Not anymore, as it seemed to me during my adventures with Windows 7. As I am the main user on my PC, so I decided to disable password prompt on startup on a fresh Windows 7 install only to find that I need to enter some non-trivial command (control userpasswords2, googled it up). Occasionally though, I do log off to let others use a guest account. So I thought I make a custom funny picture as a background on windows login screen. The instructions to do that were VERY arcane -- they involved populating %windir%\system32\oobe\info\backgrounds with many jpg-s of a fixed size. Granted, the latter is not a very common task for a user, but the former should not involve googling for an answer (especially given that e.g. KDE or GNOME have a GUI for both tasks I can reach using my keyboard only to enter root password).
And guess what happens if I want to add a Trash Bin to the panel in Win7 (4 clicks in both KDE4 and GNOME)? Another set of arcane instructions. Adding Quick Launch Bar to panel? Another one.
Well, from man NetworkManager: "NetworkManager will execute scripts in the/etc/NetworkManager/dispatcher.d" Afterwards I have just googled for some examples:)
>I really hate that with Network Manager, I can't tell it "whenever you see one of the essids [home, work], connect automatically"
Why can I do exactly that? Every network has a "Connect automatically" checkbox. Besides, dispatcher.d scripts allow me to define rules for each connection (e.g. starting vpnc when I connect to my university's network).
This "pirate" thing exists much longer than you think. People who make unauthorized copies of commercial books were called pirates since at least 17th century (Grimmelshausen comes to mind ranting about pirates copying and selling his books). Back then there were real pirates as well, but people could tell the ones from the others.
Sure, one have to target soldiers (not that you don't label guerrilla fighters as terrorists too). But soldiers are just young men who decide nothing, so it is better to target officers. Even better -- target generals. Hell, target the Commander-in-Chief, he's the one in charge! Except that in a democracy, he is not. He got elected, you know. Twice, in some cases. Now tell me, are your so-called civilians really innocent when they support Commander-in-Chief and his wars so they can continue to thrive in their suburban houses and drive their SUVs every time they need to move their asses to a shop across the street? Where does your logic put US military then? They have killed more civilians than soldiers, that's for sure. Sure they weren't actively targeting civilians, just "this house" or "that sector" but they still have more civilian blood on their hands than all "terrorist groups" combined. Except that they are better equipped and organized, there is little difference. Both insurgents and military have their goals, means to meet them and an estimation of collateral damage.
There's a great image viewer with optional support for MPEG movies for GTK (IIRC). It is called pornview and is currently in a version 0.2.0. So if you tell a kid how to install and configure such a viewer, you could be in trouble. Not to mention all the fsck's...
HDD is cheap storage nowadays, but SSD with ist speed is great for putting programs on it. You rarely need more than 16 Gb for your installed software. Recently, I have bought a Verbatim SSD 16Gb Expresscard for my laptop, made it EXT2 and copied my software on it (left/var/tmp and such on HDD to avoid writes) and got my 25-seconds boot. And by that I mean complete system start with KDE4 and several apps like kopete, kbluetooth, knetworkmanager, klipper, korganizer + some plasmoids on desktop. Prior to SSD is was more like 55 seconds to 1:10. Startup time of heavy programs like Openoffice, GIMP or games has greatly improved as well. And there is room for improvement -- sata link for that chipset is too slow and takes about 8 seconds to start. I hope that this can be corrected in driver (it's a staging driver in the kernel).
It would be ideal to have small, fast and ultra cheap SSD drives I can put in to accelerate my family member's desktops (won't probably happen, because they still have IDE drives, not SATA). USB is simply too slow for that task.
A dual-disk notebook or desktop config with programs on smaller SSD and HDD for user data would to the trick for most users. Otherwise it's hard to notice the benefits of an upgrade to a faster CPU or more RAM.
That's because you need willpower before, you know, to say no. If you smoke already, you've lacked either the willpower or brains when you've started. Never start to smoke is still the best method. Thankfully throughout Europe there is a strong trend to ban smoking from public places so it's getting harder to passive smoke here -- no need to ruin your health because some fucker thought he'll get more chicks if he smokes like that cowboy he had seen on TV.
And this information is based on what study? As we know, people who download music from torrents are actually buying more music than those who don't. Why should it be different with X-Box players?
