I can, and have, made my KDE really purty too. However, that doesn't change the fact that there are very few actual, viable, installable, usable replacements for the Windows apps that people actually use. Sure, it's nice to look at a pretty desktop, for a minute or so...
The police didn't investigate this. They were investigating the bad-check writing. They gave me back my passport. It's extremely unlikely that any agency would bother investigating a mailbox theft like that.
I went in for a passport, provided all the paperwork, photo, birth certificate. The gal said that my passport would be mailed to me. I asked her if that was safe, and she said yes.
A few month later, shortly before my international trip, a cop showed up at my door. Apparently someone had tried using my passport to cash a bogus check at a local bank, and had left the passport at the scene. I had to go in and be un-ID'd by the bank employees to prove I wasn't the perp. Great. The bastard even signed my passport, so I have this hokey signature on my passport (that is, if it hasn't been stolen - I haven't seen it in a few years). The passport, I recovered. However, my birth certificate is still out there. When I still lived in that town (Portland, OR), every so often I would get bad check notices. I even recieved a truck title from the DMV! In the process of doing all this, I learned that the perp, or another, used the birth certificate to obtain an Oregon drivers license. But, could I see a copy of this person's photo??? HELL NO. Despite the fact that I'm the victim, they wouldn't show it to me.
I have kept a file on all this, including the police report # and info. Oddly enough, my credit rating is still 97%. We had no trouble at all buying a house.
My question is... would I have a case against the passport people (State Dept?)?
The morals of this story are as follows:
Don't live in Portland OR, it' a shithole
Pay extra to have your passport sent by registered mail, UPS, Fedex, whatever, if you have that option; I DID NOT.
Don't panic. Even when bad things happen, it's not the end of the world.
Nah, those astronauts aren't like real people. Most are straight as an arrow - you have to be to be in good enough physical and mental shape to do that. Most are likely married. It's highly unlikely that on any given mission, there would be two willing and able participants. It's not like they recruit crack whores for astronauts. Maybe if a married couple were sent... maybe. I'm sure there's rules against cracking open a six pack of Pabst Blue Ribbon and seducing your fellow astronauts.
Though, it would be cool if some porn stars volunteered and were accepted on such a mission. Science would benefit, somehow, as would the world of entertainment.
It probably wouldn't sell much if they just had a black console screen with root password prompt. Maybe a dozen bored teens might try to guess the name of the floor lackey's kitty, then move on. Probably very few fully-functional tax-paying adults would say "Gee Marge, look at that, an elite system with a 'root' password prompt. We gotta get one of those!"
Unfortunately, meaningful social programs don't help that much. It wouldn't help the world to feed a dozen people if doing so allowed a tyrant to kill a hundred others.
These people who, when you post your complaints, tell you how to fix your problem. For example, complaining about program installation brings out at least 3 know-it-alls who have the answer, all different, and suggest that you should find this and install it and everything will be happy. The whole point of this is... these are annoyances. One shouldn't have to hunt down a solution to the built-in problems. The solution should be built-in. The problem shouldn't exist. This is my chief annoyance; that for every problem, there are a half-dozen solutions, which you have to track down on your own, which are not standard across distributions.
1. Fonts. I want to drop any font I want into a fonts dir, and be able to use them automatically, in EVERY bloody app. I don't want to worry about a font server, I don't want to build fonts.dir files and all that crap. Plus, I want fonts to look good and I want all apps to adhere to some sort of standard whereby all apps have a similar look.
2. Printing. I want a single printer install routine that allows me to print from every app with no problem at all. I don't want to be bothered thinking about lpr, ghostcript, postscript, etc.
3. Installing apps. I want to download a single install file which contains everything I need to install an app. I am annoyed as all hell by downloads that require me to visit other ftp sites to get pre-requisites, themselves often requiring other things that I have to download and install first. It's a Royal Pain In The Ass (RPITA).
