I installed it because, well, why not? Having it installed means if I ever come across a site using Silverlight, I won't have any problems viewing the content. Occasionally I've seen Microsoft videos presented on Ars Technica using Silverlight (since they were embedded straight from Microsoft), and didn't have any problems because the plugin was installed.
I aliased "path" to be "echo $PATH". Whenever I type "path" in bash, I get the executable search path of the current user. I aliased "lpdiff" to print a diff of two files in a landscaped printer-friendly layout. There are plenty more.
That's cool. I had a simple alias called "n", which launched "nautilus." so I could spawn a file manager from the command line to browse the current directory. That's about all I've done in the way of custom aliases though.:)
Still, with Windows 7 if you don't know quite where to go to do something, typing in the subject in the search bar will generally be enough. I had to give someone local admin rights to a computer, so I just typed in "admin" and the second option which appears was "Give administrative rights to a domain user". Very clear and specific as to what this action would do, and indeed it was exactly what I needed. No hunting around the (now very bloated) Control Panel anymore!
For what it's worth, you can restore Firefox's traditional URL behavior without using extra extensions by going into about:config and setting browser.urlbar.trimURLs to false (I also hate the new Firefox default setting of removing the headers from URLs, as if it makes the net too complicated or something). You can also fix your history showing in the AwesomeBar by going to Tools -> Options -> Privacy -> When using the location bar, suggest: .
On the other hand, I have an extension to return the traditional status bar at the bottom of the screen as well as provide a Properties to anything I right click (which was removed in Firefox 3 I believe), so believe me when I say I fucking hate the way things are going too.
It's usually terribly inefficient to go back and forth between the two.
I really doubt it's as inefficient as you might think. It's just practice. Maybe you should take up PC gaming - FPS and strategy games are a great way to learn parallel keyboard/mouse management.:)
I like some of the new GUI in Win 7/Vista, but by God do I hate having to navigate through numerous windows to get to somewhere which only took two clicks in previous versions; and that's when I can find the damn location of whatever the fuck I'm looking for. At least shell hasn't changed its interactivity.
One thing I like about Windows 7 is that the search bar in the "Start" menu doesn't just find programs to launch, but also actions.
For example, people complain that it takes a lot of clicks to find out your IP address for a network interface in Windows Vista/7. I'm not sure about Vista, but I know that in Windows 7, I can do this:
1. Hit Windows Key -> type in: "ip address" (no quotes) and hit Enter. The action shown before hitting enter will be "View network connections".
2. The Network Connections window will show up. Double click on the interface you're after, and you'll see what you used to see in XP - the info for the interface (at which point click Details as you would in XP and you'll get all the pertinent info).
There are a whole bunch of actions coded into Windows 7, so just give it a go and see if it has the shortcut for the action you're after (it probably does). When someone tries to be a smartass and say "hey look, it seems like even Microsoft knows the command line is superior!" I just remind them that you don't get actions of this form in a Bash shell. GNOME Do does have some support, but given it's entirely integrated into the OS I expect Windows 7 has it all.
I like trying new GUIs, mainly because I'm open-minded enough to realize that tradition be damned - we aren't perfect, and sometimes interfaces we've come to accept aren't the most efficient at presenting and manipulating information with, no matter how long they've been around.
That said, Unity and GNOME 3 are rubbish because they're (mostly) inflexible and lack customization features. Windows 7 was a great improvement over XP because of the new features such as Aero Snap and Peak, BUT it also contained familiar attributes that were present in past versions of Windows, as well has having a ton of configuration options (you can even move the Superbar around to any edge of the screen you like - fuck you Unity).
I'm not sure what to think of Windows 8 yet, but I actually believe Microsoft won't screw this up purely because they have a lot more customers than Linux and can't afford to experiment as much without relying on a massive amount of user feedback. The GNOME 3 team seems to believe they are a revolutionary force in UI design despite there being a lot of complaints about basic, stupid decisions that shouldn't still be in even the latest 3.2 version. Perfect example: hiding the Shutdown command in the user menu, unless you hold down the Alt key before clicking on the menu. Yes extensions can fix this, but why the fuck do you not even have it changeable in the options, much less a default people are naturally expecting to find there?
Maybe I just hate that even WINDOWS BLOODY 7 is more configurable than GNOME 3 and Unity combined out of the box. GNOME 3 has a ton of extensions that surpass what you can get in Windows 7 however, but you have to install them, whereas Windows 7 has a lot of fiddly bits all ready for you. That's the main beef I have with these new GUIs, specifically the Linux ones anyway. The lack of user-friendly configuration (no, text files and recompiling the source to fix hard-coded settings are not acceptable).
