I only ever come to slashdot when I'm looking for an argument. The actual 'news' that makes it to slashdot is so seriously slanted that if I used slashdot as the source of my tech news, I would be seriously misinformed. Indeed, I see that many commenters here are seriously misinformed, especially when it comes to what Vista's DRM will and will not do.
The quality of slashdot news stories has gone downhill drasically because MS is releasing Vista, which means the editors have to cram as much anti-Vista FUD onto slashdot as possible. But even at the best of times the 'news' here is still pretty shitty.
So, what happens hypothetically if someone tests your belief and finds the opposite; that same sex working environments are more productive (which is not inconcievable, for example same sex working environments would virtually eliminate sexual harrasment, office romances and so on). Would that then justify employers picking male candidates who are slightly worse than a female candidate because they would be the best person for their male dominated working environments?
I'm amazed at how petty and jelous many of the/. liberals are. They can't be satisified with what they've got. If someone else is getting more, they're angry and they want a piece of it, regardless of whether they earned it or not.
This isn't an article about 10 civil liberties violations. It's '10 things I hate about the Bush administration'. Things like 'slagging the media', 'slagging the courts' and 'hubris' make it even though they aren't even civil liberties violations simply because they provide an opportunity to do some Bush bashing, whereas trans fat bans and university speech codes never rate a mention even though they arguably are civil liberties violations because they are liberal in origin.
Let me add some more. Consider what the next big target market for Linux should be. Now, gamers are unlikely to be switching for the moment. Many power users will currently still want Windows specific applications, and most businesses will think of Windows specific software they want. For the moment, none of these markets are promising.
But how about users who just want basic functionallity? For them, surely almost any user friendly Linux distro would be astounding. The basic functionality you get out of, say, a standard Ubuntu install in terms of applications is vastly above that which you get from Windows, and with an amazing $0 price tag. That is an area where Linux can really take market share. Except for the catch; this is a market consisting primarily of non-power users. That means a reputation for user friendliness is absolutely and utterly vital. Linux needs that reputation ASAP, and there is still much polishing before it can be achieved.
The fact that it's been recently improved doesn't change my point. Linux relies heavily on word of mouth advertising, which is slower to propagate. Don't expect mass Linux adoption until these kinds of issues have been polished out and have been for some time; the earlier flaws of a Linux Distro will haunt it for some time. That's why it's essential that these types of issues be polished ASAP for future Linux adoption.
Agreed. I remember recently ('06) having a.deb package in Ubuntu I needed to install. Can you double click on it? Nope, you have know about the CLI and about the magic word dpkg. How the hell was a new Linux user going to deal with that!? It's just utter madness that this kind of basic GUI functionality is still missing. Linux developers need to seriously pay attention to these kinds of oversights before they can gain market share amongst home users.
The real secret to getting mass Linux adoption is to minimise the opportunity costs to new converts, because let's face it; the opportunity cost of Linux is still a real killer. If Linux had lower opportunity costs to combine with it's $0 price tag, it could outcompete Microsoft in many desktop markets. As long as the opportunity costs continue to be comparable to the price tag of Windows, Windows will win. That means compatablity and ease of use (including basic administration) should be first and foremost on any Linux developer's mind if they want to speed the adoption of Linux.
Already available in XP via MS and Google's current products.[..]Already available in XP from several vendors.[..]Nothing magical here and free applications like Picasa etc are available for XP. Most users don't have these applications. XP did not have these functionalities. Therefore, an upgrade.
Current XP users will struggle to adapt to many pointless changes. MS shuffled around and hid gui elements and menus which will make things confusing for XP users who are used to certain conventions being the same for the last decade. The new f*cked up display properties configuration settings are a perfect example of this.
New users and uses who only click on one icon will probably fair better and of course we will all adapt to the new "standard". I personally don't consider the new gui an upgrade. BS. Look at how much better, say, network configuration is in Vista. Ease of use is better.
True, in many ways that is true. Two glaring problems are for the Alpha TCP/IP stack and the fact that users will continue to click "Yes/Continue" to everything regardless of how much you isolate the actual dialog box prompt. Certain things like encryption may end up being very helpful, I guess we'll know for sure in 6 months if MS did its homework or not. Let's not forget that IE now runs in a sandbox, better firewall, defender, ASLR, other assorted anti-overflow methods, better restrictions on services, etcetera. I'd bet that despite the new TCP/IP stack, Vista will be more secure.
Do you seriously think anyone would be so stupid as to make a music player that excludes people from their own CD collections? Can you name any producer of DRM who's proposing something like that? I think you're getting carried away with this whole DRM boogie-man thing.
