Yeah, to me and every other non Linux-nazi out there, it is useless. MS does everything I, and most other people, need out of our computer and does it better and with less hassle than Linux.
That's fine, as long as you don't mind paying for it. You _did_ pay for Windows didn't you?
Yeah, because people never buy computers to run their own businesses and thereby make money for themselves.
They might make more money for themselves if they don't have to pay so much for their software...
Yeah, and you're not doing yourself any favors either. When you have to make a sales call and you dopn't have Power Point to give presentations to the managers, you're screwed.
I'm not a sales person, I'm a developer. I have used the presentation tool in open office for my presentations and guess what? It worked!
Just because you haven't got what it takes to learn to use non Microsoft software doesn't mean that its useless. You're just screwing yourself if you "have to use it because everyone else uses it".
Yeah, like Linux is going to lead to the downfall of society and the rebirth of communism. People will become homeless and blame Linux users all over the world for making them destitute. Reality check! Society will not fall apart becuase people want quality software for less money.
If you want to talk about Linux and its effect on society and the economy then think about this:
At the moment a very small percentage of the world's population own a very high percentage of the wealth. Everytime somebody buys a copy of windows the gap between rich and poor widens every so slightly as Bill Gates and co get just a little bit richer.
Using Linux instead of buying Windows won't help to rebalance the difference between rich and poor but at least you are not making Bill Gates any richer.
Loki and Eazel failed because they overestimated their market. There will be a big market for Linux games soon, when Linux has more market share. That means that Linux has to be better and more appealing to Joe Desktop Computer User.... and just to keep me ontopic.. that's why developers are working on newer and better versions of KDE and Gnome.
I've noticed that both Gnome and KDE, while trying to differentiate themselves from Windows, begin to look more and more like it at every release. For example, both have a button at the bottom of the screen analogous to the M$ Start button, and many of their desktop icons are certainly similar to those found in Windows.
Guess what, most new Linux users are used to working with Windows. They know how taksbars and start menus work so the default Gnome and KDE setups mae it easier for them to start working with their new desktop straight away instead of having to learn all new techniques. Can you imagine a windows user being comfortable with "Focus follows pointer" straight away when they've only ever been using "Focus follows mouse clicks" before?
I've been using Gnome for about 3 years now and guess what? It doesn't look anything like the default. My main panel is at the top of the screen, there's no foot menu and there's no icons on the desktop. I have the focus policy set to raise windows when the pointer enters them and I have many many key bindings for sending and retrieving windows from a gazzilion other desktops.
I love it, it works for me and I can be more productive in that environment than I am when using Windows, but would I be happy if I had only just started using Gnome after using Windows all my life up until now? I don't think so.
Its not a competition. Gnome and KDE have different goals. At the moment KDE has more developers behind it and it probably has more users.
SuSE (a major player in the European Linux scene) have KDE as their default desktop. I think Redhat is the only major distro that defaults to Gnome.
Its not as if you can't use both of them together. I run the gnome desktop at home and I'm currently on the dev team for Crescendo (a gnome mud client) but I use KDE apps every day.
KDE does seem to have more consistency than Gnome, but I also find the KDE is less responsive on my ageing PII machine.
You haven't even got the technical knowhow to be able to post to Slashdot properly. Maybe slashcode needs to be changed so that users with an AOL IP address don't see the submit button until they have previewed their post.
I just thought I'ld pick up on one part of your post:
What the crypto regulations really do is prevent most people in the USA from adopting it. None of the three-letter agencies want everyone encrypting their E-mail or network traffic by default. That simply wouldn't do -- if everyone did it, how would they know who actually has something to hide?
This is what needs to happen for crypto be widely adopted. At the moment internet users who use crypto arouse suspicion because there are so few of them compared to the internet users who don't use it. It really is important to try and use crypto wherever possible to make its use more widespread and more attractive to the rest of the population.
Crypto is not evil. Everyone who uses crypto is not evil. People who don't use cryto can be evil.
This true story involves a question on a physics exam at the University of Copenhagen:
"Describe how to determine the height of a skyscraper with a barometer."
