Linux is a pain because its so finicky to get things to work.
That is quite a generic statement, my friend. And, like other generic statements, it is incorrect for many situations.
Sure, Linux can be a pain for some things, but it is also much easier for others. I can setup services and software on my Debian system, within minutes. It is _never_ that easy in Windows. Ironically, I'd say that drivers are the area that Linux scores better in, based on my experiences. I've had some nightmare problems with drivers in Windows: finding them, installing them, even fixing them. One recent problem on a Windows XP machine, I couldn't get the motherboard ethernet interface working. I couldn't even reinstall the driver, as both the CD version and the latest downloaded version, would crash when doing the install.
By the way, guess how I downloaded that recent windows driver... I booted into Knoppix. It automatically detected the ethernet device, installed the driver, and configured the interface via DHCP. I could even write the driver to the NTFS XP partition. Ahhh, Knoppix, you've saved another situation! That CD is now permanently part of my tech toolkit.
I tried another few tricks to get the ethernet interface working in XP. Nothing worked. So, I just told the owner that they have to reinstall Windows to get it working.
Man, for such a popular OS, it sure is damn easy to break.
Still, if they fix the Meat Circus and its idiotic difficulty spike, the world will be a better place for it.
I must be one of the few people that had little difficulty with this level. I did have some difficulty with the flaming spiral net area, but as soon as I had the timing down using a double-jump-float, it was fine. The rest of the level was no problem.
I'm most looking forward to Little Big Planet. It looks like heaps of fun.
If Sony remade ICO, Shadow of the Colossus, and Katamari Damarcy, specifically for High Definition, I would snap up a PS3 today!
Lastly, about the backward compatibility issue, I'm happy for Sony to remove it from one model, as long as they always keep a model available that keeps it. I'm quite happy to pay an extra $50 for the PS3, to have it replace my PS2, instead of having to keep both side by side.
Click on one of the links in the blog, and you'll discover a reference to a Newsweek article, published in 1995, describing exactly the 1-click process. This article was based on the Digicash system that the journalist was reporting on, but the idea of clicking once to order something, was imagined by the journalist who wrote the article. This article pre-dated the Amazon patent by two years.
So, let me ask you, if a journalist can come up with this same idea, in a field that he is not related to at all, then how the hell is it _not_ an obvious idea?!
The whole issue seems to be that measuring "obviousness" is not that obvious. It can be very subjective at times, but maybe there is a way to solve it. If it was me, I would take the problem in question, hand it to a group of people, and see how they solve it. If any of them come up with the same solution, then surely the solution is "obvious" (to a greater or lesser degree, judging by how many people came up with the same solution).
Maybe this is the method that the US patent office should adopt. They should hire a group of 30 or so problem solvers, fire problems at them, and if any one comes up with the same solution as on the patent application, immediate rejection. I think that would take out most idiotic patents.
Why would that cause problems, other than extremely locally ? You're not changing the total amount of salt in the sea, nor the total amount of water in the sea, so the end-result should be pretty close to zero.
Well, you _are_ changing the total amount of water in the sea, otherwise what is the use of desalination? But that is a nit-pick, because you are correct, if you consider the _entire_ sea, the net effect will be close to zero.
But I'm not talking about net effect. Concentrated brine will kill life on the seabed, and it will kill it for many kilometres around the pipes, depending on the topography, of course. It sounds like you don't understand how concentrated brine acts in seawater. If you think it'll naturally disperse quickly, you've got a big surprise waiting. If unagitated, brine will sink to the bottom of the sea, and will hang around for a long, long time. You'll actually have a lake of brine form, and it is visibly different to the normal seawater above it. All this can quite quickly disrupt or kill off the ecosystem in a much larger area than the brine itself takes up.
The net salt content of the whole sea will be close to the same as before, but now you've destroyed any life in the area. Now you know the dangers of thinking in terms of "net effect".
This and similar technologies may bring water desalination costs down to a point where such worries about fresh water are unnecessary.
There _are_ other issues with desalination, other than cost. Like, what do you do with the salty brine by-product? Tip it back into the ocean? That could cause environmental problems.
Still, on a small scale, a cheap and efficient desalination product would be brilliant! I'd certainly buy a handheld version, when I go camping near the ocean.
