Well, as someone who has been using his Eee PC in exactly this way, let me tell you officially that you're full of shit. Putting one's personal files on a USB stick makes a lot of sense. It's a shame that this isn't a standard feature on all laptops.
Doing that well requires two things: (1) OS support to make it easy to put your home directory on a removable drive, and (2) better case design so that the USB stick doesn't stick out. If this laptop has both, it's getting something right that every previous laptop has gotten wrong.
The second best choice right now is to put your home directory on an SDHC card. The problem with that is that they are more expensive than USB sticks and that the high capacities are harder to get.
I've been using my Eee PC with my home on an external USB drive for months with no problems. Why would you lose the USB drive? It's plugged in and it stays plugged in. And this device looks like it actually has space where the thing goes; with the Eee PC, it always sticks out a little.
I think this is a good idea, provided the built-in OS can be upgraded/reinstalled. I don't want to run Mandriva, I want to run Ubuntu.
Physically and scientifically, it's certainly possible to colonize Mars; nobody is disputing that.
The question is whether people are going to be willing to make the economic and social sacrifices to do it.
I don't think so. The societies that could afford it are so fearful, lazy, and self-absorbed that they will never finance colonization of other planets.
The only chance I see for colonizing other planets is if some large group of religious nuts makes it a priority. But given the general level of corruption in Christian and Muslim religious organizations, that's not going to happen either: churches want followers to sacrifice so that the church leaders can live it up, not to go to Mars.
Why not? That's how it worked in other countries with a resistance movement: in the USA, in european countries after WWII, in Vietnam, South Africa, Iran, etc.
Bullshit. Nazi leaders, for example, escalated the war and in the end committed suicide; they had no interest in compromise or deescalation because they wouldn't benefit from it.
They simply won't be able to recruit enough hotheads to make a significant impact: as long as you don't destroy their boring normal live, people prefer to live that boring normal live.
Those people that prefer boring normal lives don't try to kill US presidents. The militants, however, do not benefit from deescalation and peace, and those are the people that pick assassination targets. Hence, it's more rational for them to kill the dove than the hawk.
We spent a trillion dollars on the Iraq war and ruined our economy. The majority of our discretionary spending goes to the military. And almost none of that money is actually going to aid.
We're way beyond "spread to thin".
but we can't be the world's nanny anymore
We've never been the world's nanny. Almost everything the US has done internationally has been in the US military and economic interest, including WWI and WWII. The difference between then and now is that (1) past efforts were successful and (2) past efforts were aimed at deriving a benefit for us by helping others. The problem with the current efforts is that they are unsuccessful and that nobody benefits.
would would Iraqi insurgents like to see become the next US president? Obama or McCain? Now isn't that interesting...
You don't understand how politics and terrorism work. Do you seriously think that people whose primary occupation has been to make IEDs and gun people down in the street are going to fit back into a civilian economy? These people thrive on conflict. The last thing they want to see is a settlement and peace because then they'd lose their power base and be out of a job.
So, since McCain is more likely to prolong the conflict, McCain is the preferred choice of insurgents and terrorists.
Worse still, the majority of the images taken on cameras turns out to be children. Ironically, O2 has a website dedicated to "Protect Our Children", well a good first step would be to avoid leaking customer photos.
What bullshit idea is it that pictures of children need to be removed from the world? If you look at the history of photography, pictures of children have always been an important part of street photography, portraits, and artistic photography. In the US and many other places, it's legal to take pictures of children, even without permission of their parents. There are many pictures of children on Flickr and elsewhere.
There is no evidence that pictures of children place them at risk. Can we please stop and reverse this meme that there is anything wrong with taking pictures of children?
I don't really give a damn about pictures of children per se, but demonizing legitimate and legal content is a serious threat to free speech and democracy.
I don't see the point. What are you going to use those "skills" for? Any application of martial arts means (1) your life is likely at risk, and (2) you are likely going to have legal troubles.
Martial arts are kind of OK for keeping in shape; for defending yourself, they're useless in a modern society.
I never claimed anything about Linux, nor was it my intention to even comment on how it works.
Bullshit. Go back through the thread.
Tell you what, why don't you join a debating team at school or something, and come back when you can organize your train of thought with something approaching competence.
