either that or the fact that nearly every single person living in a cube farm has office trainning. most corporations started using (and investing training $$) beginning with office 95, then '97, then 2k, then, then, then.
i really think the licensing is pittance compared to the trainning investment in the M$ "productivity suite". not only the current trainning investment, but trainning required to migrate to a new package. as well as conversion to new file formats.
and finally, there's always the new guy in marketing that goes out and gets office XP and starts sending documents out in that format such that within a few months every other employee NEEDS the upgraded version (however real the NEED may be is hightly debatable, but that's probably another thread).
so to conclude (there's gotta be a point here, eh?), i think it's more than Free == No Value. I think the underlying hesitation is that Change == Huge initial investment and the actual payback due to the change is negligable in terms of licensing dollars, and intangible in terms of being the odd ball without M$ Office.
mandrake does a GREAT job installing on a windoze machine that has one big fat32 partition. just kick off defrag, and then the next day when it's complete, you can start the mandrake install. it will allow you to resize your paritions from there.
after doing the mandrake install, i would recommend then installing RH 7.3 on the partitions that mandrake created. just a personal opinion, but i dind't really get mandrake at all.
on the open office/star office front, i used so 5.2 on rh and it works great! getting oo installed was challenging, but maybe the 1.0 binaries are a little easier. rh (and others) are working on rpms, but have a few changes to make due to the graphical install currently needed by open/star office.
i'm sorry, i'm still not quite sold on using a highly overpriced beefed up g4 machine for a server environment.
an NT/2k/XP server very plug-n-play in a network full of windows desktop machines. that doesn't make it the best candidate for a file server. it all boils down to total cost of ownership (TCO) including administration, software, hardware, power, upgrades, etc. an x86/Linux file server is all about maximizing TCO.
i'm not certain, but i'm thinking the AltiVec is going to have a little trouble handling serving 20-30+ users concurently running Photoshop or other high-intensive application. as you mentioned, those are desktop applications, and should be handled by the desktop. server type applications are file serving, http request serving, email serving, database serving, etc. one application that is prime for client side use is high intensive graphics type applications.
i can see the pixar type market using these, but education? i would need to see the TCO numbers to buy into that one.
how exactly do these rack mount servers benefit the education sector better than a MUCH lest costly x86 machine?
as far as video and graphics, i have heard that the g4 processor has been engineered with high intensive graphics in mind, but typically the graphics intensive stuff (rendering) is handled by the ati card (slight biased there;) ) located on the individual desktop machine. i don't see how these things will help video and graphics in any way shape or form.
again, as far as sile sharing services, is it really easier to setup than a samba server?
no, but it is ok for the engine to blow a rod through the crank shaft when it's been running 11,000 rpm's (not the redhat type) for a few minutes. those engineers should have used better rods/crank shafts in their engines, eh?
everything has it's limits and software/firmware is no exception.
if a gun goes off unexpectedly because it was loaded with improperly manufacturered bullets, is it the fault of the manufacturer of the gun or of the bullets?
i agree that no cd should break the firmware, but these aren't cds. the firmware writers have to code to some sort of a specification.
car engine manufacturers make their products to accept and function normally using a certain grade of oil. they'll run ok using other grades of engine oil sure, but they're designed to run using a specific grade. you can't go around pouring castor oil, or baby oil into a car engine and expect it to last very long.... now.. what if baby oil were packaged in a black plastic quart jar, identical to motor oil packaging, and the product were placed on the shelf right next to the motor oil. and the baby oil happened to be tinted the same color as standard motor oil. the front label reads "OIL", and on the back in small print it reads "for use on skin only.. blah, blah, blah". what is a reasonable person going to do with this jar of baby oil? damn that chevy engine manufacturer for making an engine that melts down when it's filled with baby oil.
i don't see how you blame the firmware writers. they create the firmware to conform to CD specifications. sure we all would like our software/firmware whatever to be robust and withstand any potential rot, but in all reality, it must meet the requirements and the specifications. the firmware creators for these drives certainly can't create firmware that protects the drive from every possible application of the drive. if this were true, we'de need to expect bicycle manufactueres to design and create bikes that can withstand being run over in the drive way (which by the way is actually more likely to occur than for someone to put a damaging non-CD metallic disk into their drive).
i really don't think the original post is overreacting in the slightest bit. this is intentional neglegance on the part of not the manufacturer, but of the copyright holder.
any reasonable person would expect to be able to buy a cd, and plop it in their computer without any damages. weather or not any music comes off the disk is another story.
is this any different than if disney's next dvd (monsters, inc?) were able to fry any dvd player that isn't using proper region encoding. it's intentional malicious behaviour twords a competing product (non-region encoded dvd's perhaps, those non-conformists bastards!)
