This is the future...media = interaction
on
EA As The Next Disney
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
I remember Archon. I remember saying that Activision and EA were the ones along with Sierra that could really go all the way. I liked the Atari computer too so I was not all right and everything.
The game industry is taking over. The media conglomerates are going to keep messing around and ticking off consumers and playing politics. One day the suckers will turn around and realize no one is just dumb watching anymore. They are all playing.
Most of the time I would rather play a good computer or console game than watch tv. There are still some good movies out there for sure, but I would rather play a good game than watch a bad movie. The media guys have to realize they are not the only game in town anymore. Yes, BTW, there are plenty of bad games too just the industry is growing by leaps and bounds.
From a literary standpoint the popularity of the series is transcendent in the sense that it lives up to a number of 20th century literary traditions while at the same time maintaining a tradition of heroism which is something very few writers in the 20th century were able to do.
In fact the LOTR is probably the only great heroic epic of the 20th century that can even hold the label of being literature in any sense of the word.
The author's cynical betrayal of the book's ideas is tripe from the beginning. It was not about the big heroes like Aragorn and Gandalf really but how a common man (a hobbit) who wanted nothing more than escape the madness and return to his home had to face up to the evil growing in the world and do something about it. It played perfectly into the 20th century literary tradition of focusing on the common man.
Not only that but throughout the book there is the sense of times changing and the time of man coming of age. It is backward-looking in many ways but it does talk down to the reader and try to tell them the old days were the best or the change must be fought against tool-and-nail. No instead there is a sense of noble resignation that the old times cannot stand forever against the passage of time.
There is a need ( a 20th century need I might add ) to tear down all that is good and loved in the world and to deconstruct it and expose it as a lie even though it might be the truth. I matters not to the cynical, deconstructionist nature of the modern critics. This reviews in salon is just that. I hope in the coming century we realize that the failings of our icons make them more human and more admirable in their courage and do not keep hold the hollow tradition of ripping them down simply because we can.
Listen I take it all with a grain of salt. Some of the tech book reviews on Amazon are pretty freakin' brutal. I can't believe those guys are getting paid to rip the author's a new a**hole online.
I usually look to a number of sources when buying actual physical stuff like computer hardware or even kitchen equipment (a geek that like to cook -- stop laughing). Look up reviews on a search engine and compare them with the comments online.
Take it in as a total picture look at what you need and make your decision.
It sounds interesting. My company looked into sourceforge briefly but the deal is that it was so big and so costly that we simply as a small auxillary division of a larger company could not afford it for a software project needs.
I am looking forward to trying this out.
Still using OS/2 and have used it in the past
on
OS/2 Going, Going... Gone
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
My company still uses OS/2 for some functions and they rarely fall down in the way that say NT 4.0 would however NT 2000 seems just as stable it took Windows awhile to reach that point.
I always thought the interface felt very CDE-like and had some interesting features. It is a shame but pricing+bad marketting did them in. I remember when Warp reached the market place before Win95. People at that time were still more worried about Big-bad Blue than Microsoft.
I know there was a theater company that used OS/2 for their platform in some ticketing devices. I remember going by the box and thnking how weird that is.
http://www106.pair.com/rhp/free-software-ui.html The man makes some good points about usability and free software. I think that Havoc sometimes takes these ideas to the nth degree and borders on almost RMS style dogma sometimes. Still, it is a very good read.
The other side of the coin that these folks do not take into account is the fact that OSS application developers for all the desktop adoption talk are not coding for the masses. They might think they are but they are not.
They are coding for the select few geeks that decide to install a brand new Unix or with Linux Unix-like OS on top off or besid the OS that came with their box. This number is small. The OSS developers in some ways are simply giving the geeky few the big, unwieldy, powerful applications they want to go along side their *Nix powered OS.
Listen, a lot of people on this site and some IT old-timers are about the only people that are not using IE unfortunately.
The vast majority of people are stuck with Windows and IE because that is what comes on their $999 box they bought from Best Buy and all the warnings in the world will not change that.
If AOL had the balls to use their own freakin' browser instead of IE then maybe the web designers would wake up after being hit with that clue-by-four. Until then...IE will be dominant.
