Sounds like all you did was throw manuals at these people and they wouldn't read them, ie it sounds like you didn't make it any more user friendly at all. The idea of making something user friendly is that they don't need to read the manual.
Have you connected at all and tried it? There are conventions that are very easy to understand:
say = say something to the room tell = tell a person something shout = shout something emote = do an action to the room quit = quit the program help = bring up the help files commands = show what commands are available
I can't go deviating from those otherwise everyone else who understands the commands is going to be rather unhappy.
At the same time, I'm getting stuck at working out new ways to try and persuade people that reading one help file and making a note of a couple of commands is the very least they should do.
I'm happy to hear suggestions on how to make it easier but one thing I can't do is rewrite the telnet protocol.
Yes I suppose I am throwing the manual at them. But how on earth can I make the "say" command any more easier or obvious on what it does? Or the "help" command for that matter? Whilst at the same time not dumbing it down so much that people who do know the system don't get annoyed and not changing the command set so that everyone has to re-learn everything. (the ewtoo command set is quite well established - since 95 - so any deviation from it would mean anyone used to ewtoo would have to relearn again)
If they had opened things up from the get go, they would now be the absolute standard for instant messaging instead of the de facto one for 90%+ of the people I know. Their stubbornness is what caused it.
Their stubbornness made them the market leader, which I assume was their goal.
Opening the protocol up would have been good for the users, but not for their business plan.
If you're considering AOL/MSN/ICQ/Yahoo then it's very doubtful.
Unless I'm mistaken AOL have the market pretty much sown up in terms of users. By opening up the protocol or moving to something more open, they will probably stand to lose more than they will gain.
And unless anyone can reliably convince them otherwise (and it would appear that so far they haven't) then it just isn't going to happen.
(As a side note, I use Trillian which combines a number of them including IRC)
You do realize that almost no AOL users that I know actually use the built in browser. They log in and go straight to IE on their desktop. Accessing websites through AOL is incredibly slow and clunky.
No I didn't.
Switching to Gecko (which they have been promising for over a year) won't automatically create 34 million converts.
Now that is a shame. Personally I think the only thing that will re-adress this problem with IE only pages is a very large userbase suddenly using something totally different (and more standards compliant).
Mind you, if only a third of them change, that is still 11 million odd people.
"Wow. Now I see what you mean about web sites not being compliant." She told me. "Our site looks ok, why don't others?"
"They don't properly test them, or think some flair is really necessary that's only supported in IE 5.X. They forget Web Browsing is like window shopping in a Ferrari. You move on to the next one REAL quick."
Sounds like your company president, when shown something, is fairly clueful.
The biggest problem comes about when people who see broken sites in a non-IE browser assume that its the browser that is at fault rather than the site.
When AOL move browsers, I'm wondering how many people will phone the support line and complain that their web-browser is broken because "the web site worked just fine on the old one".
"From the beginning, the situation has been that we listen to our customers and deliver what they ask for," said Whitney Brown, a representative for Shutterfly. "We have had very few requests for Opera--most of our users are on a PC using IE, and the next largest group is on a PC using Netscape. We have a pretty mainstream user base, which has moved away from the early adopters who may be aware of other browsers out there."
The solution isn't that hard.
As soon as AOL starts using Mozilla as their standard browser everyone who maintains an IE only page will be forced to sort their HTML out or lock out a potential 34 million customers.
Unless I'm misreading this, isn't the major thing about this virus that it runs automatically using an IE exploit?
I mean, that the whole going through your contacts/sent items list and mailing them is all very well, but I can write some perl that does that with your Pine folders easily enough.
I posted an article a while ago on this but it was rejected. It's a Wired article entitled "The Great MS Patch Nobody Uses". Granted it is Microsoft's fault this stupid stupid exploit happened in the first place, but it's also interesting to note that the fix for 80% of these problems have been available for over a year virtually unnoticed.
And finally, if you're running procmail then:
:0 B * Content-Disposition: attachment * name=.*\.(com|exe|pif|scr|bat|lnk|shf|vbs) { # Stick it somewhere :0 B: /home/accountname/mail/viruses }
does a pretty good job of filtering out that sort of junk.
