I use Google's system to get crash reports. Works fine, gets me the info that I need. And when an app crashes on me I also usually will press the "report" button to help the developer.
Doesn't Apple have anything like it for their app developers?
Thanks. That's a huge difference, far more than I expected. Couldn't get that from TFA myself, it is really a terribly written piece. I looked at the first graph, where Android seemed to have an edge on iOS but by not too much.
Maybe you understand what they are trying to say (you impressed me already by getting those two basic numbers!), but I'm also wondering: how do you measure "number of crashes"? OK a crash is a crash and they are easy to count but it's usually apps that crash; so which apps to choose? What use scenario? How many different apps? How did they collect their raw data? Are these numbers normalised one way or another? If so, how?
I expected Android to win thanks to faster reaction time of developers.
When I put out an app, it started to get crash reports. It was my first app, and had several beginners mistakes of course. Often the next day I could put out a new version on the market fixing that issue, and soon enough the crash reports stopped. Me learning, so less mistakes, and with a quick turnaround I got a pretty stable app. Crash reports now are not my app's crashes, but crashes in underlying Android libs.
The Apple store has the problem of far slower turnaround, so bug fixes can't be pushed out as fast, and bugs live longer. So more crashy apps.
Well then I tried to read the article, and it's unintelligible. Graphs are horribly cluttered, text is confusing, and I don't want to have to study it very hard to get to the meaning of it. Forbes usually does much better than this.
It's just that there are too many people that go "oh no terrorist overreaction" (which is a valid point) and too few actually read the article and think a little deeper. And of course by the time you're done reading the article, the first 100 or so replies have been posted already...
3/4 down the page and finally this. About time. Just some other deep-down replies of "how did they get their hands on that message to begin with?" which indeed is one of the core questions one should ask here.
Besides, of course, the total over-reaction.
And the fact that he stands to lose his job because of this ordeal: he's been accused of terrorism, but found not guilty, yet for the mere fact of being accused (and having this accusation on his record) he can not get a certificate of good conduct which he needs to work in his current job, in finance. So much for innocent until proven guilty.
His record is said to also contain some other issue, but that obviously didn't stand in the way of getting this certificate before.
When setting off a metal detector I've been asked to remove all metal items from my pockets for inspection, and walk through it again, until it's not set off. Or they use a hand-held wand and subsequently ask me to show what's in those specific spots. No need for pat-down just for setting off a metal detector.
It was about a Canadian company attending a trade show in the US. And the man sent a text message to his colleagues who at the time were in the US. US border patrol got involved as well (the latter part is mentioned in the summary even).
Both are involved. That doesn't make either US or Canada any better though.
There are reasons to hire a fresh grad and there are reasons to hire an older more experienced worker. Salary is one of them. Skills is one of them. Experience is one of them. If a company thinks a fresh grad is worth $60k and can get one for $60k, they may just hire him. If they think an experienced guy is worth $120k, but they ask $150k, then they may just not hire him.
Is that experience really worth 2 1/2 fresh grads? Or is it worth 2 fresh grads? It depends. And maybe the more experienced people indeed do have to consider lowering their sights.
There is a good reason why they get almost all their turnover from selling physical disks.
Ever tried to buy a movie online? Other than mailorder from Amazon et.al., that is, but from a service that sells you the movie at a reasonable price and where you can subsequently download it and watch it in high quality at your leisure?
The main problem will be that there is no such service.
And on top of that: why would they change? It's not as if their business model doesn't work anymore. I'd argue it works very well. Just look at the money that's made in Hollywood, it doesn't seem like they're having a hard time making ends meet or so.
I just read that linked article and some of the comments following.
Person in question apparently does this as a paid job, and claims to be agent of various copyright holders to take down material on their behalf. The first: well no doubt, why else would anyone want to do this? The second - well there it's getting tricky. There are so many studios, especially in the porn industry (the article was about how he helped taking down cheggit.net, after going after porn torrent sites empornium and puretna), hard to imagine that he's agent of them all. But it's possible of course.
Wonder how this will work out in the long run. How the torrent sites will react to it. Easiest option is probably to simply leave the US and set up shop overseas where the DMCA doesn't reach. And I hope for his own sake that he manages to keep anonymous, as the pro-piracy activists play really dirty, possibly worse than the anti-piracy lobby which at least mostly sticks to the legal channels.
Personally I have no problem looking at human bodies without clothes, or them having fun together and so.
