Entirely correct. The DoJ IPs are blocked for a certain length of time; the DoJ has not been banned, i.e. told to bugger off and not come back for x amount of time.
This sort of thing happens all the time, when a company or government department has an employee being dickish on Wikipedia from their work address; it's generally sorted out quietly and without a fuss, because the company/dept is understandably embarrassed by it. And the company BOFH can be trusted to deal with the offender in future.
Only in theory. I am as meetingphobic as any techie and even I find Outlook's meeting interface less annoying than getting anything organised using Google Calendar. But yes, it does strike me as a line of attack. And you can sync GCal and Outlook now.
There's no reason for Ubuntu not to do better. Remember, it has to do better than Windows to be perceived as a superior replacement. It already demolishes XP in performance, all the suggestions in this article are quite reasonable UI polish.
Remember that Windows (especially XP) is perceived as "good enough," because it's what people are used to. So replacing it means getting the user to feel like it's even better. Ubuntu already craps on XP for speed (particularly without the need for an antivirus, etc), so the usability suggestions this anecdotal report brings up are nothing but helpful. I didn't see any suggestion that was intrinsically difficult or inappropriate to implement.
The nice thing about Ubuntu is that they started from a solid technical base (Debian), but expressly regard "I'm a n00b and I don't know how to do X" as a reportable usability bug rather than a trigger to say "RTFM."
"3) Use torrent. Successful (but this is not a novice user task)"
I strongly disagree. BitTorrent is incredibly mainstream as "how to get TV programs." So just changing the menu item to "Transmission (BitTorrent)" should be enough to make the scifi-seeking n00b happy.
Heh, yes. We have a Gmail account set up as a backup for when Exchange is being rubbish again.
The killer function of Outlook/Exchange is for managers to arrange meetings. To get the people who sign the cheques to switch, you need to convince them that the new thing is better, then they can use the price as justification.
It's an excellent meeting organiser. (The included email client is pretty crappy.) Outlook is excellent at what it does for the people who actually sign the cheques. This is the same reason Excel is a good spreadsheet program.
Stupid people will continue to be stupid, and smart people will have outlets. e.g. Clay Shirky gets people on Slashdot talking about him, rather than just sitting in his basement.
The key factor is: a technology is mature when you can get laid with it. Can you get laid watching Gilligan's Island? Can you get laid meeting people on the Internet?
HOLLYHELL, Monday - In an admirable display of synergy between hard-headed business sense and sensitivity to artistic rightness, New Line Cinemas has hired Adam Sandler to direct The Hobbit, the prequel to The Lord Of The Rings.
"Peter Jackson may have made us three billion dollars and paved our goddamn driveways with Oscars," said a spokesdroid, "but when he dared question the three nickels and a gum wrapper payment, well. We knew we just couldn't work with someone so risibly unprofessional."
Sandler is likely to be working under renowned producer Uwe Boll. "Okay, here is what I am thinking, ja? Your Bilbo Baggins will be a WOMAN in Nazi Germany. A naked woman. And the One Ring will not show up. And she gets raped by Hitler! Gandalf will be played by Keanu Reeves. I AM THE DIRECTOR! I mean programmer. PRODUCER."
Jackson has lost weight, shaved his feet and gone back to his roots to make a warmhearted New Zealand-based family film in the style of his earliest works, under the working title Zombie Cancer Bukkake Pus-Nodules, with a budget in the range of over forty New Zealand dollars.
Work at New Line continues. "We at New Line are convinced that Professor Tolkien would have agreed with us that Adam Sandler will realise her artistic vision eleventy-one percent. We've bought three years' worth of shark futures."
Existing programs in a niche never stopped people doing their own. Java being under a proper free licence will (a) attract open source programmers to it who never used it before (b) see a lot of free-licenced Java code going into distros where people will work on it. There's really quite a lot of useful Java things you don't hear much of in free software circles because of the not-yet-free licence on Java.
Developers like Java, just as they like.NET, because it lets you quickly lash together something that almost works. A proper free licence means actually useful things will get free software programmers wanting to work on that last 10% (which is really the last 90%, but anyway).
Slashdot Mirror
Entirely correct. The DoJ IPs are blocked for a certain length of time; the DoJ has not been banned, i.e. told to bugger off and not come back for x amount of time.
This sort of thing happens all the time, when a company or government department has an employee being dickish on Wikipedia from their work address; it's generally sorted out quietly and without a fuss, because the company/dept is understandably embarrassed by it. And the company BOFH can be trusted to deal with the offender in future.
(Then, of course, there's Overstock.com.)
Wikipedia: Massively Multiplayer Online Notepad.
Yep. KDE of course does this already ;-p
My girlfriend tried "sudo fried egg sandwich?" on me when she was pregnant. I replied "partition not mounted."
PRICE: ONE SOUL.
