Yep, that paragraph is where I quit reading. This piece was particularly soul sucking:
A more healthy pattern is that of the true innovator who is truly designing something great, but who has no personal resources left over for anything but the work at hand. Every ounce of psychological, emotional and intellectual energy is being consumed in the work itself. Teamwork, in this case, is an insignificant factor to a person immersed in this sort of creative experience.
Microsoft would like every company to be so soul sucking. If they were, it would be much harder for people to co-operate with each other and make things work. Hopefully, most companies do not treat their employees like sacrificial animals and realize that people work for a living rather than living to work.
this sort of mindless groupthink Windows bashing ('Windoze' indeed, how witty) is irritating. Worse, it just makes those who push other OS look like irrational MS bashers and doesn't look at Window's real weakness with alternate systems could exploit.
If daily crashes, worms and data loss are not weaknesses of the Windoze platform, I'm hard pressed to think of any. Sure, the GUI is limited, and the non tabbed browser is a pop up heaven and the email client does not even come with a spell checker and you have to use dozens of third party programs to make it remotely useful. Those have always been minor irritations next to the the platform not working.
Did you ever think that "groupthink" represents the majority opinion of Windoze as a platform and is essentially correct? I've seen all size of customer driven nuts by M$'s junk, from home user to fortune 500.
I'm not a great Windows fan...
No one really is, and that's the whole point.
I'm not irrational, I simply know that free alternatives work better, are easier to deploy, cost less and better preserve the user's dignity. The city of Largo Florida is a widely deployed free software solution that has none of your predicted Windoze problems. It's not the users, it's not me, it's cold hard reality.
Windows 95 was obviously more stable than Windows XP.
Version A, without a registry, did not have bit rot.
None had Windoze Updater to break non-M$ programs.
Most were not connected to the internet and used Netscape and third party mail programs when they were, so they got fewer worms. The principle stability concern was Word macroviruses walked around by floppy.
I remember taking care of 95 and 98 machines. They were more "stable" than XP has been. Just look at how companies have declined to use XP and ask yourself why they would prefer the now four year old 2000, which itself is about as stable as 98 was. The declining stability of Windoze is planned obsolescence and it's a huge turn off. Marketing and people saying stupid stuff like, "It's based on NT Technology and it's stable", won't make it so.
By the way, my point is that ideals and what you like tend to go out of the window when it comes to getting real work done and/or a steady paycheck.
That's not true anymore. Sure, GA Tech boys are bright enough to learn enough in a few days to maintain someone's old VBscript / Access nightmare. It's never been that hard. Now, however, they are going to know how to get the job done faster and cheaper with free software. The tools have gotten much better and it's easier to replace things with Linux than it would be to advocate buying a $5,000 Sun. They can wipp out a CD and apt-get what they need onto any poor suffering box and poof, the replacement is ready in a few days. That's why no one is bothering to learn M$ junk and that's why it's going away.
If Office or Windoze were projects on Sourceforge they would be ignored. Really. All that's really worth while is learning to get stuff out of the file formats and most of that has already been done. M$ brags about how much it costs to get data out of roach motel they have created. It's mostly a lie, but eliminating that cost would hasten Microsoft's fall.
When it comes to love, passion, etc, these same weird folk usually look towards members of the opposite sex
I hope Windoze users don't have the same feelings for their spouse as they do for their computers. Every place I've worked where windoze was deployed, there was not a single day that I did not hear someone cursing loudly about how the "computer" ate a few hours of work. They would beat their keyboards, as if they could not believe the thing had locked again. Then some discouraging words would be shouted above the office din. 200 people on a floor or ten person office, the story was the same.
Most Windoze users loath their computers. The company, the press and their peers blame them when it fails. They have less and less control over it but stability has not improved. There much humiliating talk about how the computer is too complicated for stupid people like themselves to run, and the programs themselves are making more and more wrong choices for them. Data on "servers" routinely dissapears, costing them months of work. I've actually heard people say that they got more done without the things on their desks. Microsoft has convinced people that computers suck.
You have to have had a slight overdose to think this is anything but a PR move, but it undermines the majority of their free software FUD. M$ has always had ways of getting public input but has mostly ignored it. They have consistently worked to eliminate user choice on their platform and have only "opened" it up to competition by court order. Non affiliated Microsoft developers long ago made things like "window blinds" and other tweaks to M$'s GUI. Microsoft could have adopted any of the popular ones, but declined. Their refusal to work with popular free information formats such as ogg and png also shows their preference for pushing their own junk over the wishes of their users. Still, a PR effort is a start.
