I wasn't aware of that particular issue, and infact I know of a few instances (back when I was doing support as a college sophomore) where a call to MS and the new activation number did the trick. However, I will gladly grant you this point, and still contend that these cases are far more rare than the universal troubles with TurboTax.
Your friend jumped through some hoops and got XP to work. I hope. You could jump through hoops till you were blue the face and TurboTax wouldn't.
WinXP product activation hampers piracy by making it less straight forward to pirate a copy. I don't know anyone whose legitimate use of WinXP was hampered by activation.
Intuit's product activation hampered legitimate use. It was literally impossible to get the damn software installed even if you bought the CD.
There's nothing wrong with companies protecting their releases against casual piracy. And it does work, as I was reminded just the other day:
GF (1:30:05 PM): hey ed, how do i uninstall something? ME (1:33:18 PM): what are u uninstalling GF (1:34:02 PM): well my mom's friend gave us exell and microsoft word as well as power point, but i cant use it so i want to uninstall it ME (1:34:11 PM): why cant u use it GF (1:34:38 PM): its saying that its registered on someone else's comp so i cant use it
A normal human being doesn't know to look for pirated ISOs or cracks. As far as normal people are concerned, "borrowing an Office CD from mom's friend" was an easy way to get it, but it's no longer so. The easiest solution, then, is just to buy it. Obviously it doesn't much hamper pirates w. more sophistication and time on their hands, but they are not a large percentage of the potential install base.
So yea, XP activation may be annoying to you, but the worst a legitimate user would have to go through is calling MS to get issued a new CD key. Whereas Intuit users couldn't get the damn program to work. Period.
That's a really novel approach to driving web traffic. Pray tell, what's the URL of this marvelous website of yours, of which you wish to deprive these capitalist charge-for-search pigs?
Here are just the couple obvious lapses in logic and truth in this clearly dishonest article.
And though Microsoft's latest versions of Outlook block most executable attachments by default, it's still possible to override those protections.
Yes, it's also possible to edit and recompile Ximian to delete your hard drive when an email comes in, but who's going to do that? Users savy enough to do that (or to figure out how to enable executable attachments in Outlook) aren't the ones clicking on the WICKED SCREENSAVER!
Unfortunately, running as root (or Administrator) is common in the Windows world. In fact, Microsoft is still engaging in this risky behavior.
Right. The more prevalant an OS is, the higher the chances of a "non computer savy" guy running as Admin.
In the Windows world, a virus writer knows how the monoculture operates, so he can target his virus, secure in the knowledge that millions of systems have the same vulnerability.
You mean... market dominance is to blame for Windows being targeted? I thought that ran contrary to the guy's point?
I am not sure reading his troll any further would be a good use of time.
It meets the requirements of theft for all essential purposes as far as reasonable discussion is concerned. If I have something I do not wish you to have, and you take posession of it one way or another, you stole that item from me. I am not "deprived" of the item anymore than I am deprived of anything when you take out a loan using a stolen identity. Duplication of currency is theft against the financial system, duplication of music is theft against the industry. If you insist that the term theft is not perfectly fitting this sentence (a common mantra) fine. It does, however, perfectly convey the nature of the transgression.
First I would just like to say that this topic is totally irrelevant. It's a pen. It works. It's fine. I think that based on the size of your hand and the "posture" of your writing (by which I mean the way you grip your pen) the optimal pen for you may be the cheapest BiC or it may be something real expensive.
That aside, I recently won a Fisher Space pen. With the cap closed, it's a bullet (about 2 inches). With the crap stuck on the back, it's like 4 inches. The grip is a spiral engraving (fine enough that you can use it to file your names, in fact).
More importantly, the ink (about $5 a refill). It's obviously more viscous than regular ink due to some additive that is in there. The ink is guaranteed to not dry up for a century. It's also guaranteed to write in freezing cold (I didn't think that was relevant, but Carl {the genius behind suck.com and plastic} who grew up in Minnesotta said that used to be important to him). The ink is pressurized, meaning it does not rely on gravity in order to come out. You're probably not going to zero-gravity areas, but sometimes the only flat surface is a vertical one like the wall, and the space pen is good at writing on a piece of paper that is vertically aligned with respect to gravity. The ink is also promissed to work underwater, but I never had the need to test out that aspect of it and hopefully not going to.