Now, I can buy that outrageously expensive alienware laptop with the Radeon 9000 and bring it to my lan party to kick some serious rear in UT200-whatever!
I just need more linux games.
Brother, do have another Loki to spare?
One that can run a company this time would be nice.
Ok, now back to serious work. ___________________________________________ _______
Ok, listen I am a sysadmin but this goes for almost all IT jobs.
I got into linux before anyone was officially using it in the workplace.
These were skills I wanted to use at work so what did I do?
I learned the Solaris way of doing things and got Sun certified. Now, I do as much linux as I do Solaris and if you throw in a bit of the DEC Unix experience and BSD experience I got in one other jobs I feel like I make a pretty good all around Unix admin. They don't go away and will not for awhile.
As a programmer, learn or bone up on your C/C++ skills and then learn something else related that interests you like Java. Listen java is not going away and it is not up and coming like linux was at the time but solid C/C++ skills have been useful since the languages first appeared. Get a good base in something and then branch out to things that catch your interest. That is the key.
I read book on system administration and find them often times helpful in terms of putting together ideas of different ways to do things that maybe I had not thought of before seeing as I am the only big unix person in my org at the moment.
However, I despise the title of these sorts of books. I know that other people have said it but you cannot learn something that is in and of itself a profession within simply 24 hours and the title itself is just silly.
I feel that these sorts of books are almost a put-down to people that have spent years honing their craft only to find some dipstick book-maker claims that within a day someone starting from scratch could do the things I do.
The hell they can.
Note to the PFY of the world. Find a crusty old BOFH, be patient with them and learn slowly from them. No book, or certfication comes close to haing a good mentor when learning the craft of system administration. Not even close.
This utility does seem like it would help standard issue windows desktop users who have no real idea what they need to back up or move over to their Mac.
However, more than one person, pointed out the obvious. If Apple slashed its prices by say even $500 dollars on the big boy G4s and Powerbooks they would get a lot more converts. I can see paying a bit more for a mac but the laptop prices are just outrageous in my opinion. Not even comparing them to bargain basement priced PCs but to Dells for example and you have to sit back and scratch your head. They are good, sure. But are they that damn good?
Honestly, I am not trying to troll on this one.
What about a Macintosh Powerbook or a G4 makes them worth that much of an apple premium?
If your distro picks up, configures and sets your sound up without ALSA then you do NOT have to do this. You can and ogle for playing DVDs requires it but personally on my maestro3 card the sound from the OSS driver is better IMO compared to ALSA.
In ALSA it sounds sort of tinny and strained, it seems like the plain-jane maestro3 as opposed to the ALSA snd-maestro3 works better at least on my laptop.
I never seem to have trouble with my sound till I start mucking with it by hand. If I accept the distro defaults I am usually better off. This is a good thing for distros by the way. However, this is the exact opposite in terms of XF86Config. It seems like I always find two or three things to tweak manually that the distro-makers miss.
I heard on NPR the other day an even neater sounding alternative that is about five years off.
It uses the fact that certain plastics when charged with electricity will emit light and certain colors. The screen would be flat and completely flexible.
Literally you would have a screen (a TV for example) that could be rolled up and put into your backpack.
Right now they are looking into small scale electronics applications of the technology in terms of putting in screens for car radios and such but they have the big plan of a flexible plastic tv or computer monitor.
Of course if you pay attention is the fact that it needs no backlighting and can be extremely thin. Very neat stuff.
>That is just ludicrous, and reminds me of the >other wackos that claim that it would take 8 >Earths or whatever to support everyone at the >level of the US.
The stat may be wrong in the final number but the US and Europeans for that matter consume an extreme amount of reasources in comparison to its place in terms of population and such to other parts of the world.
However, the US economy which fuels a large hunk of the global economy absolutely feeds off the giant bloated tit of over-consumption. Getting us and even our European friends to turn down the consumption while not destroying the world-wide economy is a major issue. There are only so many resources and not all of it can just be re-produced.