Yeah, that's what Microsoft marketing would like: to be able to spread their lies without anybody contradicting them.
Let's recap: nobody in this thread has been able to come up with a single example of where Windows takes less time to administer than Linux. That's what counts.
As for your "download and wizard" quippy, most well-design install packages have an unattended mode. You've never had a job at a company where they do that sort of thing when they push updates to thousands of machines?
We're making progress. Basically, you're saying that Linux is at least as easy and fast to install as Windows. Of course, the example you gave applies only if you install the same piece of software on thousands of machines and if you have a system manager working on it; for all the other cases, Windows has no equivalent of apt-get install.
So, your turn. I'm still waiting for any significant example where Windows actually takes less time to install or maintain. Come on, there must be at least something.
Yes, Obama is editing his web site and fine-tuning his message. BFD. That's what web sites are for. I don't see anything greatly inconsistent in what Obama is doing.
What is really going on is that McCain has a lousy record: he has been flip-flopping on positions and has a lot of history that he needs to hide from. This is a huge problem for the Republican party establishment, who probably would have preferred any candidate other than McCain.
So, what does McCain do? He tries to go on the offensive so that he can say "well, it's OK if I flip-flop because the other guy edits his web site, too".
Don't let McCain get away with this bullshit. McCain is trying to pull the wool over the eyes of both conservative Republicans and moderates in terms of his actual positions and record.
If you administer systems, you're a system administrator. Are you saying that you aren't administering systems? Then you have nothing to say about system administration.
No, it does not. Repeating that over and over again doesn't magically turn it into truth.
I have given specific examples. Just something as simple as installing OpenOffice: "apt-get install openoffice.org" is a lot faster than downloading the thing and going through a wizard.
In any case, I'd much rather have an application like the IIS management console and give something up for it (not that I have since all of that is now text-based and scriptable anyway) than have to deal with/etc/httpd.conf. That however is still a personal preference.
Another demonstration of your ignorance, since there are GUIs for maintaining/etc/httpd.conf
For example, I plugged in my Logitech camera yesterday, and without putting in the CD, windows update offered to install Logitech drivers. So I said, yep, go ahead, and it did it for me, the entire logitech cam app including drivers was installed,
When you plug a Logitech camera into Linux, it just works. There's no CD to put in, nothing to install.
So, I gave you one example where Windows came through,
No, you didn't. Driver CDs in Windows are a major headache.
No such thing as perfect, and both Windows and Linux are far from being perfect, in their own little ways.
So? I didn't say Linux was perfect, I said it takes less time to administer.
it amazes me how people get so worked up over the whole linux/windows thing
Well, I do care. It's not that I care that much about Linux. Linux is simply a somewhat better alternative to Windows right now. I care that Microsoft has wrecked the computer industry and has destroyed innovation. People who grew up after Microsoft (like you apparently) don't even realize what has been lost.
Since I use Windows every day, and I work with companies that deploy thousands of desktops and servers with the OS, I disagree
Well, it's hardly a surprise that a Windows system manager would claim that Windows is easier to maintain.
Your "quantification" seems a lot more made up than my personal opinion that Windows is not the existential nightmare people like you claim it to be.
Almost every major system management operation in Linux takes less time and less user interaction than the equivalent operation on Windows: the initial install, software upgrades, driver installs, operating system upgrades, network configuration, application installs, setting up network installs, etc.
If you want to claim that Windows maintenance takes less time, at least try to come up with a plausible story and plausible examples. But you have no facts, you just repeat Microsoft's bullshit TCO claims.
When it comes down to it, for the average personal desktop, I have found *no considerable difference* in installation and maintenance times.
Good. Now...
For every time apt-get dist-upgrade has saved me time over Microsoft updates, I've found myself having to get some fiddly little detail (like banshee or video codecs) working again. For every time I've had something wonky happen on Windows, I've had Compiz stop working entirely (and, in fact, I've fixed all the wonky things that have happened in Windows so far and to date nobody knows what's up with Compiz).
Those are issues you're getting because you choose to spend time on them, not because you have to. By default, many distros will give you Metacity and Rhythmbox, and there's a reason for that. Furthermore, you have chosen a non-commercial distribution (Debian) that requires more hands-on work than others. On other distros, video codecs require no fiddling at all.