Only in theory. I am as meetingphobic as any techie and even I find Outlook's meeting interface less annoying than getting anything organised using Google Calendar. But yes, it does strike me as a line of attack. And you can sync GCal and Outlook now.
There's no reason for Ubuntu not to do better. Remember, it has to do better than Windows to be perceived as a superior replacement. It already demolishes XP in performance, all the suggestions in this article are quite reasonable UI polish.
Remember that Windows (especially XP) is perceived as "good enough," because it's what people are used to. So replacing it means getting the user to feel like it's even better. Ubuntu already craps on XP for speed (particularly without the need for an antivirus, etc), so the usability suggestions this anecdotal report brings up are nothing but helpful. I didn't see any suggestion that was intrinsically difficult or inappropriate to implement.
The nice thing about Ubuntu is that they started from a solid technical base (Debian), but expressly regard "I'm a n00b and I don't know how to do X" as a reportable usability bug rather than a trigger to say "RTFM."
That's sudo apt-get girlfriend. It typically requires full access and control of your system.
"3) Use torrent. Successful (but this is not a novice user task)"
I strongly disagree. BitTorrent is incredibly mainstream as "how to get TV programs." So just changing the menu item to "Transmission (BitTorrent)" should be enough to make the scifi-seeking n00b happy.
Dude. They can get pr0n on their work phone!
Heh, yes. We have a Gmail account set up as a backup for when Exchange is being rubbish again.
The killer function of Outlook/Exchange is for managers to arrange meetings. To get the people who sign the cheques to switch, you need to convince them that the new thing is better, then they can use the price as justification.
It's an excellent meeting organiser. (The included email client is pretty crappy.) Outlook is excellent at what it does for the people who actually sign the cheques. This is the same reason Excel is a good spreadsheet program.
Stupid people will continue to be stupid, and smart people will have outlets. e.g. Clay Shirky gets people on Slashdot talking about him, rather than just sitting in his basement.
The key factor is: a technology is mature when you can get laid with it. Can you get laid watching Gilligan's Island? Can you get laid meeting people on the Internet?
That's why this surplus is still a surplus.
Just for your interest: http://stats.grok.se/ is a nicely processed version of the data available on Domas Mituzas' wikistats page. Domas is one of the Wikimedia database gurus, who started as a volunteer, got hired by MySQL because of it (Wikimedia is a fine example of extreme MySQL) and was recently drafted to the Wikimedia board. Original announcement of good stats, Domas' blog post. And it is indeed every page view, close as we can get it. As you can imagine, getting data this accurate for a site as busy as Wikimedia (#8) with the budget of Wikimedia (>$0, give or take a few million) is an incredible win.
Yes, I wrote it ;-)
That said, I thought the movies were fantastically good.
And that Sermon On The Mount. Every phrase is a cliche in English. What the hell. Couldn't Jesus get a more original scriptwriter?
I'll have you know Wine runs many Windows trojans perfectly!
HOLLYHELL, Monday - In an admirable display of synergy between hard-headed business sense and sensitivity to artistic rightness, New Line Cinemas has hired Adam Sandler to direct The Hobbit, the prequel to The Lord Of The Rings.
"Peter Jackson may have made us three billion dollars and paved our goddamn driveways with Oscars," said a spokesdroid, "but when he dared question the three nickels and a gum wrapper payment, well. We knew we just couldn't work with someone so risibly unprofessional."
Sandler is likely to be working under renowned producer Uwe Boll. "Okay, here is what I am thinking, ja? Your Bilbo Baggins will be a WOMAN in Nazi Germany. A naked woman. And the One Ring will not show up. And she gets raped by Hitler! Gandalf will be played by Keanu Reeves. I AM THE DIRECTOR! I mean programmer. PRODUCER."
Jackson has lost weight, shaved his feet and gone back to his roots to make a warmhearted New Zealand-based family film in the style of his earliest works, under the working title Zombie Cancer Bukkake Pus-Nodules, with a budget in the range of over forty New Zealand dollars.
Work at New Line continues. "We at New Line are convinced that Professor Tolkien would have agreed with us that Adam Sandler will realise her artistic vision eleventy-one percent. We've bought three years' worth of shark futures."
Mod parent up!
Because the books are spoiled by all the crap they've influenced.
(I first read LOTR in 2004. It read like a transcript of a game of D&D.)
Existing programs in a niche never stopped people doing their own. Java being under a proper free licence will (a) attract open source programmers to it who never used it before (b) see a lot of free-licenced Java code going into distros where people will work on it. There's really quite a lot of useful Java things you don't hear much of in free software circles because of the not-yet-free licence on Java.
Developers like Java, just as they like .NET, because it lets you quickly lash together something that almost works. A proper free licence means actually useful things will get free software programmers wanting to work on that last 10% (which is really the last 90%, but anyway).