By far and away the biggest reason it never took off was the opposition of the oil companies, who didn't want people buying less fuel.
Not dissimilar to the way Americans have been hoodwinked into changing their engine oil every few weeks. Guess what? In a modern car, the oil only needs changing every 20,000 miles or so. Check the manufacturer's service recommendations for any car sold outside the USA.
The price they charge is a different matter. Most American companies and their Asian imitators work on the entirely false assumption that Europeans have more disposable income than Americans. I have no idea where this comes from, when it's patently untrue, but Apple have believed it for decades, which is why Macs are twice the price here that they are in the USA. Don't forget most Marketing people have the brain-power of a small gnat, and blithely believe everything their colleagues tell them (and like most professionals, myself included, spend far too much time talking to people in the same business instead of getting out for a bit). So it only takes one spark of suggestion to make the whole hive believe that Europeans will buy more of product Z than Americans will, even when the facts and the pricing make it impossible.
Why is this surprising? US companies have been doing this in reverse for a few centuries: this is why so many products are available in the USA which are unheard-of in Europe. It's not just American insularity, although that may be a component: it's just what the companies fondly believe to be market forces (usually they're wrong anyway, but that's the principle).
Clicking has no effect, and I did wonder about loading, but after 30 min (on my 6Mb connection) I gave up. If they can't be bothered their ass to provide it in a form that FF users can view, the hell with them.
The article links to a.swf file, but all it does in my Ubuntu FF3b5 is bring up a screenshot. I have the flash-nonfree plugin installed. I'm obviously missing something, but what?
My faithful Model M needs a thorough clean! Is there any company (in Europe, please) that can do this, or do I have to take it to bits myself and swab it with cottonbuds and solvent (and if so, which solvent is best?)
what do you recommend in terms of a F/OSS solution
Given that the support in Linux for video and webcams is so disastrously broken as it stands (largely the vendors fault for not providing APIs and driver details), what's needed first is to fix it so that all the common webcams (cheapo and expensive) "just work" -- both in standalones like Ekiga, aMSN, Pidgin, etc as well as in Flash-based browser applets -- and specifically work without slowing the system to a crawl or running at 4fps.
Once that's done, perhaps *then* we can start to look at multi-way VC.
"ready for the desktop" is in the eye of the beholder.
So long as people keep thinking this, Linux never will be ready for anything.
Yes, of course some things which one user regards as essential, another will regard as peripheral, but there is a core of stuff which has to work intuitively and flawlessly, which currently doesn't. It's very close, but still needs work.
Linux interface usability has made huge steps forward in the last few years, but there is still a residual "if it was hard to write it should be hard to use" mentality among some developers (decreasing, fortunately) and still a baffled look from many developers when you try to explain why using their internal terminology on a user-level error message is counter-productive.
You can increase the functionality (but of course not the speed) by using a WiFlyer or similar so that you at least have wireless access for laptops even if the actual connection is by POTS.
Learning to use Elm/Pine, Lynx, etc is one way round it. Here (Ireland) the remote islands and other inaccessible places got special govmnt money for broadband access, so a former colleague who lives in retirement on Sherkin Island had for a while better broadband than I did in the burbs or a major city. My subdivision's POTS cable won't handle broadband, so I'm using a 6Mb/s line-of-sight radio connection from a local ISP. If someone plants a tree on the near-intervening hilltop, I'm sunk:-)
My university uses SpamAssassin to rate all incoming mail for 18,000 student accounts and 3,000 staff/faculty, and prepend "***SPAM???" to the Subject header of all potential spam. Spam for student accounts is dropped on the floor; spam for staff/faculty is forwarded to their mailbox, and they have a local filter rule to put it into Junk or Trash or somewhere where *they* can check it.
I haven't had a false positive for over a year, and only a handful of false negs. The systems guys do a great job of keeping it tuned, and I don't know anyone who has had complaints.
It's the pixels that matter. I'm a document engineer, and I need to be able to see a whole A4 page (PDF) legibly without vertical scrolling. Sure, having a double-page spread side-by-side is good, but 1200 vertical is the absolute minimum and I really don't care after that how wide it is.
Slashdot Mirror
Writing a poem
In seventeen syllables
Is very diffi
(c) me.
Well that's pretty neat, I guess.
Not really. Making aluminium costs a lot of power.
By far and away the biggest reason it never took off was the opposition of the oil companies, who didn't want people buying less fuel.
Not dissimilar to the way Americans have been hoodwinked into changing their engine oil every few weeks. Guess what? In a modern car, the oil only needs changing every 20,000 miles or so. Check the manufacturer's service recommendations for any car sold outside the USA.
