Such stuff is great for middle-to-large sized city dwellers. I am rural folk near a small-sized city in Indiana. There is NO broadband in my area except for satellite. Think DSL is overpriced given that the phone company is essentially charging twice for the same line with a truly cheap extra addon to make DSL work? Try satellite. It costs more for satellite than for DSL or cable, but since most rural USA residents have no option BUT satellite if they want broadband...
I have been mulling over the possibilities of shoving it up the telcos (and cable company's arse) by becoming an end-run ISP. I want broadband CHEAPER than anyone else offers it and I would like to offer it to neighbors/my local community for cheaper than telcos or cable or satellite. Problem is, being a rural area, the potential customers are dispersed over a wide area and not necessarily up there on the economic scale. Farmers and manufacturing types. I want to completely sidestep the telco and install a T1 and then offer access to the community at a little over cost (to bring an income to me and help me maintain/upgrade service, etc). Unfortunately, I just don't see a large enough real customer base here to really make it feasible. Thus, we out here are stuck indefinitely with telcos and dialup internet. There is no competition and no drive to spread broadband to the people. You have to move to Canada or Europe to see a real drive to offer broadband to the citizenry.
You no understand. M$ is building DRM into everything they produce now. For NOW it is optional but the intent is that as it becomes more widely spread, that "optional" will become "required". M$ is trying to creep up with required DRM by starting with "optional". It will not remain optional and more and more content will come to require it.
If you refuse to use it, then their DRM scheme will be aborted.
What journal only accepts word? Until recently, none of the journals I would publish in accepted word files. As for pagemaker, etc, no one in my field (for all practical purposes) uses anything BUT Word or Wordperfect on the Mac or PC precisely because of EndNote. I am the only person I know of within the world I inhabit that actually uses Lyx (with pybliographic) simply because I wont purchase Office, period, but need the reference management ability inherent in Lyx.
I know that Word and Wordperfect do not come with a reference manager - it is a 3rd party app. My suggestion to Sun some time ago APPEARS to have had a slight effect in that Staroffice/Openoffice now comes with a totally useless bibliography "app". Openoffice only has it because Staroffice had it before its source was released for Openoffice (same with the inteface design of Openoffice - wasn't designed by a collaborative opensource effort, it was inherited from a commercial effort where interface is accepted to be important). The builtin bibliography thingy (for lack of a better word) does absolutely nothing useful, though with a little effort it could. It requires that you manually enter your individual reference information. After that it does nothing with it. It wont enter a citation for you based on the entry, it wont generate a properly formatted reference page(s) based on the entries. Nothing. It just sits there pointlessly.
My suggestions to koffice, abiword, openoffice, and Sun included either making simple hooks such that an app like pybliographic could easily be altered to function with their wordprocessors (something like a lyxpipe) or add a reference manager directly as another tool useful for professionals/technical writers. It seems that Sun partially responded (I don't honestly recall if the bibliography thingy existed in earlier Staroffice versions - and it took some futzing for me to stumble on the useless thingy myself). For Openoffice or Staroffice developers, they can either build on the bibliography thingy already there or trash it and make use of the database that comes with each and add a bibliography app that can make use of it. MODEL it on pybliographic, an opensource tool (so there is no need to start entirely from scratch). SOMETHING.
In any case, a reasonable request such as this is ignored, particularly by opensource developers (Sun made a step in the right direction but it was stillborn). The problem is "sexiness". No one wants to do coding if it doesn't seem sexy to them. In a company, on the other hand, you have no option. You are assigned to do this, this and this. You do it, period, whether you think it sexy or not.
OSS developers need to learn that they actually must do some coding that may be tedious and non-sexy sometimes if they want to actually produce software of quality and use. They also need to accept that there are proper ways to design GUI interfaces and they often don't match with their willy-nilly ways of doing things. There IS a right way and numerous horribly wrong ways to do an interface. OSS TENDS to suck on the UI front unless they have a commercial entity behind them to guide/manage them.
What gradeschool do you go to? It MUST be an elementary school if you can say something as idiotic as "manually type in your citation". I write SCIENTIFIC articles which can often require hundreds of citations. NO ONE does this manually these days. EVERY single colleague at every university I have been at uses Word or Wordperfect with Endnote to handle the NUMEROUS citations and reference page generation required for scientific papers. No one in their right mind does it manually...to do that you might as well use a manual typewriter as the functionality is equivalent.
