For all those who think computers, Linux or otherwise, should be so simple that any idiot can walk up, sit down, and use it productively, with no training at all
Hi. Longtime Windows and Linux user (and career programmer) here. Computing *is* too damn hard. Many people *really* only need an appliance that has a mail client, surfs the web, and maybe helps them do their taxes. I do believe that we could configure one of the major OS's to behave in this way... but I guess that it wouldn't be sexy or something. (TBH, I'm not sure why Apple hasn't sold something like this yet!)
Verizon says it will dispatch a technician to try to assist her accessing the internet without using the Windows-only installation disk. Verizon says its high-speed internet does indeed support Ubuntu, but some advanced features and installation disks clearly don't work with Linux.
MATC also says it promises to accept any of Schubert's papers or class documents using whatever software she has installed.
Schubert's computer came with Open Office, a word processing software package that is compatible with Microsoft Word. She says she wasn't aware it was compatible. MATC promised to show her how to save documents in compatible formats so she could enroll in online courses again.
(Copyright 2009, Dan Cassuto: dcassuto@wkowtv.com Used without permission.)
As we can see, Ubuntu will do everything that is required for her online courses. She didn't even *try* to contact her ISP, her University Help Desk, or her professors to resolve her issue. Hell, she didn't even attempt to edit one of her existing Word documents in OOffice. She gave up, straight out of the gate. What would you say to a Mac->Windows convert that claimed that they couldn't get anything done 'cause they couldn't install iMovie?
Look at what's been happening in Iraq and other such places. A reasonably well organized and reasonably well funded group of citizens can give the (very well organized and very well funded) US military a run for its money. If those citizens *were* also United States citizens, this will further tip the balance of power in favour of the insurgents.
If we all put on our tinfoil hats, we *could* choose to see the increasing militarization of local police forces as an attempt to quickly quell any uprising without getting the Federal armed forces involved. 'Cause -after all- who gets angry when the police murder a restrained, unarmed man in cold blood? Noone, that's who. If quelling the uprising could be spun as eliminating a terrorist cell, noone's gonna fucking question it... and the Federal armed forces will never have to bust out the guns.
I'd like to see a kernel that could do things like coping with new drivers without a reboot,
Would you clarify this statement? 'Cause, ATM I think that rmmod OLD_DRIVER && modprobe NEW_DRIVER generally inserts a new driver into the kernel w/out a reboot.
marcosdumay mentions here that smplayer is a good frontend for mplayer. I just gave it a shot. The mplayer team *really* needs to start shipping it as the default GUI... it's pretty good. *Almost* everything that I would want to do was in the GUI, and the defaults were quite suitable.
Installing smplayer qualifies as "fucking around with shit" -I didn't even know about it till someone else told me about it-. However, I would hope that the distro maintainers know about it, and have the sense to include it by default when they install mplayer on a non-technical user's system.
In seriousness, mplayer+ffmpeg+a recent mplayer codec pack plays 99% of what I run into. Of the things that won't play, 99% are probably malware-spreading WMV files.
Also, my hat's off to you for telling me about smplayer, it's *EXTREMELY* boss! My gripes: * It should do some magic to detect playback of DVD ISO files and apply my favorite deinterlacer. * It should give me a little more information about the deinterlacing schemes... Are these already ordered in a descending "best" to "worst" order? (Say, for DVD playback?) I wouldn't be surprised if this ordering is a pretty hard thing to do.
I'm a fair-to-middling programmer who's weak on his maths. Thanks for asking.
I do understand just how long it can take to spin up on a complex project. I also know my hourly rate, and can figure out just how much money I could have made had I not chosen to fuck around with KDE 4.x. (Or Gentoo, or whatever else strikes my fancy today.) You seem to be *really* serious about making money. I'm not. I *really* like playing around with software. *shrug*
Most folks -myself included- have no need for the source to their OS. However, freely available source code ensures that your current systems are always maintainable. (Until the underlying hardware changes too much, that is.)
Does your company depend on a closed-source app? If so, what happens when the current maintainer unexpectedly goes out of business, or stops supporting that app and has no upgrade path for your old data or workflow? I suppose that *you* would seek out another vendor and purchase their offering. Assuming that I was in charge of purchasing, I probably would as well. (I *know* how much it costs to develop software in-house.) But, what if your app was a one-off product, something that's very specialized, maybe something that you contracted out for in the first place? What then?