Are you kidding, that would be awesome! Consider the convenience of having a car stereo with a 60GB music library specifically chosen for your own enjoyment. Even better would be having automatic wireless updates of that music library from your homw computer.
I'm continually surprised with how out of touch some slashdotters are with reality; they continually parrot what can only be described as FUD. Every review of Vista I've ever read has stated that Vista is a big step up from XP.
It offers a huge, non-trivial improvement in looks, the search capabilities are vastly improved, the side-bar with gadgets offer handy functionality, networking is substantially improved, easy of use has been polished, security has been strongly increased, new and improved applications, parental controls, dx10 and and so on and so forth.. Vista is certainly a bigger upgrade with more features than XP ever was, and you can hardly call XP a failure. And as for performance, even an 800MHz and 0.5GB machine is certified Vista capable. If you can live without the pretty graphics effects, any machine sold since something like 2002 can run Vista. That's hardly comparable with OS/2. If you're expecting Vista to fail, you're living in a fantasy world.
"What happens when the editor of a popular Linux website attempts to install a Debian Etch desktop on an old ThinkPad? How does it turn out? Surprisingly well! Except for this:
Tops on my list of applications are Firefox and Thunderbird, and I always get rid of modified versions and substitute the pristine versions direct from Mozilla.org. So I downloaded both, unzipped and untarred them into/usr/lib/, where Debian likes to keep them, and created symlinks in/usr/bin/ pointing to/usr/lib/firefox/firefox and/usr/lib/thunderbird/thunderbird, where the system expects to find them.
I tried Firefox first, but it wouldn't load. I tried it again, this time by typing firefox from a console window, and noticed that the program was sending out an error message ("error while loading shared libraries") regarding a file called "libstdc++.so.5" that it either couldn't load or find. A quick bit of googling led me to install the missing library, using the command (as root): apt-get install libstdc++5. Thankfully, that was all it took to get the pure, Mozilla.org-supplied Firefox running on my desktop. And this:
Following that, I typed (as root) apt-get update to see if those repositories were all accessible. The last one in the list, the multimedia.org repository, gave me an error that indicated a missing public key. What's up with that?
A helpful reader on the DesktopLinux.com forum kindly provided the answer:
"You need to download repository gpg key, then you need to add it to apt-key keyring. Look at the error message you got. As you can see there is a string [in the error message from apt-get], 07DC563D1F41B907. It is the key you need. Actually the key id is the second half of that string: 1F41B907. Now you can download the key and add it to keyring."
He told me to run the following two commands (as root), to cure the problem, which I did:
gpg --keyserver wwwkeys.eu.pgp.net --recv-keys 1F41B907
gpg --armor --export 1F41B907 | apt-key add - And this:
Now it was time to get WiFi and dial-up Internet working. Here, I ran into two stumbling blocks -- probably both due to Linux's legendary hardware driver issues.
In the case of WiFi, I attempted to use the WiFi configuration utility accessable from the KDE Menu via "Control Center > Internet & Network > Wireless Network." The result of starting that function was: "unable to autodetect wireless interface." Apparently, the system couldn't find my PCMCIA WiFi card, an old LinkSys WPC11 version 4 card. Now before you blame that card, bear in mind that in my recent test of seven desktop Linux distros on the same Thinkpad, the very same WiFi card worked perfectly with MEPIS, Xandros, and Kubuntu, and was detected but didn't "connect" with several others. With Etch, though, it was completely undetected. I'm hopeful that with some further investigation I can find a way to get it working. And this:
Thankfully, the problem with my PCMCIA modem was not quite so absolute. Using kppd, the modem dialed out to my ISP; but, each time it connected, it immediately disconnected and returned an error message: "pppd daemon died unexpectedly; Exit status: 1." As an alternative, I tried wvdial from the command line (as root), and was able to successfully connect to my ISP (Earthlink) using it. However, wvdial.conf, which contains the username and password for accessing the ISP is unencrypted, making me hesitant to use that as a long-term solution. Here too, I suspect I'll locate a better solution after additional investigation and experimentation. Jesus H. Christ, I'd hate to see an installation that didn't go "suprisingly well"!
Don't forget the most important part: forget about this stupid reliance on the CLI.
It's something only highly experienced systems admins should ever need to use, it absolutely sucks for the average user. People should be able to do basic systems admin stuff without having to spend hours and hours trying to figure out the magic words to make things work.
It's really frustrating how oblivious the Linux community is to how bad the CLI is for most people. And even when a GUI alternative is present, 99% of the time, Linux gurus will 'help' newbies by telling them the magic words rather than teaching them how to use the GUI alternative.
