It is fair to say that Linux has come a long ways in usability - but if you are honest and objective, you will certainly find it difficult to argue modern Linux is an easier user experience than modern OS X or Windows.
I've never used OS X for more than five minutes, but I have used Windows 2000, XP, and 98SE for years. I'm still forced to use 2k at work (and it works fine). I can say with authority that Linux is an easier user experience than Windows. My 70-yo Mother downgraded to XP this year from 98SE, and my phone rings constantly because things don't "just work" (printer and scanner retarded setup conflicts, for example). I really, REALLY tried to get her to buy a Mac, but she just wouldn't. After 9 months with XP, she regrets that decision. Fortunately, that's opened the door for me to get her to try Linux. I upgraded her old 98SE machine with Ubuntu, and she loves it. (I still think she would love a Mac laptop.)
So she started out biased and not objective, preferring Windows, and has come to regret that bias.
My examples of web browsing and photo viewing were not to say that it can NOT be done in Linux, they were to say that the experience is not as easy as with OS X. In MY experience with Red Hat and OS X, I found the ease of use to be breathtakingly different.
Well, Red Hat is old hat.;) My experience with RH was not that great either, but there hasn't been a "RH" distro for some time. Fedora is also a pain in the ass, in my experience. Stuff didn't "just work" there either. In Ubuntu (and Xubuntu, Kubuntu, and Debian Etch for that matter), everything "just works".
I don't have experience with OS X, and you didn't say "compared to OS X" in your original statement. I've no doubt that it's easier in OS X than RH, but I think it unlikely that it's easier than Ubuntu. We can probably just say it's trivially easy in both and both declare victory.:) But I still stand by my opinion that your original statement about Linux is an incorrect and common misconception, and now confirm that it's based on outdated information.
"Further, since Linux is more of a "hacker's OS" it isn't well suited for households where a non-tech may want to jump on the web or download photos from the family digital camera. No Thanks."
I don't know when you last used Linux, but that is a common and utterly incorrect misconception. With any modern distribution, you plug in a digital camera and IT JUST WORKS. With Windows, you have to find the driver disk, load the driver, then load the proprietary software. The Linux experience is far simpler. Also, "jumping on the web" is absolutely trivial in Linux, since the Internet connection hardware is automatically loaded and configured, and there is always a browser link right on the desktop. The two experiences are just not comparable.
The Commodore 64 had the same component video outputs.
True. Commodore also had the awesome 1702 monitor. Still one of the best YC video monitors ever. Especially for the price.
It used 1 RCA cable for each, whereas the S-Video uses a single cable with 4 wires.
The Atari used a 5-pin round DIN connector, and you had to roll your own video cable. But the point wasn't the physical connector, it was that it was YC component video before Sony wrapped their marketing around it.
While maybe not the most popular home computer, the 1979 Atari 800 was the most capable, and the most likely to still work. They were built like tanks (well, like game consoles anyway). I have serial number 0127 and it still works. The other advantage for your display is that they use cartridges for software that you can demonstrate, and also have high-resolution separate chrominance and luminance video output (S-Video before anybody called it S-video).
"So by your logic, we shouldn't need traffic lights, seat belts, air bags, insurance, or speed limits. If people took the time to learn how to drive more carefully, and stopped having stupid accidents, we wouldn't need these safety measures."
If they have anything to say about this, they'll be sure that resulting programs are either closed-source, or so locked-down, encumbered, and dangerous for the greater community (beyond Novell) that it is not worth it to develop in a community-driven way.
So maybe now some people can see the benefit of the patent-protection clause in GPL V3 draft?
Bullshit to you too, friend. I didn't say the Japanese didn't have an established navy, so your retort falls flat on it's face. Read a little more carefully before you call bullshit in the future.
"If it's approved, it gets dropped into the mix. If not, it is shuttled into a junk pile and they re-cast."
If it's approved, but for the undesired candidate, shuttle it into the junk pile after the voter had approved it.
Even better; show the wrong vote. Voter rejects, drop it into the approved mix. Let voter recast and approve, shuttle into the junk pile. Voter thinks they've outsmarted machine, machine throws election. Simple.
NO. Because then vote-selling would be possible. It would allow a voter to prove to a vote-buyer that they voted as-desired and should be paid. In an honest election, the voter must have no way of proving their vote outside of the polling place.
But that still requires a local email client that you have to maintain on every machine you use. I use four machines with any regularity, and really don't want to manage updating the clients on each machine. On one of those machines, I'm not allowed to maintain anything.
Not to mention that the required ports on a foreign network may be filtered or blocked, whereas ports 80 and 443 are almost never blocked or filtered stringently enough to kill IMP.
Also not sure what functionality makes the local clients "better suited" than the web clients. Sure, IMP lacks some of the features of (bloated, IMHO) local clients, but it doesn't lack any feature that I actually use. It does 75%+ of what the local clients do, and that's about 110% of what I need.
