You forgot unnecessary default bloatware (mono) and a propensity to cover up useful text screens with useless graphical screens.
But still, I'd take Ubuntu over Fedora anyday, at least there's some kind of real attitude about support compared to Fedora's ambivalence.
Don't know why I'm getting modded down on this, it's straight from a gimp's mouth.
There are lots of user friendlier image editing programs that have sprung up due to the warts of gimp.
I have it from a gimp developer that they intentionally cultivate user unfriendliness because they don't want to deal with 'clueless newbies.' It would benefit ubuntu and open source mainstream if they forgot about gimp. It has a stupid name and is not designed to be a user friendly program. It's not particularly powerful either, so holding it up as the Photoshop alternative isn't very useful.
You're talking about a very particular kind of representative democracy framed by particular conditions. Among other problems, the conversations don't scale very well. If it all comes down to one day once every X years of voting between 5 candidates and 4 issues, I don't think that's a very good system. Granted, participation could shift from those adept in 'traditional' campaigning to on-line forms, but I think the participation would be higher. I am for a very radical change of democracy using modern computer networks, where delving into issues involves organizing information available to everyone, clicking on links and consulting individuals. I do agree some checks and balances are required, and some processes should be extended with multiple levels. But systems can evolve past their historical basis to something based more on positive beliefs of the benefits of networked individuals, that their capacity (for example, those involved on networking sites) should be expanded so we rely less on the charisma of elected officials and more on competent individuals in open connected networks creating accessible permanent records. I am very pro government but think it should be very efficient, very open, and very inclusive of the public it's meant to serve on a constant basis.
I often wonder why this doesn't happen.. Get most people to share their wifi (in exchange for free internet), supergeeks will set up wired caching hubs. Layer on some social networking so it's more difficult to exploit. Voila, free citizen-net!
Why does doing it with paper get people involved in their civics?
If you want more direct democracy (voting on finer issues) allowing internet based involvement would seem to be the more practical route, unless you think people need to be hypnotized in person.
So.... what's better than My Documents (or some other similarly named directory)? I'm glad Gnome backed away from the conceptual spatial version of directories. Traditional folders are easy enough to understand, complemented with cross system search. Unfortunately the open source world is not very good at front end innovation, but with the quality of the underpinnings (any OS is doomed to reinvent) is very good at understanding and accommodating approaches of the day.
I'd like to see the free software world charge ahead with an amazing resolution free and shared timeline branching desktop.
I think you're totally wrong. The basics of the WIMP - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WIMP_(computing) - experience date way before Windows, and Microsoft only got file structure sensible - not storing data with programs - post Windows 95. Firefox across all operating systems can be configured to ask where to save documents so it's not an Ubuntu thing. And what's especially wrong with My Documents?
The main thing Ubuntu tries to do is make it easy for people to understand how to use the OS. On that level, they succeed admirably. The same strategy is used for OpenOffice - make it like Office so people can adjust to it easily. That's the main goal - make it functional and easy to use, free and easy to install for as many people as possible. Those who need to can "escape" to the more advanced options. Being different for the sake of being different would be a terrible mistake.
There's a way to get a Thinkpad without Vista on it from the Lenovo site, haven't tried it recently but it worked a month ago. Change the CPU in any system to a Celeron, then select the enabled Vista Starter option (you know, for developing countries that would be confused by having a first world operating system). Then change the CPU to something real, and the OS changes to no charge DOS. You can then place the order. I ordered a T400S using this technique.
Good luck!
Thanks... I'll try Ubuntu 9.10 and see if it fixes my problems. I note that multichannel (ac3) encoded media is considered a "political" problem, while for the vast majority of users that would be more important than being able to switch from headphones to the neighbor's stereo.
Pulse Audio's flexibility sounds cool. But I just want my 5.1 audio setup to work. It doesn't. Right now it's completely broken, audio skips and I have to use low level programs to get surround sound. The audio system should just pass the raw stream through to my very capable receiver. When I try to use PA to do this, the receiver shuts down. I've spent hours trying to configure this through random "guides." I'm technical but I've grown very tired of tweaking, I want a distro that just works for a very common case - multimedia.