The fact that modders can play some games for free, doesn't mean they pirate ALL the games they have. I'd speculate that people who tinker a lot with their X-Boxes are more likely to get an X-Box game as a present, for example, which generates revenue for Microsoft.
Except you have fairly compelling evidence that that is not always the case. As China's example tells us, those who deliberately use an unauthorized copy can be more aware of dangers they are facing and use firewall, anti-malware and antivirus (pirated as well). Education is the key to security, not EULA.
You have a wrong definition of nerds. Nerds like to solve problems, preferably technical ones. There are many low-cost cool nerdy things (like those smartphone-based virtual reality goggles).
If there is little money to begin with, either the toys gets cheaper or there will be a different set of toys available for the nerds to tinker.
Well, they naturally assume that a Mac owner would pay big $ for what he perceives as a premium-class hardware. And they seem to be right because you have bought this webcam.
To be fair, I have installed Win7 and Ubuntu Karmic just yesterday and at the same time (VirtualBox rules!). Guess where I had needed cryptic commands to make the OS behave the way I wanted it? Win7. I wanted the OS to autologin and the proposed solution was (have to look it up again) "control userpasswords2". Ubuntu -- no need for a terminal so far.
French Resistance is a joke, really. Especially if you compare it to partisan movement in occupied USSR countries (especially Belarus). Then again, most French have survived the war quite happily while Belarus has lost almost a third of its population.
HDDs are still much better for data storage -- it's a mature technology which is quite reliable and won't be replaced any time soon.
However, SSDs are already replacing HDDs on netbooks, notebooks will follow: lower power consumption, less noise, immunity to bumps and shake make SSDs so attractive in that segment.
SSDs use on desktops is somewhat limited -- they are much better as a system disk because of fast IO times, but most users won't really care about that extra speedup. Vendors might offer dual-disk configuration though where the OS is on SSD and user data -- on HDD. But that is rather something for power users, not for Joe the Plummers.
It has been known for some time that viruses might run on wine. Threr is an urban legend about some Linux user who has tried to launch some malware in wine just to see if it's gonna work. It worked. Indeed it worked so well, that the malware has managed to steal his ICQ password from QIP (which was running in wine too).
You can switch to Win7 only from WinSomething
on
A Tale of Two Windows 7s
·
· Score: 0, Flamebait
Clearly, Windows 7 is for those who don't know any other OS. It might do the job from keeping the clueless from looking for the alternative, which is Microsoft's major goal now. But for those of us who have already switched there is no reason to even look at this OS. The fundamental flaws won't go away. Ever.
Now, even if you don't think about the price which is IMO ridiculously high... There is no LiveCD's for me to test my hardware: some of it isn't officially supported and the need to re-partition my HDD (and the need to repair GRUB afterwards) just to see how it works and whether it works at all... It's just too much hassle. Neither can I install the OS on an USB stick. Hell, I boot Linux from an ExpressCard SSD right now, overall speed increase is astronomical, but Win7 won't even install there. On top of this, I have to pay for a copy in order to test (yeah, I have missed the "free" RC1, now what?).
Software is still has to be installed one-by-one and you either have to upgrade all the pieces one-by-one too or deal with dozens of independent updaters. Not to mention the dire need for extra protection resulting in more software one has to install manually.
As for usability (something that could be fixed) -- where the hell are my goddamn virtual desktops?! Text copy on select so I can paste with a middle mouse button? Last but not least -- Alt-dragging/resizing a window. A killer feature if you are using a touchpad (which I am). It's not there.
No, you won't return to Windows land because of 7 if you're using something else.
At last, Microsoft tries to deliver the usability of Linux DEs to the Windows crowd too.
Unfortunately, their main sources were apparently anti-Linux troll posts on/. so they though it must be the need to use the console that makes Linux so great.
Slashdot Mirror
If anything, Microsoft always delivers constant user experience...
Not anymore, as it seemed to me during my adventures with Windows 7.
As I am the main user on my PC, so I decided to disable password prompt on startup on a fresh Windows 7 install only to find that I need to enter some non-trivial command (control userpasswords2, googled it up).
