It is still cryptic for your average Joe and Sally
So is Windows, and I will continue believing this fact until I go six months without someone asking me to get their system to do something that the ever-so intuitive OS makes confusing. Mandrake 7.2 is just as 'intuitive', except it also allows me to login remotely and sort stuff out for people, doesn't crash in lots of different obscure ways and has a log file to make debugging easier. I don't know about MacOS because I can't afford a Mac and neither can most of the people I know.
On Mandrake 7.2, fire up DrakConf and then select Printer configuration. Add a printer queue and then select your printer model.
For the harddrive, click on Hardware Configuration, select your disk drive and click Run Configuration Tool. Partition your drive and format the partitions. God that's tough. Windows requires the use of fdisk to partition stuff, unless you want to fork out for Partition Magic.
Linux hackers have not been doing GUIs since 1984 either. If they had the source code to all these wonderful ideas, perhaps they could do what Apple has done, but they have had to reinvent the wheel, and as far as KDE goes I think they're doing a great job.
OS X on x86 would have the same problems as Linux - not all the drivers, the apps or the games would be available - e.g. pigs would divebomb Redmond en-masse before Microsoft ported Office to a competitor that had any chance of taking market share away from Windows. Running a PPC binary on x86 wouldn't cut it in terms of speed.
Mandrake Linux is easy to use. You have to use the command line about as much as you do in Windows. The lack of apps is the problem, and is a much harder one to solve.
It is sad, but that doesn't stop it being the truth. Corporations will do anything they can get away with in order to up the stock price or the bottom line. This is the problem, the stock market decides who has value and who doesn't. No CEO can afford to treat his/her workers as people if it impacts the bottom line, as the shareholders will crucify him/her. Until there's another way for corporations to raise money, this will always be the case.
Now you've done it. You'll get half a dozen posts about how union bully boys broke their dad's windscreen when he refused to join in the '50s. Or maybe about how unions keep crap people in jobs, forgetting of course that they also keep very good people from being crapped on by bad management. Or perhaps posts saying, if you're job's crap then get another, an option for everyone with school age children.
But remember, Time says unions are bad and Ted Turner wouldn't have a vested interest in keeping this particular opinion alive, now would he?
Do they really? What a joke. When corps are loyal to their 'human resources' then they can expect reciprocal loyalty. While they lay people off because the profits were only $1.8BN instead of $2BN they can stick it.
After all, it wasn't just the board that put Cisco, for example, where they are today, but there's no suggestion that the board should tighten their belts a little and do without that third home or Lear jet.
How has Mozilla failed? 2 versions of Communicator have been released in the past few months. I know it took a long time, but rewriting Communicator 4.7 was hardly a 5 minute job. The only software project I can think of that was bigger was the rewrite of Windows NT and that took a company with far greater resources 4 years.
There should only be one GUI toolkit, just like there should be one PC vendor, one graphics card, one DVD-ROM, one RDBMS, one server architecture, otherwise things are just too hard and confuse the customer. Why is too many GUI toolkits a bad thing, but half a dozen RDBMS providers is consumer choice? A suggestion to all commercial companies developing for Linux - supply the required libraries and install them with the application, much like games will give you the option to install the latest DirectX.
Diversity is a good thing, don't let a monopoly tell you otherwise.
Just like the diversity in the PC hardware market has caused it's downfall, or the diversity in the server market is killing Sun or the diversity in the RDBMS market is killing Oracle or IBM. Why is competition on the desktop so different from competition in any other sector of the market?
But you've forgotten the anti-engineers here. You know the ones. They do appalling work, have the worst ideas and yet they've got their nose so far up the bosses backside that they are the ones that get the important jobs. It would be nice if getting the job done was the primary concern, instead of having your ego wanked by some no-talent asshole. Sorry, but I'm so tired of IT morons.
The company I first worked for has just installed SAP in 9 months without ANY serious issues. SAP are over the moon. Do you know how they managed it. Because the management assigned their best people to the job, only checked out the work in a general way (i.e. no distracting meetings), listened to the people doing the job and kept the politics bullshit where it belonged - in management meetings.
Why can't everywhere be like that? It was damn hard work, but I would love to work on a project like that where deadlines are tight and management realises that developers produce their best work at a computer, not being harassed in project meetings.
Why is this only obvious to us and not to all the management gurus so beloved of PHBs everywhere?
And how was the Vietnam war fought? With Napalm, Agent Orange and soldiers who didn't care about the difference between a village of rice farmers and a VietCong base. The Nazis were evil scum, but the Yanks didn't exactly act with honour in Vietnam either.
