Actually I think most of Linux is confusing. Looking at the wikipedia entry for Ubuntu, I see a whole bunch of variants:
- Xfce - Xbuntu - Gnome - Kubuntu
Huh? What? Huh? I see Xfce described as being "lightweight for older computers" but no system requirements. Is a 386 too slow? 1 meg of RAM too small? It is unclear. (Your typical Joe or Jane Q. Public will give-up at this point, and buy a Windoze PC-compatible or Apple Mac instead.)
I am confused about Ubuntu's naming scheme. - Windows is 1,2,3,4,5,6,7 (actually 6.1). - Mac OS is 10.1, 10.2,..., 10.5, 10.6. - Ubuntu is Year.month so it goes 2004.xx, 2005.xx,..., 2009.xx. Right? What's the "Karmic Koala" part mean?
Well I just gave both Kmeleon standard and KM CCF ME a try, but they don't really use any less memory than Firefox does. Maybe 25% reduction which isn't too dramatic.
Also both are very processor-intensive. My poor CPU is hovering around 40-50% with Kmeleon CCF ME whereas Firefox or Opera typically run 1-5%
>>>All the cloud services being offered or suggested offer something on the remote side that you're likely not to have locally. >>>
I was under the impression it's mostly about making me go to microsoft.com to use an online word processor or spreadsheet, instead of having the programs stored locally. To me that seems silly.
It's worth nothing that the year after Commodore went bankrupt, so too did Atari, and Apple almost went bankrupt as well. The mid-90s was an era of consolidation where all the old computer companies "fell" to the dominance of Microsoft. (Even the mighty IBM was eventually forced to give-up on their OS/2 project and withdraw from the home computer market.) The fact Apple survived this period when companies like Netscape, BeOS, Lotus, DR-DOS, et cetera were failing left-and-right is a minor miracle, most likely helped along by Gates monetary injection plus Steve Jobs timely takeover.
>>>co-operative multi-tasking. It's not like us Mac users were just sitting there waiting for some program to finish >>>
Yes true but the difference is that when a program crashes on a preemptive system like the 1985 Amiga, only that program crashes. The OS neatly closes it and continues operating. In contrast, on a cooperative system like Mac 1989-2001, when the program crashes it never returns control to the central OS, so everything just stops.
For example many times when I was using Eudora and WordPerfect on my Quadra, the Eudora program would crash and I'd end-up losing my book report since the OS became nonresponsive. The Mac OS would just sit there waiting for Eudora to say "I'm done" but that signal never came.
I never had the problem on my 1985 Amiga. The email client might crash, but WordPerfect would not be affected and I could still continue editing my report.
>>>Mac users had the cheek to say it was comparable to "Mac 89"
I said that in 1995, but I was referring to the APPEARANCE not the underlying operation (which is obviously not the same). Consider:
Mac Trashcan == Win95 Recycle Bin (identical operation) Mac Menu Bar == Win95 Start (slightly different but essentially the same) Mac Finder Dropdown == Win95 Finder Bar (both list the running programs and allow quick switching)
As soon as I laid my hand on Windows 95 I literally said out loud: "Wow. I feel like I'm using my Quadra Mac." There was no learning curve, because using Win95 was virtually identical to using a System 6 or 7 Mac.
As for multitasking, remember that MOST Windows 95 programs did not use preemptive multitasking. The applications were still 16 bit and still expected to have complete control of the computer, and therefore required using the old cooperative multitasking. When the program crashed, Win95 completely froze up. It took a couple years for 32 bit applications to completely replace the older legacy apps.
>>>PC had started to get a bit of an edge, in that it got 256 colours before the Amiga did
I think you've forgotten that Amiga could do 4096 colors (HAM mode), which of course is the only proper way to view those 1985-1990 Swimsuit and "other" pics. PCs didn't accurately recreate the flesh tone.;-)
Also even though PCs could do 256 colors, that was only in lo-res mode. Hi-res mode was limited to 16 colors... less than the 64 colors Amiga could do in hi-res, which is why Amiga games simply looked better. ----- Graphically PCs never really passed the Amiga. By 1992 the new AGA Amigas had 262,000 color modes, which still exceeded the PC's SVGA 65,000 color limit.
>>>The Amiga wasn't a very good computer and therefore could not cut it in the marketplace.
The Amiga 500 is actually the second best-selling computer - right after the Commodore=64. As for how "good" it was..... well we didn't see IBM PCs being used by Disney or Babylon 5 or seaQuest, did we?