"Hey, boss, we need to push out group policies over all machines on domains foo and bar. Windows has Group Policy Editor and Active Directory. We can do the same thing with Linux, but it will mean spending 5000 man hours developing, testing, and deploying scripts, because nobody has bothered to come up with a solution yet."
What would you choose for your business??
I would choose the right tool for the right job. If that job is pushing out group policies, and Microsoft have a tool for it, and open source does not, then I choose Microsoft.
If Microsoft has a tool for it, and open source has a tool as well, then I choose open source. Why? Because I have the option to tailor the program to my specific circumstances. Say I wanted to push out different policies, dependent on some essential criteria. If the Microsoft tool does not support this feature, you are hosed! With open source, you can add the feature yourself, and even better, contribute it back to the creators, so everyone benefits.
The point is, you've chosen an example where you would certainly choose a Microsoft tool. I'm sure there are also many examples where you'd choose open source. You've just got to evaluate it case by case.
OSS needs to adapt to a philosophy of developing stuff to be better even when they personally don't get much benefit from it, because otherwise businesses WILL just pay MS to get what they want.
It all depends on what your overall objective is. If the objective is to destroy Microsoft, or it's to cater to what others want, then yes, an OSS project needs to develop beyond the immediate needs of the developer. If the objective is to satisfy the needs of the developer, then no, the OSS project should stop when the developer is happy. There's nothing wrong with both, and I'm sure that both are happening in the OSS world. It's a big world after all, and it can quite happily cope with many different reasons for doing things.
For me personally, I'm not a great programmer, but I have enough talent that I can modify existing source code with a little effort. For me, open source adds a whole new dimension of freedom to software and computer use. It's great, and I really appreciate all those other programmers making the source available. I don't expect them to pander to my requirements, unless that is what they want to do.
If business wants a feature added to OSS software, and they're willing to pay money for it, surely they can sponsor the original open source developer to create it for them. After all, they were going to pony up the money to some software company somewhere. They might as well give it to a developer directly, and get a custom solution created for them, that specifically meets their needs.
Back on topic, personally I've got no issues with someone posting a foreign language link, and providing the interesting bits in English. I'm certainly interested in viewing the opinions of other countries.
No. Linux is not convincing. He is arrogant and more and more clueless. Unfortunately people seem to be so in awe of him, that allmost nobody is willing to tell him that he has he is "wanking around" about a lot of things he obviously does not really understand.
You're not being very convincing either. You call Linus all sorts of things, without actually saying specifically why you think he is arrogant, clueless, and has no understanding. I'm open to the idea that he may be, but your post certainly does nothing to convince me of it.
At least Linus has specifically stated why he thinks security guys are "wanking around". It's because security people state that "only my version is correct", when they don't quantify exactly why this is the case. That certainly meets my criteria for "wanking around". Linus appears to have made a good judgement call.
I'm not sure how much just one developer can do, but props to Novell nonetheless.
Never fear, because he's not doing all the coding himself. According to the link in the article, he's had over 100 volunteers to help him out. If he's good at managing them, then 100 talented coders could certainly make a large impact!
My only concern is - what do you do if you're missing a piece? Cataloging 5000 pieces is a huge task in and of itself...
You go to Lego and ask them to send you the missing piece. Lego are pretty good that way. You don't need to catalogue the pieces. You start building, and any missing pieces are pretty obvious after a while.
Pork for them was sausage, barbeque, or bacon, or maybe a chop. Jesus, if you can't even get people here to eat the whole pig, then pushing goat (or lamb for that matter) is a lost cause.
I thought that sausage contained the whole pig. Even the hoofs.:)
Sausage may work for goat as well. Just slap some herbs in with it, call it gourmet, and it'd probably be a hit. It's all in the marketing.
Unless they pull an Intel and release/fund Free drivers for their graphics chips, for me it's Intel for ease-of-use and NVidia for performance. I've lost faith in them.
I'm repeating what others have posted already, but what you wish for looks to be happening soon.
It looks like he just doesn't care what the people have done, he just thinks "wow, famous people, I want a picture with them".
Or, he could just be doing it for fun, and not in a way to inflate his ego or status. How sad it is, or how funny it is, depends on his reasons for doing, and you can't gather that just from his picasso page. Personally, I think it's pretty funny.
