Now, let's just hope the Palm OS will run on one of these... Unless something like LinCE picks the thing up. PalmOS now supports colour, and has a huge software library.
Now that there's a low-power CPU available, I'd love to see a Palm or Visor with a Crusoe CPU, a colour screen, MP3 playback and recording, WAP, etc... The beast still running on 2 AAA batteries that I'd change once a month.
Don't forget another bad side of the Palm V/Vx series: the battery. The early V units already have their li-ion batteries going dead, and not only they're not covered by the warranty but the units are also very difficult to open/fix/seal (the 2 half-shells are glued).
I'm very happy with my IIIx unit which shall never have this kind of problems... At least a month autonomy on 2 ultra-standard AAA batteries is, IMHO, the best system ever. I guess that's why the Visor uses the same system, and also a reason I'd love to have one the day I'll get full USB support with Linux...
Finland sux, man. Been in Helsinki for 15 months and all I want is to LEAVE! Ppl really suck and you won't make a dime here... Top coder in top company... $20K/year...and 35% tax on it...
In Geneva, Switzerland, you can fill-in your tax declaration on you computer and just send the floppy instead of manually filling all those page... The problem is they send you the floppy with the template and formulas in M$ Excel format, nothing else...
I don't have any M$ software, so I have to find my way through my stupid tax declaration and spend hours and hours doing everything manually. Gee, at least they could make the purchase of Windoze and Excel tax-deductible, but NO! I asked *why* the XLS format, the answer is: "it's the world's standard, everybody's got it". Well...I don't.
Sux to see the Geneva tax administration has been eaten up by M$... No wonder they got so many problems compiling their results! A group of GNU geniuses should ask them if they'd be interrested, they're spending gazillions on a new system... Hope they didn't buy M$ crap yet...
Sux to see part of my tax payer's money goes to M$!
You may think we are isolationist, but we don't have laws like many European countries limiting things like how many foriegn movies our theaters can show
Ahem... To my knowledge, foreign movies aren't much shown in the USA... Because most theaters are tied by their *big* parent companies not to show anything that's not from the *big* production companies, as well as anything that's NG17. The movie market there is completely dumbed down as to promote quantity instead of qualities.
Foreign movies are considered a "niche" market, and are only shown in independent theaters, mostly in cities like NY or San Francisco, where people are educated enough to understand a movie that's got a deeper meaning than all the "entertainment" crap.
In Europe, there are *some* regulations in *some* countries, most of them being there as to protect the European film industry from the big american studios and their monopolistic policy. Without *our* regulations, European movies would barely make it to the screens, since american companies would simply push the distribution channels to be american-exclusive.
And European movies don't suck. Many of them gather millions of people, and many of them are later bought by american companies as to make "remakes", following american (dumb) standards.
At least we know Motorola is thoroughly testing it's processors before letting them on the market.
Intel hasn't been *that* kind (read: professional) with the Pentium class processors... Remember the first series (60, 66, 90)??? They tried, but ultimately had to replace a helluva lot of them...
"Lives of individual Europeans are regulated to a degree that is absolutely abhorrent to Americans, in everything from what churches they may attend to what time they must put their children to bed."
Ahem... Ever been to Europe? You know, that little place across the Atlantic... Hey, I don't know where you got those stupid ideas about Europe and liberty (or lack of). I've NEVER heard of such things, and so far I've lived in 4 different European countries (France, Switzerland, Italy and Finland) without encountering any of the things you dared typing. Hey, make some money and buy yourself a 3 months trip to Europe, North to South, it'll do you good.
I have been to the US of A several times, and found out the level of liberty out there is really lower than what I'm living here in evil Europe. Here, we can (and do) say things aloud without the fear of a money-driven lawsuit and basically do whatever we want as long as we don't harm anybody. Oh yeah, we don't have guns here... Makes me feel a lot safer and FREE. I don't have to worry if my moron of noisy neighbour will shoot me or not if I knock at his door at 3AM because he's testing his new stereo.
Maybe we pay more taxes here, but we also enjoy many aspects of it in terms of social protection and public services. Eh, look at what just happened in London (train crash) just because the railways got sold to private companies who simply prefer making money rather than increasing security... Don't take me wrong, though. I'm strongly against a big strong central government, but I'm also the against the weird system you guys have back in the US of A... A system that's maybe based on complete freedom, but in which your freedom is so restricted by you're neighbour's freedom to send you in jail 'cause you told him he was a dork. Or get shot.
