Of course, once you learn to use vim, it's easy. My point was that getting there s too painful. I have only driven with a stick, and I don't like automatic cars, but that doesn't make the interface any better, the "stick" interface may be more powerful, but it's too much of a pain to learn, for most people. Of course, once you learn, you probably don't want to drive automatic, because of 1 - the power that the more difficult interface gives you and 2 - the time you invested in it.
Well, vim is modal. That means it's a pain to learn to use effectively. If that modality accomplished anything useful, it would be ok, but I don't think it does. It's ok as a lightweight editor, but not ok for the eighties or later, from a usability point of view. Pico, nano, wordstar, joe, all of them are much easier to use, arrows to move, Delete to delete. Plus, they work similarly to the command line. Direct manipulation is the way to go. Command based editing was cool, and is nice for some tasks, but it's not a good interface.
It's a book that can help you look at interfaces in a different way, with some measures you can make, and some guidelines that an be helpful. Maybe going all the way is not feasible immediately, but it can gie some insight on the subject.
It's not the musicians. That bussiness model you talk about is not the musicians', its the records labels, big difference. Without record labels, there would even be musicians. Musicians never did anything against me (well, Metallica did, that's why I didn't buy another record from them). Record labels have been treating me as a criminal, and lobbying for hideous laws passed in the US, that gradually are being forced on my country through trade treatments.
And the deal with big labels is not like you tell it. They make you listen to their records, like it or not, on commercials, movies and stuff where you do pay, _have_ to listen to what they want, and not what you want.
So, if we are talking about expectations, I didn't expect to hear Britney Spears more than once. I had to listen many more times. I understand that, although it's wrong, there's nothing I can do against it, record companies won. Well, I can listen to what I want, and not pay a cent. (Just a though, in practice, I almost don't download music, because it's too much work, but with my friends we have a pool of our ripped CDs we share).
I'm no genius (well, I am, but don't tell anybody) and I installed CVS, following some cookbook, for my team in a couple of hours. The next day, by noon, everybody was using it (update/commit) with Eclipse, and next week we were all able to resolve merges seamlessly (damn struts-config.xml, should have divided the son-of-bitch much earlier).
It was a team of 5 developers, not huge, but enough. None of us had ever actually used version control systems. Previous to that, we were just 3 people, edited the same tree, shared with samba, and used actual physical tokens representing access to conflicting resources (it's clumsy, but it kinda works when you are close to other people).
They have regular binaries, that you have to install yourself, or debian packages. I did install the binaries, and am using a hardware accelerated S3 here at work. At home I can't use the integrated S3, because of the nvidia in the AGP slot. I agree it's not easy, but it's not compiling X.org, either.
Of course, I understand what you say about your card, I was just pointing out that "installing" your video card, is just making it work, not making it work with full functionality. You said it just didn't work. You lied. I said it did work. I lied. It works, but not as intended. It's ok for a dual boot system, not ok for a dedicated machine. Of course, if you wanted a win-free machine, what were you thinking buying ATI in the first place?
Especially with opengl, there _is_ of course a problem with ATI. Anyway, I don't see the vicious circle you talk about anymore, because you can, for your next upgrade, buy an nvidia card, if you want to run it on linux, seamlessly. Or you can bitch and moan to ATI. But anyhow, you do have drivers for most of the oldest cards, and for half of the lastest ones, Ati, they did provide open source drivers, they just stopped doing it because of their marketing strategies. That has nothing to do with the "popularity of Linux", it's just a company screwing you over, and you buying from them. I wanted an ATI, but they chose not to have me as a customer. I chose to run blender and doom3 where they work nicer for me.
A FX5200 costed a bit over 80usd ncluding taxes (it's not cheap, but it's ok, dollars are much cheaper right now in Uruguay) , but if I wanted to run doom3 on win I needed to buy Windows2000 or winxp, and that's too much of a price to pay for playing on an ATI instead of an nvidia.
I understand that most people see this kind of hardware trouble as big trouble. I just say, ok, if you can't find a distro that supports your hardware, wait, and be wiser next time you buy hard.
Ubuntu can use your card. You can try the live version.
About 3d, you need ATI to release a driver. They did publish specs in the past, so there were drivers up to 9200, but then they stopped.
The problem you talk about is not so. There are some 3d video cards, and some winmodems that are not supported, but most hardware is. Proprietary drivers have problems of their own, too. I have some hardware that does run on the Linux kernel, and doesn't on newer versions of win (aimslabs tv tuner, samsung webcam) because hardware vendors died, or just don't wanna release new drivers. Linux drivers for most hardware are there, and are there forever. Win drivers are not time-proof.