Write a thesis or large research paper and you will have a lot of references and it is NOT intelligent nor necessary (nor acceptable) use of your time to manually enter your citations and manually generate the reference pages to go with them.
Motif is used in xmgrace, a scientific plotting app. It is also used in XEphem, the astonomy app. Both nice apps and opensource but are hindered by their use of Motif. Motif is NOT user friendly. It presents a static GUI interface that doesn't care what your real desktop realestate is like. It pretends that all desktops use the same resolution and have the same physical dimensions. This is NOT a good thing. Gtk and QT and the like are good things (tm) as they are dynamic and play well with a variety of screen resolutions and physical dimensions.
I have to go back to your first comment because I cannot believe how utterly moronic it was. Give me your email address and I will send you an email with an attached coupon. Said coupon will give you a substantial discount at Target towards the purchase of a CLUE.
Statement of facts wrt GUI design and whatnot and it gets modded to "flamebait"? Pah-leeze. I state facts, including the final statement about the original poster critic not being up to the job of devising a new and easy UI. Fact is, NO one has come up with something better that will take off and replace the present GUI/WM-style interface.
Flamebait indeed. Don't like facts so call it a flame?
I've done as you suggest multiple times to no avail. The request is either not "sexy" enough or somehow not important enough. For instance, THE reason that openoffice/staroffice will NOT replace M$ Word or Wordperfect in academia/science is a total lack of ability to handle references and citations. Word and Wordperfect do this beautifully and professionally (good enough for submission and publication in professional journals) through their designed ability to work well with 3rd party apps like EndNote. I have made the request/statement to Stardivision, to Sun when they took it over (twice!), and to Openoffice.org several times over the years to no avail. Thus, these packages are mere toys for use by people who either plagerize (failing to cite references) or people who don't do serious research/writing and thus don't need to give attribution or support their ideas/claims. These tools are for letter writers and memo passers, not college students or researchers or professors.
I have also asked several groups to consider moving away from the should-be-extinct Motif interface to a modern, user friendly, SYSTEM friendly widget set (QT or Gtk). Motif IS UGLY, CLUNKY, AND NEEDS TO DIE. It has NO respect for screen size, insisting of shooting beyond your window borders such that you lose the ability (in some cases) of manipulating buttons and menus. If something happens such that you move the app interface beyond your window borders, you're screwed because it will happily reside in no mans land beyond the reach or your mouse cursor. Simple requests like this (FRIENDLY and REASONED requests, not rants) are ignored or quickly blown off. Why? Because developers don't understand nor care about endusers and app usability. As long as THEY can use the app just fine, tough shit for anyone else. My way or the highway.
This is the area that OSS cannot compete with commercial. In commercial software development, it REALLY DOES MATTER what the interface looks like (psychology is important) and principles of interface design are known and adhered to. They don't just willy-nilly toss together an interface and call it good enough.
Do a little simple thinking. Wine is GOOD because there are some apps that are indispensible to people that ONLY come in windoze versions (games, tax software, etc). They can avoid the lockin and overbearing control demanded by Gates while still using their software. As for look-alike GUIs...duh. First, there are only so many ways to make a GUI system on present systems. It would be quite hard to come up with a great new way of doing things when this aspect of computing is sooo mature. More importantly, people are used to a certain windowing environment. Radical change from that makes it less likely that people would switch - they don't want to have to learn whole new ways of doing things, they just want to get on and get going on "important" stuff right ASAP.
Tell me, do you honestly think that the Apple interface (which is the ultimate originator for the Windoze copy/interface) is really different than that of windoze? Arethere ANY widely used GUIs that are substantially different than that used by windoze? They are ALL very similar to the extent that with a little futzing, many people could get things going on these "alien" wm/guis. They are not copying windoze, rather they are all (M$ including) following a generally accepted GUI paradigm (ultimately copied from Apple who based theirs on the ideas of Xerox). Come up with a better GUI yourself that doesn't require a massive learning curve and be a hero. Not up to it? Of course you aren't.
Whoa there Clarence! OK, perhaps it is a bit strong to say they can't get laid, but it DOES matter by whom (or what). They may get laid (for the first time in their lives) as a side effect of making this film, but the QUALITY of the layee...there's the rub.
Getting to nail a creature that is actually more pitiful than you is not an accomplishment.