Take, for example, Synaptic. If you teach a user how to use that, they've learnt where synaptic is, what it does and they can browse through it looking for any other packages to install. They've become more computer literate immediately. Tell a user to just apt-get this, and they've learnt nothing but a magic word, and will have to do some serious man reading before they can use it, and chances are they don't have the time. Then if they need another package, they'll probably just go to back to another LInux geek and ask for help again. That's not promoting computer literacy, it's promoting dependancy. Yet Linux gurus mostly insist on telling the newbie the CLI command rather than teaching them about the GUI. The irony of them complaining about computer literacy is papable.
Oh, come. Calling something infinitely better than something which satisfied consumers is not faint praise. And how about "Windows Vista is not, as the Web's chorus of caustic critics claim, little more than a warmed-over Windows XP"? That's a piece of FUD that's been circulating slashdot from before it was even called Vista, and this guy, who's tried Vista, is completely contradicting that. Is it not even noteworthy?
Hah! With all those men up there together on the ISS without much human contact, I bet they've already reached the point where they've played 'guess whose semen is in the air filter'.
I wonder if NASA has planned for that sort of thing? They have special zero gravity procedures for eating, sleeping and going to the toilet, is there special training for zero gravity jacking off?
I vote we buy it, and make it all web 2.0ish. It'll be a socially collaberative MMORPG, where the common man develop patches and the community will vote for it.
It'll go the way of Digg, and then the trolls will get to it, so you'll end up fighting greater goatse monsters in the dungeons of 'BIlL O'REILLY'S VAGINA LOLZ!1!'.
It'll be fantastic.
Slashdot Mirror
I only ever come to slashdot when I'm looking for an argument. The actual 'news' that makes it to slashdot is so seriously slanted that if I used slashdot as the source of my tech news, I would be seriously misinformed. Indeed, I see that many commenters here are seriously misinformed, especially when it comes to what Vista's DRM will and will not do.
The quality of slashdot news stories has gone downhill drasically because MS is releasing Vista, which means the editors have to cram as much anti-Vista FUD onto slashdot as possible. But even at the best of times the 'news' here is still pretty shitty.
Isn't it funny how women are apparently scared off of CS by 'dweebs' while men aren't? Is there a sex-specific difference in dweeb tolerance?
I can't help but think that abandoning the field of CS as a career because there are some 'dweebs' associated with it is stunningly superficial.
So, what happens hypothetically if someone tests your belief and finds the opposite; that same sex working environments are more productive (which is not inconcievable, for example same sex working environments would virtually eliminate sexual harrasment, office romances and so on). Would that then justify employers picking male candidates who are slightly worse than a female candidate because they would be the best person for their male dominated working environments?
That's a slippery slope indeed.
I'm amazed at how petty and jelous many of the /. liberals are. They can't be satisified with what they've got. If someone else is getting more, they're angry and they want a piece of it, regardless of whether they earned it or not.
This isn't an article about 10 civil liberties violations. It's '10 things I hate about the Bush administration'. Things like 'slagging the media', 'slagging the courts' and 'hubris' make it even though they aren't even civil liberties violations simply because they provide an opportunity to do some Bush bashing, whereas trans fat bans and university speech codes never rate a mention even though they arguably are civil liberties violations because they are liberal in origin.
Hubris is the number 1 civil liberties violation?! You have to be kidding me.
Tax foods containing trans-fats. Then people can still choose to eat them if they want, and the taxpayers get compensated.
Let me add some more. Consider what the next big target market for Linux should be. Now, gamers are unlikely to be switching for the moment. Many power users will currently still want Windows specific applications, and most businesses will think of Windows specific software they want. For the moment, none of these markets are promising.
But how about users who just want basic functionallity? For them, surely almost any user friendly Linux distro would be astounding. The basic functionality you get out of, say, a standard Ubuntu install in terms of applications is vastly above that which you get from Windows, and with an amazing $0 price tag. That is an area where Linux can really take market share. Except for the catch; this is a market consisting primarily of non-power users. That means a reputation for user friendliness is absolutely and utterly vital. Linux needs that reputation ASAP, and there is still much polishing before it can be achieved.
'06 != now.
The fact that it's been recently improved doesn't change my point. Linux relies heavily on word of mouth advertising, which is slower to propagate. Don't expect mass Linux adoption until these kinds of issues have been polished out and have been for some time; the earlier flaws of a Linux Distro will haunt it for some time. That's why it's essential that these types of issues be polished ASAP for future Linux adoption.
