What you're failing to understand is that you can't directly compare the two things that you're comparing, RFID and P2P. I don't like RFID because if it becomes widespread I will be forced to use it in some way, and by using it I can end up placing my privacy in jeopardy, and depending on what that private information is and who detects it, the danger may even extend to my physical person.
On the other hand, nobody is going to force me to put a P2P program on my computer and use it to do illegal things. Even if I do use it legally or illegally, it's not going to cause privacy damage to any individual who doesn't also choose to install and use a P2P program.
Also, the potential for RFID to be abused against individuals or groups by other indivuduals or the government is quite high. The "abuse" of P2P systems isn't on the same level at all. The "victim" of P2P abuse is the content holder, and the only thing lost by the content holders is a theoretical potential sale. That's assuming that the copied content was even available to be purchased. Nothing physical has been stolen when copyright is violated. The privacy and safety of individuals is not violated by P2P file sharing. With RFID, both privacy and safety could potentially be violated.
By the way, copyright violation by individuals in a not-for-profit fashion usually falls under civil laws, not criminal laws. I defy you to name any computer application that can be said to be used "almost entirely for criminal purposes". Software doesn't go around killing people or stealing physical objects or causing physical harm. Even if you put it in the context of computer crimes, the software that is used to hack into other computers is often the same software that computer people use to administrate or secure their own computers. What you're talking about is like wanting to ban crowbars because suddenly a lot of them are being used to commit robberies and murders.
And finally, it hasn't "always been accepted" that certain objects should be banned because people use them "almost entirely" for criminal purposes. I don'te accept it. I think it's bogus that brass knuckles, lockpicks, radar detectors (are those illegal now?) and other things should be illegal. I notice the crime rate hasn't gone down after the banning of those objects. Might that be because banning the objects fails to address the reasons for the actions of the persons who go ahead and commit the same crimes some other way?
No object should ever be banned unless it can somehow by its very nature cause harm to others without any human action being applied. It is the action that is the crime, and to keep the crime from happening you have to get to the source of why the person decided to cause the action to occur. I know, we aren't real big on prevention here in 'Merc-uh.
Getting back to P2P, do you have some answer for all the legitimate file sharers who will be banging on your door after you ban P2P software, asking you why in the name of Pete they are no longer allowed to choose to share anything they own the copyright for? The number of people abusing the system is meaningless, except to give you an indicator that there is some reason for these copyright violations that needs to be addressed. Banning the object is not the answer.
But go ahead and do it your way. Ban P2P software. Then you can go on your merry way, singing to yourself, "The Emporer does have clothes, the Emporer does have clothes!" Everyone will move to Freenet or its equivalent and completely ignore you. And if you try to ban Freenet and start arresting anyone who uses it (because 95% of the users are abusing the system, of course) you will sooner or later end up with a civil war on your hands, as the educated and rabidly freedom-loving minority realizes they have lost all freedom of expression and have no reason to continue allowing the current government to exist.
If you're talking about changing the window border so it looks the same as the native windows, last time I looked that was already a feature in the WINE setup application. You can specify that you want your WINE windows to look like Win3.1, Win98 or to be managed by the native window manager.
If you're talking about changing all the GUI widgets inside the windows, that would be a lot more work. It would be a lot of work to make it happen, and then a lot more work to make it look halfway decent in comparison to how it originally looked. Doesn't seem like a good use of developer time when we still have so far to go on basic compatibility.
The level of vitriol toward Microsoft on this site has gotten ridiculous--it's almost sunk to the level of discrimination, like racism but toward employees of a company.
That's surprisingly similar to "all readers of Slashdot have a fanatical hate towards Microsoft". Copied right from your post, nit-picker. The parent poster simply chose to paraphrase it.
Oh, and you'll have to show us an employee of a demonstrably evil corporation (Microsoft) that is not either following along blindly with company policy (a sheep) or following along knowingly with company policy (evil). Most of us have pretty rational reasons for disliking Microsoft and everyone involved with them. You have provided no real argument against our point of view. If you wish to argue against the parent poster's view which appears to be based on observable facts (the bahavior of people employed at Microsoft) then you should probably provide some alternate examples of observable facts. Show us all the people working for Microsoft today that DO NOT think Microsoft is the greatest, most benevolent thing since sliced bread.
In other words: Show me a sheep who shines his shoes, and I'll show you a shoe-shining sheep. Don't tell us our "vitriol" is misplaced or baseless without some evidence to back it up.
Hear, hear. I don't think most people have any appreciation for what Apple has managed to do with this new OS. 10.0-10.1 was still kind of a joke, but 10.2 was faster and had nearly all the necessary features for a desktop OS. 10.3 blows 10.2 out of the water for speed and features. The list of applications that I install after upgrading a computer to Panther is very short. And you don't need a G5 machine or even a G4 to run Panther because of the amazing amount of optimization that Apple has accomplished since 10.0 came out.
OS X Panther is now speed-comparable to OS 9 running natively on the same hardware, to the point where I can be sitting here typing this in Firefox on what would be considered an ancient Mac, an old 350MHz blue gumdrop slot-loading iMac. I upgraded this machine from OS 9.2, and in many ways I can't tell much of a responsiveness difference between this machine and my dual-867 G4 at work. This old hardware has been revitalized and brought into the modern world with a simple OS upgrade. That, my friends, is a miracle.
(Caveat: don't try to install OS X or even boot any OS X based boot CD on a Mac this old without making absolutely certain that you've applied the latest firmware updates. We used to have two of these iMacs but one died after I booted an OS X install CD on it. Something goes wrong in the logic board or video board. Same thing happened to this one but I managed to find and apply the proper firmware update before it died. Scary, but now we have a computer that will probably still be usable 5 or even 10 years from now, with an OS that isn't stuck in AppleTalk land anymore.)
If you say OS 7/8/9 and 10.0/10.1 were all crap, I would generally agree with you. But you can't deny that OS X has definitely gotten faster and better with each release, and after using 10.3 you won't be able to deny that it is a kickass operating system for actually getting things done.
Just put me on that ever-growing list of people who still run Linux on a PC (I've even run Debian and compiled a few kernels in my time), but for my main machine I wouldn't have anything but a Mac running the latest OS X. Sometimes you just want to use a computer to do actual work. Or play. And for either of those, the new Mac rocks the house.;)
I'm the computer tech for an organization with 7 people and 9 computers... All new Macs, and all now running Panther. I consider myself to be one of the luckiest sysadmins in the world. The only Microsoft crap I have to deal with is Office, and that's only because OpenOffice isn't up to par on the Mac yet. (But for those who are interested in a MS Office alternative for the Mac, check out NeoOffice/J, a Java-based version of OpenOffice. It's still under heavy development but it seems to work OK. Oh, and download Firefox, IMO it looks and acts nicer than either IE/Mac or Safari.)
I'm sorry, sir, but you are not insightful. Unless you can explain to me what's so "I'm so damn smart, look at me" about asking somebody who writes laws why it should still be illegal for me to watch a DVD on my personal computer which happens to run Linux. 90% of that interview is about legality and morality, and the guy just wanted to have a rational talk about the needs of both sides. Valenti and this Rich Taylor person had exceptionally horrifying responses to everything the interviewer said.
Here are a couple of the best ones:
TT: I'll tell you, because I'm an engineer, I'm an engineering student, and this year I built a high-definition television, from scratch. But because of the broadcast flag, if I wanted to do that again after July 2005, that would be illegal.
JV: How many people in the United States build their own sets?
TT: Well, I'm talking about engineers.
JV: Let's say there are a thousand. But there are 284 million people in this country. You can't have public policy that is aimed at 100,000 people when the other multi-multi-millions are also involved. You can't do it that way.