And just like ESR, you got confused between Stalin and Mao's application of COMMUNISM and socialism.
SOCIALISM is the endeavour of many to succeed in a common enterprise, leaving aside personal greed (money, power, etc.). The GNU/Linux development model looks like that to me. Not to you?
Maybe you should get out with ESR, it seems you guys have a lot to learn in common.
I totally agree with you. The thing is I'm also trying to keep up with nice language. I'm sick and tired of the usual slasdotter's comment, which is most of the time poorly written and quite offensive.
A few hours browsing through BeOS newsgroups cheered me up, and should be indicated as a good therapy to anyone who thinks geeks are just plain aggressive morons. Linux zealots should take example on the BeOS community good manners...
Apart from that, I also think ESR is a moron, in his way... I don't like leaders in general, anyway...
"While I have made a point of not gratuitously waving my politics around in my papers, it is no secret in the open-source world that I am a libertarian, a friend of the free market, and implacably hostile to all forms of Marxism and socialism (which I regard as coequal in evil with Naziism)."
Pretty contradictory to me. And I think ESR should definitely get out of his little hole and check what Marxism and socialism really are. He is deeply confused with the Stalinist application of Communism. All in all, this vision is very american, on the redneck side.
Short reminder: almost all of the European Union countries are led by socialists. Okay, it's now called "social-democracy", but we *never* experienced any Stalinist methods from our governments (the opposite, mostly).
Once again, I'm really disappointed by ESR's comments (mostly FUD nowadays), and the fact this guy is seen as THE OSS "leader". I find this guy dangerous. He mixes strong political opinions (which, you've guessed, I don't share) with some actual achievements (OSS, Linux...). So far, OSS and Linux have been developped in a very socialist way (not communist), in the most noble sense of the word. And it works. IMO, ESR is just trying to appropriate this movement to serve his own political views and interrests.
He calls himself a libertarian, but openly promotes the idea of World Domination(TM), which is what we're fighting through OSS. We all want to have the choice, and the freedom to choose. I don't think World Domination(TM) goes into that direction. ESR also had pretty stupid comments regarding BeOS, claiming it was doomed since it's not Open Source, and basically foreseeing the doom of all closed source OSes and apps.
Thank you Mr Raymond, but keep preaching your nonsense somewhere else. The "go my way or be doomed" smells like the naziism you think you're against and you give me nausea.
I checked the Handspring site and in the shipping details it only mentions the US of A. Seems we won't have it in Europe before next year, as usual. Grrrr!
Still,I was thinking about buying one, but 2 technical details made me change my mind:
It comes with a USB connection, gotta pay $20 more for serial. What if I dont't want USB, or my 'puter doesn't have USB? Serial does the job perfectly, and for the amount of data a normal user will have to up/download the speed difference shouldn't be a big problem. I just want the choice in there, not being forced to basically buy something I don't need.
You can't upgrade the OS since there's no Flash memory. Sounds like one of the reasons the Visor is a lot cheaper than 3Com's Palm III series (althought the IIIe is locked too, but it's only for US market, so I don't care).
I'd rather pay a bit more for a Palm IIIx or even a V (looks too good), and be sure I can upgrade the OS whenever there's an upgrade, feature that garantees my gadget won't be totally obsolete after 1 or 2 years. Heck, with the OS in a Flash ROM it's even possible to change the OS to something else than PalmOS (which is excellent, btw). LinCE anybody?
For now, I think I'll just enjoy the new prices for the Palm series...
Linux does not provide support for the broad range of hardware in use today; Windows NT 4.0 currently supports over 39,000 systems and devices on the Hardware Compatibility List. Linux does not support important ease-of-use technologies such as Plug and Play, USB, and Power Management.
Funny, PnP, USB and PM are exactly what NT4 officially doesn't support...
Sometimes, I wouldn't mind being hugely overpaid by MS so I could make a great living doing nothing and spreading bullshit.
Damnit, these are PDAs and are running OSes such as PalmOS and EPOC that are absolutely perfect for what PDAs are intended to do.
Why do you guys want to cram Linux everywhere? I don't see in *what* it'd be superior on a PDA compared to PalmOS or EPOC. Even if Linux runs on these platforms, does it mean it's good at it? I doubt so. The Linux zealotry has really gone a bit too far...
If you want to develop linux stuff anywhere, get yourself a mini-laptop such as those Fujitsu, Sony and IBM make, don't turn perfect PDAs into what they're not supposed to be.