Another obvious benefit of the space pen is the conversation piece aspect. It readily draws up a Seinfeld reference, and if you've got more time, you can tell the story that ends with "... and the Soviets just gave their cosmonauts pencils"
I believe a lot of what goes on P2P networks is copyright infringement, but what choice do we have. The music and movies are sold in packages that violates our traditional fair use rights under the law. If i can't make a copy of the CD for my car, and the manufacturer won't give me another CD when the original get stolen or damaged, then why should I buy the CD
Sorry but that's nonsense.
The CD is a carrier instrument. Meaning that if I buy a CD and give it to you, it's yours. Kind of like money. If I have a dollar and give it to you, it's yours to use. Now, what happens if my dollar gets stolen? The use of that dollar is transfered over to someone else. Does it entitle me to make a copy of the dollar so I can spend it in case my original dollar gets lost or stolen?
It doesn't because the implications of "there are more dollars in the economy" are obvious - devaluation of currency. The dollar is both a medium of currency and a unit of it. So is a CD. The physical CD you have represents both the medium and the licence for the content. If someone steals your physical CD, and you start using your backups, you've now created two "instances" of that CD in the world. You bought it once, but now two people: you and the person who stole your CDs - are using it. Or maybe they sold the CD they stole from you. Much like the case of duplicating a dollar in case the original gets stolen, this is not an acceptable situation from the point of view of the issuer of currency or music. Yes, you sure did earn that buck, and you sure did buy that CD, but your rights in both cases allow you to trade it, but not to duplicate it.
I believe a lot of what goes on P2P networks is copyright infringement, but what choice do we have. The music and movies are sold in packages that violates our traditional fair use rights under the law. If i can't make a copy of the CD for my car, and the manufacturer won't give me another CD when the original get stolen or damaged, then why should I buy the CD. The manufacturer obviously has no respect for me as a customer, so I might as well return the disrespect the manufacturer and copy the music off the net.
Nonsense once more.
As an individual, you're not guaranteed "respect" from a business entity as any sort of human right. For example, there may be a store owner in your neighborhood whom you perceive to be rude and unfriendly to you. Your option is to avoid patronizing his establishment or to be rude back to him. Your option is NOT to in any way steal his property.
If disrespect is a justifiable cause to transgress on someone's property, then surely RIAA companies have a right to disrespectfully snoop on your computer/network traffic, in exchange for your disrespectful usage of P2P networks? If disrespect justifies illegal transgression...
The same goes for movies. If movies are increasingly downloaded from the net, it won't be because people don't want to buy movies. It will be because the movies we can buy are illegally packaged to prevent out fair use rights. Why should I buy a movie that is crippled when I can download a copy that honors my fair use rights. The manufacturer may hid behind a license, but it makes no difference. A contract that removes legal rights, especially when the rights are not itemized, should not be honored.
Nonsense once again. There are plenty of non-itemized rights that you are denied all the time. In case of currency, it's not "obvious" that you cannot duplicate your dollars for backup purposes but anyone who's not a total idiot understands this. Same goes for music and movies. You're not entitled to music and movies the way you're entitled to free speech. Since someone provides these things as luxury items, they have the right to do so upon their own terms. You have the right to say "fuck that" and not do business with these enteties. However, no amount of rationalizing gives you the legal right in the eyes of any court to steal their property.
Because this guy is a SENIOR developer. That means that not only does he need to guide other Junior developers in technical aspects, but have a general idea of WHAT'S GOING ON! I am a junior programmer in that team and I still had to learn a ton about finance and markets and portfolios and all of that before I could be at all effective.
My team is looking for a senior developer with a background in finance. We work with several head hunters, we fly people in to get interviewed. Plenty of candidates but no one out of the AT LEAST 20 that my manager has met with has been good and high-level enough. And all of them have jobs already, so they only reason they're interviewing w. us is because we offered them more.
My conclusion from this is that REALLY good senior developers are in rather short demand, and that companies do tend to hang on to them.
This is completely off-topic, but I'd like to suggest that the fact that Microsoft has a Cognitive Psychologist (many, I am sure) on their staff is why their GUIs are far superior to those hacked out by open source coders, who are good developers but do not have the design and cognitive psych. knowledge necessary to produce a genuinely intuitive interface.
Is a "free right" free like speech? If a "free ride" free like beer, then? Is that a DUI?