If you want to spend less time fiddling, use Ubuntu LTS about 3-6 months after its initial release, or SuSE or some other "business" distro. Furthermore, buy supported hardware and don't install fiddly packages when non-fiddly ones will do.
On the other hand, since you're fairly experienced, you are probably much more effective at installing and using Windows, and you probably mess it up less, than the average Windows user.
Basically, you confirmed what I was saying: even with all the choices you make, you still spend about the same amount of time on Windows and Linux. And most businesses and users will end up spending more time on Windows than you, and much less on Linux.
I'm not sure that replacing JOVIAL code with C code is actually progress. If JOVIAL is anything like ALGOL 60, it's arguably a better programming language than C.
I'm sorry, are you implying that because I say something positive (or even non-negative), or have a different opinion than you, that I must work for Microsoft or have some sort of financial stake in the company?
It's not a question of "opinion"; Windows systems take a lot of time and manpower to install and maintain, that's just a fact. It's something you can reproduce for yourself. It's something you can also measure by looking at the number of machines a single support person can support in an organization. I've measured and quantified this. You obviously have not.
Do you actually expect people to discuss topics like these with you with that sort of attitude?
Why would I want to "discuss" anything with you? You're either deliberately lying or simply making things up. Either way, you shouldn't get away with it.
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Well, as someone who has been using his Eee PC in exactly this way, let me tell you officially that you're full of shit. Putting one's personal files on a USB stick makes a lot of sense. It's a shame that this isn't a standard feature on all laptops.
Doing that well requires two things: (1) OS support to make it easy to put your home directory on a removable drive, and (2) better case design so that the USB stick doesn't stick out. If this laptop has both, it's getting something right that every previous laptop has gotten wrong.
The second best choice right now is to put your home directory on an SDHC card. The problem with that is that they are more expensive than USB sticks and that the high capacities are harder to get.
I've been using my Eee PC with my home on an external USB drive for months with no problems. Why would you lose the USB drive? It's plugged in and it stays plugged in. And this device looks like it actually has space where the thing goes; with the Eee PC, it always sticks out a little.
I think this is a good idea, provided the built-in OS can be upgraded/reinstalled. I don't want to run Mandriva, I want to run Ubuntu.
likely enough information on board for a hostile intelligence service to snake its way deep into Downing Street's email servers.
So, in addition to stupid aides that fall for Chinese spy-whores, the British government is incapable of changing the passwords on its mail servers?
Physically and scientifically, it's certainly possible to colonize Mars; nobody is disputing that.
The question is whether people are going to be willing to make the economic and social sacrifices to do it.
I don't think so. The societies that could afford it are so fearful, lazy, and self-absorbed that they will never finance colonization of other planets.
The only chance I see for colonizing other planets is if some large group of religious nuts makes it a priority. But given the general level of corruption in Christian and Muslim religious organizations, that's not going to happen either: churches want followers to sacrifice so that the church leaders can live it up, not to go to Mars.
After that, they were just in for the ride
I.e., they prolonged the violence and started new offensives even though they could have ended it by capitulation in 1942.
I'm sorry, but you've lost me here.
Evidently. So, go back through the thread and re-read what I said; I'm not going to repeat myself.
Why not? That's how it worked in other countries with a resistance movement: in the USA, in european countries after WWII, in Vietnam, South Africa, Iran, etc.
Bullshit. Nazi leaders, for example, escalated the war and in the end committed suicide; they had no interest in compromise or deescalation because they wouldn't benefit from it.
They simply won't be able to recruit enough hotheads to make a significant impact: as long as you don't destroy their boring normal live, people prefer to live that boring normal live.
Those people that prefer boring normal lives don't try to kill US presidents. The militants, however, do not benefit from deescalation and peace, and those are the people that pick assassination targets. Hence, it's more rational for them to kill the dove than the hawk.
We spread ourselves too thin.
We spent a trillion dollars on the Iraq war and ruined our economy. The majority of our discretionary spending goes to the military. And almost none of that money is actually going to aid.