The natural resources of the world are not like the chips commercial where they just promise to make more. Yet, we are not on any ledge of abyss as some alarmists like to say but we are driving up to the edge quick. Moderation in talk and management of resources is the key.
>Sheesh, how about irrigating the desert?
Where the heck are you going to get the fresh water to irrigate a desert? No, I am not a crazed environmentalists about to spout about a fresh water shortage. However, I also understand that there is a finite amount of fresh water available for human use. You can create a huge water shortage (especially in the drought-ridden parts of the US) quick with such a plan.
Technology has been wonderful at destroying natural ecosystems with half-baked perposals from folks like you and half-baked proposals from environmentalists who think a dose of technology can turn back the clock. Both sides are wrong.
>We'll stabilize population way before then, but >this planet could support hundreds of billions >of people.
Man sign me up for that! I want to live an over-crowded hell sprawl with everyone in the world living at population density rates that would drive someone from Tokyo nuts.
If the US can control its consumption and the third-world can control its population expansion then half the environmental problems we see can today can be dealt with in a reasonable fashion.
Playing into a troll I know but the bloated slow tag is old.
With Gnome 2.0.2 nautilus on my machine is faster than Konqueror but in that file manager's defense it has some features that nautilus does not yet.
Re:Big mistake
on
Xandros 1.0
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
That is a such a load. Xandros first off would have to come complete except for the CrossOver stuff which is both proprietary and the smooth integration is a huge reason a lot of people would try it out. Without this piece Xandros is just another user focused distro. Hence, you have a serious reason to buy the full copy.
However, even without this, I buy my big upgrades. I am going from SuSE 8.0 to Redhat 8.0 and I plan to buy the CDs for both convience and to support the research and time Redhat contributes through its employees to so many projects.
Redhat is not saintly corp or anything. For example, I would love to see them devote some people full-time to a couple of major projects that need resources. However, any business as a corporation is founded for profit. Still it is the corporation that pays the bills for a lot of good folks putting in time on so many projects.
Listen, I think that the Mac OS X and the current set of Macs look real darn tempting right now if I were looking at a new system, software the whole shebang as it were.
However, people need to realize that Apple is not the benign underdog against the Microsoft Evil Empire. Apple as a company is very control centered. It keeps close control over the hardware, OS, software devel for the platform as well as user experience. In some ways this makes for a much smoother overall computing experience for the users. In some other ways, it is do it the apple way or hit the highway for a Dell or whatever.
This is just another example of this corporations obsession with controling every aspect of everything having do in any way with its products.
Listen, you have to run out and get an exta rpm for playing mp3s. As always you have to download Nvidia drivers and if you have an ATI card I suggest going to the gatos.sourceforge.net and using those drivers. Fonts are an install away from the corefonts sourceforge project and dvd playback requires an ogle download.
I can understand every single bit of this. However, apt-rpm needs to come with the distro.
Also what is the deal with the extras submenu? I understand simplifying the menu structure. The SuSE distro menu is a huge mess with a hundreds of programs organized fairly well but still hard to find and half with no icons in the menu! Still, when a new program is installed the user should have a choice of whether they want it merged into the main or the extras menu (can't they come up with some better frickin' title for the thing?) not very easy for an end user.
Finally they need to be hit by a clue-by-four from of all places with the dipsticks at Lindows. Every desktop OS has at one time or another a compatibility layer to ease users over to its use. Mac OS X has one for old OS 9.2 apps. Windows had one for dos and Win 3.11 apps. We need a compatibility layer that runs Windows apps and it is called Wine. It is time that the distros come together and I mean everyone including the OpenLinux distros, Redhat and Mandrake and figure out how to make Wine as good as it can be without it being completely taken over by codeweavers and transgaming.
A good compatibility layer that works as well as CrossOver Office does right now out of the box with no messing around. Install Redhat, and then install Office 2000 and it just works. This is needed not by me but the newbie easing into Linux use.
It is still going to take a shift in thinking to get Linux to the desktop in any numbers even within IT departments.
Currently the Distro is still seen by too many as simply being the OS layer -- kernel, GNU shell and the GNU utilities.