You mean you use a stripped down version of 98. Since 95 doesn't like DX8.1. That limits you a little. A few games won't run w/o DX8.1. The list will only increase as far as the number of games you won't be able to use. Once DX9 hits, and probably already, you won't be able to run most newer games.
No, I definately run 95 just what I thought was the latest version of DirectX turned out not to be anymore. I didn't even realise that it had been updated!
This worries me somewhat. For the record I use Windows 2000 on the desktop and I'm perfectly happy with it (to the point of being accussed of trolling by some idiot who couldn't read).
I see no real need to go to XP. Win2K does everything I need and pretty well. If I want development I fire up Linux and if I want games I run a bare bones cut down version of Win95 (with latest directx) which runs like the clappers.
I can sort of understand why Microsoft want to do this, reduction of support costs, push to get people to move over to a largely unsucessfully taken up OS (saturation point has been reached where people have everything they want and don't see a need to upgrade) but at the same time I think that their 3 year support cycle is becoming more and more of an inconveniance - especially with this saturation.
Now I've not really fiddled with XP that much, but is there anything really in there that would make Win2k people go "oooh oooh gotta upgrade now"? I was having a hard time finding anything.
That was it. In short, it's a like a MUD, except it's full of people who sit around (mainly students and sysadmins) and chat about whatever they want all day. It's proper name is a "talker" and it used "telnet".
Now this is where the problem lies. I consider the interface to be obvious. You have a bunch of commands and help files called with "help" and it's all very easy.
But the people logging in from Slashdot, just didn't have a clue. And by that, I mean they had no idea what to do. These are people who use UNIX all day long and yet they were lost.
So I looked at the mistakes they made and I added handholding, better information, cleaned up the help files and stuff but STILL and this is the clincher: even then, people just didn't bother reading the information on the screen.
Even when you first log in, there are a couple of pages of information that tell you what to expect. When you actually "arrive" in the main room, you get told of the useful help file to read. Before you register if you type a command wrong, it again points you to that help file!
Most never even found the "say" command. They would log on, scrabble with a few commands, ignore the friendly points on the screen and the automated robot that pointed them to help files and in the end give up.
In the end, I now ask people who want to link, to actually point to a website (see my sig) in an effort to stop people logging on and being rather clueless.
So what am I saying here? Nothing can ever be too user friendly. But it's amazing (and sometimes amusing) to see that even those people who assume that they are cream of the crop when it comes to IT issues get totally and utterly lost using something that we have both 18 and 40 year olds using with little to no IT experience at all.
The problem comes about when there isn't enough testing. We learnt a lot from the confusion of slashdot people, but unfortunately you get to a point where you just cannot do any more but hope that users think for themselves.
(As an aside, if you can read and can handle telnet and some basic commands - you only need 20 odd to get started - then feel free to drop by and chat, website is here)
I've played with one for a while and it's a very nice phone. Lovely interface and the camera picture quality is better than the T68i and Camera attachment.
My only complaint is that it's rather heavy and bulky. You could put it in your jeans pocket but you wouldn't have much room for anything else.
Personally, I'm not going to buy one as I like my phones small and light, I already have a Cannon Digital IXUS v for photos and my Palm Vx suits most of my needs. I'm not really in the need of something that does everything in one quite yet...
What a silly thing to say, but it's the kind of thing that a weenie that uses Windows by choice [slashdot.org] might think
Coo, someone who has spent the time looking through my postings. Wow, you're really putting some effort in it. So just to make you look stupid:
Yes, I use Windows on the desktop. Big deal. I actually rather like Win2k (shock! horror! are people allowed to like Windows and read Slashdot?) apart from when it starts playing silly buggers, of course. All my mail and webspace is solely Linux, I develop using Perl, PHP and C (again under Linux). I do admit to fiddling about with a bit of VB, but thats mainly because I don't want to spend the time learning Visual C++.
At home I have Windows 2k (general stuff), Mandrake 8.1 (development) and Win 95 (games). Again, no big deal. I pick the OS that serves my purpose best.