4. Network Config. This isn't too much of a problem, but it would be nice to have a single network config utility which loads whatever networking components you want without having to recompile a kernel or install modules.
5. Dynamic kernel/modules autoloading/configuring. I hate having to recompile a kernel and reboot when adding/changing stuff that requires such.
These things are major hindrances to adoption of Linux by normal users, and my pet peeves!
I would like to run one command, or click one button, to install an app. I HATE having to download a variety of libraries to install something. It's stupid.
This should be a universal thing across all distributions. Or, there should be one distribution with all the niceties of Windows. It's just too fragmented and finicky to go anywhere.
You may not get 1000 extra apps with Windows, but your fonts are going to look nice, you can download or buy 1000's of pieces of software that will work without having to download and install hundreds of different versions of different libraries and etc. It's worth it for most people to shell out actual money for something that will work that get something for free that requires hours and hours of building and configuring to accomplish the same (or almost the same) thing.
Or, just install Opera, and continue with your life without having to reinvent the wheel. Really, I'm an avid Slackware user, but this single-example-of-why-Linux-is-better-than-windows -so-blow-away-windows-you-dumb-loser is getting old. It's very short-sighted and entirely unrealistic for those of us who work in the real world.
Really, it would probably be a way more relevant test to see the same test subjects take each OS out of the box, install from scratch, install a few apps, configure their gui, etc. All this shows is that yes, after someone has tweaked the living hell out of a Linux box, it can look and behave almost as well as a Windows XP box. Whoop-de-doo!
Yeah, thousands of geeky people who each build their own app using their own version of whatever, which, in order to use, requires half a dozen other things. Sure, they're all free, but to download, compile, install, all these pre-requisites for whatever, is a major pain in the ass, even for a geeky person. Just the other day I decided I wanted the latest version of the gimp. So, I downloaded it and started config. Oopsy-Daisy! Need gtk-perl. Ooopsy-Daisy! Need atk, glib, and something called pango. Go figure. So, after downloading, untar/zipping, configure, make, make install all of these... Ooopsy-Daisy! The gtk Makefile has something wrong with it so it doesn't find the *.o files. Solved by copying from install root to subdirs. Whew! Now, after all this crap, I was able to get gimp made and installed. Yay! It was free! And sure, it's a good program, but could my mom do this? My grandma? Joe End User? Should they be required to? There's just too much fragmentation, too many dependencies on 3rd party libraries. Building and installing anything is such a pain in the ass that it's usually not worth it. KDE is getting better, but I've resisted installing the latest version because I don't want to go through that song and dance again; You need this. Download here... oh, for this, you need this, download here. Oh, for that, you need this, download here. The nice thing about MS OS/apps is that you have your installation, and when you install software, the installer installs whatever it needs. You don't have to visit half a dozen ftp sites to build the prerequisites for whatever you want. As much as I like Linux, until there are fundamental changes in the way this works, it's really not going to be something that REAL people want to use.
Is there a utility/app/shareware thing that will tell you what process on WinNT/2K/XP is associated with whatever ports are active? Thanks. Really, I mean that.
If/when changes can be made to the kernel through the gui without requiring a manual recompilation of the kernel, that would be a good start. Any Jackass MCSE can install a Novell client in Windows, which installs IPX/SPX at the same time. Try getting the same Jackass MCSE to configure and re-compile the kernel to support IPX, (or install a module). It's just a major pain in the ass. Sure, some of us can do this without much second thought, but really, for 99% of end users, this is like rocket science.
If such things were done behind-the-scenes, that would be a good start.
Slashdot Mirror
I can, and have, made my KDE really purty too. However, that doesn't change the fact that there are very few actual, viable, installable, usable replacements for the Windows apps that people actually use. Sure, it's nice to look at a pretty desktop, for a minute or so...
Uh... one of the few reasons why I use Access is because of the pretty reports it generates. How do you replicate this with Perl?