M$'s PR people have a long way to go to overcome their infamous Apple Switcher, writing letters to senators from dead people and other Astroturf campaigns. M$ is an evil and dishonest company with a record that makes them impossible to trust.
The reporter and Iraq LUG understand.
on
Linux in Iraq
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· Score: 1
I don't understand how you could see this all as free beer. The reporter and the users both seem to understand free software and what it's good for. Sure, low costs are a nice part of software not having owners who's goal is to maximize their earnings rather than function or user satisfaction. There's much more than that, of course, and these choice quotes show that both the BBC and the Iraq LUG get it:
Quoth the article:
Both of them are firm believers in open source software. Unlike expensive proprietary software, open-source software can be freely distributed and modified, as long as the modifications are shared with other users.... But it is about more than just cost for the Iraqi Linux User Group. The open source enthusiasts believe it could allow Iraqis to build their own home-grown technologies.
Quoth a member:
"I wanted to find people to share knowledge with," explained Hasanen Nawfal, "to learn from them, to speak with guys who share my thoughts."
Quoth another:
"This enables the country to build its own infrastructure based on open source, on open ideas," Ashraf Hasson. "That might help establish a solid base for Iraqi technology, and help not constrain the country with proprietary software and prevent monopolisation over Iraq by such major companies."
There you have it. They are going to help themselves the free software way so they don't get extorted from time to time. Saving their country billions of dollars is a noble goal, but information exchange looks like it's taking precedence. The idea is not to demand that other people do your work without cost, it's to co-operate to get the job done and who cares if others benefit? If only more people here in the US got it.
You will respond to our demands ...
on
Linux in Iraq
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· Score: -1, Flamebait
... or we will cut off this computer's monitor!
Terrorist looks around.
Ali-baba, where is the monitor?! Where is the keybord? How do I work this thing?
And another clueless M$ fanboy is foiled by Linux. Unable to cut off the oxygen to free software, the Linux Jihad hangs it's head in dispair. Tune in next time for the ongoing education of those who fanatically believe in the one true software from Redmond.
No, I had not read that post to a long dead thread. Thanks for pointing it out.
As you bothered to point it out, I imagine you are interested in what I think.
I think it's pure bullshit and I doubt that it happened at all. I'll take a moment here to answer some of the astroturfer's points for those who might be deluded enough to think an AC troll ever posted anything honest.
Twitter is not responsible for bad management or bad manners. While Microsoft is evil and their behavior is outrageous, I doubt that my posts could drive anyone to "frothing at the mouth". Simply reading Slashdot's story history is enough to convince anyone that Microsoft is evil and dangerous. I like to point back to them when I see people forget or lie about Microsoft's bad behavior. Other people's manners are not my responsibility. Nor am I responsible for managerial incompetence at other people's companies. Anyone dumb enough to let the passions of their subordinates cloud their own judgement of facts is a poor manager.
I do recommend complete removal of Microsoft from any company and house. The sooner people move the more heartache and money they save themselves. Every company has examples of screw Microsoft screw arounds that have cost them money and trouble. The way to transition depends on the company or household itself.
It's a computer that makes the operator run around in circles, pull their hair and curse like most of the AC fanboys that follow me around. Co-incidence? I think not.
its easier to pretend a text based client is real work...
Not to mention, it's easier to do through a ssh session and not get busted talking to your wife or doing something useful for the company. Beware corporate keyloggers though. If you are that far into a big dumb company, you probably can't have Putty and you might as well give up.
what should be worrying people like Mr. Raymond is that Linux-based desktops (...), is that Linux *isn't* so blindingly superior as to carry the day.... None of them is so much better than all the others is wonderful and positive ways.
I have to disagree with you on two counts. First, free software only has to be "good enough" if it's cheaper then what it's replacing. Second, Linux desktops kick ass. You don't have to be negative at all to say that Linux desktops work better, longer and easier.
The term, free is a very good idea, if ERS cares to carry through his own though process. He warns us,
We have to assume that Microsoft's long-term aim is to crush our culture and drive us to extinction by whatever combination of technical, economic, legal, and political means they can muster.
What better way to defend the culture than to explain it? What better way to crush it than to make your enemy feel too foolish to think things through or explain them to others?