That seems to translate to "majority rules, right or wrong". Interesting thought experiment: Re-read the above after changing "engineer" to "civil rights user" or maybe "Linux-user" or herhaps "Mac user" or [flamebait]"minority ethnic or religious group member"[/flamebait]. According to Valenti's logic he would certainly give the exact same response as long as there was a correspondingly small number of people in whatever set you stick between the quotes, compared to the total number of people in the country.
And the best: Will Linux users ever be able to view DVDs on their computers without breaking the law? "I'm sure that day is not far away," [Rich] Taylor said.
Right. Like it "wasn't far away" four years ago. These people are truly frightening. These are the kind of people who would wholeheartedly support the ideas of Thought Police and Pre-Crime style law enforcement.
And let me just make sure that all you DVD-watching Linux users truly understand the implications of what these guys are saying. THEY WANT TO PUT ALL OF YOU IN PRISON FOR WATCHING ANY ENCRYPTED DVD ON YOUR LINUX-BASED COMPUTER IF YOU DON'T DO IT WITH THE "LEGAL" SOFTWARE THAT DOESN'T EXIST. And if they could actually find you and put you in prison, they would, and they'd feel good about it. They want to put you away if you use your computer to view a DVD in a manner that they don't approve of.
First, what's the deal with these apps, are they proprietary or open source? Are they only available through the Lindows/Linspire Click-n-Run thing? If they're open source, where can I download them?
Honestly, I don't give a rat's ass about the look-n-feel. As others have pointed out, there are a lot of open source apps that emulate the L&F of other commercial apps even closer (OpenOffice.org, XMMS, etc). The repeated copycat naming is not smart, I think that's the only reason anyone is even paying attention to this post. If they hadn't named it LPhoto, do you really think anyone would have spent the time to get in an uproar about it long enough to draft a post on/.?
Seriously, iPhoto is one of the best apps on Mac OS X. It took some real genius to make an application that easy to use. I want it on my Linux box, and I don't care if you copy it pixel-for-pixel like the xPDe guys have copied the XP interface. That application (iPhoto) kicks ass. Where can we get this clone short of buying Linspire?
Anybody who mods this funny is missing the point. This is exactly the kind of application that Linux needs to have in order to make any headway on the home desktop of your average person.
However, I'm also a bit surprised that someone who is seriously trying evaluate Linux and get a sound card to work didn't try either Mandrake or Red Hat.
Jeebus. Isn't the whole point that they shouldn't have to try two additional distros just to get their bleeping sound card to work? Who the hell cares that they didn't try Manfred Linux or Dilrod Linux?
For those who may be too dense to get my subtle sub-point, the names Manfred and Dilrod will mean just as much to most people as Mandrake and Red Hat, so I won't be a bit "surprised" that someone who is just trying to evaluate Linux will fail to try them out.
The point is this person tried several distros, they all failed. Was it the fault of the distro? Not really. Was it the fault of Linux? Not really. But the end user could care less whose fault it is. All they know is this supposedly wonderful and desktop-ready operating system has failed them. Linux just ain't ready for everyone, despite what we would like to believe. This is not something that should just be sidestepped by telling people to try another distro. Unless you know of some new magical distro that will solve 100% of problems like this for every user.
To top it off, this person appears to have gone much farther than most people would ever go. Last time I had problems like that with Linux after trying only a couple of distros, I just said "eff this" and went back to BeOS. Not everyone has the time, money or patience to try out nine different distros.
Other big-name suppliers were pushing to get in on this but someone with the authority to make such decisions said "no Windows in registries" after Blaster/Slammer/et al took out most of the rest of the organisation while our Javastations kept on kicking on.
I nominate this anonymous person as the prime candidate for the first human to be cloned. His/her clones should then be distributed at no cost to government organizations all over the world via a non-profit agency, while being marketed as a way to cut costs and make said governments more efficient and self-reliant. Just don't ever mention the words "Linux" or "open source" in the marketing materials.;)
My guess why they went for Apple is probably because Darwin is bassed on BSD and the source is available. It may not be open in the sence that Linux is but it is more open then Microsoft ever will be.
Or perhaps they became interested in Apple because sales of Apple systems have trebled since OS X came out.
Trebled.
(Score: -3, Worst Play on Words Ever Seen on Slashdot);)
I shouldn't even reply, but this is just so over the top...
Is it really necessary to be so rude? Seriously.
Is it really necessary to always assume that anyone who doesn't agree with you is a "Windows Boy"?
Is it really necessary to call me an "ass", a "windows bred moron", "fucking retarded" and an "asshole"? Seriously.
Is it really necessary to assume that I'm anti-Linux because I say that obscurity makes it difficult to use? Your assumption is wrong, by the way. I've used Linux for years, but I shouldn't have to tell you that to avoid being called every nasty name in the book and avoid being berated as some "windows idiot". It is also possible to use Windows and not be an idiot.
"What in the fucking universe makes you" think that anything should be ingrained in somebody before birth, including stop signs? Nowhere, that's where. That's more of your over-simplifying.
"you people" What people am I a part of? I'm guessing the "idiot people" grouping. Obviously I'm an idiot, because I disagree with you.
Where did I come up with the idea that anything is beginner friendly? When you can plop down a beginner in front of it and have them using it productively within a short period of time, it's beginner friendly. When people can use an application for years (Windows/Linux/Mac, doesn't matter) and still complain about its lack of usability, there is obviously a problem. Just because it isn't a problem for you doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
You take things waaaay too far, you over-simplify, and you are a rude elitist. You seem to have the common Linuxite feeling that everyone else is an idiot and that everyone is against you. They aren't. I'm not. (Except for the fact that you're so rude, that does make people want to be against you whether they are idiots or intelligent.) It's like you're fighting The Man, or something. You need to chill. People like you drive a LOT of people away from the Linux community. But I'm sure you like it that way, because we're all idiots, and you're always right. Right? I don't know why you bothered to help those people set up and run on Linux instead of just calling them idiots. Oh yeah, you did it because it helps you in your fight against The Man.
Instead of replying right away, stop and think about your attitude towards others. Please. For a couple of days. Get some perspective.
Oh, and by the way. Gaim is just called Gaim on the Gaim website, on the front page and on the "What is Gaim?" page. I've been there before and went again just now. The word "GNOME" and the phrase "Instant Messaging" aren't on the front page at all. The "What is GNOME" page doesn't tell me what Gaim stands for. And wouldn't that be the logical place to find that sort of thing, if you could even find the website in the first place? Maybe you should find a better example, because that one doesn't disprove anything.
Plus, you can't really compare Gaim to AIM, because AIM has the sort of market share that means most people will know what it is already. Plus it is often referred to as "AOL Instant Messenger" on shortcuts and such. Go to aol.com or aim.com, and you'll see a big banner that says, "AOL Instant Messenger".
Oh, and this should make you happy: "Windows is user friendly, it only took grandma 50 phone calls to get to work!" Karma, here I come!
By the way two, everyone on this planet is an idiot in the right/wrong circumstances.
You're so right! And just like a corporation, individuals shouldn't be expected to restrain themselves from harming others through greed and law-breaking! That means it's entirely up to you to keep me from breaking your legs with a baseball bat because I want your wallet! I shouldn't be expected to stop myself from doing this, because it's in my best interest to do it (I get your money!) I would be BLAMELESS for my actions, just like Microsoft! Pooooor little Microsoft.
Riiight. A corporations job is to screw everyone around them and flaunt the law in order to make a buck. Why are so many posts like this modded insightful? I get soooo tired of that kind of stupidity. But I'll be happy to hold your view for a few minutes. Just come over to my place, and bring a fat wallet. Now where did I put that baseball bat... Gee, I hope you don't do your job and stop me from trying to do my "blameless" job of breaking your kneecaps.
Yes, we should ALSO have a beef with the regulators/governments, and we DO. But no entity that does the things Microsoft has done over the years is BLAMELESS. That's absolutely idiotic.
I can't believe how many threads here continue to bash microsoft and wonder why they haven't changed their ways as if by not changing their ways they are doing something wrong.