Linux is a waste of time [slashdot.org]
Score 4, Interesting Not quite, try reading the posting again. It talks about how there is a certain cost to software (even free) if you have to spend a large amount of time getting it working.
you can't run with an ipod" [slashdot.org]
Score 2 It's hard drive based. I would be concerned about running with one. Actually on Friday night I was in the pub with a work mate and he let me have a good shake of his iPod and it worked just great. Doesn't stop me being a little worried about an hour and a halves work of bouncing about (I run Marathons) and how it will affect a hard drive. In the end, I think i'm going to wait for the gigabeat and have a think again.
spam is the fault of people who respond to it [slashdot.org]
Score 4, Insightful It partly is. Let me give you a clue. People send spam because they want your business. If they get your business, then they will consider spam to be effective. As soon as they don't get your business, they won't consider it worthwhile. Why do you think that you get the "enlarge your penis" emails? (apart from that fact that it might be a hint from your girlfriend?). They don't just send those things out if they're not going to get some stupid people actually cough up money.
Gator does not interfere with websites [slashdot.org]
Score 4, Interesting Read the comment. From the article, it points out that Gater fires up adverts when people visit that page. Gator isn't PHYSICALLY interferring with the HTML, it's just doing something that make people assume its interferring.
Linux on the desktop is dead [slashdot.org]
Score 2 In no place does it say, Linux on the desktop is dead. I just said that it was hyped up rather too much and in the end was bound to fall short. Linux on the desktop will never be dead unless every program for it vanishes off the face of the planet.
So, in short, you're an idiot and you can't read. And I have moderations of my points and insightful comments to my own comments to back me up. Looking at your last comments they tend to show either stupidity, trolling or blind faith without any facts to back it up. At least I have 50 karma.
I know what the good, bad, pro's and con's are of free software and commercial software and I pick whatever software is right for my purposes. I don't follow blind faith, I sit down, evaluate and make conclusions.
I can't believe i've spent 10 minutes pointing out the flaws in a trolling accusing me of trolling. I see the IQ of some posters is definately going down the pan.
ps. Oh yes and thank you. By showing me Debian playing movies on an Amiga, you have taught me that an Amiga can play movies. I seriously doubt that in a board room meeting that sort of thing would convince CEO's and CTO's to use Linux.
pps. Stick to the blind faith. You can't produce a reasoned argument for shit.
Either this will get modded offtopic and vanish or I'll get some answers (i hope the latter).
I looked at an iPod, it's nice but it's not suitable for running, i can't stick a firewire card in my work PC (where all the bandwidth is) and it's far too expensive for me.
So, I'm looking at the Frontier Labs, Nexus II. Anyone bought one? Is it any good? Do you like it? Major points for me is:
copy to and from
acts like a hd
small, light, won't skip
compact flash memory
For $200, it may not be everything iPod is, but looks a good bargain.
Although I can't find the facts to hand I'm wondering if the iPod is now a tad overpriced?
When it first came out the HD was the same price as the iPod, but as far as I can tell the Toshiba hard drive has dropped in price yet the iPod hasn't.
I wouldn't expect the iPod's price to drop at the same rate but at least something. Otherwise the markup on the product is increasing all the time and the later you leave it, the more you're essentially being ripped off.
I'll readily admit that I don't have the facts to hand but if this is the case, then it might be better to get an Archos Jukebox and put up with the lack of functionality (but gain on massive savings).
Good point, but history has shown that if something is worth paying, then people will.
Then,there is a little of choice:
Your three choices would be viable if you're talking about someone who reads slashdot and wants to do those sorts of things. However outside in the Joe Bloggs world they care very little about those points. Most people want one single consistent desktop and user interface. Why do you think Microsoft interface guidelines exist? Why do you think that most Windows based software makes it easy to find things like print, preferences, saving and loading? The whole idea of learn-once-use-anywhere applies here.
You're assuming that everyone else in the world is as tech savvy as yourself and wants to do the things you consider important. That is not the case.
In our office, a large number of people consider a new screen saver and desktop picture "customisation". Being able to customise their window managers, desktops and kernels wouldn't rank highly on their list of things to do.
The idea of KDE was planted in October 1996 when Matthias Ettrich posted a note to a newsgroup. Over the next couple of years meetings and discussions were held, and programming was done, and four years ago next week KDE-1.0 was released.
If you haven't already, check out the comments made to his posting. It's funny to think that something that got dismissed so easily by a number of people is now considered a large part of the way Linux "is".