But thanks for your clever observation. I was always under the impression that software caught bugs the way people catch germs - by hanging out with other sick software. Are you meaning to say that bugs are there because of sloppy programmers? I refuse to believe it!
You say that this is your first vehicle. Does it mean you don't have a lot of driving experience? If you do have a few thousand miles under your belt, ignore this message. Otherwise...
A simple fact of life is that younger/less experienced drivers are pretty likely to get into accidents, whether by their own fault or by not being experienced enough to spot someone else's error and compensate for it. Either way, as a rule of thumb, you should expect to wreck your first car. I happened to not ever wreck mine, but I think most people I know have.
With that, I would recomend that you do not get a new car, especially not a hybrid. You will be paying a lot to buy it, a lot in insurance (you'll want full coverage on that shiny new baby), etc. Also, you'll feel sad every time someone dings or scratches you parking. Not to mention if, as mentioned above, you wreck it.
I would advise getting an older (and maybe scratched) compact. I had great experience with Corollas which were 10+ years old. If you get something like that, you will pay less to start, less insurance (you can probably get away with liability) and you'll have a car that can be cheaply repaired by anyone. Also, after driving this car for a few years, you'll have some better point of view from which to chose your next vehicle. The state of the art of hybrids will advance also, and you'll be ahead w. some money and experience. You'll still have a chance of getting something like 30+ mpg, w. decent power and speed.
I once took a transactions system taught by a guy who had a hand in establishing the SQL99 standard. He was talking about the way DBSs store related records adjacently on storage media so you only have to seek once, when I piped in suggesting (for the benefit of my dozing classmates) that this is kind of like what defrag does. The professor literally yelled "WHAT?!" He thought I said something about fagots. Upon explanation, he said he has absolutely no idea what defrag is and that he's never used windows.
Take this anecdote as you wish. To me it is an obvious example that you can be all about computer science, but if you don't know what some windows concepts are about, you're not really familiar with a major paradigm that exists in the industry. Which is fine for the academic world but since most CS grads are going into the work force, they should expect to use windows and MS products one way or another (plenty of banks, insurance companies, and other such places that hire programmers but don't sell software, are Windows shops and you may end up working in one.)
Now that being said, there wasn't much that I did in school that involved MS products (other than using the Windows workstations, and making a flightsum using VC++ and OpenGL) and my situation at work is very much similar. But I am sure that part-time job where I developed for IIS / MS-SQL helped broaden my skillset as much as any of my classes did.
So basically what I am trying to say is that a lot of things like Java are used because they're great for teaching, but chances are that once you're out of school you're not going to be coding in Java. Would it hurt someone to learn.NET instead of Java at school, if they're just as likely to program in c on Unix once they graduate. I don't think so.
If you graduate and you don't know how to use the Start button, on the other hand, you're almost certainly in trouble,
I haven't used quicken much (only enough to decide I like MS Money better) -- and I agree with you hat GNUCash does the job "reasonably well" - if you overlook the faults and certain unintuitive paradigms. Which, as I said, is good enough when you have an explicit goal of not using Windows or MS Software, but it's not very good when you just compare Money (or presumably quicken) based on usability alone. Sit two people in front of a computer running Money and one running GNUCash. Which one do you think will figure out how to do something faster? How about which one will be happier with the GUI and the user experience?
At this point it doesn't matter what kind of a sound card I have (to be honest I don't even recall)... Rh detected it, but whenever any sound way played, it'd play for a second and 'clog up' the sound output. Nothing else would play untill I killed some process (at which point all the stuff that didn't play before came pouring out..)
Eventually, with the help of many people, it was realized that I need to set all my stuff to use OSS drivers. That worked, but sounded like crap and only played one sound at a time.
If that was the only thing, I'd live with it. Since it was one of the many crappy aspects, I gave up the OS altogether.
Thanks for the heads up. I am not sure what version it was that I had (probably the original RPM on rh9, you're right). In general, if it was only Evolution then I could live with it. But it was more than that, it was an overal feeling of mediocrity and I could find no justification for doing that to myself (this WAS the longest stretch I've gone in using solely Linux, w/o having to boot into Windows - about a week. I am of the belief that if I need to boot into Windows to do ANYTHING, then there's no point using Linux)
At this point in my life, I am a recent college grad, starting a career, and I probably won't have time to mess with Linux until I retire. Hopefully it'll be ready by then;-)
I am not sure what affords GnuCash the title of "least publicized," as I've heard the title many times and infact it came with RedHat whenever I last installed that.