What I have more problem with is for example the glorification of all kinds of weaponry, think of Discovery Channel shows like "futureweapons". Which is basically all about death and destruction - showing how to kill as many other people, and how to do as much damage as possible, and how great it is that we can do this so much better with this new developed high-tech weaponry.
Still makes me wonder why so many people are offended with the first (people enjoying themselves), why they love to watch the second (death and destruction). The first is not allowed on mainstream TV, the second is no problem. Typical example: when the Mythbusters were doing "peeing on the third rail" they gave Buster a urination tube, to simulate a man relieving himself, but when broadcast on TV that part was covered up with the image of a leave! But showing the results of a high-powered ceiling fan chopping off a head (with an actual pig's spine), that's no problem...
There is quite some material out there that is best consumed in private - as some materials are known to offend other people, and some consideration would be nice. I'm not that interested to watch people killing other people, for example. Lacking a fully private access, at least they should find an as private place as possible, like going for the terminal at the end of the row near the wall or so.
The boards is where limits to information provided, if any, should be decided.
The task of the librarian is to help people find any and all information available in the library. If there is unfiltered Internet available, then that's included too. It's not up to them to decide what is acceptable or not - that's up to the board, or the government, or whatever higher body.
So all little children go there alone, or not at all? I regularly visit my local library (OK it's not in the US but it's a real library) and most of the times go with wife and kid. My kid is too young to go out alone anyway. But he loves browsing the books there, especially the picture books section.
Unfortunately it's grant-all basis only. As in app requests a bunch of permissions, and you can not deny one or two of those requests. You must grant them all, or deny (and not install the app). It is only fine-grained as in there are many different, well-defined permissions an app may request. And of course the good thing is that they're all listed when you install a new app, and you're re-requested to give permission if this changes in an upgrade.
But there are issues. I have a 4-in-a-row game on my phone, ad supported. Fair enough. For those ads (and the internet play option) you need network access. I can accept that. But the more recent versions of this app start to ask for location information. Now there it's getting hairy. It has network access so should be able to deduce my rough location by IP address (can be useful for targeting ads), why does it need to know in which street I'm walking around? That's too much.
Other apps ask for access to "services that may cost you money" like to make phone calls, or to send SMS messages. While I don't see any such functionality in the app itself. Then I also wonder why it's needed. And I can't just flat-out deny that specific access.
Saying that an app as "awful" and "one fo the most widely used" in one sentence is a bit strange - why would so many people use an "awful" app? Especially with the competition out there. By the way I assume "Good" is the name of the app? I for one have never even heard about it.
Piracy? Of the game? It's a free download from the market.
Metallica: afaik they're still alive and well, but artistically well over their prime. Mostly playing old works for old fans. That doesn't mean their music is bad or anything, they're still very good musicians, just that they don't have much new original material coming out. That's why you don't hear from them much. And they'll take the tours easier as well. Upcoming summer they're touring in Europe for example.
Back to the birds: interestingly the article did not mention their co-operation with a movie company, promoting some movie with Angry Birds Rio. Playing it a lot myself but actually don't know what movie it is, so promotion works great:-) Oh well. And of course merchandising is available left right and centre. Everywhere you see shops or hawkers selling Angry Birds themed products, including real-life games (where you can catapult a plastic bird against a castle made of plastic blocks, something like that). No way to tell for sure but I guess most of those goods are in fact pirated too.
Software repositories contain all kinds of software, including underlying libraries (as if the user really cares about them - just get those dependencies installed, thank you very much). As a result they're cluttered. Until recently barely searchable - you had to know the name.
Just some example with Ubuntu 10.04's Software Centre. Search for "pdf reader" and get I a cluttered list with unrelated stuff like c++ manuals, LaTeX converters, ms word viewers, etc. The first few are pdf readers at least.
Another example, search "web browser". Epic failure here. First result: VLC Media Player (plays media, doesn't browse the web). Then: gThumb (image manager). Followed by IcedTea Java Plugin (yes I may need that for the browser but as end user shouldn't have to worry about that). The fourth result is Epiphany, the first actual web browser. A few results down is Chromium. Firefox is deeply hidden several pages down and called "safe and easy browser from Mozilla", it has no Firefox icon, just very small letters "firefox" under the title. I only managed to find that one after searching specifically for "firefox".
It's a really poor excuse for an "app store". OK this is a version from 1 1/2 years ago but still that's their current LTS offer. It's so horrible I never use it; the package manager gives better results - especially if you know the actual name of the software you're looking for.