There's nothing wrong with celebrities, just as long as you don't feed them.
Firstly, I did that search for "Google is Evil". It was full of rants from people and webmasters that have clashed with Google's policies. I wouldn't describe that as evil though. They've set policy in place, some people get annoyed at them, those people crow that Google is Evil. Not convincing. Here's a typical link.
Street level photography? I thought that was a really cool idea! It adds another dimension to searching maps, on a level that is more in tune with how we recognise streets. It just adds that human element, instead of sterile shaded areas.
I've got no idea about desktop search and Gmail, since I don't use either. I use "find" or "rgrep" for searches anyway. If I was ever to get a webmail account, Gmail would probably be it, since it's had some great reviews.
Their searches getting more useless? I'm not sure about that. I've been able to find everything I've ever needed through Google. You may have a point about stale references, but I've never really noticed it. So far, Google searches are as relevant and useful as the first day I started using it.
I'm not sure what this backlash against Google is about. So far, it all seems to be "oh Google could do this", and "Google has the power to do that". Sure, they've got the power to be as evil as the next corporation. But they're not using that power for anything evil, as far as I can see. Not yet. Bwahahaha!
The new Microsoft, eh? That's an interesting tag for Google. Big is apparently evil? Certainly, the bigger you are, the more careful you have to tread, lest you squash the ants under your feet. It's not necessarily evil if you do squash an ant; it is evil if that was your purpose. Likewise Google and Microsoft. It's not necessarily evil if many people use your software or services; it's evil if you try to destroy your competition. I'd say Google has a long way to go, to be truly compared to Microsoft.
It's funny the timing of this article, because I've just completed my final interviews with Google for a job there. I'm usually a small/mid sized company person, because I hate big company environments. Google is the first large company to convince me that it'd be worth working with them. They really seem to allow employees to spread their wings and do their thing. They don't seem to try to squeeze every drop of productivity from people, and may possibly get things done better because of it. I know I certainly am more creative with my problem solving, if I'm in a relaxed and fun environment. Anyway, if I get this job, it'll be very interesting to see how Google copes with allowing such freedom at work. Maybe they've invented a way to herd cats.
My impression of Australia has been that the place never really caught the post War wave or the sixties and is still fairly stuck in a bigoted and colonial mindset. I'm probably disparaging a lot of Australian slashdotters, but to be fair your domestic actions are speaking volumes to the rest of us.
Well, speaking as a 2nd generation Australian of Lebanese origin (parents born overseas), I can say that Australia is well and truly on the road to good multiculturalism. Sure, there are bigoted pockets here and there, but they are simply the slowly decreasing minority that always seem to grab media attention.
I was born in Australia over 30 years ago, and have never experienced any racial prejudice during that time. I have good friends from all sorts of backgrounds: Scottish, Chinese, English, Dutch, South African, Sri Lankan, Finnish, Indian, Spanish. And they're just the people I'm good friends with. There are plenty more people from many other backgrounds that I know of. We all get on well. Living next to all these nationalities, going to school with them, learning about their culture and family life, I've learnt to truly understand and respect the wide diversity that this world has.
It's a generational thing. Each subsequent generation growing up with such close cultural diversity at hand, without hate and prejudice marring their upbringing, makes for almost habitual cultural tolerance. My generation often laugh at some of the things our parents say, realising that they're being unintentionally racist. We try to educate them, and I think they're understanding. They're a bit slow, but what can you do... they're only parents. Even still, my family are generally understanding, and accept marriage between cultures: my uncle has married a Greek girl, and my sister has married an Argentinian guy.
Not everything is perfect, of course. I hear of stories of Lebanese youths doing stupid things, and giving the rest of us a bad name. I don't know 'em, and have never run into them, so I can only assume that they're a minority. Still, I cringe every time I hear such stories. Many Lebanese youths do have an extrovert manner, which is great when done in fun, but can turn belligerent when attacked. That's just their nature, and maturity on their part, coupled with understanding from others, I believe it will help tremendously.
Anyway, I hope that this post has given you an insight into my slice of Australia. That's all I can give. I can't speak for the rest of the country. It doesn't make for an exciting news story; people getting on well, tolerance abounds. Boring stuff. I can see the TV ratings dropping already. But, this is reality for me in Australia, and I'm pretty happy with it.