With respect to hardware support, Linux isn't behind win, for me, because I can run more hardware with Linux (including pctel winmodem, and Doom3 on my accelerated, shaderlicious nvidia FX5200 [don't laugh]), including old hardware that I don't have winXP drivers for.
Of course, there is still lots of hardware that doesn't work with Linux, and won't, but of course the same can be said for Win. I'm not saying that changing from an already bought win machine to a gnu/linux one is easy, but it's very easy to buy a PC with all of its hardware supported. For example, most VIA motherboards have support for all their integrated peripherals, including winmodems, sound "cards", ethernet, 3d accel for S3 prosavage video chips.
I calculate some aspect of security in software as total amount of time vulnerable * size of the vulnerability.
There are some amounts I am willing to tolerate. There are some other amounts (100 times more) that piss me off. That's what happens with Firefox and IE. Firefox actually tells you not to open XPI from people you don't know. IE might, but it tells you so much useless crap, that you end up dismissing it.
Emptied bank accounts are the responsibility of banks and users. They would only be resposibility of the browser makers, if they sold it like a bank access utility, with some security seal. If web browsers are not secure enough for banks, then banks shouldn't be allowing its use.
They could always supply a boot CD with their software, ensuring whatever security they need. Not convenient, expensive, whatever, but they are the ones making money off it, they are the ones responsible.
About the "security is a process" thing, you may have misread. The idea is that no product _by_itself_ gives you security. Token based security is nothing, if you lend your token to strangers. Password security has the same problem with writing down your password. There you have two examples of products which may or may not be secure originally, but are used in an insecure way, because of the process involved. Developers are responsible for the quality of their code, if and when they say they are. If they say they are not responsible and you need them to be, please, use software from someone willing to take responsibility, or build your own (code or pay).
If you run Windows, you have IE, it's fast, it's already loaded. It's not too much of a security concern, if you are already using win. It's searching for a solution to a problem that doesn't exist.
People read/. as people who read/. The consumer POV is useful in other aspects of your life. You should better think, as a/. reading person, if you care about heat in your processor. If you don't, chances are you are not very much a nerd.
Do you really want all your accountants to have to drop to a command line, enter some arcane command, and know the root password to their box just to install some update to a custom software package?
An admin, or a very small shell script should be installing software on accountants machines. Upgrades can be handled by cron jobs set by the original software package. Accountants know how to do other things, but installing software shouldn't be on of their tasks. Anyone who doesn't have an admin available, though, should have the root password to his machine, and the knowledge needed.
That would be enough. For me. KDE feels like win. To me. Gnome doesn't. To me.
KDE - _I_ don't know its shortcuts. Gnome - _I_ do.
KDE - is not GNU. Gnome - is GNU (well, maybe for most people that's bad, but for me it's great)
That's enough, for me, to keep using Gnome. If dropline fails to satisfy me, maybe I will give a try to Debian, or that ubuntu thing, although I am very fond of Slackware, since 3.x.
And, about that FOSS thingy, I don't mind open source, the only part of it I care about is freedom. It's not a technical thing, but it's important. It's good though, for KDE, that next QT is going to be free for windows too, so now free KDE apps have a chance to be multiplatform.
That would be enough. KDE feels like win. Gnome doesn't.
KDE - I don't know its shortcuts. Gnome - I do.
KDE - is not GNU. Gnome - is GNU (well, maybe for most people that's bad, but for me it's great) Maybe the original poster has some other reasons, but I find these enough to use Gnome.
2 - noone said GNU/HURD is an alternative to GNU/Linux right now, I specifically pointed out that _if_ and when it's released, it will be the best OS design available, ages ahead of Linux in design, meaning among other things portability, ease of developement, driver writeability. It's much easier to adapt a microkernel to multiple cores, coprocessor usage, like cheap GPUs, clusters. It's a design for today and tomorrow needs. Linux is a nice kernel, because it's there, but it's not beautiful. If and when the GNU/Hurd is a reality, it will be a better reality.
3 - No, I don't care about being trolled, I enjoy just answering random bullshit.
Bad choosing of words for that joke. God, or Linus wouldn't have called "Linux" an OS. God, because if he existed, he would know what a kernel is, and what an OS is. Linus, out of fear of death by the hands of RMS, yelling: "the OS is GNU/Linux, Linux is just a kernel!!!".