If running OSX on a wintel box suddenly became very easy (and ignoring licence issues), would Linux on the desktop suddenly look rather doomed?
I've wondered about this and come to the conclusion that ignoring the sort of people that read slashdot and again I state for those people that didn't notice the first time ignoring the sort of people that read slashdot that you'd find that people would be more willing (and likely) to move to OSX because
Nice interface brought to you by the people that know how to do interface design properly
An excellent selection of software (iTunes, iPhoto etc. etc.)
Easy to use for the point-and-click users, no need to go hitting the command line, but power users can if they want
Office X. Enough said.
Stability
(I'm definately not saying the Linux doesn't have some of the above, but the steeper learning curve and not as good interface wouldn't go in Linux's favour)
Of course, we know it wont happen, there are far to many issues that would prevent it from happening. But, if OSX could run on Wintel boxes, would Linux ever see a look in if joe public and general corporations decide to leave Windows?
How in the hell did it take six hours to get Mozilla working? Either you have a really oddball setup, or were missing something, or were hammered at the time.
*sigh* I hope this was a joke otherwise the IQ level on Slashdot has hit an all time low.
To quote (again):
(before everyone bitches, mozilla downloads, installs and runs just fine - so in this case, the value of free software is fully realised)
It's called using a product as an example. Next time I'll remember such concepts are lost on some people.
Dude you are a troll. If you weren't you'd be stupid because you're citing a 1998 rant from a guy that now FUCKING uses linux on his laptop and his PC.
I think you're missing the point. The point was that any money you save from the click-and-run free software was currently lost in the hassles of getting it set up/sorted out. So in effect, the software is only free, if the time you have spare to configure it doesn't cost anything.
Let me put it another way, I don't consider Mozilla (as a product) to be free if it takes me 6 hours to fiddle with it getting it working. It has, in effect, "cost" me six hours of productivity in which I could have been doing something else. It all depends on whether or not you can attach a monetary cost to every hour of your work. If that cost of fiddling outweight the cost of another product that doesn't incur this, then it would be more worth my while going for the other product.
(before everyone bitches, mozilla downloads, installs and runs just fine - so in this case, the value of free software is fully realised)
When click-and-run really does mean that (as it currently doesn't, more click-and-fiddle-and-hopefully-run) then the fact it's free can really make a difference.
How many times have you heard people say "y is just as good as more costly x but it's a pain in the backside to configure/set-up so you might as well just go with x and save yourself the pain" or similar?
*sigh* I can't believe I'm trying to make an AC see light. I must be bored or in need of a serious challenge.
I have. However I have a couple of problems/issues with the iPod.
It's ridiciously expensive. Granted, when it came out, it was the same price as the hard drive that is in it. But HD prices have dropped, and it hasn't at all. Not even at a slower rate.
It uses Firewire, which itself isn't a problem, except when I want to use it on my work PC (for downloading, as I don't have a fast net connection at home) and IT will have hysterics if I mention that i'll want to open the box up to install a card.
I have no idea how practical it is for running. In fact, I don't know how big it's going to be. I like my electronics small, if the gadget is too big and/or bulky then it'll be a big pain to carry around and it'll end up gathering dust in the corner. Thats why I love the size of MD players, but even with the Net-MD, it's just far too damn restrictive.
The firewire card one is a big problem for me. I can't download stuff from mp3.com when I'm at home, my 56k modem just can't cope so it would have to be from work, but if they won't let me put a firewire card in (and they won't, I don't work in IT) then i'm SOL.
Looks like my best bet is the Toshiba Gigabeat - although again, it could end up having issues 1 and 3.
If I was trolling, I wouldn't have mentioned that Linux is a damn fine server. In fact, I wouldn't use anything else. I just personally prefer to use windows on the desktop and I'm happy to ssh into the server and do 99% of the things I want to do that way.
It would appear that you have two brain cells. Pity they're both fighting.
I'm implying that next year Microsoft may have shot itself in the foot (over DRM, privacy and viruses) so much that they'll be forcibly pushing people away.
Before people start claiming that Microsoft are doing that, I mean forcing people who live outside the Slashdot-World away.
