The gentoo fanboy community can't have it both ways.
1. Requiring intimate kernel-level knowledge of a system to install it.
2. Shouting 'use gentoo!' to every passerby who expresses any sort of question about another distro (like, how do I install an RPM? or something similar).
It's like people saying Macs are the bestest most awesomest systems ever, but that they're also cheaper than x86 alternatives. It doesn't work both ways.
Be content with having a difficult-to-install system that forces people to learn more than most people would want. That's fine. But don't shout that as the answer to every single problem as well - most people don't have the time or motivation to do that.
since the admins want to minimize the number of things to be watched over (i.e. if I let you install Firefox, then besides Microsoft's updates, I have to watch for Mozilla.org's updates too.)
This sort of makes sense if *all* you ever run is MS Office, MS Small Biz Server, IIS, etc. But if your org needs to run other things (Raiser's Edge, QuickBooks, Adobe products, etc.)
It used to be people chose to run Windows vs. Linux or Mac because 'Windows has all the software'. But it seems now more IT depts are using security as an excuse to not run/install anything *but* MS software, excluding a gigantic range of other software options (ostensibly much of the reason for using Windows in the first place!)
I tried OOo in knoppix last year and was pleasantly surprised that someone had made the OOo splash screen into a regular window with a - what do you call it? - a window around it. You could drag it around, minimize it (I think), but most importantly it would go behind other windows so you could actually do other stuff while it loaded.
I dunno why that's not the default behaviour, but it would be nice if it was.
Seriously, how do you do it? I've heard the rah-rah HR pep speeches about everyone pitching in '110%' and all that, but when it comes down to it, there are only so many hours in a day, and usually a finite number of people to execute the work. You can't budget 30 days of work into 27, no matter how hard you try. OK - perhaps you can. But you'll never *get* 30 days of work out of 27.
What are questions you're getting that Windows 'can't do either' ?
Pretty much any time someone's asked me something about Linux's capabilities, it's generally because they already *do* that particular task in Windows and wonder about compatibility, similarity, etc.
I've not come across people that just make up random words, then ridicule Linux because it doesn't measure up when Windows doesn't measure up either.
In a macro-sense, it helps the concept of open source by undermining money going to other closed source competitors.
Whether or not company A gets money for their open source product, company B selling a closed source product doesn't get any money to further market to other companies when companies X Y and Z use company A's product.
It's a very long-term view, but one could make that argument.
In terms of full disclosure, my company also provides Asterisk-based solutions, however we have fully embraced Asterisk and gladly contribute back to the GPL.
but I think the GPL is pretty full and doesn't need any more contributions at this time.
I'm just not too crazy about forking over money for a device running Windows. MS gets enough money from me already, I would prefer a non-MS competitor. I really wonder why DirecTivo isn't offering more content packages like this? I'd be subscribing in a heartbeat. As it is, you get the standard PPV 'box office smashes' and sporting events you could get via regular cable. Give me something different (which akimbo seems to be trying) without MS involved and I (and others) will be there in a flash.
That's what's needed. It looks like they're on the right track, but still have a way to go. IF they could license BBC programming for streaming/storage, they'd take off huge. There's a huge market for BBC stuff in the US, but we're only getting a small taste via BBC America and PBS stations.
I mentioned it to my brother, and he thought it would be worth the monthly cost just to get commercial-free 'adult swim' and 'cartoon network' feeds, assuming those were not PPV.
I think if they get more variety soon, and give a much more detailed list of what programming is available, it'd take off. As it is, just going to the site, I see what *kind* of programming, but no specifics, so I can't judge if it's worth forking out hundreds of dollars just to test it.
I just ordered 100 lattitude D800 laptops. every one of them will be 100% identical
Wow - we ordered 2 *on the same day* and they both arrived the same day from the same location. They have different wireless chips inside. One person has wireless under linux, one doesn't.
Here's hoping all *100* of yours are 100% identical down to the internals.
It could be done with small gradual steps. Novell has done it, IBM is doing it and neither one of them is a small company.
They may be investing more heavily than other companies would for 'dogfooding' reason ('eat our own dog food', etc) They have services and products to sell and need to back up the claims of the products by proving it can be done, first and foremost. How they present accounting matters (if they do) is another issue altogether.
