All CoS editors will do is edit the article from anonymous locations, such as net cafes.
Wikipedia being something that anyone can edit is also complete garbage. You can edit a page, sure, but if you're not a) a pseudo-empiricist (and I emphasise "pseudo," there) or b) a member of the elitist university student cabal, your edits get reverted immediately and without question. They usually don't even bother to quote the BS policy as an excuse, these days.
I gave up trying to make regular edits probably close to a year ago now. The policy is a continually moving target, and they have monthly fads ("weasel words," anyone?) about things they don't like. I've had stuff reverted for, "sounding too much like a magazine article," whatever the fuck that means.
No, it wasn't. As far as having to go low to find a system that can't run SQL, for embedded scenarios and a few other things, that does happen. If you can make a system which works well enough without SQL, (as ports does) it doesn't hurt to do so. One less software dependency is one less chance for things to potentially go wrong.
God, how predictable that this got modded Overrated.
Can the FSF/Debian cultist moderators please relent for five minutes? I write anything, anything at all that you don't want to hear, and no matter how actually constructive I'm trying to be, you immediately mod it down.
This is exactly what people are talking about when they say that the Linux community is its' own worst enemy. Get rid of the red haze in front of your eyes for a few minutes, and you might be able to see that with the OP, I was actually trying to help you.
We need a new mass-market/"newb friendly," distro, and we need to make sure that this one is NOT Debian based.
FreeBSD has the following technical advantages over anything Debian based that I've been able to see, and these could be recreated most easily with a non-Debian based Linux. These might be under the hood things, but they would definitely filter up to make life easier for the end user.
- Single point of daemon loading at bootup with/etc/rc.conf. - Comparitive ease of kernel recompilation that is so much greater than Linux, and Debian in particular, that it isn't funny. The config file is tiny, and completely documented. - Package management which doesn't subpackage, or have incomprehensibly stupid, bogus dependency declarations. Said package management also uses the directory structure of the filesystem itself as a database, so it can be used on low-powered systems which would have difficulty running an SQL database engine.
These are simplifications which, IMHO, Ubuntu very badly needs to adopt.
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.
Mahatma Gandhi
This quote might have looked intelligent the first time it was used; it doesn't now.
Also, remember something else. Gandhi, like Stallman, had a martyr complex. Martyrdom is a tactic which relies on a certain assumption about the moral nature of the opponent in order to be effective. If the opponent is amoral and doesn't care about your stance, then the moral high ground, and thus martyrdom as a tactic, is worthless. All they will do is laugh, steamroll you, and then continue with what they were doing anywayz.
There is a time and a place for martyrdom. If it is to be used effectively, it is definitely not a tactic for general use.
From what I can see, it looks like the premade Linux distro for the device still exists. If it's still preinstalled on the device by default, you have even less to worry about, since that will mean that no matter how much Microsoft try and promote themselves, they will still have inertia to deal with.
Microsoft are doing what they always do; banking on the concept that most people don't want to engage in intellectual activity, personal initiative, or personal responsibility. For the most part, it's nearly always a very safe bet for them; they have human nature on their side, and they know it.
If you want to beat them at this game, what you need to do is promote the advantages inherent in doing something different. That means:-
- Hardware resource efficiency from CLI or light GUI applications that they will never be able to match. Cplay or LXMusic for music, Dillo for limited web browsing, (but enough on an embedded platform) PCManFM for file management, etc.
- Greater security. Microsoft still cannot honestly compete with the root security model, and you can laugh at them if they try. Linux simply does not get viruses.
- As long as the "big two," contemporary desktop environments and ALSA are avoided, Linux also still has infinitely greater robustness.
Microsoft's solutions are vastly technologically inferior to UNIX. Always.
Microsoft cannot hope to compete on technical merit, but where they generally do beat Linux or the BSDs is via exploitation of the most base and/or negative elements of human nature; fear, laziness, reluctance to make choices or assume responsibility for those choices.
Stop fighting amongst yourselves about how best to get the neurotypical population to drink Stallman's Kool-Aid, and then gnashing your teeth when they predictably don't want to. That isn't going to work. Linux can beat Microsoft exceptionally easily on technical merit, and if you confine things to X apps, that is primarily what end users care about.
All Microsoft ever do...all they ever CAN do...is appeal to fear and laziness. They don't actually offer their customers anything better; they just keep said customers in a state of terror about accepting anything better, if said something better is non-Microsoft.
I think that at this point it's getting unacceptable to have a gigabyte OS and it still doesn't do anything will out adding more software.
I know we're supposed to be used to ACs making dumb comments, but seriously. There are plenty of small or potentiallybarebones FOSS operating systems available.
I can't comprehend why they'd be using anything other than NetBSD in space anywayz.
Neigh everyone mentioned either vi or emacs (I know they can run on Windows, but they are not acceptable as an IDE and all ya'll need to get with the times)
Yep. I've heard this song about a million times before. It's always the same snot-nosed, arrogant punks who are singing it, too.
