gerr...shivers...That looks exactly like Windows. If I hadn't been told it was GNU/Linux, I would think it was windows (aside from the terminal, which gave it away).
This is definately not for traditional GNU/Linux users who realize that many WM/DE combinations provide a superior UI to windows, but it is a nice hook for newbies entering GNU/Linux who want familiarity. Group it in with Lindows in that regard.
Hopefully, eventually these newbies will experiment alittle and go beyond their windows huts. But, if not, what's the difference? It is, after all, just a UI. The real good thing about GNU/Linux is it's security, stability, free (as in freedom) nature, and powerful commands, utils, and apps.
If it's going to look and feel just like Windows, why would anyone bother to switch over?
The aim here should be to produce a superior interface over that which windows provides (like WindowMaker, which is superior to both MacOS UI and Windows UI).
However, there are many different WM and DE projects, and it doesn't hurt to try out several different concurrent strategies to try to convert Windows users. Some windows users will want something new, novel, and better, even if it means a little bit of a learning curve; others will want to jump right into doing things the way they normally do, and are probably the users switching over for the stability, security, good "price" provided by GNU/Linux.
So it's fine that we have all of these different options, and it's fine that many of them look like Windows. It's also fine that some of them can provide similarities to MacOS, BeOS, Amiga, and any other interface users may be attached to. However, a big problem is when people start developing apps to "only work" in one environment; e.g., apps which will only work with GNOME or KDE libraries installed. People should write apps to work in any X11 environment, and to fit in with whatever WM/DE they're placed into.
The same application which displays only windows-style horizontal menus in KDE should display only NeXT-style vertical menus in WindowMaker, and maybe only pie-style menus in SCWM. This implies some kind of universal interface for different tool-kits/WMs/DEs, where the programmer codes something equivalent to the following in pseudocode (where MI = menu item):
Where MI1. - MI6. are program menu's 1-6, and MIna - MInb are the submenu's of each main program menu. Now, what we need is something which will take that and automatically display it appropriately, depending on the environment. In KDE and GNOME and most other X11 environments, that would display as a windwos-style horizontal menu. In WindowMaker, it would display as a NeXT-style vertical menu, which is normally hidden but can be brought up by the user. In SCWM, it should display as a pie-menu, where selecting one item would open up a subsequent pie menu, etc. Such a meta-format would also be extended to other aspects of the program, such as toolbars, widgets, etc.
This way, the same program would look completely different, depending on what WM/DE it's run in. This way, the end-user has complete consistency in the look and feel of apps within his/her WM/DE.
I'll grant you that, but if one has used similar products in other OS', the training will be minimal, or non-existent, and can be done by the user.
Before I continue, let me first point out that "good products" are relative. My 100MHz computer was a great product when it first hit the markets ?7? years ago. Now, it's crap.
I'll also be speaking from a personal user's point of view, since that's what most college students are.
Win 2K
More stable than the other Windows products, but still not as stable as GNU/Linux; though this doesn't matter for the home user, since crashing once every month as opposed to once every year is hardly relevant. Aside from that, Win2k still isn't as good an OS as a GNU/Linux distribution. Why? Well, GNU/Linux comes with hundreds of useful CLI commands that can be used in TSCH , BASH, ZSH, etc. Win2k doesn't. You can get similar commands by downloading CygWin, but that is not an MS product, and it is inconvenient to have to operate within another environment just to access that power. Why are these *nix commands useful? Well, lets s ay that I want to align all of the different protein sequences for the rt (retro-transcriptase) gene of HIV1 between different strains. I have to go to NCBI and download all of the FASTA files. I then get 150 separate files. Now I have to put them into one file to be aligned by ClustalX. In Win2k, that's just a whole lot of copying and pasting. In GNU/Linux a few commands can handle that easily.
Also, of course, there's the fact that GNU/Linux can be customized to suit the user, whereas Win2k can not. GNU/Linux users have their choice of a DE and WM, and each of those is usually highly customizeable.
Lets not forget that there are at least two stable and proven journaling file-systems available for GNU/Linux -- ext3 and ReiserFS.
MS Word
Again, using my relativity critereon, MS Word is not good. I, in fact, know how to use it, but it's still not good, nor convenient, for producing professional quality documents, such as review articles. LyX, however, can generate perfect formatting without me doing anything, and allow me to focus solely on the content, while it formats it properly.
Of course, there's also the issue w/ MS Word that it wants to fight the user. To see what I mean, try inserting images and captions into it.
Excel
Can't argue, Excel is a decent spreadsheet program. This, however, is hardly impressive. There are other spreadsheet programs that are superior to it, and, quite frankly, there just isn't much to making an exceptional spreadsheet program. It's sort of like toothpaste -- yea, the best toothpaste, along with all those other best toothpastes.
Haven't used Access, MSProject, or MSVisio, so can't comment on them.
Regarding Internet Explorer, I'll agree that it's better than Netscape. However, there are browsers out there for GNU/Linux that are far better than Internet Explorer. If you don't need Java or Javascript, then Dillo is by far the best browser -- small, stable, fast. If you need Javascript/Java, then Beonex & Phoenix is a great browser, as they are also fast and small; furthermore, they provide superior ad-blocking, pop-up blocking, and privacy settings to MS Excel.
Regarding viewpoint on MS' morality. You could also say it's just a viewpoint that the sexual mutilation of girls is immoral. Just a viewpoint that raping women is wrong. And so on and so forth.
MS has been convicted in a court of law of illegal and immoral behavior: namely, anti-competitive behavior. They have blackballed OEMs into not pre-installing GNU/Linux or any other alternate OS, among other things. They also intentionally introduce "features" into their proprietary format to prevent anyone else from
All this crap about violent video games causing violence is bullshit. I played and play plenty of violent video games, yet you don't see me going around murdering and raping people, do you? And those nutcases at Columbine didn't kill people because they played one too many instances of Doom, ok!
In general, I say that I'm not going to sacrafice MY freedoms -- or those of anyone else -- because some woman forgot to put in her diaphram or some man forgot to put on his condom and now doesn't want to accept sole responsibility. However, these laws only affect those under 13, and I'm 22, so I really don't give a flying fuck of some 13-year old can purchase the latest edition of Phantasmagoria or those numerous Hentai rape-games that Japenese people seem to be so fond of.