um, the director, the producer, the actors were all shocked that spider man did so well. they figured it would do fairly decent at the box office, but never figured it to smash the previous weekend record.
i gotta assume your company is distributes (binary or otherwise) software?
otherwise, there's no reason to throw gpl code over the fense. sure sharing is nice, but there's nothing in the license that mandates it. when google patches the hell out of their linux kernels (gpl), they don't have to give a line of it back to any developers or throw it over the fense.
abiword does not provide comparable capabilities. it's more of a lightweight editor. kate w/ font suppport maybe. i'd compare it more to wordpad than open office.
openoffice is definately a M$ Office alternative for general document handling, unless you've got a marketing department. those guys will create stuff that m$ office doesn't handle properly.
getting a little ot on this one... though your dvd+rw drive will be able to play dvd's if you install some of the software mentoined in the article.
as far as backups... it's been said over and over, the most cost effective backup (solely for backup/recovery purposes) is HDD. usb, IDE, EIDE whatever, it's all cheeper and easier than fiddling with virgin non-standard dvd writing technology. plus as an added bonus, you can be up and running in minutes not hours when you have lost data/hardware failure. it also makes it a little more challenging for someone else to get to any sensitive data. personally i think dvd+rw is just a fad. we went from 1.2mb 5.25 -> 1.4 mb 3.5 -> 650 mb 4in disk. 650 -> +/- 8GB isn't quite the jump for mass storage. i'll be waiting for something like a 400GB portable storage medium. all my mp3's mpegs, jpgs, databases, life history, all on one little "disk".
many, many, many cd's stop working. they get scratched! scratched! and scratched to where they skip, and they don't play worth a shit. data cd's are less likely because somehow they're not scattered all over my desktop. you seem like the type of person who take an audio cd out of the player and puts it back into its nice little case, and onto the cd rack. well, lots of us throw them into a pile of frequently used cd's and for many of us, our 2-5 year old mongrols take the metalic disks from that stack and play frisbee in the living room. thus scratches and unplayability. so, yes, i want to be able to back up my audio cd's and even my data cd's just to be sure.
i found it pretty weird that the home link in the main navbar on the top links to freshmeat.net, while all other links go to some variation of themes.freshmeat.net. if it's a themes site, shouldn't the home link go to themes.freshmeat.net?
a few (katz, roblimo) are the writing types, but for the other bin junkies, their role is to wade through the submission bin and decide which stories that were submitted could generate good conversation on the comments, and which will get plenty of page hits. usually they might add their own 0.02$, but i don't recall reading them claim to be journalists.
here's a radical idea: howzabout you creating a theme that actually makes the interface useable and putting it up for all of us on themes.freshmeat.org?
personally, I mostly stick with the default KDE theme. a few changes to the number of desktops and the taskbar, and it's all setup. pretty useable to me.
i didn't write an OS book, but i might have read one once. from what i recall, the OS is a system that operates the computer. it includes the kernel and other various other software applications (including a desktop environment, a web browser, a calculator, etc).
but....but... it's my interface for running my applications. that's gotta be worth something. who demoted my KDE from an OS to to a measly desktop environment? gnome maybe, but not KDE.
they may have the same codebase, but the builds are different, so the code is different. from a QA perspective, it's different code. different possible execution branches, different functionality.
it would fly running debian? what would fly, the twm window manager? the shell login? the mail server? the file server? a good linux desktop environment WILL NOT fly with 32MB of ram (unless that's video ram you're referring to on an ATI Rage128 chipset, then sure, it'll fly at 900FPS).
yes, you CAN use another browser, but by being forced to have IE on the machine, M$ is stubbing any browser competition. i don't think they even allowed OEM's to install NN on the machines that people just take home and use. thus, the majority of people aren't going to search out an alternative browser. that's the point of the states. they used their monopolistic OS power to gain browser marketshare.
back around IE 3.x days, most people used NN as their browser.
i would fairly safely assume that the poster was going for the majority (this being >75%) on this point. most vehicles here have 12(compact) - 20+ (suv's) gallon tanks.
since you're talking liters, i will assume you're from a different country.
i'm using the pre 1.0 release, and getting it to print to kprinter (to be able to print to kdeprintfax for faxing documents) doesn't seem to work so well. when i try to print to the fax, kde tells me that it needs --stdin since there's no file to print from. any ideas? my resume is in msword format, and openoffice does a MUCH better job of opening it to be able to fax it off.
