of corrupt congress members. Its just a matter of getting enough people informed.
I worked for a company that tried this. We had IRC chats, phone conversations and later on even did have face to face meetings from time to time (we were all in the US).
It was a nightmare, communication was horrible. Sure a lot of problems boiled down to mis-management but it was certainly compounded by the fact that we were far apart, and people could basically do whatever they wanted and get paid for it. There was tons of turn over, they kept hiring incompetent people and firing them. Almost sort of an expensive trial and error.
It truely amazes me how many people just don't care. Before I got my current job I met the person who I was taking over for so he could show me some of the stuff he had done and how it worked etc.
What I found: Zero interest in getting involved in the community. Anything that he built in one night was "cool". Waiting until the last minute was "just how the job was" and finally he actually admitted "you could probably access most of my stuff by passing the correct parameters but no one knows about that and the stuff works."
(And upon sitting down with a couple of the site he had done it literally took me five minutes to break the so called "security" on.)
The problem is complacency more than anything else. The pointy-haired bosses of the world see that it works or doesn't work. And that makes the job harder for those of us who want to do it right in the first place. (i.e. why does it take longer for you to do the same thing).
Fortunatly in my case the errors were so bad that I was able to show them off to my bosses who promptly told me to fix them as quickly as possible. But i know not everyone has such understanding bosses.
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There is no shortage of 3rd party utilities to modify a your desktop to your liking. Keep everything modular and people can add what they need when they need it.
This is so true and the reason that I use BlackBox, most anything you want is there you just have to install it. And if there is something that you can't find its not all that difficult to write since the vast majority of BlackBox configuration is written in text files (I've actually written some Perl scripts that dynamically update my menu based on certain actions)
In fact I think that an interface like blackbox would be great for new users because it is so simple and stays out of the way. All that's needed is some more user-friendly tools that combine both BlackBox configuration and system administration.
And before someone pipes up and tells me to write it, I have actually worked on the idea some in my spare time but there isn't really enough to release. However if anyone is interested I have some very decent Perl scripts that.
1. Monitor a directory for new images that can be used as backgrounds
2. Change the background image (and save the change so its persistant the next time you start X)
And another one that initiates a dial-up connection (all I have at home) and if it succeeds, starts bbppp to monitor it as well as change its menu item to reflect the action it will take. It works but it needs some work, (the way it keeps track of PIDs is a bit funky, I've learned more since I wrote it)
Reply if you're interested and I'll throw them up on a webpage somewhere.
this is true but the screen doesn't resize itself, thus you get the effect of magnifying the screen not actually resizing it.
Personally I hope that they leave the magnification features in and add the resizing as well.
Its a conspiracy because many of us used hotmail before it was bought out by the Borg. I used it for 2 years and got maybe 5 spams. It wasn't more than a week after MS bought it and it started getting flooded with spam. At that point I quit using it. I don't remember what the password to the account is now (and MS in their infinate monopoly spirit will only let you retrieve your lost password if you have IE), I shudder to think of what is in that account now.
I was picked on in HS not by the football team (some of whom were actually pretty cool) but from the group of losers that didn't want to be in school in the first place, dropped out and got GEDs or even finished but went on to be ranchers (HS was in rural Texas for me). I remember one incident in particular where such problems occured unprovocted. Were the people who did that wrong? Certainly and something should be done about it ... (shooting anyone who takes education for granted into the sun would be a good start ... okay I'm kidding).
However looking back at HS I realize that other than one or two incidents I brought a lot of it on myself. I was an arrogent SOB, I prided myself on being so much smarter than everyone else that I couldn't make friends, and I couldn't understand why no one just wanted to sit and listen to my superior intellect.
By my junior year I got over it, some significant wake-up calls got me to realize that I'm not God's gift to the universe. By that summer I made real friends and my senior year was actually quite smooth.
I think that if geeks would take a step back and be themselves instead of trying to impress people with their smarts they would be a lot better off.
Hahaha, good observation. 12 a.m. in the east = 9 p.m. in the west, they found it the same time as everyone else.
Makes you wonder if the spokesman is clueless or if their counting on clueless PHBs to buy into this ridiculous claim.
Is "ls" a part of the OS? I see the arguments on /. about GNU/Linux and such.
/bin/ls' and your machine will still boot. Try that with Internet Explorer.