Occasionally though, I do log off to let others use a guest account. So I thought I make a custom funny picture as a background on windows login screen. The instructions to do that were VERY arcane -- they involved populating %windir%\system32\oobe\info\backgrounds with many jpg-s of a fixed size. Granted, the latter is not a very common task for a user, but the former should not involve googling for an answer (especially given that e.g. KDE or GNOME have a GUI for both tasks I can reach using my keyboard only to enter root password).
And guess what happens if I want to add a Trash Bin to the panel in Win7 (4 clicks in both KDE4 and GNOME)? Another set of arcane instructions. Adding Quick Launch Bar to panel? Another one.
Well, from man NetworkManager: /etc/NetworkManager/dispatcher.d" :)
"NetworkManager will execute scripts in the
Afterwards I have just googled for some examples
>I really hate that with Network Manager, I can't tell it "whenever you see one of the essids [home, work], connect automatically"
Why can I do exactly that? Every network has a "Connect automatically" checkbox. Besides, dispatcher.d scripts allow me to define rules for each connection (e.g. starting vpnc when I connect to my university's network).
This "pirate" thing exists much longer than you think. People who make unauthorized copies of commercial books were called pirates since at least 17th century (Grimmelshausen comes to mind ranting about pirates copying and selling his books). Back then there were real pirates as well, but people could tell the ones from the others.
No-no-no, he RE-INSTALLS AND REPAIRS Windows, he's not breaking it :)
Sure, one have to target soldiers (not that you don't label guerrilla fighters as terrorists too). But soldiers are just young men who decide nothing, so it is better to target officers. Even better -- target generals. Hell, target the Commander-in-Chief, he's the one in charge!
Except that in a democracy, he is not. He got elected, you know. Twice, in some cases.
Now tell me, are your so-called civilians really innocent when they support Commander-in-Chief and his wars so they can continue to thrive in their suburban houses and drive their SUVs every time they need to move their asses to a shop across the street?
Where does your logic put US military then? They have killed more civilians than soldiers, that's for sure. Sure they weren't actively targeting civilians, just "this house" or "that sector" but they still have more civilian blood on their hands than all "terrorist groups" combined. Except that they are better equipped and organized, there is little difference. Both insurgents and military have their goals, means to meet them and an estimation of collateral damage.
Ah come on, you're just sick of being fragged by these little monsters time and time again!
There's a great image viewer with optional support for MPEG movies for GTK (IIRC).
It is called pornview and is currently in a version 0.2.0. So if you tell a kid how to install and configure such a viewer, you could be in trouble.
Not to mention all the fsck's...
There is no replacement for brain yet, so your eternal mechanical life will eventually turn into an eternal Alzheimer's.
>Thanks for the response! Not to sound like a 3 year old, but why? Wouldn't length contraction cancel out the effects of time dilation?
Don't know about you, but I'll be pretty happy and surprised if my nephew is going to ask similar questions when he turns 3.
HDD is cheap storage nowadays, but SSD with ist speed is great for putting programs on it. You rarely need more than 16 Gb for your installed software. /var /tmp and such on HDD to avoid writes) and got my 25-seconds boot. And by that I mean complete system start with KDE4 and several apps like kopete, kbluetooth, knetworkmanager, klipper, korganizer + some plasmoids on desktop. Prior to SSD is was more like 55 seconds to 1:10. Startup time of heavy programs like Openoffice, GIMP or games has greatly improved as well. And there is room for improvement -- sata link for that chipset is too slow and takes about 8 seconds to start. I hope that this can be corrected in driver (it's a staging driver in the kernel).
Recently, I have bought a Verbatim SSD 16Gb Expresscard for my laptop, made it EXT2 and copied my software on it (left
It would be ideal to have small, fast and ultra cheap SSD drives I can put in to accelerate my family member's desktops (won't probably happen, because they still have IDE drives, not SATA). USB is simply too slow for that task.
A dual-disk notebook or desktop config with programs on smaller SSD and HDD for user data would to the trick for most users. Otherwise it's hard to notice the benefits of an upgrade to a faster CPU or more RAM.
That's because you need willpower before, you know, to say no.
If you smoke already, you've lacked either the willpower or brains when you've started.
Never start to smoke is still the best method. Thankfully throughout Europe there is a strong trend to ban smoking from public places so it's getting harder to passive smoke here -- no need to ruin your health because some fucker thought he'll get more chicks if he smokes like that cowboy he had seen on TV.