They are doing something wrong! They're breaking the farking law, crushing competitors illegally (not legally), holding back innovation and perpetuating unhealthy economies through a monopolistic culture! How much simpler does it get?!?
You're the one oversimplifying, and you also don't seem to have a point. Stop signs always say "STOP" for a reason. The message written on that red octagon is accessible to all, even if they can't read.
I daresay nobody has "left MS" because they're sick of applications with "idiotic" names like "Internet Explorer" and "Notepad". I do know a lot of people who will leave with disgust when confronted with ksirc, kaim, gaim, irc, licq and told they should already know what those applications do and know how to choose the best one for their needs based solely on the name. There is room for a middle ground in this world. You can reduce the obscurity of the names short of just picking one and naming it "Instant messaging client". Gee, how about "Gaim Instant Messaging Client", and "Licq Instant Messaging Client". Gosh, that was tough.
Linux is "regressing" because non-geeks want it to be less obscure? Reveling in obscurity is not a show of intelligence or progress. It just points up the fact that you think knowing something obscure makes you more intelligent than all those "idiots" out there who can't "read for 10 minutes" and magically gather together all the pieces of knowledge they need to understand the current Linux obscurity. People need knowledge, not intelligence, in order to use Linux right now. A diligent idiot could sit down and read a manual on using Linux, and do all the things you do.
The simple fact is, Linux and its applications are obscure and cryptic to regular people, and not just because of naming conventions, and not based on whether or not those people come from the Windows world or not. They're just obscure, period. And any attempt made to de-obfuscate the Linux world in any form is immediately met with contempt and derision from wonderful, understanding people such as yourself.
By the way, I'd like to know where exactly it was that I said Linux should be exactly like Windows. Oh, that's right, I didn't.
But gee, I shouldn't even open my mouth. Obviously a "(moron)" like me shouldn't presume to talk back to a brilliant person like you who can "read for 10 minutes". (So brilliant you can't even use the shift key consistently.) I'm surprised I could overcome my "laziness" and write these paragraphs in response to your sarcastic anti-social derision.
I agree. APT really is very very good. For administrators, and people who basically know how to use their computer. So is urpmi. And portage. Etc. But of course it all depends on your sources. It depends on you knowing how to open a terminal, find specific sources that are good and add them to your list of sources. And of course these sources don't normally have any commercial software available. Is there an "apt-get purchase adobephotoshopcs", which will automatically resolve dependencies by purchasing and downloading CrossOver Office? I didn't think so.
APT-like mechanisms are awesome for keeping up to date with the core system and utilities. For regular users who want to install specific commercial software and things that just came out yesterday, it doesn't work. Face it. What you're saying is that apt-get is great, if you're willing to give up on having access to any software in the commercial world.
It's immensely easier to go to Google, type in "download 'Fax alert installer'" to find the software, download the compressed DMG (which if you download with Safari is automatically decompressed, mounted on the desktop and opened for your convenience) and drag the new application into your Applications folder. It's so easy it's ridiculous. Want to uninstall it? Go to the Applications folder and drag the app to the Trash.
Apple has really given people the best of both worlds. There is a point-and-click interface for updating system software (Software Update) which will automatically check for new software and tell the user when new updates are ready to be downloaded. A couple of clicks, wait, reboot if necessary, and you're up to date. Individual third-party applications are another matter, but many of them I have encountered seemingly have an APT-like mechanism built-in! How cool is that? When you start up the app, it runs a check and notifies you if there is an update, and with one click you can start the update downloading!
Seriously, for the average desktop user, Apple has got this software thing down pretty good. Let me give you an extreme case of how easy things are on Mac OS X. I just wiped my hard drive recently and installed Panther (10.3). From an external FireWire mirror drive, I drag-n-dropped all the old applications that I cared about. From my old Preferences folder, I copied over the preference files for the relevant applications. Within a few hours, it was as if nothing had happened, besides the fact that I'd left a lot of cruft behind and the system was faster. All the applications started up with preferences intact. Moving each application was a matter of picking up one file and dropping it in a new folder.
If I'd gone the Archive & Install route, it would have been much easier. Having been corrupted by Windows over the years, I always prefer a clean start.
To conclude: APT and its brethren have their place, and from what I can see they are basically already in use on the system side. If your applications don't support auto-updating, complain to the developer. Linux could seriously use a similar method for installing those peripheral applications that will never be found in any apt-sources list. There's room for both ways of doing things.
I used to hate Macs. Now, you can add me to that list of people who use Linux but would have a Mac as my main machine if I could afford it. It's just so insanely easy to get things done on a Mac. And that includes installing software and keeping the system up to date.
So what's your point? That we should sacrifice usability for 9 out of every 10 users by not renaming "Ferbsniddle" to "Instant Messaging Client", because it might inconvenience the few people who had prior knowledge of exactly what Ferbsniddle does? You'd like everyone to require a mountain of prior knowledge in order to get into your distro and use it productively within five minutes?
Every time someone says something like this, I wish they'd turn around and ask themselves if they'd like to have the brakes, gas pedal, steering wheel, ignition, radio and dials all in different shapes and locations on each brand of car. So you're used to driving a Ford? Well my Chevy is so much easier. To move forward, all I have to do is type in the desired speed on the dashboard and push this green button. To stop? Just tap pedal three and type in your current speed, then tap pedal four. It automatically reduces the speed to zero with an optimum deceleration curve! Steering? Grab that joystick thing marked "KLateral", that lets you control your lateral motion with.00009 precision! Cool, huh?
This is literally what much of the Linux "usability" experience is like. Only the users who want a really reliable car and/or don't want to pay for gasoline anymore, will stick with it, read the "man(ual)" and learn how to to use this "obviously superior" vehicle. After only six months, they'll be able to drive almost as well as they could with their old beat up Ford! Wow, such a deal.
c) what the OP pointed out is that since it doesn't cost them anything anyway, why didn't they put a supported OS like WinME on the machines, but instead chose a product that has EOLed like Win98. Either one will run fine on comparable Hardware.
My experience with WinME says otherwise. It seems to be a monster compared to Win98/98SE (which in turn of course is a monster compared to Win95, which will happily run much faster even on a 486/33 with 8MB of RAM, so if it weren't so unstable and riddled with security holes it would probably be a better choice for older hardware).
I agree with everything else you said.
Still, on the topic at hand, it would be really cool to see a few Linux distros with features equivalent to Win95 that would run on comparable hardware at the same speed. Anyone know of a distro that can be easily installed on a computer with only 7 or 8MB of RAM and a 486/Pentium-I level processor? Over the years I kept hearing some BS from Linuxites about how Linux will "revitalize your old hardware", but besides turning that old hardware into a non-GUI router or X-terminal, I've been largely disappointed.
That's what these non-profits and poor countries really need, a Free Software distro that will run with fairly modern features (modern web browser, office suite, email) on *really* old hardware. I know it can be done. The proof is Windows 95 itself. There's also that NewDeal Office thing which is a GUI for DOS that is supposed to run in just 2MB of RAM as a minimum, with an office suite, web browser, email, etc.
I have a feeling it could be done just as well if not better with a Linux distro, but all the distros I've tried require a lot more memory or a Linux guru who can maybe read and understand those decade-old Howto's about shoehorning Linux into low-memory computers.
And if I remember right that Howto ended up telling me I couldn't run a GUI on a machine that low-powered. Why not? Win95 is a GUI and it worked just fine on the same hardware. I'm always hearing about projects like TinyX and Linux-based portable devices (with GUI) with about the equivalent hardware as a really old 486. Why can't some of that technology be used to make those old desktops and 486/Pentium laptops usable again? I truly don't understand it.
If there were a real Linux distro out there that could just drop-n-run on old hardware like that as well as Win95 did, people would be going crazy over Linux in these sorts of situations. (Old, donated hardware.)