Vi/Emacs are primitive, old, outmoded, and "unacceptable." The command line is primitive, old, outmoded, and "unacceptable." UNIX philosophy more or less in general is primitive, old, outmoded, and "unacceptable."
Meanwhile, guess what countless millions of people are still using when they want to get serious work done?
Being blunt, I'm guessing that all of the above have probably been around since before you were born, scrub, and a very large amount of money could very comfortably be bet on the assertion that they'll be around long after you've been buried in the ground, too; along with whatever flavour of the month proprietary junk you happen to be advocating this week.
Seriously, I'm getting really sick of hearing this assertion being made about just about anything remotely associated with UNIX, and it is, again, nearly always made by arrogant, demanding ex-Windows brats who think they know everything when in reality they don't have a clue.
If you think Windows and what it offers is so much better, then go back to Windows, and leave the rest of us alone.
If you want to be able to move around 50+ line files rapidly, Vim can be invaluable. It can also have syntax highlighting support, which can be very useful for reducing bugs.
The only other two things that IDEs do that I can think of are template/skeleton generation and app launching. Vim is scriptable, and modes have likely already been written to launch/manipulate just about every app you can think of, from tar to cvs to even things like IRC and email. There's even a file management/ftp browsing system for Vim.
If you need a template generator, writing one yourself shouldn't be too difficult; you can also do it in anything from Perl to PHP to shell, as well.
Vim is one program which a lot of people tend to knock before they've tried it because, when you don't know anything about it, it can seem extremely intimidating, incomprehensible, primitive, and deeply strange. I did it myself.
However, once you start using it, you'll discover that while it does take some getting used to, it is actually none of those things. It is the product of a very large amount of programming experience, and a maintainer and users who are programmers themselves, so they know exactly what a programmer's editor should contain.
gVim and Emacs both have Windows ports. Xemacs presumably does as well.
Although I don't use Emacs, application launching could work just as well within Emacs in Windows, as well; you could use it to spawn WinZip, a C compiler, cvs client etc, just like in Linux. The Lisp VM almost certainly works more or less the same, too.
Supporting those who seek the abolition of Scientology is one thing, and I support such an end goal myself.
Calling for the end of theism in all forms, however, is something else entirely. I realise that atheism (or at least fashionable agnosticism) is part of the established groupthink here on Slashdot, but as difficult as this may be to comprehend, for some of us, theistic belief is nothing but positive, and it doesn't inspire us to go out and rape, murder, or rob anybody either.
Most people here support the concept of entirely customisable cognitive environments in terms of shells, window managers, and so on; from the perspective of mechanistic atheism, a form of theistic belief doesn't need to be perceived much differently.
If you choose to go without one, for whatever reason, that's fine; I'm not evangelical in the slightest, and I endorse the right of anyone to be totally atheistic who wants to be. All I want is recognition of the same right of freedom of belief myself. If people aren't using theism as an excuse to commit crimes, (and I don't) there is no reason why theism should not be permissible.
Everyone here only ever talks about Linux in business, but this is as much a chance for any of the BSDs to gain in government, as well. FreeBSD can be used anywhere Linux can, and also has some advantages:-
1. Potentially much simpler per-host configuration. The three files in question are/etc/rc.conf,/etc/sysctl.conf, and/boot/loader.conf. Sysvinit isn't used, and custom kernel recompilation is a lot easier than with Linux as well.
2. The ability to fully emulate the Ubuntu "user friendly," desktop; the only thing missing is Flash support at the moment, which is only going to be needed by end users. Gnome, HAL, and dbus are all present, and FreeBSD also has devd, its' own udev equivalent, which means it can handle USB devices with the same degree of ease as Linux.
3. A much freer license, which is possibly to be the major point of interest for government. The New Zealand government would be entirely free to customise the system on a per-department basis, and then sell it in its' entirety, open or closed as they chose.
There's an utterly glorious refurbished junk shop here in the centre of Melbourne, which throws out headless 3 Ghz ATX boxes for $200 AUD. However, the only way they can afford to perform such magic is without pre-installing Windows.
When I last bought one, the guy who sold it to me warned me that there wasn't going to be an OS on it, to which I answered that it was going to have Linux on it anywayz, to which he said fine. (Although it will now most likely get FreeBSD)
Getting machines without Windows is only a problem if you insist on buying them from Dell or other similarly evil places. I suppose the poor corporations don't really have much choice for what they want, but I've never bought a prebuilt computer from an OEM, and never will. Parts give me complete control, at every level...and that includes the operating system.
With apologies to Michael Dell, but I've known for years that you are wholly 0wned by Microsoft; and I prefer freedom.
