Personally I use Spamcop's RBL and reporting service. I check the held mail page a couple of times a day. I have yet to see a legitimate mail be blocked and it's reduced the number of spams a day I get from hundreds to 2 or 3.
Maybe some RBLs still work the way the author decribes but from what I'm hearing that's not the way many work now. Now it's more like a reporting user recieves a spam (hopefully very near the start of the spamming run) and reports it. The reporting system works out the most probable source and lists it (due to the fact that spoammers often move within a netblock the netblock rather than the individual IP address has to be blocked for the RBL to be effective), the system also mails the admin address for the appropriate domain (and any listed interested third parties) with the information required to identify the spammer and asks them to deal with them. That IP address is also monitored by the RBL. When the spammer stops sending spam or the administrator informs the RBL operator that they've dealt with the problem the netblock is taken off the RBL.
If the mail system administrator are on the ball and not asleep at the switch there's no reason why the total time from a netblock being entered into an RBL to being removed need be more than a couple of hours. If they're crap at their job or beligerant then they don't deserve honest customers.
The complaints made by the author of this paper are very reminisent of some of those I've seen on antispam/pro-RBL mailing lists from spammers who've had their spams stopped by RBLs. Draw your own conclusions, but I'm inclined to go with "If it looks liek a duck, it quacks like a duck nd tastes great with plum sauce...".
Most places here in the UK will give you a trade in discount on your old phone when you upgrade.
Alternatively buy a Pay-As-You-Go simm and keep it as a back up or give it to a relative who can't afford the initial purchase price but could get good use from a mobile phone. That's what I've done with my old phones. Prior to getting a mobile phone my mother couldn't see the point. Now she's addicted to texting and loves it.
I've seen whole sites rendered as a single Flash application. The worst perpetrator,IME, is Celebrity Boulevard. These people seem to have an in with a lot of talent agencies to produce the 'Official' web site for the celebs on their books. Basically they get a few photos of the celeb (usually olds publicity shots and maybe a magazine shot or two) and stick them plus a few chunks of text (basic bio + film/discography) into a Flash app and pocket a fat cheque from the agency.
Guess it's quicker than writing a real site.
On can only hope that with the rumoured aquisition of Macromedia by Micro$oft these people will stop getting the traffic and so stop getting the business.
There is no perfect OS in this world, although some would have you believe different.
At this years UK Oracle Users Group conference in one of the Q&A sessions the panel were asked which operating system they felt best for running Oracle on. The most popular answer was VMS with Tru-64 a close second for clustered systems.
I like Linux. I run SuSe 8.1 professional at work, I have to use Windows 2000 as well due to corporate stuff (although pretty much everything I do could also be done just as well if not better from the Linux box - everything could be done on Linux if Samba would work properly, and be easily configurable, and if our ITServices section would either allow HTTP access to the Lotus Domino servers or replace Domino with something like Oracle Collaberation Suite). We've also rolled it out to provide corporate DNS services through BIND 9 (a requirement for MAD but the M$ implementation of BIND 9 didn't work).
Supposing I'm sent a spam message and deduce from the headers that it's most likely point of origin was a mail server in a particular domain. I then forward the mail, including all headers as per standing instructions, to the abuse@ address of that domain. The spammer finds out, due to said domain cutting off their connection, and then sues me for copyright violation for reproducing their copyrighted work and forwarding it without permission from the copyright holder.
If the situation discussed here fails, i.e. the spammers prevail, how can I then defend myself against in the situation I described above?
We could be looking at a dangerous precedent here.
Personally I don't mind the one or two tailored messages a week I get advertising a product there's a good chance I might actually want to buy. Part of my job is procurement so it actually makes my job a bit easier.
What I object to is the 3 hundred messages a day advertising Viagra, breast enlargement, penis enhancement, MMF schemes and Nigerian money laundering.
