OK, so I'm really sick of the editor's modding here on slashdot, but if it weren't for this place, I wouldn't hear about awesome programs and other neat stuff like this Trillian IM client. I have used Jabber in the past, and, well, it sucked. So I was perfectly fine being stuck using three chat clients at once (AIM, Yahoo, and IRC).
But, wow! I just downloaded this program, and it is sharp! I'm very impressed. You would think a multi-billion dollar company like AOL/TW would be able to put out a quality product like this, but once again, my theory that the little guys always do it better proves true. I hope the big guys realize this for once and give up on trying to shut out this chat client to their servers. If they were actually halfway smart, they'd get an agreement signed with Cerulean to allow some sort of advertising or something not too personally intrusive for the use of their aol servers.
Ok, I've said this a couple of times before on slashdot, but I guess it deserves saying once again: Check out Virtual-Hideout.net for some ideas on little (or big expensive!) mods you can do to your computer from a hardware standpoint.
I found this site which looked promising for some of my needs in the quest to make cool gadgety add-ons to my computer.
Has Attorney General Ashcroft heard about this yet? Has he approved such a thing? I mean, seriously, the coordination with which a terrorist network could launch a global 'world killer' terrorist attack if all airports start doing this could be disasterous(sp?)! I'd prefer we just all be forced to let the rent-a-friskers look through all the pr0n on our laptops before giving up our security to the terrorists.
(P.S. - Hey Ashcroft, seal off the borders to fix the problem first, you dumbass. Quit treating us common folk like common criminals.)
But in our capatalistic society (more or less), that's how things work. Everyone's greed gives and takes to achieve what each party wants. The gamers want something that's fun every time they play it, the game company wants something 'sticky' that will keep the players coming back for more. It's been talked about a lot more before the dot-com bust of 2000.
Why does Coke put ads on TV and everywhere? To grab your attention and keep you coming back for more. Why does Everquest promote such addictive tendencies amongst its players? To keep them coming back for more. Ok, bad analogy, but you get my drift.
I do find it funny that an American computer game makes its gamers, on average, more money per hour than most 3rd world countries' citizens do performing actual hard physical labor. Makes you realize just how filthy rich and corpulent our society is...
Funny, our company is pushing their 'Quantum Leap' initiative to improve and extend quality within our organization. When a coworker asked what it was about, I said: "It was a TV show back in the 80's that involved time travel." It's too bad there are so many dumbasses in this world such that marketing tactics like this actually work in grabbing our attention, rather than making you blow the current liquid substance you're drinking out your nose in uncontrollable laughter.
CmdrTaco bought it, apparently, as his drool is all over my monitor right now.
Ok, look, I don't appreciate the crapfloods and "Jon Katz is gay" posts any more than the rest of you, but for once the trolls are so damn funny and ONTOPIC in this discussion it's just wonderful!
For instance: This post by an AC is just too damn funny. At first it looks like: "Oh wow, good for you, now shutup." But then you notice it's by an AC and you think, "Haha! Non-TV owning elitists who brag about it ARE about as useful as an Anonymous Coward post."
Or take this post for example. Barely has anything to do with the article topic, but since the topic is so -1 Redundant anyways, this just makes me laugh!
Lastly, we've got this scathing comment that bashes on the whole premise of this article and consequential discussion on slashdot.
The point is, who cares? You don't own a TV, great for you! Now quit wasting your time telling everyone and go back to reading the newspaper. I don't care. The last comment was probably the best. Just insert "Slashdot, sex, alcohol, or your favorite 'no-no' in all the places they have the appreviation 'TV' in the article, and resubmit this about a month later. This isn't news, it's not for nerds, geeks, or trolls, and it certainly hasn't benefitted my life, as it is common sense to everyone and their grandmother that any addiction taken too far is negative.
Don't get me wrong, I'm really impressed and actually a little surprised that your employees picked up on, and enjoy using KDE and other linux desktop apps. I just think that for mass adoption, especially by those shops who don't do IT related tasks, but just use computers for day to day writing and communication related activities, it's going to be much more acceptable to have a more robust (even if that means install wizards) installation process for programs.