Or not. Maybe there's no way people will pay $200 tax to use their computer, in the next 30 years. Of course, if you addressed a new tech, like nanotech-for-the-regular-guy or stuff like that, there's room for some hobbist-turned billionaire, but regular software doesn't look like a field that could support another Bill Gates.
You are not paying them to develop it, so they can take 100 years to make it, if they want or like. That 2Gb thing again.
It's not a product. They don't sell it, you don't have to buy it. It might even be usable, because you can join partitions.
HURD is a hacker exercise of the best type!
Everyday features means little to OS developers. They can define what everyday features are. When you quit complaining, and when and if you get to see the birth of some GNU/HURD/L4 1.0, you will get the most advanced kernel at the time it's released, because noone is working more seriously on an advanced design.
There's a better way. Why not transmit the wave info in and analog form, using low frequencies, with some air compressing-decompressing device built on the gadget itself sitting on the desk, and then pick them up with some air-wave decoding thingy that we could have in our ears?? Think about that! you could even have no-earpiece Ipods!! that's even better than wireless.
What is this "semi intelligent" that you talk about? Will someone with a down syndrome or somewhat mentally retarded be considered semi intelligent? How about animals? How smart do you expert someone that is mentally retarded or a dog to learn?
The IQ of a Down syndrome affected person can go higher than 60. That's not very much below normal (100, of course). Any design that could acheive that kind of intelligence could acheive the same as a regular person.
I just thought it had some value to point that out, we usually think of "retarded" people like very difficult to the rest, while they are not that far. For example, it's common for an engineer to have a 140 IQ, and that's as far from the regular person as Down syndrome is from regular. Just something to think about.
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Of course, once you learn to use vim, it's easy. My point was that getting there s too painful.
I have only driven with a stick, and I don't like automatic cars, but that doesn't make the interface any better, the "stick" interface may be more powerful, but it's too much of a pain to learn, for most people. Of course, once you learn, you probably don't want to drive automatic, because of 1 - the power that the more difficult interface gives you and 2 - the time you invested in it.
Well, vim is modal. That means it's a pain to learn to use effectively. If that modality accomplished anything useful, it would be ok, but I don't think it does.
It's ok as a lightweight editor, but not ok for the eighties or later, from a usability point of view.
Pico, nano, wordstar, joe, all of them are much easier to use, arrows to move, Delete to delete.
Plus, they work similarly to the command line.
Direct manipulation is the way to go. Command based editing was cool, and is nice for some tasks, but it's not a good interface.
by Jef Raskin
u maneinterface/
http://www.jefraskin.com/forjef/jefweb-compiled/h
It's a book that can help you look at interfaces in a different way, with some measures you can make, and some guidelines that an be helpful. Maybe going all the way is not feasible immediately, but it can gie some insight on the subject.
It's not the musicians.
That bussiness model you talk about is not the musicians', its the records labels, big difference. Without record labels, there would even be musicians. Musicians never did anything against me (well, Metallica did, that's why I didn't buy another record from them). Record labels have been treating me as a criminal, and lobbying for hideous laws passed in the US, that gradually are being forced on my country through trade treatments.
And the deal with big labels is not like you tell it. They make you listen to their records, like it or not, on commercials, movies and stuff where you do pay, _have_ to listen to what they want, and not what you want.
So, if we are talking about expectations, I didn't expect to hear Britney Spears more than once. I had to listen many more times. I understand that, although it's wrong, there's nothing I can do against it, record companies won. Well, I can listen to what I want, and not pay a cent.
(Just a though, in practice, I almost don't download music, because it's too much work, but with my friends we have a pool of our ripped CDs we share).
I'm no genius (well, I am, but don't tell anybody) and I installed CVS, following some cookbook, for my team in a couple of hours. The next day, by noon, everybody was using it (update/commit) with Eclipse, and next week we were all able to resolve merges seamlessly (damn struts-config.xml, should have divided the son-of-bitch much earlier).
It was a team of 5 developers, not huge, but enough. None of us had ever actually used version control systems. Previous to that, we were just 3 people, edited the same tree, shared with samba, and used actual physical tokens representing access to conflicting resources (it's clumsy, but it kinda works when you are close to other people).
No, you don't.7 94f007343b969bc570c5dd057212ece700be
It's hard, but not that hard.
You can download binaries from here:
http://dri.freedesktop.org/wiki/Download#head-f3c
They have regular binaries, that you have to install yourself, or debian packages. I did install the binaries, and am using a hardware accelerated S3 here at work. At home I can't use the integrated S3, because of the nvidia in the AGP slot.