Learn from the unions, buy software made for Linux native if you want more of it. Continue to support businesses who do not support you and see desktop support for your operating system dwindle.
a) You're a Communist. (No, in case you're wondering; that isn't meant as a compliment;))
b) You're incorrect, so much so that I'm not sure how you can even make this statement at all. Commercial software is continuing to be developed, and it isn't hurting FOSS in the slightest. Microsoft are still working busily away on Windows 7, Apple are probably going to produce a new release of OSX soon, etc; and everyone in Linux land is also able to use whatever distro they want. I'm using FreeBSD myself right now.
This hard leftist fearmongering really has to go, once and for all. Stallman and the FSF were proven wrong about DRM, and nVidia having binary-only drivers hasn't destroyed FOSS, either.
It is hysterical, irrational, spurious, and completely unproductive. Stop it.
Ultimately this technology is useless, because why do you need a screen when any available surface will do? He's putting a rectangular screen down on a white table for goodness sake. What's wrong with projecting directly onto the table?
It's fairly simple to answer this question.
Compare, mentally. You've got 50 people on a train, wearing one of these with a wearable computer, (such as a hacked ipod) vs. 50 people on a train with head-mounted projectors.
The 50 people with head mounted projectors are all going to be looking for their own patch of wall. I'm not exactly sure how things are in America, but where I live in Melbourne, space tends to be at a premium on crowded trains. There would only be enough wall space for the three or so people who were sitting on the floor near the doors, and even then it'd be a squash.
We don't want frontal projection that anyone else can see, or that is going to impose on anyone else's space.
Linux runs on just about anything, these days, and if it doesn't, NetBSD does.
Get an ipod that can run IPodLinux, plug in one of these, and a pair of these, and you'll be ready to dodge bullets.;-)
With the above, they can sell as many of their crippled, gimped notebooks as they want; you can use that stuff and the hacked ipod to create your own system. If you don't mind the weight, there's still this old trick, too.
Microsoft can do whatever they want. All we need to do is route around them.
Stop being afraid of them; they have no power. We can do whatever we like, and there is nothing they can do about it...for the simple reason that there are so many more of us. Microsoft are only one company.
Find out what he's doing in the game, that he thinks he can't do offline, and then find a way to let him do whatever it is offline, in a way that won't interfere with his exams.
I got addicted to World of Warcraft for a while because playing a Survival Hunter allowed me to vicariously deal with my sense of inadequacy over the fact that I am unavoidably a civilian. (I've since also come to realise that having said sense of inadequacy was really dumb to begin with, but it was a childhood thing)
I was able to play a leadership role in a number of battlegrounds and instances though, and have some really positive experiences while doing so, (I was also GM of a levelling guild for a bit, which was good) which allowed me to process that neurosis, and also take from it a few elements which to some extent may have improved my personality as well.
That, however, is primarily what people get from MMORPGs, and it's the main reason why they play them. Most people are fairly disempowered and helpless offline. They might have two or three jobs, (that they usually hate) a wife and the proverbial 2.4 kids, station wagon, and labrador dog, and said existence can feel like a jail sentence, especially if you have to work long hours. They're also doing said jobs, most of the time, purely to keep their head above water. There's no creativity there, no enjoyment, and no recognition from the boss. They're not allowed to feel special, to feel like they're somebody important, or to really feel fulfilled.
But in Azeroth, (or Norrath, or $WORLD) it's different.
Offline, I'm an autistic, overweight, single, balding, largely socially isolated UNIX Beard with shortsightedness, a single kidney, and a leg length difference of three inches. I've had a single girlfriend, three years ago, which ended badly due to a combination of her and my baggage, and my father being a narcissistic, amoral, interfering $%^& as well. I largely haven't come across a single woman since who hasn't made fun of me when she's found out I'm interested in her, and whenever I've tried to interact socially with anyone else as well, or develop independence, I've usually gone fairly close to being killed as a result.
I couldn't participate in grading matches in terms of martial arts as a teenager due to said single kidney, and when someone tried to teach me one on one, because of the leg length difference I nearly dislocated my knee the first time I tried to do a kick.
In WoW, none of that matters. I have a far more attractive body, which is athletic and functions with perfect agility. I can travel anywhere I want, within a fairly large environment. Most of all, I can actually do the things that Army recruitment ads talk about, in terms of being part of a group, and eventually developing sufficient knowledge of the game to successfully and positively lead said group. I'm playing a class (the Hunter) which I love and find fulfilling, and I'm also meeting my social interaction and group belonging needs in terms of the instances and battlegrounds I do as well.
Let me ask you; out of those two scenarios, which do you think you're going to want to spend more of your time in?
The answer to that question, is also likely very similar to the reason why the guy in your example is addicted to the game that he is, as well. For some of us, real life isn't exactly a barrel of laughs.
They don't do everything the users want, but they don't ignore them. That was HURD.