Just as a matter of interest, isn't Windows.NET going to be available on a subscription basis? And aren't Microsofties the world over going on about how brilliant it is, even though it's still semi-vapour at the moment. Of course if you actually read the Changes FAQs you'll find the following words:
Starting February 26, you can try the full version of Software Manager for free, but only on one system.
So basically for every RedHat box you buy, you get free updates. It's only if you use the one box set to set up several PCs that you have to pay. This is obviously aimed at businesses, but for those of us with more than one PC at home there are still plenty of distros to choose from.
BTW if this change happened nearly a month ago, why has it only just become news?
1) Microsoft supplies software with bugs
2) My software crashes and there's no way I can find the bug.
3) I mention this bug to Microsoft and they blame someone else
4) I pay for the upgrade just in case only to find that the same bug exists in the new version and Microsoft are still blaming someone else.
And a college degree would have stopped this happening how? Or how does having a college degree automatically give you a broader range of skills than someone who has spent 3 or 4 years doing actual IT work? Not having a degree has never been a disadvantage to me, except that I can never work in the USA or Switzerland - something I don't particularly care about anyway.
What point was that? Don't start dissing the Germans for losing a war 55 years ago if you don't want to be reminded of losing a war 25 years ago, and to an allegedly inferior force of communists no less.
John Logie Baird invented the television, and you're right it wasn't an Englishman who invented the first car it was a Frenchman. Saying that Daimler invented the car is as hilarious as saying it was Henry Ford that did it.
Please stop making claims for a machine that doesn't exist yet. You have no idea of the exact specs of the machine yet, merely what an accomplished hype machine says are the specs. Just like the Windows 2000 final version was missing some of the promised features, I'm willing to bet that the XBox will too.
People from my country (UK) invented the computer, the television and the car and a Scotsman invented the telephone in the US. The internet is undoubtedly a great invention, but it was an Englishman who created HTML and made it useful, and the next big thing on the internet will be mobile computing via 3G cellphone networks in which the US is woefully behind.
Slashdot Mirror
People do it all the time - it's called security through obscurity.
It is still cryptic for your average Joe and Sally
So is Windows, and I will continue believing this fact until I go six months without someone asking me to get their system to do something that the ever-so intuitive OS makes confusing. Mandrake 7.2 is just as 'intuitive', except it also allows me to login remotely and sort stuff out for people, doesn't crash in lots of different obscure ways and has a log file to make debugging easier. I don't know about MacOS because I can't afford a Mac and neither can most of the people I know.
On Mandrake 7.2, fire up DrakConf and then select Printer configuration. Add a printer queue and then select your printer model.
For the harddrive, click on Hardware Configuration, select your disk drive and click Run Configuration Tool. Partition your drive and format the partitions. God that's tough. Windows requires the use of fdisk to partition stuff, unless you want to fork out for Partition Magic.
Linux hackers have not been doing GUIs since 1984 either. If they had the source code to all these wonderful ideas, perhaps they could do what Apple has done, but they have had to reinvent the wheel, and as far as KDE goes I think they're doing a great job.
OS X on x86 would have the same problems as Linux - not all the drivers, the apps or the games would be available - e.g. pigs would divebomb Redmond en-masse before Microsoft ported Office to a competitor that had any chance of taking market share away from Windows. Running a PPC binary on x86 wouldn't cut it in terms of speed.
Mandrake Linux is easy to use. You have to use the command line about as much as you do in Windows. The lack of apps is the problem, and is a much harder one to solve.
It is sad, but that doesn't stop it being the truth. Corporations will do anything they can get away with in order to up the stock price or the bottom line. This is the problem, the stock market decides who has value and who doesn't. No CEO can afford to treat his/her workers as people if it impacts the bottom line, as the shareholders will crucify him/her. Until there's another way for corporations to raise money, this will always be the case.
Now you've done it. You'll get half a dozen posts about how union bully boys broke their dad's windscreen when he refused to join in the '50s. Or maybe about how unions keep crap people in jobs, forgetting of course that they also keep very good people from being crapped on by bad management. Or perhaps posts saying, if you're job's crap then get another, an option for everyone with school age children.
But remember, Time says unions are bad and Ted Turner wouldn't have a vested interest in keeping this particular opinion alive, now would he?
Do they really? What a joke. When corps are loyal to their 'human resources' then they can expect reciprocal loyalty. While they lay people off because the profits were only $1.8BN instead of $2BN they can stick it.