There's lots of smaller businesses than yours that would jump on free linux software in a second if only they were shown how to use it compared to the Windows environment. This of course, is what I wish my job were now, but until I can know more about Linux through my own learning, there's no chance of me doing this as a job.;)
The Linux desktop has one major hurdle left to overcome the dominance of MS. It was massively evident from the last page of the article where different apps were evaluated. Notice that the author, in almost every case, mentioned this: "Unfortunately, I couldn't get it to install..." or some derivative there-of.
I find so many Linux and KDE apps to be so much more configurable and useful than Windows programs, personally. But just like the article's author, getting them up and running is the biggest pain in the ass ever in most cases! It shouldn't take me an hour just to get Gnucash installed and running. Configuring it to my liking can take all day for all I care, but just getting it running so I can begin to replace my use of Quicken is an extraordinarily lengthy task. This is just one example of the difficult install process in linux desktop apps.
The lack of interoperability or fancy features in Linux desktop apps is not the problem. Who uses the 'web publishing' wizards in MS Word anyways??? The problem is the ease of install. I don't need MS style wizards to walk me through the install per say, but I would at least like a working product when I'm done installing, not yet another message that a certain library is missing on my system. RPM's work just fine (when they work), but if a library is missing, for God's sake, TELL ME WHERE I CAN DOWNLOAD IT or better yet, go find it and download it for me! Get easy installation of apps on the Linux desktop, and you'll get MS desktop business users migrating to Linux en masse.
Note, however, that gaming on Linux is not even close to complete yet since installation of desktop apps is still such a pain. Henceforth, the home Linux user has two hurdles to get past before using Linux at home on a consistent basis.
Yes, I like linux, and yes, I use it at home, and YES I don't mind doing some work to find the libraries, drivers, and programs I need to get linux apps working like I want them too. But the simple fact of the matter is that most business people don't have that kind of time to waste on just installing a simple program.
The most impressive thing I like about Linux and its desktops, are their complete willingness to interoperate with each other. I personally like the KDE desktop a little more than Gnome, but there's plenty of Gnome apps that work just fine in KDE that I like to use. MS doesn't even like other people building apps for their system without using all MS licensed programming tools and DLL-Hell.
Now if only I could get my Win2k NTFS partition read AND writeable for use with Wine, that would be something.
So why is PS2 letting us fiddle with Linux based PS2's if no one is allowed to modify the normal PS2? Who is it hurting if I purchase one extra game from overseas and play it with a mod chip attached to my US PS2? Oh that's right, it makes baby DMCA cry.
Usually, it's not that the original law was wrong when something new comes along, it's just that the original law was overly simplistic. Like Newton. He had the basic laws correct, but by the time Einstein developed his Theory of Special Relativity, Newton's laws were refined by Einstein's. Or something like that. Maybe I'm getting the laws those guys came up with mixed up, but my basic point is this: Existing scientific laws that have been proven time and again through empirical expirementation are not wrong, just incomplete. Our view of the atom, then the proton, electron, and nuetron, then of all the binding particles that make up those particles, etc. have not been wrong theories, just incomplete.
I'm sure the First, Second and Third Laws of Thermodynamics are correct, but certainly there are lots of holes in the theories needing to be filled in with further scientific refinement of our understanding of the universe. Too bad today's American college student is generally so stupid (especially lots of journalism majors) to investigate and research on their own. I guess cheating his way to a journalism degree didn't pay off for that Rueter's journalist in the end, huh?
And so when Palestinian TV carries a kids show that promotes to kids that martyrdom will reward you with many beautiful women and splendor in 'heaven', you call that Isreali exploitation? Sounds like a depressing way to grow up, knowing that your culture values your dying more than your living.
Besides, there was no Palestinian state before Yasser and the UN came along. They were a bunch of outcast nomads wandering around that area of the middle east with no centralized government. Then the Israelites are given back their homeland of over a thousand years, and all the sudden the Arabs just think it's always been the Palestinian's land. And if you're so afraid of who's land it was and how "exploited" everyone is, why don't you fight for all the other backwards societies of the world who lost their land and way of life because of their technological inferiority to conquering nations.
P.S. The Palestinians almost daily engage in terrorist activity exactly equal (in deed, not in death toll) to the Trade Center 9/11 attacks. Are you telling me that killing 10 Jews is justifiable where as killing 2000 innocent Americans is not? Or are you in league with Osama, Al Qaida, and all the other shit of this world?
I opened my eyes, saw yet another Palestinian blowing away a bunch of innocents during a Bar Mitzvah, and then decided to shut my eyes again to their nonstop atrocities.