That was a good show, IMHO. Reasonably intelligent plots, most of the time, with enough bangs and flashes to keep non-plot driven viewers interested. It also had the best, again IMHO, space combat sequence I've ever seen in the final dogfight in "The Angriest Angel" between McQueen and Chiggy Von Richoven; the fact that it was preceded by the "God doesn't want to speak with me right now" speech just makes it all the better.
I do think they should have dumped the plot with West and his girlfriend (even better just dumped West out of the nearest airlock) cos that just didn't fit.
I'd say it was closer to a rip off of Blakes 7 and Alien Ressurection than Star Trek. I suspect that it's similarities to Star Trek are more due to both shows having a common source, in western shows, than Firefly drawing directly from Star Trek.
Looking at the interviews Whedon has done, changes in his existing shows and what has happened with Firefly it seems that over the last year or so he's basically lost it. I have heard that he's been complaining, seriously rather than his previous joking complaints, of over work; especially on the studio/politics side. Maybe he needs to turn over the reins to someone fresher for a while and take a back seat till he can come back refreshed and with rejuvenated creativity?
Compared with the cost of living it's incredibly high. Basically it works out at about $520 per PC. How long would that last you in the US maintaining a decent standard of living? A month? Two weeks? I'm told by people who live there or have family there that you could maintain a very good standard of living through most of India for quite some time (several months at least) on that amount.
In Birmingham, England, (where I live) that amount would probably just about cover the rent on a two bedroom flat in a bad area for a month or on a studio apartment in a not quite so bad area.
People are used to windows. In India, widespread piracy has ensured that Windows is avaiable with almost every grey market PC and in every school/home/office.
Isn't that pretty much the situation in the US and Europe about 10 years ago? Mass piracy of M$ software lead to market prevalence and eventual dominance.
I'm assuming that you want to stay in some sort of development type environment.
Part of my duties is to plan and assess procurments of enterprise apps for the biggest public sector authority in Europe. Looking at what we, and other public sector bodies, are buying right now the big field for the next 3-5 years is systems/data integration. The beauty of this from a devlopers point of view, especially someone with a good history who's looking to the future, is that you are usually reusing your existing skills (interfacing to the old legacy apps) whilst also picking up skills in the bleeding edge OSs and fields (where the new apps are running) and getting a really good workout for your problem resolution skills.
If you're looking for specific skills to develop then I'd have to go with a lot of other people who've commented and say OO, probably concentrating on Java and C++. On top of that I'd reccommend getting comfortable with a few different flavours of UNIX (Solaris and HP-UX seems to be the big ones or enterprise level boxes right now with Linux taking a big bite out of M$'s share of the datacentre in the small server arena), a couple of RDBMSs (Oracle for sure) and some SAP skills wouldn't hurt. A solid understanding of networking and IP would be very useful, as would XML knowlege.
You need to do buisiness with a company, to buy their product. Realistically there is no other possible supplier for what you need, other suppliers in the market are a poor fit interms of product features that you need. This particular company only accepts payment by Visa or MasterCard (those being the two biggest players with greatest penetration), you don't have either of those cards but do have a Bank of Ethel charge card. You are one of literally thousands of customers, virtually all of whom have Visa or MasterCard and none of whom have a Bank of Ethel charge card. What are the odds that you're going to have to get a Visa or MasterCard?
That's why a lot of people use Paypal, in terms of supplier penetration they are the Visa or MasterCard of online payments. Yes, there are other online payment systems out there but few, if any, have the prevalence of Paypal. Virtually all of the sites I use on a regular basis use Paypal, most of those that didn't in the past are now adopting it as a payment method, a few use Worldpay. Many of those that do offer alternative methods will only do for for US citizens (I'm in the UK).
Until a large number of ecommerce sites use a different system, and agree on one particular system, users are going to be stuck with Paypal.
