When on vacation, you are being paid. The whole idea of vacation is that it's better than work, otherwise you would work your vacation. If you make less than 11 dollars an hour, it's ok ( I do, but I live in Uruguay). If you make more, it's just a bad deal, unless you did enjoy the chat, and really didn't have anything better to do. I bought Disneys tickets 2 for 50 dollars in Miami, walking by Collins Ave, saw a sign, and bought them. That's a good deal!. And it just reduced your hourly pay from 11 dollars to just 6.25 . Well, unless you didn't want to drive to Miami.
Aside fromt he fact that novice users don't install windows, because they can always get someone to do it for them, why would novices need to be able to set up workstations? Setting up a computer shouldn't be a part of a computer user experience. They can always come preinstalled, or someone can do it for you. Of course, it's nice to have good installers like with Ubuntu, but it doesn't change a lot of the experience.
My girlfriend uses Slackware 9.1, with Gnome 2.4 (old stuff, around 2001). She had used some Windows 98 before. I have an old windows 98 installation, so we can play FIFA2005 (the game doesn't run anymore, so I guess it's bye bye to that partition). She knows how to select Windows at boot time, and she only uses Slackware, because it just works. Mail is easy, word processing in openoffice is easy, Nautilus is real good for organizing pictures. The whole issue of downloading digital pics from the camera, and later recording a CDs is just too easy. And I'm talking about software from 2001 with two or three scripts I wrote myself. The catch? She uses it, I administer it. And it's zero effort to administer. I could even ssh from work. That what happens to people who use Windows. They like it, because they can ask or pay somebody to install it and administer it for them. After those issues are gone, mswindows has no edge. Plus, any GNU/Linux based distribution has an advantage in that it's much easier to administer for me than WinXP. I didn't get a lot of exposure to XP, but with just a glimpse I can see the same flawed design I had learned to hate since windows 3.1 through windows 2000 : I was showing MSN messenger to my father, I used my account, and after that I got him one, and logged in. After I left, my father was connected as myself. And no dialog told me that the first account would become the default. That's a big usability issue I have always had throughout mswindows, and doesn't look as it's going to be fixed: it guesses arbitrary settings, doesn't tell you it does, and fails to guess what you really wanted. Total failure.
The problem with "doesn't handle some PDFs" is a tricky one. Get a new kpdf version, and you will be happy. I found myself bitching about my gnome, and then I looked the "about" dialog and it's from 2001!! Sometimes you need to upgrade, and get current software so you don't suffer from old bugs. Of course, if what you want is acroread, then get acroread and don't complain.
[tangent]The whole concept "rights" is an illusion anyway - digital or otherwise. If copyright holders have exclusive rights to copy their music, then how come other people are making copies? If you have the right to live, then how come you could get hit by a bus tomorrow? The only rights any entity really has are those that it can take or retain by some force.[/tangent]
But you do have the right to live, and we all agree that it's your right to live. It's inherent to being human. That way, we all should make our best efforts in trying that you don't get hit by a bus tomorrow. And lots of regulation and money goes in that direction.
About the copyrights, it's not about some persons rights. It's a monopoly on distribution given by your government, as an incentive to share your works. You might say that when people copy the songs they are in breach of that agreement, but they are not violating your rights, they are violating your priviledges. It's not the same thing.
That's just theory. I understand why copyright law exists, and why patent law exists. But I don't think they are necessary. Of course, they are made with the intention of fostering innovation, but patents and copyrights don't seem to be having that effect. As soon as they stop having a benefitial effect on society, they should just stop existing. Patents for drugs and medical procedures are usually used as an example of the usefulness of patents. Well, right now they aren't helping a lot in finding an AIDS vaccine. Maybe it's because patents don't help at all. Corporations of course enjoy that kind of protection, but they would have incentives to exist if they didn't have it, and e.g. organizations not seeking profit would have more incentives to share knowledge if patents weren't an issue.
It still is pretty cool. Eterm seems to be dead, though, at http://www.eterm.org/ Term is very elegant. I just traded it for gnome-terminal, when I started using gnome, for shortcut-consistency, and to stop alienating other users. But its looks are much better than other terminals.
And don't forget about the ability to run commercial applications such as MS Office and Photoshop.
I am replying to the "running commercial applications" fallacy. Giving examples of commercial apps that run on GNU/Linux, I was pointing out that the characteristic of being "commercial applications" was not what prevented those apps from running. Citing them as an example of the "ability to run commercial applications", may imply that that's the issue with the apps. Being proprietary and closed source is part of what stops msoffice and Photoshop from being supported by more platforms. Being "commercial", whatever that means, has nothing to do with that.
