I can't RTFA because they are well slashdotted, but there are some obvious remarks that need to be made:
Well, now it looks like Sveasoft (one of the third party developers) has decided to restrict access to their modified source code to subscribers...
In other words, you can't get access to the source code unless you're using the product? The GNU GPL doesn't require that people who don't use the binary are required access to the code but rather if you distribute the binary to someone, that person needs to have access to the source code. So there's nothing wrong on this point.
... that also will need to pay $49 for a CD rather than being able to download it.
So in other words, the reasonable cost for distributing the source code on media used for software interchange? Nothing wrong with that, the GNU GPL even specifies this.
Dude, some of us are reading slashdot while eating breakfast. I just spat a bit of oatmeal onto my freakin' laptop display when I suddenly laughed at that one. That's not easy to clean up.
I was on the Math Team in high school... and I was Team Captain my senior year. That year, I came to the conclusion that since Math Team got the same letter jacket patches as the athletic activities, and since we were representing our team competitively against other schools just like the athletic teams, we should get the same "benefits" as the athletic teams. The first benefit we asked for - we needed to have cheerleaders.
I saw this in a game once. Anyone ever play the game Star Trek: Elite Force? It's a standard FPS, but they throw some cutscenes at you. The interesting thing was you could play as a male or female member of the Elite Force.
About halfway through the game, a female NPC hits on you in the ship's bar. I think this part of the script was written assuming you were playing the male character. My first time playing through as the female character, it was surprising for me when I realized that a female character was coming onto another female character in a videogame (and a Star Trek game, at that.)
Trekkie lesbian action. Cue the cheesy jazz music.. that's a video I'd like to watch.:-)
Great, our friends at world.guns.ru apparently didn't like the minor slashdotting on the jpeg image. It's unavailable if the referrer is slashdot. If you missed it, it was just a photo of the M4A1 - I can still get it if I cut/paste the URL into a different Mozilla tab.
Back in the day when LazerTag was really popular, someone sold a "GI Joe" knockoff that was compatible with the LazerTag gear. The only down-side was that the "GI Joe" receptor didn't count to 5 like LazerTag receptors (minor mod required.) And the whole thing looked fugly.
So, I went to Radio Shack and picked up a plastic kit casing, and re-housed the modded board in the new casing. It was just a plain black box with a round receptor window, but it did the job.
The really cool mod was the gun. I took it apart and put it in a water gun housing that looked exactly like an M4A1 carbine. (You may think of it as a "short M16.) Yes, it really looked like that! It was even the real size and everything. I instantly became the cool guy at LazerTag parties, although I had to keep the gun out of sight until after dark. (And we only played in empty fields owned by people we knew.) Other guys painted their LazerTag rifles to look cool (camo was popular) but I had a freaking M4!
My M4 had a decent range, but I didn't try to keep the beam tight. As a result, it acted like a high-power shotgun. Great for open fields, not so great when I followed one guy into a barn.:-(
3. speculated that random machine crashes were being caused by a poorly-mounted heat sink, so removed the sink and turned the machine on, heard a loud "BEEEEEEP" and no start-up, then put his finger on the exposed die of the CPU to feel what was going on--OHDAMNIT'SHOTHOTHOTHOT, and enjoying the sweet smell of burning fingertip flesh...
I'm guilty of that last one, but my excuse is it was my very first computer job. Had a '386-SX40 (8MB memory and 120MB hard drive.... wooooo!) running with the case off, and suddenly wondered... "I wonder how hot these things are?" Touched it with the tip of my finger - and immediately realized how hot a CPU can get.
A good way to get a 2nd degree burn on the end of your index finger, BTW.:-)
... staff who desire to be responsive and should do what it takes to make that happen. The rumor now is that we should also pay for blackberries, cell phones and pagers.
Where I work (a university) the attitude is that if it's work related then work should pay for it. That applies immediately to pagers and cell phones that are distributed to staff. If you already have a cell phone and don't want to carry around another phone, the university will pay for any overage charges that are work related (downside: you probably had work calls in there that brought you over the limit, but you still pay for personal calls in your overage - alternative is to carry a second phone that work pays for.)