I only use webmail because I can access all of my email from everywhere, and I never have to worry about duplicates updating many local clients, or which machine an email is on. But of course, now we have to argue over webmail clients. I use Horde IMP.
"I think webmail will soon be replacing client side readers for all but power users"
Webmail will be replacing client-side readers for all but LOW-power users. I dumped email clients years ago because I want my email, all of my email including archives, accessible to me at all times from all locations. No client could do that.
Low-power users will just use whatever email client AOL, Comcrap, or Ma Bell loads on their machine and will have no concept that they could access their email from anywhere other than their "Peecee" sitting in the corner that they power-on twice a week.
"The usual tech magazines do not have articles in spanish;" Ah-ha! Now language is a different matter than race. That's a legitimate quest to be looking for a Spanish-language IT magazine, or at least Spanish-speaking IT innovators, whatever their color.
"nor do they focus on minority based start ups trying to make it." But then this statement makes it clear you are not just talking about language, you are talking about race. Why should they focus on a startup based on the ethnicity of the people starting the company? That is blatantly racist! They should be completely colorblind, paying race no more attention than eye color, dammit!
"How can a Latin American kid (who only speaks spanish) learn about OSS (or anything tech) if all they see are white dudes talking english?" What if the "white dudes" were talking Spanish? Would that be good enough, or is the fact that they are "white" (which I dare you to define) make their views less valid to a Latin American kid?
"Christ I messed up on the submission, badly wording it;" I'm not sure you did. You stated you were looking for IT "innovators/developers that were not white (or American)[,] specifically Hispanic or African-American.". You haven't refuted that with later posts, including this one. You are still searching for role models based on ethnicity, not language. That's racist. Racism is wrong, period. Perpetuating racism is really wrong. Stop it, please.
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It is fair to say that Linux has come a long ways in usability - but if you are honest and objective, you will certainly find it difficult to argue modern Linux is an easier user experience than modern OS X or Windows.
;) My experience with RH was not that great either, but there hasn't been a "RH" distro for some time. Fedora is also a pain in the ass, in my experience. Stuff didn't "just work" there either. In Ubuntu (and Xubuntu, Kubuntu, and Debian Etch for that matter), everything "just works".
:) But I still stand by my opinion that your original statement about Linux is an incorrect and common misconception, and now confirm that it's based on outdated information.
I've never used OS X for more than five minutes, but I have used Windows 2000, XP, and 98SE for years. I'm still forced to use 2k at work (and it works fine). I can say with authority that Linux is an easier user experience than Windows. My 70-yo Mother downgraded to XP this year from 98SE, and my phone rings constantly because things don't "just work" (printer and scanner retarded setup conflicts, for example). I really, REALLY tried to get her to buy a Mac, but she just wouldn't. After 9 months with XP, she regrets that decision. Fortunately, that's opened the door for me to get her to try Linux. I upgraded her old 98SE machine with Ubuntu, and she loves it. (I still think she would love a Mac laptop.)
So she started out biased and not objective, preferring Windows, and has come to regret that bias.
My examples of web browsing and photo viewing were not to say that it can NOT be done in Linux, they were to say that the experience is not as easy as with OS X. In MY experience with Red Hat and OS X, I found the ease of use to be breathtakingly different.
Well, Red Hat is old hat.
I don't have experience with OS X, and you didn't say "compared to OS X" in your original statement. I've no doubt that it's easier in OS X than RH, but I think it unlikely that it's easier than Ubuntu. We can probably just say it's trivially easy in both and both declare victory.
"Further, since Linux is more of a "hacker's OS" it isn't well suited for households where a non-tech may want to jump on the web or download photos from the family digital camera. No Thanks."
I don't know when you last used Linux, but that is a common and utterly incorrect misconception. With any modern distribution, you plug in a digital camera and IT JUST WORKS. With Windows, you have to find the driver disk, load the driver, then load the proprietary software. The Linux experience is far simpler. Also, "jumping on the web" is absolutely trivial in Linux, since the Internet connection hardware is automatically loaded and configured, and there is always a browser link right on the desktop. The two experiences are just not comparable.
The Commodore 64 had the same component video outputs.
True. Commodore also had the awesome 1702 monitor. Still one of the best YC video monitors ever. Especially for the price.
It used 1 RCA cable for each, whereas the S-Video uses a single cable with 4 wires.
The Atari used a 5-pin round DIN connector, and you had to roll your own video cable. But the point wasn't the physical connector, it was that it was YC component video before Sony wrapped their marketing around it.
While maybe not the most popular home computer, the 1979 Atari 800 was the most capable, and the most likely to still work. They were built like tanks (well, like game consoles anyway). I have serial number 0127 and it still works. The other advantage for your display is that they use cartridges for software that you can demonstrate, and also have high-resolution separate chrominance and luminance video output (S-Video before anybody called it S-video).
"So by your logic, we shouldn't need traffic lights, seat belts, air bags, insurance, or speed limits. If people took the time to learn how to drive more carefully, and stopped having stupid accidents, we wouldn't need these safety measures."
That is 100% correct.
