I know the telecoms are limiting bandwidth and dropping niche services, but at least I haven't had any garbled junk land in my browser yet with the message "Upgrade your service to see this website".
Yeah, regarding the "damn lies", looking through the information it looks like it wouldn't be too difficult to submit a fake result. Does anyone have more information about validation? I couldn't find anything saying it validates results.
Why is this any worse than Firefox pestering you to become the default browser? The users who are going to miss that check box also don't know what to do when Firefox pesters to become default. I think neither is a moral tactic. But, IE does this also (I'm not sure about Safari). If there's a huge community outrage, maybe there will be a bugzilla report and they'll fix it in 6-8 years.
It's great that Shuttleworth is trying to improve the availability of Free (as in speech) software. But I hope he doesn't move too much efforts over to this.
The reason I use vanilla Ubuntu is because I don't have to put a lot of effort into setting up my OS to agree with all my hardware. Instead, from the start I can work more on customizing how I interact with my OS. I remember the hell I had with a Radeon x800 and Fedora Core 4 a few years ago. If "closed" (as if it's always a bad thing) software provides a better solution, I'm more likely to use that. So, I hope Mark still is going to put his best foot forward for plain Ubuntu. I bet the corporate interest is more aimed to that Ubuntu.
I can verify that with vanilla Ubuntu Hardy (as well as Gutsy before it), the media buttons AND the remote are already mapped perfectly in Gnome with my XPS M1330. So it could be that some tweaks may seem to be that because we're so used to making up for these things missing
>>> Exherbo is a distribution designed for people who know what they're doing with Linux.
Are you so badass that gentoo is like ripping candy out of newb babie hands? Exherbo!
>>> Although it shares some code with Gentoo, and although many concepts are similar, and although many of the people involved were or are Gentoo developers, most Exherbo code is rewritten from scratch.
We know way more than those Gentoo tards will ever know.
>>> Exherbo is not, at the moment, a user-targeted distribution.
Come on... you want it, don't you? You want to be so badass to use my awesome distro, to be the most leetest person ever.
>>> It's not that we think that Gentoo is bad.
Gentoo is wretched for our godly needs.
>>> OK, I Want to Try Exherbo
I am high as a kite.
>>> Right now, all we care about is getting it into a fit state for a small number of developers.
We're announcing this publicly because we have no idea what product we're presenting, but we'll make it sound fucking awesome compared to everything else, plus way wore leetsauce, so we can get some actual developers to contribute something useful to make our project objectively good.
>>> The above paragraph does not apply if your pet project is something we find interesting.
Again, if you have anything that will make this distro more than a publicity stunt, for the love of god, please let us know.
>>> It's not that we hate you (unless we do).
Forgot how much better we are then you? You did? OK, in conclusion, fuck you.
Just wanted to mention that Swfdec is coming along quite nicely also. It already plays all the popular FLV video players. Plus it has some cool features, like a universal "play" button on all the media it handles so you don't get assaulted by flash.
$ sudo apt-get install ubuntu-restricted-extras
You're telling me that's complicated, beyond the pale of what average users are capable of?
YES!!! Hypothetical: you're new to Linux. Someone tells you to open up a "terminal". OK.... You don't know what a terminal is but it resembles that command line thingy you've seen once or twice (and reminds you of the hackers at the movies). Now you see "sudo". wtf?? apt-get... wtf again. This kind of banter of "just type in garbel garbel garbel" just helps keep our operating system exclusive to us. While I don't think this year is "the year" (has it ever been?), Ubuntu has definitely made things way easier.
So, going back to your question. The average user is not going to understand that sudo mean "execute a command as another user", in this case the super user. Hell, they probably don't even understand what the root user is. They aren't going to understand that "apt-get install" will install packages for them. They also aren't going to understand what the ubuntu-restricted-extras package is. We can tell them to copy and paste this, but this reminds me of the "if you give a man a fish" cliche.
So what can they do instead? Well, this is where good package management software starts to show where linux has been advancing in the "average user" realm. I'm on a Gutsy laptop right now typing this. In hopes of not disproving my point, I opened add/remove. I typed in "mp3" in the search box. The first result was the restricted-extras package, which according to it's subtitle is "codecs to play mp3, sid, mpeg1...":) However, I think this wouldn't have shown up with the default repositories enabled. But, according to Ubuntu Brainstorm the needed repositories will be enabled by default in Hardy. The terminal is a powerful and efficient tool. Yes, if I know the name of the package I want I use apt-get. But I do this because at this point I know what "sudo" and "apt-get" means. Telling new users to do it this way takes them out of their comfort zone. It's not necessary and doesn't teach them anything. For more anger about resorting to the terminal, I refer you to an excellent (NSFW) Mark Pilgrim rant.