You _might_ be who you say you are, I don't really care about that. The fact is that you are a karma whore. Karma whores do try to get early posts that get moderated high. 22 comments in 5 stories, just today. And you had a firsthand story for everyone. That's difficult, from a statistical viewpoint. You might be a part of a conspiracy if you say you are, I have no proof against that. Only thing I actually know is you are a karma whore, I know them when I see them. And that's what _I_ don't like. People who don't add to the discussion, they just want to troll just a bit and get some karma.
This guy is making first posts in every story that comes up!! He is a skate-shop owner, a gold buyer http://dadasays.blogspot.com/ , an IT contractor that pays minimum wages + 66% bonuses, and a slashdot FP troll and Karma Whore. Mods, please do something (I never have mod points, maybe due to excessive reading)
I only care about _my_ desktop. About users, I only care about their web browsers. They can be using my apps from a Kenwood blender, for all I care, if they have a good enough browser.
And don't forget about the ability to run commercial applications such as MS Office and Photoshop.
Those are proprietary applications. Specifically desktop proprietary applications.
Mysql _is_ a commercial application. SuSE _is_ a commercial software distribution. Lots of free software packages are for commercial used, distributed and supported commercially. Open office, Netscape, etc. all have commercial support available. The difference is proprietary against free. Or open source against closed source, if you care about that sort of thing. Commercial software itself has no problems with non-uniform free software platforms. Proprietary, closed source software does, because among other things it's harder to maintain binary-only distributions when only a small group of people have access to the source.
Not, it's not an oldest fart competition. I am 28. I was only replying the GGP that "we" the geeks didn't all root for Microsoft. In fact, back in the day most people I knew already though Microsoft was a shit factory. We never changed our minds about them.
Back in the '80s, I was pushing DR-DOS, and WordPerfect. I thought MS Word was a piece of shit, and windows 3.0 sucked. All of my friends thought so. We used multitasking with DRDOS 6 and some stuff. I used a DOS graphical web browser built on TurboVision, or something very similar. WYSIWYG graphical mode was great. We already thought MS was bad at that time. Their software was shit already. Great editor, that "edit.com" thingy, but their DOS was much worse than the competition, win was a joke, and their office apps too. We didn't think it was evil, we thought it was just not good enough. Plus, games didn't run on win, thery used that dos4g or something. YOU killed my DOS, by supporting MS!! Bastards!
NURBS B-splines based sufraces are a great way of specifying round objects. It's kind-of-analog to the Bezier tool present in drawing programs, but applied to surfaces. They share some interesting properties with polygons (invariance through projections) but they are much more complex. They could be implemented, at least at the software level, but all the algos in the card should be made NURBS-aware, too. Right now it's just easier to rely on a good tesselation algorithm, maybe based on NURBS models.
Popularity doesn't matter when the person you are trying to contact uses the least popular system. Plus, no one I know uses AIM. Maybe it's a US thing.
I use GAIM most of the time (msn, in-house jabber server, jabber.org, yahoo messenger, and now google talk). Most of my friends I met in college use yahoo messenger and some jabber.org or google talk. People with no computer knowledge started using MSN around me, so I got a user. Plus, we use a jabber IM server at my job, because it's handy.
But when you want to see the face of someone across the atlantic, it's difficult to resist the temptation of installing mswindows.
Then, aMSN comes to the rescue. You can have webcam conversations. That, added to skype, is much better to me than a phone call. Now that skype has webcam support, if it ever reaches gnu/linux, it might stay as the unique piece of proprietary software in my drive.
You don't seem as a marketing expert. You don't want to alienate 10% of your target audience. You can have a niche product and cater to a 5% of the population, but it's stupid from a marketing perspective to leave out people that you don't need to. Specially when you are targeting large audiences. That top 10% might be all profit, and your might be chopping it off just because you don't want to do some more testing.
Yeah, we should all stick our cocks in the mouths of artists and musicians, and tell them to just suck it.
Not all of them. I wouldn't like to be the one who had to do _that_ to most artists. I would only think of playing if I get to choose the artists. Does Aria Giovanni count as an artist?
Linux is a kernel. GNU/Linux, although it's usually called just "Linux", has its bigger strength in GNU. Of course, the GNU system is the best of modern unix-like systems. If AIX uses GNU, then when using AIX you would be using a core part of what comprises a GNU/Linux system, or, as most people call it, a "Linux" system. I know AIX has some "enterprise-class" features, useful for IBM buyers, that GNU/Linux doesn't. That's why it's good to have GNU/AIX!!:)
Slashdot Mirror
I've been thinking about retrofitting an iPod into my ass. Do you think that would make a good slashdot story?
- prediction-outtake in the "everybody loves Eric Raymond"
What you are talking about has precedents, http://geekz.co.uk/lovesraymond/archive/eler-2006
series (don't judge them by this link, please, they have some good material)
When on vacation, you are being paid.
The whole idea of vacation is that it's better than work, otherwise you would work your vacation.