Well written comment! I agree with your sentiments on the Linux desktop, although XP does boot about 5-10 seconds faster for me. I certainly have no problems playing music or video, even while multitasking with other software. No jitters or stutters here. No tearing while dragging windows around either.
I converted my work laptop (IBM R51e) to Linux about a year and a half ago. I converted it, because I thought the desktop experience in Linux had matured to the point where it could be used full time. I did go through a period where things weren't exactly the way I liked them, but I managed to find ways to tweak existing software, or found other software which did what I wanted. Today, the only thing I'm not happy about is Evolution and Microsoft Exchange, but I work around that in my office environment, by using rdesktop to a teminal server, and running Outlook. I'm hopeful that something called Brutus will help in that regard. I've yet to test it out though.
Basically, I've just about hit my desktop sweetspot, using Linux. It's responsive, has almost all the software I need, and I can tweak it exactly how I like (virtual desktops, zero wait desktop mouse flip, no raise on focus). I always feel constrained when I have to use a Windows machine these days.
Your comments remind me of an article that I read about the other day. It is similar to what you say, except from an economists view. Have a read, it's very enlightening.
Hopefully the internet will better educate future consumers. I know I try to research any purchases that I make, and the internet has been invaluable for that.
I second the recommendation about flashblock. I've been using it for years myself, not because I've been worried about any flash issues, but because it stops those garish flash ads, and obnoxious flash sites. It seems that most flash designers prefer showy designs, rather than usable ones. Therefore, I prefer not to show flash.
For less than half the cost of going there, you can purchase a PS3 and the BluRay version of the Galapagos BBC documentary (available Oct 2). I haven't seen it yet, but I've heard from friends that it is spectacular.
The bonus is, this option has much less environmental impact. I'd say zero impact, but the juice your PS3 and HDTV sucks down has to contribute some way. Not to mention the hot air that the PS3 blows out.
Actually, all we expect from any company is openness, and not lies. If you are selling a piece of shit, please let us know how bad it smells before we buy it.
Hah! You want companies to tell you the truth about their product, no matter how bad it is?! Let's be realistic, it's just not in the interest of the company to do so. The best you can currently hope for is for early adopters to get burnt and report it on a forum. That's why I love the internet... it's given a world-wide consumer base a chance to share experiences, far from the control of a company. DMCA takedown notices excepted, of course.
If you want ethical behaviour from companies, then you have to give them incentives to be so. Think of them as children. Reward their behaviour when they do something good, punish them when they do something bad. If you're an engineer, think of it as establishing a feedback loop in a control system. The system ain't going to regulate itself.
But, how do you reward a company for truthfully reporting that their product was badly designed? That, my friend, seems to be the crux of the situation.
Debian must not sell out to Microsoft or Ubuntu will have a very rough road ahead. And for Debian not go with Microsoft will take the whole community to back it.
And thus we now understand the need for sticking to ideals. Debian developers have stuck to their ideals on many issues. For example, the Firefox trademark problem. Many people criticised them for it, but they didn't compromise on what they believed in.
So, based on past actions, I believe that Debian will be perfectly safe. They have their ideals, they've written them down, and they're not going to back down on them.
Slashdot Mirror
That is quite a generic statement, my friend. And, like other generic statements, it is incorrect for many situations.
Sure, Linux can be a pain for some things, but it is also much easier for others. I can setup services and software on my Debian system, within minutes. It is _never_ that easy in Windows. Ironically, I'd say that drivers are the area that Linux scores better in, based on my experiences. I've had some nightmare problems with drivers in Windows: finding them, installing them, even fixing them. One recent problem on a Windows XP machine, I couldn't get the motherboard ethernet interface working. I couldn't even reinstall the driver, as both the CD version and the latest downloaded version, would crash when doing the install.
By the way, guess how I downloaded that recent windows driver
I tried another few tricks to get the ethernet interface working in XP. Nothing worked. So, I just told the owner that they have to reinstall Windows to get it working.
Man, for such a popular OS, it sure is damn easy to break.