We're way beyond "spread to thin".
but we can't be the world's nanny anymore
We've never been the world's nanny. Almost everything the US has done internationally has been in the US military and economic interest, including WWI and WWII. The difference between then and now is that (1) past efforts were successful and (2) past efforts were aimed at deriving a benefit for us by helping others. The problem with the current efforts is that they are unsuccessful and that nobody benefits.
would would Iraqi insurgents like to see become the next US president? Obama or McCain? Now isn't that interesting...
You don't understand how politics and terrorism work. Do you seriously think that people whose primary occupation has been to make IEDs and gun people down in the street are going to fit back into a civilian economy? These people thrive on conflict. The last thing they want to see is a settlement and peace because then they'd lose their power base and be out of a job.
So, since McCain is more likely to prolong the conflict, McCain is the preferred choice of insurgents and terrorists.
Worse still, the majority of the images taken on cameras turns out to be children. Ironically, O2 has a website dedicated to "Protect Our Children", well a good first step would be to avoid leaking customer photos.
What bullshit idea is it that pictures of children need to be removed from the world? If you look at the history of photography, pictures of children have always been an important part of street photography, portraits, and artistic photography. In the US and many other places, it's legal to take pictures of children, even without permission of their parents. There are many pictures of children on Flickr and elsewhere.
There is no evidence that pictures of children place them at risk. Can we please stop and reverse this meme that there is anything wrong with taking pictures of children?
I don't really give a damn about pictures of children per se, but demonizing legitimate and legal content is a serious threat to free speech and democracy.
I don't see the point. What are you going to use those "skills" for? Any application of martial arts means (1) your life is likely at risk, and (2) you are likely going to have legal troubles.
Martial arts are kind of OK for keeping in shape; for defending yourself, they're useless in a modern society.
I never claimed anything about Linux, nor was it my intention to even comment on how it works.
Bullshit. Go back through the thread.
Tell you what, why don't you join a debating team at school or something, and come back when you can organize your train of thought with something approaching competence.
Yeah, that's what Microsoft marketing would like: to be able to spread their lies without anybody contradicting them.
Let's recap: nobody in this thread has been able to come up with a single example of where Windows takes less time to administer than Linux. That's what counts.
You only get one of these, BTW.
Does that mean you'll shut up? Good.
Trolling Slashdot is dreadfully easy [slashdot.org]
Uh huh.
As for your "download and wizard" quippy, most well-design install packages have an unattended mode. You've never had a job at a company where they do that sort of thing when they push updates to thousands of machines?
We're making progress. Basically, you're saying that Linux is at least as easy and fast to install as Windows. Of course, the example you gave applies only if you install the same piece of software on thousands of machines and if you have a system manager working on it; for all the other cases, Windows has no equivalent of apt-get install.
So, your turn. I'm still waiting for any significant example where Windows actually takes less time to install or maintain. Come on, there must be at least something.
His shuffling on positions hardly exonerates Obama from having done the same thing.
Are you stupid or something? Obama has NOT done the same thing.
Yes, McCain is a liar and a flip-flopper; have a look at these videos:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YuTemj7fmUY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OnyEMLXvgV8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6lyaMrS0hzk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFM1xqqTX_g
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXT78jZ9Kw0
I agree he was always a liar and flip-flopper. So what is he doing is nothing new.
Exactly: McCain is a liar and a flip-flopper. McCain cannot be trusted.
It's like Miro player or Joost, except half a dozen years late and controlled by big European media conglomerates!
Yes, Obama is editing his web site and fine-tuning his message. BFD. That's what web sites are for. I don't see anything greatly inconsistent in what Obama is doing.
What is really going on is that McCain has a lousy record: he has been flip-flopping on positions and has a lot of history that he needs to hide from. This is a huge problem for the Republican party establishment, who probably would have preferred any candidate other than McCain.
So, what does McCain do? He tries to go on the offensive so that he can say "well, it's OK if I flip-flop because the other guy edits his web site, too".
Don't let McCain get away with this bullshit. McCain is trying to pull the wool over the eyes of both conservative Republicans and moderates in terms of his actual positions and record.
Too bad I'm a developer and not a sysadmin.
