To be fair, I do know a number of people who use Windows who *don't* want to use Windows. I introduced them to Linux, and they went right back to Windows. Why? Because they discovered to their embarrassment, that even though they don't want to use Windows, they DO want to use something that is identical to Windows.
That, of course, is the problem - because they've only ever really used windows they struglle with ANYTHING else. I've seen exactly what you're talking about happen. I've also seen someone who wasn't terribly computer literate who had used both windows AND macs switch to windows. Sure, she doesn't administer the system, but she didn't adminster her windows system either. It was set up, and she uses it. Problem solved. Windows maintains it's market share because they've managed to make people SCARED of anything else. As soon as your open to other ways of doing things you're fine.
First of all, thanks for not towing the line, and I agree, the article was very zealous - however, it was from the FSF, and we would expect something equally over the top from microsofts marketing dept.
I do take issue with at least one point though:
In addition, the hardware requirements are negligably higher than that of W2K. The memory has been doubled under the "Recommended" arena from 64MB to 128MB, but at $20USD for 128MB who cares?
True... however:
MS forecasts XP will generate £13.2bn in UK
Microsoft seems to think that hardware manufacturers will cash in big time in the UK - are they perhaps saying something different in the US?
The greatest threat to Microsoft's monopoly is the coming generations of computer users. Their plan is to indoctrinate them early - hoping that the "stick with what you know" philosophy will prevail. The reason that it is a threat is very simple: At the moment Microsoft manages to get by with "ease of use" arguments (that aren't even all that valid). That sells very well at the moment because currently the majority of the buying public are older computerphobics who simply don't want to know. The younger generations, on the other hand, have a much better intuitive sense of computing - and the generations to come will only be more so. Ease of use will cease to be such an overriding factor - "good enough" in ease of use will be all you'll need.
The possibility of Linux becoming more widely used in schools and colleges scares Microsoft witless I'm sure.
So they're trying to lock down the content suppliers with juicy promises of padlocked content that every last dollar can be wrung from. The catch is that that could be a serious turn off for content users. hence the SSSCA, which, I'm sure, will have Microsoft rolling on the floor laughing should it ever get passed, as that ought to seal up the last of the holes.
It's amazing how all of this ties in together really. Amazing or frightening. One of the two.
Find a metaphor that organizes information in a useful fashion in 3D and I might be interested.
Well, I'd be interested to see Self Organising maps dropped into 3-D - and extra dimension always helps.
For those that don't know what I'm talking about, Self organsing maps are methods of representing large multidimensional datasets in 2 dimensional space using neural network pattern recognition to get the best "organisation" of point in 2 space. It's quite interestign stuff - check out www.cis.hut.fi for more detail.
As long as Linux is the haven of geeks and hackers who LIKE sorting out hard problems by themselves Linux support will be a hard business to sell. That doesn't mean you can't, you just have to be very good at selling support (IBM, or maybe Red Hat).
That doesn't mean it will ALWAYS be a hard businbess to sell - Linux support will get easier to sell the easier Linux is to use. That's because the easier Linux is to use, the more idiot Linux users you'll have to sell to.
In a couple of years, after all the more minor players have been choked, as Linux starts to grow a little, support will start becoming a growing industry, not a dying one.
I always remember Pratchett talking about getting out a possible deal to do a film of Mort because the US distributors wanted him to get rid of the character of Death.
I admit that some people (mysteriously) hate focus follows mouse (point to type), but in general it is far superior. As for raising windows when they are clicked in, I've been trying to turn that off in Windows for years to no avail. Some people find the switch hard, (they hate hunting for titlebars to raise windows), but I find binding an ALT-Click or something to "Raise Window" (easy to do in any decent window manager (E, FVWM, Sawfish, etc. - but not windows)) does the job while they transition.
Most people don't complain about their GUI 'cause they don't know any better. I play around with a lot of different systems (I've used FVWM, Blackbox, Windows, GNOME, E, and Windowmaker extensively), and inevietably I find things that are good about some systems that I really miss when I move on/back. That's why I'm mostly with E now - It does almost everything I want (except it's still not quite as functionally configurable as good old FVWM). I've hacked my windows GUI to suit my needs (as best I can). I'm a lot more efficient using my system than what MS provided. More importantly, people that bother to take a little time to try my system out generally want me to hack their system too.