... (Not to mention wget, curl and the LWP library for Perl), so not only do I have a choice of 5 different browsers, I even have the tools to create my own if I so choose. All of these browsing tools are written by different organizations or individuals. Also every last one of them follows W3C standards for rendering HTML. And as a web developer I couldn't care less if IE is bundled with Windows I care about wheither or not it follows the same standards as everyone else.
No. You can do 'rm
At any rate comparing ls to IE is comparing apples to oranges, why not compare things like browsers. My Linux Distro came with Galeon, Konquerer, Lynx, Links, and Mozilla
Also I can simply delete any of the above browsers and my machine will still boot.
So to answer your question, no if Linux and Windows changed market share Linux would not be violating laws by shipping with lots of software, that's not the point, in fact they would be going above and beyond fair competition as several competing softwares exist on the same machine. I don't believe its illegal for MS to include their own titles, its illegal for telling OEMs they can't include titles and illegal to make it difficult for the consumer to remove titles that MS has added.
We need a new moderation: -1 Doesn't Read News
Read The Findings of Fact by a US judge in court. Just because the DOJ got cold feet and decided to let them off with a slap on the wrist doesn't make it less true.
Also go ask random Joe Blow on the street if he knows what Solaris is.
And finally no one is suing the worlds largest zipper company because its not illegal to have a monopoly, its illegal to leverage that monopoly into other markets, You don't see ZippyCo trying to buy out all Velcro and button manufactuerers do you? And its also illegal to price fix based on that monopoly. MS has done both.
Nice troll, I'll bite,
I don't care how user friendly you think a *nix install is, the home user would never be able to do it! It's only the geeks and the techs that have the skills to install complex pieces of software.
a.) How many home users do you know that can install Windows?
b.) Have you tried intalling Mandrake? Mandrake installed on my machine, detected all of my hardware, found my printer on the network, it can if you want it to partition your drive. Put it on easy and it asks you 4 or 5 questions and on a fast machine installs in 40 minutes. Contrast to Windows which requires reboots in the middle of the install, comes with almost no software bundled and requires installing a ton of drivers to get half the hardware working after the OS is installed. As a geek I find it easier to install Linux.
Where would the state of computing be if Linux came preinstalled on your Dell instead of Windows? Where would the state of computing be if God-forbid the customers could choose?
That's the problem, that's why governments keep bringing up these lawsuits because the home user doesn't have a choice and it shouldn't be that way.
As for MS's success there are tons of cases where they have bought or outright stolen all their "innovations", usually by using their massive market share to stifle the real innovators (usually by undercutting on price and the buying out the bankrupt company).
MS has show time and time again that they can't just be the biggest OS/software vendor for home users, they have to be the only one.
Crystalis Rocked ... however it belonged to a friend so I never got the chance to beat it. It was difficult for an 11 year old to play as well... oh well
Because that's the way its set up. The only way 3rd party cookies work at all is if an ad or even a one pixel image from another domain is on the page you're looking at.
I use Mozilla and I trust that it implements the spec correctly. I'm a web developer as well, the problem I most often have with IE is not accepting valid cookies. So maybe now IE reads what type of server is sending information to it and only accepts cookies from Windows servers?
Ummm who modded this up? With DirectTV you do get the networks (often you get their broadcasts from both the east and west coasts, which is kind of cool if you miss something).
What you don't get is your local TV station's programming. So you miss your local news, and things like local information on the Weather Channel, as well as independent stations in your area. That's a long way from saying you don't get the Simpsons.
Also, a friend of mine who has had DirectTV in the past (I don't) told me that you can petition them to carry local channels in certain areas and that they'll usually do it if enough people are interested.
And while we're at it, let's ban political contributions (because you can't be sure that your canidate won't do a 180 on every issue once he's in office) and political parties (because you can't be sure that everone will follow the party line.)
Actually I think that would be very helpful to America. Too often politicians (no matter what their intentions) just go along with what the Party wants rather than what is best for their constituants. Interestingly enough Washington didn't want there to be mulitple parties (for thos of you who want something to back that up do a quick search of google there are lots of references to that), he was afraid that it would divide the nation. I think in some respects he was right.
So is it also unethical to take time to go to the restroom or get a drink of water?
Seriously most companies have broadband connections, how much bandwidth are you really using?
I agree it can become a problem if that is all you are doing, but how can an employer complain if I get my work done in a timely manner and read up alittle on technology, news, whatever on the side? Arguably it would take longer to do my work if I don't get breaks and I would certainly be much less happy if I couldn't take that time and surf a bit.
but more along the same lines as Clive Cussler, Douglas Adams, or Neil Stephenson.
