I think that firstly, "the year of the linux desktop" will come so gradually that it won't make headlines.
Just like there's no "year of the internet" (discounting eternal September) or "year of the jet engine" etc.
Secondly, until 80% of users can make everything work without editing a text file or running terminal commands Linux isn't ready for the masses. And yes, it's Linux that has to change, the masses simply won't. There are new ones born every minute.
We've come a long way, with Ubuntu but I still find things in the forums where you have to edit your/etc/X11/xorg.conf or whatever to fix things. Another example: I still can't use my Razer Diamond back in Linux without it being unusably sensitive. So far the only fix I've found for the garbage mouse pointer behavior requires that I recompile X with a patch file. And even I haven't attempted that yet. It's not that I couldn't figure it out eventually, it's that I'd rather spend the time playing computer games, watching youtube videos, spamming the stumbleupon button, or clicking pretty widgets to kill time.
In short: Recompiling things = not ready for the masses. Editing text files to make shit work = not ready for the masses. Everything works out of the box = ready for the masses. (Defaults are that important)
In other news, there's going to be a huge market for buying these drugs in third world countries and selling them in the UK and the US.
Next up, expect to see laws against importing drugs (if there aren't already), and news about how dangerous even name brand drugs are from other countries are (to keep you from buy them that way since they're cheaper).
IIRC, the animated collision.gif I viewed on the last slashdot story showed them colliding at approximately right angles. And since they're satellites they were probably maintaining a constant altitude. Given that they collided, they had to be in the same altitude. Given the same altitude, and being satellites you can reasonably conclude that they had the same velocity.
Given this information, I would imagine the collision this would send debris in all kinds of directions with the center of mass moving off somewhere in the ~270 degree arc at reduced velocities, leading to orbital decay and lots of little pieces getting all sorts of exciting new orbits for a while.
There are still multi-billion dollar businesses operating the core of their business on COBOL systems, and they're decades older than relational database technology.
Words cannot express how frustrating is to know that constructive criticism of superiors or even peers is hundreds of times more likely to get you fired than being belligerently incompetent and hampering others through your incompetence.
It's important to keep it in mind that nobody is going to say or do anything that has a possibility of jeopardizing their livelyhood.
Perhaps all suggestions should be anonymous. Lots of people have really good ideas but are just afraid of being fired or CareerLimited(tm) for opening their mouths.
It blows my mind that amazon went to all the trouble to get eInk going on the kindle, but you still need a kludgey booklight to read it in the dark.
It's why I vastly prefer to use my Nokia N810 with FBReader over the kindle. It's tiny, customizable (think red text on a black background - night vision preservation - no light keeping your SO awake), and the N810 is ideal for one handed reading (a big deal when reading laying down on your side).
Call me when amazon is selling a kindle that doesn't need a kludgey addon book light.
For now I'm looking to buy a broken kindle so I can have the privilege of being able to buy ebooks from amazon. (You cannot purchase their ebooks without a kindle registered to your amazon account).
Yay, I'm forced to watch previews on a movie I paid for. And I can't skip the FBI warning. And I can't skip the stupid menu animations. How about region coding that generally forces you to buy a more expensive copy that you don't actually own?
The alternative is to download a DVD/blu-ray rip DRM unencumbered, no FBI warning, no forced previews - hell, no previews. No user prohibited actions. I could store it easily on any media I choose - such as carry it to a friend's house on a thumb drive. I could fast forward and rewind more easily than a DVD. I could store it on a big fat network drive with thousands of others. I could stream it anywhere I have the bandwidth to watch it. It's easily transferred from media to media - as fast as you can copy files.
DVD and Blu-ray couldn't compete even if they were free.
Free may not be a format, but a non-DRMed data files are a blessedly versatile format whereas DVD & Blu-ray is incredibly restrictive by comparison.
I wasn't speaking for all states, but I know in OH it is so.
I just assumed that since it was so reasonable that it would be conventionally-so nation wide.
And your anecdotal evidence sways me not the slightest. The likeliest reason you haven't contracted something horrible yet is because most people have been vaccinated and thus are not carriers. In short, it could very well be pure luck you're still alive. If I were you I'd go get vaccinated ASAP. You don't want measles.
And the number of times you've been "severely sick" in your life is not a scientific measure of the quality of your immune system. Not by any stretch of the imagination.
It's not your fault, but you are a danger to the people around you. Go get immunized for the rest of our sakes. Putting it off is your fault.
