Interesting that this article came up today. Tomorrow my dad's borrowing my laptop to visit some relatives and scan a load of old family photos (he's into that stuff)... thing is, he's used to Windows and the laptop only has Debian on it.
So, I set up SANE, plug the scanner into the firewire port, it all works perfectly. Nice. Set up a minimal, Windows-styled KDE desktop with a nice friendly icon, "Scan and OCR software". All he has to do is click his name on the KDM login screen. Cool. Even he can't get this wrong. I do a few test runs. It's dead simple, even more so than his Windows setup.
So I sit him down in front of the laptop to see if he can manage this. He just about figures out the login. OK. Now we've got the KDE desktop, nothing there but a few icons. Mouse is right over the "Scan and OCR" icon. He sits there for about 20 seconds in silence before saying "which one is it?"
If there's anything getting in the way of linux on the desktop, it sure isn't linux:P
It is a total myth that Linux desktops are difficult to use. KDE and GNOME are just as easy to use as Windows, and offer a lot more flexibility too. Kids learn things quickly, they are group that would be least challenged by a switch from Windows to Linux.
Now, where Linux gets tough, is when you have to install it, configure it, get everything set up and running "just so". Then it's a pain and way beyond the scope of your average end user. (Yes, there are plenty of attempts at easy configuration utilities, but because the unix design was never intended to incorporate such things, there hasn't been one yet that really fits in).
Fortunately, in such environments as a school, or an office, this isn't the job of the end user, it's the job of the sysadmins. They're in charge of keeping them all running smoothly and doing "all that complicated techy stuff" so the users don't have to concern themselves with it, they just get the job done.
Of course, Linux's great remote administration capabilities, networking, general reliability, etc means that the sysadmin's job is easier and more pleasant, there's less downtime, and, perhaps most importantly, no Microsoft licensing fees and restrictions. Schools are publicly funded and Microsoft's pockets are the last place our taxes should be going.
So liberals only want you to have the freedom to debauch, to murder unborn children, and to send plaintext emails and feel illusory confidence in their security? Hmm.
Debauchery is underrated. Don't knock it til you've tried it!
Yep that's why Mr Sixpack in question buys a slightly more expensive computer if that's what he wants to do on it.
These are low spec, low price machines... don't expect great things of them. If you can upgrade it to play games, then great.. but that's not what they're for, and not what they're priced for, so it's not really fair to slate them for it being outside the capability of the average user to do so, is it?
Well what happens when every cm^2 of the earth is covered with a computer that size and then people start stacking them on top of eachother like pennies?
I'm in university accomodation and we all share a 34Mbit leased line, which is usually pretty damn fast, so I was expecting great things from BitTorrent. I downloaded the Linux version for myself and also the Windows version to distribute around the place a bit. Linux is now finished and I am now still downloading the Windows one at about 2kB/s and uploading at about 8kB/s.
The Linux version peaked at about 180, but most of the time it was either stalled or just moving very slowly, although of course the upload was zipping along very nicely all the while.
Maybe being behind a NAT gateway adversely affects it, I don't know. My impression so far is that BT is a great idea but needs a bit more work.
I've found OpenGL games to run just as well under Linux as they do in Windows, if not marginally faster. And that's with Wine as well as Linux native. (All the Quake 3 based games I have tried work perfectly under Wine, fully hardware accelerated. So does Counterstrike)
Sounds like you don't have hardware accelleration set up properly (or at all). Your best bet is with an Nvidia or maybe ATI card (I think the Nvidia drivers are slightly more polished than the ATI drivers at this point but I'm not entirely sure as I don't use an ATI).
I'm not knocking the PHP/MySQL combination as such, (although I do dislike the language for a number of reasons), but my gripe is that it makes it very easy to write poorly designed and unsecure code. In fact you could almost say that the language style encourages it. This means that people don't really need much of a clue to build websites with PHP. Result: every idiot and his dog goes out and buys himself one of these books, knocks together some awful code, find that it kind of works, and suddenly fancies himself a professional web developer and starts charging people £10 an hour for his "services".