It's lack of awareness of any other way of doing things 90% of the time. I can't believe so many people still use click to focus (except that the focus follows mouse hack is so badly broken in windows).
MS really does know what people want (after spending $$$millions on usability testing), and they give it to them (with several features tacked onto the side to extend their monopoly).
Don't fool yourself here - MS will spend millions on usability testing, then do some careful sums: How much did people want this feature, compared to how much it will cost to implement. If the latter weighs a little to heavy, they just won't do it. Why do you think stability took so damn long? Why do you think Stardock are having the create Object Desktop when MS should be doing it themselves?
My windows box horrifies people who aren't used to other GUIs. I have Xmouse installed, and most of object desktop going. Window titlebars are BeOS style (only blue), I use multiple desktops (used to use XDesk, which was great, but incomaptible with DesktopX), and, with DesktopX I have fionally and utterly banished the startbar.
Root menu? Right click on the root window.
Quick link buttons? Expand the slideout on the bottom right.
Taksbar? Try the small icondock down the right hand side.
It's not exactly enlightenment, (and I would kill for a proper pager, and sideways window shading, and a dragbar, and decent KEYBINDINGS), but it is a lot more useable (for me).
Most non experienced users sit down and don't know where to begin. On the other hand, the few that took the 2 minutes to learn how I set things up wanted me to come and "fix" their machines.
I just spent 15 minutes looking for a truly good theme somewhere without success. that's a tragedy. that will hurt linux's mainstream acceptance far more than the fact that cmdrtaco was too dumb to buy a supported scanner.
To each their own. In my clearly biased opinion my own theme, aphex, is quite good. Sure, it is different to windows, but it is intended to be used differently (I don't need maximise much, so it's a double click on the title bar, and I tend to use iconify and kill most often, so they get buttons). In the end I wanted to get rid of a lot of the uneccassary clutter of window decorations.
I don't pretned it will suit everyone, and you may hate it, but it is IMHO clean, simple, and easy to use.
Purchase Sybase SQLServer (Adaptive Server Enterprise as of today) for a helluva lot of money
Or download Adaptive Server Enterprise for Linux for free...
Of course there's still no decent linux version (that I know of) of Adaptive Server Anywhere, which is, IMHO a much nicer lightweight database, nor Adaptive Server IQ, their warehousing database.
There are plenty of low-tech sci-fi settings that rock. Remember Aliens? Even Star Wars had a much lower level of technology that Star Trek. In fact, the tech is the WORST THING about Star Trek,
Ridiculously high tech can actually be good though. I would point you in the direction of Iain M. Banks' culture novels for a fine example.
Anyone remember "Space Above and Beyond"? Okay, so the first 5 or 6 episodes sucked, but after that it got a lot better very quickly. Who the hell cancelled that thing after one season? Idiots.
Though it would amuse me no end that we would see see it from some far future, and part of the gist is that none would know why precisely why the federation fell.
There's actually a lot of opportunity for some really interesting long term story arcs in that too - slow hints as to why exactly the federation collapsed... leading toward, for instance the revelation that some immensely powerful race from another galaxy just waltzed in an wiped them out, and they're due to come back any time now...
Someone's got to be tripping on E to like that bloated ugly counter-intuitive dung pile. Why is it so hard to have a window manager/desktop setup that acts like Windows? Why do we need screwy interface paradigms and funky themes that make it hard to discern what the hell is even on the screen?
So those users who don't really like windows simplistic and limited interface paradigm can make things work properly. Why not have a WM that acts like windows? There are several - E amongst them (you just have to configure it accordinly). KWM, and FVWM95 are also very windowsesque.