Well, yes; we already well know about the FSF's tendency to try and tell other people what they want, rather than listening to said other people. Still, I'm not going to turn this particular post into another foaming-at-the-mouth rant about my unwavering belief that Stallman is the antiChrist; I've already written plenty of those, and they're in my comment history if you're interested.;)
Seriously. The day Linux is just like Windows is the day I boot OpenBSD.
Why do you think I'm currently running FreeBSD? If I were you I'd beat the rush.;)
The primary problem with being as much like Windows as possible is that those who are demanding it will eventually realize that if they want something Windows-like, they could, ya know, run Windows.
Frequently, being significantly different is better than being mostly the same.
You don't need to tell me that. I'm on my way to becoming a bona fide CLI zealot at this point. Windows might be great from the standpoint of superficial usability, but it's engineering's answer to the Ebola virus.
I was talking about what I've seen other people want, but I'm 100% with you in wishing that they didn't want it, because as you say, I realise also that long term, it won't do them any good.
But if I had made an awesome distro, or windows manager, or whatever; and no one wanted to use it, I'd feel really lame.
I wouldn't, simply because I recognise that the majority have completely screwed up priorities, and generally have no clue how to recognise real quality when they see it.
If you want to make a popular Linux distro, all you have to do is clone Windows. Case closed.
The popularity of Linux distros can therefore easily be determined by how closely they resemble Windows. Ubuntu is the one distro which has the most in common with Windows, which is why it will be the most popular. From the above heuristic, you can also easily determine how (tragically) comparitively unpopular distros such as Slack, Arch, or Gentoo will remain. They resemble Windows the least.
For some intuitive, illogical reason, I feel as though 5% is probably a reasonable current number where desktop Linux is concerned.
Virtually the only major growth going forward is going to be with Ubuntu. There simply isn't any other distro out there which mimics Windows closely enough for the Lloyd Christmas demographic to be happy with it. So in mainstream terms, we're going to have a Ubuntu monoculture; to the uneducated, Ubuntu and Linux will become synonyms.
I think however that it's too early to tell, at this point, what longer term effect Ubuntu's mainstream success will have on the broader Linux community. I've already seen some vague suggestions online that in some cases Ubuntu acts as a gateway drug for Linux; Ubuntu is used at first, and then as a user learns more, and develops more confidence, they sometimes move somewhere else, distro-wise. I don't think this happens a lot, though; something tells me that with most people, Ubuntu's long-term retention rate will be high, with most staying in GNOME and avoiding the CLI more or less completely.
The overwhelming mainstream demand of Linux is that it become as much a clone of Windows as possible. I believe that this will greatly damage Linux's technical integrity long term, which is why I've moved to FreeBSD, which I am hoping will remain relatively immune from the insistent screaming of Windows refugees for a monetarily free XP clone. I had one Ubuntu user inform me on IRC, only a few hours ago, that Linux's primary reason for existence was to apparently provide users like her with only a marginally more stable Windows clone; it is interesting just how arrogant and forceful Windows refugees are becoming with this demand.
Of course, what I still haven't figured out is why those people who consider it important for Linux to become mainstream, do feel such a desperate need for that to happen. The one thing I can promise you is that mainstream adoption will not ultimately do good things for Linux; it is a fundamental law in my mind that the quality of any given thing is inversely proportional to its' degree of popularity.
Apart from anything else, Windows refugees generally have absolutely no clue what they are doing where serious software development is concerned. As more ex-Windows users migrate to Linux, there is, I feel, sound cause for therefore believing that Linux's overall code quality will begin to drop. The only thing Windows users care about is that computer use is, "easy." They don't know or care about stability, security, or hardware efficiency, and they also don't understand that a severe tradeoff nearly always exists between robustness and usability at the best of times.
The facts that Slackware is a rock-solid server distro, but not used much on the desktop, while Ubuntu is a nightmare in technical terms, but is the primary desktop distro, are not coincidences. Robustness and extreme usability are virtually mutually exclusive. For one to be present, the other must go by definition.
A corporation has other features besides that one, and I greatly suspect he was referring to those other features.
You are correct.
We are currently experiencing the greatest planetary extinction since the Jurassic Period. We see, with weather turbulence, continued proof of the changes in climate. The city near where I live, had its' hottest day on record this past summer, and we are running desperately short of water.
Corporations are wiping out life in all its' forms; human and animal. They poison the air, the water, sell us what is advertised as food but actually harms us terribly, and do innumerable other forms of damage...and at the end of it all, we are expected to absolve them of all of it with the saying,
Slashdot Mirror
All CoS editors will do is edit the article from anonymous locations, such as net cafes.
Wikipedia being something that anyone can edit is also complete garbage. You can edit a page, sure, but if you're not a) a pseudo-empiricist (and I emphasise "pseudo," there) or b) a member of the elitist university student cabal, your edits get reverted immediately and without question. They usually don't even bother to quote the BS policy as an excuse, these days.