Let's just take the Japanese Hentai rape games as an example. Now, we all know that women in Japan are treated unfairly and immorally, and that incidence of rape in Japan is inordinately high. Does this mean that these Hentai rape games are causing that? No, of course not. It is absurd to blame a videogame for the actions of human being. These games are merely a symptom of the problem.
People who have children -- accept YOUR responsibility. You are the one's who have kids, NOT me or anyone else. I have no responsibility to help anyone raise their kids by censoring my fucking speech, nor does anyone else.
Just because something's a natural part of life doesn't make it good. Gangre, HIV, disease, cancer, suffering, walking around without a wiped ass after defication -- all of these are "natural parts of life". That doesn't mean any of them are good.
Aging isn't a disease? Really? Tell that to people being slowly killed by Alzheimers and other conditions that effect the elderly. Or what about those who just live on and on and die "of old age"? Hardly a joyous thing either, being so limited from one's normal capacity.
It's amazing to me that some people have nothing better to do than sit around and babble amonst themselves and a bunch of other elitist snobs about why we should not extend our own life-spans.
Especially as an atheist, I take it that being alive is good -- the longer the better. If I could live to be 200 years old, that'd be good. If I could live to be 10,000 years old, that'd be great. If I could live until the universe either collapses into a big crunch or expands out approaching near zero-K termperatures, that'd be even even better.
Ok, ONE good thing about MS: they have automatic cursor movement, something I wish the GNU/Linux would allow as an option. It's a bitch getting from one place to another on a 1600x1200 monitor.
As I said before, they would be able to use whatever they want on their own computers. Btw, the guy isn't saying they have to stop using all MS products. He said they have to not buy MS products or renew licenses in the future. The school can continue using Win-whatever on their computers without buying new MS products, and can phase in GNU/Linux and other alternatives.
Furthermore, let's face the facts. If someone is skilled in GNU/Linux, they can easily translate those skills over to MS Windows. Let's not pretend it takes much intelligence to operate MS Windows.
I'm starting to think you're a troll. The problem with rampant advocates of MS's evil is that they do not/can not/will not see any good in any of the products. And that's a crying shame because you should be able to make the best with with what you've got.
What good? Where are these good MS products? Just speaking from the one's I've used -- which are all home-user applications -- there aren't any. Let's start out with basic entertainment like games. HellBender and Fury come to mind -- disgusting cheap rip offs of Descent, which invariably gave one a headache when playing. Internet Explorer -- bloatware, insecure, no way to block pop-ups or unwanted images. Outlook Express -- poor e-mail client in general, with minimal ability to filter out spam. MS Word -- just try creating a scientific document in it. MS Word actually fights the user. You put something somewhere, Word decides it's better somewhere else. Excel -- ok, this one's decent, but I've rarely ran accross a spread-sheet that hasn't perfectly accounted for my needs. The spreadsheet in FirstChoice was exceptional, and that was back in the 386 day. PowerPoint -- again decent, but nothing that you can't find elsewhere. I could go on, but I won't. Instead, I'll just list the superior alternatives in GNU/Linux and Window: Descent, and any other game made by a real gaming company; Kameleon in Windows, Dillo, Phoenix, or Beonex in Linux, depending on your needs; PocoMail in Windows, GNUMail.app in Linux; LyX in Windows and Linux; Abs in Linux, Calc in Windows; Impress in both Windows and Linux.
Also, even if you can say that some MS products are well-designed, that still does not mean that using them is acceptable among principled people. MS has illegally used their power, and continues to include draconian terms in it's EULA's, among other transgressions from ethics. Supporting a company by continuing to buy their products is supporting whatever activity they may be engaging in -- which, in MS' case, is immoral unethical and illegal activity. Universities should not support MS' draconian ways.
As has been proven by every impartial study done (those funded by MS don't count), the TCO of a GNU/Linux system is just cheaper than that of a Windows system. I won't go into all of the reasons, but will list a few:
1. Upgrades are free ($).
2. Initial acquirement is free ($).
3. Support can be purchased on a competitive basis among competing companies, thus producing superior support. How many times have you called up inept technical support guys who obviously don't know what the fuck they're talking about, can't speak English, know less about the system than you do, and are obviously reading from a TO-DO cookbook, which ends in "if all else fails, tell them to wipe the hard-drive and reinstall everything"? The simple fact is, there's a reasonable solution for the vast majority of problems you run into, which doesn't involve reinstalling everything from scratch.
Call up a windows support guy and complain that your computer won't start up due to a corrupted IO.sys file. What will he tell you? He'll take you through the usual motions, and then -- invariably -- tell you there's nothing else you can do, back up your data, and reinstall the OS (conveniently ignoring the fact that it's difficult if not impossible to back up one's data when one can only boot into DOS and has no access to the CD-writer). He will tell you this despite the fact that there is a much simpler solution, which is simply to replace the corrupt IO.sys file with a valid working one. Why can't he tell you that, or send you the file that would allow you to do that? Because the technical support contract doesn't support that. Don't like your technical support contract options? Too fucking bad, there's no alternative.
Not so with GNU/Linux. First of all, such problems are rarely encountered, even in the rare case where a power failure occurs, due to journaling file-systems. Secondly, technical support can be purchased at a competitive price -- which means, ultimately, cheaper for you if you section out the tech-support aspect of your bill from a proprietary vendor. It also means better service.
GNU/Linux also provides the benefit of being able to run on much older hardware than does Windows, allowing the university to upgrade their hardware less frequently. Microsoft apparently thinks that it needs to provide hardware developers with motivation to produce better hardware by continually increasing requirements that it's software need to run acceptably. Though this is true with regards to some modern bloat-ware in GNU/Linux, there are always non-bloatware alternatives which are usually just as functional, if not more so. KDE and GNOME can be replaced with the lighter Xfce. The bloated WM's that come with them can be replaced by the streamlined and elegant WindowMaker.
Let's not forget some of the obvious benefits. Universities are big organizations, which can afford to fix their own problems if given the means. Because GNU/Linux uses FS and OSS software, universities can fix their own problems. Indeed, they need not even pay for the solution -- they can simply throw a problem at CS students to solve, making it a mandatory part of the course.