Admit it.
Just put it in the dishwasher with your dishes, wash, allow to dry.
Chicken!
Thanks, I'll be here all week. Be sure to tip your waitress.
The police didn't investigate this. They were investigating the bad-check writing. They gave me back my passport. It's extremely unlikely that any agency would bother investigating a mailbox theft like that.
I went in for a passport, provided all the paperwork, photo, birth certificate. The gal said that my passport would be mailed to me. I asked her if that was safe, and she said yes.
A few month later, shortly before my international trip, a cop showed up at my door. Apparently someone had tried using my passport to cash a bogus check at a local bank, and had left the passport at the scene. I had to go in and be un-ID'd by the bank employees to prove I wasn't the perp. Great. The bastard even signed my passport, so I have this hokey signature on my passport (that is, if it hasn't been stolen - I haven't seen it in a few years). The passport, I recovered. However, my birth certificate is still out there. When I still lived in that town (Portland, OR), every so often I would get bad check notices. I even recieved a truck title from the DMV! In the process of doing all this, I learned that the perp, or another, used the birth certificate to obtain an Oregon drivers license. But, could I see a copy of this person's photo??? HELL NO. Despite the fact that I'm the victim, they wouldn't show it to me.
I have kept a file on all this, including the police report # and info. Oddly enough, my credit rating is still 97%. We had no trouble at all buying a house.
My question is... would I have a case against the passport people (State Dept?)?
The morals of this story are as follows:
Thanks for listening.
Nah, those astronauts aren't like real people. Most are straight as an arrow - you have to be to be in good enough physical and mental shape to do that. Most are likely married. It's highly unlikely that on any given mission, there would be two willing and able participants. It's not like they recruit crack whores for astronauts. Maybe if a married couple were sent... maybe. I'm sure there's rules against cracking open a six pack of Pabst Blue Ribbon and seducing your fellow astronauts.
Though, it would be cool if some porn stars volunteered and were accepted on such a mission. Science would benefit, somehow, as would the world of entertainment.
It probably wouldn't sell much if they just had a black console screen with root password prompt. Maybe a dozen bored teens might try to guess the name of the floor lackey's kitty, then move on. Probably very few fully-functional tax-paying adults would say "Gee Marge, look at that, an elite system with a 'root' password prompt. We gotta get one of those!"
Unfortunately, meaningful social programs don't help that much. It wouldn't help the world to feed a dozen people if doing so allowed a tyrant to kill a hundred others.
These people who, when you post your complaints, tell you how to fix your problem. For example, complaining about program installation brings out at least 3 know-it-alls who have the answer, all different, and suggest that you should find this and install it and everything will be happy.
The whole point of this is... these are annoyances. One shouldn't have to hunt down a solution to the built-in problems. The solution should be built-in. The problem shouldn't exist. This is my chief annoyance; that for every problem, there are a half-dozen solutions, which you have to track down on your own, which are not standard across distributions.
Assuming we're talking about GUI's here....
1. Fonts. I want to drop any font I want into a fonts dir, and be able to use them automatically, in EVERY bloody app. I don't want to worry about a font server, I don't want to build fonts.dir files and all that crap. Plus, I want fonts to look good and I want all apps to adhere to some sort of standard whereby all apps have a similar look.
2. Printing. I want a single printer install routine that allows me to print from every app with no problem at all. I don't want to be bothered thinking about lpr, ghostcript, postscript, etc.
3. Installing apps. I want to download a single install file which contains everything I need to install an app. I am annoyed as all hell by downloads that require me to visit other ftp sites to get pre-requisites, themselves often requiring other things that I have to download and install first. It's a Royal Pain In The Ass (RPITA).
4. Network Config. This isn't too much of a problem, but it would be nice to have a single network config utility which loads whatever networking components you want without having to recompile a kernel or install modules.