Give me Google's App Store any time over that. And I hear Apple's app store (no first-hand experience with it) is far better than Google's offering. As much as I like Ubuntu 10.04, I hate their "Software Centre". It's useless crap to me.
The big difference with house vs. software is that when you nail some boards together it's quite permanent, and hard to remove and redo. I admit to do programming mainly alone the second line, but usually with something like a plan, and working quite targeted to it. More like:
1. Nail boards together. 2.Step back. 3. Location correct, all straight up and aligned with the rest? goto 6. 4. Redo latest board, and/or adjust previous boards. 5. goto 3. 6. Looks like a livable house? end. 7. goto 1.
It appears the song is used every time he comes on stage, making it a bit of his personal theme.
It is not used to parody, or to study it, to comment on it, or any similar manner.
The way it's used (at least that's how I read the summary) is to have the song become his theme, that as soon as someone hears the riff they think "Gingrich". So that way he's using it as advertising for himself. And imho should at least have asked permission from the rights holder before using it in such a manner.
Do you have a preference b/w Debian based vs Red Hat based vs FreeBSD based distros? Here's what I'd suggest:
I don't really care as long as it works and deosn't get in the way.
Mandriva very much just worked. And no problems with rmp as long as I stuck to the official distribution's packages, at least not since the early 2000s. Before it had issues sometimes. And using third-party packages gave me as many problems as I have with Ubuntu now in that respect, mostly mismatching versions. That it requires a version newer than available in the distro, or that it must have a certain older version.
Debian based: try PearOS - even though it's Gnome 3.2 based, it rigs it to give you the Mac UI. If you don't like that idea, go w/ Mint
Mint was recommended by others too; should give that a look. PearOS well I like the MacOS interface but it's not the one all end all way.
FreeBSD based: go w/ PC-BSD. You get a choice of KDE, Gnome 2.x, XFCE, LXDE as well as Windowmaker, IceWM and a couple of others like Awesome & Enlightenment
Enlightenment is an old favourite. From Gnome1 fame. They were a great combo, at the time. For the rest I always stuck with Gnome and whatever WM came with it. Mandriva had Compiz and that had some great features including expose, Ubuntu should have that too but so hidden I haven't found it. Maybe I should look harder. KDE I once tried (about a decade ago) and found it a lot slower than Gnome and didn't bother with it anymore. Gnome2 is great, didn't give me any urge to try something else.
Yet to go FreeBSD - it's a big step for me. I'd rather stick to what I know, and Linux is that. I guess the UI in the end is pretty much the same but if something has to be tweaked on the system then I've too many unknowns. And no compelling reason to go that way.
For me trying out new software is usually either for seeing enough reviews recommending it and me getting the idea that I will like it, or because I'm getting irritated by a certain piece of software. The first was the reason for me to go Ubuntu (9.something iirc - replaced Mandriva partly because their future is so bleak), the second is becoming the reason to drop Ubuntu again.
IMHO Unity sucks, so I ditched it and went for gnome3 which is also a bit of a regression from Gnome2 but not so bad.
So yes, menus for the win.
This new interface sounds like keyboard-shortcuts-on-steroids. Nothing wrong with keyboard shortcuts, just that they're harder to learn than menus. This is promoted as "not having to relearn menus" - well true, but you have to learn so much more! For example how to find a function you don't know the exact name of? Or how to find what functions are available that may be of help for you? Browsing through menus works well. All functions are presented to you, in a more or less organised manner.
Same for software programs: how do you know the command to start a web browser? Is Firefox installed or Chrome or Opera or whatever? You have to know the name beforehand to use such keyboard input.
There is a good reason the command line with its typed commands has been replaced by the GUI for most tasks. The command line remains there, behind the scenes, for those in the know to find it. If you don't know about the existence of the command line terminal you likely don't need it anyway.
Now seriously: can anyone advise me a distro to try out? Ubuntu is losing it for me. Mandriva, my previous favourite, doesn't seem to have much of a future either as they're bankrupt again. So what'd be a good alternative? (no flame wars please).
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I use Google's system to get crash reports. Works fine, gets me the info that I need. And when an app crashes on me I also usually will press the "report" button to help the developer.
Doesn't Apple have anything like it for their app developers?