The Distros need to think of the Linux OS as being made up of three parts as most OSes do --
OS layer -- kernel, GNU shell and GNU utilities. Compatibility layer -- Wine GUI layer -- kernel frame buffer support to Xfree86 to finally the desktop
Redhat is almost there and considering how quick the shift in focus came from Redhat they did a pretty good job.
I have been thinking and gathering additional packages in anticipation of going to Redhat 8.0.
I have been using SuSE which is really nice but the deal clincher for me has been the fact I use Gnome and the integration of Gnome and the System Tools used by Redhat are much better than the integration of System Tools into Gnome that SuSE provides.
I want a unified look and feel and use almost entirely gtk/gnome apps except for OpenOffice of course.
BTW, when I say this I must mention and no one else ever does that SuSE does an excellent job of integrating its System Tools into KDE. Just go to the control center in KDE and you can get to every System Function provided by Yast2. If you use KDE SuSE is the winner. I just hate the look and feel of KDE. Its just me.
Anyway, I am still waiting though. Why? The main reason I will probably wait until Gnome 2.2 and the release of Redhat in a few years considering Redhat's release schedule than includes that version of Gnome by default. The reason is the fact that until Gnome 2.2 most apps I know and love and will not be ported over by default. I have compiled them one by one on my SuSE box and do not care to repeast that move.
On the whole desktop issue I will say that it is entirely possible to create a good desktop for linux using the currently available tools. However, there are still too many downloads -- ltmodem, Nvidia drivers, i8kutils for the laptop users, core MS fonts and other things (even more for Redhat 8.0, too much preparation needed (checking for hardware compatibility with current hardware for example) and too much after work needed to set the desktop up in a usable state.
BTW, does anyone else hate that extras submenu everything else gets installed under for Redhat 8.0 it sounds nasty. SuSE solution of the all-encompassing distro menu is equally evil though. With linux, the problem is quickly becoming not too few options but too many options for a newbie to sort through. ________________________________________ _________
Listen, I love this look for the Window Manager and widgets.
However, I feel that the icons with their plastic 3-D look is too KDE-like. (I know KDE folks say just the opposite but its my OPINION).
My big problem is the fact that they ripped out all the mp3 stuff and do not include most plugins for multimedia use needed for Mozilla. SuSE has no problem shipping Acrobat, RealPlayer etc...etc...
What does this mean? A lot of noisome downloading and such to get a distro I can live with.
Also, what is up with going with Gnome 2.0 by default and not including the Gnumeric gtk 2.0 version? I know that the Gimp port is supposed to be unstable but I love the thing it works great for me. Include some of those cutting edge ports!
On the good side I like the way they integrated the system tools in a very smooth Gnome-like fashion. I hate it when system tools are not integrated well into the desktop environment.
Ok, I am a UI whore. I fully admit it. I liked SuSE because they seemed to care about the UI. I put my wife on KDE and she is happy and I compile and manually muck with my my Gnome 2.0.2 environment and I am happy. So what is the problem?
Redhat has some nice advancements in terms of integration of the UI and consistency for the look and feel of administration tools. So I should make the switch right?
Well, then I hear that the multimedia, plugins side of Redhat sucks hard. I started gathering some of the packages needed to make this better but my god there is a lot of missing things.
So I am at an impasse. Should I stay with a distro that is not aimed at my primary desktop or move to a distro that is but will take a lot more work to get functional?
Slashdot Mirror
I remember Archon. I remember saying that Activision and EA were the ones along with Sierra that could really go all the way. I liked the Atari computer too so I was not all right and everything.
The game industry is taking over. The media conglomerates are going to keep messing around and ticking off consumers and playing politics. One day the suckers will turn around and realize no one is just dumb watching anymore. They are all playing.
Most of the time I would rather play a good computer or console game than watch tv. There are still some good movies out there for sure, but I would rather play a good game than watch a bad movie. The media guys have to realize they are not the only game in town anymore. Yes, BTW, there are plenty of bad games too just the industry is growing by leaps and bounds.
From a literary standpoint the popularity of the series is transcendent in the sense that it lives up to a number of 20th century literary traditions while at the same time maintaining a tradition of heroism which is something very few writers in the 20th century were able to do.