Haven't used Opera much and only recently started using Mozilla so can't really comment on those. However I can tell you from bitter experience that the overrides in IE (and the last version of Netscape that I used, four point something I think) work patchilly at best.
Typically they will override somethings but not others, depending on how the page sets things. The overrides are not a universal panacea for poorly accessible pages.
I think it comes down to the difference between absolute font sizes and relative font sizes. I like to use the 'Larger' setting for font sizes in IE (I've recently moved to Mozilla and now use the 150% setting) as it's more comfortable for me and I can read default sized text OK. If a web page uses relative font sizes then I can still read it OK as IE (or Mozilla) will apply the size adjustment I've specified on top of the one specified by the web page. However if the page specifies an absolute size the IE will render the text at that size (I haven't been using Mozilla long enough to make a definate statement on what it does yet), not appling the size adjustment I've specified.
I've tried using the overrides in IE, including local stylesheet, but have found it patchy at best. For example if the page specifies a separate stylesheet IE will use my local one instead, if it uses an inline stylesheet it will override some settings but not all and if it uses style settings in the body of the page it won't override them at all.
Probably for some sites the design and the content are intertwined, however most of the sites I use most often (mainly technical how-to sites, product information sites and Buffy fanfiction sites) the important parts of the content are separate from the presentation/design side of things. I want to be able to read the text, not struggle to read it due to it being set to a small font size or get a headache from the color scheme the page author has chosen to use (e.g. pale yellow on orange, yellow on blue, dark brown on black &c, those are real colour schemes I've seen in the past few weeks).
A piece of code that runs behind the scenes and can stop the user accessing their data or even stop the machine from working at all. Didn't we used to call those Trojans?
Hence also putting the link on the page, along with some text explaining that the page has moved. That way people who's browser does support META refresh and haven't disabled it get automatically redirected, if the browser doesn't support or they have disabled META refresh then they can click the link.
I have yet to come accross a way to send a 302 header when you do not control the web server set up because you're using an account on someone else's server. If you are aware of a way to do this, that will work without any special server setups (remember, I have no control over the server and can only upload files) or CGI scripting, then please tell me as I'd love to know. I am currently in the process of migrating my site from Demon to my own domain that is hosted on Warped.com so I'd love to know.
I mainly use it if I've moved a page for some reason. Replace the page with one pointing to the new location with an auto redirect (put a clickable link on the page as well) so that way if someone's using an old bookmark, I forget to change a link on another page or the page has been indexed people can still reach the page and won't get a 404 error.
Which, in my experience, makes you an atypical user. I also use my computer a lot, I'd estimate that on a typical day I spend 14 hours plus on one computer or another. I'm also an atypical user.
Most of the people I know with a PC probably use it for less than an hour a day. They check their mail, maybe hit a few web sites then go and do something else. For these people having to learn a new UI isn't that good an investment of time.
The point I was initially trying to make, and what I think this thread was more about was not so much the features you mention of the virtual desktops &c in KDE etc; it's more about if a certain set of key strokes does a particular task (e.g. copy to clipboard)in one app then to do the same thing in a different app the same keystrokes should be used, if a certain command (e.g. Preferences/Options) is on a particular menu in one app then it should be on the same menu in all apps. It's about not having to, when you change apps, change the way to you work or having to stop to think where commands are or remembering what keystrokes to use in this app for a common function.
Actually that reminded me of something I read a while back, might have been an "I, Cringely". Basically there was a guy who due to some physical disability would not be able to hold down a regular job and so would probably be a financial burden on his family and society. Instead he got onto Ebay and is now the primary earner of the family, trading catering equipment on Ebay. Something like that anyhow.
Personally, the biggest advantage the net has for me is that I'm able to argue with people much farther afield than I would have been previously so have much more interesting arguements. It also gives me free and easy access to Buffy fanfic, especially femslash.
Good for them. So, why don't they keep using PCs running Windows? Why does my computer have to become just like theirs?