Thanks. That's a huge difference, far more than I expected. Couldn't get that from TFA myself, it is really a terribly written piece. I looked at the first graph, where Android seemed to have an edge on iOS but by not too much.
Maybe you understand what they are trying to say (you impressed me already by getting those two basic numbers!), but I'm also wondering: how do you measure "number of crashes"? OK a crash is a crash and they are easy to count but it's usually apps that crash; so which apps to choose? What use scenario? How many different apps? How did they collect their raw data? Are these numbers normalised one way or another? If so, how?
I expected Android to win thanks to faster reaction time of developers.
When I put out an app, it started to get crash reports. It was my first app, and had several beginners mistakes of course. Often the next day I could put out a new version on the market fixing that issue, and soon enough the crash reports stopped. Me learning, so less mistakes, and with a quick turnaround I got a pretty stable app. Crash reports now are not my app's crashes, but crashes in underlying Android libs.
The Apple store has the problem of far slower turnaround, so bug fixes can't be pushed out as fast, and bugs live longer. So more crashy apps.
Well then I tried to read the article, and it's unintelligible. Graphs are horribly cluttered, text is confusing, and I don't want to have to study it very hard to get to the meaning of it. Forbes usually does much better than this.
I am reading at +3 already...
It's just that there are too many people that go "oh no terrorist overreaction" (which is a valid point) and too few actually read the article and think a little deeper. And of course by the time you're done reading the article, the first 100 or so replies have been posted already...
3/4 down the page and finally this. About time. Just some other deep-down replies of "how did they get their hands on that message to begin with?" which indeed is one of the core questions one should ask here.
Besides, of course, the total over-reaction.
And the fact that he stands to lose his job because of this ordeal: he's been accused of terrorism, but found not guilty, yet for the mere fact of being accused (and having this accusation on his record) he can not get a certificate of good conduct which he needs to work in his current job, in finance. So much for innocent until proven guilty.
His record is said to also contain some other issue, but that obviously didn't stand in the way of getting this certificate before.
When setting off a metal detector I've been asked to remove all metal items from my pockets for inspection, and walk through it again, until it's not set off. Or they use a hand-held wand and subsequently ask me to show what's in those specific spots. No need for pat-down just for setting off a metal detector.
It was about a Canadian company attending a trade show in the US. And the man sent a text message to his colleagues who at the time were in the US. US border patrol got involved as well (the latter part is mentioned in the summary even).
Both are involved. That doesn't make either US or Canada any better though.
There are reasons to hire a fresh grad and there are reasons to hire an older more experienced worker. Salary is one of them. Skills is one of them. Experience is one of them. If a company thinks a fresh grad is worth $60k and can get one for $60k, they may just hire him. If they think an experienced guy is worth $120k, but they ask $150k, then they may just not hire him.
Is that experience really worth 2 1/2 fresh grads? Or is it worth 2 fresh grads? It depends. And maybe the more experienced people indeed do have to consider lowering their sights.
There is a good reason why they get almost all their turnover from selling physical disks.
Ever tried to buy a movie online? Other than mailorder from Amazon et.al., that is, but from a service that sells you the movie at a reasonable price and where you can subsequently download it and watch it in high quality at your leisure?
The main problem will be that there is no such service.
And on top of that: why would they change? It's not as if their business model doesn't work anymore. I'd argue it works very well. Just look at the money that's made in Hollywood, it doesn't seem like they're having a hard time making ends meet or so.
I just read that linked article and some of the comments following.
Person in question apparently does this as a paid job, and claims to be agent of various copyright holders to take down material on their behalf. The first: well no doubt, why else would anyone want to do this? The second - well there it's getting tricky. There are so many studios, especially in the porn industry (the article was about how he helped taking down cheggit.net, after going after porn torrent sites empornium and puretna), hard to imagine that he's agent of them all. But it's possible of course.
Wonder how this will work out in the long run. How the torrent sites will react to it. Easiest option is probably to simply leave the US and set up shop overseas where the DMCA doesn't reach. And I hope for his own sake that he manages to keep anonymous, as the pro-piracy activists play really dirty, possibly worse than the anti-piracy lobby which at least mostly sticks to the legal channels.
Personally I have no problem looking at human bodies without clothes, or them having fun together and so.
What I have more problem with is for example the glorification of all kinds of weaponry, think of Discovery Channel shows like "futureweapons". Which is basically all about death and destruction - showing how to kill as many other people, and how to do as much damage as possible, and how great it is that we can do this so much better with this new developed high-tech weaponry.