It's why I think we should establish a BuSab - only for corporations that have become abusive rather than governments. A few come to mind: Sony, Microsoft, <insert medical insurance carrier here>, *IAA etc.
Am I the only one to think, "Wait a second, the court doesn't get to decide this."
Vaccines either did or didn't cause autism, and that's determined scientifically by looking at the evidence. What the court rules has no impact on whether or not vaccines cause autism.
That said, I'm glad to see a courtroom see reason for a change instead of finding in favor of the party with the best lawyers.
No, they don't, because unimmunized kids are a health risk for the entire community.
No kidding.
Public schools won't let you in if you're not immunized. It was a great show stopper in OH were I grew up, but in SC where I live now public schools are terrible so it has no effect - unfortunately.
I had meant to give props on that point, but forgot in my ranting.
I guess if I had to say something bad about them, it's that there are both.rpms and.debs. That is, there are two types. I remember happening across something saying that you could use a.rpm on a debian based system or something, but I haven't looked into it. I hit the apathy barrier. And since software creators/maintainers only provide one or the other and you're SOL if you need the one they don't have. Or you have to figure out how to build it yourself. And that's means you're approaching the apathy barrier at dangerous velocities.
Windows users will not install QT unless it comes as part of the whole one-click.msi for the package.
Speaking as a long time windows user and being fairly new at using Linux as a dedicated work-OS, I must say that that whole one-click.msi stuff is pretty damn awesome.
To elaborate the whole perception that users are dumb is pretty misguided. I'm not a dumb user, but even I like things to be easy. It's because (usually) I don't give much of a shit how the thing works, just that it does.
Before you declare that you're any different, think of how you put gas in your vehicle.. Do you care how the fuel pump works? If you're like me you only throw a fit when the clip that holds the fuel lever open is broken, but otherwise don't pay much attention.
See it's about motivation not intelligence. I do like using OSS because I think it's a GoodThing(tm) therefore I'm motivated to try it. It's a lot of the reason it took so long for Java to get a toe hold. "I just want to run PrettyWidgetBox, wtf is this JVM thing I have to have?" It's seen as ancillary or superfluous to the average user, and they don't often care enough to figure it out.
It kinda spoils one of my favorite quotes for me though regarding trash cans, bears, and tourists. Yellowstone added some trash cans with tricky openings to keep the bears out, but it turned out most of the tourists couldn't figure it out. The quote goes, "It turns out there is considerable overlap between the smartest bears and the dumbest tourists." Which is unfortunately hogwash. The bears are motivated by survival to get in the trash can. The tourists are demotivated by apathy to take the time to figure out a trashcan. They just want to be able to put shit in the trash hole and be done with it. If they're frustrated for more than a few seconds they just throw it on the ground.
The best way to fight this might to be to find a way to get the DNA of senators, representatives, governors, and high ranking executives in there as quickly and as publicly as possible.
They have clear market dominance now, but it's slipping.
We'll probably say "This is the year of the linux" desktop for along time, but when the time finally comes it won't be news anymore.
These kinds of things happen so gradually no one notices. Try and find any historical headlines about "the year of the lightbulb", "the year of the telephone", or the "year of the internet".
This is a really cool idea, but I foresee the implementation falling short.
In my experience Linux packages have terrible names, non-descriptive names, or both, and usually, worthless or no description.
So you end up with have several different packages that do similar or the same things with no significantly distinguishing characteristics. For example: smartphone-system, smart-phone-system, smartphonesystem, dtmf-system, smart-phone, and smartphone. Then you'll have 5 different distros that use different but overlapping packages, with insufficient documentation to make a decision as to which you need.
So in practice, I usually have no idea what package(s) I need without extensive searching of the tubes, but maybe it's just my lack of experience.
The chronology is sometimes called the Ussher-Lightfoot chronology because John Lightfoot published a similar chronology in 1642-1644. This, however, is a misnomer, as the chronology is based on Ussher's work alone and not that of Lightfoot.
Ahh wikipedia. Nothing like seeing an article refute itself mid-paragraph.
Slashdot Mirror
What, no mention of EVE's godawful IGB? The one that barely supports fonts, images, and nothing else?
I'm shocked.
Upgrades usually involve a fee...so this kinda makes sense if you're cynical enough.
What's an articles?
I think that firstly, "the year of the linux desktop" will come so gradually that it won't make headlines.