Well, I can't reply to micheal's bullshit at this point, so I'll just point it out here. He's basically calling me a giant loser too for sitting on slashdot practically every day for over a year now as I have over 500 comments to my credit at this point. Guess what? I have an extraordinarily busy life! I work full-time at a job where I CAN spend time reading up on current issues and writing things to slashdot from time to time. I go to school part-time, and I have a fiancee and church obligations all at the same time!
And guess what, my fiancee is a first year law student, and while she does know more than me in some areas, she is amazed at my comprhension of the DMCA and copyright law. All of which I learned by reading articles, comments, rants, and raves from information found right here on Slashdot. Michael is the one that needs to quit bashing the people who make Slashdot such a visited site on the internet and start finding ways to get us to spend money to make him and his cohorts rich. Unfortunately, I won't give money out to businesses that ridicule their users and try to wield absolute power for the good of the 'masses'. *cough* Microsoft, RIAA, MPAA, etc. *cough*.
I would email Yahoo! about how annoying there ads were if I could find a customer service email address, but alas, after an hour+ of searching, I've never found one.
A site I frequent is WorldNetDaily.com, and they have ads for stuff sprinkled all over there front page implying sometimes that they are news items, when really they're just another advertisement for the newest book they're selling on their site. It's definitely not a new scheme, but certainly annoying when done the wrong way. Some of Yahoo's advertisements have gotten really annoying. There's no way to 'block' flash ads in Mozilla yet, and Yahoo keeps throwing up this damn huge Oracle/IBM ad on the my.yahoo.com page I have. Pretty annoying because it makes me unable to see any pertinent info until halfway down the page, and my.yahoo.com is quite important to me for quick snapshots of stock quotes, weather, and world news.:(
I like to see easy, simple, routinely formatted documentation when I go to use and/or test software. As a software tester, unfortunately, I have to read through all kinds of documentation all the time to get my job done. It's a core requirement of my job. 'man' pages on Linux are simple. They're always formatted relatively the same. Information is all contained within that 80 character console screen space, and no fancy highlighting and other annoying things to distract you.
I say use vi to write up your documentation with liberal useage of tabs and blank space, then add HTML tags to the simple text file with a program like Quanta+ or other HTML program that allows manual editing of html tags along with the ability to preview your work and simplify annoying things (like closing those tags).;)
Ok, so this is a troll, but I'll respond anyways. Why is it that some people find the alternative OS crowd to be so 'out there', annoying, and retarded? It's because of people like you, with your 'BSD is the best' elitism, and your 'aren't I special for not following the crowd' thinking. There's another poster on slashdot that has as his sig: "Yes, not having a TV, DOES make me a better person."
People with this holier than thou attitude really need a reality check. Why does not having a TV make you a better person? I have a TV, but I don't waste every waking minute in front of it. Still, it does me good to be in on the pop culture of our times. Without a TV I wouldn't be as much a part of US society. But if you don't want a TV, I applaud that. Just don't go hyping how awesome you are for not having a TV.
Same thing goes for you. You make this implication that the second Linux became profitable and useable by the masses of computer geeks, it became not elitist. And so when BSD reaches this point, where it becomes massively accepted and useful for many things, will you then decide it too is not elite enough for you?
Is Microsoft Windows the greatest? No. Is Linux the greatest? No. Is MacOS the greatest? No. Is BSD the greatest? No. Every single one has something about them that someone doesn't like. Personally, I'm really learning to love linux, but it's taking time. Will I tell others how I think Linux is generally better for a lot of productivity and security things? Yes. Will I try cramming it down their throats how brain-dead and worthless everything about MS Windows is? No, not unless I feel like being a real ass.
BTW, good job with making this post a subtle enough troll not to get you modded down as such. Too bad people actually modded it up.
DVD stands for Digital Versatile Disk, not Digital Video Disk. It's not SUPPOSED to be limited to your 'high quality crisp audio/video.' If I can use a DVD to store twice the number of lossy format mp3's and still play on my car stereo, then it's worth it to me.
But Dave Danz, owner of the Indianapolis-based courier company Double D Express, called the law "a ridiculous waste of money.