I gave up trying to make regular edits probably close to a year ago now. The policy is a continually moving target, and they have monthly fads ("weasel words," anyone?) about things they don't like. I've had stuff reverted for, "sounding too much like a magazine article," whatever the fuck that means.
It's useless.
That's a troll, right?
No, it wasn't. As far as having to go low to find a system that can't run SQL, for embedded scenarios and a few other things, that does happen. If you can make a system which works well enough without SQL, (as ports does) it doesn't hurt to do so. One less software dependency is one less chance for things to potentially go wrong.
All your points comparing FreeBSD to Debian are completely bogus. There are very good reasons why Debian decided on the design it uses.
I'd love to hear them, if you're willing to enlighten me.
Also, that branding issue you mention hasn't been too much of a problem for Apple; they just used theirs.
God, how predictable that this got modded Overrated.
Can the FSF/Debian cultist moderators please relent for five minutes? I write anything, anything at all that you don't want to hear, and no matter how actually constructive I'm trying to be, you immediately mod it down.
This is exactly what people are talking about when they say that the Linux community is its' own worst enemy. Get rid of the red haze in front of your eyes for a few minutes, and you might be able to see that with the OP, I was actually trying to help you.
We need a new mass-market/"newb friendly," distro, and we need to make sure that this one is NOT Debian based.
FreeBSD has the following technical advantages over anything Debian based that I've been able to see, and these could be recreated most easily with a non-Debian based Linux. These might be under the hood things, but they would definitely filter up to make life easier for the end user.
- Single point of daemon loading at bootup with /etc/rc.conf.
- Comparitive ease of kernel recompilation that is so much greater than Linux, and Debian in particular, that it isn't funny. The config file is tiny, and completely documented.
- Package management which doesn't subpackage, or have incomprehensibly stupid, bogus dependency declarations. Said package management also uses the directory structure of the filesystem itself as a database, so it can be used on low-powered systems which would have difficulty running an SQL database engine.
These are simplifications which, IMHO, Ubuntu very badly needs to adopt.
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.
Mahatma Gandhi
This quote might have looked intelligent the first time it was used; it doesn't now.
Also, remember something else. Gandhi, like Stallman, had a martyr complex. Martyrdom is a tactic which relies on a certain assumption about the moral nature of the opponent in order to be effective. If the opponent is amoral and doesn't care about your stance, then the moral high ground, and thus martyrdom as a tactic, is worthless. All they will do is laugh, steamroll you, and then continue with what they were doing anywayz.
There is a time and a place for martyrdom. If it is to be used effectively, it is definitely not a tactic for general use.
Likewise, don't be a parrot.
...and in this case, it's entirely legitimate.
From what I can see, it looks like the premade Linux distro for the device still exists. If it's still preinstalled on the device by default, you have even less to worry about, since that will mean that no matter how much Microsoft try and promote themselves, they will still have inertia to deal with.
Microsoft are doing what they always do; banking on the concept that most people don't want to engage in intellectual activity, personal initiative, or personal responsibility. For the most part, it's nearly always a very safe bet for them; they have human nature on their side, and they know it.
If you want to beat them at this game, what you need to do is promote the advantages inherent in doing something different. That means:-
- Hardware resource efficiency from CLI or light GUI applications that they will never be able to match. Cplay or LXMusic for music, Dillo for limited web browsing, (but enough on an embedded platform) PCManFM for file management, etc.
- Greater security. Microsoft still cannot honestly compete with the root security model, and you can laugh at them if they try. Linux simply does not get viruses.
- As long as the "big two," contemporary desktop environments and ALSA are avoided, Linux also still has infinitely greater robustness.
Microsoft's solutions are vastly technologically inferior to UNIX. Always.
Microsoft cannot hope to compete on technical merit, but where they generally do beat Linux or the BSDs is via exploitation of the most base and/or negative elements of human nature; fear, laziness, reluctance to make choices or assume responsibility for those choices.
Stop fighting amongst yourselves about how best to get the neurotypical population to drink Stallman's Kool-Aid, and then gnashing your teeth when they predictably don't want to. That isn't going to work. Linux can beat Microsoft exceptionally easily on technical merit, and if you confine things to X apps, that is primarily what end users care about.
All Microsoft ever do...all they ever CAN do...is appeal to fear and laziness. They don't actually offer their customers anything better; they just keep said customers in a state of terror about accepting anything better, if said something better is non-Microsoft.
I think that at this point it's getting unacceptable to have a gigabyte OS and it still doesn't do anything will out adding more software.
I know we're supposed to be used to ACs making dumb comments, but seriously. There are plenty of small or potentially bare bones FOSS operating systems available.
I can't comprehend why they'd be using anything other than NetBSD in space anywayz.
Neigh everyone mentioned either vi or emacs (I know they can run on Windows, but they are not acceptable as an IDE and all ya'll need to get with the times)
Yep. I've heard this song about a million times before. It's always the same snot-nosed, arrogant punks who are singing it, too.