Um, no... every time there is a government change, ministries get renamed, rearranged, budgets get slashed and rearranged. Haven't you heard the phrase "Canada's New Government?" Sounds a bit Orwellian.
Their plan is to make money off the residue of what TPB was. Their projection is that bots and spiders alone will generate enough advertising dollars to pay for the sale. Also they are working on a co venture with The Onion to expand on http://thepiratebay.org/legal
PS why is comment posting so horrible (Using Firefox on Linux). its laggy and loses focus (not me, the comment box). Just give me plain text, please.
Thanks for that info. Fujitsu makes great computers, aside from their keyboards (I had my eye on a Fujitsu Tablet). Hopefully the drive will relate to what you posted.
I just ordered a Thinkpad T400S with the 128GB SSD option. It was impossible to determine whose SSD it is - some reports said Samsung, some said Toshiba, reps don't know. Small random writes (eg generating class files, but very commonly used in apps ranging from Pidgin to Firefox) can be quite slow with SSDs. I intend to use the device with Ubuntu installed for typical desktop use, and developing server ware that uses Java, PHP, and MySQL.
Anyone have insight with this device combination and know of any issues?
I've had several touchscreens/tablets over the years, starting with a Fujitsu B series. While I really like the concept and for some apps it's a lot nicer to use, I just ordered an expensive non touch screen computer. The main reason is while the touchscreen is nice, it's not a big breakthrough, and there are always compromises in other areas - keyboard, screen size, computing power, weight, etc. Ultimately, with those compromises, it's just not worth it until there is a large breakthrough in a universal approach to touch interface. For some people who find it effective to hand write notes or need to make freehand diagrams, it can be worth it, but for everyone else it's better to focus on more important features. (For those who talk about One Note's consolidation features, well guess what, the world outside of MS Office has moved on in terms of general consolidation of data).
It starts with calling design "art." Art is what you find in the Louvre, not the consistency of visual messaging on the desktop. Every once in a while they decide they're going to reinvent how desktops work. Well, we've all been dealing with their half baked reinventions for a long time. Things that mostly work but have strange bugs preventing you from doing essential stuff. Incomplete components, like the horrible default music players and photo viewers (you can't even view pictures by date). Companies like Apple and even Microsoft do a much better job of at least pushing out products that have all the essential features, and if they have some brilliant new idea it's there in full. I hate to say it, but these guys should stick to copying. Religiously copy the best features and low level functioning of Windows and Mac OS, including the best ideas of Linux predecessors. Because sticking to good designs is a much better choice for the end user, and when your brilliant journal mode break down, nobody wants to go into a creaky half functioning file browser. If they could really get the basic ideas, they might even be able to take them farther sometimes. But I'm not holding my breath.
I have been running Linux mdadm RAID 5 for years using onboard IDE & SATA and completely different drives (some combination of 300, 500, 500, TB drives all from different manufacturers) and have never had a problem due to differences in drives. General performance is "good," I don't have the numbers offhand but when I was testing it was comparable to ideal configurations with these drives. For the average uses, there's no need to go out of your way.
RAID5 has a nice side effect; if you need to send a drive in for replacement, you don't need to worry about snooping of your data. Not sure how this applies to RAID1.
I have not studied philosophy (or computer science), but from my research, ontologies (which I am trying to apply in social organizations, and also the basis of the semantic web) are where philosophy and computer science most concretely are looking for the same answers. But philosophy itself is more of a notion of a methodical exploration of any topic, that includes all of science. I was waiting to spring that one on the anon troll but never got the chance.;)
Anyway, I haven't come across William James, but will check him out, he sounds like my kinda guy. You may like Artaud.
Yes, they are a lot simpler, like say sending a bunch of guys with guns to solve another country's problem ("Mission Accomplished!"). But despite some inevitable dead ends (or at least ends no one can really do anything with, that are part of discovery), philosophy is still very much a vital concept, especially when combined with topics such as computer science.
You are right, mr anonymous, the comic book approach with black and white good and evil characters is much better than an analytical approach to being and relations.
Slashdot Mirror
You forgot unnecessary default bloatware (mono) and a propensity to cover up useful text screens with useless graphical screens. But still, I'd take Ubuntu over Fedora anyday, at least there's some kind of real attitude about support compared to Fedora's ambivalence.