Let's not pretend that the university would be denying students choice by not buying MS products. These students could use whatever they want on their own computers. Exposing them to Linux at the libraries and other public areas would expose them to an operating system which is more likely than not the direction of the future. MS may be the dominant force, but it has no-where to go but down, and it's insistence on making crappy products, illegally using it's monopoly power, and depriving consumers of their rights will certainly accelerate its downfall. On the contrary, GNU/Linux is gaining more and more support. It is growing extremely quickly, and is a fertile ground for new ideas and innovation.
Finally, exposing students to Linux exposes them to the way computer's really work. Linux -- though it now has easy-to-use inte
Let's not pretend it takes a genius to use a word-processor. Sufficed to say, ANYONE who can use GNU/Linux and it's corresponding applications can alwso use MS Windows and it's corresponding applications. No-one is going to be rejected for a job because they haven't have experience specifically with MS Word, or any other MS products. Sufficed to say, experience in any GNU/Linux office suite easily translates over to MS Office, with a small learning curve. Far more important than experience with a specific office suite, is one's ability to type fastly and one's general computer savvyness.
Maybe many/.ers making these comments about the necessity of experience with MS Word haven't been in the real world that much. In terms of real-world publishing and document creation, MS Word is total and complete crap. First of all, I haven't encountered a version of MS Word yet that doesn't "fight the user". You put something in one place, MS Word thinks it's better somewhere else. The result? Headaches and documents that often appear unprofessional. It takes both an extra-ordinary knowledge of MS Word to create professional document using it, and an extra-ordinary amount of patience to do so, as well as an extra-ordinary amount of time.
You want to make an article for a news-paper, a book, or a scientific paper? Professional business statement, etc? MS Word is total crap. Why? Because it relies completely on the users ability to manually typset. Users, naturally, make documents that are typsetted to look "pretty". "Pretty" would be fine if you were hanging documents on walls like paintings. But you aren't. Documents aren't meant to be looked at with cursory appreciation. They are meant to be read in depth.
I am not trying to say that OpenOffice -- or any other Office suite -- is superior to MS in that regard. All of them rely on the user -- who is almost invariably completely ignorant of professional typesetting standards -- to produce a professional document. What I am saying, however, is that in the GNU/Linux world, an alternative is available which allows for the painless creation of professional documents, requiring no previous knowledge of the details of typesetting by the user for the particular document-style. This is called TeX and LaTeX, which are frontended by an easy-to-use graphical document processor, LyX.
What this allows people to do is to focus on the content of the documents they create, and not the formatting. LyX handles the formatting, according to well-established professional rules. The result is that the user saves time, because (s)he does not have to spend time and effort formatting the document to look quasi-professional. Instead, the document is automatically formatted to look 100% professional according to the standards of the document that the user specified (e.g., there are very specific guidelines for formatting in scientific papers, which are different from scientific thesis', which are different from scientific reviews).
I myself am coming from a scientific (biological) background. As an undergraduate in college, I had written lab-reports and review-articles. Initially, I wrote these using MS Word, which was a huge pain in the ass. You insert a figure, put it somewhere, and word places it somewhere else. And of course you have to bother with the trivial details of perfectly aligning the figure legend with the figure, equations, and so on and so forth. LyX does all this for you, and allows you to focus on content. The results are invariably more professional than those produced by MS Word. LyX does not mistakenly put two spaces after a section title when there should be only one, nor commit any of the other various mistakes that you may make while formatting a document yourself. Furthermore, it provides complete consistency with professional standards, not some hacked-up bullshit standards that you yourself define ad-hoc.
This lawsuit is humbug, and business, FS, and OSS communities all know it. It will have no -- or only a marginal -- effect on the adoptation of Linux. Sun isn't going to squeeze much out of this dry well.
X-Free my arse...X-Mess is more like it. You can rationalize it all you want, but the simple fact is, X-Free is a big giant mess.
Sure, network transparency, being able to run X remotely from another computer, is great, IF you want to do that. Most people don't. I have one computer at my home -- no need to ever use the GUI from remote. If I want to access it, I'll be accessing files and transferring them to a computer at work -- whcih is what ssh is for.
Because of the big mess that X-Free is, I set up a pretty minimal desktop GUI, which is fine with me. I've always hated candy-desktop appearances, like OS X. Me, I stick with WindowMaker (in combo w/ PWM), Xfce for my desktop, and no anti-aliasing along with plain themes and hide-away stuff. Also, I don't -- not on my Debian GNU/Linux OS, or Windows (w/c I use for games) -- make it redraw the windows as I move them. What a waste. I want instantaneous responses to my actions, so I get rid of all animations and crap like that.
So, my GUI's run pretty smoothly (except when I'm using Kazaa on Windows). However, that's only because of my minimalism, and doesn't justify or excuse X's sloppiness and enormous bloat. (I'm not going to complain about MS' bloat b/c MS never bothers to address real problems and I'm never upgrading WinME...I have all the games I want, and I think thatt future games coming out I'll want [like Tomb Raider 6] will support Win9x for a long long time).
Of course, there's other disgusting problems in X, like not being able to copy and paste between windows, and the atrocious lack of standards for that and other things. I don't think we should throw out X -- just massive rehaul to get rid of this slop, not bandaid-treatments. Also, make a version of it for normal home users, who won't be sharing GUI's between multiple PC's.
For a good price, best thing to do is make your own. A simple refracting telescope really isn't that complicated.
The most difficult thing is spacing. You need to space the parts very precisely. You could have an aperture 3 feet wide, but it doesn't mean anything if the assembly is imprecise and you have poor focusing ability.
Aperture determines how many times an image can be magnified, thus how far out in space you can see (or rather, how many light years into the past you can see). Just as important, is the ability to resolve one point of light from another, which requires quality lenses and precise placement.
My suggestion? Read some good books on it, get some precise measuring instruments for distance placement, and use frenzel lenses. Frenzel lenses of larger size can be bought for the same price as normal glass lenses. The only disadvantage is that they can irritate the eyes if you look through them too long.
Don't they fucking test these things before releasing them to the public? There's no excuse for total shit like this in what is supposed to be a stable update (NOT an alpha or beta test-version). Moving applications to new locations should not produce these kind of abberrant results.
Yea, yea, yea, you don't hear people complaining about minor stuff like this happening in the latest update of X Linux distribution. There's a few good reasons for that: (1) You're not usually paying the makers of Linux good money for the latest updates, nor for the original; (2) In almost all cases, issues like this occur in the alpha and beta update releases, not the official stable ones (especially for Debian).