In fact the LOTR is probably the only great heroic epic of the 20th century that can even hold the label of being literature in any sense of the word.
The author's cynical betrayal of the book's ideas is tripe from the beginning. It was not about the big heroes like Aragorn and Gandalf really but how a common man (a hobbit) who wanted nothing more than escape the madness and return to his home had to face up to the evil growing in the world and do something about it. It played perfectly into the 20th century literary tradition of focusing on the common man.
Not only that but throughout the book there is the sense of times changing and the time of man coming of age. It is backward-looking in many ways but it does talk down to the reader and try to tell them the old days were the best or the change must be fought against tool-and-nail. No instead there is a sense of noble resignation that the old times cannot stand forever against the passage of time.
There is a need ( a 20th century need I might add ) to tear down all that is good and loved in the world and to deconstruct it and expose it as a lie even though it might be the truth. I matters not to the cynical, deconstructionist nature of the modern critics. This reviews in salon is just that. I hope in the coming century we realize that the failings of our icons make them more human and more admirable in their courage and do not keep hold the hollow tradition of ripping them down simply because we can.
____________________________________
Scientist 1:
Ok see we get these rats but they are not just any old rats.
They are robo-controlled rats, see.
We use them in rescue missions and other noble pursuits.
Scientist 2:
Do you think they will figure we just glued lego blocks to the heads of trained rats?
Scientist 1:
Nah, they are too dumb to check.
Yeah, something like that..
Listen I take it all with a grain of salt. Some of the tech book reviews on Amazon are pretty freakin' brutal. I can't believe those guys are getting paid to rip the author's a new a**hole online.
I usually look to a number of sources when buying actual physical stuff like computer hardware or even kitchen equipment (a geek that like to cook -- stop laughing). Look up reviews on a search engine and compare them with the comments online.
Take it in as a total picture look at what you need and make your decision.
It sounds interesting. My company looked into sourceforge briefly but the deal is that it was so big and so costly that we simply as a small auxillary division of a larger company could not afford it for a software project needs.
I am looking forward to trying this out.
My company still uses OS/2 for some functions and they rarely fall down in the way that say NT 4.0 would however NT 2000 seems just as stable it took Windows awhile to reach that point.
I always thought the interface felt very CDE-like and had some interesting features. It is a shame but pricing+bad marketting did them in. I remember when Warp reached the market place before Win95. People at that time were still more worried about Big-bad Blue than Microsoft.
I know there was a theater company that used OS/2 for their platform in some ticketing devices. I remember going by the box and thnking how weird that is.
Where have you seen OS/2 still lingering in IT?
_______________________________
I read this two weeks ago on a classic troll website. The website is made up of nothing but trolls and this one was listed.
_ __ _
Well crafted Trolls I actually do not mind as long as they are humorous and well-written.
_______________________________________________
http://www106.pair.com/rhp/free-software-ui.html
The man makes some good points about usability and free software. I think that Havoc sometimes takes these ideas to the nth degree and borders on almost RMS style dogma sometimes. Still, it is a very good read.
The other side of the coin that these folks do not take into account is the fact that OSS application developers for all the desktop adoption talk are not coding for the masses. They might think they are but they are not.
They are coding for the select few geeks that decide to install a brand new Unix or with Linux Unix-like OS on top off or besid the OS that came with their box. This number is small. The OSS developers in some ways are simply giving the geeky few the big, unwieldy, powerful applications they want to go along side their *Nix powered OS.
Listen, a lot of people on this site and some IT old-timers are about the only people that are not using IE unfortunately.
_ __
The vast majority of people are stuck with Windows and IE because that is what comes on their $999 box they bought from Best Buy and all the warnings in the world will not change that.
If AOL had the balls to use their own freakin' browser instead of IE then maybe the web designers would wake up after being hit with that clue-by-four. Until then...IE will be dominant.
_______________________________________________
Now, I can buy that outrageously expensive alienware laptop with the Radeon 9000 and bring it to my lan party to kick some serious rear in UT200-whatever!
_ _______
I just need more linux games.