Vi/Emacs are primitive, old, outmoded, and "unacceptable."
The command line is primitive, old, outmoded, and "unacceptable."
UNIX philosophy more or less in general is primitive, old, outmoded, and "unacceptable."
Meanwhile, guess what countless millions of people are still using when they want to get serious work done?
Being blunt, I'm guessing that all of the above have probably been around since before you were born, scrub, and a very large amount of money could very comfortably be bet on the assertion that they'll be around long after you've been buried in the ground, too; along with whatever flavour of the month proprietary junk you happen to be advocating this week.
Seriously, I'm getting really sick of hearing this assertion being made about just about anything remotely associated with UNIX, and it is, again, nearly always made by arrogant, demanding ex-Windows brats who think they know everything when in reality they don't have a clue.
If you think Windows and what it offers is so much better, then go back to Windows, and leave the rest of us alone.
If you want to be able to move around 50+ line files rapidly, Vim can be invaluable. It can also have syntax highlighting support, which can be very useful for reducing bugs.
The only other two things that IDEs do that I can think of are template/skeleton generation and app launching. Vim is scriptable, and modes have likely already been written to launch/manipulate just about every app you can think of, from tar to cvs to even things like IRC and email. There's even a file management/ftp browsing system for Vim.
If you need a template generator, writing one yourself shouldn't be too difficult; you can also do it in anything from Perl to PHP to shell, as well.
Vim is one program which a lot of people tend to knock before they've tried it because, when you don't know anything about it, it can seem extremely intimidating, incomprehensible, primitive, and deeply strange. I did it myself.
However, once you start using it, you'll discover that while it does take some getting used to, it is actually none of those things. It is the product of a very large amount of programming experience, and a maintainer and users who are programmers themselves, so they know exactly what a programmer's editor should contain.
But what I'm amused with is your desktop environment analogy for belief systems. Bizarre, geeky, precise. Congrats.
Thanks. I was thinking of transhumanism at the time. It's exactly the sort of analogy they'd make, from what I've seen. ;)
gVim and Emacs both have Windows ports. Xemacs presumably does as well.
Although I don't use Emacs, application launching could work just as well within Emacs in Windows, as well; you could use it to spawn WinZip, a C compiler, cvs client etc, just like in Linux. The Lisp VM almost certainly works more or less the same, too.
Supporting those who seek the abolition of Scientology is one thing, and I support such an end goal myself.
Calling for the end of theism in all forms, however, is something else entirely. I realise that atheism (or at least fashionable agnosticism) is part of the established groupthink here on Slashdot, but as difficult as this may be to comprehend, for some of us, theistic belief is nothing but positive, and it doesn't inspire us to go out and rape, murder, or rob anybody either.
Most people here support the concept of entirely customisable cognitive environments in terms of shells, window managers, and so on; from the perspective of mechanistic atheism, a form of theistic belief doesn't need to be perceived much differently.
If you choose to go without one, for whatever reason, that's fine; I'm not evangelical in the slightest, and I endorse the right of anyone to be totally atheistic who wants to be. All I want is recognition of the same right of freedom of belief myself. If people aren't using theism as an excuse to commit crimes, (and I don't) there is no reason why theism should not be permissible.
Everyone here only ever talks about Linux in business, but this is as much a chance for any of the BSDs to gain in government, as well. FreeBSD can be used anywhere Linux can, and also has some advantages:-
1. Potentially much simpler per-host configuration. The three files in question are /etc/rc.conf, /etc/sysctl.conf, and /boot/loader.conf. Sysvinit isn't used, and custom kernel recompilation is a lot easier than with Linux as well.
2. The ability to fully emulate the Ubuntu "user friendly," desktop; the only thing missing is Flash support at the moment, which is only going to be needed by end users. Gnome, HAL, and dbus are all present, and FreeBSD also has devd, its' own udev equivalent, which means it can handle USB devices with the same degree of ease as Linux.
3. A much freer license, which is possibly to be the major point of interest for government. The New Zealand government would be entirely free to customise the system on a per-department basis, and then sell it in its' entirety, open or closed as they chose.
There's an utterly glorious refurbished junk shop here in the centre of Melbourne, which throws out headless 3 Ghz ATX boxes for $200 AUD. However, the only way they can afford to perform such magic is without pre-installing Windows.
When I last bought one, the guy who sold it to me warned me that there wasn't going to be an OS on it, to which I answered that it was going to have Linux on it anywayz, to which he said fine. (Although it will now most likely get FreeBSD)
Getting machines without Windows is only a problem if you insist on buying them from Dell or other similarly evil places. I suppose the poor corporations don't really have much choice for what they want, but I've never bought a prebuilt computer from an OEM, and never will. Parts give me complete control, at every level...and that includes the operating system.