I live in a rural area of Indiana just 8 miles from a city. No broadband (except very expensive satellite - of which one provider is shutting down: DirectTV satellite internet) and no prospect for such in the future. How about spending a little in the USA to bring access up to even UK standards? The UK seems particularly adept among Western countries in working to get broadband access to its citizens (despite problems with BT). In this country (USA) there is no drive at all to the point that it is a nonstarter for the most part.
How about the country that created the internet get on the ball and provide access to its own citizens to at least the point of Western Europe? I wont even mention Asian countries like Japan and S. Korea (and Taiwan?) which put all Western countries to shame with their incredibly high level of high speed connectivity.
I WANT BROADBAND, DAMNIT! Sprint USED to have a wireless service available that I would have gone with but they aborted at takeoff.
How about so one large entity (schools/gov't org) can count on full support from another org (Sun)? Such organizations are not the type of entity that will populate mailing lists or newsgroups seeking support, they want a single source that is certain to deal with any problem they have right now.
This isn't a dig at openoffice, it is simply a fact that the openoffice people are not setup for providing support the same way that Sun is. This fact is one of the reasons that the corporation that is RedHat is the biggest and most successful linux distro to date because they are a single corporate entity that will support their product faster and better than a newsgroup can (or mailing list). These common free means of support are fine for individuals but don't cut it for corporations or government entities.
Sun and Staroffice were the right choice in this, given the requirements. Besides, large entities supporting Staroffice are by default also supporting Openoffice as they are fully compatible with each other. The important thing, the KEY thing, is that something other than M$ Office is being adopted in a big way and this will continue. The growth of corporations and governments adopting Staroffice also supports openoffice. It is win-win.
I wonder if there's a faction who'd like a populace which doesn't understand the world it lives in and reverts to superstition and prayer when a little thought would do.
Hell yes. Such a population is easy to manipulate, easy to control. You can do anything you want with such a populace. It is the entire basis, thus far, of Bush's push to attack Iraq, for instance. Keep saying that "we have proof that Saddam is lying", blah, blah and never ever show any evidence. Basically, they expect people to take it on faith because the heavy lifting and thought has been done by others (in the Administration). Just take their word for it.
If the bulk of a society is unthinking and will accept what is fed them by those seemingly in authority, then that authority has near absolute power.
I don't know that I'd say I'm "comfortable" with the WIMP interface...as a matter of fact, my RSI tells me quite distinctly that I am UNcomfortable with the WIMP interface. Oh, that's probaably not what you meant. Psychologically it is BORING but on that level I am comfortable with it as I know what to do to get things done (or start with some of the more spartan GUI wms but physically it frickin' aches or even hurts. Class action lawsuit against mouse developers/designers, what do you say?
Erm...were you really able to use them as a firestarter after you spat on them? Did you not at least wait for the spittle to dry? I wouldn't think it would burn well with a big wet loogie spattered all over it.
Standing/shmanding. They can sue in their OWN courts. Since it now seems OK to sue people in other countries within the courts of your own country because the other person violated a law in your country (even though they do not LIVE or do anything in your country)...why NOT sue the US and everyone who has anything to do with violations of privacy?
It's about time for some European "imperialism" to stop my own county's dictatorial moves against even its own citizens. Start forcing the US to abide by YOUR laws and punish it when it violates them. Quit aping our laws by codifying similar measures into your books.
It wont take long for someone to crack the satellite. They will download images thinking to collect nice data about deep space but instead will find that some h@X0R has redirected their satellite to take a good close look at Natalie Portman.
Or...the first DDoS initiated from space will soon be in the headlines.
No, not mice, keyboards, etc, because 3D accelerators are more complex than any of these and thus prone to problems. Sorry, never EVER had a mouse driver or keyboard driver lockup my system. They are relatively simple devices. Not so with 3D cards of today which are practically computers in their own right.
As I understand it, NVidia isn't exactly free to release everything necessary for coders to produce an equivalently performing driver to the binary NVidia driver. So, they do not fully control the situation so they are evil because they don't violate the law and give up someone else's IP? Like or hate IP, it is a current legal reality and you cannot blow it off and pretend it doesn't apply.