Why, yes I *am* an arrogant bastard. Thanks for noticing. Be aware that "Free as in beer (anything)" and "Free as in speech (anything)" are two *very* different -often non-overlapping- concepts. "Free of charge" is an attribute that *anyone* can see the benefit of. "Free to modify" is an attribute that Joe Sixpack will never care about. Joe will almost always grab something that's "Free as in beer", but he doesn't care much for enhancing his television set.
Ah ha! You don't even have to prefix the ekiga.net username (or any other SIP address) with sip:. ekiga seems to figure out what to do automagically.:D
Also, thanks for making me run Ekiga! My buddy fixed his broken Asterisk setup, and I now know that Ekiga is a decent PC-PC voice telephony app. This gives me something good to recommend to the Skype users that I know.:)
Hopefully, I'll get a webcam soon, so's I can test out the video aspect of it.
Oh. I notice that I didn't address your "simplicity" angle. What's more simple than asking your buddy what their ekiga.net username is, then entering sip:username@ekiga.net and pressing the "connect" button? It's just like email, right? I ask this, having never used Windows Messenger. Perhaps you can tell me how it's easier?
Bah. I meant to say... I really wish that the ekiga guys would package the GTK runtime with their installer. My Windows using friend had to have me track down the installer. This is obviously a point against ekiga.
It's that users don't want to have to fuck around with shit to make it work.
I didn't *have* to fuck around with anything to get Mplayer, Thunderbird, and Pidgin installed and running. I said "Package Manager, make it so! (and install all the eeeevil codecs, while you're at it)". I agree that mplayer's frontend sucks. But, have you used Amarok? I have. It's pretty fucking awsome. It claims to have iPod (and other music device) support, but I don't have any such devices to test that claim. IMO, Amarok's waaaaay better than iTunes, and -as a music player and organizer- parsecs beyond WMP. I simply asked my package manager to install that one, too.;)
And gnomemeeting? I'm thinking you don't actually use it,
You caught me.:/ *has no reason to be videoconferencing.* I don't have a webcam, but did have Ekiga installed -for some damn reason-, so I ran the "Configuration Druid" and accepted the defaults at every page. It ended up autodetected my sound hardware and my NAT, and then enabled STUN. I then called sip:500@ekiga.net as suggested here, and heard my voice! I called sip:520@ekiga.net as suggested here and found out that I could, indeed be reached from the outside world. I even had a friend call me from his Asterisk site. After thirty mintues of him futzing with his mis-configured Asterisk server, we got a couple of crystal-clear calls in!
I tried to have a Windows using friend call me with Windows Messenger. Following these instructions failed at the login step. Windows Messenger claimed that it couldn't establish a session with ekiga.net. Installing Ekiga and the GTK Runtime worked wonderfully, though. Just like it did on Linux, after my buddy fixed his Asterisk setup. Are you behind a NAT? If not, would you like to try a SIP call using Windows Messenger?
How can you "lock down" a Linux install? From what I've seen, a./configure --prefix ~/installdir && make install will get almost anything installed. (That's one of the beauties of Linux, IMO.)
*nods* One place that I worked at was sick of the cost of Sun's OS (whatever it was called at the time) and switched to Win NT back in the mid nineties. Now, they have a shitload of in-house Windows software to support and are looking at switching to Linux.
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For all those who think computers, Linux or otherwise, should be so simple that any idiot can walk up, sit down, and use it productively, with no training at all
Hi. Longtime Windows and Linux user (and career programmer) here.
Computing *is* too damn hard. Many people *really* only need an appliance that has a mail client, surfs the web, and maybe helps them do their taxes. I do believe that we could configure one of the major OS's to behave in this way... but I guess that it wouldn't be sexy or something. (TBH, I'm not sure why Apple hasn't sold something like this yet!)
*nods*
"Ordinary people" turn off their brains when they're asked to operate a computer. I wish I knew why.
From TFA:
Verizon says it will dispatch a technician to try to assist her accessing the internet without using the Windows-only installation disk. Verizon says its high-speed internet does indeed support Ubuntu, but some advanced features and installation disks clearly don't work with Linux.