No we saw Amigas in that role, with the very first animation package being produced by Disney for the Amiga in 1986. Not Mac. Not the PC. Mac had decent sound, but was still black-and-white. And PCs had a mere 16 colors and went "beep" in 1986. NEITHER of them could do the preemptive multitasking (not until 2001 and 1995 respectively) the Amiga did with ease in 1985.
Not a good computer? Hardly. It was ten years ahead of the competition.
Similarly the Atari 800 was ahead of its time, producing 128 color graphics and near-music-quality sound in 1979..... again it took the Mac/PC competition about ten years to catch up. Jay Miner is the man responsible for these amazing machines.
Do you work for RIAA? You seem to share the same inability to understand basic human rights. No matter. You falsely-presume I'm guilty of strikes one and two. This is what Articles 47 and 48 of the Charter of Rights is about: The government has to PROVE guilt, not just assume it. The law should be written that FIRST they prove the three strikes are your fault and THEN you get internet cutoff. As currently written they don't have to prove anything - an open invitation for abuse (President Sarkozy could turnoff those he doesn't like, even if they did nothing wrong).
The early years of the U.S. were not perfect - but it was headed in the right direction - with near-perfection achieved between 1870 and 1930. The three thousand-year-old slavery/serfdom institution had finally been killed off, the Bill of Rights had risen to prominence, and the government was so small most Americans never even noticed it.
But since 1910 it seems we've been going backwards. We are being turning back into serfs with the oligarchs as our master, and no rights as individuals. It's almost exactly the same pattern that happened in Rome from 300-500 A.D... the landlords slowly but surely turned the middle class into a serf class of debtors... and medieval Europe was born.
That doesn't sound right. At 9.6 kbit/s it would take 8 minutes to load a single slashdot page. Even if you turned-off the java, CSS, and pics it would still requires over a minute to download. ----- Perhaps if you said 96k for your GSM that would be more realistic... about twice as fast as a dialup connection.
Have you tried Opera 10 with your modem? O10 uses compression to speed-up slow connections.
Most of this stuff died in the 1930s when the U.S. government was given power to do basically anything it wants, and the 10th Amendment was crossed-out. And now it appears the EU government is changing course to follow the same path. "We will, at last, know peace in our time... through force."
"The idea of the emergency summit is being pushed forcefully by President Sarkozy" from the article.
Why does this fool's name keep popping up? He seems awfully ambitious. Ambition and power are a dangerous combination. Is his alternate name Darth Sidious by any chance?
"German and French diplomats, in talks with their Czech counterparts, explored two ways of removing the Klaus obstacle: impeach him or change the Czech constitution to take away his right of veto."
Good grief. That's equivalent to a California governor impeaching the Illinois governor. That kinda crap should not be allowed. Impeachments should be handled internally.
The EU could have learned from our mistakes, and ensured that their Constitution (Lisbon Treaty) would not be ignored by overzealous EU politicians. i.e. Include a provision for States to ignore/nullify unconstitutional EU laws.
>>>smaller, financially weaker nations, either play by the arbitrary rules of the EU of they face restrictions/taxation..... of course the stronger factions [France] reserve special privileges for themselves >>>
Sounds like California. So many U.S. laws can be traced back to California. As CA swings so swings most of the union of states.
Any EU state that tried to secede from the EU would face the same outcome as the U.S. South - forced reintegration.
If such a thing happened, it would probably be the western states (Union side) versus the eastern states (Secessionist) with the dividing line being the eastern Germany border. Since the eastern states are more freedom-loving but not as strong militarily, they would be crushed.
It's also possible Ireland and Iceland would join the secessionist side, but the UK would quickly bring Ireland to its knees, and Iceland would be left isolated until after Poland/Austria/Greece/Turkey/et cetera were defeated.
Slashdot Mirror
>>>Uh yeah, I clearly remember my Windows 4 and my Windows 5 boxes
You should. Windows 4 == NT 4. Windows 5 == XP. Windows 6 == Vista
Actually I think most of Linux is confusing. Looking at the wikipedia entry for Ubuntu, I see a whole bunch of variants:
- Xfce
- Xbuntu
- Gnome
- Kubuntu
Huh? What? Huh? I see Xfce described as being "lightweight for older computers" but no system requirements. Is a 386 too slow? 1 meg of RAM too small? It is unclear. (Your typical Joe or Jane Q. Public will give-up at this point, and buy a Windoze PC-compatible or Apple Mac instead.)