This was also extended to in-home broadband access to those who could justify it. For example, if you are a systems administrator and you need to be able to respond to down systems during off-hours (i.e. you carry a pager or cell phone) or if you are a DBA who needs to respond to database problems, work will pay for broadband access. People like the financial support staff, most of the developers, and the web designers are not able to justify home internet access, since they don't need to respond to system problems. (Note I said "most of the developers".)
You have to re-apply every year, and your supervisor and the CIO need to sign off on it. You need to submit your bills monthly, and it only covers broadband internet. For example, if you have cable TV + internet, you only get reimbursed for the internet service. It's a fair system.
Didn't we see this basic topic covered a few months ago? Yup, thought so.
For those who don't want to read the link:
Hoompini-Ting writes "Some accuse area 51, but in any case many folks were stranded when keyless locks failed or their car computers malfunctioned. No technical explanation but I'm sure slashdotters have theories. Similar to the failure in Seattle 3 years ago. See the Las Vegas Review-Journal for more details."
And just to compare, the link in this thread is the same.
Usually, double-posts on Slashdot are a few days apart... things must be improving if it takes a few months to re-post the same article.
Well, yeah... looking back at my remark, I did kind of miss the point. If it's a dead iPod, turn it in and sell the discounted DJ... to buy another iPod. But I'm definitely an iPod person now - and I don't even own a Mac.
Helpful tip: If you have a dead iPod, do the rebate offer, and sell the Jukebox on eBay.
While some may criticize this "editorial" on the Slashdot front page, I completely agree with it. For me, the iPod is a completely natural, easy to use, very functional portable music player. I carry it with me everywhere I go - on the bus to work, on trips, even when hanging out at the lake (just not in the water.)
Dell has offered FreeDOS on their systems for a while now. Here are some links:
15 Jan 2004
and
Aug 9 2003.
Slashdot also ran a story about FreeDOS on Dells before.
FD has been quite useable for many years. The fact its not reached 1.0 is mainly due to debates on optional features needed to call it '1.0', and not related at all to its stablity or useablity.
I can think of some games that were written in DOS that would work great on FreeDOS.
Some of these games have their own grphics engines that work (speedy) better than Windows.
Yes, FreeDOS does work great as a game platform. At one point, I started a FreeDOS for Gamers page, but I haven't finished it (need to add EMM386 info.) Some of that info may help you.
Actually, one of the links (FreeDOS.org) was to a list of mirrors. This was intentional, to prevent swamping the host provider with too much traffic. The last time we were slashdotted, I set up this page so that visitors could hit mirror sites instead of the main one (if the main site became slow).
-jh
(from the article:)
From Dark Castle, then, descends the modern first-person shooter. Mouse-look is essentially a 3D rendition of what Dark Castle did in two dimensions (although Abuse refined the concept into something more readily recognizable as the precursor of first-person point-and-shoot). See what you want to hit? Point the mouse at it and do it. Point, and click.
Sorry guys, you totally missed it. 'Abuse' was not a first-person-shooter. It was a 2D side-scroller along the theme of the movie 'Aliens'. (The creatures even made the same sounds, and looked pretty much like the movie aliens.) It was point-and-shoot, though. You moved left/right (and jump) with the keyboard, and used the mouse to aim at enemies, and fired by clicking the mouse button.
There was also a version of 'Abuse' released for Windows, and yes even Linux.
One point to think of, regarding "How many of you Slashdotters have used the backwards compatibility on Playstation 2's" is that, well, actually making use of PS2's backwards compatibility is most likely quite rare, but when it was a *new* console it meant that the console immediately had 100x the games of any competitor.
Backward compatibility only helps you get people when the console is new.
I am definitely one of the people for whom backwards compatibility is important. I still go back and play some of my favorite PS1 games (the 'Spyro the Dragon' series and a few of the 'Tomb Raider' titles, especially.) I'm very happy that Sony will preserve PS1 backwards compatibility with the (oneday) release of the PS3.
Just because a game is old doesn't mean it stops being fun.