With apologies to Michael Dell, but I've known for years that you are wholly 0wned by Microsoft; and I prefer freedom.
Learn from the unions, buy software made for Linux native if you want more of it. Continue to support businesses who do not support you and see desktop support for your operating system dwindle.
a) You're a Communist. (No, in case you're wondering; that isn't meant as a compliment ;))
b) You're incorrect, so much so that I'm not sure how you can even make this statement at all. Commercial software is continuing to be developed, and it isn't hurting FOSS in the slightest. Microsoft are still working busily away on Windows 7, Apple are probably going to produce a new release of OSX soon, etc; and everyone in Linux land is also able to use whatever distro they want. I'm using FreeBSD myself right now.
This hard leftist fearmongering really has to go, once and for all. Stallman and the FSF were proven wrong about DRM, and nVidia having binary-only drivers hasn't destroyed FOSS, either.
It is hysterical, irrational, spurious, and completely unproductive. Stop it.
Ultimately this technology is useless, because why do you need a screen when any available surface will do? He's putting a rectangular screen down on a white table for goodness sake. What's wrong with projecting directly onto the table?
It's fairly simple to answer this question.
Compare, mentally. You've got 50 people on a train, wearing one of these with a wearable computer, (such as a hacked ipod) vs. 50 people on a train with head-mounted projectors.
The 50 people with head mounted projectors are all going to be looking for their own patch of wall. I'm not exactly sure how things are in America, but where I live in Melbourne, space tends to be at a premium on crowded trains. There would only be enough wall space for the three or so people who were sitting on the floor near the doors, and even then it'd be a squash.
We don't want frontal projection that anyone else can see, or that is going to impose on anyone else's space.
Linux runs on just about anything, these days, and if it doesn't, NetBSD does.
Get an ipod that can run IPodLinux, plug in one of these, and a pair of these, and you'll be ready to dodge bullets. ;-)
With the above, they can sell as many of their crippled, gimped notebooks as they want; you can use that stuff and the hacked ipod to create your own system. If you don't mind the weight, there's still this old trick, too.
Microsoft can do whatever they want. All we need to do is route around them.
Stop being afraid of them; they have no power. We can do whatever we like, and there is nothing they can do about it...for the simple reason that there are so many more of us. Microsoft are only one company.
"It's simple."
Find out what he's doing in the game, that he thinks he can't do offline, and then find a way to let him do whatever it is offline, in a way that won't interfere with his exams.
I got addicted to World of Warcraft for a while because playing a Survival Hunter allowed me to vicariously deal with my sense of inadequacy over the fact that I am unavoidably a civilian. (I've since also come to realise that having said sense of inadequacy was really dumb to begin with, but it was a childhood thing)
I was able to play a leadership role in a number of battlegrounds and instances though, and have some really positive experiences while doing so, (I was also GM of a levelling guild for a bit, which was good) which allowed me to process that neurosis, and also take from it a few elements which to some extent may have improved my personality as well.
That, however, is primarily what people get from MMORPGs, and it's the main reason why they play them. Most people are fairly disempowered and helpless offline. They might have two or three jobs, (that they usually hate) a wife and the proverbial 2.4 kids, station wagon, and labrador dog, and said existence can feel like a jail sentence, especially if you have to work long hours. They're also doing said jobs, most of the time, purely to keep their head above water. There's no creativity there, no enjoyment, and no recognition from the boss. They're not allowed to feel special, to feel like they're somebody important, or to really feel fulfilled.
But in Azeroth, (or Norrath, or $WORLD) it's different.
Offline, I'm an autistic, overweight, single, balding, largely socially isolated UNIX Beard with shortsightedness, a single kidney, and a leg length difference of three inches. I've had a single girlfriend, three years ago, which ended badly due to a combination of her and my baggage, and my father being a narcissistic, amoral, interfering $%^& as well. I largely haven't come across a single woman since who hasn't made fun of me when she's found out I'm interested in her, and whenever I've tried to interact socially with anyone else as well, or develop independence, I've usually gone fairly close to being killed as a result.
I couldn't participate in grading matches in terms of martial arts as a teenager due to said single kidney, and when someone tried to teach me one on one, because of the leg length difference I nearly dislocated my knee the first time I tried to do a kick.
In WoW, none of that matters. I have a far more attractive body, which is athletic and functions with perfect agility. I can travel anywhere I want, within a fairly large environment. Most of all, I can actually do the things that Army recruitment ads talk about, in terms of being part of a group, and eventually developing sufficient knowledge of the game to successfully and positively lead said group. I'm playing a class (the Hunter) which I love and find fulfilling, and I'm also meeting my social interaction and group belonging needs in terms of the instances and battlegrounds I do as well.
Let me ask you; out of those two scenarios, which do you think you're going to want to spend more of your time in?
The answer to that question, is also likely very similar to the reason why the guy in your example is addicted to the game that he is, as well. For some of us, real life isn't exactly a barrel of laughs.