5. Dynamic kernel/modules autoloading/configuring. I hate having to recompile a kernel and reboot when adding/changing stuff that requires such.
These things are major hindrances to adoption of Linux by normal users, and my pet peeves!
The "overwhelming majority" of the world aren't doing this, Americans are.
if he's standing on the beach instead of sitting in a bar.
Thanks, I'll be here all week. Be sure to tip your waitress.
I would like to run one command, or click one button, to install an app. I HATE having to download a variety of libraries to install something. It's stupid.
This should be a universal thing across all distributions. Or, there should be one distribution with all the niceties of Windows. It's just too fragmented and finicky to go anywhere.
I don't have apt-get. I spent a few minutes the other night trying to find where to get it, but gave up.
Exactly.
You may not get 1000 extra apps with Windows, but your fonts are going to look nice, you can download or buy 1000's of pieces of software that will work without having to download and install hundreds of different versions of different libraries and etc. It's worth it for most people to shell out actual money for something that will work that get something for free that requires hours and hours of building and configuring to accomplish the same (or almost the same) thing.
Or, just install Opera, and continue with your life without having to reinvent the wheel.s -so-blow-away-windows-you-dumb-loser is getting old. It's very short-sighted and entirely unrealistic for those of us who work in the real world.
Really, I'm an avid Slackware user, but this single-example-of-why-Linux-is-better-than-window
Really, it would probably be a way more relevant test to see the same test subjects take each OS out of the box, install from scratch, install a few apps, configure their gui, etc. All this shows is that yes, after someone has tweaked the living hell out of a Linux box, it can look and behave almost as well as a Windows XP box. Whoop-de-doo!
Yeah, thousands of geeky people who each build their own app using their own version of whatever, which, in order to use, requires half a dozen other things. Sure, they're all free, but to download, compile, install, all these pre-requisites for whatever, is a major pain in the ass, even for a geeky person. Just the other day I decided I wanted the latest version of the gimp. So, I downloaded it and started config. Oopsy-Daisy! Need gtk-perl. Ooopsy-Daisy! Need atk, glib, and something called pango. Go figure. So, after downloading, untar/zipping, configure, make, make install all of these... Ooopsy-Daisy! The gtk Makefile has something wrong with it so it doesn't find the *.o files. Solved by copying from install root to subdirs. Whew! Now, after all this crap, I was able to get gimp made and installed. Yay! It was free! And sure, it's a good program, but could my mom do this? My grandma? Joe End User? Should they be required to? There's just too much fragmentation, too many dependencies on 3rd party libraries. Building and installing anything is such a pain in the ass that it's usually not worth it. KDE is getting better, but I've resisted installing the latest version because I don't want to go through that song and dance again; You need this. Download here... oh, for this, you need this, download here. Oh, for that, you need this, download here. The nice thing about MS OS/apps is that you have your installation, and when you install software, the installer installs whatever it needs. You don't have to visit half a dozen ftp sites to build the prerequisites for whatever you want. As much as I like Linux, until there are fundamental changes in the way this works, it's really not going to be something that REAL people want to use.
Nice. You obviously don't work for a living.
Is there a utility/app/shareware thing that will tell you what process on WinNT/2K/XP is associated with whatever ports are active? Thanks. Really, I mean that.
Mmmm, Certs! I especially like those that spark when you bite them in the dark. Or is that LifeSavers?
If/when changes can be made to the kernel through the gui without requiring a manual recompilation of the kernel, that would be a good start. Any Jackass MCSE can install a Novell client in Windows, which installs IPX/SPX at the same time. Try getting the same Jackass MCSE to configure and re-compile the kernel to support IPX, (or install a module). It's just a major pain in the ass. Sure, some of us can do this without much second thought, but really, for 99% of end users, this is like rocket science.
If such things were done behind-the-scenes, that would be a good start.
Yet Another Assknob Discovers Microsoft Bob
Really, is there another point to this stupid story?