I agree it's not easy, but it's not compiling X.org, either.
Of course, I understand what you say about your card, I was just pointing out that "installing" your video card, is just making it work, not making it work with full functionality. You said it just didn't work. You lied. I said it did work. I lied. It works, but not as intended. It's ok for a dual boot system, not ok for a dedicated machine. Of course, if you wanted a win-free machine, what were you thinking buying ATI in the first place?
Especially with opengl, there _is_ of course a problem with ATI.
Anyway, I don't see the vicious circle you talk about anymore, because you can, for your next upgrade, buy an nvidia card, if you want to run it on linux, seamlessly. Or you can bitch and moan to ATI.
But anyhow, you do have drivers for most of the oldest cards, and for half of the lastest ones, Ati, they did provide open source drivers, they just stopped doing it because of their marketing strategies. That has nothing to do with the "popularity of Linux", it's just a company screwing you over, and you buying from them.
I wanted an ATI, but they chose not to have me as a customer. I chose to run blender and doom3 where they work nicer for me.
A FX5200 costed a bit over 80usd ncluding taxes (it's not cheap, but it's ok, dollars are much cheaper right now in Uruguay) , but if I wanted to run doom3 on win I needed to buy Windows2000 or winxp, and that's too much of a price to pay for playing on an ATI instead of an nvidia.
I understand that most people see this kind of hardware trouble as big trouble. I just say, ok, if you can't find a distro that supports your hardware, wait, and be wiser next time you buy hard.
Ubuntu can use your card.
You can try the live version.
About 3d, you need ATI to release a driver.
They did publish specs in the past, so there were drivers up to 9200, but then they stopped.
The problem you talk about is not so. There are some 3d video cards, and some winmodems that are not supported, but most hardware is.
Proprietary drivers have problems of their own, too.
I have some hardware that does run on the Linux kernel, and doesn't on newer versions of win (aimslabs tv tuner, samsung webcam) because hardware vendors died, or just don't wanna release new drivers.
Linux drivers for most hardware are there, and are there forever.
Win drivers are not time-proof.
With respect to hardware support, Linux isn't behind win, for me, because I can run more hardware with Linux (including pctel winmodem, and Doom3 on my accelerated, shaderlicious nvidia FX5200 [don't laugh]), including old hardware that I don't have winXP drivers for.
Of course, there is still lots of hardware that doesn't work with Linux, and won't, but of course the same can be said for Win. I'm not saying that changing from an already bought win machine to a gnu/linux one is easy, but it's very easy to buy a PC with all of its hardware supported. For example, most VIA motherboards have support for all their integrated peripherals, including winmodems, sound "cards", ethernet, 3d accel for S3 prosavage video chips.
I calculate some aspect of security in software as total amount of time vulnerable * size of the vulnerability.
There are some amounts I am willing to tolerate.
There are some other amounts (100 times more) that piss me off. That's what happens with Firefox and IE.
Firefox actually tells you not to open XPI from people you don't know.
IE might, but it tells you so much useless crap, that you end up dismissing it.
Emptied bank accounts are the responsibility of banks and users.
They would only be resposibility of the browser makers, if they sold it like a bank access utility, with some security seal.
If web browsers are not secure enough for banks, then banks shouldn't be allowing its use.
They could always supply a boot CD with their software, ensuring whatever security they need.
Not convenient, expensive, whatever, but they are the ones making money off it, they are the ones responsible.
About the "security is a process" thing, you may have misread.
The idea is that no product _by_itself_ gives you security.
Token based security is nothing, if you lend your token to strangers. Password security has the same problem with writing down your password.
There you have two examples of products which may or may not be secure originally, but are used in an insecure way, because of the process involved.
Developers are responsible for the quality of their code, if and when they say they are. If they say they are not responsible and you need them to be, please, use software from someone willing to take responsibility, or build your own (code or pay).
If you run Windows, you have IE, it's fast, it's already loaded. It's not too much of a security concern, if you are already using win. It's searching for a solution to a problem that doesn't exist.
People read /. as people who read /. /. reading person, if you care about heat in your processor.
The consumer POV is useful in other aspects of your life.
You should better think, as a
If you don't, chances are you are not very much a nerd.
Dillo is for you.
http://www.dillo.org/
It has all the features you need.
I need other features, and I use Firefox + extensions.
Do you really want all your accountants to have to drop to a command line, enter some arcane command, and know the root password to their box just to install some update to a custom software package?