Anyway, I sense a lot of snobbery in your comment. Ditching an OS for another because the masses are starting to know about it?
That hasn't been the only reason, no. I have really enjoyed using FreeBSD, as well.
They don't do everything the users want, but they don't ignore them. That was HURD.
Well, yes; we already well know about the FSF's tendency to try and tell other people what they want, rather than listening to said other people. Still, I'm not going to turn this particular post into another foaming-at-the-mouth rant about my unwavering belief that Stallman is the antiChrist; I've already written plenty of those, and they're in my comment history if you're interested. ;)
Seriously. The day Linux is just like Windows is the day I boot OpenBSD.
Why do you think I'm currently running FreeBSD? If I were you I'd beat the rush. ;)
The primary problem with being as much like Windows as possible is that those who are demanding it will eventually realize that if they want something Windows-like, they could, ya know, run Windows.
Frequently, being significantly different is better than being mostly the same.
You don't need to tell me that. I'm on my way to becoming a bona fide CLI zealot at this point. Windows might be great from the standpoint of superficial usability, but it's engineering's answer to the Ebola virus.
I was talking about what I've seen other people want, but I'm 100% with you in wishing that they didn't want it, because as you say, I realise also that long term, it won't do them any good.
But if I had made an awesome distro, or windows manager, or whatever; and no one wanted to use it, I'd feel really lame.
I wouldn't, simply because I recognise that the majority have completely screwed up priorities, and generally have no clue how to recognise real quality when they see it.
If you want to make a popular Linux distro, all you have to do is clone Windows. Case closed.
The popularity of Linux distros can therefore easily be determined by how closely they resemble Windows. Ubuntu is the one distro which has the most in common with Windows, which is why it will be the most popular. From the above heuristic, you can also easily determine how (tragically) comparitively unpopular distros such as Slack, Arch, or Gentoo will remain. They resemble Windows the least.
For some intuitive, illogical reason, I feel as though 5% is probably a reasonable current number where desktop Linux is concerned.
Virtually the only major growth going forward is going to be with Ubuntu. There simply isn't any other distro out there which mimics Windows closely enough for the Lloyd Christmas demographic to be happy with it. So in mainstream terms, we're going to have a Ubuntu monoculture; to the uneducated, Ubuntu and Linux will become synonyms.
I think however that it's too early to tell, at this point, what longer term effect Ubuntu's mainstream success will have on the broader Linux community. I've already seen some vague suggestions online that in some cases Ubuntu acts as a gateway drug for Linux; Ubuntu is used at first, and then as a user learns more, and develops more confidence, they sometimes move somewhere else, distro-wise. I don't think this happens a lot, though; something tells me that with most people, Ubuntu's long-term retention rate will be high, with most staying in GNOME and avoiding the CLI more or less completely.
The overwhelming mainstream demand of Linux is that it become as much a clone of Windows as possible. I believe that this will greatly damage Linux's technical integrity long term, which is why I've moved to FreeBSD, which I am hoping will remain relatively immune from the insistent screaming of Windows refugees for a monetarily free XP clone. I had one Ubuntu user inform me on IRC, only a few hours ago, that Linux's primary reason for existence was to apparently provide users like her with only a marginally more stable Windows clone; it is interesting just how arrogant and forceful Windows refugees are becoming with this demand.
Of course, what I still haven't figured out is why those people who consider it important for Linux to become mainstream, do feel such a desperate need for that to happen. The one thing I can promise you is that mainstream adoption will not ultimately do good things for Linux; it is a fundamental law in my mind that the quality of any given thing is inversely proportional to its' degree of popularity.
Apart from anything else, Windows refugees generally have absolutely no clue what they are doing where serious software development is concerned. As more ex-Windows users migrate to Linux, there is, I feel, sound cause for therefore believing that Linux's overall code quality will begin to drop. The only thing Windows users care about is that computer use is, "easy." They don't know or care about stability, security, or hardware efficiency, and they also don't understand that a severe tradeoff nearly always exists between robustness and usability at the best of times.
The facts that Slackware is a rock-solid server distro, but not used much on the desktop, while Ubuntu is a nightmare in technical terms, but is the primary desktop distro, are not coincidences. Robustness and extreme usability are virtually mutually exclusive. For one to be present, the other must go by definition.
A corporation has other features besides that one, and I greatly suspect he was referring to those other features.
You are correct.
We are currently experiencing the greatest planetary extinction since the Jurassic Period. We see, with weather turbulence, continued proof of the changes in climate. The city near where I live, had its' hottest day on record this past summer, and we are running desperately short of water.
Corporations are wiping out life in all its' forms; human and animal. They poison the air, the water, sell us what is advertised as food but actually harms us terribly, and do innumerable other forms of damage...and at the end of it all, we are expected to absolve them of all of it with the saying,
"It's nothing personal. It's just business."