Don't know why I'm getting modded down on this, it's straight from a gimp's mouth. There are lots of user friendlier image editing programs that have sprung up due to the warts of gimp.
I have it from a gimp developer that they intentionally cultivate user unfriendliness because they don't want to deal with 'clueless newbies.' It would benefit ubuntu and open source mainstream if they forgot about gimp. It has a stupid name and is not designed to be a user friendly program. It's not particularly powerful either, so holding it up as the Photoshop alternative isn't very useful.
You're talking about a very particular kind of representative democracy framed by particular conditions. Among other problems, the conversations don't scale very well. If it all comes down to one day once every X years of voting between 5 candidates and 4 issues, I don't think that's a very good system. Granted, participation could shift from those adept in 'traditional' campaigning to on-line forms, but I think the participation would be higher. I am for a very radical change of democracy using modern computer networks, where delving into issues involves organizing information available to everyone, clicking on links and consulting individuals. I do agree some checks and balances are required, and some processes should be extended with multiple levels. But systems can evolve past their historical basis to something based more on positive beliefs of the benefits of networked individuals, that their capacity (for example, those involved on networking sites) should be expanded so we rely less on the charisma of elected officials and more on competent individuals in open connected networks creating accessible permanent records. I am very pro government but think it should be very efficient, very open, and very inclusive of the public it's meant to serve on a constant basis.
I often wonder why this doesn't happen.. Get most people to share their wifi (in exchange for free internet), supergeeks will set up wired caching hubs. Layer on some social networking so it's more difficult to exploit. Voila, free citizen-net!
Why does doing it with paper get people involved in their civics? If you want more direct democracy (voting on finer issues) allowing internet based involvement would seem to be the more practical route, unless you think people need to be hypnotized in person.
So.... what's better than My Documents (or some other similarly named directory)? I'm glad Gnome backed away from the conceptual spatial version of directories. Traditional folders are easy enough to understand, complemented with cross system search. Unfortunately the open source world is not very good at front end innovation, but with the quality of the underpinnings (any OS is doomed to reinvent) is very good at understanding and accommodating approaches of the day. I'd like to see the free software world charge ahead with an amazing resolution free and shared timeline branching desktop.
I think you're totally wrong. The basics of the WIMP - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WIMP_(computing) - experience date way before Windows, and Microsoft only got file structure sensible - not storing data with programs - post Windows 95. Firefox across all operating systems can be configured to ask where to save documents so it's not an Ubuntu thing. And what's especially wrong with My Documents? The main thing Ubuntu tries to do is make it easy for people to understand how to use the OS. On that level, they succeed admirably. The same strategy is used for OpenOffice - make it like Office so people can adjust to it easily. That's the main goal - make it functional and easy to use, free and easy to install for as many people as possible. Those who need to can "escape" to the more advanced options. Being different for the sake of being different would be a terrible mistake.
There's a way to get a Thinkpad without Vista on it from the Lenovo site, haven't tried it recently but it worked a month ago. Change the CPU in any system to a Celeron, then select the enabled Vista Starter option (you know, for developing countries that would be confused by having a first world operating system). Then change the CPU to something real, and the OS changes to no charge DOS. You can then place the order. I ordered a T400S using this technique. Good luck!
Thanks... I'll try Ubuntu 9.10 and see if it fixes my problems. I note that multichannel (ac3) encoded media is considered a "political" problem, while for the vast majority of users that would be more important than being able to switch from headphones to the neighbor's stereo.
Pulse Audio's flexibility sounds cool. But I just want my 5.1 audio setup to work. It doesn't. Right now it's completely broken, audio skips and I have to use low level programs to get surround sound. The audio system should just pass the raw stream through to my very capable receiver. When I try to use PA to do this, the receiver shuts down. I've spent hours trying to configure this through random "guides." I'm technical but I've grown very tired of tweaking, I want a distro that just works for a very common case - multimedia.
Um, no... every time there is a government change, ministries get renamed, rearranged, budgets get slashed and rearranged. Haven't you heard the phrase "Canada's New Government?" Sounds a bit Orwellian.
It was suggested by Kurzweil and Mirsky over a decade ago, though they mixed in kinetic energy.