An admin, or a very small shell script should be installing software on accountants machines.
Upgrades can be handled by cron jobs set by the original software package.
Accountants know how to do other things, but installing software shouldn't be on of their tasks.
Anyone who doesn't have an admin available, though, should have the root password to his machine, and the knowledge needed.
KDE looks bad. To me.
Gnome looks good. To me.
That would be enough. For me.
KDE feels like win. To me.
Gnome doesn't. To me.
KDE - _I_ don't know its shortcuts.
Gnome - _I_ do.
KDE - is not GNU.
Gnome - is GNU (well, maybe for most people that's bad, but for me it's great)
That's enough, for me, to keep using Gnome.
If dropline fails to satisfy me, maybe I will give a try to Debian, or that ubuntu thing, although I am very fond of Slackware, since 3.x.
And, about that FOSS thingy, I don't mind open source, the only part of it I care about is freedom.
It's not a technical thing, but it's important.
It's good though, for KDE, that next QT is going to be free for windows too, so now free KDE apps have a chance to be multiplatform.
KDE looks bad.
Gnome looks good.
That would be enough.
KDE feels like win.
Gnome doesn't.
KDE - I don't know its shortcuts.
Gnome - I do.
KDE - is not GNU.
Gnome - is GNU (well, maybe for most people that's bad, but for me it's great)
Maybe the original poster has some other reasons, but I find these enough to use Gnome.
1 - noone complained about your bitching.
2 - noone said GNU/HURD is an alternative to GNU/Linux right now, I specifically pointed out that _if_ and when it's released, it will be the best OS design available, ages ahead of Linux in design, meaning among other things portability, ease of developement, driver writeability. It's much easier to adapt a microkernel to multiple cores, coprocessor usage, like cheap GPUs, clusters. It's a design for today and tomorrow needs. Linux is a nice kernel, because it's there, but it's not beautiful. If and when the GNU/Hurd is a reality, it will be a better reality.
3 - No, I don't care about being trolled, I enjoy just answering random bullshit.
Well, he is the equivalent to god, for me, if that's worth anything.
Bad choosing of words for that joke.
God, or Linus wouldn't have called "Linux" an OS.
God, because if he existed, he would know what a kernel is, and what an OS is.
Linus, out of fear of death by the hands of RMS, yelling: "the OS is GNU/Linux, Linux is just a kernel!!!".
Somebody has to be
Or not.
Maybe there's no way people will pay $200 tax to use their computer, in the next 30 years.
Of course, if you addressed a new tech, like nanotech-for-the-regular-guy or stuff like that, there's room for some hobbist-turned billionaire, but regular software doesn't look like a field that could support another Bill Gates.
You are not paying them to develop it, so they can take 100 years to make it, if they want or like.
That 2Gb thing again.
It's not a product.
They don't sell it, you don't have to buy it.
It might even be usable, because you can join partitions.
HURD is a hacker exercise of the best type!
Everyday features means little to OS developers. They can define what everyday features are. When you quit complaining, and when and if you get to see the birth of some GNU/HURD/L4 1.0, you will get the most advanced kernel at the time it's released, because noone is working more seriously on an advanced design.
In Firefox running on xfree or xorg, without extensions, you can highlight the word, middle-click in the google box, press Enter.
Also, highlight the word, Ctrl-C,K,V, Enter does it, even more efective.
Just kidding, but the real issue is that Firefox already has all the searching functionality I can use right now.
There's a better way.
h tml
Why not transmit the wave info in and analog form, using low frequencies, with some air compressing-decompressing device built on the gadget itself sitting on the desk, and then pick them up with some air-wave decoding thingy that we could have in our ears??
Think about that! you could even have no-earpiece Ipods!! that's even better than wireless.
Well, maybe there's prior art http://www.transistor.org/collection/spica/spica.
Yes. Occam's razor says so.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam's_Razor
What is this "semi intelligent" that you talk about? Will someone with a down syndrome or somewhat mentally retarded be considered semi intelligent? How about animals? How smart do you expert someone that is mentally retarded or a dog to learn?
The IQ of a Down syndrome affected person can go higher than 60. That's not very much below normal (100, of course).
Any design that could acheive that kind of intelligence could acheive the same as a regular person.
I just thought it had some value to point that out, we usually think of "retarded" people like very difficult to the rest, while they are not that far. For example, it's common for an engineer to have a 140 IQ, and that's as far from the regular person as Down syndrome is from regular. Just something to think about.
You can go back to AI now