Hmm... which kind of 'courier' service is he running that the city might not approve of either. Suspicious. Video games are being backed by the "bad guys"!:-p
I criticize the Chinese government because one of their pilots acting irresponsibly in the air in international boundaries knocks one of OUR (US) planes out of the sky, and then blames the whole thing on us, and glorifies its 'hero' of a showboat pilot! Oh yeah, their government also jails and executes thousands of people, especially those practicing Christianity, each year. I know there are billions of wonderful Chinese in the country of China, but unfortunately, their government is still our (US) enemy.
Well, giving the worst nation on earth normalized trade status was just plain dumb (China), but at least W isn't dumb enough to keep trade restrictions from 20 years ago on US tech firms in place for no reason. Free trade is good and all, but we shouldn't be giving more business to our enemies in the first place. Our only consolation is that hopefully the increased overseas business for US companies will mean more envelope pushing technologies for 'us', before 'them.'
Oh yes, and in addition to my above post, this one is quite true. For a measly $32 I got an AMD Duron 750, another $25 got it overclocked very stably to 995MHz in Win2k and Mandrake 8.1.
Slashdot Mirror
But, wow! I just downloaded this program, and it is sharp! I'm very impressed. You would think a multi-billion dollar company like AOL/TW would be able to put out a quality product like this, but once again, my theory that the little guys always do it better proves true. I hope the big guys realize this for once and give up on trying to shut out this chat client to their servers. If they were actually halfway smart, they'd get an agreement signed with Cerulean to allow some sort of advertising or something not too personally intrusive for the use of their aol servers.
I found this site which looked promising for some of my needs in the quest to make cool gadgety add-ons to my computer.
(P.S. - Hey Ashcroft, seal off the borders to fix the problem first, you dumbass. Quit treating us common folk like common criminals.)
Why does Coke put ads on TV and everywhere? To grab your attention and keep you coming back for more. Why does Everquest promote such addictive tendencies amongst its players? To keep them coming back for more. Ok, bad analogy, but you get my drift.
I do find it funny that an American computer game makes its gamers, on average, more money per hour than most 3rd world countries' citizens do performing actual hard physical labor. Makes you realize just how filthy rich and corpulent our society is...
CmdrTaco bought it, apparently, as his drool is all over my monitor right now.
For instance: This post by an AC is just too damn funny. At first it looks like: "Oh wow, good for you, now shutup." But then you notice it's by an AC and you think, "Haha! Non-TV owning elitists who brag about it ARE about as useful as an Anonymous Coward post."
Or take this post for example. Barely has anything to do with the article topic, but since the topic is so -1 Redundant anyways, this just makes me laugh!
Lastly, we've got this scathing comment that bashes on the whole premise of this article and consequential discussion on slashdot.
The point is, who cares? You don't own a TV, great for you! Now quit wasting your time telling everyone and go back to reading the newspaper. I don't care. The last comment was probably the best. Just insert "Slashdot, sex, alcohol, or your favorite 'no-no' in all the places they have the appreviation 'TV' in the article, and resubmit this about a month later. This isn't news, it's not for nerds, geeks, or trolls, and it certainly hasn't benefitted my life, as it is common sense to everyone and their grandmother that any addiction taken too far is negative.
I rate this slashdot discussion: -1 Redundant.
There's lots of smaller businesses than yours that would jump on free linux software in a second if only they were shown how to use it compared to the Windows environment. This of course, is what I wish my job were now, but until I can know more about Linux through my own learning, there's no chance of me doing this as a job. ;)
BTW - Congrats on saving money over Windows. ;)
Where's that guy with the sig about his website, resume, and skill set? He should post to this discussion. Quite appropriate. ;)
I find so many Linux and KDE apps to be so much more configurable and useful than Windows programs, personally. But just like the article's author, getting them up and running is the biggest pain in the ass ever in most cases! It shouldn't take me an hour just to get Gnucash installed and running. Configuring it to my liking can take all day for all I care, but just getting it running so I can begin to replace my use of Quicken is an extraordinarily lengthy task. This is just one example of the difficult install process in linux desktop apps.
The lack of interoperability or fancy features in Linux desktop apps is not the problem. Who uses the 'web publishing' wizards in MS Word anyways??? The problem is the ease of install. I don't need MS style wizards to walk me through the install per say, but I would at least like a working product when I'm done installing, not yet another message that a certain library is missing on my system. RPM's work just fine (when they work), but if a library is missing, for God's sake, TELL ME WHERE I CAN DOWNLOAD IT or better yet, go find it and download it for me! Get easy installation of apps on the Linux desktop, and you'll get MS desktop business users migrating to Linux en masse.