If they have anything to say about this, they'll be sure that resulting programs are either closed-source, or so locked-down, encumbered, and dangerous for the greater community (beyond Novell) that it is not worth it to develop in a community-driven way.
So maybe now some people can see the benefit of the patent-protection clause in GPL V3 draft?
Bullshit to you too, friend. I didn't say the Japanese didn't have an established navy, so your retort falls flat on it's face. Read a little more carefully before you call bullshit in the future.
'Defense Secretary Rumsfeld says we need to protect against a 'space Pearl Harbor,'' he says. 'But we're still the dominant power there.'"
We were the dominant power in the Pacific in 1941 too. Didn't stop our enemies then, why should it stop them now?
LCD's cause cancer? Holy hell!
;-)
Seriously, this is 2006. CRTs are about finished.
Not cracking on you for the spelling mistake. Giving you a thumbs-up for NOT being a politician!
"guess I'll never make a politiion..."
You can be proud of that.
"If it's approved, it gets dropped into the mix. If not, it is shuttled into a junk pile and they re-cast."
If it's approved, but for the undesired candidate, shuttle it into the junk pile after the voter had approved it.
Even better; show the wrong vote. Voter rejects, drop it into the approved mix. Let voter recast and approve, shuttle into the junk pile. Voter thinks they've outsmarted machine, machine throws election. Simple.
NO. Because then vote-selling would be possible. It would allow a voter to prove to a vote-buyer that they voted as-desired and should be paid. In an honest election, the voter must have no way of proving their vote outside of the polling place.
Given StopBadware.org's criteria, why isn't at least Windows XP listed?
Yes, but the area you speak of can not be read at a distance.
She's a mutant!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leela's_Homeworld
Why in the HELL would you let Microsoft or any other company PERIOD to write or even assist in the writing of a law like this.
Uh, MONEY!!! Doesn't cost much to buy yourself a middle-America legislator.
I bought one of these:
http://www.monstergecko.com/products.html
Great mouse, and cheap too at $20. An added bonus is it frightens those who think like small children.
But that still requires a local email client that you have to maintain on every machine you use. I use four machines with any regularity, and really don't want to manage updating the clients on each machine. On one of those machines, I'm not allowed to maintain anything.
Not to mention that the required ports on a foreign network may be filtered or blocked, whereas ports 80 and 443 are almost never blocked or filtered stringently enough to kill IMP.
Also not sure what functionality makes the local clients "better suited" than the web clients. Sure, IMP lacks some of the features of (bloated, IMHO) local clients, but it doesn't lack any feature that I actually use. It does 75%+ of what the local clients do, and that's about 110% of what I need.
You people have no sense of humor. Shame on me for forgetting to put a smiley on it. :-))))
How often are you someplace where you have no connection, really? A few hours on a plane, maybe. Even that is being connected now.
.
The beauty of webmail is I can connect from any computer anywhere there is connectivity, which, if you read the news, is everywhere
If I don't have connectivity, I can surely read a book or something until the plane lands...
W-w-wha-what the f-f-f-fu-fu HELL are y-y-you talk-ta-talk-talking about y-y-you P-P-PUS-PUSSY!!!!
Out-ow-outlook B-B-B-B-a-BLO-BL-B-aba-d- SUCKS!
I only use webmail because I can access all of my email from everywhere, and I never have to worry about duplicates updating many local clients, or which machine an email is on. But of course, now we have to argue over webmail clients. I use Horde IMP.
"I think webmail will soon be replacing client side readers for all but power users"
Webmail will be replacing client-side readers for all but LOW-power users. I dumped email clients years ago because I want my email, all of my email including archives, accessible to me at all times from all locations. No client could do that.
Low-power users will just use whatever email client AOL, Comcrap, or Ma Bell loads on their machine and will have no concept that they could access their email from anywhere other than their "Peecee" sitting in the corner that they power-on twice a week.
Meh.
"The usual tech magazines do not have articles in spanish;"
Ah-ha! Now language is a different matter than race. That's a legitimate quest to be looking for a Spanish-language IT magazine, or at least Spanish-speaking IT innovators, whatever their color.
"nor do they focus on minority based start ups trying to make it."
But then this statement makes it clear you are not just talking about language, you are talking about race. Why should they focus on a startup based on the ethnicity of the people starting the company? That is blatantly racist! They should be completely colorblind, paying race no more attention than eye color, dammit!
"How can a Latin American kid (who only speaks spanish) learn about OSS (or anything tech) if all they see are white dudes talking english?"
What if the "white dudes" were talking Spanish? Would that be good enough, or is the fact that they are "white" (which I dare you to define) make their views less valid to a Latin American kid?
"Christ I messed up on the submission, badly wording it;"
I'm not sure you did. You stated you were looking for IT "innovators/developers that were not white (or American)[,] specifically Hispanic or African-American.". You haven't refuted that with later posts, including this one. You are still searching for role models based on ethnicity, not language. That's racist. Racism is wrong, period. Perpetuating racism is really wrong. Stop it, please.