Like it or not, it's only the few that are currently moving, not the majority. Maybe when virus writers get to the point where they are spreading IIS/Outlook viruses that totally trash your OS and files, then people will start to think about moving.
The entire point of linux is to cut costs, and 100$ to download free software is a huge showstopper.
I'm not having a go at you, but there seems to be this misconception that they are charging money for old rope as the software is free.
Maybe so, but bandwidth for you to download it isn't free, neither is hosting, testing that the products run fine, employing people to do all the tedious things that make sure the site stays running and 101 other things.
They are not charging you for the products, they're merely charging you (if you like) a proportion of the maintenance free (plus profit) so that they can make downloading software for the users as simple as possible.
There seems to be this strange idea in the Linux community that anyone who tries to make money is "selling out". Considering that unless the people who work on providing a service actually see some money to financially support them (and motivate them into not leaving) then you're never going to find people who work on open source stuff 100% of the time for free.
And I agree with you. Most open source repositories do suck. Even with a specific application you get presented with about 50 different choices (i586, mdk etc. etc.) which is totally confusing for the novice. Someone has to sort that out and present everything nicely, and unless they get paid, it's not something they're going to do as a full time job.
LindowsOS, at least in its present form, represents false economy. Any money you save buying a LindowsOS computer and downloading Click-N-Run software will be canceled out by the time spent coping with the many missing pieces.
That reminds me of someone who said (JWZ?) "Linux is only free if your time is worth nothing ". Despite all the commendable advances, personally I'll keep it as a damn fine server and stick with Windows for my desktop.
Next year though... things might be very different...
Slashdot Mirror
Have you connected at all and tried it? There are conventions that are very easy to understand:
say = say something to the room
tell = tell a person something
shout = shout something
emote = do an action to the room
quit = quit the program
help = bring up the help files
commands = show what commands are available
I can't go deviating from those otherwise everyone else who understands the commands is going to be rather unhappy.
At the same time, I'm getting stuck at working out new ways to try and persuade people that reading one help file and making a note of a couple of commands is the very least they should do.
I'm happy to hear suggestions on how to make it easier but one thing I can't do is rewrite the telnet protocol.
Yes I suppose I am throwing the manual at them. But how on earth can I make the "say" command any more easier or obvious on what it does? Or the "help" command for that matter? Whilst at the same time not dumbing it down so much that people who do know the system don't get annoyed and not changing the command set so that everyone has to re-learn everything. (the ewtoo command set is quite well established - since 95 - so any deviation from it would mean anyone used to ewtoo would have to relearn again)
Their stubbornness made them the market leader, which I assume was their goal.
Opening the protocol up would have been good for the users, but not for their business plan.
Unless I'm mistaken AOL have the market pretty much sown up in terms of users. By opening up the protocol or moving to something more open, they will probably stand to lose more than they will gain.
And unless anyone can reliably convince them otherwise (and it would appear that so far they haven't) then it just isn't going to happen.
(As a side note, I use Trillian which combines a number of them including IRC)
No I didn't.
Switching to Gecko (which they have been promising for over a year) won't automatically create 34 million converts.
Now that is a shame. Personally I think the only thing that will re-adress this problem with IE only pages is a very large userbase suddenly using something totally different (and more standards compliant).
Mind you, if only a third of them change, that is still 11 million odd people.
Sounds like your company president, when shown something, is fairly clueful.
The biggest problem comes about when people who see broken sites in a non-IE browser assume that its the browser that is at fault rather than the site.
When AOL move browsers, I'm wondering how many people will phone the support line and complain that their web-browser is broken because "the web site worked just fine on the old one".
The solution isn't that hard.
As soon as AOL starts using Mozilla as their standard browser everyone who maintains an IE only page will be forced to sort their HTML out or lock out a potential 34 million customers .
That should give them food for thought.
I mean, that the whole going through your contacts/sent items list and mailing them is all very well, but I can write some perl that does that with your Pine folders easily enough.
I posted an article a while ago on this but it was rejected. It's a Wired article entitled "The Great MS Patch Nobody Uses". Granted it is Microsoft's fault this stupid stupid exploit happened in the first place, but it's also interesting to note that the fix for 80% of these problems have been available for over a year virtually unnoticed.
