...I haven't yet seen a Linux distro that comes close enough to something like Windows in terms of easy installation, use, and especially configuration...
Alright, that's it! I've had it! There is no such thing as ease of use or user friendliness. It's all your head. It's really all about ignorance and wanting to learn something new.
For example, my mom won't switch to Linux because she doesn't want to go through the learning curve, not because it's not user friendly.
And as far as new computer users using Linux instead of windows is concerned, it has nothing to do with user-friendliness either. It's because they want to be able to walk into a store and know that any program in any box that they could possibly buy will work on their computer. Windows is the closest to achieving that as of right now and that's the hardest thing that Linux can compete with.
In other words, a computer is just an appliance to most people. You wouldn't want to buy bread that will only work in a toaster with such and such OS would you???
Enough of this "Linux isn't as easy as blah blah blah..." argument. Ease of use is just an excuse to not learn anything new. The term "computer illiterate" really means "I don't give a shit about computers and how they work". Using the unix shell is just as easy as pointing and clicking once you learn how to do it!
In the 80's when everyone used DOS no one who used a computer was complaining that it was too hard. It was just the people who wanted to use a computer but didn't want to learn how to. So companies like Apple and Microsoft took advantage of this and came out with GUIs and said "You're stupid. Use our product! See? Now you have less to learn!" hence the terms "computer literate" and "user friendliness" were coined.
The beauty of Linux (and free software) is that as long as there is the desire for something different (more distros) that something different will exist.
You mentioned debian. But the Linux hackers that don't like debian will make their own "not debian" distros.
Just go to linux.org and look at all the millions of different non-commercial distributions.
I'm not talking about individuals. Yes, the people who start the corporations have strong ambitions, dreams and goals. But while the corporation is running it's sole purpose is to be one big gigantic money making machine.
If I started a corporation selling computers with windows on them and then someday decided to stop selling windows on them and instead sell Linux because I (personally) think that Linux is better I would be fired faster than you can say "Linux" because I was not doing what was best to maximize profit.
All corporations are started for a reason and are made out of some dream or goal. But all corporations are also started as small businesses and later turn into corporations when the money is there. After they're a corporation their only purpose is to make money.
1. Corporations want to make money no matter where in the world they are
2. Corporation will bend laws to make money no matter who it hurts
Also remember that it's the sole purpose of a corporation to make money. Nothing else. They don't exist to make you products that make you happy. They don't exist to do good things for people. They exist solely to make money. The people running corporations don't give one single shit about what they're making, how they're making it or whether what they do conforms to the morals of the general public whether they're taking away people's freedoms. All they care about (and as far as they're concerned all they should care about) is how to maximize profit in the present.
Corporations are big, giant money making machines and nothing else. So don't expect anything else from them.
Yeah but the difference is that Linus doesn't guarantee anything. He's under a lot of pressure from people anxious for the new kernel. So he just projects a rough estimate to "shut them up" and it's usually something like "you can't expect it until AT LEAST December" and not something like "give me your money and it will be ready December 14th" which is usually what varporware is all about (an attempt to get money off of a product that doesn't exist yet).
In order for me to connect to port 25 to send mail I have to send a HELO and the smtp server has to respond with a OK. So to play around with your analogy I would have to knock at your door say "Hello may I borrow your gun I'm going to go shoot someone" and you have to respond by saying "Yes of course here you go."
I admit I'm being awful technical, however, what if you left a robot at your house that would automatically answer requests to borrow your gun. That's EXACTLY what the smtp server is doing. Automatically answering requests to send mail. If I wasn't supposed to get the gun from your house then you should have re configured the robot to only respond to requests to borrow the gun only from certain "authorized" people. Just like the admin should have configured the smtp server to only send mail from a certain ip block.
If I ask to use your gun so I can go shoot someone and you say "Sure", I go shoot someone we're both in jail.
It's not like this guy cracked a root shell and used/usr/lib/sendmail to send the mail. He connected remotely to port 25 on this system and did this. The admin is partly at fault! The admin said "Sure take my gun and start shooting people."
Also I agree with other people that 7 years is an awful lot too. It's not like he was killing people. Murderers and rapists don't get that much time usually anyway....
And no I'm not defending him. I think he should do SOME time. But he should get 7 years when rapists get life. And the admin should at LEAST get fired.
(anyone tried to write a standalone app in Java and get it to work on all UNIXes as well as MSFT systems?)
Yes.