One student replied:
"You tie a long piece of string to the neck of the barometer, then lower the barometer from the roof of the skyscraper to the ground. The length of the string plus the length of the barometer will equal the height of the building."
This highly original answer so incensed the examiner that the student was failed immediately.
He appealed on the grounds that his answer was indisputably correct, and the university appointed an independent arbiter to decide the case. The arbiter judged that the answer was indeed correct, but it did not display any noticeable knowledge of physics.
To resolve the problem it was decided to call the student in and allow him six minutes in which to provide a verbal answer which showed at least a minimal familiarity with the basic principles of physics.
For five minutes the student sat in silence, forehead creased in thought.
The arbiter reminded him that time was running out, to which the student replied that he had several extremely relevant answers, but couldn't make up his mind which one to use.
On being advised to hurry up, the student replied as follows:
"First, you could take the barometer up to the roof of the skyscraper, drop it over the edge, and measure the time it takes to reach the ground. The height of the building can then be worked out from the formula: H = 0.5g x t squared. But bad luck for the barometer."
"Or if the sun is shining you could measure the height of the barometer, then set it on end and measure the length of its shadow. Then you measure the length of the skyscraper's shadow, and thereafter it is simple matter of proportional arithmetic to work out the height of the skyscraper."
"But if you wanted to be highly scientific about it, you could tie a short piece of string to the barometer and swing it like a pendulum, first at ground level and then on the roof of the skyscraper. The height is worked out by the difference in the gravitational restoring force: T = 2 pi sq root (l/g)."
"Or if the skyscraper has an outside emergency staircase, it would be easier to walk up it and mark off the height of the skyscraper in barometer lengths, then add them up."
"If you merely wanted to be boring and orthodox about it, of course, you could use the barometer to measure the air pressure on the roof of the skyscraper and on the ground, and convert the difference in millibars into feet to give the height of the building."
"But since we are constantly being exhorted to exercise independence of mind and apply scientific methods, undoubtedly the best way would be to knock on the janitor's door and say to him, 'If you'd like a nice new barometer, I'll give you this one if you'll tell me the height of this skyscraper.'"
Sometimes a CLI is more useful. A simple command for cvs diff - you can see what you've typed before you hit enter and not have to wonder if you dragged the correct file to the correct little box on the GUI.
If you want to see what you just did then you press the up arrow and the command pops up at yor cursor.
So much funtionality but I suppose you'll tell me its not pretty enough.
I don't see why Microsoft should get to choose any of the officers. The officers should be three people who can work together with a common goal.
Lets imagine for a second that the DOJ choose 2 and MS chooses 1 then you've basically got two people trying to do their job of watching to see if Microsoft are being compliant and 1 person who is doing their damn best to hinder the other two.
None of the three people chosen should have Microsoft's best interests in mind.
Lets have an analogy
When a criminal gets sent to prison he doesn't get asked "Who do you want your prison officer to be?" If he did then he could choose someone who he could rely on to try and break him out when the other two prison officers weren't looking.
Hey its not a brilliant analogy, but as far as analogies go its OK
I wonder what the copyright siuation is there. They only took a quote from CaseyB's post - but they did take almost the whole post. Its says at the bottom of the page "Comments are owned by the poster" right? Even if its translated then its still a derived work.
I'm not saying they shouldn't have copied it - I just think its an interesting issue.
No, No this way is even better beacuse you will be able to install Debain on a computer, install the wine version of Win32 on debian. Use the wine version of Win32 to install another copy of debain on top of which can be installed another copy of wine on top of which can be installed another version of debian another copy of wine on top of which can be installed another version of debian another copy of wine on top of which can be installed another version of debian....
oh what fun!
--
I/O I/O Its off to disk I go with a read and a write, a bit and a byte I/O I/O I/O I/O
If encryption is outlawed, only bhgynjf jvyy unir rapelcgvba
would be strong enough for anybody. If you attempt to circumvent this decryption message then you will be committing an offence under the DMCA. This will make you a terrorist since under the new definition of terrorists anybody who has commited a crime will be a terrorist.