Still makes me wonder why so many people are offended with the first (people enjoying themselves), why they love to watch the second (death and destruction). The first is not allowed on mainstream TV, the second is no problem. Typical example: when the Mythbusters were doing "peeing on the third rail" they gave Buster a urination tube, to simulate a man relieving himself, but when broadcast on TV that part was covered up with the image of a leave! But showing the results of a high-powered ceiling fan chopping off a head (with an actual pig's spine), that's no problem...
There is quite some material out there that is best consumed in private - as some materials are known to offend other people, and some consideration would be nice. I'm not that interested to watch people killing other people, for example. Lacking a fully private access, at least they should find an as private place as possible, like going for the terminal at the end of the row near the wall or so.
The boards is where limits to information provided, if any, should be decided.
The task of the librarian is to help people find any and all information available in the library. If there is unfiltered Internet available, then that's included too. It's not up to them to decide what is acceptable or not - that's up to the board, or the government, or whatever higher body.
So all little children go there alone, or not at all? I regularly visit my local library (OK it's not in the US but it's a real library) and most of the times go with wife and kid. My kid is too young to go out alone anyway. But he loves browsing the books there, especially the picture books section.
Unfortunately it's grant-all basis only. As in app requests a bunch of permissions, and you can not deny one or two of those requests. You must grant them all, or deny (and not install the app). It is only fine-grained as in there are many different, well-defined permissions an app may request. And of course the good thing is that they're all listed when you install a new app, and you're re-requested to give permission if this changes in an upgrade.
But there are issues. I have a 4-in-a-row game on my phone, ad supported. Fair enough. For those ads (and the internet play option) you need network access. I can accept that. But the more recent versions of this app start to ask for location information. Now there it's getting hairy. It has network access so should be able to deduce my rough location by IP address (can be useful for targeting ads), why does it need to know in which street I'm walking around? That's too much.
Other apps ask for access to "services that may cost you money" like to make phone calls, or to send SMS messages. While I don't see any such functionality in the app itself. Then I also wonder why it's needed. And I can't just flat-out deny that specific access.
Saying that an app as "awful" and "one fo the most widely used" in one sentence is a bit strange - why would so many people use an "awful" app? Especially with the competition out there. By the way I assume "Good" is the name of the app? I for one have never even heard about it.
Especially after seeing all those very serious replies on my comment, right?
It's free (ad-supported - or no ads if you don't have an Internet connection) from the Android Market.
Piracy? Of the game? It's a free download from the market.
Metallica: afaik they're still alive and well, but artistically well over their prime. Mostly playing old works for old fans. That doesn't mean their music is bad or anything, they're still very good musicians, just that they don't have much new original material coming out. That's why you don't hear from them much. And they'll take the tours easier as well. Upcoming summer they're touring in Europe for example.
Back to the birds: interestingly the article did not mention their co-operation with a movie company, promoting some movie with Angry Birds Rio. Playing it a lot myself but actually don't know what movie it is, so promotion works great :-) Oh well. And of course merchandising is available left right and centre. Everywhere you see shops or hawkers selling Angry Birds themed products, including real-life games (where you can catapult a plastic bird against a castle made of plastic blocks, something like that). No way to tell for sure but I guess most of those goods are in fact pirated too.
I really wonder how long this fad will last.
You obviously haven't used either, recently.
App stores contains apps.
Software repositories contain all kinds of software, including underlying libraries (as if the user really cares about them - just get those dependencies installed, thank you very much). As a result they're cluttered. Until recently barely searchable - you had to know the name.
Just some example with Ubuntu 10.04's Software Centre. Search for "pdf reader" and get I a cluttered list with unrelated stuff like c++ manuals, LaTeX converters, ms word viewers, etc. The first few are pdf readers at least.
Another example, search "web browser". Epic failure here. First result: VLC Media Player (plays media, doesn't browse the web). Then: gThumb (image manager). Followed by IcedTea Java Plugin (yes I may need that for the browser but as end user shouldn't have to worry about that). The fourth result is Epiphany, the first actual web browser. A few results down is Chromium. Firefox is deeply hidden several pages down and called "safe and easy browser from Mozilla", it has no Firefox icon, just very small letters "firefox" under the title. I only managed to find that one after searching specifically for "firefox".
It's a really poor excuse for an "app store". OK this is a version from 1 1/2 years ago but still that's their current LTS offer. It's so horrible I never use it; the package manager gives better results - especially if you know the actual name of the software you're looking for.