So what, he's arrogant? He's also done a lot for the chess world. And, quite frankly, he's the best chess player since B. Fischer (yes, still better than that upstart Kramnick).
The simple fact is, that when people talk about the best chess players ever, there are two candidates for #1: Bobby Fischer and Gary Kasparov. Since they've never played each-other, we don't know who's better than who, and it's a topic of unsubstantiated speculation.
Regarding Bobby Fischer, I'm tired of hearing about his anti-semitism. Bobby Fischer is himself half-Jewish, and is friends with several Jewish people, despite his anti-semitic beliefs. Irrelevant of the man's political beliefs -- which he's entitled to, like the rest of us, think whatever the fuck he wants -- he's still one of the greatest chess players of all time.
Get a Walmart computer with Lindows on it. Lindows is basically Debian Linux with a friendly GUI installed on top. You'll have to reconfigure it manually, as it comes with "root" as the default login (not good). But, if you know anything about Linux, shouldn't be hard to add an account and login under that.
WRONG. They had a LEGAL obligation to report this. Releasing a virus onto the internet to infect other computers is a FELONY -- a CRIME. If you witness a crime and don't call 911, you're an accessory to the crime. Symmantec had a LEGAL obligation to report this obvious CRIME to the authorities. Because they didn't, they are an accessory to the crime.
They could just be incompetent instead of intentionally sabotaging. However, if it's just incompetence, shouldn't it have been fixed a long time ago? Oh, wait, MS only fixes problems when there's a huge outcry...good old monopolies for ya.
Even on Win9x, why would anyone want to use WMP with WinAmp and FreeAmp available? WinAmp is a great player app, and I'd rather have that on Linux than WMP. The only thing that's really important is the codec. So long as the player can play the codec, its good: and WinAmp can play almost every codec.
Hellbender and Fury were the MS rip-offs of Descent. Or at least they were in my opinion; alot of people will call them rip-offs of Tie Fighter. In any case, they really sucked bad.
1. All of the Descent clones. "Forsaken" and "Terracide". Terracide was rightfully slammed in the reviews: almost every review I've read said that the author would rather play Descent 1 or 2, even though the graphics for Terracide were superior. Don't be fooled by "Forsaken's" decent reception: its just a rip-off, nothing you'd buy instead of Descent 3, and something you wouldn't even look at if you had Descent 3.
2. Microsoft's "unique" and unimaginative rip-off of Descent: I forget the name of the game, but it sucked. It was basically Descent outside, with better graphics, but the gameplay sucked. You didn't have the freedom of moving along all three axis', and combat was very boring. The levels were large and pointless.
3. All of the Tomb Raider clones, most notably the Indianna Jones games.
4. DukeNukem 3D. Wow, what a boring game. Move around, kill everything in sight, maybe jump up and down a few times. What exactly did DukeNukem 3D offer that wasn't offered in Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, or Quake? Nothing, except for perhaps better graphics. At least Quake III and Doom III (the modern version of Doom) offer more imaginative creatures, even if they're flogging a dead horse.
5. Lords of Magic. I'll admit, I bought this game. Very lame. AI is incredibly stupid, has very little replay value, graphics suck even on my GeForce2-equipped computer, takes forever to load battles.
6. Descent to and Undermountain. It's really insulting that Interplay used the word "Descent" in this terrible game.
Now that that's over, let me name a few games that I really like:
1. Tomb Raider and Descent Series. These are my all-time favorite games: great game-play, graphics, and replay-value. Multiplayer in Descent and the great skill you can develop in it makes it playable forever. I used to play against someone who could hit you dead on with a gauss accross the room every time. But I could beat him with my skillful moves.:-) TombRaider has great replay value even though its not multiplayer, because of all the challenges you can take up while replaying it (especially in Tomb Raider 2, where you can be very skillful and do some difficult things like jumping accross a canyon on one of the ice-levels).
2. EternalDarkness. Damn, I wish this was available for the PC. Very scary game.
3. Baldur's Gate series. Just got Baldur's Gate II SoA and ToB: awesome.
4. NeverWinter nights: haven't played it yet, but it seems like it'll be cool if its supposed to be the next step in evolution from Baldur's Gate.
5. Blade of Darkness. Never bought this game (only played the demos), but wow, what a game! Great hack-and-slash gameplay that actually brings something new to the table beyond Doom. Nice sword-fight sequences, in which you fight interactively, and some great moves. The graphics (especially lighting) in this game are awesome.
Sure, the graphics and sound sucked. But who cares? It was a fun game to play. I still play it on my computer.
Gameplay is just as important -- more so -- than sound or graphics.
I have yet to see anything in the same genre come out that is anywhere near as good as Descent 1-3, and the graphics on those games are dated now. I'd rather play D1 (with its blocky graphics) than anything that exists today.
I have yet to see an "explore the ancient world" type game that even comes anywhere close to Tomb Raider 1, and that's the oldest of the TRs.
You know, I was hoping that people would realize that I was trying to be funny here. Obviously not, as it was moderated "Insightful" instead of funny. I myself don't think its insightful: it was something that someone would have eventually thought of and said, I just said it first. On the other hand, it isn't one of those "first post " first posts.
Lets see...Hitler didn't want people reading books written by Jews. Valentini doesn't want people to be able to read source-code that can help them excercise fair-use rights over their property.
How you prevent people from reading something -- be it by book-burning or court orders -- is irrelevant. Destroying information only indicates that you are afraid of the ideas it contains, and is wrong.
On a side note, it is obvious to me that the German's (and I regret in regards to this instance to say I am a German American) obviously haven't learning anything from Hitler and the Nazi-era. They continue banning the distribution of books who's ideas they don't like. Now, its "Mein Kampf" and other nazi-books which are banned in Germany. Banning "bad books" is just as bad as banning any other kind of books, because who's to decide what's a good and a bad book?
Slashdot Mirror
gerr...shivers...That looks exactly like Windows. If I hadn't been told it was GNU/Linux, I would think it was windows (aside from the terminal, which gave it away).
This is definately not for traditional GNU/Linux users who realize that many WM/DE combinations provide a superior UI to windows, but it is a nice hook for newbies entering GNU/Linux who want familiarity. Group it in with Lindows in that regard.