If you make less than 11 dollars an hour, it's ok ( I do, but I live in Uruguay).
If you make more, it's just a bad deal, unless you did enjoy the chat, and really didn't have anything better to do.
I bought Disneys tickets 2 for 50 dollars in Miami, walking by Collins Ave, saw a sign, and bought them. That's a good deal!.
And it just reduced your hourly pay from 11 dollars to just 6.25 .
Well, unless you didn't want to drive to Miami.
Aside fromt he fact that novice users don't install windows, because they can always get someone to do it for them, why would novices need to be able to set up workstations? Setting up a computer shouldn't be a part of a computer user experience. They can always come preinstalled, or someone can do it for you.
Of course, it's nice to have good installers like with Ubuntu, but it doesn't change a lot of the experience.
My girlfriend uses Slackware 9.1, with Gnome 2.4 (old stuff, around 2001).
She had used some Windows 98 before.
I have an old windows 98 installation, so we can play FIFA2005 (the game doesn't run anymore, so I guess it's bye bye to that partition).
She knows how to select Windows at boot time, and she only uses Slackware, because it just works. Mail is easy, word processing in openoffice is easy, Nautilus is real good for organizing pictures. The whole issue of downloading digital pics from the camera, and later recording a CDs is just too easy.
And I'm talking about software from 2001 with two or three scripts I wrote myself. The catch? She uses it, I administer it. And it's zero effort to administer. I could even ssh from work.
That what happens to people who use Windows. They like it, because they can ask or pay somebody to install it and administer it for them. After those issues are gone, mswindows has no edge.
Plus, any GNU/Linux based distribution has an advantage in that it's much easier to administer for me than WinXP.
I didn't get a lot of exposure to XP, but with just a glimpse I can see the same flawed design I had learned to hate since windows 3.1 through windows 2000 : I was showing MSN messenger to my father, I used my account, and after that I got him one, and logged in. After I left, my father was connected as myself. And no dialog told me that the first account would become the default. That's a big usability issue I have always had throughout mswindows, and doesn't look as it's going to be fixed: it guesses arbitrary settings, doesn't tell you it does, and fails to guess what you really wanted. Total failure.
The problem with "doesn't handle some PDFs" is a tricky one.
Get a new kpdf version, and you will be happy.
I found myself bitching about my gnome, and then I looked the "about" dialog and it's from 2001!! Sometimes you need to upgrade, and get current software so you don't suffer from old bugs.
Of course, if what you want is acroread, then get acroread and don't complain.
[tangent]The whole concept "rights" is an illusion anyway - digital or otherwise. If copyright holders have exclusive rights to copy their music, then how come other people are making copies? If you have the right to live, then how come you could get hit by a bus tomorrow? The only rights any entity really has are those that it can take or retain by some force.[/tangent]
But you do have the right to live, and we all agree that it's your right to live. It's inherent to being human. That way, we all should make our best efforts in trying that you don't get hit by a bus tomorrow. And lots of regulation and money goes in that direction.
About the copyrights, it's not about some persons rights. It's a monopoly on distribution given by your government, as an incentive to share your works. You might say that when people copy the songs they are in breach of that agreement, but they are not violating your rights, they are violating your priviledges. It's not the same thing.
0 - Portable toilets.
Eric Raymond was seen around SCO advisors.
That's just theory.
I understand why copyright law exists, and why patent law exists. But I don't think they are necessary. Of course, they are made with the intention of fostering innovation, but patents and copyrights don't seem to be having that effect.
As soon as they stop having a benefitial effect on society, they should just stop existing.
Patents for drugs and medical procedures are usually used as an example of the usefulness of patents.
Well, right now they aren't helping a lot in finding an AIDS vaccine.
Maybe it's because patents don't help at all. Corporations of course enjoy that kind of protection, but they would have incentives to exist if they didn't have it, and e.g. organizations not seeking profit would have more incentives to share knowledge if patents weren't an issue.
You could do the same, if your wanted to.
They don't want what you want. that's why they don't promote it.
Enlightenment, not enhancement
http://www.enlightenment.org.au/
It still is pretty cool.
Eterm seems to be dead, though, at http://www.eterm.org/
Term is very elegant. I just traded it for gnome-terminal, when I started using gnome, for shortcut-consistency, and to stop alienating other users. But its looks are much better than other terminals.
I keep my friends close (+5) and my foes as close (+5) as them.
And don't forget about the ability to run commercial applications such as MS Office and Photoshop.
I am replying to the "running commercial applications" fallacy.
Giving examples of commercial apps that run on GNU/Linux, I was pointing out that the characteristic of being "commercial applications" was not what prevented those apps from running.
Citing them as an example of the "ability to run commercial applications", may imply that that's the issue with the apps.
Being proprietary and closed source is part of what stops msoffice and Photoshop from being supported by more platforms. Being "commercial", whatever that means, has nothing to do with that.