As it is, the appearance is that Linux keeps requiring more and more hardware to run any type of semi-modern platform (just not quite as bad as each new release of Windows), but that may just be my perception. Prove me wrong. I've got an old 486/100 laptop with 7.5MB of RAM. It's perfectly usable with Win95 and an old copy of Microsoft Office. Why can't it be usable with Linux in the same capacity? (As a desktop with a GUI, not as a router.)
Seriously, anyone know of distros or projects focused specifically on making *really* old computers usable again? To many parts of the world, this would be a godsend. Even in this country, I know a lot of people who would be really impressed if Linux allowed them to avoid having to buy a new computer just to continue to participate with the world safely (Internet, email, etc).
Re:I'm no Real Player fan...
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Real Problems
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· Score: 1
...but it only takes two clicks from their homepage to get the free player download started. Click "download" and then the bold, text link "Download free player."
I find this to be untrue. I'm on OS X at the moment, and when going to the homepage with either Mozilla or Safari, I get a page saying "Upgrade to our Mac OS X player". There's a big orange image with "Download" on it, and a couple of other "download" links. They all take me to a page that requires my email address and a password, I guess to set up an account with them. No other download links to be seen on that page. It won't let me continue without a properly formatted email address and a password. And unfortunately "asdf@asdf.org" and "asdf1@asdf.org" are both taken already. Fancy that.
In other words, there's no "two clicks to start the download" for me. Don't know about the rest of y'all. As far as I can tell, their website still sucks.
Re:Not Best Buy...Dell, HP and Gateway.
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Why PHBs Fear Linux
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· Score: 5, Insightful
Most non-geeks have no clue, period. I'm constantly hearing from mostly educated people that they're having a problem using "Microsoft" or "Adobe", by which they usually mean Word or Excel in the first case and either Acrobat Reader or Photoshop in the latter case. But it could be just about anything. People simply have no clue how their computers work, they just see the brand names everywhere so that's what they remember.
HOWEVER, people aren't entirely hopeless. If you sit down with them with a clear idea of what you're trying to explain, and explain that thing calmly and clearly in terms they can relate to, most will pick some of it up. If you calmly explain it a few more times, still keeping to terms they can understand, they'll get even more of it. We, the geeks, are the educators. The market and the education system has no desire to talk about something that doesn't make them piles of money.
If we treat people with respect and keep our ideas clear, they will listen most of the time. Stick to real world examples that have or can affect them. If you can't come up with a real world example, maybe you should go back and rethink whatever idea you're trying to explain. If it doesn't affect them at all, why are you harping on it?
Geeks are capable of changing the world, one non-geek at a time. Just have patience.
Please explain how pocket, portable computing would have been possible even ten years ago.
I'll tell you how it was possible. I used to own one. The Dauphin DTR-1. It wasn't exactly a pocket computer but it was a very small tablet with a pen-based version of Windows, which even included a nifty handwriting recognition system *gasp*. This was in ~1994, and I got it out of a discount catalog, so it must have been at least a year old at the time. I held it in my hands and got a lot of use out of it, so I'd say it was perfectly possible to have portable computing 10 years ago. Guess what, the software back then didn't need nearly as much power as it does now. Full size desktop computers at the time ran fine with a 486SX/33 and 4MB of RAM.
I really miss that old computer. Had a 486SLC and a 40MB hard drive. Not much but it ran Windows 3.1 just fine. That thing was so cool. Everyone who saw it loved it. And I've always wondered why I've never seen anything like it in the intervening years. Well, this article about Microsoft and Go pretty much explains it. After Go Corp. collapsed, Microsoft dropped the whole PenWindows and portable computing project. I can only imagine what neat things we could have seen if Microsoft hadn't interfered as usual.
Slashdot FUD, my ass. This is real damage to market innovation caused by a real monopoly. Put that in yer pipe and smoke it.
What happened to the notion of freedom, so rarely espoused or valued on Slashdot, of freedom from government intervention?
That notion of freedom can be found where you find the notion that I should have "freedom" from police "intervention" when I walk up to you on the street and start punching you in the face. But I'll be happy to espouse your notion of freedom, just come on over to my place and I'm sure you'll agree that it's perfectly OK for me to use my "freedom" to put my boot up your ass. In the real world, I'm free to put on a pair of earmuffs if I don't want to listen to you screaming while I kick your ass. Under your system (this is great) I'm free to do something to you, like duct-tape your mouth shut, to achieve the same objective.
Think about it for two seconds and you'll realize that's exactly what you've said to everyone here. You think freedom means you should be able to do what you want, regardless of the consequences to anyone else. That's not called freedom, that's called anarchy.
Freedom not espoused often on Slashdot? What freeping planet are you from? There are probably more people with Libertarian leanings here (read: people who don't like the government interfering) than you'll find almost anywhere else short of an anarchist convention.
I don't know about y'all, but I'm getting incredibly tired and depressed at seeing comments like this plastered all over the Slashdot pages, especially when they get an insightful moderation from some modder that's just as ignorant.
People choose Microsoft because it offers benefits that they consider worthwhile,
Well, um, DUH! Microsoft offers interoperability benefits because they've manipulated the market in their own image, along the way actively abusing their power over the market to make it difficult or impossible for any competitor to offer the same benefits! The best choice is Microsoft because that's the way Microsoft has designed the market, and that's supposed to be great?!? That's your idea of the capitalist ideal? How well do you think capitalism works when the consumer no longer has a choice? Hint: it doesn't. Read some economic history. The abuse of a monopoly position damages capitalist economies and is bad for consumers. Since there is no other way to regain control of the market and ensure competition and thus a healthy economy, the government is forced to step in. We don't like it, but that's the way it is.
1) People don't choose Microsoft because they have to. 2) People don't choose Microsoft because they're stupid.
Wrong, and wrong, at least for most values of X. You've said yourself, people choose Microsoft because of some benefit they see in it, and as many people have stated, most of those benefits come from the fact that Microsoft is an abusive monopoly and no other competitor is allowed to enter the market and supply those same benefits. In many cases, those benefits are seen as needed or actually are needed, so yes, people do choose Microsoft because they have to.
I'll rephrase the second one: People do choose Microsoft because they are [ignorant]. (Some of these ignorant people may also be stupid, this is a separate issue.) Because of the Microsoft monopoly and the massive marketing muscle behind it, most people who don't buy Microsoft because they have to will still buy Microsoft because they are ignorant of the fact that there are choices. So you are wrong on both points, except for a certain small portion of the consumer population that is both non-ignorant and doesn't have to buy Microsoft but they do anyway.
Who wants to bet that this guy, and whoever modded him Insightful, are NOT both Americans? (ob.disc. I am a natural born American with many generations of Americans behind me, so I can say whatever the hell I want about Americans, and you can't just blow it off as if I'm some foreigner who "just doesn't understand Americans")
I'm sure no one would mind if I stole both cars so I could try them each out. I'll buy them if I like them. I swear.
I think the question is, would they mind if you instantaneously made an exact duplicate of each car (with your own duplicating machine, of course) and took the duplicate out for a test drive. The manufacturer wouldn't like it, the dealer probably wouldn't much like it, but what about the owner of the original, and the original designer of the car? Would either of them care? It's something to ponder.
I use firefox/tbird on windows, but still, lets be sensible here. People can use the IE/OE combo without too much fear as long as they keep auto-update running.
Oh, I heartily agree. Because the patch is always available to be auto-installed at least 24 hours prior to the latest virus/worm/trojan being released in the wild. Therefore you'll never have a problem! You can continue to use IE/OE and the preview pane forever with a nice warm fuzzy feeling of safeness! Mmmm...
Slashdot Mirror
Wow, +5, Insightful for that.
What you're failing to understand is that you can't directly compare the two things that you're comparing, RFID and P2P. I don't like RFID because if it becomes widespread I will be forced to use it in some way, and by using it I can end up placing my privacy in jeopardy, and depending on what that private information is and who detects it, the danger may even extend to my physical person.