Hopefully, eventually these newbies will experiment alittle and go beyond their windows huts. But, if not, what's the difference? It is, after all, just a UI. The real good thing about GNU/Linux is it's security, stability, free (as in freedom) nature, and powerful commands, utils, and apps.
If it's going to look and feel just like Windows, why would anyone bother to switch over?
The aim here should be to produce a superior interface over that which windows provides (like WindowMaker, which is superior to both MacOS UI and Windows UI).
However, there are many different WM and DE projects, and it doesn't hurt to try out several different concurrent strategies to try to convert Windows users. Some windows users will want something new, novel, and better, even if it means a little bit of a learning curve; others will want to jump right into doing things the way they normally do, and are probably the users switching over for the stability, security, good "price" provided by GNU/Linux.
So it's fine that we have all of these different options, and it's fine that many of them look like Windows. It's also fine that some of them can provide similarities to MacOS, BeOS, Amiga, and any other interface users may be attached to. However, a big problem is when people start developing apps to "only work" in one environment; e.g., apps which will only work with GNOME or KDE libraries installed. People should write apps to work in any X11 environment, and to fit in with whatever WM/DE they're placed into.
The same application which displays only windows-style horizontal menus in KDE should display only NeXT-style vertical menus in WindowMaker, and maybe only pie-style menus in SCWM. This implies some kind of universal interface for different tool-kits/WMs/DEs, where the programmer codes something equivalent to the following in pseudocode (where MI = menu item):
MI1. MI2. MI3. MI4. MI5. MI6.
MI1a MI2a MI3a MI4a MI5a MI6a
MI1b MI2b MI3b MI4b MI5b MI6b
MI1c MI2c MI3c MI4c MI5c MI6c
MI1d MI2d MI3d MI4d MI5d MI6d
MI1e MI2e MI3e MI4e MI5e MI6e
Where MI1. - MI6. are program menu's 1-6, and MIna - MInb are the submenu's of each main program menu. Now, what we need is something which will take that and automatically display it appropriately, depending on the environment. In KDE and GNOME and most other X11 environments, that would display as a windwos-style horizontal menu. In WindowMaker, it would display as a NeXT-style vertical menu, which is normally hidden but can be brought up by the user. In SCWM, it should display as a pie-menu, where selecting one item would open up a subsequent pie menu, etc. Such a meta-format would also be extended to other aspects of the program, such as toolbars, widgets, etc.
This way, the same program would look completely different, depending on what WM/DE it's run in. This way, the end-user has complete consistency in the look and feel of apps within his/her WM/DE.
I'll grant you that, but if one has used similar products in other OS', the training will be minimal, or non-existent, and can be done by the user.
Before I continue, let me first point out that "good products" are relative. My 100MHz computer was a great product when it first hit the markets ?7? years ago. Now, it's crap.
I'll also be speaking from a personal user's point of view, since that's what most college students are.
Win 2K
More stable than the other Windows products, but still not as stable as GNU/Linux; though this doesn't matter for the home user, since crashing once every month as opposed to once every year is hardly relevant. Aside from that, Win2k still isn't as good an OS as a GNU/Linux distribution. Why? Well, GNU/Linux comes with hundreds of useful CLI commands that can be used in TSCH , BASH, ZSH, etc. Win2k doesn't. You can get similar commands by downloading CygWin, but that is not an MS product, and it is inconvenient to have to operate within another environment just to access that power. Why are these *nix commands useful? Well, lets s ay that I want to align all of the different protein sequences for the rt (retro-transcriptase) gene of HIV1 between different strains. I have to go to NCBI and download all of the FASTA files. I then get 150 separate files. Now I have to put them into one file to be aligned by ClustalX. In Win2k, that's just a whole lot of copying and pasting. In GNU/Linux a few commands can handle that easily.
Also, of course, there's the fact that GNU/Linux can be customized to suit the user, whereas Win2k can not. GNU/Linux users have their choice of a DE and WM, and each of those is usually highly customizeable.
Lets not forget that there are at least two stable and proven journaling file-systems available for GNU/Linux -- ext3 and ReiserFS.
MS Word
Again, using my relativity critereon, MS Word is not good. I, in fact, know how to use it, but it's still not good, nor convenient, for producing professional quality documents, such as review articles. LyX, however, can generate perfect formatting without me doing anything, and allow me to focus solely on the content, while it formats it properly.
Of course, there's also the issue w/ MS Word that it wants to fight the user. To see what I mean, try inserting images and captions into it.
Excel
Can't argue, Excel is a decent spreadsheet program. This, however, is hardly impressive. There are other spreadsheet programs that are superior to it, and, quite frankly, there just isn't much to making an exceptional spreadsheet program. It's sort of like toothpaste -- yea, the best toothpaste, along with all those other best toothpastes.
Haven't used Access, MSProject, or MSVisio, so can't comment on them.
Regarding Internet Explorer, I'll agree that it's better than Netscape. However, there are browsers out there for GNU/Linux that are far better than Internet Explorer. If you don't need Java or Javascript, then Dillo is by far the best browser -- small, stable, fast. If you need Javascript/Java, then Beonex & Phoenix is a great browser, as they are also fast and small; furthermore, they provide superior ad-blocking, pop-up blocking, and privacy settings to MS Excel.
Regarding viewpoint on MS' morality. You could also say it's just a viewpoint that the sexual mutilation of girls is immoral. Just a viewpoint that raping women is wrong. And so on and so forth.
MS has been convicted in a court of law of illegal and immoral behavior: namely, anti-competitive behavior. They have blackballed OEMs into not pre-installing GNU/Linux or any other alternate OS, among other things. They also intentionally introduce "features" into their proprietary format to prevent anyone else from
All this crap about violent video games causing violence is bullshit. I played and play plenty of violent video games, yet you don't see me going around murdering and raping people, do you? And those nutcases at Columbine didn't kill people because they played one too many instances of Doom, ok!
In general, I say that I'm not going to sacrafice MY freedoms -- or those of anyone else -- because some woman forgot to put in her diaphram or some man forgot to put on his condom and now doesn't want to accept sole responsibility. However, these laws only affect those under 13, and I'm 22, so I really don't give a flying fuck of some 13-year old can purchase the latest edition of Phantasmagoria or those numerous Hentai rape-games that Japenese people seem to be so fond of.