What ERS is worried about is looking, "irrelevant or nutty". Fine, you only need to talk about it when confronted with lies about it and you need to be aware of your audience. They brought it up, dissmissing it is easy because the M$ position is impossible to defend. Ducking it is bad news. Self censorship is perceived as ignorance, weakness or deception.
You can stop a M$ fanboy dead in his tracks when they bother to bring up this rotten little strawman. Not even RMS would argue that your services should be without cost and every IT manager knows that services cost money. What is true is that free software will always cost less and be more flexible than non-free. Microsoft's demands to give them money and sign a contract for restricted use software is a real loser by comparison. When the fanboy starts talking about Microsoft's rights to do all of that, you have revealed the greedy slave for what they are. You can then talk about everyone's right to ignore bad deals from liars.
It takes care and practice to explain free software to corporate drone types, but you can do it concretely and concisely. With free software, the company owns it's software and it's computers 100% but pays less to do so than they would if Microsoft owned them.
Later, if you are chummy with someone, you can get into the details. Talking about how and why free software works is not a waste of time, it's culture building. It does not take long to explain how free software does not have owners and all the benefits that brings everyone involved with software. The more people understand this, the less they will fall for the Open / Shared source lie or free beer.
Culture building is all about explaining things and building up the mindset. You can't do that by ignoring the fundamental drive of free software, to be free of other people's restrictions and demands. Everyone can get it and it's not incompatible with good American ideals that any corporate type can understand.
As far as I know there's always been a spell checker on OE, there is on the Win98 machines I play around with at work. If it didn't come with the version of OE on Win2000, updating to IE/OE6 would probably add it.
Being able to get a spell checker by upgrading both IE and OE for free (soul sucking EULAs are free, right?) has convinced me that I need to run out and buy Windows XP for all six of my computers. I'll have to buy Microsoft Office for at least one of them and Adobe Acrobat Writer so I can send well formated pdf by spell checked email. I'll also have to learn to use Microsoft's firewall and how to make it work on a 486. I'll probably have to also buy some remote desktop software to replace ssh with X forwarding, so that I don't have to buy five new monitors or a switchbox. I'll also want a fancy video card with multiple desktop software. See, Microsoft had the solution for me all along. All I needed was another $2,000 or so and lots of time to fight viruses. Why on earth have I been sitting here relaxing with machines that just work?
My Win2k box stays on all week, only being shut down on the weekends.
That's better than I got following most of the above advice. My box sat behind a firewall. I used Mozilla for mail and web. I never fooled with media junk, especially windows media player, so if it was not on there I lived without. I got GIMP for the few times I wanted to edit an image. I lived with the single screen and desktop. After four months or so, the damn thing had trouble staying up all day.
All of the above was tedious work I don't have to go through with any modern Linux distribution. For all of my trouble, it was not enough. I consider install time and performance issues very "sharp corners." Why go through all of that so that they might be able to keep a box up for a week when they could get all the same features and better performance in 30 minutes with a Mepis CD?
each device will instead have a relatively large, expensive widget to use our nerves as cat-5 (human-5?) so we only have to shlep around one little speaker?
No, the future is much better than that! Imagine yourself covered in speakers or organic LEDs. They will use your skin to make you into a big billboard. Skin power transference also shows great promise in EULA and copyright enforcement. DMCA mark V will require placement of electrodes on all external genitalia at birth and terrorism, masturbation, pre and post marital sex and other evils will cease to exist.
Somehow, I'm not impressed. Everyone knows the conductive properties of skin and electro-cardiogram makers have researching human skin electrodes and signaling for decades.
... it will get slow and quirky with age. Heavily advertised, third party applications will bring expensive but temporary and bloated relief for a few. Planned obsolescence dooms most unit unless they are turned off most of the time. People who turn to Unix will be happier.
That's a natural, given how much you have to run around to keep the average M$ powered computer going. Might as well stick the operator in a squirrel cage.
Um, what are you talking about? Outlook Express has a spell checker.
Not with Windows 2000 Pro. I know because that's what the last company I worked for gave me. I had to spell check in Open Office until I figured out how to make Mozilla mail work with their exchange server. I can't vouch for XP, but I suspect that you have to buy Office to get a spell checker there too. Don't blame me for that company, like most, thinking that XP is not what they want on their desktops. That's what I had and that's what most people get.
In any case, not having to look for a spell checker won't make up for all of the other things Outlook Express lacks, much less all of the other 8 things that make me love Linux on the desktop. Modern Linux distributions are easier to install and use than Windows and most commercial software.