Not to try and advertise for the company I work for or anything but check out Planet Intra. Our document editor is written in Java works well on all Unix's as well as MS operating systems. The only caveat we've had is Mac support. Netscape and IE in Mac are entirely different products then their windows/*nix counterparts.
I'm with the Bank of Montreal and I really like their online service. I use it with Linux all the time and it works great. They also have a requirement that your browser must support 128-bit SSL (which is a good thing:O)
I'm just wondering: who cares if something is gpl compatible or not??? Seriously. Why should every piece of open source software (or "free" software, exuse me) have a license that's compatible with the gpl. Dammit! If RMS wants to write his own damn software under his own damn license that's fine but why does he give a shit if someone else's code is released under a license that's "compatible" with the gpl and why should the authors of open source software try and release their software under one??!!??
As a programmer I will release my software under whatever the hell license I feel like. This isn't meant as a flame it's my serious opinion: fuck GNU, fuck the GPL and fuck RMS! Where does he get off complaining about the license of software??!!?? Release your code under the license that suits your needs the best!
Pardon my ignorance, though, if someone can explain to me why as the author of some open source software (all gpl'd actually, but not because RMS said I should) I should give a shit.
Every tv show kills themselves when the finally make a movie. Examples: Beavis and Butthead, Southpark (that one happend REALLY fast), The X-Files (debatable).
I think the simpsons is still very good but it's been slowly degrating over the years. In the opion of a lot of earlier posts: it's just not as good as it used to be. Now they're going to release a movie and finally put it to an end.
People pay much less attention to the artist than the actual music.
I really wish I could believe that. In many cases it may be true but it is obvious that the modern "record industry" is trying to sell the artist rather than the music. That's why we see all this crap like "Making the band", "The personality behind Britney Spears", "The legal battle between Eminem and his mom" etc. And people like that. If I meet one more gossip hog.... (well that's another story).
It's not about the music, it's about being famous and making rich people even richer (and obviously I don't mean the artists). And since so much is put into this people pay attention. How many die hard Beatles fans ONLY listened to their music and didn't try and get all the intimate details of every band member's life?
As a father and a programmer I have to say that it makes me very upset to see all these other parents who are trusting their software to 'protect' their children!
The internet is just like television (full of both good stuff and pure trash) and as parents if we are concerned about what our children are going to expose themselves to then the only solution is to educate them first. Educate them about the morals and ethics that your family believes in in order to help your child develop good character and avoid the trash that the morals that you have taught them would find 'offensive'. But most importantly, if you do in fact want to censor what your children accesses on the internet then YOU must monitor what your child is accessing YOURSELF!
Of course your child is going to experiment and access material online that you would not approve of. However, your child will also do the same with television, drugs, smoking, sex etc. and in the end it will be you who will have had the most influence on the overall outcome of your child's life.
When I was a teenager I experimented a lot with drugs but I grew out of it and wouldn't touch a single illegal drug now. I expect my daughter to do the same (although I definitely wish that she wouldn't). And I believe that they way that I raise her will lead her to be a very good, clean person. I don't believe that looking at offensive material on the internet is going to hurt her unless she remains uneducated about it. And that would be my fault.
IE does deal with webpages better.. even look at netscapes tables, terrable!
Actually, IMHO netscape handles tables better then IE. IE has a technique that displays as it renders while netscape renders everything then displays it. So it's a lot easier to catch html problems with netscape. So if you made a mistake in your html in netscape it won't display anything whereas IE will display crap. Making it a little easier for the developer (most of the time) because you may not know that you made a mistake in IE until something bad happens (like a form that didn't submit a variable etc.).
Anyway, the reason netscape won't follow IE is because the ultimate goal with Mozilla was to create a 100% standards compliant web browser. MS is instead (as we all know) trying to set it's own standards. Something that the netscape generation dispises. The other problem with trying to "match" IE is that MS tends to "reserve the right" to their "innovations". In other words: you can use it but you can not implement it. It really is a monopolistic strategy.
The reality is that Blizzard is one of the largest game companies out there, and sorry to say it but the fact that Blizzard is a BUSINESS means that judgement calls are made regarding what platforms to support and when.
And they will never port to other platforms if there is no demand. If Linux users start installing windows on an extra hd just to play Diablo II then that reduces the damand for a Linux port. Why spend money and resources porting to a platform if the users of that platform are willing to switch over to the currently supported platform to play it???
The one thing that people have to realize is that the PC market is going to cease to exist in the next couple years.