I must be one of the few people that had little difficulty with this level. I did have some difficulty with the flaming spiral net area, but as soon as I had the timing down using a double-jump-float, it was fine. The rest of the level was no problem.
I'm most looking forward to Little Big Planet. It looks like heaps of fun.
If Sony remade ICO, Shadow of the Colossus, and Katamari Damarcy, specifically for High Definition, I would snap up a PS3 today!
Lastly, about the backward compatibility issue, I'm happy for Sony to remove it from one model, as long as they always keep a model available that keeps it. I'm quite happy to pay an extra $50 for the PS3, to have it replace my PS2, instead of having to keep both side by side.
Click on one of the links in the blog, and you'll discover a reference to a Newsweek article, published in 1995, describing exactly the 1-click process. This article was based on the Digicash system that the journalist was reporting on, but the idea of clicking once to order something, was imagined by the journalist who wrote the article. This article pre-dated the Amazon patent by two years.
So, let me ask you, if a journalist can come up with this same idea, in a field that he is not related to at all, then how the hell is it _not_ an obvious idea?!
The whole issue seems to be that measuring "obviousness" is not that obvious. It can be very subjective at times, but maybe there is a way to solve it. If it was me, I would take the problem in question, hand it to a group of people, and see how they solve it. If any of them come up with the same solution, then surely the solution is "obvious" (to a greater or lesser degree, judging by how many people came up with the same solution).
Maybe this is the method that the US patent office should adopt. They should hire a group of 30 or so problem solvers, fire problems at them, and if any one comes up with the same solution as on the patent application, immediate rejection. I think that would take out most idiotic patents.
I should probably patent the idea.
Well, you _are_ changing the total amount of water in the sea, otherwise what is the use of desalination? But that is a nit-pick, because you are correct, if you consider the _entire_ sea, the net effect will be close to zero.
But I'm not talking about net effect. Concentrated brine will kill life on the seabed, and it will kill it for many kilometres around the pipes, depending on the topography, of course. It sounds like you don't understand how concentrated brine acts in seawater. If you think it'll naturally disperse quickly, you've got a big surprise waiting. If unagitated, brine will sink to the bottom of the sea, and will hang around for a long, long time. You'll actually have a lake of brine form, and it is visibly different to the normal seawater above it. All this can quite quickly disrupt or kill off the ecosystem in a much larger area than the brine itself takes up.
The net salt content of the whole sea will be close to the same as before, but now you've destroyed any life in the area. Now you know the dangers of thinking in terms of "net effect".
There _are_ other issues with desalination, other than cost. Like, what do you do with the salty brine by-product? Tip it back into the ocean? That could cause environmental problems.
Still, on a small scale, a cheap and efficient desalination product would be brilliant! I'd certainly buy a handheld version, when I go camping near the ocean.
I would choose the right tool for the right job. If that job is pushing out group policies, and Microsoft have a tool for it, and open source does not, then I choose Microsoft.
If Microsoft has a tool for it, and open source has a tool as well, then I choose open source. Why? Because I have the option to tailor the program to my specific circumstances. Say I wanted to push out different policies, dependent on some essential criteria. If the Microsoft tool does not support this feature, you are hosed! With open source, you can add the feature yourself, and even better, contribute it back to the creators, so everyone benefits.
The point is, you've chosen an example where you would certainly choose a Microsoft tool. I'm sure there are also many examples where you'd choose open source. You've just got to evaluate it case by case.
It all depends on what your overall objective is. If the objective is to destroy Microsoft, or it's to cater to what others want, then yes, an OSS project needs to develop beyond the immediate needs of the developer. If the objective is to satisfy the needs of the developer, then no, the OSS project should stop when the developer is happy. There's nothing wrong with both, and I'm sure that both are happening in the OSS world. It's a big world after all, and it can quite happily cope with many different reasons for doing things.
For me personally, I'm not a great programmer, but I have enough talent that I can modify existing source code with a little effort. For me, open source adds a whole new dimension of freedom to software and computer use. It's great, and I really appreciate all those other programmers making the source available. I don't expect them to pander to my requirements, unless that is what they want to do.
If business wants a feature added to OSS software, and they're willing to pay money for it, surely they can sponsor the original open source developer to create it for them. After all, they were going to pony up the money to some software company somewhere. They might as well give it to a developer directly, and get a custom solution created for them, that specifically meets their needs.