Brother, do have another Loki to spare?
One that can run a company this time would be nice.
Ok, now back to serious work.
__________________________________________
This brings to the forefront of my mind the fact my organization is currently devising disaster recovery plans for our new building.
The NIH Computer Center Disaster Recovery Plan is available online somewhere in pdf format and provided a good deal of insite.
Does anyone else have good hints on texts and outline for good disaster recovery plans?
___________________________________________
Ok, listen I am a sysadmin but this goes for almost all IT jobs.
_ _
I got into linux before anyone was officially using it in the workplace.
These were skills I wanted to use at work so what did I do?
I learned the Solaris way of doing things and got Sun certified. Now, I do as much linux as I do Solaris and if you throw in a bit of the DEC Unix experience and BSD experience I got in one other jobs I feel like I make a pretty good all around Unix admin. They don't go away and will not for awhile.
As a programmer, learn or bone up on your C/C++ skills and then learn something else related that interests you like Java. Listen java is not going away and it is not up and coming like linux was at the time but solid C/C++ skills have been useful since the languages first appeared. Get a good base in something and then branch out to things that catch your interest. That is the key.
_______________________________________________
I read book on system administration and find them often times helpful in terms of putting together ideas of different ways to do things that maybe I had not thought of before seeing as I am the only big unix person in my org at the moment.
_ _
However, I despise the title of these sorts of books. I know that other people have said it but you cannot learn something that is in and of itself a profession within simply 24 hours and the title itself is just silly.
I feel that these sorts of books are almost a put-down to people that have spent years honing their craft only to find some dipstick book-maker claims that within a day someone starting from scratch could do the things I do.
The hell they can.
Note to the PFY of the world. Find a crusty old BOFH, be patient with them and learn slowly from them. No book, or certfication comes close to haing a good mentor when learning the craft of system administration. Not even close.
_______________________________________________
Soon, I will be able to play the trailers for Matrix Reloading without having to switch over to my Windows box.
_
Cool.
Soon, I will be able to laugh at all the Apple Switcher campaign videos with ex-drug addict teenagers.
Cool.
Still, what does this mean for the folks who made the Crossover plugin program?
I can't imagine it will muck them up too bad since they have a half dozen distros ready to put Crossover Office on their disks.
_______________________________________________
This utility does seem like it would help standard issue windows desktop users who have no real idea what they need to back up or move over to their Mac.
_ _
However, more than one person, pointed out the obvious. If Apple slashed its prices by say even $500 dollars on the big boy G4s and Powerbooks they would get a lot more converts. I can see paying a bit more for a mac but the laptop prices are just outrageous in my opinion. Not even comparing them to bargain basement priced PCs but to Dells for example and you have to sit back and scratch your head. They are good, sure. But are they that damn good?
Honestly, I am not trying to troll on this one.
What about a Macintosh Powerbook or a G4 makes them worth that much of an apple premium?
I want to see a Switcher price campaign.
_______________________________________________
If your distro picks up, configures and sets your sound up without ALSA then you do NOT have to do this. You can and ogle for playing DVDs requires it but personally on my maestro3 card the sound from the OSS driver is better IMO compared to ALSA.
_ __
In ALSA it sounds sort of tinny and strained, it seems like the plain-jane maestro3 as opposed to the ALSA snd-maestro3 works better at least on my laptop.
I never seem to have trouble with my sound till I start mucking with it by hand. If I accept the distro defaults I am usually better off. This is a good thing for distros by the way. However, this is the exact opposite in terms of XF86Config. It seems like I always find two or three things to tweak manually that the distro-makers miss.
Oh well...
_______________________________________________
I heard on NPR the other day an even neater sounding alternative that is about five years off.
_
It uses the fact that certain plastics when charged with electricity will emit light and certain colors. The screen would be flat and completely flexible.
Literally you would have a screen (a TV for example) that could be rolled up and put into your backpack.
Right now they are looking into small scale electronics applications of the technology in terms of putting in screens for car radios and such but they have the big plan of a flexible plastic tv or computer monitor.
Of course if you pay attention is the fact that it needs no backlighting and can be extremely thin. Very neat stuff.