As for alternatives, my favorite would probably be some kind of mod_perl based solution. Perl is a much nicer language than PHP and although not as easy to learn it does without some of PHP's brain damaged design principles and is a lot more powerful. There are a number of ways of coding mod_perl sites PHP-style (code inline with HTML) such as Apache::ASP, Embperl and Mason. I think IIS lets you use Perl in ASP pages too, but who cares about that?;)
Aren't there enough PHP/MySQL books out there? More to the point, aren't there enough clueless fuckwits out there using PHP and MySQL to retardedly kludge together unsecure, inefficient, shoddy websites, undercutting the pros with their stupid prices and generally carving up the IT job market further than it already is with their general fuckwittery?
This is one of the problems with the job market right now. Too many of the idiots who got in the business during the boom are still in. I know several of them.
"Yes, yes, I know that, Sydney... Everybody knows that!... But look: Four wrongs squared, minus two wrongs to the fourth power, divided by this formula, do make a right."
Someone knowledgeable about the inner workings of radio could put together a rig that could transmit on any frequency he wished, using cheap off the shelf electronics components. I'm pretty sure you can get schematics online too. It's not really a new problem that software radio introduces, it just makes it a bit easier to achieve the same thing.
You may choose routes based on avoiding red lights, which is understandable, but I often choose mine by minimizing my exposure to rotaries.
Therefore, if I visit England, I will try to occupy passenger seats and buses more than driver's seats;)
Don't visit Swindon then, every corner is a roundabout, even sometimes when there's no junction (just a sharp bend in the road). And then there's one roundabout with 5 exits, and every exit has another smaller roundabout on it. Rather scary to navigate, I think most drivers just close their eyes, hit the accelerator and pray:)
B&O kit is for people with more money than sense (sense of hearing that is). The amount you pay for it, you can get the same results with kit a tenth of the price. You are only paying for the design.
IMHO, all this crap that companies like B&O and Bose spew about their R&D and the latest gadget they've come up with to "shape" the sound or whatever has little basis in reality at all. Audio reproduction is not a mystery. It is well known how to get good results. There's no secret to it and B&O have not made any breakthroughs.
So if you have the cash and the inclination, instead of spending 8 grand on a pair of these speakers, get yourself some kit from Quad, TAG McLaren Audio, Arcam, Mission, etc. I'm willing to bet you could put together an entire system that'd sound ten times as good as these for a quarter of the cost of these speakers alone, without any of this nonsense they're putting in them.
Having said all that, I'm currently listening to a pair of B&O speakers, although they are about 30 or 40 years old. Obviously they had a bit more of a clue back then as the speakers sound amazing, although they were marred by the very long and very thin cables they came with. A bit of modification of the terminals to accept a thicker cable made them sound like a completely different set of speakers. It makes me wonder, if B&O were prepared to completely ruin the sound for the sake of the design of the cable, of all things.. what else are they doing?
Network booting with PXE combined with Debian's "fully automated installer" system gives you a fully functional setup from a cold boot in under 60 seconds.
Of course this is most useful for servers and corporate desktops where you have a pre-made setup, a la Norton Ghost.
Re:How is this allowed by the GPL?
on
Libranet 2.8 Released
·
· Score: 2, Informative
You can sell GPL software for any price you like. The license places no restriction on the price you sell it for. Of course there is nothing to stop the customer from giving away free copies subsequently.
This is a damn good idea, and mentioned a few times already... I'd definitely throw a few bucks their way, and I'm a poor(ish) student myself.. if this were me I'd be seriously pissed off:P
Personally I'm not convinced Karyn wasn't a bit of a scam, something seemed a bit "off" with it, and she was hardly a worthy cause even if she was genuine.
Slashdot Mirror
Interesting that this article came up today. Tomorrow my dad's borrowing my laptop to visit some relatives and scan a load of old family photos (he's into that stuff)... thing is, he's used to Windows and the laptop only has Debian on it.
:P
So, I set up SANE, plug the scanner into the firewire port, it all works perfectly. Nice. Set up a minimal, Windows-styled KDE desktop with a nice friendly icon, "Scan and OCR software". All he has to do is click his name on the KDM login screen. Cool. Even he can't get this wrong. I do a few test runs. It's dead simple, even more so than his Windows setup.