± 1 Freakish
Back on topic, personally I've got no issues with someone posting a foreign language link, and providing the interesting bits in English. I'm certainly interested in viewing the opinions of other countries.
You're not being very convincing either. You call Linus all sorts of things, without actually saying specifically why you think he is arrogant, clueless, and has no understanding. I'm open to the idea that he may be, but your post certainly does nothing to convince me of it.
At least Linus has specifically stated why he thinks security guys are "wanking around". It's because security people state that "only my version is correct", when they don't quantify exactly why this is the case. That certainly meets my criteria for "wanking around". Linus appears to have made a good judgement call.
Never fear, because he's not doing all the coding himself. According to the link in the article, he's had over 100 volunteers to help him out. If he's good at managing them, then 100 talented coders could certainly make a large impact!
You go to Lego and ask them to send you the missing piece. Lego are pretty good that way. You don't need to catalogue the pieces. You start building, and any missing pieces are pretty obvious after a while.
I thought that sausage contained the whole pig. Even the hoofs.
Sausage may work for goat as well. Just slap some herbs in with it, call it gourmet, and it'd probably be a hit. It's all in the marketing.
But, ducks float on water, so they must weigh the same as wood, like witches, since witches burn like wood. Therefore the duck must be a witch!
I'm repeating what others have posted already, but what you wish for looks to be happening soon.
http://lwn.net/Articles/248227/
Or, he could just be doing it for fun, and not in a way to inflate his ego or status. How sad it is, or how funny it is, depends on his reasons for doing, and you can't gather that just from his picasso page. Personally, I think it's pretty funny.
There's nothing wrong with celebrities, just as long as you don't feed them.
Interesting comment, thanks for replying.
Firstly, I did that search for "Google is Evil". It was full of rants from people and webmasters that have clashed with Google's policies. I wouldn't describe that as evil though. They've set policy in place, some people get annoyed at them, those people crow that Google is Evil. Not convincing. Here's a typical link.
Street level photography? I thought that was a really cool idea! It adds another dimension to searching maps, on a level that is more in tune with how we recognise streets. It just adds that human element, instead of sterile shaded areas.
I've got no idea about desktop search and Gmail, since I don't use either. I use "find" or "rgrep" for searches anyway. If I was ever to get a webmail account, Gmail would probably be it, since it's had some great reviews.
Their searches getting more useless? I'm not sure about that. I've been able to find everything I've ever needed through Google. You may have a point about stale references, but I've never really noticed it. So far, Google searches are as relevant and useful as the first day I started using it.
I'm not sure what this backlash against Google is about. So far, it all seems to be "oh Google could do this", and "Google has the power to do that". Sure, they've got the power to be as evil as the next corporation. But they're not using that power for anything evil, as far as I can see. Not yet. Bwahahaha!
I couldn't resist that last bit.
The new Microsoft, eh? That's an interesting tag for Google. Big is apparently evil? Certainly, the bigger you are, the more careful you have to tread, lest you squash the ants under your feet. It's not necessarily evil if you do squash an ant; it is evil if that was your purpose. Likewise Google and Microsoft. It's not necessarily evil if many people use your software or services; it's evil if you try to destroy your competition. I'd say Google has a long way to go, to be truly compared to Microsoft.
It's funny the timing of this article, because I've just completed my final interviews with Google for a job there. I'm usually a small/mid sized company person, because I hate big company environments. Google is the first large company to convince me that it'd be worth working with them. They really seem to allow employees to spread their wings and do their thing. They don't seem to try to squeeze every drop of productivity from people, and may possibly get things done better because of it. I know I certainly am more creative with my problem solving, if I'm in a relaxed and fun environment. Anyway, if I get this job, it'll be very interesting to see how Google copes with allowing such freedom at work. Maybe they've invented a way to herd cats.
Well, speaking as a 2nd generation Australian of Lebanese origin (parents born overseas), I can say that Australia is well and truly on the road to good multiculturalism. Sure, there are bigoted pockets here and there, but they are simply the slowly decreasing minority that always seem to grab media attention.