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either that or the fact that nearly every single person living in a cube farm has office trainning. most corporations started using (and investing training $$) beginning with office 95, then '97, then 2k, then, then, then.
i really think the licensing is pittance compared to the trainning investment in the M$ "productivity suite". not only the current trainning investment, but trainning required to migrate to a new package. as well as conversion to new file formats.
and finally, there's always the new guy in marketing that goes out and gets office XP and starts sending documents out in that format such that within a few months every other employee NEEDS the upgraded version (however real the NEED may be is hightly debatable, but that's probably another thread).
so to conclude (there's gotta be a point here, eh?), i think it's more than Free == No Value. I think the underlying hesitation is that Change == Huge initial investment and the actual payback due to the change is negligable in terms of licensing dollars, and intangible in terms of being the odd ball without M$ Office.
mandrake does a GREAT job installing on a windoze machine that has one big fat32 partition. just kick off defrag, and then the next day when it's complete, you can start the mandrake install. it will allow you to resize your paritions from there.
after doing the mandrake install, i would recommend then installing RH 7.3 on the partitions that mandrake created. just a personal opinion, but i dind't really get mandrake at all.
on the open office/star office front, i used so 5.2 on rh and it works great! getting oo installed was challenging, but maybe the 1.0 binaries are a little easier. rh (and others) are working on rpms, but have a few changes to make due to the graphical install currently needed by open/star office.
i'm sorry, i'm still not quite sold on using a highly overpriced beefed up g4 machine for a server environment.
an NT/2k/XP server very plug-n-play in a network full of windows desktop machines. that doesn't make it the best candidate for a file server. it all boils down to total cost of ownership (TCO) including administration, software, hardware, power, upgrades, etc. an x86/Linux file server is all about maximizing TCO.
i'm not certain, but i'm thinking the AltiVec is going to have a little trouble handling serving 20-30+ users concurently running Photoshop or other high-intensive application. as you mentioned, those are desktop applications, and should be handled by the desktop. server type applications are file serving, http request serving, email serving, database serving, etc. one application that is prime for client side use is high intensive graphics type applications.
i can see the pixar type market using these, but education? i would need to see the TCO numbers to buy into that one.
how exactly do these rack mount servers benefit the education sector better than a MUCH lest costly x86 machine?
;) ) located on the individual desktop machine. i don't see how these things will help video and graphics in any way shape or form.
as far as video and graphics, i have heard that the g4 processor has been engineered with high intensive graphics in mind, but typically the graphics intensive stuff (rendering) is handled by the ati card (slight biased there
again, as far as sile sharing services, is it really easier to setup than a samba server?
no, but it is ok for the engine to blow a rod through the crank shaft when it's been running 11,000 rpm's (not the redhat type) for a few minutes. those engineers should have used better rods/crank shafts in their engines, eh?
everything has it's limits and software/firmware is no exception.
if a gun goes off unexpectedly because it was loaded with improperly manufacturered bullets, is it the fault of the manufacturer of the gun or of the bullets?
i agree that no cd should break the firmware, but these aren't cds. the firmware writers have to code to some sort of a specification.
car engine manufacturers make their products to accept and function normally using a certain grade of oil. they'll run ok using other grades of engine oil sure, but they're designed to run using a specific grade. you can't go around pouring castor oil, or baby oil into a car engine and expect it to last very long.... now.. what if baby oil were packaged in a black plastic quart jar, identical to motor oil packaging, and the product were placed on the shelf right next to the motor oil. and the baby oil happened to be tinted the same color as standard motor oil. the front label reads "OIL", and on the back in small print it reads "for use on skin only.. blah, blah, blah". what is a reasonable person going to do with this jar of baby oil? damn that chevy engine manufacturer for making an engine that melts down when it's filled with baby oil.
i don't see how you blame the firmware writers. they create the firmware to conform to CD specifications. sure we all would like our software/firmware whatever to be robust and withstand any potential rot, but in all reality, it must meet the requirements and the specifications. the firmware creators for these drives certainly can't create firmware that protects the drive from every possible application of the drive. if this were true, we'de need to expect bicycle manufactueres to design and create bikes that can withstand being run over in the drive way (which by the way is actually more likely to occur than for someone to put a damaging non-CD metallic disk into their drive).
i really don't think the original post is overreacting in the slightest bit. this is intentional neglegance on the part of not the manufacturer, but of the copyright holder.
any reasonable person would expect to be able to buy a cd, and plop it in their computer without any damages. weather or not any music comes off the disk is another story.
is this any different than if disney's next dvd (monsters, inc?) were able to fry any dvd player that isn't using proper region encoding. it's intentional malicious behaviour twords a competing product (non-region encoded dvd's perhaps, those non-conformists bastards!)
um, the director, the producer, the actors were all shocked that spider man did so well. they figured it would do fairly decent at the box office, but never figured it to smash the previous weekend record.
sorry, had to get in on this one ;).