At the risk of being flamed, I have to say that so far IE5 *works*, and damn well. On my 98/NT box, it's the *only* browser that never gave me any trouble. I can't say that about NS which seems to crash after roughly 5 minutes of use.
I'm not a M$ supporter, far from it. I hate their business (read: monopolistic) practices, but one must admit some of their software pieces aren't that bad. And until quite recent times, OSS wasn't (and is still not in many domains) really offering any valid alternative to proprietary software.
As far as I'm concerned, I take software as tools, not as holy war weapons. When it comes to bugs, of course I'm pissed-off. I'm even more when I have to pay for a bug fix, which should be free. With OSS, another sort of problems arises: version 1.0 comes from that "it compiles, ship it!" policy. OK, the bugfixes come quickly, but are IMO too frequents. I'd like to see some sort of code of ethics when it comes to software versions, really. When I get a 1.0 (or 2.0, 3.0) version, I'd like to be sure it's a stable version, not something I'll have to upgade every other day. Basically, it shouldn't be called a "final version" until it actually works at 100% of its specs. It'll make software development a bit more lengthy, but at least the user (also read: customer) won't be harrassed by frequent re-installations, patches, etc.
If car makers were following software development practices, how many customers would they keep if they had to recall the cars every month for a bugfix of some kind?
Heck, I remember the days when new versions were only appearing once a year, or even less. We also used to have quite stable pieces of software back then, software we could actually use "as advertised". I wouldn't mind seeing that kind of things happening again.
By saying such things, you place yourself no higher than all those script-kiddies who regularily flame everything that's not GPL and/or OSS. You're a fanatic zealot who doesn't see any further than your Linux box. Sad from someone like you, really.
You're basically saying the same things than Bill Gates or Steve Jobs. You want "world domination", which is something we're more or less supposed to fight (MS in that case). Excuse me, but I don't think replacing one hegemony by another is good. We want the choice, and we now got it.
BeOS is a beauty to install and use, whereas Linux is a butt ugly for the non-geek. Linux is probably one of the best, if not the best, OS for servers but I don't see Joe User out of Windoze getting into it. BeOS is a really modern OS, using a 64-bit journaled filesystem. Linux relies on 60-70's technologies. Linux is a good OS, but seriously lacks coherence and standards when it comes to basic usability.
Imagine the guy who just needs a program, say a bank account manager. He's got Linux installed. Which distro? which libraries installed? Joe User doesn't know. With BeOS you just unzip et voilà.
Saying that closed source is doomed is a huge mistake. Companies like Adobe, Macromedia etc. make wonderful software that works and defines standards of ease of use, functionality and most of all coherence through evolution. If you started using Photoshop 3, then the 4 and now the 5, you never got lost. What's on Linux? GIMP! Nice try, as you say, but it's plain unusable and definitely not professional. Not counting all the different UI available for which there's a legion of zealots claiming one is better than the others...
Gee, if we just invented ground transportation, you guys would endlessly fight on *what* we should move our butts... Roads? Rails? Water?
Now, Mr Raymond, please try to think a bit further than your little ego before issuing statements that turn you into a complete idiot online.
A couple of years ago, I started getting serious pain in my wrists and hands after long typing days. A friend of mine who happened to practice Chinese medicine did some acupuncture on my elbows, wrists and hands and it really helped. I also used some chinese sort of cataplasms (herbs, oils, etc) and within about a month, I had no pain left.
Adding this to good ergonomics (MS natural keyboard helped a lot), good work position should save most ppl from this kind of pains (not CTS in most cases anyway).
In case you got heavy pains and before accepting any kind of surgery, try to see a chinese acupunctor. This stuff does wonders, really. It has also helped me a great deal after some heavy duty fractures and back pains. Hey, these guys have been practicing for over 4000 years...
Duh, I don't believe you... I've been living in Helsinki for 15 months now, and if there's one thing finns don't like (I'm making a generality here, I know) it's foreigners. I even lost my job because some redneck businessman in the company though having a foreigner around was a threat. And they also didn't like speaking English.
I'm no Russian or Estonian (their usual scapegoats), but still I'm being insulted constantly, especially in governmental institutions on behalf I'm a foreigner and should get back to my country ASAP. You call it friendly?
I don't know where you've spent your time in Finland, really. Maybe in Kuopio, where people are really cool, but definitely not in Helsinki.