Just like there's no "year of the internet" (discounting eternal September) or "year of the jet engine" etc.
Secondly, until 80% of users can make everything work without editing a text file or running terminal commands Linux isn't ready for the masses. And yes, it's Linux that has to change, the masses simply won't. There are new ones born every minute.
We've come a long way, with Ubuntu but I still find things in the forums where you have to edit your /etc/X11/xorg.conf or whatever to fix things. Another example: I still can't use my Razer Diamond back in Linux without it being unusably sensitive. So far the only fix I've found for the garbage mouse pointer behavior requires that I recompile X with a patch file. And even I haven't attempted that yet. It's not that I couldn't figure it out eventually, it's that I'd rather spend the time playing computer games, watching youtube videos, spamming the stumbleupon button, or clicking pretty widgets to kill time.
In short:
Recompiling things = not ready for the masses.
Editing text files to make shit work = not ready for the masses.
Everything works out of the box = ready for the masses. (Defaults are that important)
In other news, there's going to be a huge market for buying these drugs in third world countries and selling them in the UK and the US.
Next up, expect to see laws against importing drugs (if there aren't already), and news about how dangerous even name brand drugs are from other countries are (to keep you from buy them that way since they're cheaper).
Technologies that businesses get built on tend to stick around for decades, and are replaced about as often as foundation blocks.
Evidence of this is found in the fact that COBOL is alive, if not well.
That their roles are different is irrelevant.
IIRC, the animated collision .gif I viewed on the last slashdot story showed them colliding at approximately right angles. And since they're satellites they were probably maintaining a constant altitude. Given that they collided, they had to be in the same altitude. Given the same altitude, and being satellites you can reasonably conclude that they had the same velocity.
Given this information, I would imagine the collision this would send debris in all kinds of directions with the center of mass moving off somewhere in the ~270 degree arc at reduced velocities, leading to orbital decay and lots of little pieces getting all sorts of exciting new orbits for a while.
There are still multi-billion dollar businesses operating the core of their business on COBOL systems, and they're decades older than relational database technology.
So don't bet on it.
Solicit for the suggestions anonymously.
Words cannot express how frustrating is to know that constructive criticism of superiors or even peers is hundreds of times more likely to get you fired than being belligerently incompetent and hampering others through your incompetence.
It's important to keep it in mind that nobody is going to say or do anything that has a possibility of jeopardizing their livelyhood.
Perhaps all suggestions should be anonymous. Lots of people have really good ideas but are just afraid of being fired or CareerLimited(tm) for opening their mouths.
My problem with eInk is the lack of a backlight.
It blows my mind that amazon went to all the trouble to get eInk going on the kindle, but you still need a kludgey booklight to read it in the dark.
It's why I vastly prefer to use my Nokia N810 with FBReader over the kindle. It's tiny, customizable (think red text on a black background - night vision preservation - no light keeping your SO awake), and the N810 is ideal for one handed reading (a big deal when reading laying down on your side).
Call me when amazon is selling a kindle that doesn't need a kludgey addon book light.
For now I'm looking to buy a broken kindle so I can have the privilege of being able to buy ebooks from amazon. (You cannot purchase their ebooks without a kindle registered to your amazon account).
No, but DVD is an awful, user-abusive format.
Ever heard of "user prohibited actions"?
Yay, I'm forced to watch previews on a movie I paid for. And I can't skip the FBI warning. And I can't skip the stupid menu animations. How about region coding that generally forces you to buy a more expensive copy that you don't actually own?
The alternative is to download a DVD/blu-ray rip DRM unencumbered, no FBI warning, no forced previews - hell, no previews. No user prohibited actions. I could store it easily on any media I choose - such as carry it to a friend's house on a thumb drive. I could fast forward and rewind more easily than a DVD. I could store it on a big fat network drive with thousands of others. I could stream it anywhere I have the bandwidth to watch it. It's easily transferred from media to media - as fast as you can copy files.
DVD and Blu-ray couldn't compete even if they were free.
Free may not be a format, but a non-DRMed data files are a blessedly versatile format whereas DVD & Blu-ray is incredibly restrictive by comparison.
I wasn't speaking for all states, but I know in OH it is so.
I just assumed that since it was so reasonable that it would be conventionally-so nation wide.
And your anecdotal evidence sways me not the slightest. The likeliest reason you haven't contracted something horrible yet is because most people have been vaccinated and thus are not carriers. In short, it could very well be pure luck you're still alive. If I were you I'd go get vaccinated ASAP. You don't want measles.