Their plan is to make money off the residue of what TPB was. Their projection is that bots and spiders alone will generate enough advertising dollars to pay for the sale. Also they are working on a co venture with The Onion to expand on http://thepiratebay.org/legal
PS why is comment posting so horrible (Using Firefox on Linux). its laggy and loses focus (not me, the comment box). Just give me plain text, please.
Thanks for that info. Fujitsu makes great computers, aside from their keyboards (I had my eye on a Fujitsu Tablet). Hopefully the drive will relate to what you posted.
I just ordered a Thinkpad T400S with the 128GB SSD option. It was impossible to determine whose SSD it is - some reports said Samsung, some said Toshiba, reps don't know. Small random writes (eg generating class files, but very commonly used in apps ranging from Pidgin to Firefox) can be quite slow with SSDs. I intend to use the device with Ubuntu installed for typical desktop use, and developing server ware that uses Java, PHP, and MySQL.
Anyone have insight with this device combination and know of any issues?
It's better than the other response to touch screen computers, "yes, I'd like fries with that."
I've had several touchscreens/tablets over the years, starting with a Fujitsu B series. While I really like the concept and for some apps it's a lot nicer to use, I just ordered an expensive non touch screen computer. The main reason is while the touchscreen is nice, it's not a big breakthrough, and there are always compromises in other areas - keyboard, screen size, computing power, weight, etc. Ultimately, with those compromises, it's just not worth it until there is a large breakthrough in a universal approach to touch interface. For some people who find it effective to hand write notes or need to make freehand diagrams, it can be worth it, but for everyone else it's better to focus on more important features. (For those who talk about One Note's consolidation features, well guess what, the world outside of MS Office has moved on in terms of general consolidation of data).
I'll believe it's open source when I see it running fully on third party hardware. An Android handset would be an interesting choice.
It starts with calling design "art." Art is what you find in the Louvre, not the consistency of visual messaging on the desktop. Every once in a while they decide they're going to reinvent how desktops work. Well, we've all been dealing with their half baked reinventions for a long time. Things that mostly work but have strange bugs preventing you from doing essential stuff. Incomplete components, like the horrible default music players and photo viewers (you can't even view pictures by date). Companies like Apple and even Microsoft do a much better job of at least pushing out products that have all the essential features, and if they have some brilliant new idea it's there in full. I hate to say it, but these guys should stick to copying. Religiously copy the best features and low level functioning of Windows and Mac OS, including the best ideas of Linux predecessors. Because sticking to good designs is a much better choice for the end user, and when your brilliant journal mode break down, nobody wants to go into a creaky half functioning file browser. If they could really get the basic ideas, they might even be able to take them farther sometimes. But I'm not holding my breath.
Speaking of which, no idea why using the editor was so painful (firefox 3) nor why this was posted anonymously. Go Slashdot. Happy Monday.
I have been running Linux mdadm RAID 5 for years using onboard IDE & SATA and completely different drives (some combination of 300, 500, 500, TB drives all from different manufacturers) and have never had a problem due to differences in drives. General performance is "good," I don't have the numbers offhand but when I was testing it was comparable to ideal configurations with these drives. For the average uses, there's no need to go out of your way.
RAID5 has a nice side effect; if you need to send a drive in for replacement, you don't need to worry about snooping of your data. Not sure how this applies to RAID1.
I have not studied philosophy (or computer science), but from my research, ontologies (which I am trying to apply in social organizations, and also the basis of the semantic web) are where philosophy and computer science most concretely are looking for the same answers. But philosophy itself is more of a notion of a methodical exploration of any topic, that includes all of science. I was waiting to spring that one on the anon troll but never got the chance. ;)
Anyway, I haven't come across William James, but will check him out, he sounds like my kinda guy. You may like Artaud.
Yes, they are a lot simpler, like say sending a bunch of guys with guns to solve another country's problem ("Mission Accomplished!"). But despite some inevitable dead ends (or at least ends no one can really do anything with, that are part of discovery), philosophy is still very much a vital concept, especially when combined with topics such as computer science.
You are right, mr anonymous, the comic book approach with black and white good and evil characters is much better than an analytical approach to being and relations.