Let's just take the Japanese Hentai rape games as an example. Now, we all know that women in Japan are treated unfairly and immorally, and that incidence of rape in Japan is inordinately high. Does this mean that these Hentai rape games are causing that? No, of course not. It is absurd to blame a videogame for the actions of human being. These games are merely a symptom of the problem.
People who have children -- accept YOUR responsibility. You are the one's who have kids, NOT me or anyone else. I have no responsibility to help anyone raise their kids by censoring my fucking speech, nor does anyone else.
Just because something's a natural part of life doesn't make it good. Gangre, HIV, disease, cancer, suffering, walking around without a wiped ass after defication -- all of these are "natural parts of life". That doesn't mean any of them are good.
Aging isn't a disease? Really? Tell that to people being slowly killed by Alzheimers and other conditions that effect the elderly. Or what about those who just live on and on and die "of old age"? Hardly a joyous thing either, being so limited from one's normal capacity.
It's amazing to me that some people have nothing better to do than sit around and babble amonst themselves and a bunch of other elitist snobs about why we should not extend our own life-spans.
Especially as an atheist, I take it that being alive is good -- the longer the better. If I could live to be 200 years old, that'd be good. If I could live to be 10,000 years old, that'd be great. If I could live until the universe either collapses into a big crunch or expands out approaching near zero-K termperatures, that'd be even even better.
Ok, ONE good thing about MS: they have automatic cursor movement, something I wish the GNU/Linux would allow as an option. It's a bitch getting from one place to another on a 1600x1200 monitor.
As I said before, they would be able to use whatever they want on their own computers. Btw, the guy isn't saying they have to stop using all MS products. He said they have to not buy MS products or renew licenses in the future. The school can continue using Win-whatever on their computers without buying new MS products, and can phase in GNU/Linux and other alternatives.
Furthermore, let's face the facts. If someone is skilled in GNU/Linux, they can easily translate those skills over to MS Windows. Let's not pretend it takes much intelligence to operate MS Windows.
I'm starting to think you're a troll. The problem with rampant advocates of MS's evil is that they do not/can not/will not see any good in any of the products. And that's a crying shame because you should be able to make the best with with what you've got.
What good? Where are these good MS products? Just speaking from the one's I've used -- which are all home-user applications -- there aren't any. Let's start out with basic entertainment like games. HellBender and Fury come to mind -- disgusting cheap rip offs of Descent, which invariably gave one a headache when playing. Internet Explorer -- bloatware, insecure, no way to block pop-ups or unwanted images. Outlook Express -- poor e-mail client in general, with minimal ability to filter out spam. MS Word -- just try creating a scientific document in it. MS Word actually fights the user. You put something somewhere, Word decides it's better somewhere else. Excel -- ok, this one's decent, but I've rarely ran accross a spread-sheet that hasn't perfectly accounted for my needs. The spreadsheet in FirstChoice was exceptional, and that was back in the 386 day. PowerPoint -- again decent, but nothing that you can't find elsewhere. I could go on, but I won't. Instead, I'll just list the superior alternatives in GNU/Linux and Window: Descent, and any other game made by a real gaming company; Kameleon in Windows, Dillo, Phoenix, or Beonex in Linux, depending on your needs; PocoMail in Windows, GNUMail.app in Linux; LyX in Windows and Linux; Abs in Linux, Calc in Windows; Impress in both Windows and Linux.
Also, even if you can say that some MS products are well-designed, that still does not mean that using them is acceptable among principled people. MS has illegally used their power, and continues to include draconian terms in it's EULA's, among other transgressions from ethics. Supporting a company by continuing to buy their products is supporting whatever activity they may be engaging in -- which, in MS' case, is immoral unethical and illegal activity. Universities should not support MS' draconian ways.
As has been proven by every impartial study done (those funded by MS don't count), the TCO of a GNU/Linux system is just cheaper than that of a Windows system. I won't go into all of the reasons, but will list a few:
1. Upgrades are free ($).
2. Initial acquirement is free ($).
3. Support can be purchased on a competitive basis among competing companies, thus producing superior support. How many times have you called up inept technical support guys who obviously don't know what the fuck they're talking about, can't speak English, know less about the system than you do, and are obviously reading from a TO-DO cookbook, which ends in "if all else fails, tell them to wipe the hard-drive and reinstall everything"? The simple fact is, there's a reasonable solution for the vast majority of problems you run into, which doesn't involve reinstalling everything from scratch.
Call up a windows support guy and complain that your computer won't start up due to a corrupted IO.sys file. What will he tell you? He'll take you through the usual motions, and then -- invariably -- tell you there's nothing else you can do, back up your data, and reinstall the OS (conveniently ignoring the fact that it's difficult if not impossible to back up one's data when one can only boot into DOS and has no access to the CD-writer). He will tell you this despite the fact that there is a much simpler solution, which is simply to replace the corrupt IO.sys file with a valid working one. Why can't he tell you that, or send you the file that would allow you to do that? Because the technical support contract doesn't support that. Don't like your technical support contract options? Too fucking bad, there's no alternative.
Not so with GNU/Linux. First of all, such problems are rarely encountered, even in the rare case where a power failure occurs, due to journaling file-systems. Secondly, technical support can be purchased at a competitive price -- which means, ultimately, cheaper for you if you section out the tech-support aspect of your bill from a proprietary vendor. It also means better service.
GNU/Linux also provides the benefit of being able to run on much older hardware than does Windows, allowing the university to upgrade their hardware less frequently. Microsoft apparently thinks that it needs to provide hardware developers with motivation to produce better hardware by continually increasing requirements that it's software need to run acceptably. Though this is true with regards to some modern bloat-ware in GNU/Linux, there are always non-bloatware alternatives which are usually just as functional, if not more so. KDE and GNOME can be replaced with the lighter Xfce. The bloated WM's that come with them can be replaced by the streamlined and elegant WindowMaker.
Let's not forget some of the obvious benefits. Universities are big organizations, which can afford to fix their own problems if given the means. Because GNU/Linux uses FS and OSS software, universities can fix their own problems. Indeed, they need not even pay for the solution -- they can simply throw a problem at CS students to solve, making it a mandatory part of the course.