The pc is steming out into 2 seperate markets: the web pad and the game console. Microsoft realizes this and they're going after both.
In a few short years everything that you do in the lines of word processing, e-mailing, chatting, web surfing etc. will be done on portable pads that you can take anywhere. All of your applications will reside online, hosted by asps. Proof is msn, Planet Intra etc.
The only thing that this leaves out however is gaming. Hence the X-Box.
With MSN and the X-Box Microsoft is preparing themselves for when the PC market is obsolete.
Slashdot Mirror
Okay I have way too much time on my hand.
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Garett
Alright, that's it! I've had it! There is no such thing as ease of use or user friendliness. It's all your head. It's really all about ignorance and wanting to learn something new.
For example, my mom won't switch to Linux because she doesn't want to go through the learning curve, not because it's not user friendly.
And as far as new computer users using Linux instead of windows is concerned, it has nothing to do with user-friendliness either. It's because they want to be able to walk into a store and know that any program in any box that they could possibly buy will work on their computer. Windows is the closest to achieving that as of right now and that's the hardest thing that Linux can compete with.
In other words, a computer is just an appliance to most people. You wouldn't want to buy bread that will only work in a toaster with such and such OS would you???
Enough of this "Linux isn't as easy as blah blah blah..." argument. Ease of use is just an excuse to not learn anything new. The term "computer illiterate" really means "I don't give a shit about computers and how they work". Using the unix shell is just as easy as pointing and clicking once you learn how to do it!
In the 80's when everyone used DOS no one who used a computer was complaining that it was too hard. It was just the people who wanted to use a computer but didn't want to learn how to. So companies like Apple and Microsoft took advantage of this and came out with GUIs and said "You're stupid. Use our product! See? Now you have less to learn!" hence the terms "computer literate" and "user friendliness" were coined.
Sorry being offtopic...
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Garett
The beauty of Linux (and free software) is that as long as there is the desire for something different (more distros) that something different will exist.
You mentioned debian. But the Linux hackers that don't like debian will make their own "not debian" distros.
Just go to linux.org and look at all the millions of different non-commercial distributions.
--
Garett
I'm not talking about individuals. Yes, the people who start the corporations have strong ambitions, dreams and goals. But while the corporation is running it's sole purpose is to be one big gigantic money making machine.
If I started a corporation selling computers with windows on them and then someday decided to stop selling windows on them and instead sell Linux because I (personally) think that Linux is better I would be fired faster than you can say "Linux" because I was not doing what was best to maximize profit.
All corporations are started for a reason and are made out of some dream or goal. But all corporations are also started as small businesses and later turn into corporations when the money is there. After they're a corporation their only purpose is to make money.
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Garett
2. Corporation will bend laws to make money no matter who it hurts
Also remember that it's the sole purpose of a corporation to make money. Nothing else. They don't exist to make you products that make you happy. They don't exist to do good things for people. They exist solely to make money. The people running corporations don't give one single shit about what they're making, how they're making it or whether what they do conforms to the morals of the general public whether they're taking away people's freedoms. All they care about (and as far as they're concerned all they should care about) is how to maximize profit in the present.
Corporations are big, giant money making machines and nothing else. So don't expect anything else from them.
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Garett
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Garett
In order for me to connect to port 25 to send mail I have to send a HELO and the smtp server has to respond with a OK. So to play around with your analogy I would have to knock at your door say "Hello may I borrow your gun I'm going to go shoot someone" and you have to respond by saying "Yes of course here you go."
I admit I'm being awful technical, however, what if you left a robot at your house that would automatically answer requests to borrow your gun. That's EXACTLY what the smtp server is doing. Automatically answering requests to send mail. If I wasn't supposed to get the gun from your house then you should have re configured the robot to only respond to requests to borrow the gun only from certain "authorized" people. Just like the admin should have configured the smtp server to only send mail from a certain ip block.
But that's just my opinion.
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Garett
It's not like this guy cracked a root shell and used /usr/lib/sendmail to send the mail. He connected remotely to port 25 on this system and did this. The admin is partly at fault! The admin said "Sure take my gun and start shooting people."
Also I agree with other people that 7 years is an awful lot too. It's not like he was killing people. Murderers and rapists don't get that much time usually anyway....
And no I'm not defending him. I think he should do SOME time. But he should get 7 years when rapists get life. And the admin should at LEAST get fired.
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Garett
There's a copy of that article here
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Garett
Actually that's not a bad thing at all.