On the other hand, nobody is going to force me to put a P2P program on my computer and use it to do illegal things. Even if I do use it legally or illegally, it's not going to cause privacy damage to any individual who doesn't also choose to install and use a P2P program.
Also, the potential for RFID to be abused against individuals or groups by other indivuduals or the government is quite high. The "abuse" of P2P systems isn't on the same level at all. The "victim" of P2P abuse is the content holder, and the only thing lost by the content holders is a theoretical potential sale. That's assuming that the copied content was even available to be purchased. Nothing physical has been stolen when copyright is violated. The privacy and safety of individuals is not violated by P2P file sharing. With RFID, both privacy and safety could potentially be violated.
By the way, copyright violation by individuals in a not-for-profit fashion usually falls under civil laws, not criminal laws. I defy you to name any computer application that can be said to be used "almost entirely for criminal purposes". Software doesn't go around killing people or stealing physical objects or causing physical harm. Even if you put it in the context of computer crimes, the software that is used to hack into other computers is often the same software that computer people use to administrate or secure their own computers. What you're talking about is like wanting to ban crowbars because suddenly a lot of them are being used to commit robberies and murders.
And finally, it hasn't "always been accepted" that certain objects should be banned because people use them "almost entirely" for criminal purposes. I don'te accept it. I think it's bogus that brass knuckles, lockpicks, radar detectors (are those illegal now?) and other things should be illegal. I notice the crime rate hasn't gone down after the banning of those objects. Might that be because banning the objects fails to address the reasons for the actions of the persons who go ahead and commit the same crimes some other way?
No object should ever be banned unless it can somehow by its very nature cause harm to others without any human action being applied. It is the action that is the crime, and to keep the crime from happening you have to get to the source of why the person decided to cause the action to occur. I know, we aren't real big on prevention here in 'Merc-uh.
Getting back to P2P, do you have some answer for all the legitimate file sharers who will be banging on your door after you ban P2P software, asking you why in the name of Pete they are no longer allowed to choose to share anything they own the copyright for? The number of people abusing the system is meaningless, except to give you an indicator that there is some reason for these copyright violations that needs to be addressed. Banning the object is not the answer.
But go ahead and do it your way. Ban P2P software. Then you can go on your merry way, singing to yourself, "The Emporer does have clothes, the Emporer does have clothes!" Everyone will move to Freenet or its equivalent and completely ignore you. And if you try to ban Freenet and start arresting anyone who uses it (because 95% of the users are abusing the system, of course) you will sooner or later end up with a civil war on your hands, as the educated and rabidly freedom-loving minority realizes they have lost all freedom of expression and have no reason to continue allowing the current government to exist.
If a law were passed tomorrow
If you're talking about changing the window border so it looks the same as the native windows, last time I looked that was already a feature in the WINE setup application. You can specify that you want your WINE windows to look like Win3.1, Win98 or to be managed by the native window manager.
If you're talking about changing all the GUI widgets inside the windows, that would be a lot more work. It would be a lot of work to make it happen, and then a lot more work to make it look halfway decent in comparison to how it originally looked. Doesn't seem like a good use of developer time when we still have so far to go on basic compatibility.
The level of vitriol toward Microsoft on this site has gotten ridiculous--it's almost sunk to the level of discrimination, like racism but toward employees of a company.
That's surprisingly similar to "all readers of Slashdot have a fanatical hate towards Microsoft". Copied right from your post, nit-picker. The parent poster simply chose to paraphrase it.
Oh, and you'll have to show us an employee of a demonstrably evil corporation (Microsoft) that is not either following along blindly with company policy (a sheep) or following along knowingly with company policy (evil). Most of us have pretty rational reasons for disliking Microsoft and everyone involved with them. You have provided no real argument against our point of view. If you wish to argue against the parent poster's view which appears to be based on observable facts (the bahavior of people employed at Microsoft) then you should probably provide some alternate examples of observable facts. Show us all the people working for Microsoft today that DO NOT think Microsoft is the greatest, most benevolent thing since sliced bread.
In other words: Show me a sheep who shines his shoes, and I'll show you a shoe-shining sheep. Don't tell us our "vitriol" is misplaced or baseless without some evidence to back it up.
Hear, hear. I don't think most people have any appreciation for what Apple has managed to do with this new OS. 10.0-10.1 was still kind of a joke, but 10.2 was faster and had nearly all the necessary features for a desktop OS. 10.3 blows 10.2 out of the water for speed and features. The list of applications that I install after upgrading a computer to Panther is very short. And you don't need a G5 machine or even a G4 to run Panther because of the amazing amount of optimization that Apple has accomplished since 10.0 came out.
;)
OS X Panther is now speed-comparable to OS 9 running natively on the same hardware, to the point where I can be sitting here typing this in Firefox on what would be considered an ancient Mac, an old 350MHz blue gumdrop slot-loading iMac. I upgraded this machine from OS 9.2, and in many ways I can't tell much of a responsiveness difference between this machine and my dual-867 G4 at work. This old hardware has been revitalized and brought into the modern world with a simple OS upgrade. That, my friends, is a miracle.
(Caveat: don't try to install OS X or even boot any OS X based boot CD on a Mac this old without making absolutely certain that you've applied the latest firmware updates. We used to have two of these iMacs but one died after I booted an OS X install CD on it. Something goes wrong in the logic board or video board. Same thing happened to this one but I managed to find and apply the proper firmware update before it died. Scary, but now we have a computer that will probably still be usable 5 or even 10 years from now, with an OS that isn't stuck in AppleTalk land anymore.)
If you say OS 7/8/9 and 10.0/10.1 were all crap, I would generally agree with you. But you can't deny that OS X has definitely gotten faster and better with each release, and after using 10.3 you won't be able to deny that it is a kickass operating system for actually getting things done.
Just put me on that ever-growing list of people who still run Linux on a PC (I've even run Debian and compiled a few kernels in my time), but for my main machine I wouldn't have anything but a Mac running the latest OS X. Sometimes you just want to use a computer to do actual work. Or play. And for either of those, the new Mac rocks the house.
I'm the computer tech for an organization with 7 people and 9 computers... All new Macs, and all now running Panther. I consider myself to be one of the luckiest sysadmins in the world. The only Microsoft crap I have to deal with is Office, and that's only because OpenOffice isn't up to par on the Mac yet. (But for those who are interested in a MS Office alternative for the Mac, check out NeoOffice/J, a Java-based version of OpenOffice. It's still under heavy development but it seems to work OK. Oh, and download Firefox, IMO it looks and acts nicer than either IE/Mac or Safari.)
I guess it doesn't matter as far as slashdot is concerned though. They'd take down a bus full of nuns if they were a website.
What makes you think we wouldn't take down a bus full of nuns in meatspace as well?
Especially if the nuns on that bus use... Micro$oft Windows! DUN-DUN-Duuuun!
Cha-ching. Thanks, I'll be here all decade. Try the sarcasm and don't forget to tip your waiter!
I'm sorry, sir, but you are not insightful. Unless you can explain to me what's so "I'm so damn smart, look at me" about asking somebody who writes laws why it should still be illegal for me to watch a DVD on my personal computer which happens to run Linux. 90% of that interview is about legality and morality, and the guy just wanted to have a rational talk about the needs of both sides. Valenti and this Rich Taylor person had exceptionally horrifying responses to everything the interviewer said.
Here are a couple of the best ones:
TT: I'll tell you, because I'm an engineer, I'm an engineering student, and this year I built a high-definition television, from scratch. But because of the broadcast flag, if I wanted to do that again after July 2005, that would be illegal.
JV: How many people in the United States build their own sets?
TT: Well, I'm talking about engineers.
JV: Let's say there are a thousand. But there are 284 million people in this country. You can't have public policy that is aimed at 100,000 people when the other multi-multi-millions are also involved. You can't do it that way.