When I noticed my web usage indicated most of the visitors to my site used IE, I was surprised. I emailed the mailing lists and asked if that sounded right to everyone.
The answer was equally surprising. Most users there said they have their user agent string set to mimic IE (most of these were using Opera, but a fair number were using Mozilla/Firefox.)
I think it's important that if you use Mozilla/Firefox (or Opera) that you let your browser identify itself as such. Yes, it is sometimes very convenient to "fake" your browser to report itself as IE (some bank sites, for example) but I think it sends the wrong message to webmasters. For all the world, it looked to me like my users were running IE, and I actually considered tweaking the web design to better suit IE. (Damn me for my weakness!) Glad I didn't.
I'm going to reply to my own comment to remark why my wife currently uses Linux. I'm a technical person (sysadmin) but my wife has her BA in Literature and her MA in Theology. No technical background there. And she also is as non-technical as you can get.
But my wife asked to move off Windows. Why? Because she was tired of Windows viruses, of always having to apply updates to Windows (sometimes that would break her system... usually when a paper was due the next day.) Generally, she considered Windows to be buggy, and Microsoft software (Office,..) to be just as buggy.
Today, my wife is happily using Fedora Core on her 600MHz 128MB laptop. Try running Windows XP in that footprint.
She runs Mozilla for her browser and to check email, she finished her thesis work on StarOffice (she felt a little better about using an office suite she had to pay for - no problem on my end.. whatever makes her more comfortable with Linux.)
She's writing a book for publication using OpenOffice (after the thesis was finished, she decided to give OpenOffice a try.) She visits web sites that use flash or java plugins, and is able to see all the content.
As far as my wife is concerned, Linux is just as good as a Windows box. Or rather, Linux is even better. When she sees that another round of Windows viruses has appeared, she sort of cackles about those "poor Windows users.":-)
The reason I first installed Linux is simple: I was a UNIX sysadmin at the time, and it made most sense for my desktop environment at work to be the same environment that I managed on the servers (for familiarity, same toolsets,...) and I installed it at home because I found I was just as productive on Linux as I was on Windows. My first Linux was SLS 1.03 (which only the old-timers here will recognize.)
I continue to run Linux at work (now Fedora Core) because I find it's easier to use and manage. The software is familiar (Mozilla for browser/mail, OpenOffice/StarOffice for most office apps, and java versions of the few non-native apps that I need at work... like calendaring.) When new Windows viruses are announced, I sort of groan because I know it means I'll have more virus email hit my Inbox, but otherwise I'm unaffected.
At home, I'm still running Linux (again, Fedora Core) because everything I need is there. What does a home desktop need to do? Mozilla for browser/mail, OpenOffice for the annual Christmas letter... I installed some third-party stuff so I can rip MP3s, listen to them, and dump them onto my iPod. I can download photos from my camera, and modify/tweak/enhance/print those photos with the GIMP. Not a lot else that I need to do... I play some games on Linux, sure ('Enemy Territory' is my current favorite.) Oh yeah, and I also have a development environment (DOSEmu) for working on FreeDOS (also useful when playing old DOS games.)
I subscribe to the print edition of Newsweek, and I read the article about this. Interestingly, the mock-up they showed of the "mobile phone of future" had some nice features (video, music,...) but the one thing they didn't talk about was its (in)ability to make a phone call. It really gets me that they seemingly took the attitude of "oh, and it makes phone calls"... for a device whose primary purpose should be to make phone calls!
IMO, mobile phones should be phones first, and misc appliances second. The attitude should be "oh, and it can also play video and music."
The fact that copy/paste is buggy or sluggish under X-Windows has a simple reason: There are tons of SDKs for X-Windows, almost all of them using a separate clipboard implementation/mechanism.
Saying that you deal with a technical problem by getting used to it, is saying that technology will fail to address the problem. As you say, "Linux is different" (almost true, since it has almost nothing to do with Linux, but rather with X-Windows). I would rather say:
X-Windows clipboard management sucks. If you want to use Linux on the desktop, you'll have to get used to it.