After all, it wasn't just the board that put Cisco, for example, where they are today, but there's no suggestion that the board should tighten their belts a little and do without that third home or Lear jet.
How has Mozilla failed? 2 versions of Communicator have been released in the past few months. I know it took a long time, but rewriting Communicator 4.7 was hardly a 5 minute job. The only software project I can think of that was bigger was the rewrite of Windows NT and that took a company with far greater resources 4 years.
There should only be one GUI toolkit, just like there should be one PC vendor, one graphics card, one DVD-ROM, one RDBMS, one server architecture, otherwise things are just too hard and confuse the customer. Why is too many GUI toolkits a bad thing, but half a dozen RDBMS providers is consumer choice? A suggestion to all commercial companies developing for Linux - supply the required libraries and install them with the application, much like games will give you the option to install the latest DirectX.
Diversity is a good thing, don't let a monopoly tell you otherwise.
Just like the diversity in the PC hardware market has caused it's downfall, or the diversity in the server market is killing Sun or the diversity in the RDBMS market is killing Oracle or IBM. Why is competition on the desktop so different from competition in any other sector of the market?
Luna is the Latin/Italian word for moon. Do you call this planet Terra by any chance?
But you've forgotten the anti-engineers here. You know the ones. They do appalling work, have the worst ideas and yet they've got their nose so far up the bosses backside that they are the ones that get the important jobs. It would be nice if getting the job done was the primary concern, instead of having your ego wanked by some no-talent asshole. Sorry, but I'm so tired of IT morons.
The company I first worked for has just installed SAP in 9 months without ANY serious issues. SAP are over the moon. Do you know how they managed it. Because the management assigned their best people to the job, only checked out the work in a general way (i.e. no distracting meetings), listened to the people doing the job and kept the politics bullshit where it belonged - in management meetings.
Why can't everywhere be like that? It was damn hard work, but I would love to work on a project like that where deadlines are tight and management realises that developers produce their best work at a computer, not being harassed in project meetings.
Why is this only obvious to us and not to all the management gurus so beloved of PHBs everywhere?
But all software companies have this (even Mandrake I noticed yesterday), so who do you buy from?
And how was the Vietnam war fought? With Napalm, Agent Orange and soldiers who didn't care about the difference between a village of rice farmers and a VietCong base. The Nazis were evil scum, but the Yanks didn't exactly act with honour in Vietnam either.
Just as a matter of interest, isn't Windows.NET going to be available on a subscription basis? And aren't Microsofties the world over going on about how brilliant it is, even though it's still semi-vapour at the moment. Of course if you actually read the Changes FAQs you'll find the following words:
Starting February 26, you can try the full version of Software Manager for free, but only on one system.
So basically for every RedHat box you buy, you get free updates. It's only if you use the one box set to set up several PCs that you have to pay. This is obviously aimed at businesses, but for those of us with more than one PC at home there are still plenty of distros to choose from.
BTW if this change happened nearly a month ago, why has it only just become news?
1) Microsoft supplies software with bugs
2) My software crashes and there's no way I can find the bug.
3) I mention this bug to Microsoft and they blame someone else
4) I pay for the upgrade just in case only to find that the same bug exists in the new version and Microsoft are still blaming someone else.
Why am I happier using Linux?
And a college degree would have stopped this happening how? Or how does having a college degree automatically give you a broader range of skills than someone who has spent 3 or 4 years doing actual IT work? Not having a degree has never been a disadvantage to me, except that I can never work in the USA or Switzerland - something I don't particularly care about anyway.
What point was that? Don't start dissing the Germans for losing a war 55 years ago if you don't want to be reminded of losing a war 25 years ago, and to an allegedly inferior force of communists no less.
John Logie Baird invented the television, and you're right it wasn't an Englishman who invented the first car it was a Frenchman. Saying that Daimler invented the car is as hilarious as saying it was Henry Ford that did it.
Please stop making claims for a machine that doesn't exist yet. You have no idea of the exact specs of the machine yet, merely what an accomplished hype machine says are the specs. Just like the Windows 2000 final version was missing some of the promised features, I'm willing to bet that the XBox will too.
No paedophiles in the US then? You can own a gun, we just don't hand them out to any lunatic or 2 bit punk.
In which case then, the Vietnamese must be the master race.
Well Microsoft did it. Sort of anyway.
People from my country (UK) invented the computer, the television and the car and a Scotsman invented the telephone in the US. The internet is undoubtedly a great invention, but it was an Englishman who created HTML and made it useful, and the next big thing on the internet will be mobile computing via 3G cellphone networks in which the US is woefully behind.