And the number of times you've been "severely sick" in your life is not a scientific measure of the quality of your immune system. Not by any stretch of the imagination.
It's not your fault, but you are a danger to the people around you. Go get immunized for the rest of our sakes. Putting it off is your fault.
And remind me not to go to WI.
It's why I think we should establish a BuSab - only for corporations that have become abusive rather than governments. A few come to mind: Sony, Microsoft, <insert medical insurance carrier here>, *IAA etc.
Am I the only one to think, "Wait a second, the court doesn't get to decide this."
Vaccines either did or didn't cause autism, and that's determined scientifically by looking at the evidence. What the court rules has no impact on whether or not vaccines cause autism.
That said, I'm glad to see a courtroom see reason for a change instead of finding in favor of the party with the best lawyers.
No kidding.
Public schools won't let you in if you're not immunized. It was a great show stopper in OH were I grew up, but in SC where I live now public schools are terrible so it has no effect - unfortunately.
Not a thing, they're freaking awesome.
I had meant to give props on that point, but forgot in my ranting.
I guess if I had to say something bad about them, it's that there are both .rpms and .debs. That is, there are two types. I remember happening across something saying that you could use a .rpm on a debian based system or something, but I haven't looked into it. I hit the apathy barrier. And since software creators/maintainers only provide one or the other and you're SOL if you need the one they don't have. Or you have to figure out how to build it yourself. And that's means you're approaching the apathy barrier at dangerous velocities.
Speaking as a long time windows user and being fairly new at using Linux as a dedicated work-OS, I must say that that whole one-click .msi stuff is pretty damn awesome.
To elaborate the whole perception that users are dumb is pretty misguided. I'm not a dumb user, but even I like things to be easy. It's because (usually) I don't give much of a shit how the thing works, just that it does.
Before you declare that you're any different, think of how you put gas in your vehicle.. Do you care how the fuel pump works? If you're like me you only throw a fit when the clip that holds the fuel lever open is broken, but otherwise don't pay much attention.
See it's about motivation not intelligence. I do like using OSS because I think it's a GoodThing(tm) therefore I'm motivated to try it. It's a lot of the reason it took so long for Java to get a toe hold. "I just want to run PrettyWidgetBox, wtf is this JVM thing I have to have?" It's seen as ancillary or superfluous to the average user, and they don't often care enough to figure it out.
It kinda spoils one of my favorite quotes for me though regarding trash cans, bears, and tourists. Yellowstone added some trash cans with tricky openings to keep the bears out, but it turned out most of the tourists couldn't figure it out. The quote goes, "It turns out there is considerable overlap between the smartest bears and the dumbest tourists." Which is unfortunately hogwash. The bears are motivated by survival to get in the trash can. The tourists are demotivated by apathy to take the time to figure out a trashcan. They just want to be able to put shit in the trash hole and be done with it. If they're frustrated for more than a few seconds they just throw it on the ground.
the keys are like right next to each other.
The best way to fight this might to be to find a way to get the DNA of senators, representatives, governors, and high ranking executives in there as quickly and as publicly as possible.
Then see how long it sticks around.
Sounds like someone is in need of a few extra visitors.
Perhaps in the form of a distributed set of requests - that really shouldn't be denied - for service, but we surely shouldn't attack them.
While I applaud you knowledge of that infamous day, that was technically the day the internet began serious decline, not "the year of the internet".
They have clear market dominance now, but it's slipping.
We'll probably say "This is the year of the linux" desktop for along time, but when the time finally comes it won't be news anymore.
These kinds of things happen so gradually no one notices. Try and find any historical headlines about "the year of the lightbulb", "the year of the telephone", or the "year of the internet".
He'll tell you who paid him to do it for $25.
This is a really cool idea, but I foresee the implementation falling short.
In my experience Linux packages have terrible names, non-descriptive names, or both, and usually, worthless or no description.
So you end up with have several different packages that do similar or the same things with no significantly distinguishing characteristics. For example: smartphone-system, smart-phone-system, smartphonesystem, dtmf-system, smart-phone, and smartphone. Then you'll have 5 different distros that use different but overlapping packages, with insufficient documentation to make a decision as to which you need.
So in practice, I usually have no idea what package(s) I need without extensive searching of the tubes, but maybe it's just my lack of experience.
Ahh wikipedia. Nothing like seeing an article refute itself mid-paragraph.