I find finns being extremely closed-minded and isolationist, not talking about their terrible tendency to racism. Looking different, speaking different, thinking different condemns you immediately to most finns' eyes. Like in Sweden, there's a culture of uniformity here that dumbs people from childhood. Be a sheep is their motto. No wonder Apple's campaign on "think different" had no impact here.
Really, if anyone's thinking about moving here, I'd tell that person to think twice... Oh, salaries are a joke here, combined with super-high taxes. Wanna buy a car? Pay 130% tax on it. everything else? Minimum 22% Goods & Services tax. Service, in general, is lousy and salespersons would easily insult you if you *dare* complaining about anything, even politely.
Finn's behaviour towards foreigners could be explained by 700 years of Swedish domination, followed by 100 years of Russian colonialism. I don't mind if people are being patriotic to some extent, but to *that* point, it's critical...
Good reasons for me to move back to Switzerland. At least there's good income there and people don't spit at you when you're different.
I just wanna add another thing. I happen to know *for sure* that one of the biggest Geneva private banks has accorded a *huge* loan to the government of the US of A. If this bank claimed today for the entire amount of the loan, the so-nice American Govt would file for bankrupcy immediately.
So, I'd also would like to ask story posters to think twice before writing shit about a country they've only heard of in tabloids.
"In a move that should make it easier to launder money on the internet."
What the hell does that mean? I'm a Swiss citizen and I'm quite fed-up with the systematic association most americans do between crime and my country. I'm sure most US banks have their nasty past as well, but it's oh-so-easy to bash that little country in the middle of nowhere (Europe, that's nowhere to you). I'd like my country to be remembered for different things, such as the WWW itself (T. Berners-Lee invented it at the CERN, near Geneva) or the many hi tech innovations achieved by our universities.
Our banks are, at least officially, doing everything in their power as to stop money laundring activities. Nothing I can personaly do about it. And I happen to have a few Swiss bank accounts.
We happen to have electronic banking in Switzerland, and we've had it for way over 10 years now. I think it's just normal the banks offer the same service to their international customers. And hell if your IRS gets an ulcere, who likes them anyway?
So guys, please revise your stereotypes for once, it's getting a bit tiring. Otherwise I'm gonna start talking about how your big US corporations prefer having the work done by Chinese slave workers.
Hum, what about a section in which users would not only be able to rate comments, but also OSes, computer makers, etc., following their production/comments/attitude/whatever. It'd have to be carefully handled (I can already see M$'s karma...woohoo), but it could sort of give a visual apreciation over what our community thinks about those who produce the stuff we work with.
What do you guys think? Since/. seems to have some influence, maybe it could improve certain things... Sounds like rating, but add the karma and it could be even better...
Ok, enough is enough. Everybody loved his/her Amiga (1000, 500, A2000, B2000, etc.), but now it's over!
The only reason that could possibly raise any discution is nostalagia. In the days of the Amiga (circa end of the 80's), people were passionate on the war between the Amiga and the Atari ST. Now, we see the same kind of flame wars between Windows and Linux users/advocates (although I haven't seen many ppl claiming to be Win advocates).
Is there anybody here who likes that vaporware never-ending-story with the Amiga? Haven't we evolved? Or is it the new teenager generation busy discovering the joys of partisanship and computers?
Boy, we didn't have the net 10-12 years ago! We were congregating at our local computer dealer, arguing about what one of the *printed* magazines had said! At least, we were getting off the 'puter, just for the pleasure of talking about it... Remember the time when Tramiel (CEO of Atari) was openly flaming the Amiga, and vice-versa...?
But now...wow... I don't think any software community or advocacy group *needs* that kind of childish behaviour. The "my toy is better than yours" is OK when you're 10.
I'm requesting/. doesn't propagate all those bogus "news" about something that doesn't even exist anymore. It's like trying to bring a dead back to life, even though the dead was great.
I liked my Amigas a lot, they were ahead of anything on the market then. But, unfortunately, it's the fate of those who are ahead of their times to die poor.
Slashdot Mirror
Now, let's just hope the Palm OS will run on one of these... Unless something like LinCE picks the thing up. PalmOS now supports colour, and has a huge software library.
Now that there's a low-power CPU available, I'd love to see a Palm or Visor with a Crusoe CPU, a colour screen, MP3 playback and recording, WAP, etc... The beast still running on 2 AAA batteries that I'd change once a month.