Let's not pretend that the university would be denying students choice by not buying MS products. These students could use whatever they want on their own computers. Exposing them to Linux at the libraries and other public areas would expose them to an operating system which is more likely than not the direction of the future. MS may be the dominant force, but it has no-where to go but down, and it's insistence on making crappy products, illegally using it's monopoly power, and depriving consumers of their rights will certainly accelerate its downfall. On the contrary, GNU/Linux is gaining more and more support. It is growing extremely quickly, and is a fertile ground for new ideas and innovation.
Finally, exposing students to Linux exposes them to the way computer's really work. Linux -- though it now has easy-to-use inte
Let's not pretend it takes a genius to use a word-processor. Sufficed to say, ANYONE who can use GNU/Linux and it's corresponding applications can alwso use MS Windows and it's corresponding applications. No-one is going to be rejected for a job because they haven't have experience specifically with MS Word, or any other MS products. Sufficed to say, experience in any GNU/Linux office suite easily translates over to MS Office, with a small learning curve. Far more important than experience with a specific office suite, is one's ability to type fastly and one's general computer savvyness.
/.ers making these comments about the necessity of experience with MS Word haven't been in the real world that much. In terms of real-world publishing and document creation, MS Word is total and complete crap. First of all, I haven't encountered a version of MS Word yet that doesn't "fight the user". You put something in one place, MS Word thinks it's better somewhere else. The result? Headaches and documents that often appear unprofessional. It takes both an extra-ordinary knowledge of MS Word to create professional document using it, and an extra-ordinary amount of patience to do so, as well as an extra-ordinary amount of time.
Maybe many
You want to make an article for a news-paper, a book, or a scientific paper? Professional business statement, etc? MS Word is total crap. Why? Because it relies completely on the users ability to manually typset. Users, naturally, make documents that are typsetted to look "pretty". "Pretty" would be fine if you were hanging documents on walls like paintings. But you aren't. Documents aren't meant to be looked at with cursory appreciation. They are meant to be read in depth.
I am not trying to say that OpenOffice -- or any other Office suite -- is superior to MS in that regard. All of them rely on the user -- who is almost invariably completely ignorant of professional typesetting standards -- to produce a professional document. What I am saying, however, is that in the GNU/Linux world, an alternative is available which allows for the painless creation of professional documents, requiring no previous knowledge of the details of typesetting by the user for the particular document-style. This is called TeX and LaTeX, which are frontended by an easy-to-use graphical document processor, LyX.
What this allows people to do is to focus on the content of the documents they create, and not the formatting. LyX handles the formatting, according to well-established professional rules. The result is that the user saves time, because (s)he does not have to spend time and effort formatting the document to look quasi-professional. Instead, the document is automatically formatted to look 100% professional according to the standards of the document that the user specified (e.g., there are very specific guidelines for formatting in scientific papers, which are different from scientific thesis', which are different from scientific reviews).
I myself am coming from a scientific (biological) background. As an undergraduate in college, I had written lab-reports and review-articles. Initially, I wrote these using MS Word, which was a huge pain in the ass. You insert a figure, put it somewhere, and word places it somewhere else. And of course you have to bother with the trivial details of perfectly aligning the figure legend with the figure, equations, and so on and so forth. LyX does all this for you, and allows you to focus on content. The results are invariably more professional than those produced by MS Word. LyX does not mistakenly put two spaces after a section title when there should be only one, nor commit any of the other various mistakes that you may make while formatting a document yourself. Furthermore, it provides complete consistency with professional standards, not some hacked-up bullshit standards that you yourself define ad-hoc.
This lawsuit is humbug, and business, FS, and OSS communities all know it. It will have no -- or only a marginal -- effect on the adoptation of Linux. Sun isn't going to squeeze much out of this dry well.
X-Free my arse...X-Mess is more like it. You can rationalize it all you want, but the simple fact is, X-Free is a big giant mess.
Sure, network transparency, being able to run X remotely from another computer, is great, IF you want to do that. Most people don't. I have one computer at my home -- no need to ever use the GUI from remote. If I want to access it, I'll be accessing files and transferring them to a computer at work -- whcih is what ssh is for.
Because of the big mess that X-Free is, I set up a pretty minimal desktop GUI, which is fine with me. I've always hated candy-desktop appearances, like OS X. Me, I stick with WindowMaker (in combo w/ PWM), Xfce for my desktop, and no anti-aliasing along with plain themes and hide-away stuff. Also, I don't -- not on my Debian GNU/Linux OS, or Windows (w/c I use for games) -- make it redraw the windows as I move them. What a waste. I want instantaneous responses to my actions, so I get rid of all animations and crap like that.
So, my GUI's run pretty smoothly (except when I'm using Kazaa on Windows). However, that's only because of my minimalism, and doesn't justify or excuse X's sloppiness and enormous bloat. (I'm not going to complain about MS' bloat b/c MS never bothers to address real problems and I'm never upgrading WinME...I have all the games I want, and I think thatt future games coming out I'll want [like Tomb Raider 6] will support Win9x for a long long time).
Of course, there's other disgusting problems in X, like not being able to copy and paste between windows, and the atrocious lack of standards for that and other things. I don't think we should throw out X -- just massive rehaul to get rid of this slop, not bandaid-treatments. Also, make a version of it for normal home users, who won't be sharing GUI's between multiple PC's.
For a good price, best thing to do is make your own. A simple refracting telescope really isn't that complicated.
The most difficult thing is spacing. You need to space the parts very precisely. You could have an aperture 3 feet wide, but it doesn't mean anything if the assembly is imprecise and you have poor focusing ability.
Aperture determines how many times an image can be magnified, thus how far out in space you can see (or rather, how many light years into the past you can see). Just as important, is the ability to resolve one point of light from another, which requires quality lenses and precise placement.
My suggestion? Read some good books on it, get some precise measuring instruments for distance placement, and use frenzel lenses. Frenzel lenses of larger size can be bought for the same price as normal glass lenses. The only disadvantage is that they can irritate the eyes if you look through them too long.
Nope, actually, I use Debian Linux. This all the more convinces me not to switch over to Apple's proprietary OS.
So what, customers don't pay for the update? They pay for the original OS, which is what puts Apple in business. They have a right to expect quality.
Don't they fucking test these things before releasing them to the public? There's no excuse for total shit like this in what is supposed to be a stable update (NOT an alpha or beta test-version). Moving applications to new locations should not produce these kind of abberrant results.