Of course terrorists will be subject to execution by hanging.
Slashdot Mirror
Going from point-to-type to click-to-type is almost impossible and causes severe errors when commands are typed to the wrong window.
:)
It happens almost every morning at work (using Win2000). I'm so used to point-to-type at home on Linux.
What's the registry setting? I might set it up.
Sure will confuse my co-workers
That's fine, as long as you don't mind paying for it. You _did_ pay for Windows didn't you?
They might make more money for themselves if they don't have to pay so much for their software...
Yeah, and you're not doing yourself any favors either. When you have to make a sales call and you dopn't have Power Point to give presentations to the managers, you're screwed.
I'm not a sales person, I'm a developer. I have used the presentation tool in open office for my presentations and guess what? It worked!
Just because you haven't got what it takes to learn to use non Microsoft software doesn't mean that its useless. You're just screwing yourself if you "have to use it because everyone else uses it".
If you want to talk about Linux and its effect on society and the economy then think about this:
At the moment a very small percentage of the world's population own a very high percentage of the wealth. Everytime somebody buys a copy of windows the gap between rich and poor widens every so slightly as Bill Gates and co get just a little bit richer.
Using Linux instead of buying Windows won't help to rebalance the difference between rich and poor but at least you are not making Bill Gates any richer.
Loki and Eazel failed because they overestimated their market. There will be a big market for Linux games soon, when Linux has more market share. That means that Linux has to be better and more appealing to Joe Desktop Computer User.... and just to keep me ontopic.. that's why developers are working on newer and better versions of KDE and Gnome.
Yes, it comes with a superior licencing model that greatly surpasses Linux in its ability to farm money for the people who made it.
Guess what, most new Linux users are used to working with Windows. They know how taksbars and start menus work so the default Gnome and KDE setups mae it easier for them to start working with their new desktop straight away instead of having to learn all new techniques. Can you imagine a windows user being comfortable with "Focus follows pointer" straight away when they've only ever been using "Focus follows mouse clicks" before?
I've been using Gnome for about 3 years now and guess what? It doesn't look anything like the default. My main panel is at the top of the screen, there's no foot menu and there's no icons on the desktop. I have the focus policy set to raise windows when the pointer enters them and I have many many key bindings for sending and retrieving windows from a gazzilion other desktops.
I love it, it works for me and I can be more productive in that environment than I am when using Windows, but would I be happy if I had only just started using Gnome after using Windows all my life up until now? I don't think so.
Its not a competition. Gnome and KDE have different goals. At the moment KDE has more developers behind it and it probably has more users.
SuSE (a major player in the European Linux scene) have KDE as their default desktop. I think Redhat is the only major distro that defaults to Gnome.
Its not as if you can't use both of them together. I run the gnome desktop at home and I'm currently on the dev team for Crescendo (a gnome mud client) but I use KDE apps every day.
KDE does seem to have more consistency than Gnome, but I also find the KDE is less responsive on my ageing PII machine.
You haven't even got the technical knowhow to be able to post to Slashdot properly. Maybe slashcode needs to be changed so that users with an AOL IP address don't see the submit button until they have previewed their post.
A 32 bit key can never be safe simply because there is only a search space of 2^32 keys, which is childs play to brute force.
That is as long as you don't use a Euro coin. This is becuase most denominations of Euro coins are weighted to come down heads.
Its a conspiracy!
What the crypto regulations really do is prevent most people in the USA from adopting it. None of the three-letter agencies want everyone encrypting their E-mail or network traffic by default. That simply wouldn't do -- if everyone did it, how would they know who actually has something to hide?
This is what needs to happen for crypto be widely adopted. At the moment internet users who use crypto arouse suspicion because there are so few of them compared to the internet users who don't use it. It really is important to try and use crypto wherever possible to make its use more widespread and more attractive to the rest of the population.
Crypto is not evil. Everyone who uses crypto is not evil. People who don't use cryto can be evil.
He never had one to start with. Gun nuts don't have brains.