And finally, if you're running procmail then:
* Content-Disposition: attachment
* name=.*\.(com|exe|pif|scr|bat|lnk|shf|vbs)
{
# Stick it somewhere
}
does a pretty good job of filtering out that sort of junk.
No, I definately run 95 just what I thought was the latest version of DirectX turned out not to be anymore. I didn't even realise that it had been updated!
Shows how often I play games :o)
Hows that? :o)
Shows how often I play games :o)
I see no real need to go to XP. Win2K does everything I need and pretty well. If I want development I fire up Linux and if I want games I run a bare bones cut down version of Win95 (with latest directx) which runs like the clappers.
I can sort of understand why Microsoft want to do this, reduction of support costs, push to get people to move over to a largely unsucessfully taken up OS (saturation point has been reached where people have everything they want and don't see a need to upgrade) but at the same time I think that their 3 year support cycle is becoming more and more of an inconveniance - especially with this saturation.
Now I've not really fiddled with XP that much, but is there anything really in there that would make Win2k people go "oooh oooh gotta upgrade now"? I was having a hard time finding anything.
uberworld.org
That was it. In short, it's a like a MUD, except it's full of people who sit around (mainly students and sysadmins) and chat about whatever they want all day. It's proper name is a "talker" and it used "telnet".
Now this is where the problem lies. I consider the interface to be obvious. You have a bunch of commands and help files called with "help" and it's all very easy.
But the people logging in from Slashdot, just didn't have a clue. And by that, I mean they had no idea what to do. These are people who use UNIX all day long and yet they were lost.
So I looked at the mistakes they made and I added handholding, better information, cleaned up the help files and stuff but STILL and this is the clincher: even then, people just didn't bother reading the information on the screen.
Even when you first log in, there are a couple of pages of information that tell you what to expect. When you actually "arrive" in the main room, you get told of the useful help file to read. Before you register if you type a command wrong, it again points you to that help file!
Most never even found the "say" command. They would log on, scrabble with a few commands, ignore the friendly points on the screen and the automated robot that pointed them to help files and in the end give up.
In the end, I now ask people who want to link, to actually point to a website (see my sig) in an effort to stop people logging on and being rather clueless.
So what am I saying here? Nothing can ever be too user friendly. But it's amazing (and sometimes amusing) to see that even those people who assume that they are cream of the crop when it comes to IT issues get totally and utterly lost using something that we have both 18 and 40 year olds using with little to no IT experience at all.
The problem comes about when there isn't enough testing. We learnt a lot from the confusion of slashdot people, but unfortunately you get to a point where you just cannot do any more but hope that users think for themselves.
(As an aside, if you can read and can handle telnet and some basic commands - you only need 20 odd to get started - then feel free to drop by and chat, website is here)
My only complaint is that it's rather heavy and bulky. You could put it in your jeans pocket but you wouldn't have much room for anything else.
Personally, I'm not going to buy one as I like my phones small and light, I already have a Cannon Digital IXUS v for photos and my Palm Vx suits most of my needs. I'm not really in the need of something that does everything in one quite yet ...
Coo, someone who has spent the time looking through my postings. Wow, you're really putting some effort in it. So just to make you look stupid:
Yes, I use Windows on the desktop. Big deal. I actually rather like Win2k (shock! horror! are people allowed to like Windows and read Slashdot?) apart from when it starts playing silly buggers, of course. All my mail and webspace is solely Linux, I develop using Perl, PHP and C (again under Linux). I do admit to fiddling about with a bit of VB, but thats mainly because I don't want to spend the time learning Visual C++.
At home I have Windows 2k (general stuff), Mandrake 8.1 (development) and Win 95 (games). Again, no big deal. I pick the OS that serves my purpose best.
Linux is a waste of time [slashdot.org]
Score 4, Interesting
Not quite, try reading the posting again. It talks about how there is a certain cost to software (even free) if you have to spend a large amount of time getting it working.
you can't run with an ipod" [slashdot.org]
Score 2
It's hard drive based. I would be concerned about running with one. Actually on Friday night I was in the pub with a work mate and he let me have a good shake of his iPod and it worked just great. Doesn't stop me being a little worried about an hour and a halves work of bouncing about (I run Marathons) and how it will affect a hard drive. In the end, I think i'm going to wait for the gigabeat and have a think again.
spam is the fault of people who respond to it [slashdot.org]
Score 4, Insightful
It partly is. Let me give you a clue. People send spam because they want your business. If they get your business, then they will consider spam to be effective. As soon as they don't get your business, they won't consider it worthwhile. Why do you think that you get the "enlarge your penis" emails? (apart from that fact that it might be a hint from your girlfriend?). They don't just send those things out if they're not going to get some stupid people actually cough up money.