While true, I found a rather interesting "workaround" when I explained to my mother how to use her new Linux desktop (disclaimer: she asked me to move her to Linux, and after several weeks of me asking her "why do you want to learn something new?" and setting an expectation for what she'd find on Linux, I finally moved her to Red Hat Linux. Also, I have run Linux 100% as my desktop since 1998.)
The "workaround" was to explain that Linux has two different kinds of clipboards, and it would work differently for her under Linux than the clipboard worked under Windows. I explained it like this:
One clipboard (which I referred to as the "local" clipboard) was used within a program to let you copy/paste stuff. For example, within Mozilla you can copy some text and paste it into a new Mozilla Mail message. Or within StarOffice, you can copy a selection and paste it elsewhere within your document.
The other clipboard (which I called the "global" clipboard) was used to copy/paste between applications. You used this by selecting text with the mouse, and middle-clicking (or in her case, clicking both left and right mouse buttons together) to paste the text somewhere else. For example, you could highlight some text in Mozilla, and middle-click to paste it in your StarOffice document.
I explained the "global" clipboard would only let you copy/paste text. And "local" clipboard was implemented by the program, but would let you copy/paste graphics, etc, just like in Windows. (If you want to insert a graphic from a web page into your StarOffice document, I showed her how to do "Save As" and then insert the graphics file into StarOffice.)
As a newbie to Linux, she only used Mozilla for browser and mail, and StarOffice for spreadsheets, presentations, and documents. I didn't have to worry about chat software or anything "weird". This was a fairly simple migration.
Yes, I know this is not technically the correct explanation. But when trying to explain how the copy/paste thing works to a non-Linux user, I found this simplification made it easy for her to understand. And it set the right expectation - she never asks about why copy/paste acts the way it does. My mother (not a technical user) had the expectation set for her that Linux was not Windows, so copy/paste wouldn't work just like Windows. The concept of "local" vs "global" clipboards was different, but then again she was on a different operating system. It didn't take her any time to get used to this - she understood right from the start when to use middle-click and when to use copy/paste.
Interestingly, I was in the next room when I heard her explain this to one of her (also non-technical) friends. She said something like "...and that's why you can do copy/paste from the file manager, but you can't just middle-click the file there." I smiled, since it was technically not copy/paste in Nautilus, but I thought it was neat that the simplified concept of "local" vs "global" clipboards seemed to work so well for her.
I suppose I'll go to hell for telling a white lie about how it really works.:-)
Slashdot Mirror
I found it hard to remember the names of other search engines that I could use though.
You could do a Google search for them, I suppose... :-)
I can't RTFA because they are well slashdotted, but there are some obvious remarks that need to be made:
Well, now it looks like Sveasoft (one of the third party developers) has decided to restrict access to their modified source code to subscribers ...
In other words, you can't get access to the source code unless you're using the product? The GNU GPL doesn't require that people who don't use the binary are required access to the code but rather if you distribute the binary to someone, that person needs to have access to the source code. So there's nothing wrong on this point.
So in other words, the reasonable cost for distributing the source code on media used for software interchange? Nothing wrong with that, the GNU GPL even specifies this.
Nothing out of place here, so it seems.
good point.. she should also get a huge package.
Dude, some of us are reading slashdot while eating breakfast. I just spat a bit of oatmeal onto my freakin' laptop display when I suddenly laughed at that one. That's not easy to clean up.
New rule: no humor before 8am.
I was on the Math Team in high school ... and I was Team Captain my senior year. That year, I came to the conclusion that since Math Team got the same letter jacket patches as the athletic activities, and since we were representing our team competitively against other schools just like the athletic teams, we should get the same "benefits" as the athletic teams. The first benefit we asked for - we needed to have cheerleaders.
Request was denied. :-(
We decided not to ask for the pep rally. :-)
I saw this in a game once. Anyone ever play the game Star Trek: Elite Force? It's a standard FPS, but they throw some cutscenes at you. The interesting thing was you could play as a male or female member of the Elite Force.
About halfway through the game, a female NPC hits on you in the ship's bar. I think this part of the script was written assuming you were playing the male character. My first time playing through as the female character, it was surprising for me when I realized that a female character was coming onto another female character in a videogame (and a Star Trek game, at that.)