I am confused about Ubuntu's naming scheme. ..., 10.5, 10.6. ..., 2009.xx. Right? What's the "Karmic Koala" part mean?
- Windows is 1,2,3,4,5,6,7 (actually 6.1).
- Mac OS is 10.1, 10.2,
- Ubuntu is Year.month so it goes 2004.xx, 2005.xx,
Well I just gave both Kmeleon standard and KM CCF ME a try, but they don't really use any less memory than Firefox does. Maybe 25% reduction which isn't too dramatic.
Also both are very processor-intensive. My poor CPU is hovering around 40-50% with Kmeleon CCF ME whereas Firefox or Opera typically run 1-5%
Still don't see why I would goto microsoft.com and use CloudWord or CloudExcel when I can use these programs right here locally from c:
>>>All the cloud services being offered or suggested offer something on the remote side that you're likely not to have locally.
>>>
I was under the impression it's mostly about making me go to microsoft.com to use an online word processor or spreadsheet, instead of having the programs stored locally. To me that seems silly.
It's worth nothing that the year after Commodore went bankrupt, so too did Atari, and Apple almost went bankrupt as well. The mid-90s was an era of consolidation where all the old computer companies "fell" to the dominance of Microsoft. (Even the mighty IBM was eventually forced to give-up on their OS/2 project and withdraw from the home computer market.) The fact Apple survived this period when companies like Netscape, BeOS, Lotus, DR-DOS, et cetera were failing left-and-right is a minor miracle, most likely helped along by Gates monetary injection plus Steve Jobs timely takeover.
>>>co-operative multi-tasking. It's not like us Mac users were just sitting there waiting for some program to finish
>>>
Yes true but the difference is that when a program crashes on a preemptive system like the 1985 Amiga, only that program crashes. The OS neatly closes it and continues operating. In contrast, on a cooperative system like Mac 1989-2001, when the program crashes it never returns control to the central OS, so everything just stops.
For example many times when I was using Eudora and WordPerfect on my Quadra, the Eudora program would crash and I'd end-up losing my book report since the OS became nonresponsive. The Mac OS would just sit there waiting for Eudora to say "I'm done" but that signal never came.
I never had the problem on my 1985 Amiga. The email client might crash, but WordPerfect would not be affected and I could still continue editing my report.
>>>Mac users had the cheek to say it was comparable to "Mac 89"
I said that in 1995, but I was referring to the APPEARANCE not the underlying operation (which is obviously not the same). Consider:
Mac Trashcan == Win95 Recycle Bin (identical operation)
Mac Menu Bar == Win95 Start (slightly different but essentially the same)
Mac Finder Dropdown == Win95 Finder Bar (both list the running programs and allow quick switching)
As soon as I laid my hand on Windows 95 I literally said out loud: "Wow. I feel like I'm using my Quadra Mac." There was no learning curve, because using Win95 was virtually identical to using a System 6 or 7 Mac.
As for multitasking, remember that MOST Windows 95 programs did not use preemptive multitasking. The applications were still 16 bit and still expected to have complete control of the computer, and therefore required using the old cooperative multitasking. When the program crashed, Win95 completely froze up. It took a couple years for 32 bit applications to completely replace the older legacy apps.
I used a Quadra Mac. After the death of Commodore, I looked-around to see what was the best computer. It definitely wasn't the kludgey Windows 3 PC.
>>>PC had started to get a bit of an edge, in that it got 256 colours before the Amiga did
I think you've forgotten that Amiga could do 4096 colors (HAM mode), which of course is the only proper way to view those 1985-1990 Swimsuit and "other" pics. PCs didn't accurately recreate the flesh tone. ;-)
Also even though PCs could do 256 colors, that was only in lo-res mode. Hi-res mode was limited to 16 colors... less than the 64 colors Amiga could do in hi-res, which is why Amiga games simply looked better. ----- Graphically PCs never really passed the Amiga. By 1992 the new AGA Amigas had 262,000 color modes, which still exceeded the PC's SVGA 65,000 color limit.
>>>The Amiga wasn't a very good computer and therefore could not cut it in the marketplace.
The Amiga 500 is actually the second best-selling computer - right after the Commodore=64. As for how "good" it was..... well we didn't see IBM PCs being used by Disney or Babylon 5 or seaQuest, did we?