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Garett
Yes.
Not to try and advertise for the company I work for or anything but check out Planet Intra. Our document editor is written in Java works well on all Unix's as well as MS operating systems. The only caveat we've had is Mac support. Netscape and IE in Mac are entirely different products then their windows/*nix counterparts.
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Garett Spencley
Hope this helps :O)
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Garett
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Garett
As a programmer I will release my software under whatever the hell license I feel like. This isn't meant as a flame it's my serious opinion: fuck GNU, fuck the GPL and fuck RMS! Where does he get off complaining about the license of software??!!?? Release your code under the license that suits your needs the best!
Pardon my ignorance, though, if someone can explain to me why as the author of some open source software (all gpl'd actually, but not because RMS said I should) I should give a shit.
Garett Spencley
Every tv show kills themselves when the finally make a movie. Examples: Beavis and Butthead, Southpark (that one happend REALLY fast), The X-Files (debatable).
I think the simpsons is still very good but it's been slowly degrating over the years. In the opion of a lot of earlier posts: it's just not as good as it used to be. Now they're going to release a movie and finally put it to an end.
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Garett Spencley
I reject all cookies so it didn't log me in after my second "PREVIEW" :O(
I really wish I could believe that. In many cases it may be true but it is obvious that the modern "record industry" is trying to sell the artist rather than the music. That's why we see all this crap like "Making the band", "The personality behind Britney Spears", "The legal battle between Eminem and his mom" etc. And people like that. If I meet one more gossip hog.... (well that's another story).
It's not about the music, it's about being famous and making rich people even richer (and obviously I don't mean the artists). And since so much is put into this people pay attention. How many die hard Beatles fans ONLY listened to their music and didn't try and get all the intimate details of every band member's life?
Well this is just my opinion. I could be wrong.
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Garett Spencley
The internet is just like television (full of both good stuff and pure trash) and as parents if we are concerned about what our children are going to expose themselves to then the only solution is to educate them first. Educate them about the morals and ethics that your family believes in in order to help your child develop good character and avoid the trash that the morals that you have taught them would find 'offensive'. But most importantly, if you do in fact want to censor what your children accesses on the internet then YOU must monitor what your child is accessing YOURSELF!
Of course your child is going to experiment and access material online that you would not approve of. However, your child will also do the same with television, drugs, smoking, sex etc. and in the end it will be you who will have had the most influence on the overall outcome of your child's life.
When I was a teenager I experimented a lot with drugs but I grew out of it and wouldn't touch a single illegal drug now. I expect my daughter to do the same (although I definitely wish that she wouldn't). And I believe that they way that I raise her will lead her to be a very good, clean person. I don't believe that looking at offensive material on the internet is going to hurt her unless she remains uneducated about it. And that would be my fault.
Just my $0.02
Garett
Actually, IMHO netscape handles tables better then IE. IE has a technique that displays as it renders while netscape renders everything then displays it. So it's a lot easier to catch html problems with netscape. So if you made a mistake in your html in netscape it won't display anything whereas IE will display crap. Making it a little easier for the developer (most of the time) because you may not know that you made a mistake in IE until something bad happens (like a form that didn't submit a variable etc.).
Anyway, the reason netscape won't follow IE is because the ultimate goal with Mozilla was to create a 100% standards compliant web browser. MS is instead (as we all know) trying to set it's own standards. Something that the netscape generation dispises. The other problem with trying to "match" IE is that MS tends to "reserve the right" to their "innovations". In other words: you can use it but you can not implement it. It really is a monopolistic strategy.
My $0.02
Garett
Geez! We're right across the border from you!
And they will never port to other platforms if there is no demand. If Linux users start installing windows on an extra hd just to play Diablo II then that reduces the damand for a Linux port. Why spend money and resources porting to a platform if the users of that platform are willing to switch over to the currently supported platform to play it???
Now if I had the money to build this machine, it would be strictly for q3a tournaments ;-)
The pc is steming out into 2 seperate markets: the web pad and the game console. Microsoft realizes this and they're going after both.
In a few short years everything that you do in the lines of word processing, e-mailing, chatting, web surfing etc. will be done on portable pads that you can take anywhere. All of your applications will reside online, hosted by asps. Proof is msn, Planet Intra etc.
The only thing that this leaves out however is gaming. Hence the X-Box.
With MSN and the X-Box Microsoft is preparing themselves for when the PC market is obsolete.
Garett Spencley