Not only is there gnash but another project is coming along very quickly: swfdec. I decided to use it over gnash on my Hardy install. It's very compatible and has cool features like putting a "play" button on every flash animation so you don't get assaulted by flash you don't want.
We are all making comparisons to IE trying this direction years ago. I was tempted to further comment on KDE's similar attempts that were split up with 4. But in making looking to the original article, I found that I couldn't compare much. Prism, the direction in which "the lines are blurred", does not make attempts at system management or even at messing with your files. It does however give the option to make web applications like GMail work similar to local apps. According to more information about Prism, this also gives the options of having specific profiles for specific web applications. Think about it: you could have a slimmed down, no add-on profile for quickly checking your e-mail. And for general browsing you could have the full profile, no-script, adblock plus etc. Sounds pretty original
As someone who uses public transportation, I know that a weak signal for someone using a cell means I have to plug in the canal phones. Now with satellite delay and engine noise, I think I'm going to need more noise blocking.
Yeah, maintaining bubbles like these can be quite expensive. I work in the IT department of Housing at my university. An ill-planned Mesh Network project for family/graduate housing has shown that maintaining these networks is more costly than just sticking in an access point. Each access point has to be able to support the bandwidth of many users, not just extend the signal to them. I'd imagine the Houston project required a good amount of fiber as well as very load capable access points.
Slashdot Mirror
I know the telecoms are limiting bandwidth and dropping niche services, but at least I haven't had any garbled junk land in my browser yet with the message "Upgrade your service to see this website".
Sorry for the OT, but I have to admit this reminded me of Dwight on "The Office", in which Jim stabbed Dwight's exercise ball with a knife.
I should have saved my mod points for today. Thanks for the info.
I'm sorry, I caught something about Google... Oh, and the Internet.
What?
Yeah, regarding the "damn lies", looking through the information it looks like it wouldn't be too difficult to submit a fake result. Does anyone have more information about validation? I couldn't find anything saying it validates results.
Always an XKCD for every occasion.
They do
: )
How can it be bad if it has Q in the name? The only way I would want it more is if it was named "QoreX" or "XCore".
Why is this any worse than Firefox pestering you to become the default browser? The users who are going to miss that check box also don't know what to do when Firefox pesters to become default. I think neither is a moral tactic. But, IE does this also (I'm not sure about Safari). If there's a huge community outrage, maybe there will be a bugzilla report and they'll fix it in 6-8 years.
It's great that Shuttleworth is trying to improve the availability of Free (as in speech) software. But I hope he doesn't move too much efforts over to this.
The reason I use vanilla Ubuntu is because I don't have to put a lot of effort into setting up my OS to agree with all my hardware. Instead, from the start I can work more on customizing how I interact with my OS. I remember the hell I had with a Radeon x800 and Fedora Core 4 a few years ago. If "closed" (as if it's always a bad thing) software provides a better solution, I'm more likely to use that. So, I hope Mark still is going to put his best foot forward for plain Ubuntu. I bet the corporate interest is more aimed to that Ubuntu.
Just because two companies have the word "Egg" in them it doesn't make them related. Sort of like Playboy and Play-doh
I'm hoping Russia will take the lead and be first to surpass 100,000 so it will turn red
I can verify that with vanilla Ubuntu Hardy (as well as Gutsy before it), the media buttons AND the remote are already mapped perfectly in Gnome with my XPS M1330. So it could be that some tweaks may seem to be that because we're so used to making up for these things missing
>>> Exherbo is a distribution designed for people who know what they're doing with Linux.
Are you so badass that gentoo is like ripping candy out of newb babie hands? Exherbo!
>>> Although it shares some code with Gentoo, and although many concepts are similar, and although many of the people involved were or are Gentoo developers, most Exherbo code is rewritten from scratch.
We know way more than those Gentoo tards will ever know.
>>> Exherbo is not, at the moment, a user-targeted distribution.
Come on... you want it, don't you? You want to be so badass to use my awesome distro, to be the most leetest person ever.