That seems to translate to "majority rules, right or wrong". Interesting thought experiment: Re-read the above after changing "engineer" to "civil rights user" or maybe "Linux-user" or herhaps "Mac user" or [flamebait]"minority ethnic or religious group member"[/flamebait]. According to Valenti's logic he would certainly give the exact same response as long as there was a correspondingly small number of people in whatever set you stick between the quotes, compared to the total number of people in the country.
And the best:
Will Linux users ever be able to view DVDs on their computers without breaking the law? "I'm sure that day is not far away," [Rich] Taylor said.
Right. Like it "wasn't far away" four years ago. These people are truly frightening. These are the kind of people who would wholeheartedly support the ideas of Thought Police and Pre-Crime style law enforcement.
And let me just make sure that all you DVD-watching Linux users truly understand the implications of what these guys are saying. THEY WANT TO PUT ALL OF YOU IN PRISON FOR WATCHING ANY ENCRYPTED DVD ON YOUR LINUX-BASED COMPUTER IF YOU DON'T DO IT WITH THE "LEGAL" SOFTWARE THAT DOESN'T EXIST. And if they could actually find you and put you in prison, they would, and they'd feel good about it. They want to put you away if you use your computer to view a DVD in a manner that they don't approve of.
It boggles the mind.
First, what's the deal with these apps, are they proprietary or open source? Are they only available through the Lindows/Linspire Click-n-Run thing? If they're open source, where can I download them?
/.?
Honestly, I don't give a rat's ass about the look-n-feel. As others have pointed out, there are a lot of open source apps that emulate the L&F of other commercial apps even closer (OpenOffice.org, XMMS, etc). The repeated copycat naming is not smart, I think that's the only reason anyone is even paying attention to this post. If they hadn't named it LPhoto, do you really think anyone would have spent the time to get in an uproar about it long enough to draft a post on
Seriously, iPhoto is one of the best apps on Mac OS X. It took some real genius to make an application that easy to use. I want it on my Linux box, and I don't care if you copy it pixel-for-pixel like the xPDe guys have copied the XP interface. That application (iPhoto) kicks ass. Where can we get this clone short of buying Linspire?
Anybody who mods this funny is missing the point. This is exactly the kind of application that Linux needs to have in order to make any headway on the home desktop of your average person.
However, I'm also a bit surprised that someone who is seriously trying evaluate Linux and get a sound card to work didn't try either Mandrake or Red Hat.
Jeebus. Isn't the whole point that they shouldn't have to try two additional distros just to get their bleeping sound card to work? Who the hell cares that they didn't try Manfred Linux or Dilrod Linux?
For those who may be too dense to get my subtle sub-point, the names Manfred and Dilrod will mean just as much to most people as Mandrake and Red Hat, so I won't be a bit "surprised" that someone who is just trying to evaluate Linux will fail to try them out.
The point is this person tried several distros, they all failed. Was it the fault of the distro? Not really. Was it the fault of Linux? Not really. But the end user could care less whose fault it is. All they know is this supposedly wonderful and desktop-ready operating system has failed them. Linux just ain't ready for everyone, despite what we would like to believe. This is not something that should just be sidestepped by telling people to try another distro. Unless you know of some new magical distro that will solve 100% of problems like this for every user.
To top it off, this person appears to have gone much farther than most people would ever go. Last time I had problems like that with Linux after trying only a couple of distros, I just said "eff this" and went back to BeOS. Not everyone has the time, money or patience to try out nine different distros.
Other big-name suppliers were pushing to get in on this but someone with the authority to make such decisions said "no Windows in registries" after Blaster/Slammer/et al took out most of the rest of the organisation while our Javastations kept on kicking on.
;)
I nominate this anonymous person as the prime candidate for the first human to be cloned. His/her clones should then be distributed at no cost to government organizations all over the world via a non-profit agency, while being marketed as a way to cut costs and make said governments more efficient and self-reliant. Just don't ever mention the words "Linux" or "open source" in the marketing materials.
Who's with me?
My guess why they went for Apple is probably because Darwin is bassed on BSD and the source is available. It may not be open in the sence that Linux is but it is more open then Microsoft ever will be.
;)
Or perhaps they became interested in Apple because sales of Apple systems have trebled since OS X came out.
Trebled.
(Score: -3, Worst Play on Words Ever Seen on Slashdot)
The following came to mind about halfway through your post:
blah blah blah blah GINGER blah blah blah GINGER blah blah blah...
(Gary Larson reference, for those who don't know.)
I shouldn't even reply, but this is just so over the top...
Is it really necessary to be so rude? Seriously.
Is it really necessary to always assume that anyone who doesn't agree with you is a "Windows Boy"?
Is it really necessary to call me an "ass", a "windows bred moron", "fucking retarded" and an "asshole"? Seriously.
Is it really necessary to assume that I'm anti-Linux because I say that obscurity makes it difficult to use? Your assumption is wrong, by the way. I've used Linux for years, but I shouldn't have to tell you that to avoid being called every nasty name in the book and avoid being berated as some "windows idiot". It is also possible to use Windows and not be an idiot.
"What in the fucking universe makes you" think that anything should be ingrained in somebody before birth, including stop signs? Nowhere, that's where. That's more of your over-simplifying.
"you people" What people am I a part of? I'm guessing the "idiot people" grouping. Obviously I'm an idiot, because I disagree with you.
Where did I come up with the idea that anything is beginner friendly? When you can plop down a beginner in front of it and have them using it productively within a short period of time, it's beginner friendly. When people can use an application for years (Windows/Linux/Mac, doesn't matter) and still complain about its lack of usability, there is obviously a problem. Just because it isn't a problem for you doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
You take things waaaay too far, you over-simplify, and you are a rude elitist. You seem to have the common Linuxite feeling that everyone else is an idiot and that everyone is against you. They aren't. I'm not. (Except for the fact that you're so rude, that does make people want to be against you whether they are idiots or intelligent.) It's like you're fighting The Man, or something. You need to chill. People like you drive a LOT of people away from the Linux community. But I'm sure you like it that way, because we're all idiots, and you're always right. Right? I don't know why you bothered to help those people set up and run on Linux instead of just calling them idiots. Oh yeah, you did it because it helps you in your fight against The Man.
Instead of replying right away, stop and think about your attitude towards others. Please. For a couple of days. Get some perspective.
Oh, and by the way. Gaim is just called Gaim on the Gaim website, on the front page and on the "What is Gaim?" page. I've been there before and went again just now. The word "GNOME" and the phrase "Instant Messaging" aren't on the front page at all. The "What is GNOME" page doesn't tell me what Gaim stands for. And wouldn't that be the logical place to find that sort of thing, if you could even find the website in the first place? Maybe you should find a better example, because that one doesn't disprove anything.
Plus, you can't really compare Gaim to AIM, because AIM has the sort of market share that means most people will know what it is already. Plus it is often referred to as "AOL Instant Messenger" on shortcuts and such. Go to aol.com or aim.com, and you'll see a big banner that says, "AOL Instant Messenger".
Oh, and this should make you happy: "Windows is user friendly, it only took grandma 50 phone calls to get to work!" Karma, here I come!
By the way two, everyone on this planet is an idiot in the right/wrong circumstances.
You're so right! And just like a corporation, individuals shouldn't be expected to restrain themselves from harming others through greed and law-breaking! That means it's entirely up to you to keep me from breaking your legs with a baseball bat because I want your wallet! I shouldn't be expected to stop myself from doing this, because it's in my best interest to do it (I get your money!) I would be BLAMELESS for my actions, just like Microsoft! Pooooor little Microsoft.
Riiight. A corporations job is to screw everyone around them and flaunt the law in order to make a buck. Why are so many posts like this modded insightful? I get soooo tired of that kind of stupidity. But I'll be happy to hold your view for a few minutes. Just come over to my place, and bring a fat wallet. Now where did I put that baseball bat... Gee, I hope you don't do your job and stop me from trying to do my "blameless" job of breaking your kneecaps.