As I understand it as well, ATI has released everything needed for driver development of their cards (for the most part, perhaps they are also not quite free to provide all pertinent info?) and that is the driver used by ATI card owners. But it STINKS. Prone to system lockups and X crashing. I had a radeon using the GPL drivers and this is what I experienced again and again. This is why I HAD to go with an NVidia card (and its binary driver) because I need my video card to work. Period. Guess what? It does. I never experience any of the problems I had with my Radeon.
Now just for the sake of argument here, if this is what GPL hardware drivers do then we can do without them. They may be great for non-3d accelerated vidcards, but they appear in practice to suck hard in the physical world. Be nice if it wasn't the truth but it is and not everyone can sit around waiting for a day when they wont suck. Many need their hardware to work right this instant.
The argument is moot in any case, if it is true that Nvidia binary drivers will still work with the new kernel changes. Not so sure how big shops with expensive software that breaks will feel about it but that isn't me.
Last I heard/read, Sprint broadband was no longer accepting new customers (This was almost a year ago I read this on their site). If you have it now it is only because you got in before the locked down the system and stopped accepting new users. Doesn't bode well for its future does it?
Until this point, at which they have arbitrarily decided to break hardware that some people MUST use. Sorry, your hardware is no longer viable under linux because we are asswipe primadonnas.
For some of these crybaby philosophical TYRANTS, I would love to see the company they work for fire them. See how much of a living they manage just on "love" of coding.
It's the CUSTOMERS stupid! The CUSTOMER is ALWAYS right. Period. Once you move out of your basement dwelling (and out from under mommy and daddy's monetary support) you do not get to do whatever you want just because. Linux is no longer a basement hobby and it needs to be handled thusly. Not ALL software is amenable to GPL. Much is, but not ALL. There is no black and white...except for the statement that there is no black and white.
So you'd THINK. But you are wrong. The opensource drivers for ATI cards suck. Period. The cards perform midlin, barely work with the OSS Mesa OpenGL libs (I have had GPL-supported ATI Radeons and experienced their broken-ness first hand). I have since gone to NVidia and their closed drivers - and it works FAR better than the Radeon with its oh-so-wonderful GPL drivers. The binary drivers are also STILL superior to the GPL Nvidia drivers. That is a fact, I am afraid.
I don't give a rat for how the driver is made or developed so long as it works. It would be NICE for Nvidia to publish their specs enough to allow for decent open drivers (just to ensure continued support if they drop out of the linux driver business) but they MUST protect their legit property (their hardware). In any case, and I reiterate, the GPL Radeon drivers STINK! The Nvidia GPL driver STINKS! If GPL is so great at this why DO they stink then?
This is kind of funny and pathetic. Just as linux is taking off, it seems the kernel developers, over philosphical nonsense, have decided to shoot linux in the face and try to drive it back into obscurity.
So long as my Nvidia card keeps working WELL, then I don't mind, but screw that up, prevent people from properly using THE best video card on the market, and you kill linux's growth.
Get rid of the cutsie crappy characters, the bouncing barrels, the other dorky crap and make a real good game for a console and I'll consider it. I have NEVER played that crap Dorky Kong, Super Mario Babytoybrothers, and other goo-goo, gaa-gaa infantile game pap. Warcraft, Civ II, HalfLife, DeusEx, Alpha Centauri, Myth I and II. THOSE are games. Donkeys and cartoon characters bouncing around or dumbass karate/boxing nonsense are for preteens and infants, not adults.
The Answer to Everything: Also if you make open source software the users will provide you with patches and feedback to make your software work on all the platforms required.
This simply ignores the fact that not all software is best done OS - sometimes the only way to make a living off software is to SELL it and NOT rely on support. OSS is great for a lot of things but not all things (games, voice rec, handwriting rec, tax prep software, any law/legal system based software). There are some things that OSS will NEVER manage as well as closed source vendors (see above paranthetical list for a few).
If you want certain types of software then you MUST make the system as easy as possible for the ONLY source of that software (commercial/closed source) to write it for your OS.
OSS/FSF will NEVER produce voice rec software, handwriting rec software, tax prep software, and games that can in any way compete or compare with the fast-paced development of state-of-the-art games. Hasn't happened in over a dozen years, ain't EVER going to happen. You/we NEED commercial vendors for some things.
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Such stuff is great for middle-to-large sized city dwellers. I am rural folk near a small-sized city in Indiana. There is NO broadband in my area except for satellite. Think DSL is overpriced given that the phone company is essentially charging twice for the same line with a truly cheap extra addon to make DSL work? Try satellite. It costs more for satellite than for DSL or cable, but since most rural USA residents have no option BUT satellite if they want broadband...