_______________________________________________
>That is just ludicrous, and reminds me of the >other wackos that claim that it would take 8 >Earths or whatever to support everyone at the >level of the US.
_ _
The stat may be wrong in the final number but the US and Europeans for that matter consume an extreme amount of reasources in comparison to its place in terms of population and such to other parts of the world.
However, the US economy which fuels a large hunk of the global economy absolutely feeds off the giant bloated tit of over-consumption. Getting us and even our European friends to turn down the consumption while not destroying the world-wide economy is a major issue. There are only so many resources and not all of it can just be re-produced.
The natural resources of the world are not like the chips commercial where they just promise to make more. Yet, we are not on any ledge of abyss as some alarmists like to say but we are driving up to the edge quick. Moderation in talk and management of resources is the key.
>Sheesh, how about irrigating the desert?
Where the heck are you going to get the fresh water to irrigate a desert? No, I am not a crazed environmentalists about to spout about a fresh water shortage. However, I also understand that there is a finite amount of fresh water available for human use. You can create a huge water shortage (especially in the drought-ridden parts of the US) quick with such a plan.
Technology has been wonderful at destroying natural ecosystems with half-baked perposals from folks like you and half-baked proposals from environmentalists who think a dose of technology can turn back the clock. Both sides are wrong.
>We'll stabilize population way before then, but >this planet could support hundreds of billions >of people.
Man sign me up for that! I want to live an over-crowded hell sprawl with everyone in the world living at population density rates that would drive someone from Tokyo nuts.
If the US can control its consumption and the third-world can control its population expansion then half the environmental problems we see can today can be dealt with in a reasonable fashion.
_______________________________________________
Playing into a troll I know but the bloated slow tag is old.
With Gnome 2.0.2 nautilus on my machine is faster than Konqueror but in that file manager's defense it has some features that nautilus does not yet.
That is a such a load. Xandros first off would have to come complete except for the CrossOver stuff which is both proprietary and the smooth integration is a huge reason a lot of people would try it out. Without this piece Xandros is just another user focused distro. Hence, you have a serious reason to buy the full copy.
_
However, even without this, I buy my big upgrades. I am going from SuSE 8.0 to Redhat 8.0 and I plan to buy the CDs for both convience and to support the research and time Redhat contributes through its employees to so many projects.
Redhat is not saintly corp or anything. For example, I would love to see them devote some people full-time to a couple of major projects that need resources. However, any business as a corporation is founded for profit. Still it is the corporation that pays the bills for a lot of good folks putting in time on so many projects.
_______________________________________________
Listen, I think that the Mac OS X and the current set of Macs look real darn tempting right now if I were looking at a new system, software the whole shebang as it were.
_ _
However, people need to realize that Apple is not the benign underdog against the Microsoft Evil Empire. Apple as a company is very control centered. It keeps close control over the hardware, OS, software devel for the platform as well as user experience. In some ways this makes for a much smoother overall computing experience for the users. In some other ways, it is do it the apple way or hit the highway for a Dell or whatever.
This is just another example of this corporations obsession with controling every aspect of everything having do in any way with its products.
_______________________________________________
Listen, you have to run out and get an exta rpm for playing mp3s. As always you have to download Nvidia drivers and if you have an ATI card I suggest going to the gatos.sourceforge.net and using those drivers. Fonts are an install away from the corefonts sourceforge project and dvd playback requires an ogle download.
I can understand every single bit of this. However, apt-rpm needs to come with the distro.
Also what is the deal with the extras submenu? I understand simplifying the menu structure. The SuSE distro menu is a huge mess with a hundreds of programs organized fairly well but still hard to find and half with no icons in the menu! Still, when a new program is installed the user should have a choice of whether they want it merged into the main or the extras menu (can't they come up with some better frickin' title for the thing?) not very easy for an end user.