I thought the idea of this was to help/encourage people off Microsoft and on to Linux or some other OSS OS. As for why the interface on your computer might become like their's. Well, there are a lot more of them than there are of you and people creating software commercially (and usually non commercially as well) want as many people as possible to be using their product so that they can make some money or even just for the satisfaction of knowing that a lot of people are using their product. Therefore they are going to create a product that appeals to the majority.
My computers are used for very different purposes. It stands to reason that they should have a different interface.
I was really talking about the basic look and feel of the interface and about how normal day-to-day office type products work; things like the way copy and paste are done in the wordprocessor, spreadsheet, graphics package etc. If you have some specialist application that needs a different interface then there's no reason it can't have a different interface. However, I feel that such applications will tend to be the exception rather than the rule.
One advantage of Linux and OSS is that if you don't like the interface you can always find or write a window manager (or, indeed, another application)that does things how you want; the majority are catered for by the default whilst allowing the minority to change from the default if it doesn't suit them.
A few reasons really. Mainly comfort factor and learning curve.
Generally, people like things that look familiar, it gives them a comfortable feeling. If I'm used to one application that uses a certain key sequence to perform a particular task (eg copy something to the clipboard) and then want to do the same thing in another application I'm going to be a lot happier if the key sequence is the same. Whether we like it or not a lot of people are used to the Microsoft way of doing things.
If I know how to do something in one application and want to do the same thing in another application then, if it doesn't do it the same way, I'm going to need some training or to spend some time reading the manuals. A lot of people are used to the Microsoft way of doing things and, to be honest, one of the few good things about Microsoft is at least they have interface consistency accross their apps.
To take another approach. On UNIX (and other OSes for that matter) programs like grep, sed and awk (amongst others) use REGEX. Further they all use the same REGEX. How many problems would it cause if they all used different ways of representing strings?
For most users a PC is just a tool for writing letters, web browsing, playing games or some other task. They don't want to RTFM and if they've had to learn one application they want to be able to apply that knowlege in the next application they have to use that does similar things, not have to learn another way to do the same things.
These days the big money in TV production comes from syndication and mechandising
I know from talking to managers in local SF&F genre shops that Farscape merch just does not sell well. The magazines tend to go to pulp. It just doesn't work. If you compare it with shows like Buffy, Charmed, Angel &c where the merch flies off the shelves it just can't compete.
Syndication tends to kick in around Season 4-5 of a series, the networks like to have at least 100 episodes so they can show them often without starting over too often. I guess that when Sci-Fi started hawking it around for syndication they got turned down or the networks weren't prepared to pay as much as Sci-Fi wanted. The producers of shows use the money from current series to fund production on new series, this means that if a show isn't pulling in the cash then they have to pull the plug.
To be absolutely honest I hated Farscape, I hope that Sci-Fi will use the money saved from not trying to save that show to make better shows.
Trains can be quite nice as well. They're usually faster than driving (well from major city to major city at least) more environmentally friendly and give you a chance to work/read/sleep (not advisable activities whilst driving).
Here's a bit of a suggestion/challenge for all the EU/.ers. Call up your local council and find out who the Data Protection Contact Officer is and their address. Then send them a letter stating that you want to make a Data Subject Access Request. A lot of councils will do this for free but some charge a tenner. They then have 40 days from the postmark of your letter (send it first class else they migh try to get an extension) to send you a copy of all information that they hold on you in both electronic and paper systems (used to be just electronic but paper got added in 1998).
You will probably be very suprised by the sheer volume, if you're not then they're probably holding something back as councils hold a lot of data on their citizens.
Sun uses a different architecture end to end to Intel. Because of this, based on my own experience and comparisons, for running databases or backoffice applications (indeed anything that involves moving large amounts of data around or lots of number crunching) a 450MHz Sparc will usually out perform a 1.2GHz Intel.
Slashdot Mirror
I'd have to say, yes.