I think it'd be quite cool. What d'ya all think?
Max
Don't forget another bad side of the Palm V/Vx series: the battery. The early V units already have their li-ion batteries going dead, and not only they're not covered by the warranty but the units are also very difficult to open/fix/seal (the 2 half-shells are glued).
I'm very happy with my IIIx unit which shall never have this kind of problems... At least a month autonomy on 2 ultra-standard AAA batteries is, IMHO, the best system ever. I guess that's why the Visor uses the same system, and also a reason I'd love to have one the day I'll get full USB support with Linux...
Max
Have a good one all of you...
The next millenium will be GPL'd or won't be.
I know, other AC...
Finland sux, man. Been in Helsinki for 15 months and all I want is to LEAVE! Ppl really suck and you won't make a dime here... Top coder in top company... $20K/year...and 35% tax on it...
Forget it.
Well, if any public (read: government) service/agency uses some M$ software, then some of your taxes go to M$...
I think it's just dangerous...
In Geneva, Switzerland, you can fill-in your tax declaration on you computer and just send the floppy instead of manually filling all those page... The problem is they send you the floppy with the template and formulas in M$ Excel format, nothing else...
I don't have any M$ software, so I have to find my way through my stupid tax declaration and spend hours and hours doing everything manually. Gee, at least they could make the purchase of Windoze and Excel tax-deductible, but NO! I asked *why* the XLS format, the answer is: "it's the world's standard, everybody's got it". Well...I don't.
Sux to see the Geneva tax administration has been eaten up by M$... No wonder they got so many problems compiling their results! A group of GNU geniuses should ask them if they'd be interrested, they're spending gazillions on a new system... Hope they didn't buy M$ crap yet...
Sux to see part of my tax payer's money goes to M$!
You may think we are isolationist, but we don't have laws like many European countries limiting things like how many foriegn movies our theaters can show
Ahem... To my knowledge, foreign movies aren't much shown in the USA... Because most theaters are tied by their *big* parent companies not to show anything that's not from the *big* production companies, as well as anything that's NG17. The movie market there is completely dumbed down as to promote quantity instead of qualities.
Foreign movies are considered a "niche" market, and are only shown in independent theaters, mostly in cities like NY or San Francisco, where people are educated enough to understand a movie that's got a deeper meaning than all the "entertainment" crap.
In Europe, there are *some* regulations in *some* countries, most of them being there as to protect the European film industry from the big american studios and their monopolistic policy. Without *our* regulations, European movies would barely make it to the screens, since american companies would simply push the distribution channels to be american-exclusive.
And European movies don't suck. Many of them gather millions of people, and many of them are later bought by american companies as to make "remakes", following american (dumb) standards.
At least we know Motorola is thoroughly testing it's processors before letting them on the market.
Intel hasn't been *that* kind (read: professional) with the Pentium class processors... Remember the first series (60, 66, 90)??? They tried, but ultimately had to replace a helluva lot of them...
"Lives of individual Europeans are regulated to a degree that is absolutely abhorrent to Americans, in everything from what churches they may attend to what time they must put their children to bed."
Ahem... Ever been to Europe? You know, that little place across the Atlantic... Hey, I don't know where you got those stupid ideas about Europe and liberty (or lack of). I've NEVER heard of such things, and so far I've lived in 4 different European countries (France, Switzerland, Italy and Finland) without encountering any of the things you dared typing. Hey, make some money and buy yourself a 3 months trip to Europe, North to South, it'll do you good.
I have been to the US of A several times, and found out the level of liberty out there is really lower than what I'm living here in evil Europe. Here, we can (and do) say things aloud without the fear of a money-driven lawsuit and basically do whatever we want as long as we don't harm anybody. Oh yeah, we don't have guns here... Makes me feel a lot safer and FREE. I don't have to worry if my moron of noisy neighbour will shoot me or not if I knock at his door at 3AM because he's testing his new stereo.
Maybe we pay more taxes here, but we also enjoy many aspects of it in terms of social protection and public services. Eh, look at what just happened in London (train crash) just because the railways got sold to private companies who simply prefer making money rather than increasing security... Don't take me wrong, though. I'm strongly against a big strong central government, but I'm also the against the weird system you guys have back in the US of A... A system that's maybe based on complete freedom, but in which your freedom is so restricted by you're neighbour's freedom to send you in jail 'cause you told him he was a dork. Or get shot.