Agreed. I remember recently ('06) having a .deb package in Ubuntu I needed to install. Can you double click on it? Nope, you have know about the CLI and about the magic word dpkg. How the hell was a new Linux user going to deal with that!? It's just utter madness that this kind of basic GUI functionality is still missing. Linux developers need to seriously pay attention to these kinds of oversights before they can gain market share amongst home users.
The real secret to getting mass Linux adoption is to minimise the opportunity costs to new converts, because let's face it; the opportunity cost of Linux is still a real killer. If Linux had lower opportunity costs to combine with it's $0 price tag, it could outcompete Microsoft in many desktop markets. As long as the opportunity costs continue to be comparable to the price tag of Windows, Windows will win. That means compatablity and ease of use (including basic administration) should be first and foremost on any Linux developer's mind if they want to speed the adoption of Linux.
So what you're saying is that you can use your music ripped from your CDs even with Microsoft's DRM. Which means.. the parent is wrong.
Do you seriously think anyone would be so stupid as to make a music player that excludes people from their own CD collections? Can you name any producer of DRM who's proposing something like that? I think you're getting carried away with this whole DRM boogie-man thing.
Dude, you can legally copy unDRMed mp3 files from iTunes to an iPod.
Of course it's legal. Making that illegal would be like saying it's illegal to copy music from iTunes to an iPod.
Are you kidding, that would be awesome! Consider the convenience of having a car stereo with a 60GB music library specifically chosen for your own enjoyment. Even better would be having automatic wireless updates of that music library from your homw computer.
I'm continually surprised with how out of touch some slashdotters are with reality; they continually parrot what can only be described as FUD. Every review of Vista I've ever read has stated that Vista is a big step up from XP.
It offers a huge, non-trivial improvement in looks, the search capabilities are vastly improved, the side-bar with gadgets offer handy functionality, networking is substantially improved, easy of use has been polished, security has been strongly increased, new and improved applications, parental controls, dx10 and and so on and so forth.. Vista is certainly a bigger upgrade with more features than XP ever was, and you can hardly call XP a failure. And as for performance, even an 800MHz and 0.5GB machine is certified Vista capable. If you can live without the pretty graphics effects, any machine sold since something like 2002 can run Vista. That's hardly comparable with OS/2. If you're expecting Vista to fail, you're living in a fantasy world.
Yeah, like installing vanilla Firefox. God knows how tricky that is for a windows newbie.
Don't forget the most important part: forget about this stupid reliance on the CLI.
It's something only highly experienced systems admins should ever need to use, it absolutely sucks for the average user. People should be able to do basic systems admin stuff without having to spend hours and hours trying to figure out the magic words to make things work.
It's really frustrating how oblivious the Linux community is to how bad the CLI is for most people. And even when a GUI alternative is present, 99% of the time, Linux gurus will 'help' newbies by telling them the magic words rather than teaching them how to use the GUI alternative.
Take, for example, Synaptic. If you teach a user how to use that, they've learnt where synaptic is, what it does and they can browse through it looking for any other packages to install. They've become more computer literate immediately. Tell a user to just apt-get this, and they've learnt nothing but a magic word, and will have to do some serious man reading before they can use it, and chances are they don't have the time. Then if they need another package, they'll probably just go to back to another LInux geek and ask for help again. That's not promoting computer literacy, it's promoting dependancy. Yet Linux gurus mostly insist on telling the newbie the CLI command rather than teaching them about the GUI. The irony of them complaining about computer literacy is papable.
Fools and their money are slowly rotated?
Oh, come. Calling something infinitely better than something which satisfied consumers is not faint praise. And how about "Windows Vista is not, as the Web's chorus of caustic critics claim, little more than a warmed-over Windows XP"? That's a piece of FUD that's been circulating slashdot from before it was even called Vista, and this guy, who's tried Vista, is completely contradicting that. Is it not even noteworthy?
Yeah, and what about Steve the janitor?
Hah! With all those men up there together on the ISS without much human contact, I bet they've already reached the point where they've played 'guess whose semen is in the air filter'.
I wonder if NASA has planned for that sort of thing? They have special zero gravity procedures for eating, sleeping and going to the toilet, is there special training for zero gravity jacking off?
I vote we buy it, and make it all web 2.0ish. It'll be a socially collaberative MMORPG, where the common man develop patches and the community will vote for it. It'll go the way of Digg, and then the trolls will get to it, so you'll end up fighting greater goatse monsters in the dungeons of 'BIlL O'REILLY'S VAGINA LOLZ!1!'. It'll be fantastic.