Personally I use Spamcop's RBL and reporting service. I check the held mail page a couple of times a day. I have yet to see a legitimate mail be blocked and it's reduced the number of spams a day I get from hundreds to 2 or 3.
Maybe some RBLs still work the way the author decribes but from what I'm hearing that's not the way many work now. Now it's more like a reporting user recieves a spam (hopefully very near the start of the spamming run) and reports it. The reporting system works out the most probable source and lists it (due to the fact that spoammers often move within a netblock the netblock rather than the individual IP address has to be blocked for the RBL to be effective), the system also mails the admin address for the appropriate domain (and any listed interested third parties) with the information required to identify the spammer and asks them to deal with them. That IP address is also monitored by the RBL. When the spammer stops sending spam or the administrator informs the RBL operator that they've dealt with the problem the netblock is taken off the RBL.
If the mail system administrator are on the ball and not asleep at the switch there's no reason why the total time from a netblock being entered into an RBL to being removed need be more than a couple of hours. If they're crap at their job or beligerant then they don't deserve honest customers.
The complaints made by the author of this paper are very reminisent of some of those I've seen on antispam/pro-RBL mailing lists from spammers who've had their spams stopped by RBLs. Draw your own conclusions, but I'm inclined to go with "If it looks liek a duck, it quacks like a duck nd tastes great with plum sauce...".
Stephen
Most places here in the UK will give you a trade in discount on your old phone when you upgrade.
Alternatively buy a Pay-As-You-Go simm and keep it as a back up or give it to a relative who can't afford the initial purchase price but could get good use from a mobile phone. That's what I've done with my old phones. Prior to getting a mobile phone my mother couldn't see the point. Now she's addicted to texting and loves it.
Stephen
Whole link bars? I can top that!
I've seen whole sites rendered as a single Flash application. The worst perpetrator,IME, is Celebrity Boulevard. These people seem to have an in with a lot of talent agencies to produce the 'Official' web site for the celebs on their books. Basically they get a few photos of the celeb (usually olds publicity shots and maybe a magazine shot or two) and stick them plus a few chunks of text (basic bio + film/discography) into a Flash app and pocket a fat cheque from the agency.
Guess it's quicker than writing a real site.
On can only hope that with the rumoured aquisition of Macromedia by Micro$oft these people will stop getting the traffic and so stop getting the business.
Stephen
At this years UK Oracle Users Group conference in one of the Q&A sessions the panel were asked which operating system they felt best for running Oracle on. The most popular answer was VMS with Tru-64 a close second for clustered systems.
I like Linux. I run SuSe 8.1 professional at work, I have to use Windows 2000 as well due to corporate stuff (although pretty much everything I do could also be done just as well if not better from the Linux box - everything could be done on Linux if Samba would work properly, and be easily configurable, and if our ITServices section would either allow HTTP access to the Lotus Domino servers or replace Domino with something like Oracle Collaberation Suite). We've also rolled it out to provide corporate DNS services through BIND 9 (a requirement for MAD but the M$ implementation of BIND 9 didn't work).
Stephen
Supposing I'm sent a spam message and deduce from the headers that it's most likely point of origin was a mail server in a particular domain. I then forward the mail, including all headers as per standing instructions, to the abuse@ address of that domain. The spammer finds out, due to said domain cutting off their connection, and then sues me for copyright violation for reproducing their copyrighted work and forwarding it without permission from the copyright holder.
If the situation discussed here fails, i.e. the spammers prevail, how can I then defend myself against in the situation I described above?
We could be looking at a dangerous precedent here.
Stephen
Personally I don't mind the one or two tailored messages a week I get advertising a product there's a good chance I might actually want to buy. Part of my job is procurement so it actually makes my job a bit easier.
What I object to is the 3 hundred messages a day advertising Viagra, breast enlargement, penis enhancement, MMF schemes and Nigerian money laundering.