Yes, we should ALSO have a beef with the regulators/governments, and we DO. But no entity that does the things Microsoft has done over the years is BLAMELESS. That's absolutely idiotic.
I can't believe how many threads here continue to bash microsoft and wonder why they haven't changed their ways as if by not changing their ways they are doing something wrong.
They are doing something wrong! They're breaking the farking law, crushing competitors illegally (not legally), holding back innovation and perpetuating unhealthy economies through a monopolistic culture! How much simpler does it get?!?
You're the one oversimplifying, and you also don't seem to have a point. Stop signs always say "STOP" for a reason. The message written on that red octagon is accessible to all, even if they can't read.
I daresay nobody has "left MS" because they're sick of applications with "idiotic" names like "Internet Explorer" and "Notepad". I do know a lot of people who will leave with disgust when confronted with ksirc, kaim, gaim, irc, licq and told they should already know what those applications do and know how to choose the best one for their needs based solely on the name. There is room for a middle ground in this world. You can reduce the obscurity of the names short of just picking one and naming it "Instant messaging client". Gee, how about "Gaim Instant Messaging Client", and "Licq Instant Messaging Client". Gosh, that was tough.
Linux is "regressing" because non-geeks want it to be less obscure? Reveling in obscurity is not a show of intelligence or progress. It just points up the fact that you think knowing something obscure makes you more intelligent than all those "idiots" out there who can't "read for 10 minutes" and magically gather together all the pieces of knowledge they need to understand the current Linux obscurity. People need knowledge, not intelligence, in order to use Linux right now. A diligent idiot could sit down and read a manual on using Linux, and do all the things you do.
The simple fact is, Linux and its applications are obscure and cryptic to regular people, and not just because of naming conventions, and not based on whether or not those people come from the Windows world or not. They're just obscure, period. And any attempt made to de-obfuscate the Linux world in any form is immediately met with contempt and derision from wonderful, understanding people such as yourself.
By the way, I'd like to know where exactly it was that I said Linux should be exactly like Windows. Oh, that's right, I didn't.
But gee, I shouldn't even open my mouth. Obviously a "(moron)" like me shouldn't presume to talk back to a brilliant person like you who can "read for 10 minutes". (So brilliant you can't even use the shift key consistently.) I'm surprised I could overcome my "laziness" and write these paragraphs in response to your sarcastic anti-social derision.
I agree. APT really is very very good. For administrators, and people who basically know how to use their computer. So is urpmi. And portage. Etc. But of course it all depends on your sources. It depends on you knowing how to open a terminal, find specific sources that are good and add them to your list of sources. And of course these sources don't normally have any commercial software available. Is there an "apt-get purchase adobephotoshopcs", which will automatically resolve dependencies by purchasing and downloading CrossOver Office? I didn't think so.
APT-like mechanisms are awesome for keeping up to date with the core system and utilities. For regular users who want to install specific commercial software and things that just came out yesterday, it doesn't work. Face it. What you're saying is that apt-get is great, if you're willing to give up on having access to any software in the commercial world.
It's immensely easier to go to Google, type in "download 'Fax alert installer'" to find the software, download the compressed DMG (which if you download with Safari is automatically decompressed, mounted on the desktop and opened for your convenience) and drag the new application into your Applications folder. It's so easy it's ridiculous. Want to uninstall it? Go to the Applications folder and drag the app to the Trash.
Apple has really given people the best of both worlds. There is a point-and-click interface for updating system software (Software Update) which will automatically check for new software and tell the user when new updates are ready to be downloaded. A couple of clicks, wait, reboot if necessary, and you're up to date. Individual third-party applications are another matter, but many of them I have encountered seemingly have an APT-like mechanism built-in! How cool is that? When you start up the app, it runs a check and notifies you if there is an update, and with one click you can start the update downloading!
Seriously, for the average desktop user, Apple has got this software thing down pretty good. Let me give you an extreme case of how easy things are on Mac OS X. I just wiped my hard drive recently and installed Panther (10.3). From an external FireWire mirror drive, I drag-n-dropped all the old applications that I cared about. From my old Preferences folder, I copied over the preference files for the relevant applications. Within a few hours, it was as if nothing had happened, besides the fact that I'd left a lot of cruft behind and the system was faster. All the applications started up with preferences intact. Moving each application was a matter of picking up one file and dropping it in a new folder.
If I'd gone the Archive & Install route, it would have been much easier. Having been corrupted by Windows over the years, I always prefer a clean start.
To conclude: APT and its brethren have their place, and from what I can see they are basically already in use on the system side. If your applications don't support auto-updating, complain to the developer. Linux could seriously use a similar method for installing those peripheral applications that will never be found in any apt-sources list. There's room for both ways of doing things.
I used to hate Macs. Now, you can add me to that list of people who use Linux but would have a Mac as my main machine if I could afford it. It's just so insanely easy to get things done on a Mac. And that includes installing software and keeping the system up to date.
So what's your point? That we should sacrifice usability for 9 out of every 10 users by not renaming "Ferbsniddle" to "Instant Messaging Client", because it might inconvenience the few people who had prior knowledge of exactly what Ferbsniddle does? You'd like everyone to require a mountain of prior knowledge in order to get into your distro and use it productively within five minutes?
.00009 precision! Cool, huh?
Every time someone says something like this, I wish they'd turn around and ask themselves if they'd like to have the brakes, gas pedal, steering wheel, ignition, radio and dials all in different shapes and locations on each brand of car. So you're used to driving a Ford? Well my Chevy is so much easier. To move forward, all I have to do is type in the desired speed on the dashboard and push this green button. To stop? Just tap pedal three and type in your current speed, then tap pedal four. It automatically reduces the speed to zero with an optimum deceleration curve! Steering? Grab that joystick thing marked "KLateral", that lets you control your lateral motion with
This is literally what much of the Linux "usability" experience is like. Only the users who want a really reliable car and/or don't want to pay for gasoline anymore, will stick with it, read the "man(ual)" and learn how to to use this "obviously superior" vehicle. After only six months, they'll be able to drive almost as well as they could with their old beat up Ford! Wow, such a deal.
c) what the OP pointed out is that since it doesn't cost them anything anyway, why didn't they put a supported OS like WinME on the machines, but instead chose a product that has EOLed like Win98. Either one will run fine on comparable Hardware.
My experience with WinME says otherwise. It seems to be a monster compared to Win98/98SE (which in turn of course is a monster compared to Win95, which will happily run much faster even on a 486/33 with 8MB of RAM, so if it weren't so unstable and riddled with security holes it would probably be a better choice for older hardware).
I agree with everything else you said.
Still, on the topic at hand, it would be really cool to see a few Linux distros with features equivalent to Win95 that would run on comparable hardware at the same speed. Anyone know of a distro that can be easily installed on a computer with only 7 or 8MB of RAM and a 486/Pentium-I level processor? Over the years I kept hearing some BS from Linuxites about how Linux will "revitalize your old hardware", but besides turning that old hardware into a non-GUI router or X-terminal, I've been largely disappointed.
That's what these non-profits and poor countries really need, a Free Software distro that will run with fairly modern features (modern web browser, office suite, email) on *really* old hardware. I know it can be done. The proof is Windows 95 itself. There's also that NewDeal Office thing which is a GUI for DOS that is supposed to run in just 2MB of RAM as a minimum, with an office suite, web browser, email, etc.
I have a feeling it could be done just as well if not better with a Linux distro, but all the distros I've tried require a lot more memory or a Linux guru who can maybe read and understand those decade-old Howto's about shoehorning Linux into low-memory computers.
And if I remember right that Howto ended up telling me I couldn't run a GUI on a machine that low-powered. Why not? Win95 is a GUI and it worked just fine on the same hardware. I'm always hearing about projects like TinyX and Linux-based portable devices (with GUI) with about the equivalent hardware as a really old 486. Why can't some of that technology be used to make those old desktops and 486/Pentium laptops usable again? I truly don't understand it.