MATC also says it promises to accept any of Schubert's papers or class documents using whatever software she has installed.
Schubert's computer came with Open Office, a word processing software package that is compatible with Microsoft Word. She says she wasn't aware it was compatible. MATC promised to show her how to save documents in compatible formats so she could enroll in online courses again.
(Copyright 2009, Dan Cassuto: dcassuto@wkowtv.com Used without permission.)
As we can see, Ubuntu will do everything that is required for her online courses.
She didn't even *try* to contact her ISP, her University Help Desk, or her professors to resolve her issue. Hell, she didn't even attempt to edit one of her existing Word documents in OOffice. She gave up, straight out of the gate. What would you say to a Mac->Windows convert that claimed that they couldn't get anything done 'cause they couldn't install iMovie?
*sigh*
Look at what's been happening in Iraq and other such places.
A reasonably well organized and reasonably well funded group of citizens can give the (very well organized and very well funded) US military a run for its money.
If those citizens *were* also United States citizens, this will further tip the balance of power in favour of the insurgents.
If we all put on our tinfoil hats, we *could* choose to see the increasing militarization of local police forces as an attempt to quickly quell any uprising without getting the Federal armed forces involved. 'Cause -after all- who gets angry when the police murder a restrained, unarmed man in cold blood? Noone, that's who. If quelling the uprising could be spun as eliminating a terrorist cell, noone's gonna fucking question it... and the Federal armed forces will never have to bust out the guns.
I'd like to see a kernel that could do things like coping with new drivers without a reboot,
Would you clarify this statement? 'Cause, ATM I think that rmmod OLD_DRIVER && modprobe NEW_DRIVER generally inserts a new driver into the kernel w/out a reboot.
Are you sure that that OGG comparison is fair?
This http://www.xiph.org/dshow/
enables all directshow apps on a Windows machine to play all Xiph.org codecs.
This http://www.xiph.org/quicktime/
enables all quicktime apps to play all Xiph.org codecs.
Granted, this is probably just as much fucking around as asking the package manager to install Pidgin, but it's still possible!
marcosdumay mentions here that smplayer is a good frontend for mplayer. I just gave it a shot. The mplayer team *really* needs to start shipping it as the default GUI... it's pretty good. *Almost* everything that I would want to do was in the GUI, and the defaults were quite suitable.
Installing smplayer qualifies as "fucking around with shit" -I didn't even know about it till someone else told me about it-. However, I would hope that the distro maintainers know about it, and have the sense to include it by default when they install mplayer on a non-technical user's system.
*plays Devil's Advocate*
Can that Debian box play DRM'd WMV's? All QuickTime files? (Even QuicktimeVR?) How about the audio track of this file: http://aig.cs.man.ac.uk/research/daedalus/movies/SIGGRAPH08v3_30.mov ?
*removes DA hat*
In seriousness, mplayer+ffmpeg+a recent mplayer codec pack plays 99% of what I run into. Of the things that won't play, 99% are probably malware-spreading WMV files.
Also, my hat's off to you for telling me about smplayer, it's *EXTREMELY* boss!
My gripes:
* It should do some magic to detect playback of DVD ISO files and apply my favorite deinterlacer.
* It should give me a little more information about the deinterlacing schemes... Are these already ordered in a descending "best" to "worst" order? (Say, for DVD playback?) I wouldn't be surprised if this ordering is a pretty hard thing to do.
Wait, you know what cam this dood is talking about? Do tell!
I'm a fair-to-middling programmer who's weak on his maths. Thanks for asking.
I do understand just how long it can take to spin up on a complex project. I also know my hourly rate, and can figure out just how much money I could have made had I not chosen to fuck around with KDE 4.x. (Or Gentoo, or whatever else strikes my fancy today.) You seem to be *really* serious about making money. I'm not. I *really* like playing around with software. *shrug*
Most folks -myself included- have no need for the source to their OS. However, freely available source code ensures that your current systems are always maintainable. (Until the underlying hardware changes too much, that is.)
Does your company depend on a closed-source app? If so, what happens when the current maintainer unexpectedly goes out of business, or stops supporting that app and has no upgrade path for your old data or workflow?
I suppose that *you* would seek out another vendor and purchase their offering. Assuming that I was in charge of purchasing, I probably would as well. (I *know* how much it costs to develop software in-house.) But, what if your app was a one-off product, something that's very specialized, maybe something that you contracted out for in the first place? What then?