No we saw Amigas in that role, with the very first animation package being produced by Disney for the Amiga in 1986. Not Mac. Not the PC. Mac had decent sound, but was still black-and-white. And PCs had a mere 16 colors and went "beep" in 1986. NEITHER of them could do the preemptive multitasking (not until 2001 and 1995 respectively) the Amiga did with ease in 1985.
Not a good computer? Hardly. It was ten years ahead of the competition.
Similarly the Atari 800 was ahead of its time, producing 128 color graphics and near-music-quality sound in 1979..... again it took the Mac/PC competition about ten years to catch up. Jay Miner is the man responsible for these amazing machines.
>>>Deus Ex, System Shock 2, Dark Forces series, Thief series, Half Life series...
Most of those can be played on my PS2 console, so I haven't really "missed" them. I just didn't get around to playing them yet.
>>>Then don't go for that third strike.
Do you work for RIAA? You seem to share the same inability to understand basic human rights. No matter. You falsely-presume I'm guilty of strikes one and two. This is what Articles 47 and 48 of the Charter of Rights is about: The government has to PROVE guilt, not just assume it. The law should be written that FIRST they prove the three strikes are your fault and THEN you get internet cutoff. As currently written they don't have to prove anything - an open invitation for abuse (President Sarkozy could turnoff those he doesn't like, even if they did nothing wrong).
The early years of the U.S. were not perfect - but it was headed in the right direction - with near-perfection achieved between 1870 and 1930. The three thousand-year-old slavery/serfdom institution had finally been killed off, the Bill of Rights had risen to prominence, and the government was so small most Americans never even noticed it.
But since 1910 it seems we've been going backwards. We are being turning back into serfs with the oligarchs as our master, and no rights as individuals. It's almost exactly the same pattern that happened in Rome from 300-500 A.D... the landlords slowly but surely turned the middle class into a serf class of debtors... and medieval Europe was born.
That doesn't sound right. At 9.6 kbit/s it would take 8 minutes to load a single slashdot page. Even if you turned-off the java, CSS, and pics it would still requires over a minute to download. ----- Perhaps if you said 96k for your GSM that would be more realistic... about twice as fast as a dialup connection.
Have you tried Opera 10 with your modem? O10 uses compression to speed-up slow connections.
I better buy my ~10 Piratebay t-shirts before they disappear forever. They will be collectors items.
What tree?
What constitution?
What rights?
Most of this stuff died in the 1930s when the U.S. government was given power to do basically anything it wants, and the 10th Amendment was crossed-out. And now it appears the EU government is changing course to follow the same path. "We will, at last, know peace in our time... through force."
"The idea of the emergency summit is being pushed forcefully by President Sarkozy" from the article.
Why does this fool's name keep popping up?
He seems awfully ambitious.
Ambition and power are a dangerous combination.
Is his alternate name Darth Sidious by any chance?
"German and French diplomats, in talks with their Czech counterparts, explored two ways of removing the Klaus obstacle: impeach him or change the Czech constitution to take away his right of veto."
Good grief.
That's equivalent to a California governor impeaching the Illinois governor.
That kinda crap should not be allowed. Impeachments should be handled internally.
Only because the U.S. nullified its Constitution.
The EU could have learned from our mistakes, and ensured that their Constitution (Lisbon Treaty) would not be ignored by overzealous EU politicians. i.e. Include a provision for States to ignore/nullify unconstitutional EU laws.
>>>smaller, financially weaker nations, either play by the arbitrary rules of the EU of they face restrictions/taxation..... of course the stronger factions [France] reserve special privileges for themselves
>>>
Sounds like California. So many U.S. laws can be traced back to California. As CA swings so swings most of the union of states.
In other words - the government brought about the collapse *on purpose*. It was not a free market.
Any EU state that tried to secede from the EU would face the same outcome as the U.S. South - forced reintegration.
If such a thing happened, it would probably be the western states (Union side) versus the eastern states (Secessionist) with the dividing line being the eastern Germany border. Since the eastern states are more freedom-loving but not as strong militarily, they would be crushed.
It's also possible Ireland and Iceland would join the secessionist side, but the UK would quickly bring Ireland to its knees, and Iceland would be left isolated until after Poland/Austria/Greece/Turkey/et cetera were defeated.
>>>... because arbitrary power with no due process and little or no burden of proof on the accuser has always worked out so well in the past.
I wonder if EU 2050 will resemble Hitler's original vision for his German-accupied Europe. i.e. Authoritarian with little input from the citizenry.
The Democrats and Socialists are on the "right" in Europe?