Things seem to have settled down in the Firefox world. I did the update, it worked very smoothly with all my extensions supported without requiring any hacks. I think most extension developers have finally understood the need to future-proof their extension's compatibility with Firefox when it does get upgraded, which is probably why there were no issues for me.
Personally (and I do mean personally, just in case someone thinks I'm talking for them) I do not have an issue with the Firefox versioning system anymore. The updates are appreciated, and ranting about it seems less about practical issues and instead people preferring to complain instead of just going with it.
Canonical can't seem to decide what to do with its selection of default software. I found an insightful comment from OMGUbuntu that I thought I should share:
Beyond the ridiculousness of the flip flopping on default applications, this is unacceptable, in my opinion. User loyalty to programs is one thing. People have their preferences and can change them quickly and radically as they see fit. A distro should not exhibit such behavior, particularly when so much work was done to bring Banshee in and make it feel at home in Ubuntu.
To see this and the other comments on the previous Banshee/Ryhthmbox post that indicate the Banshee developers didn't even know the winds of change were blowing is unreal. This is a dangerous precedent to set for behavior toward projects that you'd like included in your distro. What incentive does any developer have, after seeing this, to go out of their way to help Ubuntu? The correct answer should be none.
I'm a teacher from the U.S. so I found some truth in these words, paraphrased as they are:
"Prudence, indeed, will dictate that distros long established should not change their defaults for light and transient causes..."/blockquote
Why would you voluntarily use it when there are several other PDF readers which don't even show up on the attack vector charts?
Adobe Reader will read ALL PDFs that are out there, guaranteed. I've encounter PDFs which opened up to a blank page in Foxit, whereas they worked just fine in Adobe Reader. I don't want to have to deal with that level of unpredictability when it comes to reading file formats, hence I still use Adobe Reader.
As for the attack vectors, well I have yet to encounter any issues. The same people that rant on and on about attack vectors are also the same people who think Windows BSODs and gets infected with malware/viruses/trojans all the time, which simply doesn't happen (to me at least), and as such I tend to downplay the rants they make regarding Reader, Flash and Java attacks.
No! Microsoft is becoming more and more irrelevant and the smart money won't be on closed standards that run on monolithic platforms.
People have been saying Microsoft is becoming more and more irrelevant for YEARS. If they're still this powerful after so long, then obviously the slide into irrelevancy is taking too long for anyone to notice, or (more than likely) it's just a lot of hot air and isn't happening.
Plus, if the smart money won't be on closed standards that run on monolithic platforms, then I guess the iPhone/iPad are financial failures. Closed standards don't seem to bother anyone these days except developers. For better or worse.
You can distill it down to a very simple observation:
The Japanese (and most Asian people) are a proud sort and don't like admitting failure. Admitting failure is a gross sign of weakness, second only to the failure itself. This seems rather counter-productive to me but it's a societal and cultural thing, so I have no avenue to judge.
THAT is what the guys at GNU find funny? I guess when you're out to denigrate proprietary software and anyone who uses it, you'll probably end up with so much hate that your scene of humor becomes rather lame.
There was an embedded version that went everywhere, from phones to information kiosks
Indeed, some of our lab's test equipment (specifically the Agilent oscilloscopes and network analyzers) use Windows XP embedded. When I saw what they were running it was a bit of a shock as I was conditioned to believe Linux was king on embedded systems and Windows didn't have anything to compete, but I guess that's what you get for reading Slashdot/Linux sites too much. Still, seems to work reasonably well.
Although I admit it's funny to turn on a AUD$50,000 network analyzer and see a system tray balloon complaining that automatic updates is not enabled.:)
Yes well, assuming you're not using "Linux ISOs" as a metaphor for something else, my ISP hosts them locally anyway (official mirror), which makes it extremely fast to obtain them and also means they're not counted towards the quota.
I have a 2011 15" MacBook Pro. The new i7 quad-core + new GPU gets crazy hot. Often the temp gauge jumps to 80 degrees C + and the fans spin up. Those 2 fans maxed out at 6200 RPM is anything but quiet.
This is the problem I see with a lot of laptops. If you buy a laptop with a very powerful CPU and GPU, it's gonna run very hot and potentially suffer thermal issues such as overheating and/or other damage (to you and the computer). Plus it's loud. On the other hand, you could buy a less powerful laptop which by its nature will require less cooling and hence will feel a lot nicer. Probably will also do better in battery life too.