I'd like to know why you are so desperate to reimplement the windows interface? What is quite so good about it that E or Sawfish won't do? I can, if I want to, make either E or Sawfish behave like windows - but I don't. I rather like window shading (taskbars annoy me, and take up valubale space I like to use, I prefer root window taskmenus etc), especially multi-direction window shading (I can easily maintain a 2 function setup on a single desk by using side and vertical shading for the different groups - of course, I could always (and tend to) use window groups anyway). I rather like having titlebars that don't span the window (hooray for BeOS). I rather like being able to minimize apps to a shaded iconbox when I really don't need it for a while. I can't live without multiple desktops (and hence quality pagers, sticky windows, send_to_desktop win_ops options etc.)
I have gone to a lot of trouble to get my WinNT machine at work to emulate as much of this behaviour as possible.
I'll reiterate: Why do we have all these interface options and themes? Because a lot of people like them. Most people I know who actually bother to learn E or sawfish don't go back.
For one you can't alter the titlebar buttons, and double clicking on the titlebar itself makes the window "shade."
Let's check what I said: "Most people I know who actually bother to learn E or sawfish don't go back." - it's pretty clear from the above complaint that you have no real clues about sawfish. All of the "annoying" behaviour you list can be customised to suit your needs. If you don't like shading, simply turn it off.
Fact is, Wheat wasn't the first nor will he be the last. Sir James Frazer's 'The Golden Bough',
and just think - it was partial inspiration for T.S. Eliot's "The Wasteland" a poem which can and does have prtty much anyting and everything read into it.
Eliot had the right idea - make you art obscure enough, and then let the technical critics read all manner of deep and meaningful philosophy into it later.
It's shocking when then Chinese do it, yet it's been happening in North American libraries and schools for years, with any kind of censorware you can name.
In fact, it's even worse than that. In China it is a single centralised government doing the censorship - at least you can a reasonable idea what sorts of sites you're missing out on. In the U.S. you have a variety of private companies providing all kinds of different censorware programs - who knows what is getting blocked (especially when they keep closed encrypted blocked stite lists!)? AFAIK there was at least one such censorware program that was blocking a variety of gay and women's activist sites, simply because the author of the software "didn't like them". Talk about insidious - especially if you don't even know what's being blocked!
Slashdot Mirror
That, of course, is the problem - because they've only ever really used windows they struglle with ANYTHING else. I've seen exactly what you're talking about happen. I've also seen someone who wasn't terribly computer literate who had used both windows AND macs switch to windows. Sure, she doesn't administer the system, but she didn't adminster her windows system either. It was set up, and she uses it. Problem solved. Windows maintains it's market share because they've managed to make people SCARED of anything else. As soon as your open to other ways of doing things you're fine.
Jedidiah
I do take issue with at least one point though:
In addition, the hardware requirements are negligably higher than that of W2K. The memory has been doubled under the "Recommended" arena from 64MB to 128MB, but at $20USD for 128MB who cares?
True... however:
MS forecasts XP will generate £13.2bn in UK
Microsoft seems to think that hardware manufacturers will cash in big time in the UK - are they perhaps saying something different in the US?
Jedidiah
--
The greatest threat to Microsoft's monopoly is the coming generations of computer users. Their plan is to indoctrinate them early - hoping that the "stick with what you know" philosophy will prevail. The reason that it is a threat is very simple: At the moment Microsoft manages to get by with "ease of use" arguments (that aren't even all that valid). That sells very well at the moment because currently the majority of the buying public are older computerphobics who simply don't want to know. The younger generations, on the other hand, have a much better intuitive sense of computing - and the generations to come will only be more so. Ease of use will cease to be such an overriding factor - "good enough" in ease of use will be all you'll need.
The possibility of Linux becoming more widely used in schools and colleges scares Microsoft witless I'm sure.
So they're trying to lock down the content suppliers with juicy promises of padlocked content that every last dollar can be wrung from. The catch is that that could be a serious turn off for content users. hence the SSSCA, which, I'm sure, will have Microsoft rolling on the floor laughing should it ever get passed, as that ought to seal up the last of the holes.
It's amazing how all of this ties in together really. Amazing or frightening. One of the two.
Jedidiah
Last time I checked flying commercial airliners into buildings wasn't very legal. That didn't seem to worry the terrorists too much really...
Jedidiah
--
Well, I'd be interested to see Self Organising maps dropped into 3-D - and extra dimension always helps.