I wish I had mod points
+1 Funny
This true story involves a question on a physics exam at the University of Copenhagen:
"Describe how to determine the height of a skyscraper with a barometer."
One student replied:
"You tie a long piece of string to the neck of the barometer, then lower the barometer from the roof of the skyscraper to the ground. The length of the string plus the length of the barometer will equal the height of the building."
This highly original answer so incensed the examiner that the student was failed immediately.
He appealed on the grounds that his answer was indisputably correct, and the university appointed an independent arbiter to decide the case. The arbiter judged that the answer was indeed correct, but it did not display any noticeable knowledge of physics.
To resolve the problem it was decided to call the student in and allow him six minutes in which to provide a verbal answer which showed at least a minimal familiarity with the basic principles of physics.
For five minutes the student sat in silence, forehead creased in thought.
The arbiter reminded him that time was running out, to which the student replied that he had several extremely relevant answers, but couldn't make up his mind which one to use.
On being advised to hurry up, the student replied as follows:
"First, you could take the barometer up to the roof of the skyscraper, drop it over the edge, and measure the time it takes to reach the ground. The height of the building can then be worked out from the formula: H = 0.5g x t squared. But bad luck for the barometer."
"Or if the sun is shining you could measure the height of the barometer, then set it on end and measure the length of its shadow. Then you measure the length of the skyscraper's shadow, and thereafter it is simple matter of proportional arithmetic to work out the height of the skyscraper."
"But if you wanted to be highly scientific about it, you could tie a short piece of string to the barometer and swing it like a pendulum, first at ground level and then on the roof of the skyscraper. The height is worked out by the difference in the gravitational restoring force: T = 2 pi sq root (l/g)."
"Or if the skyscraper has an outside emergency staircase, it would be easier to walk up it and mark off the height of the skyscraper in barometer lengths, then add them up."
"If you merely wanted to be boring and orthodox about it, of course, you could use the barometer to measure the air pressure on the roof of the skyscraper and on the ground, and convert the difference in millibars into feet to give the height of the building."
"But since we are constantly being exhorted to exercise independence of mind and apply scientific methods, undoubtedly the best way would be to knock on the janitor's door and say to him, 'If you'd like a nice new barometer, I'll give you this one if you'll tell me the height of this skyscraper.'"
What law is that? Redhat do not have a monopoly on Linux last time I looked.
If you want to see what you just did then you press the up arrow and the command pops up at yor cursor.
So much funtionality but I suppose you'll tell me its not pretty enough.
Lets imagine for a second that the DOJ choose 2 and MS chooses 1 then you've basically got two people trying to do their job of watching to see if Microsoft are being compliant and 1 person who is doing their damn best to hinder the other two.
None of the three people chosen should have Microsoft's best interests in mind.
Lets have an analogy
When a criminal gets sent to prison he doesn't get asked "Who do you want your prison officer to be?" If he did then he could choose someone who he could rely on to try and break him out when the other two prison officers weren't looking.
Hey its not a brilliant analogy, but as far as analogies go its OK
I wonder what the copyright siuation is there. They only took a quote from CaseyB's post - but they did take almost the whole post. Its says at the bottom of the page "Comments are owned by the poster" right? Even if its translated then its still a derived work.
I'm not saying they shouldn't have copied it - I just think its an interesting issue.
That won't take long what with China becomming a superpower pretty quickly. I was in China this summer and those guys *really* value their culture.
Lose32 sounds better to me
oh what fun!
--
I/O I/O Its off to disk I go with a read and a write, a bit and a byte I/O I/O I/O I/O
Microsoft have no right to collect your telephone number without asking.
They're also based in the Netherlands
That didn't help poor Dmitry Sklyarov
-- The American Businesses were not happy ruining their own country. They had to ruin every other country as well.
I'll second that
If encryption is outlawed, only bhgynjf jvyy unir rapelcgvba
would be strong enough for anybody. If you attempt to circumvent this decryption message then you will be committing an offence under the DMCA. This will make you a terrorist since under the new definition of terrorists anybody who has commited a crime will be a terrorist.
Of course terrorists will be subject to execution by hanging.