If you administer systems, you're a system administrator. Are you saying that you aren't administering systems? Then you have nothing to say about system administration.
No, it does not. Repeating that over and over again doesn't magically turn it into truth.
I have given specific examples. Just something as simple as installing OpenOffice: "apt-get install openoffice.org" is a lot faster than downloading the thing and going through a wizard.
In any case, I'd much rather have an application like the IIS management console and give something up for it (not that I have since all of that is now text-based and scriptable anyway) than have to deal with /etc/httpd.conf. That however is still a personal preference.
Another demonstration of your ignorance, since there are GUIs for maintaining /etc/httpd.conf
For example, I plugged in my Logitech camera yesterday, and without putting in the CD, windows update offered to install Logitech drivers. So I said, yep, go ahead, and it did it for me, the entire logitech cam app including drivers was installed,
When you plug a Logitech camera into Linux, it just works. There's no CD to put in, nothing to install.
So, I gave you one example where Windows came through,
No, you didn't. Driver CDs in Windows are a major headache.
No such thing as perfect, and both Windows and Linux are far from being perfect, in their own little ways.
So? I didn't say Linux was perfect, I said it takes less time to administer.
it amazes me how people get so worked up over the whole linux/windows thing
Well, I do care. It's not that I care that much about Linux. Linux is simply a somewhat better alternative to Windows right now. I care that Microsoft has wrecked the computer industry and has destroyed innovation. People who grew up after Microsoft (like you apparently) don't even realize what has been lost.
All true, but what does any of that have to do with the language?
Since I use Windows every day, and I work with companies that deploy thousands of desktops and servers with the OS, I disagree
Well, it's hardly a surprise that a Windows system manager would claim that Windows is easier to maintain.
Your "quantification" seems a lot more made up than my personal opinion that Windows is not the existential nightmare people like you claim it to be.
Almost every major system management operation in Linux takes less time and less user interaction than the equivalent operation on Windows: the initial install, software upgrades, driver installs, operating system upgrades, network configuration, application installs, setting up network installs, etc.
If you want to claim that Windows maintenance takes less time, at least try to come up with a plausible story and plausible examples. But you have no facts, you just repeat Microsoft's bullshit TCO claims.
When it comes down to it, for the average personal desktop, I have found *no considerable difference* in installation and maintenance times.
Good. Now...
For every time apt-get dist-upgrade has saved me time over Microsoft updates, I've found myself having to get some fiddly little detail (like banshee or video codecs) working again. For every time I've had something wonky happen on Windows, I've had Compiz stop working entirely (and, in fact, I've fixed all the wonky things that have happened in Windows so far and to date nobody knows what's up with Compiz).
Those are issues you're getting because you choose to spend time on them, not because you have to. By default, many distros will give you Metacity and Rhythmbox, and there's a reason for that. Furthermore, you have chosen a non-commercial distribution (Debian) that requires more hands-on work than others. On other distros, video codecs require no fiddling at all.
If you want to spend less time fiddling, use Ubuntu LTS about 3-6 months after its initial release, or SuSE or some other "business" distro. Furthermore, buy supported hardware and don't install fiddly packages when non-fiddly ones will do.
On the other hand, since you're fairly experienced, you are probably much more effective at installing and using Windows, and you probably mess it up less, than the average Windows user.
Basically, you confirmed what I was saying: even with all the choices you make, you still spend about the same amount of time on Windows and Linux. And most businesses and users will end up spending more time on Windows than you, and much less on Linux.
I'm not sure that replacing JOVIAL code with C code is actually progress. If JOVIAL is anything like ALGOL 60, it's arguably a better programming language than C.
I'm sorry, are you implying that because I say something positive (or even non-negative), or have a different opinion than you, that I must work for Microsoft or have some sort of financial stake in the company?
It's not a question of "opinion"; Windows systems take a lot of time and manpower to install and maintain, that's just a fact. It's something you can reproduce for yourself. It's something you can also measure by looking at the number of machines a single support person can support in an organization. I've measured and quantified this. You obviously have not.
Do you actually expect people to discuss topics like these with you with that sort of attitude?
Why would I want to "discuss" anything with you? You're either deliberately lying or simply making things up. Either way, you shouldn't get away with it.