Some months ago I said on/. that two major things keeping me away from using Linux is the lack of any sort of decent finance management software and an Outlook-type thing. My whole life is in MS Money and Outlook.
I heard things about GnuCash being hopeless to install unless it came packaged with your distro, so I was excited when I found out that the version of RH about to come out will include it.
Thus began my most-recent attempt to switch to Linux. I exported my Outlook archives into Evolution, and my Ms Money accounts into GnuCash.
It lasted about a week. By the end of the week I was thoroughly dissapointed with the mediocrity of both of the pieces of software. Yes, they are usable. yes, GnuCash added up numbers together, but no,the user experience was mediocre compared to what I was used to with my Microsoft applications. That, and the shitty sound support, eventually made me say "fuck it" and switch back to Win2k and I'm happily using it since.
I think most everyone agrees that GnuCash is a critical piece of software for the Linux desktop. Yes. Absolutely....
GnuCash is a long program (well at work we deal with about 150 times that much code..) but from a user perspective of someone who's known better, it sucks. I am glad that the focus isn't only to find more coders. What this thing needs is some normal human beings using it and saying "you know what, it's NOT acceptable that window A obscures window B and freezes while window B is waiting for input from me." It needs, I am sorry to say, Quicken or MS Money users, who say "It was really easy to do X, Y, and Z, but here, I can't even figure out if it's possible,"
Good luck to this project, absolutely. Maybe - evnetually - projects like this will mature and become useful to people who don't care about open source and don't hate Microsoft. Yes, GnuCash appeals if you're maniacal about those things. It does not appeal if you're looking for better and more useable software. Unfortunately, a lot of Linux stuff can be described thusly.
Slashdot Mirror
I wasn't aware of that particular issue, and infact I know of a few instances (back when I was doing support as a college sophomore) where a call to MS and the new activation number did the trick. However, I will gladly grant you this point, and still contend that these cases are far more rare than the universal troubles with TurboTax.
Your friend jumped through some hoops and got XP to work. I hope. You could jump through hoops till you were blue the face and TurboTax wouldn't.
Okay here's the difference, dre.
WinXP product activation hampers piracy by making it less straight forward to pirate a copy. I don't know anyone whose legitimate use of WinXP was hampered by activation.
Intuit's product activation hampered legitimate use. It was literally impossible to get the damn software installed even if you bought the CD.
There's nothing wrong with companies protecting their releases against casual piracy. And it does work, as I was reminded just the other day:
GF (1:30:05 PM): hey ed, how do i uninstall something?
ME (1:33:18 PM): what are u uninstalling
GF (1:34:02 PM): well my mom's friend gave us exell and microsoft word as well as power point, but i cant use it so i want to uninstall it
ME (1:34:11 PM): why cant u use it
GF (1:34:38 PM): its saying that its registered on someone else's comp so i cant use it
A normal human being doesn't know to look for pirated ISOs or cracks. As far as normal people are concerned, "borrowing an Office CD from mom's friend" was an easy way to get it, but it's no longer so. The easiest solution, then, is just to buy it. Obviously it doesn't much hamper pirates w. more sophistication and time on their hands, but they are not a large percentage of the potential install base.
So yea, XP activation may be annoying to you, but the worst a legitimate user would have to go through is calling MS to get issued a new CD key. Whereas Intuit users couldn't get the damn program to work. Period.
That's a really novel approach to driving web traffic. Pray tell, what's the URL of this marvelous website of yours, of which you wish to deprive these capitalist charge-for-search pigs?
Here are just the couple obvious lapses in logic and truth in this clearly dishonest article.
And though Microsoft's latest versions of Outlook block most executable attachments by default, it's still possible to override those protections.
Yes, it's also possible to edit and recompile Ximian to delete your hard drive when an email comes in, but who's going to do that? Users savy enough to do that (or to figure out how to enable executable attachments in Outlook) aren't the ones clicking on the WICKED SCREENSAVER!
Unfortunately, running as root (or Administrator) is common in the Windows world. In fact, Microsoft is still engaging in this risky behavior.
Right. The more prevalant an OS is, the higher the chances of a "non computer savy" guy running as Admin.
In the Windows world, a virus writer knows how the monoculture operates, so he can target his virus, secure in the knowledge that millions of systems have the same vulnerability.
