Office suites in general are profoundly sick, Microsoft's just as much as OOo.
First, they are gigantic, hard to maintain C++ programs. It takes forever to figure out how to change the simplest things about them, the programming environments sucks, and nobody has figured out how to structure large C++ programs so that they are easy to modify. OOo may be annoying as hell, but it's not worth spending several weeks analyzing the code just to fix an annoyance.
Second, they do the wrong things and they are obsolete. Smaller, more targeted applications are the way to go, and most of those can be delivered over the web.
Who cares about the "actual cost"? Do you think you pay anything close to actual cost on your software, designer sneakers, or iPod Nano?
Companies need to make profit somewhere, so why not with texting? And it's not like you end up having to go to the poorhouse. You can get an unlimited texting plan fairly cheap, or you can run an IM client on your phone with an unlimited data plan.
Would more competition be good? Of course. But who do you think is going to make the investment to put in another set of towers across the country? Four carriers is actually pretty good.
Yeah, because that approach works so well for cigarettes and food, right?
The automobile market is not a free and efficient market; it is already heavily distorted by government subsidies and other factors. In addition, buyers do not have the information or expertise to make optimal decisions. And the automobile industry manages to influence choice strongly through advertising.
Besides, several of your choices are mutually incompatible: you can't have low purchase costs, cars that last a long time and are cheap to repair, and high resale value; it's economically impossible.
Your "solution" is as obvious as hoping that Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny will fix all of our problems.
Rail-based infrastructures work better with higher population densities
What matters is having densely populated centers, not a densely populated nation. The US used to have settlement patterns that worked very well with public transportation; they simply were destroyed by poor urban planning, enabled by a subsidized automobile infrastructure.
otherwise, you're laying an awful lot of track to get from point A to point B.
Absolute distances don't matter that much; one mile through a settled area can cost more than one hundred miles through the country.
Odd that your kind of logic doesn't get applied to, oh, say, drugs. Talk about a product that many people want. Well, why doesn't it? It doesn't because the cost of widespread drug use are too high.
Gas in the US should have been at $4/gal many years ago, in order to pay for all the actual costs necessary to keep the gas flowing, in addition to all the upkeep and other automobile related costs in America.
The only reason people can afford to buy SUVs is because SUVs and driving are being massively subsidized by tax dollars.
First of all, the automobile represents freedom. Freedom to go where you want, when you want. You are not tied to mass transit schedules and routes.
You don't need long distance driving for that, you can go by rail and rent a car at the other end. You know, like people do with airplanes anyway. And you don't need an SUV either, an economy car will do.
But that kind of freedom is an illusion anyway; you cannot go "where you want" anymore, if you ever could.
Americans want cars that are safe and useful.
An economy car is safe and useful, more so than an SUV.
A family of five wants a car that can comfortably haul the family plus a couple of friends plus their stuff.
Then they should pay for it themselves. Right now, the only reason why most Americans can afford anything like an SUV and drive it is because of huge hidden subsidies pumped into the highway system, gasoline, and the car industry.
Tinkering with life actually isn't intrinsically bad: genetic engineering can be done safely. You get problems only when the biological equivalent of script kiddies start tinkering with biology. That may be unavoidable, but it's unavoidable for sociological reasons, it's not a problem with the technology itself.
As for Bill Joy, he is right that genetic engineering is dangerous, but he gets just about everything else wrong. I suppose the fact that people with no qualifications like Bill Joy speak as experts in this area is itself an indication of the problem.
Most genetic engineering done for research purposes really is harmless and people used to be way too careful.
But people can really mess up. One of the most common bacteria in genetic engineering, E. coli, grows in the intestines of every human being. If you add the wrong genes to it, you have a potent pathogen. Viruses are even worse.
Maybe the solution to the Fermi paradox ("where are they?") is that all civilizations kill themselves by homegrown genetic engineering.
You should patent "a system and method for storing people's credit card numbers as part of an E-commerce system" and then demand insane license fees. Please do.
Actually, Microsoft is to be applauded in that regard: they patent many stupid, customer-hostile ideas and thereby save the world from other companies actually implementing that trash. If only Microsoft enforced its patents (and copyrights) more vigorously.
Japan is doing the same thing, and I suspect other countries are as well. I think European nations just quietly scan your passport, including picture. Relatively speaking, the US isn't all that bad.
Of course, I think the US should lead by being more open and more liberal. I don't see what all this data is really good for.
Well, the answer is: it can't be done and you're risking your own sanity and your parents' security if you try.
Yes, there will be some of "but Mathilda is running this neat software to do... why can't I?", but dealing with that is much less effort than explaining to your parents why their machine has turned into a porn distribution node or has dancing hamsters all over the screen. In most cases, you can simply point them to a web site that does the same thing these days.