If there were a real Linux distro out there that could just drop-n-run on old hardware like that as well as Win95 did, people would be going crazy over Linux in these sorts of situations. (Old, donated hardware.)
As it is, the appearance is that Linux keeps requiring more and more hardware to run any type of semi-modern platform (just not quite as bad as each new release of Windows), but that may just be my perception. Prove me wrong. I've got an old 486/100 laptop with 7.5MB of RAM. It's perfectly usable with Win95 and an old copy of Microsoft Office. Why can't it be usable with Linux in the same capacity? (As a desktop with a GUI, not as a router.)
Seriously, anyone know of distros or projects focused specifically on making *really* old computers usable again? To many parts of the world, this would be a godsend. Even in this country, I know a lot of people who would be really impressed if Linux allowed them to avoid having to buy a new computer just to continue to participate with the world safely (Internet, email, etc).
I find this to be untrue. I'm on OS X at the moment, and when going to the homepage with either Mozilla or Safari, I get a page saying "Upgrade to our Mac OS X player". There's a big orange image with "Download" on it, and a couple of other "download" links. They all take me to a page that requires my email address and a password, I guess to set up an account with them. No other download links to be seen on that page. It won't let me continue without a properly formatted email address and a password. And unfortunately "asdf@asdf.org" and "asdf1@asdf.org" are both taken already. Fancy that.
In other words, there's no "two clicks to start the download" for me. Don't know about the rest of y'all. As far as I can tell, their website still sucks.
Most non-geeks have no clue, period. I'm constantly hearing from mostly educated people that they're having a problem using "Microsoft" or "Adobe", by which they usually mean Word or Excel in the first case and either Acrobat Reader or Photoshop in the latter case. But it could be just about anything. People simply have no clue how their computers work, they just see the brand names everywhere so that's what they remember.
HOWEVER, people aren't entirely hopeless. If you sit down with them with a clear idea of what you're trying to explain, and explain that thing calmly and clearly in terms they can relate to, most will pick some of it up. If you calmly explain it a few more times, still keeping to terms they can understand, they'll get even more of it. We, the geeks, are the educators. The market and the education system has no desire to talk about something that doesn't make them piles of money.
If we treat people with respect and keep our ideas clear, they will listen most of the time. Stick to real world examples that have or can affect them. If you can't come up with a real world example, maybe you should go back and rethink whatever idea you're trying to explain. If it doesn't affect them at all, why are you harping on it?
Geeks are capable of changing the world, one non-geek at a time. Just have patience.
Please explain how pocket, portable computing would have been possible even ten years ago.
I'll tell you how it was possible. I used to own one. The Dauphin DTR-1. It wasn't exactly a pocket computer but it was a very small tablet with a pen-based version of Windows, which even included a nifty handwriting recognition system *gasp*. This was in ~1994, and I got it out of a discount catalog, so it must have been at least a year old at the time. I held it in my hands and got a lot of use out of it, so I'd say it was perfectly possible to have portable computing 10 years ago. Guess what, the software back then didn't need nearly as much power as it does now. Full size desktop computers at the time ran fine with a 486SX/33 and 4MB of RAM.
I really miss that old computer. Had a 486SLC and a 40MB hard drive. Not much but it ran Windows 3.1 just fine. That thing was so cool. Everyone who saw it loved it. And I've always wondered why I've never seen anything like it in the intervening years. Well, this article about Microsoft and Go pretty much explains it. After Go Corp. collapsed, Microsoft dropped the whole PenWindows and portable computing project. I can only imagine what neat things we could have seen if Microsoft hadn't interfered as usual.
Slashdot FUD, my ass. This is real damage to market innovation caused by a real monopoly. Put that in yer pipe and smoke it.
What happened to the notion of freedom, so rarely espoused or valued on Slashdot, of freedom from government intervention?
That notion of freedom can be found where you find the notion that I should have "freedom" from police "intervention" when I walk up to you on the street and start punching you in the face. But I'll be happy to espouse your notion of freedom, just come on over to my place and I'm sure you'll agree that it's perfectly OK for me to use my "freedom" to put my boot up your ass. In the real world, I'm free to put on a pair of earmuffs if I don't want to listen to you screaming while I kick your ass. Under your system (this is great) I'm free to do something to you, like duct-tape your mouth shut, to achieve the same objective.
Think about it for two seconds and you'll realize that's exactly what you've said to everyone here. You think freedom means you should be able to do what you want, regardless of the consequences to anyone else. That's not called freedom, that's called anarchy.
Freedom not espoused often on Slashdot? What freeping planet are you from? There are probably more people with Libertarian leanings here (read: people who don't like the government interfering) than you'll find almost anywhere else short of an anarchist convention.
I don't know about y'all, but I'm getting incredibly tired and depressed at seeing comments like this plastered all over the Slashdot pages, especially when they get an insightful moderation from some modder that's just as ignorant.
People choose Microsoft because it offers benefits that they consider worthwhile,
Well, um, DUH! Microsoft offers interoperability benefits because they've manipulated the market in their own image, along the way actively abusing their power over the market to make it difficult or impossible for any competitor to offer the same benefits! The best choice is Microsoft because that's the way Microsoft has designed the market, and that's supposed to be great?!? That's your idea of the capitalist ideal? How well do you think capitalism works when the consumer no longer has a choice? Hint: it doesn't. Read some economic history. The abuse of a monopoly position damages capitalist economies and is bad for consumers. Since there is no other way to regain control of the market and ensure competition and thus a healthy economy, the government is forced to step in. We don't like it, but that's the way it is.
1) People don't choose Microsoft because they have to.
2) People don't choose Microsoft because they're stupid.
Wrong, and wrong, at least for most values of X. You've said yourself, people choose Microsoft because of some benefit they see in it, and as many people have stated, most of those benefits come from the fact that Microsoft is an abusive monopoly and no other competitor is allowed to enter the market and supply those same benefits. In many cases, those benefits are seen as needed or actually are needed, so yes, people do choose Microsoft because they have to.
I'll rephrase the second one: People do choose Microsoft because they are [ignorant]. (Some of these ignorant people may also be stupid, this is a separate issue.) Because of the Microsoft monopoly and the massive marketing muscle behind it, most people who don't buy Microsoft because they have to will still buy Microsoft because they are ignorant of the fact that there are choices. So you are wrong on both points, except for a certain small portion of the consumer population that is both non-ignorant and doesn't have to buy Microsoft but they do anyway.
Who wants to bet that this guy, and whoever modded him Insightful, are NOT both Americans? (ob.disc. I am a natural born American with many generations of Americans behind me, so I can say whatever the hell I want about Americans, and you can't just blow it off as if I'm some foreigner who "just doesn't understand Americans")
It does not spe
I'm sure no one would mind if I stole both cars so I could try them each out. I'll buy them if I like them. I swear.
I think the question is, would they mind if you instantaneously made an exact duplicate of each car (with your own duplicating machine, of course) and took the duplicate out for a test drive. The manufacturer wouldn't like it, the dealer probably wouldn't much like it, but what about the owner of the original, and the original designer of the car? Would either of them care? It's something to ponder.
I use firefox/tbird on windows, but still, lets be sensible here. People can use the IE/OE combo without too much fear as long as they keep auto-update running.
Oh, I heartily agree. Because the patch is always available to be auto-installed at least 24 hours prior to the latest virus/worm/trojan being released in the wild. Therefore you'll never have a problem! You can continue to use IE/OE and the preview pane forever with a nice warm fuzzy feeling of safeness! Mmmm...
'I host your site. You've never google me. You dont visit my page. And now you want me to bring down this site. What am I supposed to think?'
I swear to GOD, I saw this EXACT string of sentences in a private forum the other day!
Ordered on the 29th of February? That sounds disturbingly like going to work on the 13th floor.