Security is nice but the big deal for me is all the beautiful, first class software that comes with any Linux distribution. This essentially boils down to KDE/Gnome, but the list goes on and on.
Uptime. Nothing sucks so much as having to open everything I WAS working on every other day or so.
Window managers with multiple desktops. One is not enough to organize work and play.
Modern Browsers, Konqueror, Mozilla, even Galleon. Where would I be without tabs, pop-up blocking, and everything else modern browsers offer?
Modern mail clients. Kontact, Kmail, Evolution, Balsa even. Kontact rocks for syncs to my handheld computer. What do you get with Windoze, a mail client that lacks a spell checker?
GIMP and friends.
K3B and Eroaster for burning CDs.
No DRM to mess with my music. It is very nice to know that ogg won't go away and neither will any of my legitimately gotten music.
APT, for getting all of the above without much trouble.
The ease of install. Mepis goes on in 30 minutes or less and gives you everything the average user could want. One CD that runs live so you know it all works.
That's a short list. I could think of more.
Free software is more than stable and hard to break, it's excellent in every way these days. Fedora is very good too and addressing all of the reasons I moved to Debian based distributions two years ago but doing it with the same Red Hat ease of use I sometimes miss. The new interfaces are beautiful and functional.
Not really. She calmly detailed the workings of the scam so that other experts won't waste their time. The description was calm, clear and without inflammatory language. What more could you want? What less should she have done? The sucks running the show deserve to be called what they are.
Slashdot Mirror
A more healthy pattern is that of the true innovator who is truly designing something great, but who has no personal resources left over for anything but the work at hand. Every ounce of psychological, emotional and intellectual energy is being consumed in the work itself. Teamwork, in this case, is an insignificant factor to a person immersed in this sort of creative experience.
That's healthy? I prefer not having a job over working for assholes like that. No hobbies, no home life, not a single psychological or emotional ounce left? The free software model, where the most programmers devote less than five hours a week to their projects (see page 3) has been far more productive.
Microsoft would like every company to be so soul sucking. If they were, it would be much harder for people to co-operate with each other and make things work. Hopefully, most companies do not treat their employees like sacrificial animals and realize that people work for a living rather than living to work.
If daily crashes, worms and data loss are not weaknesses of the Windoze platform, I'm hard pressed to think of any. Sure, the GUI is limited, and the non tabbed browser is a pop up heaven and the email client does not even come with a spell checker and you have to use dozens of third party programs to make it remotely useful. Those have always been minor irritations next to the the platform not working.
Did you ever think that "groupthink" represents the majority opinion of Windoze as a platform and is essentially correct? I've seen all size of customer driven nuts by M$'s junk, from home user to fortune 500.
I'm not a great Windows fan...
No one really is, and that's the whole point.
I'm not irrational, I simply know that free alternatives work better, are easier to deploy, cost less and better preserve the user's dignity. The city of Largo Florida is a widely deployed free software solution that has none of your predicted Windoze problems. It's not the users, it's not me, it's cold hard reality.
Version A, without a registry, did not have bit rot.
None had Windoze Updater to break non-M$ programs.
Most were not connected to the internet and used Netscape and third party mail programs when they were, so they got fewer worms. The principle stability concern was Word macroviruses walked around by floppy.
I remember taking care of 95 and 98 machines. They were more "stable" than XP has been. Just look at how companies have declined to use XP and ask yourself why they would prefer the now four year old 2000, which itself is about as stable as 98 was. The declining stability of Windoze is planned obsolescence and it's a huge turn off. Marketing and people saying stupid stuff like, "It's based on NT Technology and it's stable", won't make it so.
That's not true anymore. Sure, GA Tech boys are bright enough to learn enough in a few days to maintain someone's old VBscript / Access nightmare. It's never been that hard. Now, however, they are going to know how to get the job done faster and cheaper with free software. The tools have gotten much better and it's easier to replace things with Linux than it would be to advocate buying a $5,000 Sun. They can wipp out a CD and apt-get what they need onto any poor suffering box and poof, the replacement is ready in a few days. That's why no one is bothering to learn M$ junk and that's why it's going away.
If Office or Windoze were projects on Sourceforge they would be ignored. Really. All that's really worth while is learning to get stuff out of the file formats and most of that has already been done. M$ brags about how much it costs to get data out of roach motel they have created. It's mostly a lie, but eliminating that cost would hasten Microsoft's fall.