So I sit him down in front of the laptop to see if he can manage this. He just about figures out the login. OK. Now we've got the KDE desktop, nothing there but a few icons. Mouse is right over the "Scan and OCR" icon. He sits there for about 20 seconds in silence before saying "which one is it?"
If there's anything getting in the way of linux on the desktop, it sure isn't linux
Also:
nailer horsy
is real horny
rhino slayer
hairy loners
sailor henry
Courtesy of The Internet Anagram Server.
Thanks, I'll be here all week.
It is a total myth that Linux desktops are difficult to use. KDE and GNOME are just as easy to use as Windows, and offer a lot more flexibility too. Kids learn things quickly, they are group that would be least challenged by a switch from Windows to Linux.
Now, where Linux gets tough, is when you have to install it, configure it, get everything set up and running "just so". Then it's a pain and way beyond the scope of your average end user. (Yes, there are plenty of attempts at easy configuration utilities, but because the unix design was never intended to incorporate such things, there hasn't been one yet that really fits in).
Fortunately, in such environments as a school, or an office, this isn't the job of the end user, it's the job of the sysadmins. They're in charge of keeping them all running smoothly and doing "all that complicated techy stuff" so the users don't have to concern themselves with it, they just get the job done.
Of course, Linux's great remote administration capabilities, networking, general reliability, etc means that the sysadmin's job is easier and more pleasant, there's less downtime, and, perhaps most importantly, no Microsoft licensing fees and restrictions. Schools are publicly funded and Microsoft's pockets are the last place our taxes should be going.
The Monica affair is a black spot on all our faces.
And a white spot on hers
(-1, too obvious)
So liberals only want you to have the freedom to debauch, to murder unborn children, and to send plaintext emails and feel illusory confidence in their security? Hmm.
Debauchery is underrated. Don't knock it til you've tried it!
Yep that's why Mr Sixpack in question buys a slightly more expensive computer if that's what he wants to do on it.
These are low spec, low price machines... don't expect great things of them. If you can upgrade it to play games, then great.. but that's not what they're for, and not what they're priced for, so it's not really fair to slate them for it being outside the capability of the average user to do so, is it?
If this is capitalism, sign me up for socialism.
:)
There's no reason why the two can't co-exist. Like in Europe
No one will look in there to steal your Altoids.
No one looks in your Altoid tin to steal your weed, either. Bonus!
Well what happens when every cm^2 of the earth is covered with a computer that size and then people start stacking them on top of eachother like pennies?
NAT of course. Duh.
Are you suggesting that U.K. spammers should be beaten with a baseball bat if they send explicit material to an 18 year old in the USA,
;)
Yes, spam is spam
Well, I can't say it's been that good.
I'm in university accomodation and we all share a 34Mbit leased line, which is usually pretty damn fast, so I was expecting great things from BitTorrent. I downloaded the Linux version for myself and also the Windows version to distribute around the place a bit. Linux is now finished and I am now still downloading the Windows one at about 2kB/s and uploading at about 8kB/s.
The Linux version peaked at about 180, but most of the time it was either stalled or just moving very slowly, although of course the upload was zipping along very nicely all the while.
Maybe being behind a NAT gateway adversely affects it, I don't know. My impression so far is that BT is a great idea but needs a bit more work.
I've found OpenGL games to run just as well under Linux as they do in Windows, if not marginally faster. And that's with Wine as well as Linux native. (All the Quake 3 based games I have tried work perfectly under Wine, fully hardware accelerated. So does Counterstrike)
Sounds like you don't have hardware accelleration set up properly (or at all). Your best bet is with an Nvidia or maybe ATI card (I think the Nvidia drivers are slightly more polished than the ATI drivers at this point but I'm not entirely sure as I don't use an ATI).
RTCW single player stinks? What are you talking about man, it's been one of the best single player games I've played in ages!
;)
Then again I don't play that many.
Which is a bit annoying
I'm not knocking the PHP/MySQL combination as such, (although I do dislike the language for a number of reasons), but my gripe is that it makes it very easy to write poorly designed and unsecure code. In fact you could almost say that the language style encourages it. This means that people don't really need much of a clue to build websites with PHP. Result: every idiot and his dog goes out and buys himself one of these books, knocks together some awful code, find that it kind of works, and suddenly fancies himself a professional web developer and starts charging people £10 an hour for his "services".