And just like ESR, you got confused between Stalin and Mao's application of COMMUNISM and socialism.
SOCIALISM is the endeavour of many to succeed in a common enterprise, leaving aside personal greed (money, power, etc.). The GNU/Linux development model looks like that to me. Not to you?
Maybe you should get out with ESR, it seems you guys have a lot to learn in common.
I totally agree with you. The thing is I'm also trying to keep up with nice language. I'm sick and tired of the usual slasdotter's comment, which is most of the time poorly written and quite offensive.
A few hours browsing through BeOS newsgroups cheered me up, and should be indicated as a good therapy to anyone who thinks geeks are just plain aggressive morons. Linux zealots should take example on the BeOS community good manners...
Apart from that, I also think ESR is a moron, in his way... I don't like leaders in general, anyway...
I'm talking about Eric Raymond here, *after* reading his last papers.
I guess you didn't do that effort, dude.
Start thinking by yourself, instead of taking some big name's words for truth.
Dude...
"While I have made a point of not gratuitously waving my politics around in my papers, it is no secret in the open-source world that I am a libertarian, a friend of the free market, and implacably hostile to all forms of Marxism and socialism (which I regard as coequal in evil with Naziism)."
Pretty contradictory to me. And I think ESR should definitely get out of his little hole and check what Marxism and socialism really are. He is deeply confused with the Stalinist application of Communism. All in all, this vision is very american, on the redneck side.
Short reminder: almost all of the European Union countries are led by socialists. Okay, it's now called "social-democracy", but we *never* experienced any Stalinist methods from our governments (the opposite, mostly).
Once again, I'm really disappointed by ESR's comments (mostly FUD nowadays), and the fact this guy is seen as THE OSS "leader". I find this guy dangerous. He mixes strong political opinions (which, you've guessed, I don't share) with some actual achievements (OSS, Linux...). So far, OSS and Linux have been developped in a very socialist way (not communist), in the most noble sense of the word. And it works. IMO, ESR is just trying to appropriate this movement to serve his own political views and interrests.
He calls himself a libertarian, but openly promotes the idea of World Domination(TM), which is what we're fighting through OSS. We all want to have the choice, and the freedom to choose. I don't think World Domination(TM) goes into that direction. ESR also had pretty stupid comments regarding BeOS, claiming it was doomed since it's not Open Source, and basically foreseeing the doom of all closed source OSes and apps.
Thank you Mr Raymond, but keep preaching your nonsense somewhere else. The "go my way or be doomed" smells like the naziism you think you're against and you give me nausea.
Still,I was thinking about buying one, but 2 technical details made me change my mind:
It comes with a USB connection, gotta pay $20 more for serial. What if I dont't want USB, or my 'puter doesn't have USB? Serial does the job perfectly, and for the amount of data a normal user will have to up/download the speed difference shouldn't be a big problem. I just want the choice in there, not being forced to basically buy something I don't need.
You can't upgrade the OS since there's no Flash memory. Sounds like one of the reasons the Visor is a lot cheaper than 3Com's Palm III series (althought the IIIe is locked too, but it's only for US market, so I don't care).
I'd rather pay a bit more for a Palm IIIx or even a V (looks too good), and be sure I can upgrade the OS whenever there's an upgrade, feature that garantees my gadget won't be totally obsolete after 1 or 2 years. Heck, with the OS in a Flash ROM it's even possible to change the OS to something else than PalmOS (which is excellent, btw). LinCE anybody?
For now, I think I'll just enjoy the new prices for the Palm series...
AWFULLY would be an understatement... Aaahhh, I'm sure the guy who wrote it was secretely celebrating Monty Python's 30th anniversary!
muahahahahaha
Linux does not provide support for the broad range of hardware in use today; Windows NT 4.0 currently supports over 39,000 systems and devices on the Hardware Compatibility List. Linux does not support important ease-of-use technologies such as Plug and Play, USB, and Power Management.
Funny, PnP, USB and PM are exactly what NT4 officially doesn't support...
Sometimes, I wouldn't mind being hugely overpaid by MS so I could make a great living doing nothing and spreading bullshit.
Damnit, these are PDAs and are running OSes such as PalmOS and EPOC that are absolutely perfect for what PDAs are intended to do.
Why do you guys want to cram Linux everywhere? I don't see in *what* it'd be superior on a PDA compared to PalmOS or EPOC. Even if Linux runs on these platforms, does it mean it's good at it? I doubt so. The Linux zealotry has really gone a bit too far...