Yea, yea, yea, you don't hear people complaining about minor stuff like this happening in the latest update of X Linux distribution. There's a few good reasons for that: (1) You're not usually paying the makers of Linux good money for the latest updates, nor for the original; (2) In almost all cases, issues like this occur in the alpha and beta update releases, not the official stable ones (especially for Debian).
So what, he's arrogant? He's also done a lot for the chess world. And, quite frankly, he's the best chess player since B. Fischer (yes, still better than that upstart Kramnick).
The simple fact is, that when people talk about the best chess players ever, there are two candidates for #1: Bobby Fischer and Gary Kasparov. Since they've never played each-other, we don't know who's better than who, and it's a topic of unsubstantiated speculation.
Regarding Bobby Fischer, I'm tired of hearing about his anti-semitism. Bobby Fischer is himself half-Jewish, and is friends with several Jewish people, despite his anti-semitic beliefs. Irrelevant of the man's political beliefs -- which he's entitled to, like the rest of us, think whatever the fuck he wants -- he's still one of the greatest chess players of all time.
Because, gosh darnit, if it were iMovies, I'd have already used up 32,000 slots on porn alone!
Get a Walmart computer with Lindows on it. Lindows is basically Debian Linux with a friendly GUI installed on top. You'll have to reconfigure it manually, as it comes with "root" as the default login (not good). But, if you know anything about Linux, shouldn't be hard to add an account and login under that.
WRONG. They had a LEGAL obligation to report this. Releasing a virus onto the internet to infect other computers is a FELONY -- a CRIME. If you witness a crime and don't call 911, you're an accessory to the crime. Symmantec had a LEGAL obligation to report this obvious CRIME to the authorities. Because they didn't, they are an accessory to the crime.
They could just be incompetent instead of intentionally sabotaging. However, if it's just incompetence, shouldn't it have been fixed a long time ago? Oh, wait, MS only fixes problems when there's a huge outcry...good old monopolies for ya.
Even on Win9x, why would anyone want to use WMP with WinAmp and FreeAmp available? WinAmp is a great player app, and I'd rather have that on Linux than WMP. The only thing that's really important is the codec. So long as the player can play the codec, its good: and WinAmp can play almost every codec.
Hellbender and Fury were the MS rip-offs of Descent. Or at least they were in my opinion; alot of people will call them rip-offs of Tie Fighter. In any case, they really sucked bad.
Modern duds:
:-) TombRaider has great replay value even though its not multiplayer, because of all the challenges you can take up while replaying it (especially in Tomb Raider 2, where you can be very skillful and do some difficult things like jumping accross a canyon on one of the ice-levels).
1. All of the Descent clones. "Forsaken" and "Terracide". Terracide was rightfully slammed in the reviews: almost every review I've read said that the author would rather play Descent 1 or 2, even though the graphics for Terracide were superior. Don't be fooled by "Forsaken's" decent reception: its just a rip-off, nothing you'd buy instead of Descent 3, and something you wouldn't even look at if you had Descent 3.
2. Microsoft's "unique" and unimaginative rip-off of Descent: I forget the name of the game, but it sucked. It was basically Descent outside, with better graphics, but the gameplay sucked. You didn't have the freedom of moving along all three axis', and combat was very boring. The levels were large and pointless.
3. All of the Tomb Raider clones, most notably the Indianna Jones games.
4. DukeNukem 3D. Wow, what a boring game. Move around, kill everything in sight, maybe jump up and down a few times. What exactly did DukeNukem 3D offer that wasn't offered in Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, or Quake? Nothing, except for perhaps better graphics. At least Quake III and Doom III (the modern version of Doom) offer more imaginative creatures, even if they're flogging a dead horse.
5. Lords of Magic. I'll admit, I bought this game. Very lame. AI is incredibly stupid, has very little replay value, graphics suck even on my GeForce2-equipped computer, takes forever to load battles.
6. Descent to and Undermountain. It's really insulting that Interplay used the word "Descent" in this terrible game.
Now that that's over, let me name a few games that I really like:
1. Tomb Raider and Descent Series. These are my all-time favorite games: great game-play, graphics, and replay-value. Multiplayer in Descent and the great skill you can develop in it makes it playable forever. I used to play against someone who could hit you dead on with a gauss accross the room every time. But I could beat him with my skillful moves.
2. EternalDarkness. Damn, I wish this was available for the PC. Very scary game.
3. Baldur's Gate series. Just got Baldur's Gate II SoA and ToB: awesome.
4. NeverWinter nights: haven't played it yet, but it seems like it'll be cool if its supposed to be the next step in evolution from Baldur's Gate.
5. Blade of Darkness. Never bought this game (only played the demos), but wow, what a game! Great hack-and-slash gameplay that actually brings something new to the table beyond Doom. Nice sword-fight sequences, in which you fight interactively, and some great moves. The graphics (especially lighting) in this game are awesome.
Sure, the graphics and sound sucked. But who cares? It was a fun game to play. I still play it on my computer.
Gameplay is just as important -- more so -- than sound or graphics.
I have yet to see anything in the same genre come out that is anywhere near as good as Descent 1-3, and the graphics on those games are dated now. I'd rather play D1 (with its blocky graphics) than anything that exists today.
I have yet to see an "explore the ancient world" type game that even comes anywhere close to Tomb Raider 1, and that's the oldest of the TRs.
You know, I was hoping that people would realize that I was trying to be funny here. Obviously not, as it was moderated "Insightful" instead of funny. I myself don't think its insightful: it was something that someone would have eventually thought of and said, I just said it first. On the other hand, it isn't one of those "first post " first posts.
Lets see...Hitler didn't want people reading books written by Jews. Valentini doesn't want people to be able to read source-code that can help them excercise fair-use rights over their property.
How you prevent people from reading something -- be it by book-burning or court orders -- is irrelevant. Destroying information only indicates that you are afraid of the ideas it contains, and is wrong.
On a side note, it is obvious to me that the German's (and I regret in regards to this instance to say I am a German American) obviously haven't learning anything from Hitler and the Nazi-era. They continue banning the distribution of books who's ideas they don't like. Now, its "Mein Kampf" and other nazi-books which are banned in Germany. Banning "bad books" is just as bad as banning any other kind of books, because who's to decide what's a good and a bad book?