For most companies it's probably still cheaper just to buy MS than to move to Linux, due to all the migration issues. 'Cheaper' as measured in quarters, not years, but that's all most people can justify.
DCs cost money by doing things like this. And stopping them would save the company money. And this leaves only the one question that actually matters to anyone, will we (the good, saintly, customers) actually see any of this money?
Probably not.
Employees would see some in terms of bonuses or more jobs. Or investors would see it in terms of increased profits. As someone who works for a living and also invests money in companies, I like seeing bonuses, more jobs and higher profits. Reducing those things so people can do things like
* buy clothes then return them * buy chips then fry them before returning for new ones * continually buy and return items within the 30 day refund policy just to have the 'latest' without paying any more
is not something I support.
For the record, I do return things at best buy, usually about 20% of the things I purchase. About 80% of those returns are to buy the next version up because I bought too cheap the first time. Examples:
* just bought a phone with a speaker, but realized it wasn't a 'speakerphone' for example, for I returned it for a more expensive phone
* bought a laptop last year, but the video card was mislabelled. took it back and bought one $100 more.
Do I make returns? Sometimes. Am I a devil customer out to abuse the system? I don't consider myself in that category. I hope retailers don't either.:)
Often times the restacking of shelves is also done by outsiders. Many softdrink vendors (Coke/Pepsi, for example) will have their delivery people stock the shelves directly. Same with chips, from what I remember. I would guess for many of the larger stores 10-15% of shelf space is maintained by outsiders, not store staff.
If they can't afford Macs, they're not going to purchase photoshop. You wouldn't be buying it unless you had relatively demanding graphics requirements. You won't be producinig demanding graphics stuff on low-end hardware. If you can afford high-end hardware, you buy the mac and get photoshop.
I'm *NOT* saying PS for Linux would be a bad thing, or that no one would buy it. It's just that trying to make the argument that people that can't afford a mac *would* buy PS for Linux is very far-fetched.
Actually, I've had audio problems on every linux I've tried, but Mandrake lately is the worst (pretty much the best at everything else, though!)
I've installed MDK a few times, and nearly every time - right after install during first boot and subsequent boots - I get notices about/dev/dsp not being available. WHAT? I JUST INSTALLED THE DAMN THING! If the system can't set itself up right on installation to work, what's the problem?
The other thing I've noticed is 'artsd'. I generally have to kill that everytime I want to use sound, then kill it again when starting a new app that wants to use sound. Again, wtf?
Lastly, GAIM seems to be a big sound killer. if it's running, it will eventually lock up/dev/dsp (or something) such that the only way to get sound going is to completely kill gaim (fuser was the way I eventually tracked this down).
I've found mandrake to be great in every respect except sound issues, and as I said before, even then, I've had issues with every other distro so this isn't something solely mandrake-specific.
The higher cost of Windows hosting has *nothing* to do with the fact that it actually costs money to purchase the Windows license? *NOTHING*? It's all just a 'ripoff' by the middlemen, but not by Microsoft?
I'm just glad you were here to straighten us out.:)
Functionally, I don't see much of a difference between the two. I was able to pick up a 120 for about $200 on ebay, and given that it plays ogg, it was a no brainer for me, as that's what much of my music is ripped in. Paying list for each, though, I'm not sure there's much distinguishing them except for the file formats each supports and the wheel thingy.
Well, i just looked closer at the ipod. It has contact lists and appointment reminders. If you use those, that might sway the decision. I preferred the built-in microphone in the iriver, as I've been able to record some meetings without having to use an external microphone. Ipod also has a sleep timer to fall asleep to music without using all the battery - I think my iriver has something like that, but I'm not sure (not on hand to check).
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only old people watch Jeopardy!
The gentoo fanboy community can't have it both ways.
1. Requiring intimate kernel-level knowledge of a system to install it.
2. Shouting 'use gentoo!' to every passerby who expresses any sort of question about another distro (like, how do I install an RPM? or something similar).
It's like people saying Macs are the bestest most awesomest systems ever, but that they're also cheaper than x86 alternatives. It doesn't work both ways.