The Mac has many of the same annoying misfeatures that Windows has, including software that pops up annoying "I need to be updated" dialogs and inconsistent interfaces among third party applications.
Apple's revenue-enhancing policies make that even worse, like the fact that network backups are only easy to their service and their hardware.
And unless you're actually a Mac user yourself and know all the tricks and utilities already, maintaining a Mac for a parent is a lot of work.
I've done both, and Ubuntu is both easier to use and easier to support than OS X. OS X is still a better choice than Windows.
A Week? Really?:) Why did you format it in the first place? Why did you setup a restore image in the first place created on the Windows clean installation?
Because getting a clean Windows install isn't usually the hardest part (if it is, you're really screwed), installing and configuring all the software is.
And the last time I did Upgrade Version on Ubuntu, it took an hour just to download the new files.
Typical apples-to-oranges comparisons.
He wasn't talking about upgrades, he was talking about reinstalls. Time to reinstall on Ubuntu because of bitrot is zero because, unlike Windows systems, Ubuntu systems don't deteriorate with use. Even if they did, you could fix it by simple telling the system to reinstall packages.
(And how long does it take to obtain Windows for an upgrade? It takes longer, because it's a bigger download or you have to go to the store. Furthermore, even with download, the Ubuntu upgrade requires almost no user interaction, and the OS upgrade also upgrades all the applications.)
but it just irks me how much GNU/Linux people bend the truth when pushing their agenda
I know what you mean: it irks me how much Windows people bend the truth when pushing their agenda. You know, like you just did again. Windows is being kept alive by lies and fanbois.
Except for the simple fact that you ignored the "flash didn't install properly" in the beginning of the sentence.
The only possible meaning of that sentence is that he attempted a browser-based install of Flash. And that means that he was running a very old version of Ubuntu or installed the wrong version (e.g., Ubuntu server).
Please, before you stop reading a sentence in your zeal to get your fanboi activism off, comprehend the ENTIRE sentence first.
Please, before jumping to conclusions, use your head.
And yes, it's still the case, installing from tarballs, when the magicall mythicall UBUNTU repository stops working.
Ubuntu repositories don't "stop working", and installing something that's in the repository separately from tarballs is a good way of destroying your system.
But, then it started: they couldn't access their preferred websites, because flash didn't install properly.
Flash is preinstalled on Ubuntu and just works. Either you were using a very old copy of Ubuntu (before Flash was redistributable), or you messed up the install.
So, I had to teach a 80 year's old how to untar and copy a library over to the mozilla directory, which was a pretty gruesome experience.
I thought you "installed VNC so I could manage their GUI desktops if necessary".
And you can have happy Xmases forever, without have to being cursed because of the homo-fanboy F*ckuntu...
I think you have issues, and I'm not just referring to incompetence...
I have a couple of Windows partitions that I boot into rarely and use only for the occasional browser compatibility testing and they deteriorate and break. I also had a Windows Media Center PC that I didn't use for anything else and after 9 months of updates, wouldn't receive TV anymore and had lots of other problems. Yes, Windows really does literally break by itself.
Of course, Apple holds the copyright for OS X. The real question is what right they have to impose restrictions on how you use it. Any attempts for Apple to regulate its usage would have to be based that loading OS X requires making another "copy", but that's really stretching copyright too thin. The obvious application of copyright to OS X is that if you buy a copy, you own a copy and can run it on whatever hardware you choose. You should even be able to re-sell it.
And this is different from the many people who use linux for the image of being an uber geek how?
There aren't many people like that. Most Linux usage is in academia, research, embedded systems, and many other places where it is simply technically the best choice.
That said, the FSF would never deign to offer a good, workable alternative;
The alternative to DRM is no DRM. What else do you think they should offer?
It's just "give for freeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!", with the predictably short-sighted results
The FSF doesn't want you to give away things for free, they simply think that the recipient should have certain rights. What business models do and don't work given those rights is for the market to figure out.
There are plenty of business models that work in the absence of DRM. In fact, so far, it's unclear that DRM even is a competitive and working business model.
People will figure it out sooner or later when they will want to move their music and videos to a non-Apple approved platform.
Or they would if the whole approach weren't obsolete anyway. In a few years, you'll just get everything on-demand, and the notion of managing terabytes of your own audio and video data will seem as quaint as photographic film.
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Office suites in general are profoundly sick, Microsoft's just as much as OOo.
First, they are gigantic, hard to maintain C++ programs. It takes forever to figure out how to change the simplest things about them, the programming environments sucks, and nobody has figured out how to structure large C++ programs so that they are easy to modify. OOo may be annoying as hell, but it's not worth spending several weeks analyzing the code just to fix an annoyance.