You mean... market dominance is to blame for Windows being targeted? I thought that ran contrary to the guy's point?
I am not sure reading his troll any further would be a good use of time.
Okay, so if I replace all instances of theft with "fraud" you'll accept my point of view?
It meets the requirements of theft for all essential purposes as far as reasonable discussion is concerned. If I have something I do not wish you to have, and you take posession of it one way or another, you stole that item from me. I am not "deprived" of the item anymore than I am deprived of anything when you take out a loan using a stolen identity. Duplication of currency is theft against the financial system, duplication of music is theft against the industry. If you insist that the term theft is not perfectly fitting this sentence (a common mantra) fine. It does, however, perfectly convey the nature of the transgression.
First I would just like to say that this topic is totally irrelevant. It's a pen. It works. It's fine. I think that based on the size of your hand and the "posture" of your writing (by which I mean the way you grip your pen) the optimal pen for you may be the cheapest BiC or it may be something real expensive.
That aside, I recently won a Fisher Space pen. With the cap closed, it's a bullet (about 2 inches). With the crap stuck on the back, it's like 4 inches. The grip is a spiral engraving (fine enough that you can use it to file your names, in fact).
More importantly, the ink (about $5 a refill). It's obviously more viscous than regular ink due to some additive that is in there. The ink is guaranteed to not dry up for a century. It's also guaranteed to write in freezing cold (I didn't think that was relevant, but Carl {the genius behind suck.com and plastic} who grew up in Minnesotta said that used to be important to him). The ink is pressurized, meaning it does not rely on gravity in order to come out. You're probably not going to zero-gravity areas, but sometimes the only flat surface is a vertical one like the wall, and the space pen is good at writing on a piece of paper that is vertically aligned with respect to gravity. The ink is also promissed to work underwater, but I never had the need to test out that aspect of it and hopefully not going to.
Another obvious benefit of the space pen is the conversation piece aspect. It readily draws up a Seinfeld reference, and if you've got more time, you can tell the story that ends with "... and the Soviets just gave their cosmonauts pencils"
I believe a lot of what goes on P2P networks is copyright infringement, but what choice do we have. The music and movies are sold in packages that violates our traditional fair use rights under the law. If i can't make a copy of the CD for my car, and the manufacturer won't give me another CD when the original get stolen or damaged, then why should I buy the CD
Sorry but that's nonsense.
The CD is a carrier instrument. Meaning that if I buy a CD and give it to you, it's yours. Kind of like money. If I have a dollar and give it to you, it's yours to use. Now, what happens if my dollar gets stolen? The use of that dollar is transfered over to someone else. Does it entitle me to make a copy of the dollar so I can spend it in case my original dollar gets lost or stolen?
It doesn't because the implications of "there are more dollars in the economy" are obvious - devaluation of currency. The dollar is both a medium of currency and a unit of it. So is a CD. The physical CD you have represents both the medium and the licence for the content. If someone steals your physical CD, and you start using your backups, you've now created two "instances" of that CD in the world. You bought it once, but now two people: you and the person who stole your CDs - are using it. Or maybe they sold the CD they stole from you. Much like the case of duplicating a dollar in case the original gets stolen, this is not an acceptable situation from the point of view of the issuer of currency or music. Yes, you sure did earn that buck, and you sure did buy that CD, but your rights in both cases allow you to trade it, but not to duplicate it.
I believe a lot of what goes on P2P networks is copyright infringement, but what choice do we have. The music and movies are sold in packages that violates our traditional fair use rights under the law. If i can't make a copy of the CD for my car, and the manufacturer won't give me another CD when the original get stolen or damaged, then why should I buy the CD. The manufacturer obviously has no respect for me as a customer, so I might as well return the disrespect the manufacturer and copy the music off the net.
Nonsense once more.
As an individual, you're not guaranteed "respect" from a business entity as any sort of human right. For example, there may be a store owner in your neighborhood whom you perceive to be rude and unfriendly to you. Your option is to avoid patronizing his establishment or to be rude back to him. Your option is NOT to in any way steal his property.
If disrespect is a justifiable cause to transgress on someone's property, then surely RIAA companies have a right to disrespectfully snoop on your computer/network traffic, in exchange for your disrespectful usage of P2P networks? If disrespect justifies illegal transgression...