Be content with having a difficult-to-install system that forces people to learn more than most people would want. That's fine. But don't shout that as the answer to every single problem as well - most people don't have the time or motivation to do that.
since the admins want to minimize the number of things to be watched over (i.e. if I let you install Firefox, then besides Microsoft's updates, I have to watch for Mozilla.org's updates too.)
This sort of makes sense if *all* you ever run is MS Office, MS Small Biz Server, IIS, etc. But if your org needs to run other things (Raiser's Edge, QuickBooks, Adobe products, etc.)
It used to be people chose to run Windows vs. Linux or Mac because 'Windows has all the software'. But it seems now more IT depts are using security as an excuse to not run/install anything *but* MS software, excluding a gigantic range of other software options (ostensibly much of the reason for using Windows in the first place!)
I tried OOo in knoppix last year and was pleasantly surprised that someone had made the OOo splash screen into a regular window with a - what do you call it? - a window around it. You could drag it around, minimize it (I think), but most importantly it would go behind other windows so you could actually do other stuff while it loaded.
I dunno why that's not the default behaviour, but it would be nice if it was.
Go read Eats, shoots and leaves for even more.
The point still stands that 'naturally' doesn't fit well if the person is a KDE user. Knoppix is what would 'natually' follow, not gnoppix. :(
So you use KDE but 'naturally' you would choose GNOPPIX? Why not Knoppix?
Seriously, how do you do it? I've heard the rah-rah HR pep speeches about everyone pitching in '110%' and all that, but when it comes down to it, there are only so many hours in a day, and usually a finite number of people to execute the work. You can't budget 30 days of work into 27, no matter how hard you try. OK - perhaps you can. But you'll never *get* 30 days of work out of 27.
The same British who have 10 surveillance cameras on every street corner?
What are questions you're getting that Windows 'can't do either' ?
Pretty much any time someone's asked me something about Linux's capabilities, it's generally because they already *do* that particular task in Windows and wonder about compatibility, similarity, etc.
I've not come across people that just make up random words, then ridicule Linux because it doesn't measure up when Windows doesn't measure up either.
In a macro-sense, it helps the concept of open source by undermining money going to other closed source competitors.
Whether or not company A gets money for their open source product, company B selling a closed source product doesn't get any money to further market to other companies when companies X Y and Z use company A's product.
It's a very long-term view, but one could make that argument.
In terms of full disclosure, my company also provides Asterisk-based solutions, however we have fully embraced Asterisk and gladly contribute back to the GPL.
but I think the GPL is pretty full and doesn't need any more contributions at this time.
I'm just not too crazy about forking over money for a device running Windows. MS gets enough money from me already, I would prefer a non-MS competitor. I really wonder why DirecTivo isn't offering more content packages like this? I'd be subscribing in a heartbeat. As it is, you get the standard PPV 'box office smashes' and sporting events you could get via regular cable. Give me something different (which akimbo seems to be trying) without MS involved and I (and others) will be there in a flash.
That's what's needed. It looks like they're on the right track, but still have a way to go. IF they could license BBC programming for streaming/storage, they'd take off huge. There's a huge market for BBC stuff in the US, but we're only getting a small taste via BBC America and PBS stations.
I mentioned it to my brother, and he thought it would be worth the monthly cost just to get commercial-free 'adult swim' and 'cartoon network' feeds, assuming those were not PPV.
I think if they get more variety soon, and give a much more detailed list of what programming is available, it'd take off. As it is, just going to the site, I see what *kind* of programming, but no specifics, so I can't judge if it's worth forking out hundreds of dollars just to test it.
I just ordered 100 lattitude D800 laptops. every one of them will be 100% identical
Wow - we ordered 2 *on the same day* and they both arrived the same day from the same location. They have different wireless chips inside. One person has wireless under linux, one doesn't.
Here's hoping all *100* of yours are 100% identical down to the internals.
It could be done with small gradual steps. Novell has done it, IBM is doing it and neither one of them is a small company.
They may be investing more heavily than other companies would for 'dogfooding' reason ('eat our own dog food', etc) They have services and products to sell and need to back up the claims of the products by proving it can be done, first and foremost. How they present accounting matters (if they do) is another issue altogether.