Second, they do the wrong things and they are obsolete. Smaller, more targeted applications are the way to go, and most of those can be delivered over the web.
Who cares about the "actual cost"? Do you think you pay anything close to actual cost on your software, designer sneakers, or iPod Nano?
Companies need to make profit somewhere, so why not with texting? And it's not like you end up having to go to the poorhouse. You can get an unlimited texting plan fairly cheap, or you can run an IM client on your phone with an unlimited data plan.
Would more competition be good? Of course. But who do you think is going to make the investment to put in another set of towers across the country? Four carriers is actually pretty good.
OpenOffice is far from perfect. The UI isn't going to wow anyone. It is slow and clunky.
Yes, it is. But, then, so is Microsoft Office. I think the only reason people prefer Microsoft Office is because they know it.
Build cars that people want to buy.
Yeah, because that approach works so well for cigarettes and food, right?
The automobile market is not a free and efficient market; it is already heavily distorted by government subsidies and other factors. In addition, buyers do not have the information or expertise to make optimal decisions. And the automobile industry manages to influence choice strongly through advertising.
Besides, several of your choices are mutually incompatible: you can't have low purchase costs, cars that last a long time and are cheap to repair, and high resale value; it's economically impossible.
Your "solution" is as obvious as hoping that Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny will fix all of our problems.
Rail-based infrastructures work better with higher population densities
What matters is having densely populated centers, not a densely populated nation. The US used to have settlement patterns that worked very well with public transportation; they simply were destroyed by poor urban planning, enabled by a subsidized automobile infrastructure.
otherwise, you're laying an awful lot of track to get from point A to point B.
Absolute distances don't matter that much; one mile through a settled area can cost more than one hundred miles through the country.
Odd that your kind of logic doesn't get applied to, oh, say, drugs. Talk about a product that many people want. Well, why doesn't it? It doesn't because the cost of widespread drug use are too high.
Gas in the US should have been at $4/gal many years ago, in order to pay for all the actual costs necessary to keep the gas flowing, in addition to all the upkeep and other automobile related costs in America.
The only reason people can afford to buy SUVs is because SUVs and driving are being massively subsidized by tax dollars.
First of all, the automobile represents freedom. Freedom to go where you want, when you want. You are not tied to mass transit schedules and routes.
You don't need long distance driving for that, you can go by rail and rent a car at the other end. You know, like people do with airplanes anyway. And you don't need an SUV either, an economy car will do.
But that kind of freedom is an illusion anyway; you cannot go "where you want" anymore, if you ever could.
Americans want cars that are safe and useful.
An economy car is safe and useful, more so than an SUV.
A family of five wants a car that can comfortably haul the family plus a couple of friends plus their stuff.
Then they should pay for it themselves. Right now, the only reason why most Americans can afford anything like an SUV and drive it is because of huge hidden subsidies pumped into the highway system, gasoline, and the car industry.
Sports utility vehicles are fun and sexy in the same way cigarettes and super-sized meals are: it's no more than a marketing fiction.
Tinkering with life actually isn't intrinsically bad: genetic engineering can be done safely. You get problems only when the biological equivalent of script kiddies start tinkering with biology. That may be unavoidable, but it's unavoidable for sociological reasons, it's not a problem with the technology itself.
As for Bill Joy, he is right that genetic engineering is dangerous, but he gets just about everything else wrong. I suppose the fact that people with no qualifications like Bill Joy speak as experts in this area is itself an indication of the problem.
Most genetic engineering done for research purposes really is harmless and people used to be way too careful.
But people can really mess up. One of the most common bacteria in genetic engineering, E. coli, grows in the intestines of every human being. If you add the wrong genes to it, you have a potent pathogen. Viruses are even worse.
Maybe the solution to the Fermi paradox ("where are they?") is that all civilizations kill themselves by homegrown genetic engineering.
You should patent "a system and method for storing people's credit card numbers as part of an E-commerce system" and then demand insane license fees. Please do.
Actually, Microsoft is to be applauded in that regard: they patent many stupid, customer-hostile ideas and thereby save the world from other companies actually implementing that trash. If only Microsoft enforced its patents (and copyrights) more vigorously.
Japan is doing the same thing, and I suspect other countries are as well. I think European nations just quietly scan your passport, including picture. Relatively speaking, the US isn't all that bad.
Of course, I think the US should lead by being more open and more liberal. I don't see what all this data is really good for.
They're doing this because they have caught oh-so-many terrorists using that fingerprint and face data so far, right?
I suspect that by now, the term "netbook" has become generic and they have no claim. They still have rights to "Psion Netbook".
Well, the answer is: it can't be done and you're risking your own sanity and your parents' security if you try.