Finally they need to be hit by a clue-by-four from of all places with the dipsticks at Lindows. Every desktop OS has at one time or another a compatibility layer to ease users over to its use. Mac OS X has one for old OS 9.2 apps. Windows had one for dos and Win 3.11 apps. We need a compatibility layer that runs Windows apps and it is called Wine. It is time that the distros come together and I mean everyone including the OpenLinux distros, Redhat and Mandrake and figure out how to make Wine as good as it can be without it being completely taken over by codeweavers and transgaming.
A good compatibility layer that works as well as CrossOver Office does right now out of the box with no messing around. Install Redhat, and then install Office 2000 and it just works. This is needed not by me but the newbie easing into Linux use.
It is still going to take a shift in thinking to get Linux to the desktop in any numbers even within IT departments.
Currently the Distro is still seen by too many as simply being the OS layer -- kernel, GNU shell and the GNU utilities.
The Distros need to think of the Linux OS as being made up of three parts as most OSes do --
OS layer -- kernel, GNU shell and GNU utilities.
Compatibility layer -- Wine
GUI layer -- kernel frame buffer support to Xfree86 to finally the desktop
Redhat is almost there and considering how quick the shift in focus came from Redhat they did a pretty good job.
I have been thinking and gathering additional packages in anticipation of going to Redhat 8.0.
_ _________
I have been using SuSE which is really nice but the deal clincher for me has been the fact I use Gnome and the integration of Gnome and the System Tools used by Redhat are much better than the integration of System Tools into Gnome that SuSE provides.
I want a unified look and feel and use almost entirely gtk/gnome apps except for OpenOffice of course.
BTW, when I say this I must mention and no one else ever does that SuSE does an excellent job of integrating its System Tools into KDE. Just go to the control center in KDE and you can get to every System Function provided by Yast2. If you use KDE SuSE is the winner. I just hate the look and feel of KDE. Its just me.
Anyway, I am still waiting though. Why? The main reason I will probably wait until Gnome 2.2 and the release of Redhat in a few years considering Redhat's release schedule than includes that version of Gnome by default. The reason is the fact that until Gnome 2.2 most apps I know and love and will not be ported over by default. I have compiled them one by one on my SuSE box and do not care to repeast that move.
On the whole desktop issue I will say that it is entirely possible to create a good desktop for linux using the currently available tools. However, there are still too many downloads -- ltmodem, Nvidia drivers, i8kutils for the laptop users, core MS fonts and other things (even more for Redhat 8.0, too much preparation needed (checking for hardware compatibility with current hardware for example) and too much after work needed to set the desktop up in a usable state.
BTW, does anyone else hate that extras submenu everything else gets installed under for Redhat 8.0 it sounds nasty. SuSE solution of the all-encompassing distro menu is equally evil though. With linux, the problem is quickly becoming not too few options but too many options for a newbie to sort through.
_______________________________________
Listen, I love this look for the Window Manager and widgets.
However, I feel that the icons with their plastic 3-D look is too KDE-like. (I know KDE folks say just the opposite but its my OPINION).
My big problem is the fact that they ripped out all the mp3 stuff and do not include most plugins for multimedia use needed for Mozilla. SuSE has no problem shipping Acrobat, RealPlayer etc...etc...
What does this mean? A lot of noisome downloading and such to get a distro I can live with.
Also, what is up with going with Gnome 2.0 by default and not including the Gnumeric gtk 2.0 version? I know that the Gimp port is supposed to be unstable but I love the thing it works great for me. Include some of those cutting edge ports!
On the good side I like the way they integrated the system tools in a very smooth Gnome-like fashion. I hate it when system tools are not integrated well into the desktop environment.
Ok, I am a UI whore. I fully admit it. I liked SuSE because they seemed to care about the UI. I put my wife on KDE and she is happy and I compile and manually muck with my my Gnome 2.0.2 environment and I am happy. So what is the problem?
_ _
Redhat has some nice advancements in terms of integration of the UI and consistency for the look and feel of administration tools. So I should make the switch right?
Well, then I hear that the multimedia, plugins side of Redhat sucks hard. I started gathering some of the packages needed to make this better but my god there is a lot of missing things.
So I am at an impasse. Should I stay with a distro that is not aimed at my primary desktop or move to a distro that is but will take a lot more work to get functional?
Any ideas?
_______________________________________________