Give me Google's App Store any time over that. And I hear Apple's app store (no first-hand experience with it) is far better than Google's offering. As much as I like Ubuntu 10.04, I hate their "Software Centre". It's useless crap to me.
LOL
The big difference with house vs. software is that when you nail some boards together it's quite permanent, and hard to remove and redo. I admit to do programming mainly alone the second line, but usually with something like a plan, and working quite targeted to it. More like:
1. Nail boards together.
2.Step back.
3. Location correct, all straight up and aligned with the rest? goto 6.
4. Redo latest board, and/or adjust previous boards.
5. goto 3.
6. Looks like a livable house? end.
7. goto 1.
But then without the goto statements :-)
I would add that the big difference between "hacking" and an engineering approach is a structured understanding of the problem.
I may assume that the CS masters study has taken care of that "structured understanding" part. In other words: hacker + CS degree = software engineer.
Not likely he can get away with that argument.
It appears the song is used every time he comes on stage, making it a bit of his personal theme.
It is not used to parody, or to study it, to comment on it, or any similar manner.
The way it's used (at least that's how I read the summary) is to have the song become his theme, that as soon as someone hears the riff they think "Gingrich". So that way he's using it as advertising for himself. And imho should at least have asked permission from the rights holder before using it in such a manner.
Do you have a preference b/w Debian based vs Red Hat based vs FreeBSD based distros? Here's what I'd suggest:
I don't really care as long as it works and deosn't get in the way.
Mandriva very much just worked. And no problems with rmp as long as I stuck to the official distribution's packages, at least not since the early 2000s. Before it had issues sometimes. And using third-party packages gave me as many problems as I have with Ubuntu now in that respect, mostly mismatching versions. That it requires a version newer than available in the distro, or that it must have a certain older version.
Debian based: try PearOS - even though it's Gnome 3.2 based, it rigs it to give you the Mac UI. If you don't like that idea, go w/ Mint
Mint was recommended by others too; should give that a look. PearOS well I like the MacOS interface but it's not the one all end all way.
FreeBSD based: go w/ PC-BSD. You get a choice of KDE, Gnome 2.x, XFCE, LXDE as well as Windowmaker, IceWM and a couple of others like Awesome & Enlightenment
Enlightenment is an old favourite. From Gnome1 fame. They were a great combo, at the time. For the rest I always stuck with Gnome and whatever WM came with it. Mandriva had Compiz and that had some great features including expose, Ubuntu should have that too but so hidden I haven't found it. Maybe I should look harder. KDE I once tried (about a decade ago) and found it a lot slower than Gnome and didn't bother with it anymore. Gnome2 is great, didn't give me any urge to try something else.
Yet to go FreeBSD - it's a big step for me. I'd rather stick to what I know, and Linux is that. I guess the UI in the end is pretty much the same but if something has to be tweaked on the system then I've too many unknowns. And no compelling reason to go that way.
For me trying out new software is usually either for seeing enough reviews recommending it and me getting the idea that I will like it, or because I'm getting irritated by a certain piece of software. The first was the reason for me to go Ubuntu (9.something iirc - replaced Mandriva partly because their future is so bleak), the second is becoming the reason to drop Ubuntu again.
IMHO Unity sucks, so I ditched it and went for gnome3 which is also a bit of a regression from Gnome2 but not so bad.
So yes, menus for the win.
This new interface sounds like keyboard-shortcuts-on-steroids. Nothing wrong with keyboard shortcuts, just that they're harder to learn than menus. This is promoted as "not having to relearn menus" - well true, but you have to learn so much more! For example how to find a function you don't know the exact name of? Or how to find what functions are available that may be of help for you? Browsing through menus works well. All functions are presented to you, in a more or less organised manner.
Same for software programs: how do you know the command to start a web browser? Is Firefox installed or Chrome or Opera or whatever? You have to know the name beforehand to use such keyboard input.
There is a good reason the command line with its typed commands has been replaced by the GUI for most tasks. The command line remains there, behind the scenes, for those in the know to find it. If you don't know about the existence of the command line terminal you likely don't need it anyway.
Now seriously: can anyone advise me a distro to try out? Ubuntu is losing it for me. Mandriva, my previous favourite, doesn't seem to have much of a future either as they're bankrupt again. So what'd be a good alternative? (no flame wars please).