Yes, there will be some of "but Mathilda is running this neat software to do... why can't I?", but dealing with that is much less effort than explaining to your parents why their machine has turned into a porn distribution node or has dancing hamsters all over the screen. In most cases, you can simply point them to a web site that does the same thing these days.
The Mac has many of the same annoying misfeatures that Windows has, including software that pops up annoying "I need to be updated" dialogs and inconsistent interfaces among third party applications.
Apple's revenue-enhancing policies make that even worse, like the fact that network backups are only easy to their service and their hardware.
And unless you're actually a Mac user yourself and know all the tricks and utilities already, maintaining a Mac for a parent is a lot of work.
I've done both, and Ubuntu is both easier to use and easier to support than OS X. OS X is still a better choice than Windows.
People who OS bash are like runners in the special olympics. Even if you win, you're still a retard
This is why you bash Linux, right?
A Week? Really? :) Why did you format it in the first place? Why did you setup a restore image in the first place created on the Windows clean installation?
Because getting a clean Windows install isn't usually the hardest part (if it is, you're really screwed), installing and configuring all the software is.
And the last time I did Upgrade Version on Ubuntu, it took an hour just to download the new files.
Typical apples-to-oranges comparisons.
He wasn't talking about upgrades, he was talking about reinstalls. Time to reinstall on Ubuntu because of bitrot is zero because, unlike Windows systems, Ubuntu systems don't deteriorate with use. Even if they did, you could fix it by simple telling the system to reinstall packages.
(And how long does it take to obtain Windows for an upgrade? It takes longer, because it's a bigger download or you have to go to the store. Furthermore, even with download, the Ubuntu upgrade requires almost no user interaction, and the OS upgrade also upgrades all the applications.)
but it just irks me how much GNU/Linux people bend the truth when pushing their agenda
I know what you mean: it irks me how much Windows people bend the truth when pushing their agenda. You know, like you just did again. Windows is being kept alive by lies and fanbois.
Except for the simple fact that you ignored the "flash didn't install properly" in the beginning of the sentence.
The only possible meaning of that sentence is that he attempted a browser-based install of Flash. And that means that he was running a very old version of Ubuntu or installed the wrong version (e.g., Ubuntu server).
Please, before you stop reading a sentence in your zeal to get your fanboi activism off, comprehend the ENTIRE sentence first.
Please, before jumping to conclusions, use your head.
And yes, it's still the case, installing from tarballs, when the magicall mythicall UBUNTU repository stops working.
Ubuntu repositories don't "stop working", and installing something that's in the repository separately from tarballs is a good way of destroying your system.
But, then it started: they couldn't access their preferred websites, because flash didn't install properly.
Flash is preinstalled on Ubuntu and just works. Either you were using a very old copy of Ubuntu (before Flash was redistributable), or you messed up the install.
So, I had to teach a 80 year's old how to untar and copy a library over to the mozilla directory, which was a pretty gruesome experience.
I thought you "installed VNC so I could manage their GUI desktops if necessary".
And you can have happy Xmases forever, without have to being cursed because of the homo-fanboy F*ckuntu...
I think you have issues, and I'm not just referring to incompetence...
I have a couple of Windows partitions that I boot into rarely and use only for the occasional browser compatibility testing and they deteriorate and break. I also had a Windows Media Center PC that I didn't use for anything else and after 9 months of updates, wouldn't receive TV anymore and had lots of other problems. Yes, Windows really does literally break by itself.
Of course, Apple holds the copyright for OS X. The real question is what right they have to impose restrictions on how you use it. Any attempts for Apple to regulate its usage would have to be based that loading OS X requires making another "copy", but that's really stretching copyright too thin. The obvious application of copyright to OS X is that if you buy a copy, you own a copy and can run it on whatever hardware you choose. You should even be able to re-sell it.
And this is different from the many people who use linux for the image of being an uber geek how?
There aren't many people like that. Most Linux usage is in academia, research, embedded systems, and many other places where it is simply technically the best choice.
That said, the FSF would never deign to offer a good, workable alternative;
The alternative to DRM is no DRM. What else do you think they should offer?
It's just "give for freeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!", with the predictably short-sighted results
The FSF doesn't want you to give away things for free, they simply think that the recipient should have certain rights. What business models do and don't work given those rights is for the market to figure out.
There are plenty of business models that work in the absence of DRM. In fact, so far, it's unclear that DRM even is a competitive and working business model.
People will figure it out sooner or later when they will want to move their music and videos to a non-Apple approved platform.
Or they would if the whole approach weren't obsolete anyway. In a few years, you'll just get everything on-demand, and the notion of managing terabytes of your own audio and video data will seem as quaint as photographic film.