The same goes for movies. If movies are increasingly downloaded from the net, it won't be because people don't want to buy movies. It will be because the movies we can buy are illegally packaged to prevent out fair use rights. Why should I buy a movie that is crippled when I can download a copy that honors my fair use rights. The manufacturer may hid behind a license, but it makes no difference. A contract that removes legal rights, especially when the rights are not itemized, should not be honored.
Nonsense once again. There are plenty of non-itemized rights that you are denied all the time. In case of currency, it's not "obvious" that you cannot duplicate your dollars for backup purposes but anyone who's not a total idiot understands this. Same goes for music and movies. You're not entitled to music and movies the way you're entitled to free speech. Since someone provides these things as luxury items, they have the right to do so upon their own terms. You have the right to say "fuck that" and not do business with these enteties. However, no amount of rationalizing gives you the legal right in the eyes of any court to steal their property.
I find your last sentence
Is the Bush re-election campaign going to be able to spam me once a month asking for donations?
It's the Dean compaign that was accused of spamming, IIRC.
Yes. I don't remember names, just concepts.
(if that)
True enough, why would a financial analyst care about his reputatioon?
There was some virus 2 or 3 years ago that fucked up some flash chip or whatever and you had to get a new MB.
Because this guy is a SENIOR developer. That means that not only does he need to guide other Junior developers in technical aspects, but have a general idea of WHAT'S GOING ON! I am a junior programmer in that team and I still had to learn a ton about finance and markets and portfolios and all of that before I could be at all effective.
Actually that's -not- funny at all.
My team is looking for a senior developer with a background in finance. We work with several head hunters, we fly people in to get interviewed. Plenty of candidates but no one out of the AT LEAST 20 that my manager has met with has been good and high-level enough. And all of them have jobs already, so they only reason they're interviewing w. us is because we offered them more.
My conclusion from this is that REALLY good senior developers are in rather short demand, and that companies do tend to hang on to them.
And we're located in NYC.
This is completely off-topic, but I'd like to suggest that the fact that Microsoft has a Cognitive Psychologist (many, I am sure) on their staff is why their GUIs are far superior to those hacked out by open source coders, who are good developers but do not have the design and cognitive psych. knowledge necessary to produce a genuinely intuitive interface.
Is a "free right" free like speech? If a "free ride" free like beer, then? Is that a DUI?
But thanks for your clever observation. I was always under the impression that software caught bugs the way people catch germs - by hanging out with other sick software. Are you meaning to say that bugs are there because of sloppy programmers? I refuse to believe it!
For example, Claire at the Brickseller must be good looking because he gave her a good (23%) tip.
You say that this is your first vehicle. Does it mean you don't have a lot of driving experience? If you do have a few thousand miles under your belt, ignore this message. Otherwise...
A simple fact of life is that younger/less experienced drivers are pretty likely to get into accidents, whether by their own fault or by not being experienced enough to spot someone else's error and compensate for it. Either way, as a rule of thumb, you should expect to wreck your first car. I happened to not ever wreck mine, but I think most people I know have.
With that, I would recomend that you do not get a new car, especially not a hybrid. You will be paying a lot to buy it, a lot in insurance (you'll want full coverage on that shiny new baby), etc. Also, you'll feel sad every time someone dings or scratches you parking. Not to mention if, as mentioned above, you wreck it.
I would advise getting an older (and maybe scratched) compact. I had great experience with Corollas which were 10+ years old. If you get something like that, you will pay less to start, less insurance (you can probably get away with liability) and you'll have a car that can be cheaply repaired by anyone. Also, after driving this car for a few years, you'll have some better point of view from which to chose your next vehicle. The state of the art of hybrids will advance also, and you'll be ahead w. some money and experience. You'll still have a chance of getting something like 30+ mpg, w. decent power and speed.
I once took a transactions system taught by a guy who had a hand in establishing the SQL99 standard. He was talking about the way DBSs store related records adjacently on storage media so you only have to seek once, when I piped in suggesting (for the benefit of my dozing classmates) that this is kind of like what defrag does. The professor literally yelled "WHAT?!" He thought I said something about fagots. Upon explanation, he said he has absolutely no idea what defrag is and that he's never used windows.
.NET instead of Java at school, if they're just as likely to program in c on Unix once they graduate. I don't think so.