;)
As for alternatives, my favorite would probably be some kind of mod_perl based solution. Perl is a much nicer language than PHP and although not as easy to learn it does without some of PHP's brain damaged design principles and is a lot more powerful. There are a number of ways of coding mod_perl sites PHP-style (code inline with HTML) such as Apache::ASP, Embperl and Mason. I think IIS lets you use Perl in ASP pages too, but who cares about that?
Aren't there enough PHP/MySQL books out there? More to the point, aren't there enough clueless fuckwits out there using PHP and MySQL to retardedly kludge together unsecure, inefficient, shoddy websites, undercutting the pros with their stupid prices and generally carving up the IT job market further than it already is with their general fuckwittery?
:P
This is one of the problems with the job market right now. Too many of the idiots who got in the business during the boom are still in. I know several of them.
No, I'm not bitter... honest
In the words of genius cartoonist Gary Larson,
... Everybody knows that! ... But look: Four wrongs squared, minus two wrongs to the fourth power, divided by this formula, do make a right."
"Yes, yes, I know that, Sydney
Someone knowledgeable about the inner workings of radio could put together a rig that could transmit on any frequency he wished, using cheap off the shelf electronics components. I'm pretty sure you can get schematics online too. It's not really a new problem that software radio introduces, it just makes it a bit easier to achieve the same thing.
What do you think his opinion is? That it's a super great idea?
;)
FFS, what a stupid question
A euro is worth approximately the same amount as a dollar.
(Yes, for the rest of you I said approximately, before you all hit me with 60 decimal places of righteous indignation)
You may choose routes based on avoiding red lights, which is understandable, but I often choose mine by minimizing my exposure to rotaries.
;)
:)
Therefore, if I visit England, I will try to occupy passenger seats and buses more than driver's seats
Don't visit Swindon then, every corner is a roundabout, even sometimes when there's no junction (just a sharp bend in the road). And then there's one roundabout with 5 exits, and every exit has another smaller roundabout on it. Rather scary to navigate, I think most drivers just close their eyes, hit the accelerator and pray
B&O kit is for people with more money than sense (sense of hearing that is). The amount you pay for it, you can get the same results with kit a tenth of the price. You are only paying for the design.
IMHO, all this crap that companies like B&O and Bose spew about their R&D and the latest gadget they've come up with to "shape" the sound or whatever has little basis in reality at all. Audio reproduction is not a mystery. It is well known how to get good results. There's no secret to it and B&O have not made any breakthroughs.
So if you have the cash and the inclination, instead of spending 8 grand on a pair of these speakers, get yourself some kit from Quad, TAG McLaren Audio, Arcam, Mission, etc. I'm willing to bet you could put together an entire system that'd sound ten times as good as these for a quarter of the cost of these speakers alone, without any of this nonsense they're putting in them.
Having said all that, I'm currently listening to a pair of B&O speakers, although they are about 30 or 40 years old. Obviously they had a bit more of a clue back then as the speakers sound amazing, although they were marred by the very long and very thin cables they came with. A bit of modification of the terminals to accept a thicker cable made them sound like a completely different set of speakers. It makes me wonder, if B&O were prepared to completely ruin the sound for the sake of the design of the cable, of all things.. what else are they doing?
Network booting with PXE combined with Debian's "fully automated installer" system gives you a fully functional setup from a cold boot in under 60 seconds.
Of course this is most useful for servers and corporate desktops where you have a pre-made setup, a la Norton Ghost.
You can sell GPL software for any price you like. The license places no restriction on the price you sell it for. Of course there is nothing to stop the customer from giving away free copies subsequently.
This is a damn good idea, and mentioned a few times already... I'd definitely throw a few bucks their way, and I'm a poor(ish) student myself.. if this were me I'd be seriously pissed off :P
Personally I'm not convinced Karyn wasn't a bit of a scam, something seemed a bit "off" with it, and she was hardly a worthy cause even if she was genuine.