Spaceman 2: Took acid while doing your homework again, eh?
i gotta assume your company is distributes (binary or otherwise) software?
otherwise, there's no reason to throw gpl code over the fense. sure sharing is nice, but there's nothing in the license that mandates it. when google patches the hell out of their linux kernels (gpl), they don't have to give a line of it back to any developers or throw it over the fense.
abiword does not provide comparable capabilities. it's more of a lightweight editor. kate w/ font suppport maybe. i'd compare it more to wordpad than open office.
openoffice is definately a M$ Office alternative for general document handling, unless you've got a marketing department. those guys will create stuff that m$ office doesn't handle properly.
getting a little ot on this one... though your dvd+rw drive will be able to play dvd's if you install some of the software mentoined in the article.
as far as backups... it's been said over and over, the most cost effective backup (solely for backup/recovery purposes) is HDD. usb, IDE, EIDE whatever, it's all cheeper and easier than fiddling with virgin non-standard dvd writing technology. plus as an added bonus, you can be up and running in minutes not hours when you have lost data/hardware failure. it also makes it a little more challenging for someone else to get to any sensitive data. personally i think dvd+rw is just a fad. we went from 1.2mb 5.25 -> 1.4 mb 3.5 -> 650 mb 4in disk. 650 -> +/- 8GB isn't quite the jump for mass storage. i'll be waiting for something like a 400GB portable storage medium. all my mp3's mpegs, jpgs, databases, life history, all on one little "disk".
many, many, many cd's stop working. they get scratched! scratched! and scratched to where they skip, and they don't play worth a shit. data cd's are less likely because somehow they're not scattered all over my desktop. you seem like the type of person who take an audio cd out of the player and puts it back into its nice little case, and onto the cd rack. well, lots of us throw them into a pile of frequently used cd's and for many of us, our 2-5 year old mongrols take the metalic disks from that stack and play frisbee in the living room. thus scratches and unplayability. so, yes, i want to be able to back up my audio cd's and even my data cd's just to be sure.
i wonder if the deal included solar panels to keep those oracle boxes crash-proof?
i found it pretty weird that the home link in the main navbar on the top links to freshmeat.net, while all other links go to some variation of themes.freshmeat.net. if it's a themes site, shouldn't the home link go to themes.freshmeat.net?
where do the /. editors claim to be journalists?
a few (katz, roblimo) are the writing types, but for the other bin junkies, their role is to wade through the submission bin and decide which stories that were submitted could generate good conversation on the comments, and which will get plenty of page hits. usually they might add their own 0.02$, but i don't recall reading them claim to be journalists.
here's a radical idea: howzabout you creating a theme that actually makes the interface useable and putting it up for all of us on themes.freshmeat.org?
personally, I mostly stick with the default KDE theme. a few changes to the number of desktops and the taskbar, and it's all setup. pretty useable to me.
i didn't write an OS book, but i might have read one once. from what i recall, the OS is a system that operates the computer. it includes the kernel and other various other software applications (including a desktop environment, a web browser, a calculator, etc).
what?!? KDE isn't an operating system?
but....but... it's my interface for running my applications. that's gotta be worth something. who demoted my KDE from an OS to to a measly desktop environment? gnome maybe, but not KDE.
they may have the same codebase, but the builds are different, so the code is different. from a QA perspective, it's different code. different possible execution branches, different functionality.
it would fly running debian? what would fly, the twm window manager? the shell login? the mail server? the file server? a good linux desktop environment WILL NOT fly with 32MB of ram (unless that's video ram you're referring to on an ATI Rage128 chipset, then sure, it'll fly at 900FPS).
yes, you CAN use another browser, but by being forced to have IE on the machine, M$ is stubbing any browser competition. i don't think they even allowed OEM's to install NN on the machines that people just take home and use. thus, the majority of people aren't going to search out an alternative browser. that's the point of the states. they used their monopolistic OS power to gain browser marketshare.
back around IE 3.x days, most people used NN as their browser.
i would fairly safely assume that the poster was going for the majority (this being >75%) on this point. most vehicles here have 12(compact) - 20+ (suv's) gallon tanks.
since you're talking liters, i will assume you're from a different country.
i'm using the pre 1.0 release, and getting it to print to kprinter (to be able to print to kdeprintfax for faxing documents) doesn't seem to work so well. when i try to print to the fax, kde tells me that it needs --stdin since there's no file to print from. any ideas? my resume is in msword format, and openoffice does a MUCH better job of opening it to be able to fax it off.