For most companies it's probably still cheaper just to buy MS than to move to Linux, due to all the migration issues. 'Cheaper' as measured in quarters, not years, but that's all most people can justify.
DCs cost money by doing things like this. And stopping them would save the company money. And this leaves only the one question that actually matters to anyone, will we (the good, saintly, customers) actually see any of this money?
:)
Probably not.
Employees would see some in terms of bonuses or more jobs. Or investors would see it in terms of increased profits. As someone who works for a living and also invests money in companies, I like seeing bonuses, more jobs and higher profits. Reducing those things so people can do things like
* buy clothes then return them
* buy chips then fry them before returning for new ones
* continually buy and return items within the 30 day refund policy just to have the 'latest' without paying any more
is not something I support.
For the record, I do return things at best buy, usually about 20% of the things I purchase. About 80% of those returns are to buy the next version up because I bought too cheap the first time. Examples:
* just bought a phone with a speaker, but realized it wasn't a 'speakerphone' for example, for I returned it for a more expensive phone
* bought a laptop last year, but the video card was mislabelled. took it back and bought one $100 more.
Do I make returns? Sometimes. Am I a devil customer out to abuse the system? I don't consider myself in that category. I hope retailers don't either.
Staff, restacking of shelves, rent on property
Often times the restacking of shelves is also done by outsiders. Many softdrink vendors (Coke/Pepsi, for example) will have their delivery people stock the shelves directly. Same with chips, from what I remember. I would guess for many of the larger stores 10-15% of shelf space is maintained by outsiders, not store staff.
If they can't afford Macs, they're not going to purchase photoshop. You wouldn't be buying it unless you had relatively demanding graphics requirements. You won't be producinig demanding graphics stuff on low-end hardware. If you can afford high-end hardware, you buy the mac and get photoshop.
I'm *NOT* saying PS for Linux would be a bad thing, or that no one would buy it. It's just that trying to make the argument that people that can't afford a mac *would* buy PS for Linux is very far-fetched.
Actually, I've had audio problems on every linux I've tried, but Mandrake lately is the worst (pretty much the best at everything else, though!)
/dev/dsp not being available. WHAT? I JUST INSTALLED THE DAMN THING! If the system can't set itself up right on installation to work, what's the problem?
/dev/dsp (or something) such that the only way to get sound going is to completely kill gaim (fuser was the way I eventually tracked this down).
I've installed MDK a few times, and nearly every time - right after install during first boot and subsequent boots - I get notices about
The other thing I've noticed is 'artsd'. I generally have to kill that everytime I want to use sound, then kill it again when starting a new app that wants to use sound. Again, wtf?
Lastly, GAIM seems to be a big sound killer. if it's running, it will eventually lock up
I've found mandrake to be great in every respect except sound issues, and as I said before, even then, I've had issues with every other distro so this isn't something solely mandrake-specific.
The higher cost of Windows hosting has *nothing* to do with the fact that it actually costs money to purchase the Windows license? *NOTHING*? It's all just a 'ripoff' by the middlemen, but not by Microsoft?
:)
I'm just glad you were here to straighten us out.
Go with the iriver. :)
Functionally, I don't see much of a difference between the two. I was able to pick up a 120 for about $200 on ebay, and given that it plays ogg, it was a no brainer for me, as that's what much of my music is ripped in. Paying list for each, though, I'm not sure there's much distinguishing them except for the file formats each supports and the wheel thingy.
Well, i just looked closer at the ipod. It has contact lists and appointment reminders. If you use those, that might sway the decision. I preferred the built-in microphone in the iriver, as I've been able to record some meetings without having to use an external microphone. Ipod also has a sleep timer to fall asleep to music without using all the battery - I think my iriver has something like that, but I'm not sure (not on hand to check).
Good luck - either unit would be nice.
The iriver announced a video player a few days ago and there were a bunch of people bitching about it being $600 (for 20 or 30 gig) I think.
Yes 60 gig is more, but will there ever be a firmware upgrade to actually support video playback?
Or, are you talking about it simply being a storage unit for movies, with playback being done someplace else?
Go on, you know you want to - respond as AC if you need to. :)
You won't have the Access killer until something also runs on Windows.
Maybe this will, or can run under cygwin or something?