Why, yes I *am* an arrogant bastard. Thanks for noticing.
Be aware that "Free as in beer (anything)" and "Free as in speech (anything)" are two *very* different -often non-overlapping- concepts. "Free of charge" is an attribute that *anyone* can see the benefit of. "Free to modify" is an attribute that Joe Sixpack will never care about. Joe will almost always grab something that's "Free as in beer", but he doesn't care much for enhancing his television set.
Do you understand what I'm trying to say here?
Ah ha! You don't even have to prefix the ekiga.net username (or any other SIP address) with sip:. ekiga seems to figure out what to do automagically. :D
Also, thanks for making me run Ekiga! My buddy fixed his broken Asterisk setup, and I now know that Ekiga is a decent PC-PC voice telephony app. This gives me something good to recommend to the Skype users that I know. :)
Hopefully, I'll get a webcam soon, so's I can test out the video aspect of it.
Oh. I notice that I didn't address your "simplicity" angle. What's more simple than asking your buddy what their ekiga.net username is, then entering sip:username@ekiga.net and pressing the "connect" button? It's just like email, right? I ask this, having never used Windows Messenger. Perhaps you can tell me how it's easier?
Bah. I meant to say... I really wish that the ekiga guys would package the GTK runtime with their installer. My Windows using friend had to have me track down the installer. This is obviously a point against ekiga.
It's that users don't want to have to fuck around with shit to make it work.
I didn't *have* to fuck around with anything to get Mplayer, Thunderbird, and Pidgin installed and running. I said "Package Manager, make it so! (and install all the eeeevil codecs, while you're at it)". ;)
I agree that mplayer's frontend sucks. But, have you used Amarok? I have. It's pretty fucking awsome. It claims to have iPod (and other music device) support, but I don't have any such devices to test that claim. IMO, Amarok's waaaaay better than iTunes, and -as a music player and organizer- parsecs beyond WMP. I simply asked my package manager to install that one, too.
And gnomemeeting? I'm thinking you don't actually use it,
You caught me. :/ *has no reason to be videoconferencing.* I don't have a webcam, but did have Ekiga installed -for some damn reason-, so I ran the "Configuration Druid" and accepted the defaults at every page. It ended up autodetected my sound hardware and my NAT, and then enabled STUN.
I then called sip:500@ekiga.net as suggested here, and heard my voice! I called sip:520@ekiga.net as suggested here and found out that I could, indeed be reached from the outside world. I even had a friend call me from his Asterisk site. After thirty mintues of him futzing with his mis-configured Asterisk server, we got a couple of crystal-clear calls in!
I tried to have a Windows using friend call me with Windows Messenger. Following these instructions failed at the login step. Windows Messenger claimed that it couldn't establish a session with ekiga.net. Installing Ekiga and the GTK Runtime worked wonderfully, though. Just like it did on Linux, after my buddy fixed his Asterisk setup.
Are you behind a NAT? If not, would you like to try a SIP call using Windows Messenger?
Most consumers use computers to chat with text and video. They want to watch movies. They want to read email.
*looks up from my Mplayer, Gnomemeeting, Thunderbird, and Pidgin windows*
Pardon me. I was momentarily distracted. Could you start over from the beginning? ;)
For my desktops, servers, and laptop, Linux is a better OS than Windows. However, what works well for one person may not work at all for another.
Are you a programmer?
If you're not, you're not likely to understand the "free as in speech" fixation.
How can you "lock down" a Linux install? From what I've seen, a ./configure --prefix ~/installdir && make install will get almost anything installed. (That's one of the beauties of Linux, IMO.)
*nods* One place that I worked at was sick of the cost of Sun's OS (whatever it was called at the time) and switched to Win NT back in the mid nineties. Now, they have a shitload of in-house Windows software to support and are looking at switching to Linux.
*shrug* Crazy place.
Dick.
I think that you misspelled "You insensitive clod."
But the act of making tea hastens the heat death of the universe!
Please, think of the children!
*nods*
Same here. (I could finally set my hardware clock to GMT! Oh Joy!)
No reason to believe memristors would be different.
Why?
If you're *that* paranoid, you have your hardware locked in a good safe.