Trekkie lesbian action. Cue the cheesy jazz music .. that's a video I'd like to watch. :-)
Great, our friends at world.guns.ru apparently didn't like the minor slashdotting on the jpeg image. It's unavailable if the referrer is slashdot. If you missed it, it was just a photo of the M4A1 - I can still get it if I cut/paste the URL into a different Mozilla tab.
Back in the day when LazerTag was really popular, someone sold a "GI Joe" knockoff that was compatible with the LazerTag gear. The only down-side was that the "GI Joe" receptor didn't count to 5 like LazerTag receptors (minor mod required.) And the whole thing looked fugly.
So, I went to Radio Shack and picked up a plastic kit casing, and re-housed the modded board in the new casing. It was just a plain black box with a round receptor window, but it did the job.
The really cool mod was the gun. I took it apart and put it in a water gun housing that looked exactly like an M4A1 carbine. (You may think of it as a "short M16.) Yes, it really looked like that! It was even the real size and everything. I instantly became the cool guy at LazerTag parties, although I had to keep the gun out of sight until after dark. (And we only played in empty fields owned by people we knew.) Other guys painted their LazerTag rifles to look cool (camo was popular) but I had a freaking M4!
My M4 had a decent range, but I didn't try to keep the beam tight. As a result, it acted like a high-power shotgun. Great for open fields, not so great when I followed one guy into a barn. :-(
3. speculated that random machine crashes were being caused by a poorly-mounted heat sink, so removed the sink and turned the machine on, heard a loud "BEEEEEEP" and no start-up, then put his finger on the exposed die of the CPU to feel what was going on--OHDAMNIT'SHOTHOTHOTHOT, and enjoying the sweet smell of burning fingertip flesh...
I'm guilty of that last one, but my excuse is it was my very first computer job. Had a '386-SX40 (8MB memory and 120MB hard drive .... wooooo!) running with the case off, and suddenly wondered ... "I wonder how hot these things are?" Touched it with the tip of my finger - and immediately realized how hot a CPU can get.
A good way to get a 2nd degree burn on the end of your index finger, BTW. :-)
Where I work (a university) the attitude is that if it's work related then work should pay for it. That applies immediately to pagers and cell phones that are distributed to staff. If you already have a cell phone and don't want to carry around another phone, the university will pay for any overage charges that are work related (downside: you probably had work calls in there that brought you over the limit, but you still pay for personal calls in your overage - alternative is to carry a second phone that work pays for.)
This was also extended to in-home broadband access to those who could justify it. For example, if you are a systems administrator and you need to be able to respond to down systems during off-hours (i.e. you carry a pager or cell phone) or if you are a DBA who needs to respond to database problems, work will pay for broadband access. People like the financial support staff, most of the developers, and the web designers are not able to justify home internet access, since they don't need to respond to system problems. (Note I said "most of the developers".)
You have to re-apply every year, and your supervisor and the CIO need to sign off on it. You need to submit your bills monthly, and it only covers broadband internet. For example, if you have cable TV + internet, you only get reimbursed for the internet service. It's a fair system.
Didn't we see this basic topic covered a few months ago? Yup, thought so.
For those who don't want to read the link:
Hoompini-Ting writes "Some accuse area 51, but in any case many folks were stranded when keyless locks failed or their car computers malfunctioned. No technical explanation but I'm sure slashdotters have theories. Similar to the failure in Seattle 3 years ago. See the Las Vegas Review-Journal for more details."
And just to compare, the link in this thread is the same.
Usually, double-posts on Slashdot are a few days apart ... things must be improving if it takes a few months to re-post the same article.
Well, yeah ... looking back at my remark, I did kind of miss the point. If it's a dead iPod, turn it in and sell the discounted DJ ... to buy another iPod. But I'm definitely an iPod person now - and I don't even own a Mac.
Helpful tip: If you have a dead iPod, do the rebate offer, and sell the Jukebox on eBay.
While some may criticize this "editorial" on the Slashdot front page, I completely agree with it. For me, the iPod is a completely natural, easy to use, very functional portable music player. I carry it with me everywhere I go - on the bus to work, on trips, even when hanging out at the lake (just not in the water.)