YMMV
Stephen
Sure you don't mean Space: Above and Beyond?
That was a good show, IMHO. Reasonably intelligent plots, most of the time, with enough bangs and flashes to keep non-plot driven viewers interested. It also had the best, again IMHO, space combat sequence I've ever seen in the final dogfight in "The Angriest Angel" between McQueen and Chiggy Von Richoven; the fact that it was preceded by the "God doesn't want to speak with me right now" speech just makes it all the better.
I do think they should have dumped the plot with West and his girlfriend (even better just dumped West out of the nearest airlock) cos that just didn't fit.
I'd say it was closer to a rip off of Blakes 7 and Alien Ressurection than Star Trek. I suspect that it's similarities to Star Trek are more due to both shows having a common source, in western shows, than Firefly drawing directly from Star Trek.
Looking at the interviews Whedon has done, changes in his existing shows and what has happened with Firefly it seems that over the last year or so he's basically lost it. I have heard that he's been complaining, seriously rather than his previous joking complaints, of over work; especially on the studio/politics side. Maybe he needs to turn over the reins to someone fresher for a while and take a back seat till he can come back refreshed and with rejuvenated creativity?
Stephen
Compared with the cost of living it's incredibly high. Basically it works out at about $520 per PC. How long would that last you in the US maintaining a decent standard of living? A month? Two weeks? I'm told by people who live there or have family there that you could maintain a very good standard of living through most of India for quite some time (several months at least) on that amount.
In Birmingham, England, (where I live) that amount would probably just about cover the rent on a two bedroom flat in a bad area for a month or on a studio apartment in a not quite so bad area.
Stephen
Isn't that pretty much the situation in the US and Europe about 10 years ago? Mass piracy of M$ software lead to market prevalence and eventual dominance.
Stephen
I'm assuming that you want to stay in some sort of development type environment.
Part of my duties is to plan and assess procurments of enterprise apps for the biggest public sector authority in Europe. Looking at what we, and other public sector bodies, are buying right now the big field for the next 3-5 years is systems/data integration. The beauty of this from a devlopers point of view, especially someone with a good history who's looking to the future, is that you are usually reusing your existing skills (interfacing to the old legacy apps) whilst also picking up skills in the bleeding edge OSs and fields (where the new apps are running) and getting a really good workout for your problem resolution skills.
If you're looking for specific skills to develop then I'd have to go with a lot of other people who've commented and say OO, probably concentrating on Java and C++. On top of that I'd reccommend getting comfortable with a few different flavours of UNIX (Solaris and HP-UX seems to be the big ones or enterprise level boxes right now with Linux taking a big bite out of M$'s share of the datacentre in the small server arena), a couple of RDBMSs (Oracle for sure) and some SAP skills wouldn't hurt. A solid understanding of networking and IP would be very useful, as would XML knowlege.
Stephen
You need to do buisiness with a company, to buy their product. Realistically there is no other possible supplier for what you need, other suppliers in the market are a poor fit interms of product features that you need. This particular company only accepts payment by Visa or MasterCard (those being the two biggest players with greatest penetration), you don't have either of those cards but do have a Bank of Ethel charge card. You are one of literally thousands of customers, virtually all of whom have Visa or MasterCard and none of whom have a Bank of Ethel charge card. What are the odds that you're going to have to get a Visa or MasterCard?
That's why a lot of people use Paypal, in terms of supplier penetration they are the Visa or MasterCard of online payments. Yes, there are other online payment systems out there but few, if any, have the prevalence of Paypal. Virtually all of the sites I use on a regular basis use Paypal, most of those that didn't in the past are now adopting it as a payment method, a few use Worldpay. Many of those that do offer alternative methods will only do for for US citizens (I'm in the UK).
Until a large number of ecommerce sites use a different system, and agree on one particular system, users are going to be stuck with Paypal.