You _might_ be who you say you are, I don't really care about that.
The fact is that you are a karma whore.
Karma whores do try to get early posts that get moderated high.
22 comments in 5 stories, just today.
And you had a firsthand story for everyone.
That's difficult, from a statistical viewpoint.
You might be a part of a conspiracy if you say you are, I have no proof against that.
Only thing I actually know is you are a karma whore, I know them when I see them. And that's what _I_ don't like. People who don't add to the discussion, they just want to troll just a bit and get some karma.
This guy is making first posts in every story that comes up!!
He is a skate-shop owner, a gold buyer http://dadasays.blogspot.com/ , an IT contractor that pays minimum wages + 66% bonuses, and a slashdot FP troll and Karma Whore.
Mods, please do something (I never have mod points, maybe due to excessive reading)
I only care about _my_ desktop.
About users, I only care about their web browsers.
They can be using my apps from a Kenwood blender, for all I care, if they have a good enough browser.
And don't forget about the ability to run commercial applications such as MS Office and Photoshop.
Those are proprietary applications.
Specifically desktop proprietary applications.
Mysql _is_ a commercial application.
SuSE _is_ a commercial software distribution.
Lots of free software packages are for commercial used, distributed and supported commercially.
Open office, Netscape, etc. all have commercial support available.
The difference is proprietary against free.
Or open source against closed source, if you care about that sort of thing.
Commercial software itself has no problems with non-uniform free software platforms. Proprietary, closed source software does, because among other things it's harder to maintain binary-only distributions when only a small group of people have access to the source.
Not, it's not an oldest fart competition.
I am 28.
I was only replying the GGP that "we" the geeks didn't all root for Microsoft.
In fact, back in the day most people I knew already though Microsoft was a shit factory. We never changed our minds about them.
Back in the '80s, I was pushing DR-DOS, and WordPerfect.
I thought MS Word was a piece of shit, and windows 3.0 sucked.
All of my friends thought so.
We used multitasking with DRDOS 6 and some stuff.
I used a DOS graphical web browser built on TurboVision, or something very similar.
WYSIWYG graphical mode was great.
We already thought MS was bad at that time.
Their software was shit already. Great editor, that "edit.com" thingy, but their DOS was much worse than the competition, win was a joke, and their office apps too.
We didn't think it was evil, we thought it was just not good enough.
Plus, games didn't run on win, thery used that dos4g or something.
YOU killed my DOS, by supporting MS!! Bastards!
NURBS B-splines based sufraces are a great way of specifying round objects.
It's kind-of-analog to the Bezier tool present in drawing programs, but applied to surfaces.
They share some interesting properties with polygons (invariance through projections) but they are much more complex.
They could be implemented, at least at the software level, but all the algos in the card should be made NURBS-aware, too. Right now it's just easier to rely on a good tesselation algorithm, maybe based on NURBS models.
Popularity doesn't matter when the person you are trying to contact uses the least popular system.
Plus, no one I know uses AIM.
Maybe it's a US thing.
I use GAIM most of the time (msn, in-house jabber server, jabber.org, yahoo messenger, and now google talk).
Most of my friends I met in college use yahoo messenger and some jabber.org or google talk. People with no computer knowledge started using MSN around me, so I got a user. Plus, we use a jabber IM server at my job, because it's handy.
But when you want to see the face of someone across the atlantic, it's difficult to resist the temptation of installing mswindows.
Then, aMSN comes to the rescue. You can have webcam conversations. That, added to skype, is much better to me than a phone call.
Now that skype has webcam support, if it ever reaches gnu/linux, it might stay as the unique piece of proprietary software in my drive.
You don't seem as a marketing expert.
You don't want to alienate 10% of your target audience.
You can have a niche product and cater to a 5% of the population, but it's stupid from a marketing perspective to leave out people that you don't need to. Specially when you are targeting large audiences. That top 10% might be all profit, and your might be chopping it off just because you don't want to do some more testing.
Yeah, we should all stick our cocks in the mouths of artists and musicians, and tell them to just suck it.
Not all of them. I wouldn't like to be the one who had to do _that_ to most artists. I would only think of playing if I get to choose the artists. Does Aria Giovanni count as an artist?
Linux is a kernel. :)
GNU/Linux, although it's usually called just "Linux", has its bigger strength in GNU.
Of course, the GNU system is the best of modern unix-like systems.
If AIX uses GNU, then when using AIX you would be using a core part of what comprises a GNU/Linux system, or, as most people call it, a "Linux" system.
I know AIX has some "enterprise-class" features, useful for IBM buyers, that GNU/Linux doesn't. That's why it's good to have GNU/AIX!!
Robots don't have sex organs.
In Japan they do...
In Korea, only old people's robots have sex organs.