I have been mulling over the possibilities of shoving it up the telcos (and cable company's arse) by becoming an end-run ISP. I want broadband CHEAPER than anyone else offers it and I would like to offer it to neighbors/my local community for cheaper than telcos or cable or satellite. Problem is, being a rural area, the potential customers are dispersed over a wide area and not necessarily up there on the economic scale. Farmers and manufacturing types. I want to completely sidestep the telco and install a T1 and then offer access to the community at a little over cost (to bring an income to me and help me maintain/upgrade service, etc). Unfortunately, I just don't see a large enough real customer base here to really make it feasible. Thus, we out here are stuck indefinitely with telcos and dialup internet. There is no competition and no drive to spread broadband to the people. You have to move to Canada or Europe to see a real drive to offer broadband to the citizenry.
The printers will be sold cheaply but the printing "ink" will be sold at a premium. Oh yes, they will be "winprinters" and have windoze-only drivers.
DRM built in will prevent you from fabbing virtually anything that could be considered to have been patented, trademarked, or copywrited.
You no understand. M$ is building DRM into everything they produce now. For NOW it is optional but the intent is that as it becomes more widely spread, that "optional" will become "required". M$ is trying to creep up with required DRM by starting with "optional". It will not remain optional and more and more content will come to require it.
If you refuse to use it, then their DRM scheme will be aborted.
What journal only accepts word? Until recently, none of the journals I would publish in accepted word files. As for pagemaker, etc, no one in my field (for all practical purposes) uses anything BUT Word or Wordperfect on the Mac or PC precisely because of EndNote. I am the only person I know of within the world I inhabit that actually uses Lyx (with pybliographic) simply because I wont purchase Office, period, but need the reference management ability inherent in Lyx.
I know that Word and Wordperfect do not come with a reference manager - it is a 3rd party app. My suggestion to Sun some time ago APPEARS to have had a slight effect in that Staroffice/Openoffice now comes with a totally useless bibliography "app". Openoffice only has it because Staroffice had it before its source was released for Openoffice (same with the inteface design of Openoffice - wasn't designed by a collaborative opensource effort, it was inherited from a commercial effort where interface is accepted to be important). The builtin bibliography thingy (for lack of a better word) does absolutely nothing useful, though with a little effort it could. It requires that you manually enter your individual reference information. After that it does nothing with it. It wont enter a citation for you based on the entry, it wont generate a properly formatted reference page(s) based on the entries. Nothing. It just sits there pointlessly.
My suggestions to koffice, abiword, openoffice, and Sun included either making simple hooks such that an app like pybliographic could easily be altered to function with their wordprocessors (something like a lyxpipe) or add a reference manager directly as another tool useful for professionals/technical writers. It seems that Sun partially responded (I don't honestly recall if the bibliography thingy existed in earlier Staroffice versions - and it took some futzing for me to stumble on the useless thingy myself). For Openoffice or Staroffice developers, they can either build on the bibliography thingy already there or trash it and make use of the database that comes with each and add a bibliography app that can make use of it. MODEL it on pybliographic, an opensource tool (so there is no need to start entirely from scratch). SOMETHING.
In any case, a reasonable request such as this is ignored, particularly by opensource developers (Sun made a step in the right direction but it was stillborn). The problem is "sexiness". No one wants to do coding if it doesn't seem sexy to them. In a company, on the other hand, you have no option. You are assigned to do this, this and this. You do it, period, whether you think it sexy or not.
OSS developers need to learn that they actually must do some coding that may be tedious and non-sexy sometimes if they want to actually produce software of quality and use. They also need to accept that there are proper ways to design GUI interfaces and they often don't match with their willy-nilly ways of doing things. There IS a right way and numerous horribly wrong ways to do an interface. OSS TENDS to suck on the UI front unless they have a commercial entity behind them to guide/manage them.
What gradeschool do you go to? It MUST be an elementary school if you can say something as idiotic as "manually type in your citation". I write SCIENTIFIC articles which can often require hundreds of citations. NO ONE does this manually these days. EVERY single colleague at every university I have been at uses Word or Wordperfect with Endnote to handle the NUMEROUS citations and reference page generation required for scientific papers. No one in their right mind does it manually...to do that you might as well use a manual typewriter as the functionality is equivalent.