And this information is based on what study? As we know, people who download music from torrents are actually buying more music than those who don't. Why should it be different with X-Box players?
The fact that modders can play some games for free, doesn't mean they pirate ALL the games they have. I'd speculate that people who tinker a lot with their X-Boxes are more likely to get an X-Box game as a present, for example, which generates revenue for Microsoft.
Except you have fairly compelling evidence that that is not always the case. As China's example tells us, those who deliberately use an unauthorized copy can be more aware of dangers they are facing and use firewall, anti-malware and antivirus (pirated as well). Education is the key to security, not EULA.
You have a wrong definition of nerds. Nerds like to solve problems, preferably technical ones. There are many low-cost cool nerdy things (like those smartphone-based virtual reality goggles).
If there is little money to begin with, either the toys gets cheaper or there will be a different set of toys available for the nerds to tinker.
Well, they naturally assume that a Mac owner would pay big $ for what he perceives as a premium-class hardware. And they seem to be right because you have bought this webcam.
To be fair, I have installed Win7 and Ubuntu Karmic just yesterday and at the same time (VirtualBox rules!). Guess where I had needed cryptic commands to make the OS behave the way I wanted it? Win7. I wanted the OS to autologin and the proposed solution was (have to look it up again) "control userpasswords2". Ubuntu -- no need for a terminal so far.
French Resistance is a joke, really. Especially if you compare it to partisan movement in occupied USSR countries (especially Belarus). Then again, most French have survived the war quite happily while Belarus has lost almost a third of its population.
HDDs are still much better for data storage -- it's a mature technology which is quite reliable and won't be replaced any time soon.
However, SSDs are already replacing HDDs on netbooks, notebooks will follow: lower power consumption, less noise, immunity to bumps and shake make SSDs so attractive in that segment.
SSDs use on desktops is somewhat limited -- they are much better as a system disk because of fast IO times, but most users won't really care about that extra speedup.
Vendors might offer dual-disk configuration though where the OS is on SSD and user data -- on HDD. But that is rather something for power users, not for Joe the Plummers.
It has been known for some time that viruses might run on wine. Threr is an urban legend about some Linux user who has tried to launch some malware in wine just to see if it's gonna work.
It worked. Indeed it worked so well, that the malware has managed to steal his ICQ password from QIP (which was running in wine too).
Clearly, Windows 7 is for those who don't know any other OS. It might do the job from keeping the clueless from looking for the alternative, which is Microsoft's major goal now. But for those of us who have already switched there is no reason to even look at this OS. The fundamental flaws won't go away. Ever.
Now, even if you don't think about the price which is IMO ridiculously high... There is no LiveCD's for me to test my hardware: some of it isn't officially supported and the need to re-partition my HDD (and the need to repair GRUB afterwards) just to see how it works and whether it works at all... It's just too much hassle. Neither can I install the OS on an USB stick. Hell, I boot Linux from an ExpressCard SSD right now, overall speed increase is astronomical, but Win7 won't even install there. On top of this, I have to pay for a copy in order to test (yeah, I have missed the "free" RC1, now what?).
Software is still has to be installed one-by-one and you either have to upgrade all the pieces one-by-one too or deal with dozens of independent updaters. Not to mention the dire need for extra protection resulting in more software one has to install manually.
As for usability (something that could be fixed) -- where the hell are my goddamn virtual desktops?! Text copy on select so I can paste with a middle mouse button?
Last but not least -- Alt-dragging/resizing a window. A killer feature if you are using a touchpad (which I am). It's not there.
No, you won't return to Windows land because of 7 if you're using something else.
At last, Microsoft tries to deliver the usability of Linux DEs to the Windows crowd too.
Unfortunately, their main sources were apparently anti-Linux troll posts on /. so they though it must be the need to use the console that makes Linux so great.
Alt-drag a window then. Or do similar as you did in Windows on 640x480, whatever it has been (tabbing till you hit OK, I really can't recall).
Why didn't you wait till the resolution restores, btw? Or didn't choose to return to previous settings?
Hey, Ubuntu tries to deliver you similar experience you've had in Windows -- you don't see the OK button there too on 640x480 :)
And holding down Alt key is sooo hard, definitely a secret arcane combination. BTW, how do you move a window in Windows in similar situation?