The price they charge is a different matter. Most American companies and their Asian imitators work on the entirely false assumption that Europeans have more disposable income than Americans. I have no idea where this comes from, when it's patently untrue, but Apple have believed it for decades, which is why Macs are twice the price here that they are in the USA. Don't forget most Marketing people have the brain-power of a small gnat, and blithely believe everything their colleagues tell them (and like most professionals, myself included, spend far too much time talking to people in the same business instead of getting out for a bit). So it only takes one spark of suggestion to make the whole hive believe that Europeans will buy more of product Z than Americans will, even when the facts and the pricing make it impossible.
Why is this surprising? US companies have been doing this in reverse for a few centuries: this is why so many products are available in the USA which are unheard-of in Europe. It's not just American insularity, although that may be a component: it's just what the companies fondly believe to be market forces (usually they're wrong anyway, but that's the principle).
Turns out that the flash-nonfree plugin is broken. I uninstalled it (and gnash as well) and installed the flash player 9 from Adobe and it works.
Clicking has no effect, and I did wonder about loading, but after 30 min (on my 6Mb connection) I gave up. If they can't be bothered their ass to provide it in a form that FF users can view, the hell with them.
The article links to a .swf file, but all it does in my Ubuntu FF3b5 is bring up a screenshot. I have the flash-nonfree plugin installed. I'm obviously missing something, but what?
My faithful Model M needs a thorough clean! Is there any company (in Europe, please) that can do this, or do I have to take it to bits myself and swab it with cottonbuds and solvent (and if so, which solvent is best?)
Was "cult" really the word used?
Hey, these are American companies. You think they give a flying fuck about employees or legislation?
Given that the support in Linux for video and webcams is so disastrously broken as it stands (largely the vendors fault for not providing APIs and driver details), what's needed first is to fix it so that all the common webcams (cheapo and expensive) "just work" -- both in standalones like Ekiga, aMSN, Pidgin, etc as well as in Flash-based browser applets -- and specifically work without slowing the system to a crawl or running at 4fps.
Once that's done, perhaps *then* we can start to look at multi-way VC.
So long as people keep thinking this, Linux never will be ready for anything.
Yes, of course some things which one user regards as essential, another will regard as peripheral, but there is a core of stuff which has to work intuitively and flawlessly, which currently doesn't. It's very close, but still needs work.
The recent story about one guy who tested Ubuntu on his girlfriend is an excellent example of some of these items, and helps to explain why this woolly "in the eye of the beholder" thinking is so wrong.
Linux interface usability has made huge steps forward in the last few years, but there is still a residual "if it was hard to write it should be hard to use" mentality among some developers (decreasing, fortunately) and still a baffled look from many developers when you try to explain why using their internal terminology on a user-level error message is counter-productive.
The keys needed to type sudo rm -rf /* are right in front of you; you just need to avoid using them that way :-)
Would be more watchable if it wasn't for the intrusive Hublot wristwatch-porn advertainment.
How long before bottles say "Brewed Under License" referring to the GPL (GNU Pub License)?
--
Open Source Beer requires old boots...
You can increase the functionality (but of course not the speed) by using a WiFlyer or similar so that you at least have wireless access for laptops even if the actual connection is by POTS.
:-)
Learning to use Elm/Pine, Lynx, etc is one way round it. Here (Ireland) the remote islands and other inaccessible places got special govmnt money for broadband access, so a former colleague who lives in retirement on Sherkin Island had for a while better broadband than I did in the burbs or a major city. My subdivision's POTS cable won't handle broadband, so I'm using a 6Mb/s line-of-sight radio connection from a local ISP. If someone plants a tree on the near-intervening hilltop, I'm sunk
My university uses SpamAssassin to rate all incoming mail for 18,000 student accounts and 3,000 staff/faculty, and prepend "***SPAM???" to the Subject header of all potential spam. Spam for student accounts is dropped on the floor; spam for staff/faculty is forwarded to their mailbox, and they have a local filter rule to put it into Junk or Trash or somewhere where *they* can check it.
I haven't had a false positive for over a year, and only a handful of false negs. The systems guys do a great job of keeping it tuned, and I don't know anyone who has had complaints.
They're all still non-starters until they get rid of the proprietary formats and use (eg) eBook.
Invite Don Knuth?
But math *is* a mystical religion...
... or one Microsoft OOXML spec doc
It's the pixels that matter. I'm a document engineer, and I need to be able to see a whole A4 page (PDF) legibly without vertical scrolling. Sure, having a double-page spread side-by-side is good, but 1200 vertical is the absolute minimum and I really don't care after that how wide it is.
Open it up to SIP, stupid!
Bluetooth is still flaky, frequently failing to see live devices.
CUPS is still *way* too complex for the novice.
*All* codecs should be installed by default. The moment it says "can't play {video|audio} because of..." is the moment the novice wipes Ubuntu.