Write a thesis or large research paper and you will have a lot of references and it is NOT intelligent nor necessary (nor acceptable) use of your time to manually enter your citations and manually generate the reference pages to go with them.
Motif is used in xmgrace, a scientific plotting app. It is also used in XEphem, the astonomy app. Both nice apps and opensource but are hindered by their use of Motif. Motif is NOT user friendly. It presents a static GUI interface that doesn't care what your real desktop realestate is like. It pretends that all desktops use the same resolution and have the same physical dimensions. This is NOT a good thing. Gtk and QT and the like are good things (tm) as they are dynamic and play well with a variety of screen resolutions and physical dimensions.
I have to go back to your first comment because I cannot believe how utterly moronic it was. Give me your email address and I will send you an email with an attached coupon. Said coupon will give you a substantial discount at Target towards the purchase of a CLUE.
Statement of facts wrt GUI design and whatnot and it gets modded to "flamebait"? Pah-leeze. I state facts, including the final statement about the original poster critic not being up to the job of devising a new and easy UI. Fact is, NO one has come up with something better that will take off and replace the present GUI/WM-style interface.
Flamebait indeed. Don't like facts so call it a flame?
I've done as you suggest multiple times to no avail. The request is either not "sexy" enough or somehow not important enough. For instance, THE reason that openoffice/staroffice will NOT replace M$ Word or Wordperfect in academia/science is a total lack of ability to handle references and citations. Word and Wordperfect do this beautifully and professionally (good enough for submission and publication in professional journals) through their designed ability to work well with 3rd party apps like EndNote. I have made the request/statement to Stardivision, to Sun when they took it over (twice!), and to Openoffice.org several times over the years to no avail. Thus, these packages are mere toys for use by people who either plagerize (failing to cite references) or people who don't do serious research/writing and thus don't need to give attribution or support their ideas/claims. These tools are for letter writers and memo passers, not college students or researchers or professors.
I have also asked several groups to consider moving away from the should-be-extinct Motif interface to a modern, user friendly, SYSTEM friendly widget set (QT or Gtk). Motif IS UGLY, CLUNKY, AND NEEDS TO DIE. It has NO respect for screen size, insisting of shooting beyond your window borders such that you lose the ability (in some cases) of manipulating buttons and menus. If something happens such that you move the app interface beyond your window borders, you're screwed because it will happily reside in no mans land beyond the reach or your mouse cursor. Simple requests like this (FRIENDLY and REASONED requests, not rants) are ignored or quickly blown off. Why? Because developers don't understand nor care about endusers and app usability. As long as THEY can use the app just fine, tough shit for anyone else. My way or the highway.
This is the area that OSS cannot compete with commercial. In commercial software development, it REALLY DOES MATTER what the interface looks like (psychology is important) and principles of interface design are known and adhered to. They don't just willy-nilly toss together an interface and call it good enough.
Do a little simple thinking. Wine is GOOD because there are some apps that are indispensible to people that ONLY come in windoze versions (games, tax software, etc). They can avoid the lockin and overbearing control demanded by Gates while still using their software. As for look-alike GUIs...duh. First, there are only so many ways to make a GUI system on present systems. It would be quite hard to come up with a great new way of doing things when this aspect of computing is sooo mature. More importantly, people are used to a certain windowing environment. Radical change from that makes it less likely that people would switch - they don't want to have to learn whole new ways of doing things, they just want to get on and get going on "important" stuff right ASAP.
Tell me, do you honestly think that the Apple interface (which is the ultimate originator for the Windoze copy/interface) is really different than that of windoze? Arethere ANY widely used GUIs that are substantially different than that used by windoze? They are ALL very similar to the extent that with a little futzing, many people could get things going on these "alien" wm/guis. They are not copying windoze, rather they are all (M$ including) following a generally accepted GUI paradigm (ultimately copied from Apple who based theirs on the ideas of Xerox). Come up with a better GUI yourself that doesn't require a massive learning curve and be a hero. Not up to it? Of course you aren't.
Whoa there Clarence! OK, perhaps it is a bit strong to say they can't get laid, but it DOES matter by whom (or what). They may get laid (for the first time in their lives) as a side effect of making this film, but the QUALITY of the layee...there's the rub.
Getting to nail a creature that is actually more pitiful than you is not an accomplishment.