Stephen
Haven't used Opera much and only recently started using Mozilla so can't really comment on those. However I can tell you from bitter experience that the overrides in IE (and the last version of Netscape that I used, four point something I think) work patchilly at best.
Typically they will override somethings but not others, depending on how the page sets things. The overrides are not a universal panacea for poorly accessible pages.
Stephen
I think it comes down to the difference between absolute font sizes and relative font sizes. I like to use the 'Larger' setting for font sizes in IE (I've recently moved to Mozilla and now use the 150% setting) as it's more comfortable for me and I can read default sized text OK. If a web page uses relative font sizes then I can still read it OK as IE (or Mozilla) will apply the size adjustment I've specified on top of the one specified by the web page. However if the page specifies an absolute size the IE will render the text at that size (I haven't been using Mozilla long enough to make a definate statement on what it does yet), not appling the size adjustment I've specified.
I've tried using the overrides in IE, including local stylesheet, but have found it patchy at best. For example if the page specifies a separate stylesheet IE will use my local one instead, if it uses an inline stylesheet it will override some settings but not all and if it uses style settings in the body of the page it won't override them at all.
Probably for some sites the design and the content are intertwined, however most of the sites I use most often (mainly technical how-to sites, product information sites and Buffy fanfiction sites) the important parts of the content are separate from the presentation/design side of things. I want to be able to read the text, not struggle to read it due to it being set to a small font size or get a headache from the color scheme the page author has chosen to use (e.g. pale yellow on orange, yellow on blue, dark brown on black &c, those are real colour schemes I've seen in the past few weeks).
Stephen
A piece of code that runs behind the scenes and can stop the user accessing their data or even stop the machine from working at all. Didn't we used to call those Trojans?
Stephen
Hence also putting the link on the page, along with some text explaining that the page has moved. That way people who's browser does support META refresh and haven't disabled it get automatically redirected, if the browser doesn't support or they have disabled META refresh then they can click the link.
I have yet to come accross a way to send a 302 header when you do not control the web server set up because you're using an account on someone else's server. If you are aware of a way to do this, that will work without any special server setups (remember, I have no control over the server and can only upload files) or CGI scripting, then please tell me as I'd love to know. I am currently in the process of migrating my site from Demon to my own domain that is hosted on Warped.com so I'd love to know.
Stephen
I mainly use it if I've moved a page for some reason. Replace the page with one pointing to the new location with an auto redirect (put a clickable link on the page as well) so that way if someone's using an old bookmark, I forget to change a link on another page or the page has been indexed people can still reach the page and won't get a 404 error.
Stephen
Which, in my experience, makes you an atypical user. I also use my computer a lot, I'd estimate that on a typical day I spend 14 hours plus on one computer or another. I'm also an atypical user.
Most of the people I know with a PC probably use it for less than an hour a day. They check their mail, maybe hit a few web sites then go and do something else. For these people having to learn a new UI isn't that good an investment of time.
The point I was initially trying to make, and what I think this thread was more about was not so much the features you mention of the virtual desktops &c in KDE etc; it's more about if a certain set of key strokes does a particular task (e.g. copy to clipboard)in one app then to do the same thing in a different app the same keystrokes should be used, if a certain command (e.g. Preferences/Options) is on a particular menu in one app then it should be on the same menu in all apps. It's about not having to, when you change apps, change the way to you work or having to stop to think where commands are or remembering what keystrokes to use in this app for a common function.
Stephen
True
Actually that reminded me of something I read a while back, might have been an "I, Cringely". Basically there was a guy who due to some physical disability would not be able to hold down a regular job and so would probably be a financial burden on his family and society. Instead he got onto Ebay and is now the primary earner of the family, trading catering equipment on Ebay. Something like that anyhow.
Personally, the biggest advantage the net has for me is that I'm able to argue with people much farther afield than I would have been previously so have much more interesting arguements. It also gives me free and easy access to Buffy fanfic, especially femslash.