I hope Windoze users don't have the same feelings for their spouse as they do for their computers. Every place I've worked where windoze was deployed, there was not a single day that I did not hear someone cursing loudly about how the "computer" ate a few hours of work. They would beat their keyboards, as if they could not believe the thing had locked again. Then some discouraging words would be shouted above the office din. 200 people on a floor or ten person office, the story was the same.
Most Windoze users loath their computers. The company, the press and their peers blame them when it fails. They have less and less control over it but stability has not improved. There much humiliating talk about how the computer is too complicated for stupid people like themselves to run, and the programs themselves are making more and more wrong choices for them. Data on "servers" routinely dissapears, costing them months of work. I've actually heard people say that they got more done without the things on their desks. Microsoft has convinced people that computers suck.
M$'s PR people have a long way to go to overcome their infamous Apple Switcher, writing letters to senators from dead people and other Astroturf campaigns. M$ is an evil and dishonest company with a record that makes them impossible to trust.
Quoth the article:
Both of them are firm believers in open source software. Unlike expensive proprietary software, open-source software can be freely distributed and modified, as long as the modifications are shared with other users. ... But it is about more than just cost for the Iraqi Linux User Group. The open source enthusiasts believe it could allow Iraqis to build their own home-grown technologies.
Quoth a member:
"I wanted to find people to share knowledge with," explained Hasanen Nawfal, "to learn from them, to speak with guys who share my thoughts."
Quoth another:
"This enables the country to build its own infrastructure based on open source, on open ideas," Ashraf Hasson. "That might help establish a solid base for Iraqi technology, and help not constrain the country with proprietary software and prevent monopolisation over Iraq by such major companies."
There you have it. They are going to help themselves the free software way so they don't get extorted from time to time. Saving their country billions of dollars is a noble goal, but information exchange looks like it's taking precedence. The idea is not to demand that other people do your work without cost, it's to co-operate to get the job done and who cares if others benefit? If only more people here in the US got it.
Terrorist looks around.
Ali-baba, where is the monitor?! Where is the keybord? How do I work this thing?
And another clueless M$ fanboy is foiled by Linux. Unable to cut off the oxygen to free software, the Linux Jihad hangs it's head in dispair. Tune in next time for the ongoing education of those who fanatically believe in the one true software from Redmond.
As you bothered to point it out, I imagine you are interested in what I think.
I think it's pure bullshit and I doubt that it happened at all. I'll take a moment here to answer some of the astroturfer's points for those who might be deluded enough to think an AC troll ever posted anything honest.
Twitter is not responsible for bad management or bad manners. While Microsoft is evil and their behavior is outrageous, I doubt that my posts could drive anyone to "frothing at the mouth". Simply reading Slashdot's story history is enough to convince anyone that Microsoft is evil and dangerous. I like to point back to them when I see people forget or lie about Microsoft's bad behavior. Other people's manners are not my responsibility. Nor am I responsible for managerial incompetence at other people's companies. Anyone dumb enough to let the passions of their subordinates cloud their own judgement of facts is a poor manager.
I do recommend complete removal of Microsoft from any company and house. The sooner people move the more heartache and money they save themselves. Every company has examples of screw Microsoft screw arounds that have cost them money and trouble. The way to transition depends on the company or household itself.
What the hell is an "M$ powered computer"?
It's a computer that makes the operator run around in circles, pull their hair and curse like most of the AC fanboys that follow me around. Co-incidence? I think not.
Not to mention, it's easier to do through a ssh session and not get busted talking to your wife or doing something useful for the company. Beware corporate keyloggers though. If you are that far into a big dumb company, you probably can't have Putty and you might as well give up.
I have to disagree with you on two counts. First, free software only has to be "good enough" if it's cheaper then what it's replacing. Second, Linux desktops kick ass. You don't have to be negative at all to say that Linux desktops work better, longer and easier.
We have to assume that Microsoft's long-term aim is to crush our culture and drive us to extinction by whatever combination of technical, economic, legal, and political means they can muster.
What better way to defend the culture than to explain it? What better way to crush it than to make your enemy feel too foolish to think things through or explain them to others?
What ERS is worried about is looking, "irrelevant or nutty". Fine, you only need to talk about it when confronted with lies about it and you need to be aware of your audience. They brought it up, dissmissing it is easy because the M$ position is impossible to defend. Ducking it is bad news. Self censorship is perceived as ignorance, weakness or deception.