Douglas Adams? You're comparing manga to the Douglas Adams??? I help with an online comic that is in partly inspired by Hitchhikers (just inspired the story is no where near the same). And even we don't claim to have literacy standards anywhere near Douglas Adams.
Don't get me wrong while manga is not really a style I enjoy, some of it is quite good in terms of stories and in artwork, but Douglas Adams was perhaps one of the greatest writers in our time, comparing him to manga is like comparing Archie to Shakesphere.
To the stupid moderator who Didn't get the joke. Its a Futurama reference.
:)
Here's your flamebait right here.
Jerk.
Plus being married has at least a few added benefits (especially if you haven't been married long) ... though I suppose we'll start getting marches on Washington for the rights of Robosexuals any day now.
My own nitpick:
:)
-Assuming Picard's clone-guy is at least 25 or so, that means they had to start cloning Picard back when he was just some random captain of a random ship (Stargazer?) Why'd they pick him?
This was explained. The Picard clone's growth was accelerated for the first several years of his life (until the Romulans dropped the program). The whole reason he was dying was because of the growth speed ups had torn up his body and he never received the treatment to stop that (which had to do with Picard's DNA).
Silly plot if you ask me, but yes I did see it. Personally I was rather suprised that Berman didn't roll all 4 star trek plots into one, now that would have been a blockbuster!
Apparently not very hard.
We run this on a server that a group of people I'm associated run. Works extremely well if you're on a box that doesn't have an ssh client installed.
Are you kidding? What are those commercials about linux on TV then?
I think you are badly mistaken about the role that IBM wants to take with Linux. They aren't interested in putting Linux on the desktop for the same reasons they never put AIX on the desktop. For them (and for most people) its a server OS.
I agree it would be nice for them to push it on the desktop as well, but saying they don't support it just because that isn't the role they are taking with it is irresponsible.
We are too stupid to mind our own business, so we let the government do everything for us. Now that those in power have taken the next logical step (raise our kids, run our lives, make decisions FOR us) everyone is getting upset.
I don't think so. I don't see any massive protests about the way the gov has been running things. The reason that this sort of legislation gets by is because people want to hear it. Just like the original poster said, everyone wants to blame someone else for their problems instead of taking responsibility for themselves.
Revolution is not the answer. Not only because I seriously doubt you'd find more than a handful of people who would support such a thing but because believe it or not our government still works. What's needed is a change in the thinking of general populace. When people in this country as a whole take responsibility for their actions the gov will change. When people in general start complaining about copyright issues, stupid wars, the UN, and a whole host of other things, it will change.
last I checked officials are still voted into office and no amount of money from corporations is going to stop an informed populace from getting rid of corrupt congress members. Its just a matter of getting enough people informed.
... and we would have beaten Microsoft and Sony too if it hadn't been for those darn kids!!
:)
Sorry just had to say it
If you watch ABC or its affiliates, or ESPN or its affiliates then you are giving money to Disney.
I worked for a company that tried this. We had IRC chats, phone conversations and later on even did have face to face meetings from time to time (we were all in the US).
It was a nightmare, communication was horrible. Sure a lot of problems boiled down to mis-management but it was certainly compounded by the fact that we were far apart, and people could basically do whatever they wanted and get paid for it. There was tons of turn over, they kept hiring incompetent people and firing them. Almost sort of an expensive trial and error.
The by-products of combustion of the new fuel are carbon dioxide and water
Isn't that the whole global warming thing? That we're releasing too much carbon dioxide and its causing a global warm up?
It truely amazes me how many people just don't care. Before I got my current job I met the person who I was taking over for so he could show me some of the stuff he had done and how it worked etc.
What I found: Zero interest in getting involved in the community. Anything that he built in one night was "cool". Waiting until the last minute was "just how the job was" and finally he actually admitted "you could probably access most of my stuff by passing the correct parameters but no one knows about that and the stuff works."
(And upon sitting down with a couple of the site he had done it literally took me five minutes to break the so called "security" on.)
The problem is complacency more than anything else. The pointy-haired bosses of the world see that it works or doesn't work. And that makes the job harder for those of us who want to do it right in the first place. (i.e. why does it take longer for you to do the same thing).
Fortunatly in my case the errors were so bad that I was able to show them off to my bosses who promptly told me to fix them as quickly as possible. But i know not everyone has such understanding bosses.