Keep your iPod - dump the DJ.
Dell has offered FreeDOS on their systems for a while now. Here are some links: 15 Jan 2004 and Aug 9 2003. Slashdot also ran a story about FreeDOS on Dells before.
To quote another poster here on slashdot:
FD has been quite useable for many years. The fact its not reached 1.0 is mainly due to debates on optional features needed to call it '1.0', and not related at all to its stablity or useablity.
I can think of some games that were written in DOS that would work great on FreeDOS. Some of these games have their own grphics engines that work (speedy) better than Windows.
Yes, FreeDOS does work great as a game platform. At one point, I started a FreeDOS for Gamers page, but I haven't finished it (need to add EMM386 info.) Some of that info may help you.
Actually, one of the links (FreeDOS.org) was to a list of mirrors. This was intentional, to prevent swamping the host provider with too much traffic. The last time we were slashdotted, I set up this page so that visitors could hit mirror sites instead of the main one (if the main site became slow). -jh
(from the article:) From Dark Castle, then, descends the modern first-person shooter. Mouse-look is essentially a 3D rendition of what Dark Castle did in two dimensions (although Abuse refined the concept into something more readily recognizable as the precursor of first-person point-and-shoot). See what you want to hit? Point the mouse at it and do it. Point, and click.
Sorry guys, you totally missed it. 'Abuse' was not a first-person-shooter. It was a 2D side-scroller along the theme of the movie 'Aliens'. (The creatures even made the same sounds, and looked pretty much like the movie aliens.) It was point-and-shoot, though. You moved left/right (and jump) with the keyboard, and used the mouse to aim at enemies, and fired by clicking the mouse button.
There was also a version of 'Abuse' released for Windows, and yes even Linux.
My standard response for the (rare) telemarketer phone calls I get is this:
telemarketer: Hi, my name is Cyndi and I'm calling from __ company to tell you about...
me: I don't believe your name is Cyndi.
Gets 'em every time. :-)
One point to think of, regarding "How many of you Slashdotters have used the backwards compatibility on Playstation 2's" is that, well, actually making use of PS2's backwards compatibility is most likely quite rare, but when it was a *new* console it meant that the console immediately had 100x the games of any competitor. Backward compatibility only helps you get people when the console is new.
I am definitely one of the people for whom backwards compatibility is important. I still go back and play some of my favorite PS1 games (the 'Spyro the Dragon' series and a few of the 'Tomb Raider' titles, especially.) I'm very happy that Sony will preserve PS1 backwards compatibility with the (oneday) release of the PS3.
Just because a game is old doesn't mean it stops being fun.
When I noticed my web usage indicated most of the visitors to my site used IE, I was surprised. I emailed the mailing lists and asked if that sounded right to everyone.
The answer was equally surprising. Most users there said they have their user agent string set to mimic IE (most of these were using Opera, but a fair number were using Mozilla/Firefox.)
I think it's important that if you use Mozilla/Firefox (or Opera) that you let your browser identify itself as such. Yes, it is sometimes very convenient to "fake" your browser to report itself as IE (some bank sites, for example) but I think it sends the wrong message to webmasters. For all the world, it looked to me like my users were running IE, and I actually considered tweaking the web design to better suit IE. (Damn me for my weakness!) Glad I didn't.
I'm going to reply to my own comment to remark why my wife currently uses Linux. I'm a technical person (sysadmin) but my wife has her BA in Literature and her MA in Theology. No technical background there. And she also is as non-technical as you can get.
But my wife asked to move off Windows. Why? Because she was tired of Windows viruses, of always having to apply updates to Windows (sometimes that would break her system ... usually when a paper was due the next day.) Generally, she considered Windows to be buggy, and Microsoft software (Office, ..) to be just as buggy.
Today, my wife is happily using Fedora Core on her 600MHz 128MB laptop. Try running Windows XP in that footprint. She runs Mozilla for her browser and to check email, she finished her thesis work on StarOffice (she felt a little better about using an office suite she had to pay for - no problem on my end .. whatever makes her more comfortable with Linux.)