You can stop a M$ fanboy dead in his tracks when they bother to bring up this rotten little strawman. Not even RMS would argue that your services should be without cost and every IT manager knows that services cost money. What is true is that free software will always cost less and be more flexible than non-free. Microsoft's demands to give them money and sign a contract for restricted use software is a real loser by comparison. When the fanboy starts talking about Microsoft's rights to do all of that, you have revealed the greedy slave for what they are. You can then talk about everyone's right to ignore bad deals from liars.
It takes care and practice to explain free software to corporate drone types, but you can do it concretely and concisely. With free software, the company owns it's software and it's computers 100% but pays less to do so than they would if Microsoft owned them.
Later, if you are chummy with someone, you can get into the details. Talking about how and why free software works is not a waste of time, it's culture building. It does not take long to explain how free software does not have owners and all the benefits that brings everyone involved with software. The more people understand this, the less they will fall for the Open / Shared source lie or free beer.
Culture building is all about explaining things and building up the mindset. You can't do that by ignoring the fundamental drive of free software, to be free of other people's restrictions and demands. Everyone can get it and it's not incompatible with good American ideals that any corporate type can understand.
It's not my bag either, but we are talking about Microsoft. I'm sure they will market it your way but use it their way, as explained above.
They see your potential and apply it!
Being able to get a spell checker by upgrading both IE and OE for free (soul sucking EULAs are free, right?) has convinced me that I need to run out and buy Windows XP for all six of my computers. I'll have to buy Microsoft Office for at least one of them and Adobe Acrobat Writer so I can send well formated pdf by spell checked email. I'll also have to learn to use Microsoft's firewall and how to make it work on a 486. I'll probably have to also buy some remote desktop software to replace ssh with X forwarding, so that I don't have to buy five new monitors or a switchbox. I'll also want a fancy video card with multiple desktop software. See, Microsoft had the solution for me all along. All I needed was another $2,000 or so and lots of time to fight viruses. Why on earth have I been sitting here relaxing with machines that just work?
That's better than I got following most of the above advice. My box sat behind a firewall. I used Mozilla for mail and web. I never fooled with media junk, especially windows media player, so if it was not on there I lived without. I got GIMP for the few times I wanted to edit an image. I lived with the single screen and desktop. After four months or so, the damn thing had trouble staying up all day.
All of the above was tedious work I don't have to go through with any modern Linux distribution. For all of my trouble, it was not enough. I consider install time and performance issues very "sharp corners." Why go through all of that so that they might be able to keep a box up for a week when they could get all the same features and better performance in 30 minutes with a Mepis CD?
Skin power transfer has shown great promise in EULA enforcement. DMCA part 7 will require electrode implantation on your dongle at birth.
What, did you think your M$ PAN would work for you? That will get you thirteen volts to the right testicle. Your dog never had it so bad.
No, the future is much better than that! Imagine yourself covered in speakers or organic LEDs. They will use your skin to make you into a big billboard. Skin power transference also shows great promise in EULA and copyright enforcement. DMCA mark V will require placement of electrodes on all external genitalia at birth and terrorism, masturbation, pre and post marital sex and other evils will cease to exist.
Somehow, I'm not impressed. Everyone knows the conductive properties of skin and electro-cardiogram makers have researching human skin electrodes and signaling for decades.
Not with Windows 2000 Pro. I know because that's what the last company I worked for gave me. I had to spell check in Open Office until I figured out how to make Mozilla mail work with their exchange server. I can't vouch for XP, but I suspect that you have to buy Office to get a spell checker there too. Don't blame me for that company, like most, thinking that XP is not what they want on their desktops. That's what I had and that's what most people get.
In any case, not having to look for a spell checker won't make up for all of the other things Outlook Express lacks, much less all of the other 8 things that make me love Linux on the desktop. Modern Linux distributions are easier to install and use than Windows and most commercial software.
That's a short list. I could think of more.
Free software is more than stable and hard to break, it's excellent in every way these days. Fedora is very good too and addressing all of the reasons I moved to Debian based distributions two years ago but doing it with the same Red Hat ease of use I sometimes miss. The new interfaces are beautiful and functional.
Not really. She calmly detailed the workings of the scam so that other experts won't waste their time. The description was calm, clear and without inflammatory language. What more could you want? What less should she have done? The sucks running the show deserve to be called what they are.