If people want to buy powerful computers, they should buy a desktop or build one. That's what they're for - powerful workstations/gaming machines which are much larger and hence can handle the airflow. They can then have a separate laptop for portable usage with lesser (but still reasonable) hardware such that they don't have their fingers sweat whenever they use it. Hot laptops are just a sign of stuffing overpowered hardware into a very confined space without sufficient cooling, and this is going to cause problems.
Slashdot Mirror
Wow, so many morons who don't get a clear Office Space reference. :)
Am I the only one who read the words Phobos and Grunt like the announcer in Quake 3 when bots are joining a game?
Today I learnt that Slashdot has an unusually large number of beekeepers.
This game must be great for those with, shall we say, "toilet troubles." A few comments below yours I read someone say
Then I looked back at your comment and you said
Who needs a laxative when a game can literally blow shit away!
*raises hand*
I installed it because, well, why not? Having it installed means if I ever come across a site using Silverlight, I won't have any problems viewing the content. Occasionally I've seen Microsoft videos presented on Ars Technica using Silverlight (since they were embedded straight from Microsoft), and didn't have any problems because the plugin was installed.
You forced me to Google that word. Now I am more educated. +1
That's cool. I had a simple alias called "n", which launched "nautilus ." so I could spawn a file manager from the command line to browse the current directory. That's about all I've done in the way of custom aliases though. :)
Still, with Windows 7 if you don't know quite where to go to do something, typing in the subject in the search bar will generally be enough. I had to give someone local admin rights to a computer, so I just typed in "admin" and the second option which appears was "Give administrative rights to a domain user". Very clear and specific as to what this action would do, and indeed it was exactly what I needed. No hunting around the (now very bloated) Control Panel anymore!
For what it's worth, you can restore Firefox's traditional URL behavior without using extra extensions by going into about:config and setting browser.urlbar.trimURLs to false (I also hate the new Firefox default setting of removing the headers from URLs, as if it makes the net too complicated or something). You can also fix your history showing in the AwesomeBar by going to Tools -> Options -> Privacy -> When using the location bar, suggest: .
On the other hand, I have an extension to return the traditional status bar at the bottom of the screen as well as provide a Properties to anything I right click (which was removed in Firefox 3 I believe), so believe me when I say I fucking hate the way things are going too.
I really doubt it's as inefficient as you might think. It's just practice. Maybe you should take up PC gaming - FPS and strategy games are a great way to learn parallel keyboard/mouse management. :)
One thing I like about Windows 7 is that the search bar in the "Start" menu doesn't just find programs to launch, but also actions.
For example, people complain that it takes a lot of clicks to find out your IP address for a network interface in Windows Vista/7. I'm not sure about Vista, but I know that in Windows 7, I can do this:
1. Hit Windows Key -> type in: "ip address" (no quotes) and hit Enter. The action shown before hitting enter will be "View network connections".
2. The Network Connections window will show up. Double click on the interface you're after, and you'll see what you used to see in XP - the info for the interface (at which point click Details as you would in XP and you'll get all the pertinent info).
There are a whole bunch of actions coded into Windows 7, so just give it a go and see if it has the shortcut for the action you're after (it probably does). When someone tries to be a smartass and say "hey look, it seems like even Microsoft knows the command line is superior!" I just remind them that you don't get actions of this form in a Bash shell. GNOME Do does have some support, but given it's entirely integrated into the OS I expect Windows 7 has it all.
I like trying new GUIs, mainly because I'm open-minded enough to realize that tradition be damned - we aren't perfect, and sometimes interfaces we've come to accept aren't the most efficient at presenting and manipulating information with, no matter how long they've been around.
That said, Unity and GNOME 3 are rubbish because they're (mostly) inflexible and lack customization features. Windows 7 was a great improvement over XP because of the new features such as Aero Snap and Peak, BUT it also contained familiar attributes that were present in past versions of Windows, as well has having a ton of configuration options (you can even move the Superbar around to any edge of the screen you like - fuck you Unity).
I'm not sure what to think of Windows 8 yet, but I actually believe Microsoft won't screw this up purely because they have a lot more customers than Linux and can't afford to experiment as much without relying on a massive amount of user feedback. The GNOME 3 team seems to believe they are a revolutionary force in UI design despite there being a lot of complaints about basic, stupid decisions that shouldn't still be in even the latest 3.2 version. Perfect example: hiding the Shutdown command in the user menu, unless you hold down the Alt key before clicking on the menu. Yes extensions can fix this, but why the fuck do you not even have it changeable in the options, much less a default people are naturally expecting to find there?