>>> It's not that we think that Gentoo is bad.
Gentoo is wretched for our godly needs.
>>> OK, I Want to Try Exherbo
I am high as a kite.
>>> Right now, all we care about is getting it into a fit state for a small number of developers.
We're announcing this publicly because we have no idea what product we're presenting, but we'll make it sound fucking awesome compared to everything else, plus way wore leetsauce, so we can get some actual developers to contribute something useful to make our project objectively good.
>>> The above paragraph does not apply if your pet project is something we find interesting.
Again, if you have anything that will make this distro more than a publicity stunt, for the love of god, please let us know.
>>> It's not that we hate you (unless we do).
Forgot how much better we are then you? You did? OK, in conclusion, fuck you.
Credit where credit's due: John Gruber and Mark Pilgrim
"FailsForSure"
Just wanted to mention that Swfdec is coming along quite nicely also. It already plays all the popular FLV video players. Plus it has some cool features, like a universal "play" button on all the media it handles so you don't get assaulted by flash.
Yes, Amarok does the same on Ubuntu (gotta love Amarok)
:)
YES!!! Hypothetical: you're new to Linux. Someone tells you to open up a "terminal". OK.... You don't know what a terminal is but it resembles that command line thingy you've seen once or twice (and reminds you of the hackers at the movies). Now you see "sudo". wtf?? apt-get... wtf again. This kind of banter of "just type in garbel garbel garbel" just helps keep our operating system exclusive to us. While I don't think this year is "the year" (has it ever been?), Ubuntu has definitely made things way easier.
So, going back to your question. The average user is not going to understand that sudo mean "execute a command as another user", in this case the super user. Hell, they probably don't even understand what the root user is. They aren't going to understand that "apt-get install" will install packages for them. They also aren't going to understand what the ubuntu-restricted-extras package is. We can tell them to copy and paste this, but this reminds me of the "if you give a man a fish" cliche.
So what can they do instead? Well, this is where good package management software starts to show where linux has been advancing in the "average user" realm. I'm on a Gutsy laptop right now typing this. In hopes of not disproving my point, I opened add/remove. I typed in "mp3" in the search box. The first result was the restricted-extras package, which according to it's subtitle is "codecs to play mp3, sid, mpeg1..." :) However, I think this wouldn't have shown up with the default repositories enabled. But, according to Ubuntu Brainstorm the needed repositories will be enabled by default in Hardy. The terminal is a powerful and efficient tool. Yes, if I know the name of the package I want I use apt-get. But I do this because at this point I know what "sudo" and "apt-get" means. Telling new users to do it this way takes them out of their comfort zone. It's not necessary and doesn't teach them anything. For more anger about resorting to the terminal, I refer you to an excellent (NSFW) Mark Pilgrim rant.
But will it blend?
Sorry, I couldn't resist (8 ton blender? Beowolf Total Blender cluster?)
Kubuntu Hardy is not LTS, and the KDE 3 and KDE 4 releases are separate entities (the KDE4 release being termed the "remix").
Well, time to move to Haiku.
Not only is there gnash but another project is coming along very quickly: swfdec. I decided to use it over gnash on my Hardy install. It's very compatible and has cool features like putting a "play" button on every flash animation so you don't get assaulted by flash you don't want.
We are all making comparisons to IE trying this direction years ago. I was tempted to further comment on KDE's similar attempts that were split up with 4. But in making looking to the original article, I found that I couldn't compare much. Prism, the direction in which "the lines are blurred", does not make attempts at system management or even at messing with your files. It does however give the option to make web applications like GMail work similar to local apps. According to more information about Prism, this also gives the options of having specific profiles for specific web applications. Think about it: you could have a slimmed down, no add-on profile for quickly checking your e-mail. And for general browsing you could have the full profile, no-script, adblock plus etc. Sounds pretty original
As someone who uses public transportation, I know that a weak signal for someone using a cell means I have to plug in the canal phones. Now with satellite delay and engine noise, I think I'm going to need more noise blocking.
Yeah, maintaining bubbles like these can be quite expensive. I work in the IT department of Housing at my university. An ill-planned Mesh Network project for family/graduate housing has shown that maintaining these networks is more costly than just sticking in an access point. Each access point has to be able to support the bandwidth of many users, not just extend the signal to them. I'd imagine the Houston project required a good amount of fiber as well as very load capable access points.