I was born in Australia over 30 years ago, and have never experienced any racial prejudice during that time. I have good friends from all sorts of backgrounds: Scottish, Chinese, English, Dutch, South African, Sri Lankan, Finnish, Indian, Spanish. And they're just the people I'm good friends with. There are plenty more people from many other backgrounds that I know of. We all get on well. Living next to all these nationalities, going to school with them, learning about their culture and family life, I've learnt to truly understand and respect the wide diversity that this world has.
It's a generational thing. Each subsequent generation growing up with such close cultural diversity at hand, without hate and prejudice marring their upbringing, makes for almost habitual cultural tolerance. My generation often laugh at some of the things our parents say, realising that they're being unintentionally racist. We try to educate them, and I think they're understanding. They're a bit slow, but what can you do
Not everything is perfect, of course. I hear of stories of Lebanese youths doing stupid things, and giving the rest of us a bad name. I don't know 'em, and have never run into them, so I can only assume that they're a minority. Still, I cringe every time I hear such stories. Many Lebanese youths do have an extrovert manner, which is great when done in fun, but can turn belligerent when attacked. That's just their nature, and maturity on their part, coupled with understanding from others, I believe it will help tremendously.
Anyway, I hope that this post has given you an insight into my slice of Australia. That's all I can give. I can't speak for the rest of the country. It doesn't make for an exciting news story; people getting on well, tolerance abounds. Boring stuff. I can see the TV ratings dropping already. But, this is reality for me in Australia, and I'm pretty happy with it.
Well written comment! I agree with your sentiments on the Linux desktop, although XP does boot about 5-10 seconds faster for me. I certainly have no problems playing music or video, even while multitasking with other software. No jitters or stutters here. No tearing while dragging windows around either.
I converted my work laptop (IBM R51e) to Linux about a year and a half ago. I converted it, because I thought the desktop experience in Linux had matured to the point where it could be used full time. I did go through a period where things weren't exactly the way I liked them, but I managed to find ways to tweak existing software, or found other software which did what I wanted. Today, the only thing I'm not happy about is Evolution and Microsoft Exchange, but I work around that in my office environment, by using rdesktop to a teminal server, and running Outlook. I'm hopeful that something called Brutus will help in that regard. I've yet to test it out though.
Basically, I've just about hit my desktop sweetspot, using Linux. It's responsive, has almost all the software I need, and I can tweak it exactly how I like (virtual desktops, zero wait desktop mouse flip, no raise on focus). I always feel constrained when I have to use a Windows machine these days.
Your comments remind me of an article
that I read about the other day. It is similar to what you say, except from an economists view. Have a read, it's very enlightening.
Hopefully the internet will better educate future consumers. I know I try to research any purchases that I make, and the internet has been invaluable for that.
I second the recommendation about flashblock. I've been using it for years myself, not because I've been worried about any flash issues, but because it stops those garish flash ads, and obnoxious flash sites. It seems that most flash designers prefer showy designs, rather than usable ones. Therefore, I prefer not to show flash.
For less than half the cost of going there, you can purchase a PS3 and the BluRay version of the Galapagos BBC documentary (available Oct 2). I haven't seen it yet, but I've heard from friends that it is spectacular.
The bonus is, this option has much less environmental impact. I'd say zero impact, but the juice your PS3 and HDTV sucks down has to contribute some way. Not to mention the hot air that the PS3 blows out.
Another bonus, you get a PS3!
Hah! You want companies to tell you the truth about their product, no matter how bad it is?! Let's be realistic, it's just not in the interest of the company to do so. The best you can currently hope for is for early adopters to get burnt and report it on a forum. That's why I love the internet
If you want ethical behaviour from companies, then you have to give them incentives to be so. Think of them as children. Reward their behaviour when they do something good, punish them when they do something bad. If you're an engineer, think of it as establishing a feedback loop in a control system. The system ain't going to regulate itself.
But, how do you reward a company for truthfully reporting that their product was badly designed? That, my friend, seems to be the crux of the situation.
And thus we now understand the need for sticking to ideals. Debian developers have stuck to their ideals on many issues. For example, the Firefox trademark problem. Many people criticised them for it, but they didn't compromise on what they believed in.
So, based on past actions, I believe that Debian will be perfectly safe. They have their ideals, they've written them down, and they're not going to back down on them.