Maybe I just hate that even WINDOWS BLOODY 7 is more configurable than GNOME 3 and Unity combined out of the box. GNOME 3 has a ton of extensions that surpass what you can get in Windows 7 however, but you have to install them, whereas Windows 7 has a lot of fiddly bits all ready for you. That's the main beef I have with these new GUIs, specifically the Linux ones anyway. The lack of user-friendly configuration (no, text files and recompiling the source to fix hard-coded settings are not acceptable).
Things seem to have settled down in the Firefox world. I did the update, it worked very smoothly with all my extensions supported without requiring any hacks. I think most extension developers have finally understood the need to future-proof their extension's compatibility with Firefox when it does get upgraded, which is probably why there were no issues for me.
Personally (and I do mean personally, just in case someone thinks I'm talking for them) I do not have an issue with the Firefox versioning system anymore. The updates are appreciated, and ranting about it seems less about practical issues and instead people preferring to complain instead of just going with it.
Canonical can't seem to decide what to do with its selection of default software. I found an insightful comment from OMGUbuntu that I thought I should share:
No wonder people can't tell trolls from insane people anymore. The lack of subtlety means both look the same these days.
Adobe Reader will read ALL PDFs that are out there, guaranteed. I've encounter PDFs which opened up to a blank page in Foxit, whereas they worked just fine in Adobe Reader. I don't want to have to deal with that level of unpredictability when it comes to reading file formats, hence I still use Adobe Reader.
As for the attack vectors, well I have yet to encounter any issues. The same people that rant on and on about attack vectors are also the same people who think Windows BSODs and gets infected with malware/viruses/trojans all the time, which simply doesn't happen (to me at least), and as such I tend to downplay the rants they make regarding Reader, Flash and Java attacks.
We're not dickheads here. Trust me.
People have been saying Microsoft is becoming more and more irrelevant for YEARS. If they're still this powerful after so long, then obviously the slide into irrelevancy is taking too long for anyone to notice, or (more than likely) it's just a lot of hot air and isn't happening.
Plus, if the smart money won't be on closed standards that run on monolithic platforms, then I guess the iPhone/iPad are financial failures. Closed standards don't seem to bother anyone these days except developers. For better or worse.
Where are the worms/viruses/malware going to come from? The hardware isn't networked and we don't install any additional software on the things.
You can distill it down to a very simple observation:
The Japanese (and most Asian people) are a proud sort and don't like admitting failure. Admitting failure is a gross sign of weakness, second only to the failure itself. This seems rather counter-productive to me but it's a societal and cultural thing, so I have no avenue to judge.
THAT is what the guys at GNU find funny? I guess when you're out to denigrate proprietary software and anyone who uses it, you'll probably end up with so much hate that your scene of humor becomes rather lame.
Indeed, some of our lab's test equipment (specifically the Agilent oscilloscopes and network analyzers) use Windows XP embedded. When I saw what they were running it was a bit of a shock as I was conditioned to believe Linux was king on embedded systems and Windows didn't have anything to compete, but I guess that's what you get for reading Slashdot/Linux sites too much. Still, seems to work reasonably well.
Although I admit it's funny to turn on a AUD$50,000 network analyzer and see a system tray balloon complaining that automatic updates is not enabled. :)
Yes well, assuming you're not using "Linux ISOs" as a metaphor for something else, my ISP hosts them locally anyway (official mirror), which makes it extremely fast to obtain them and also means they're not counted towards the quota.
I have enough trouble finding legit content (and spare time) to use up 150GB, much less 250GB. You Americans are spoilt. :)
They want to expand into bankrupt Ireland but still don't have any plans to open up in Australia? FFS.
This is the problem I see with a lot of laptops. If you buy a laptop with a very powerful CPU and GPU, it's gonna run very hot and potentially suffer thermal issues such as overheating and/or other damage (to you and the computer). Plus it's loud. On the other hand, you could buy a less powerful laptop which by its nature will require less cooling and hence will feel a lot nicer. Probably will also do better in battery life too.
If people want to buy powerful computers, they should buy a desktop or build one. That's what they're for - powerful workstations/gaming machines which are much larger and hence can handle the airflow. They can then have a separate laptop for portable usage with lesser (but still reasonable) hardware such that they don't have their fingers sweat whenever they use it. Hot laptops are just a sign of stuffing overpowered hardware into a very confined space without sufficient cooling, and this is going to cause problems.