What you say is true and for just actually getting it done they get kudos... But that doesn't mean that they can get laid. They can't.
I live in a rural area of Indiana just 8 miles from a city. No broadband (except very expensive satellite - of which one provider is shutting down: DirectTV satellite internet) and no prospect for such in the future. How about spending a little in the USA to bring access up to even UK standards? The UK seems particularly adept among Western countries in working to get broadband access to its citizens (despite problems with BT). In this country (USA) there is no drive at all to the point that it is a nonstarter for the most part.
How about the country that created the internet get on the ball and provide access to its own citizens to at least the point of Western Europe? I wont even mention Asian countries like Japan and S. Korea (and Taiwan?) which put all Western countries to shame with their incredibly high level of high speed connectivity.
I WANT BROADBAND, DAMNIT! Sprint USED to have a wireless service available that I would have gone with but they aborted at takeoff.
How about so one large entity (schools/gov't org) can count on full support from another org (Sun)? Such organizations are not the type of entity that will populate mailing lists or newsgroups seeking support, they want a single source that is certain to deal with any problem they have right now.
This isn't a dig at openoffice, it is simply a fact that the openoffice people are not setup for providing support the same way that Sun is. This fact is one of the reasons that the corporation that is RedHat is the biggest and most successful linux distro to date because they are a single corporate entity that will support their product faster and better than a newsgroup can (or mailing list). These common free means of support are fine for individuals but don't cut it for corporations or government entities.
Sun and Staroffice were the right choice in this, given the requirements. Besides, large entities supporting Staroffice are by default also supporting Openoffice as they are fully compatible with each other. The important thing, the KEY thing, is that something other than M$ Office is being adopted in a big way and this will continue. The growth of corporations and governments adopting Staroffice also supports openoffice. It is win-win.
I wonder if there's a faction who'd like a populace which doesn't understand the world it lives in and reverts to superstition and prayer when a little thought would do.
Hell yes. Such a population is easy to manipulate, easy to control. You can do anything you want with such a populace. It is the entire basis, thus far, of Bush's push to attack Iraq, for instance. Keep saying that "we have proof that Saddam is lying", blah, blah and never ever show any evidence. Basically, they expect people to take it on faith because the heavy lifting and thought has been done by others (in the Administration). Just take their word for it.
If the bulk of a society is unthinking and will accept what is fed them by those seemingly in authority, then that authority has near absolute power.
I don't know that I'd say I'm "comfortable" with the WIMP interface...as a matter of fact, my RSI tells me quite distinctly that I am UNcomfortable with the WIMP interface. Oh, that's probaably not what you meant. Psychologically it is BORING but on that level I am comfortable with it as I know what to do to get things done (or start with some of the more spartan GUI wms but physically it frickin' aches or even hurts. Class action lawsuit against mouse developers/designers, what do you say?
Erm...were you really able to use them as a firestarter after you spat on them? Did you not at least wait for the spittle to dry? I wouldn't think it would burn well with a big wet loogie spattered all over it.
Standing/shmanding. They can sue in their OWN courts. Since it now seems OK to sue people in other countries within the courts of your own country because the other person violated a law in your country (even though they do not LIVE or do anything in your country)...why NOT sue the US and everyone who has anything to do with violations of privacy?
It's about time for some European "imperialism" to stop my own county's dictatorial moves against even its own citizens. Start forcing the US to abide by YOUR laws and punish it when it violates them. Quit aping our laws by codifying similar measures into your books.
Yeah, well...it would seem easier just to use ssh instead of dinking with ftp.
It wont take long for someone to crack the satellite. They will download images thinking to collect nice data about deep space but instead will find that some h@X0R has redirected their satellite to take a good close look at Natalie Portman.
Or...the first DDoS initiated from space will soon be in the headlines.
FTP? C'mon!
No, not mice, keyboards, etc, because 3D accelerators are more complex than any of these and thus prone to problems. Sorry, never EVER had a mouse driver or keyboard driver lockup my system. They are relatively simple devices. Not so with 3D cards of today which are practically computers in their own right.
As I understand it, NVidia isn't exactly free to release everything necessary for coders to produce an equivalently performing driver to the binary NVidia driver. So, they do not fully control the situation so they are evil because they don't violate the law and give up someone else's IP? Like or hate IP, it is a current legal reality and you cannot blow it off and pretend it doesn't apply.