Take this anecdote as you wish. To me it is an obvious example that you can be all about computer science, but if you don't know what some windows concepts are about, you're not really familiar with a major paradigm that exists in the industry. Which is fine for the academic world but since most CS grads are going into the work force, they should expect to use windows and MS products one way or another (plenty of banks, insurance companies, and other such places that hire programmers but don't sell software, are Windows shops and you may end up working in one.)
Now that being said, there wasn't much that I did in school that involved MS products (other than using the Windows workstations, and making a flightsum using VC++ and OpenGL) and my situation at work is very much similar. But I am sure that part-time job where I developed for IIS / MS-SQL helped broaden my skillset as much as any of my classes did.
So basically what I am trying to say is that a lot of things like Java are used because they're great for teaching, but chances are that once you're out of school you're not going to be coding in Java. Would it hurt someone to learn
If you graduate and you don't know how to use the Start button, on the other hand, you're almost certainly in trouble,
So, we're going to have this in the U.S. soon... Will the two nations then be trully the same?
also your intelligence and... unpleasant body odour."
Having gone to an engineering school, I found the two to go hand in hand anyways.
I haven't used quicken much (only enough to decide I like MS Money better) -- and I agree with you hat GNUCash does the job "reasonably well" - if you overlook the faults and certain unintuitive paradigms. Which, as I said, is good enough when you have an explicit goal of not using Windows or MS Software, but it's not very good when you just compare Money (or presumably quicken) based on usability alone. Sit two people in front of a computer running Money and one running GNUCash. Which one do you think will figure out how to do something faster? How about which one will be happier with the GUI and the user experience?
At this point it doesn't matter what kind of a sound card I have (to be honest I don't even recall)... Rh detected it, but whenever any sound way played, it'd play for a second and 'clog up' the sound output. Nothing else would play untill I killed some process (at which point all the stuff that didn't play before came pouring out..)
Eventually, with the help of many people, it was realized that I need to set all my stuff to use OSS drivers. That worked, but sounded like crap and only played one sound at a time.
If that was the only thing, I'd live with it. Since it was one of the many crappy aspects, I gave up the OS altogether.
Thanks for the heads up. I am not sure what version it was that I had (probably the original RPM on rh9, you're right). In general, if it was only Evolution then I could live with it. But it was more than that, it was an overal feeling of mediocrity and I could find no justification for doing that to myself (this WAS the longest stretch I've gone in using solely Linux, w/o having to boot into Windows - about a week. I am of the belief that if I need to boot into Windows to do ANYTHING, then there's no point using Linux)
;-)
At this point in my life, I am a recent college grad, starting a career, and I probably won't have time to mess with Linux until I retire. Hopefully it'll be ready by then
I am not sure what affords GnuCash the title of "least publicized," as I've heard the title many times and infact it came with RedHat whenever I last installed that.
/. that two major things keeping me away from using Linux is the lack of any sort of decent finance management software and an Outlook-type thing. My whole life is in MS Money and Outlook.
Some months ago I said on
I heard things about GnuCash being hopeless to install unless it came packaged with your distro, so I was excited when I found out that the version of RH about to come out will include it.
Thus began my most-recent attempt to switch to Linux. I exported my Outlook archives into Evolution, and my Ms Money accounts into GnuCash.
It lasted about a week. By the end of the week I was thoroughly dissapointed with the mediocrity of both of the pieces of software. Yes, they are usable. yes, GnuCash added up numbers together, but no,the user experience was mediocre compared to what I was used to with my Microsoft applications. That, and the shitty sound support, eventually made me say "fuck it" and switch back to Win2k and I'm happily using it since.
I think most everyone agrees that GnuCash is a critical piece of software for the Linux desktop. Yes. Absolutely....
GnuCash is a long program (well at work we deal with about 150 times that much code..) but from a user perspective of someone who's known better, it sucks. I am glad that the focus isn't only to find more coders. What this thing needs is some normal human beings using it and saying "you know what, it's NOT acceptable that window A obscures window B and freezes while window B is waiting for input from me." It needs, I am sorry to say, Quicken or MS Money users, who say "It was really easy to do X, Y, and Z, but here, I can't even figure out if it's possible,"
Good luck to this project, absolutely. Maybe - evnetually - projects like this will mature and become useful to people who don't care about open source and don't hate Microsoft. Yes, GnuCash appeals if you're maniacal about those things. It does not appeal if you're looking for better and more useable software. Unfortunately, a lot of Linux stuff can be described thusly.