If you want to develop linux stuff anywhere, get yourself a mini-laptop such as those Fujitsu, Sony and IBM make, don't turn perfect PDAs into what they're not supposed to be.
Couldn't have said it better.
Thanx
PS: There must be a bug in The Slash, 'cause I get moderator's privilege at least twice a week now... How ironic.
At the risk of being flamed, I have to say that so far IE5 *works*, and damn well. On my 98/NT box, it's the *only* browser that never gave me any trouble. I can't say that about NS which seems to crash after roughly 5 minutes of use.
I'm not a M$ supporter, far from it. I hate their business (read: monopolistic) practices, but one must admit some of their software pieces aren't that bad. And until quite recent times, OSS wasn't (and is still not in many domains) really offering any valid alternative to proprietary software.
As far as I'm concerned, I take software as tools, not as holy war weapons. When it comes to bugs, of course I'm pissed-off. I'm even more when I have to pay for a bug fix, which should be free. With OSS, another sort of problems arises: version 1.0 comes from that "it compiles, ship it!" policy. OK, the bugfixes come quickly, but are IMO too frequents. I'd like to see some sort of code of ethics when it comes to software versions, really. When I get a 1.0 (or 2.0, 3.0) version, I'd like to be sure it's a stable version, not something I'll have to upgade every other day. Basically, it shouldn't be called a "final version" until it actually works at 100% of its specs. It'll make software development a bit more lengthy, but at least the user (also read: customer) won't be harrassed by frequent re-installations, patches, etc.
If car makers were following software development practices, how many customers would they keep if they had to recall the cars every month for a bugfix of some kind?
Heck, I remember the days when new versions were only appearing once a year, or even less. We also used to have quite stable pieces of software back then, software we could actually use "as advertised". I wouldn't mind seeing that kind of things happening again.
Mr Raymond,
By saying such things, you place yourself no higher than all those script-kiddies who regularily flame everything that's not GPL and/or OSS. You're a fanatic zealot who doesn't see any further than your Linux box. Sad from someone like you, really.
You're basically saying the same things than Bill Gates or Steve Jobs. You want "world domination", which is something we're more or less supposed to fight (MS in that case). Excuse me, but I don't think replacing one hegemony by another is good. We want the choice, and we now got it.
BeOS is a beauty to install and use, whereas Linux is a butt ugly for the non-geek. Linux is probably one of the best, if not the best, OS for servers but I don't see Joe User out of Windoze getting into it. BeOS is a really modern OS, using a 64-bit journaled filesystem. Linux relies on 60-70's technologies. Linux is a good OS, but seriously lacks coherence and standards when it comes to basic usability.
Imagine the guy who just needs a program, say a bank account manager. He's got Linux installed. Which distro? which libraries installed? Joe User doesn't know. With BeOS you just unzip et voilà.
Saying that closed source is doomed is a huge mistake. Companies like Adobe, Macromedia etc. make wonderful software that works and defines standards of ease of use, functionality and most of all coherence through evolution. If you started using Photoshop 3, then the 4 and now the 5, you never got lost. What's on Linux? GIMP! Nice try, as you say, but it's plain unusable and definitely not professional. Not counting all the different UI available for which there's a legion of zealots claiming one is better than the others...
Gee, if we just invented ground transportation, you guys would endlessly fight on *what* we should move our butts... Roads? Rails? Water?
Now, Mr Raymond, please try to think a bit further than your little ego before issuing statements that turn you into a complete idiot online.
A couple of years ago, I started getting serious pain in my wrists and hands after long typing days. A friend of mine who happened to practice Chinese medicine did some acupuncture on my elbows, wrists and hands and it really helped. I also used some chinese sort of cataplasms (herbs, oils, etc) and within about a month, I had no pain left.
.02
Adding this to good ergonomics (MS natural keyboard helped a lot), good work position should save most ppl from this kind of pains (not CTS in most cases anyway).
In case you got heavy pains and before accepting any kind of surgery, try to see a chinese acupunctor. This stuff does wonders, really. It has also helped me a great deal after some heavy duty fractures and back pains. Hey, these guys have been practicing for over 4000 years...
Just my
The people are friendly to foreigners
Duh, I don't believe you... I've been living in Helsinki for 15 months now, and if there's one thing finns don't like (I'm making a generality here, I know) it's foreigners. I even lost my job because some redneck businessman in the company though having a foreigner around was a threat. And they also didn't like speaking English.