For those that don't know what I'm talking about, Self organsing maps are methods of representing large multidimensional datasets in 2 dimensional space using neural network pattern recognition to get the best "organisation" of point in 2 space. It's quite interestign stuff - check out www.cis.hut.fi for more detail.
Jedidiah
--
As long as Linux is the haven of geeks and hackers who LIKE sorting out hard problems by themselves Linux support will be a hard business to sell. That doesn't mean you can't, you just have to be very good at selling support (IBM, or maybe Red Hat).
That doesn't mean it will ALWAYS be a hard businbess to sell - Linux support will get easier to sell the easier Linux is to use. That's because the easier Linux is to use, the more idiot Linux users you'll have to sell to.
In a couple of years, after all the more minor players have been choked, as Linux starts to grow a little, support will start becoming a growing industry, not a dying one.
Jedidiah
You have actually read some of Gaiman's work right?
Jedidiah
I always remember Pratchett talking about getting out a possible deal to do a film of Mort because the US distributors wanted him to get rid of the character of Death.
Jedidiah
Please mod the parent post up!
I admit that some people (mysteriously) hate focus follows mouse (point to type), but in general it is far superior. As for raising windows when they are clicked in, I've been trying to turn that off in Windows for years to no avail. Some people find the switch hard, (they hate hunting for titlebars to raise windows), but I find binding an ALT-Click or something to "Raise Window" (easy to do in any decent window manager (E, FVWM, Sawfish, etc. - but not windows)) does the job while they transition.
Why are we following such broken standards?!
Jedidiah
--
Most people don't complain about their GUI 'cause they don't know any better. I play around with a lot of different systems (I've used FVWM, Blackbox, Windows, GNOME, E, and Windowmaker extensively), and inevietably I find things that are good about some systems that I really miss when I move on/back. That's why I'm mostly with E now - It does almost everything I want (except it's still not quite as functionally configurable as good old FVWM). I've hacked my windows GUI to suit my needs (as best I can). I'm a lot more efficient using my system than what MS provided. More importantly, people that bother to take a little time to try my system out generally want me to hack their system too.
It's lack of awareness of any other way of doing things 90% of the time. I can't believe so many people still use click to focus (except that the focus follows mouse hack is so badly broken in windows).
Jedidiah
--
You could in fact make the first three:
A New Threat
The Republic Strikes Back
Return of the Sith
and have equally pathetic titling for the first three as the second three. Hoorah.
Jedidiah
Don't fool yourself here - MS will spend millions on usability testing, then do some careful sums: How much did people want this feature, compared to how much it will cost to implement. If the latter weighs a little to heavy, they just won't do it. Why do you think stability took so damn long? Why do you think Stardock are having the create Object Desktop when MS should be doing it themselves?
Jedidiah
--
My windows box horrifies people who aren't used to other GUIs. I have Xmouse installed, and most of object desktop going. Window titlebars are BeOS style (only blue), I use multiple desktops (used to use XDesk, which was great, but incomaptible with DesktopX), and, with DesktopX I have fionally and utterly banished the startbar.
Root menu? Right click on the root window.
Quick link buttons? Expand the slideout on the bottom right.
Taksbar? Try the small icondock down the right hand side.
It's not exactly enlightenment, (and I would kill for a proper pager, and sideways window shading, and a dragbar, and decent KEYBINDINGS), but it is a lot more useable (for me).
Most non experienced users sit down and don't know where to begin. On the other hand, the few that took the 2 minutes to learn how I set things up wanted me to come and "fix" their machines.
Jedidiah
--
To each their own. In my clearly biased opinion my own theme, aphex, is quite good. Sure, it is different to windows, but it is intended to be used differently (I don't need maximise much, so it's a double click on the title bar, and I tend to use iconify and kill most often, so they get buttons). In the end I wanted to get rid of a lot of the uneccassary clutter of window decorations.
I don't pretned it will suit everyone, and you may hate it, but it is IMHO clean, simple, and easy to use.