Gator does not interfere with websites [slashdot.org]
Score 4, Interesting
Read the comment. From the article, it points out that Gater fires up adverts when people visit that page. Gator isn't PHYSICALLY interferring with the HTML, it's just doing something that make people assume its interferring.
Linux on the desktop is dead [slashdot.org]
Score 2
In no place does it say, Linux on the desktop is dead. I just said that it was hyped up rather too much and in the end was bound to fall short. Linux on the desktop will never be dead unless every program for it vanishes off the face of the planet.
So, in short, you're an idiot and you can't read. And I have moderations of my points and insightful comments to my own comments to back me up. Looking at your last comments they tend to show either stupidity, trolling or blind faith without any facts to back it up. At least I have 50 karma.
I know what the good, bad, pro's and con's are of free software and commercial software and I pick whatever software is right for my purposes. I don't follow blind faith, I sit down, evaluate and make conclusions.
I can't believe i've spent 10 minutes pointing out the flaws in a trolling accusing me of trolling. I see the IQ of some posters is definately going down the pan.
ps. Oh yes and thank you. By showing me Debian playing movies on an Amiga, you have taught me that an Amiga can play movies. I seriously doubt that in a board room meeting that sort of thing would convince CEO's and CTO's to use Linux.
pps. Stick to the blind faith. You can't produce a reasoned argument for shit.
I looked at an iPod, it's nice but it's not suitable for running, i can't stick a firewire card in my work PC (where all the bandwidth is) and it's far too expensive for me.
So, I'm looking at the Frontier Labs, Nexus II. Anyone bought one? Is it any good? Do you like it? Major points for me is:
For $200, it may not be everything iPod is, but looks a good bargain.
Many thanks to anyone who answers!
When it first came out the HD was the same price as the iPod, but as far as I can tell the Toshiba hard drive has dropped in price yet the iPod hasn't.
I wouldn't expect the iPod's price to drop at the same rate but at least something. Otherwise the markup on the product is increasing all the time and the later you leave it, the more you're essentially being ripped off.
I'll readily admit that I don't have the facts to hand but if this is the case, then it might be better to get an Archos Jukebox and put up with the lack of functionality (but gain on massive savings).
Or wait for the Toshiba Gigabeat.
(Again, I could be wrong, so please correct me)
Good point, but history has shown that if something is worth paying, then people will.
Then ,there is a little of choice:
Your three choices would be viable if you're talking about someone who reads slashdot and wants to do those sorts of things. However outside in the Joe Bloggs world they care very little about those points. Most people want one single consistent desktop and user interface. Why do you think Microsoft interface guidelines exist? Why do you think that most Windows based software makes it easy to find things like print, preferences, saving and loading? The whole idea of learn-once-use-anywhere applies here.
You're assuming that everyone else in the world is as tech savvy as yourself and wants to do the things you consider important. That is not the case.
In our office, a large number of people consider a new screen saver and desktop picture "customisation". Being able to customise their window managers, desktops and kernels wouldn't rank highly on their list of things to do.
If you haven't already, check out the comments made to his posting. It's funny to think that something that got dismissed so easily by a number of people is now considered a large part of the way Linux "is".
I've wondered about this and come to the conclusion that ignoring the sort of people that read slashdot and again I state for those people that didn't notice the first time ignoring the sort of people that read slashdot that you'd find that people would be more willing (and likely) to move to OSX because
(I'm definately not saying the Linux doesn't have some of the above, but the steeper learning curve and not as good interface wouldn't go in Linux's favour)
Of course, we know it wont happen, there are far to many issues that would prevent it from happening. But, if OSX could run on Wintel boxes , would Linux ever see a look in if joe public and general corporations decide to leave Windows?