As I understand it as well, ATI has released everything needed for driver development of their cards (for the most part, perhaps they are also not quite free to provide all pertinent info?) and that is the driver used by ATI card owners. But it STINKS. Prone to system lockups and X crashing. I had a radeon using the GPL drivers and this is what I experienced again and again. This is why I HAD to go with an NVidia card (and its binary driver) because I need my video card to work. Period. Guess what? It does. I never experience any of the problems I had with my Radeon.
Now just for the sake of argument here, if this is what GPL hardware drivers do then we can do without them. They may be great for non-3d accelerated vidcards, but they appear in practice to suck hard in the physical world. Be nice if it wasn't the truth but it is and not everyone can sit around waiting for a day when they wont suck. Many need their hardware to work right this instant.
The argument is moot in any case, if it is true that Nvidia binary drivers will still work with the new kernel changes. Not so sure how big shops with expensive software that breaks will feel about it but that isn't me.
Last I heard/read, Sprint broadband was no longer accepting new customers (This was almost a year ago I read this on their site). If you have it now it is only because you got in before the locked down the system and stopped accepting new users. Doesn't bode well for its future does it?
Until this point, at which they have arbitrarily decided to break hardware that some people MUST use. Sorry, your hardware is no longer viable under linux because we are asswipe primadonnas.
For some of these crybaby philosophical TYRANTS, I would love to see the company they work for fire them. See how much of a living they manage just on "love" of coding.
It's the CUSTOMERS stupid! The CUSTOMER is ALWAYS right. Period. Once you move out of your basement dwelling (and out from under mommy and daddy's monetary support) you do not get to do whatever you want just because. Linux is no longer a basement hobby and it needs to be handled thusly. Not ALL software is amenable to GPL. Much is, but not ALL. There is no black and white...except for the statement that there is no black and white.
So you'd THINK. But you are wrong. The opensource drivers for ATI cards suck. Period. The cards perform midlin, barely work with the OSS Mesa OpenGL libs (I have had GPL-supported ATI Radeons and experienced their broken-ness first hand). I have since gone to NVidia and their closed drivers - and it works FAR better than the Radeon with its oh-so-wonderful GPL drivers. The binary drivers are also STILL superior to the GPL Nvidia drivers. That is a fact, I am afraid.
I don't give a rat for how the driver is made or developed so long as it works. It would be NICE for Nvidia to publish their specs enough to allow for decent open drivers (just to ensure continued support if they drop out of the linux driver business) but they MUST protect their legit property (their hardware). In any case, and I reiterate, the GPL Radeon drivers STINK! The Nvidia GPL driver STINKS! If GPL is so great at this why DO they stink then?
This is kind of funny and pathetic. Just as linux is taking off, it seems the kernel developers, over philosphical nonsense, have decided to shoot linux in the face and try to drive it back into obscurity.
So long as my Nvidia card keeps working WELL, then I don't mind, but screw that up, prevent people from properly using THE best video card on the market, and you kill linux's growth.
Get rid of the cutsie crappy characters, the bouncing barrels, the other dorky crap and make a real good game for a console and I'll consider it. I have NEVER played that crap Dorky Kong, Super Mario Babytoybrothers, and other goo-goo, gaa-gaa infantile game pap. Warcraft, Civ II, HalfLife, DeusEx, Alpha Centauri, Myth I and II. THOSE are games. Donkeys and cartoon characters bouncing around or dumbass karate/boxing nonsense are for preteens and infants, not adults.
The Answer to Everything: Also if you make open source software the users will provide you with patches and feedback to make your software work on all the platforms required.
This simply ignores the fact that not all software is best done OS - sometimes the only way to make a living off software is to SELL it and NOT rely on support. OSS is great for a lot of things but not all things (games, voice rec, handwriting rec, tax prep software, any law/legal system based software). There are some things that OSS will NEVER manage as well as closed source vendors (see above paranthetical list for a few).
If you want certain types of software then you MUST make the system as easy as possible for the ONLY source of that software (commercial/closed source) to write it for your OS.
OSS/FSF will NEVER produce voice rec software, handwriting rec software, tax prep software, and games that can in any way compete or compare with the fast-paced development of state-of-the-art games. Hasn't happened in over a dozen years, ain't EVER going to happen. You/we NEED commercial vendors for some things.