Stephen
I thought the idea of this was to help/encourage people off Microsoft and on to Linux or some other OSS OS. As for why the interface on your computer might become like their's. Well, there are a lot more of them than there are of you and people creating software commercially (and usually non commercially as well) want as many people as possible to be using their product so that they can make some money or even just for the satisfaction of knowing that a lot of people are using their product. Therefore they are going to create a product that appeals to the majority.
I was really talking about the basic look and feel of the interface and about how normal day-to-day office type products work; things like the way copy and paste are done in the wordprocessor, spreadsheet, graphics package etc. If you have some specialist application that needs a different interface then there's no reason it can't have a different interface. However, I feel that such applications will tend to be the exception rather than the rule.
One advantage of Linux and OSS is that if you don't like the interface you can always find or write a window manager (or, indeed, another application)that does things how you want; the majority are catered for by the default whilst allowing the minority to change from the default if it doesn't suit them.
Stephen
A few reasons really. Mainly comfort factor and learning curve.
Generally, people like things that look familiar, it gives them a comfortable feeling. If I'm used to one application that uses a certain key sequence to perform a particular task (eg copy something to the clipboard) and then want to do the same thing in another application I'm going to be a lot happier if the key sequence is the same. Whether we like it or not a lot of people are used to the Microsoft way of doing things.
If I know how to do something in one application and want to do the same thing in another application then, if it doesn't do it the same way, I'm going to need some training or to spend some time reading the manuals. A lot of people are used to the Microsoft way of doing things and, to be honest, one of the few good things about Microsoft is at least they have interface consistency accross their apps.
To take another approach. On UNIX (and other OSes for that matter) programs like grep, sed and awk (amongst others) use REGEX. Further they all use the same REGEX. How many problems would it cause if they all used different ways of representing strings?
For most users a PC is just a tool for writing letters, web browsing, playing games or some other task. They don't want to RTFM and if they've had to learn one application they want to be able to apply that knowlege in the next application they have to use that does similar things, not have to learn another way to do the same things.
Stephen
These days the big money in TV production comes from syndication and mechandising
I know from talking to managers in local SF&F genre shops that Farscape merch just does not sell well. The magazines tend to go to pulp. It just doesn't work. If you compare it with shows like Buffy, Charmed, Angel &c where the merch flies off the shelves it just can't compete.
Syndication tends to kick in around Season 4-5 of a series, the networks like to have at least 100 episodes so they can show them often without starting over too often. I guess that when Sci-Fi started hawking it around for syndication they got turned down or the networks weren't prepared to pay as much as Sci-Fi wanted. The producers of shows use the money from current series to fund production on new series, this means that if a show isn't pulling in the cash then they have to pull the plug.
To be absolutely honest I hated Farscape, I hope that Sci-Fi will use the money saved from not trying to save that show to make better shows.
Stephen
Trains can be quite nice as well. They're usually faster than driving (well from major city to major city at least) more environmentally friendly and give you a chance to work/read/sleep (not advisable activities whilst driving).
Stephen
All EU countries have a similar act.
Here's a bit of a suggestion/challenge for all the EU /.ers. Call up your local council and find out who the Data Protection Contact Officer is and their address. Then send them a letter stating that you want to make a Data Subject Access Request. A lot of councils will do this for free but some charge a tenner. They then have 40 days from the postmark of your letter (send it first class else they migh try to get an extension) to send you a copy of all information that they hold on you in both electronic and paper systems (used to be just electronic but paper got added in 1998).
You will probably be very suprised by the sheer volume, if you're not then they're probably holding something back as councils hold a lot of data on their citizens.
Stephen
Sun uses a different architecture end to end to Intel. Because of this, based on my own experience and comparisons, for running databases or backoffice applications (indeed anything that involves moving large amounts of data around or lots of number crunching) a 450MHz Sparc will usually out perform a 1.2GHz Intel.
Stephen