She's writing a book for publication using OpenOffice (after the thesis was finished, she decided to give OpenOffice a try.) She visits web sites that use flash or java plugins, and is able to see all the content.
As far as my wife is concerned, Linux is just as good as a Windows box. Or rather, Linux is even better. When she sees that another round of Windows viruses has appeared, she sort of cackles about those "poor Windows users." :-)
The reason I first installed Linux is simple: I was a UNIX sysadmin at the time, and it made most sense for my desktop environment at work to be the same environment that I managed on the servers (for familiarity, same toolsets, ...) and I installed it at home because I found I was just as productive on Linux as I was on Windows. My first Linux was SLS 1.03 (which only the old-timers here will recognize.)
I continue to run Linux at work (now Fedora Core) because I find it's easier to use and manage. The software is familiar (Mozilla for browser/mail, OpenOffice/StarOffice for most office apps, and java versions of the few non-native apps that I need at work ... like calendaring.) When new Windows viruses are announced, I sort of groan because I know it means I'll have more virus email hit my Inbox, but otherwise I'm unaffected.
At home, I'm still running Linux (again, Fedora Core) because everything I need is there. What does a home desktop need to do? Mozilla for browser/mail, OpenOffice for the annual Christmas letter ... I installed some third-party stuff so I can rip MP3s, listen to them, and dump them onto my iPod. I can download photos from my camera, and modify/tweak/enhance/print those photos with the GIMP. Not a lot else that I need to do ... I play some games on Linux, sure ('Enemy Territory' is my current favorite.) Oh yeah, and I also have a development environment (DOSEmu) for working on FreeDOS (also useful when playing old DOS games.)
Why do I need Windows?
I subscribe to the print edition of Newsweek, and I read the article about this. Interestingly, the mock-up they showed of the "mobile phone of future" had some nice features (video, music, ...) but the one thing they didn't talk about was its (in)ability to make a phone call. It really gets me that they seemingly took the attitude of "oh, and it makes phone calls" ... for a device whose primary purpose should be to make phone calls!
IMO, mobile phones should be phones first, and misc appliances second. The attitude should be "oh, and it can also play video and music."
BTW, a version of GEM still exists ... OpenGEM and GEMini.
-jh
The fact that copy/paste is buggy or sluggish under X-Windows has a simple reason: There are tons of SDKs for X-Windows, almost all of them using a separate clipboard implementation/mechanism. Saying that you deal with a technical problem by getting used to it, is saying that technology will fail to address the problem. As you say, "Linux is different" (almost true, since it has almost nothing to do with Linux, but rather with X-Windows). I would rather say: X-Windows clipboard management sucks. If you want to use Linux on the desktop, you'll have to get used to it.
While true, I found a rather interesting "workaround" when I explained to my mother how to use her new Linux desktop (disclaimer: she asked me to move her to Linux, and after several weeks of me asking her "why do you want to learn something new?" and setting an expectation for what she'd find on Linux, I finally moved her to Red Hat Linux. Also, I have run Linux 100% as my desktop since 1998.)
The "workaround" was to explain that Linux has two different kinds of clipboards, and it would work differently for her under Linux than the clipboard worked under Windows. I explained it like this:
Yes, I know this is not technically the correct explanation. But when trying to explain how the copy/paste thing works to a non-Linux user, I found this simplification made it easy for her to understand. And it set the right expectation - she never asks about why copy/paste acts the way it does. My mother (not a technical user) had the expectation set for her that Linux was not Windows, so copy/paste wouldn't work just like Windows. The concept of "local" vs "global" clipboards was different, but then again she was on a different operating system. It didn't take her any time to get used to this - she understood right from the start when to use middle-click and when to use copy/paste.
Interestingly, I was in the next room when I heard her explain this to one of her (also non-technical) friends. She said something like "...and that's why you can do copy/paste from the file manager, but you can't just middle-click the file there." I smiled, since it was technically not copy/paste in Nautilus, but I thought it was neat that the simplified concept of "local" vs "global" clipboards seemed to work so well for her.
I suppose I'll go to hell for telling a white lie about how it really works. :-)