*sigh* I hope this was a joke otherwise the IQ level on Slashdot has hit an all time low.
To quote (again):
(before everyone bitches, mozilla downloads, installs and runs just fine - so in this case, the value of free software is fully realised)
It's called using a product as an example . Next time I'll remember such concepts are lost on some people.
I think you're missing the point. The point was that any money you save from the click-and-run free software was currently lost in the hassles of getting it set up/sorted out. So in effect, the software is only free, if the time you have spare to configure it doesn't cost anything.
Let me put it another way, I don't consider Mozilla (as a product) to be free if it takes me 6 hours to fiddle with it getting it working. It has, in effect, "cost" me six hours of productivity in which I could have been doing something else. It all depends on whether or not you can attach a monetary cost to every hour of your work. If that cost of fiddling outweight the cost of another product that doesn't incur this, then it would be more worth my while going for the other product.
(before everyone bitches, mozilla downloads, installs and runs just fine - so in this case, the value of free software is fully realised)
When click-and-run really does mean that (as it currently doesn't, more click-and-fiddle-and-hopefully-run) then the fact it's free can really make a difference.
How many times have you heard people say "y is just as good as more costly x but it's a pain in the backside to configure/set-up so you might as well just go with x and save yourself the pain" or similar?
*sigh* I can't believe I'm trying to make an AC see light. I must be bored or in need of a serious challenge.
- It's ridiciously expensive. Granted, when it came out, it was the same price as the hard drive that is in it. But HD prices have dropped, and it hasn't at all. Not even at a slower rate.
- It uses Firewire, which itself isn't a problem, except when I want to use it on my work PC (for downloading, as I don't have a fast net connection at home) and IT will have hysterics if I mention that i'll want to open the box up to install a card.
- I have no idea how practical it is for running. In fact, I don't know how big it's going to be. I like my electronics small, if the gadget is too big and/or bulky then it'll be a big pain to carry around and it'll end up gathering dust in the corner. Thats why I love the size of MD players, but even with the Net-MD, it's just far too damn restrictive.
The firewire card one is a big problem for me. I can't download stuff from mp3.com when I'm at home, my 56k modem just can't cope so it would have to be from work, but if they won't let me put a firewire card in (and they won't, I don't work in IT) then i'm SOL.Looks like my best bet is the Toshiba Gigabeat - although again, it could end up having issues 1 and 3.
If I was trolling, I wouldn't have mentioned that Linux is a damn fine server. In fact, I wouldn't use anything else. I just personally prefer to use windows on the desktop and I'm happy to ssh into the server and do 99% of the things I want to do that way.
It would appear that you have two brain cells. Pity they're both fighting.
I'm implying that next year Microsoft may have shot itself in the foot (over DRM, privacy and viruses) so much that they'll be forcibly pushing people away.
Before people start claiming that Microsoft are doing that, I mean forcing people who live outside the Slashdot-World away.
Like it or not, it's only the few that are currently moving, not the majority. Maybe when virus writers get to the point where they are spreading IIS/Outlook viruses that totally trash your OS and files, then people will start to think about moving.
I'm not having a go at you, but there seems to be this misconception that they are charging money for old rope as the software is free.
Maybe so, but bandwidth for you to download it isn't free, neither is hosting, testing that the products run fine, employing people to do all the tedious things that make sure the site stays running and 101 other things.
They are not charging you for the products, they're merely charging you (if you like) a proportion of the maintenance free (plus profit) so that they can make downloading software for the users as simple as possible.
There seems to be this strange idea in the Linux community that anyone who tries to make money is "selling out". Considering that unless the people who work on providing a service actually see some money to financially support them (and motivate them into not leaving) then you're never going to find people who work on open source stuff 100% of the time for free.
And I agree with you. Most open source repositories do suck. Even with a specific application you get presented with about 50 different choices (i586, mdk etc. etc.) which is totally confusing for the novice. Someone has to sort that out and present everything nicely, and unless they get paid, it's not something they're going to do as a full time job.
That reminds me of someone who said (JWZ?) " Linux is only free if your time is worth nothing ". Despite all the commendable advances, personally I'll keep it as a damn fine server and stick with Windows for my desktop.
Next year though ... things might be very different ...