I'm no Russian or Estonian (their usual scapegoats), but still I'm being insulted constantly, especially in governmental institutions on behalf I'm a foreigner and should get back to my country ASAP. You call it friendly?
I don't know where you've spent your time in Finland, really. Maybe in Kuopio, where people are really cool, but definitely not in Helsinki.
I find finns being extremely closed-minded and isolationist, not talking about their terrible tendency to racism. Looking different, speaking different, thinking different condemns you immediately to most finns' eyes. Like in Sweden, there's a culture of uniformity here that dumbs people from childhood. Be a sheep is their motto. No wonder Apple's campaign on "think different" had no impact here.
Really, if anyone's thinking about moving here, I'd tell that person to think twice... Oh, salaries are a joke here, combined with super-high taxes. Wanna buy a car? Pay 130% tax on it. everything else? Minimum 22% Goods & Services tax. Service, in general, is lousy and salespersons would easily insult you if you *dare* complaining about anything, even politely.
Finn's behaviour towards foreigners could be explained by 700 years of Swedish domination, followed by 100 years of Russian colonialism. I don't mind if people are being patriotic to some extent, but to *that* point, it's critical...
Good reasons for me to move back to Switzerland. At least there's good income there and people don't spit at you when you're different.
My 0.02 pennia.
I just wanna add another thing. I happen to know *for sure* that one of the biggest Geneva private banks has accorded a *huge* loan to the government of the US of A. If this bank claimed today for the entire amount of the loan, the so-nice American Govt would file for bankrupcy immediately.
So, I'd also would like to ask story posters to think twice before writing shit about a country they've only heard of in tabloids.
"In a move that should make it easier to launder money on the internet."
What the hell does that mean? I'm a Swiss citizen and I'm quite fed-up with the systematic association most americans do between crime and my country. I'm sure most US banks have their nasty past as well, but it's oh-so-easy to bash that little country in the middle of nowhere (Europe, that's nowhere to you). I'd like my country to be remembered for different things, such as the WWW itself (T. Berners-Lee invented it at the CERN, near Geneva) or the many hi tech innovations achieved by our universities.
Our banks are, at least officially, doing everything in their power as to stop money laundring activities. Nothing I can personaly do about it. And I happen to have a few Swiss bank accounts.
We happen to have electronic banking in Switzerland, and we've had it for way over 10 years now. I think it's just normal the banks offer the same service to their international customers. And hell if your IRS gets an ulcere, who likes them anyway?
So guys, please revise your stereotypes for once, it's getting a bit tiring. Otherwise I'm gonna start talking about how your big US corporations prefer having the work done by Chinese slave workers.
Hum, what about a section in which users would not only be able to rate comments, but also OSes, computer makers, etc., following their production/comments/attitude/whatever. It'd have to be carefully handled (I can already see M$'s karma...woohoo), but it could sort of give a visual apreciation over what our community thinks about those who produce the stuff we work with.
/. seems to have some influence, maybe it could improve certain things... Sounds like rating, but add the karma and it could be even better...
What do you guys think? Since
Ok, enough is enough. Everybody loved his/her Amiga (1000, 500, A2000, B2000, etc.), but now it's over!
/. doesn't propagate all those bogus "news" about something that doesn't even exist anymore. It's like trying to bring a dead back to life, even though the dead was great.
The only reason that could possibly raise any discution is nostalagia. In the days of the Amiga (circa end of the 80's), people were passionate on the war between the Amiga and the Atari ST. Now, we see the same kind of flame wars between Windows and Linux users/advocates (although I haven't seen many ppl claiming to be Win advocates).
Is there anybody here who likes that vaporware never-ending-story with the Amiga? Haven't we evolved? Or is it the new teenager generation busy discovering the joys of partisanship and computers?
Boy, we didn't have the net 10-12 years ago! We were congregating at our local computer dealer, arguing about what one of the *printed* magazines had said! At least, we were getting off the 'puter, just for the pleasure of talking about it... Remember the time when Tramiel (CEO of Atari) was openly flaming the Amiga, and vice-versa...?
But now...wow... I don't think any software community or advocacy group *needs* that kind of childish behaviour. The "my toy is better than yours" is OK when you're 10.
I'm requesting
I liked my Amigas a lot, they were ahead of anything on the market then. But, unfortunately, it's the fate of those who are ahead of their times to die poor.