Jedidiah
--
PS1="\e[32m,.\e[31m\267\260\e[35m\221\222\e[32m[\e [35m\u@\h\e[32m]\e[35m\222\221\e[31m\260\267\e[32m .,\e[32m,.\e[31m\267\260\e[35m\221\222\e[32m[\e[35 m\d \t\e[32m]\e[35m\222\221\e[31m\260\267\e[32m.,\e[32 m,.\e[31m\267\260\e[35m\221\222\e[32m[\e[35m\#\e[3 2m]\e[0m\n
"
\e[0m\e[32m[\e[35m\!\e[32m]\e[35m\w\e[31m>\e[0m
Which comes out roughly as:
,.''[jedidiah@Wintermute]''.,,.''[Sat Jul 7 18:02:15]''.,,.''[3]
[502]~>
Jedidiah
--
Hmmm ... I wonder how it'll be before someone writes a version of DeCSS in CSS - that might be fun (for a very short time).
Jedidiah
Purchase Sybase SQLServer (Adaptive Server Enterprise as of today) for a helluva lot of money
Or download Adaptive Server Enterprise for Linux for free...
Of course there's still no decent linux version (that I know of) of Adaptive Server Anywhere, which is, IMHO a much nicer lightweight database, nor Adaptive Server IQ, their warehousing database.
Still, one can hope...
Jedidiah
Cool, long 5 minute sequences of utterly blue screen. That'll be worth it...
Jedidiah
38% of the server market was running Win2k in 1999 ? - now that's impressive!
Jedidiah
Ridiculously high tech can actually be good though. I would point you in the direction of Iain M. Banks' culture novels for a fine example.
Jedidiah
Jedidiah
--
Agreed
Though it would amuse me no end that we would see see it from some far future, and part of the gist is that none would know why precisely why the federation fell.
There's actually a lot of opportunity for some really interesting long term story arcs in that too - slow hints as to why exactly the federation collapsed
Jedidiah
--
So those users who don't really like windows simplistic and limited interface paradigm can make things work properly. Why not have a WM that acts like windows? There are several - E amongst them (you just have to configure it accordinly). KWM, and FVWM95 are also very windowsesque.
I'd like to know why you are so desperate to reimplement the windows interface? What is quite so good about it that E or Sawfish won't do? I can, if I want to, make either E or Sawfish behave like windows - but I don't. I rather like window shading (taskbars annoy me, and take up valubale space I like to use, I prefer root window taskmenus etc), especially multi-direction window shading (I can easily maintain a 2 function setup on a single desk by using side and vertical shading for the different groups - of course, I could always (and tend to) use window groups anyway). I rather like having titlebars that don't span the window (hooray for BeOS). I rather like being able to minimize apps to a shaded iconbox when I really don't need it for a while. I can't live without multiple desktops (and hence quality pagers, sticky windows, send_to_desktop win_ops options etc.)
I have gone to a lot of trouble to get my WinNT machine at work to emulate as much of this behaviour as possible.
I'll reiterate: Why do we have all these interface options and themes? Because a lot of people like them. Most people I know who actually bother to learn E or sawfish don't go back.
For one you can't alter the titlebar buttons, and double clicking on the titlebar itself makes the window "shade."
Let's check what I said: "Most people I know who actually bother to learn E or sawfish don't go back." - it's pretty clear from the above complaint that you have no real clues about sawfish. All of the "annoying" behaviour you list can be customised to suit your needs. If you don't like shading, simply turn it off.
Jedidiah
and just think - it was partial inspiration for T.S. Eliot's "The Wasteland" a poem which can and does have prtty much anyting and everything read into it.
Eliot had the right idea - make you art obscure enough, and then let the technical critics read all manner of deep and meaningful philosophy into it later.
Jedidiah
--
In fact, it's even worse than that. In China it is a single centralised government doing the censorship - at least you can a reasonable idea what sorts of sites you're missing out on. In the U.S. you have a variety of private companies providing all kinds of different censorware programs - who knows what is getting blocked (especially when they keep closed encrypted blocked stite lists!)? AFAIK there was at least one such censorware program that was blocking a variety of gay and women's activist sites, simply because the author of the software "didn't like them". Talk about insidious - especially if you don't even know what's being blocked!
Jedidiah
--