Note, however, that gaming on Linux is not even close to complete yet since installation of desktop apps is still such a pain. Henceforth, the home Linux user has two hurdles to get past before using Linux at home on a consistent basis.
Yes, I like linux, and yes, I use it at home, and YES I don't mind doing some work to find the libraries, drivers, and programs I need to get linux apps working like I want them too. But the simple fact of the matter is that most business people don't have that kind of time to waste on just installing a simple program.
Now if only I could get my Win2k NTFS partition read AND writeable for use with Wine, that would be something.
Yes, I'm a Linux newb.
Excuse the previous comment at the end. ;) I should have said: "...it makes baby WIPO cry." ;)
So why is PS2 letting us fiddle with Linux based PS2's if no one is allowed to modify the normal PS2? Who is it hurting if I purchase one extra game from overseas and play it with a mod chip attached to my US PS2? Oh that's right, it makes baby DMCA cry.
I'm sure the First, Second and Third Laws of Thermodynamics are correct, but certainly there are lots of holes in the theories needing to be filled in with further scientific refinement of our understanding of the universe. Too bad today's American college student is generally so stupid (especially lots of journalism majors) to investigate and research on their own. I guess cheating his way to a journalism degree didn't pay off for that Rueter's journalist in the end, huh?
Besides, there was no Palestinian state before Yasser and the UN came along. They were a bunch of outcast nomads wandering around that area of the middle east with no centralized government. Then the Israelites are given back their homeland of over a thousand years, and all the sudden the Arabs just think it's always been the Palestinian's land. And if you're so afraid of who's land it was and how "exploited" everyone is, why don't you fight for all the other backwards societies of the world who lost their land and way of life because of their technological inferiority to conquering nations.
P.S. The Palestinians almost daily engage in terrorist activity exactly equal (in deed, not in death toll) to the Trade Center 9/11 attacks. Are you telling me that killing 10 Jews is justifiable where as killing 2000 innocent Americans is not? Or are you in league with Osama, Al Qaida, and all the other shit of this world?
I opened my eyes, saw yet another Palestinian blowing away a bunch of innocents during a Bar Mitzvah, and then decided to shut my eyes again to their nonstop atrocities.
And guess what, my fiancee is a first year law student, and while she does know more than me in some areas, she is amazed at my comprhension of the DMCA and copyright law. All of which I learned by reading articles, comments, rants, and raves from information found right here on Slashdot. Michael is the one that needs to quit bashing the people who make Slashdot such a visited site on the internet and start finding ways to get us to spend money to make him and his cohorts rich. Unfortunately, I won't give money out to businesses that ridicule their users and try to wield absolute power for the good of the 'masses'. *cough* Microsoft, RIAA, MPAA, etc. *cough*.
I would email Yahoo! about how annoying there ads were if I could find a customer service email address, but alas, after an hour+ of searching, I've never found one.
A site I frequent is WorldNetDaily.com, and they have ads for stuff sprinkled all over there front page implying sometimes that they are news items, when really they're just another advertisement for the newest book they're selling on their site. It's definitely not a new scheme, but certainly annoying when done the wrong way. Some of Yahoo's advertisements have gotten really annoying. There's no way to 'block' flash ads in Mozilla yet, and Yahoo keeps throwing up this damn huge Oracle/IBM ad on the my.yahoo.com page I have. Pretty annoying because it makes me unable to see any pertinent info until halfway down the page, and my.yahoo.com is quite important to me for quick snapshots of stock quotes, weather, and world news. :(
I say use vi to write up your documentation with liberal useage of tabs and blank space, then add HTML tags to the simple text file with a program like Quanta+ or other HTML program that allows manual editing of html tags along with the ability to preview your work and simplify annoying things (like closing those tags). ;)
People with this holier than thou attitude really need a reality check. Why does not having a TV make you a better person? I have a TV, but I don't waste every waking minute in front of it. Still, it does me good to be in on the pop culture of our times. Without a TV I wouldn't be as much a part of US society. But if you don't want a TV, I applaud that. Just don't go hyping how awesome you are for not having a TV.
Same thing goes for you. You make this implication that the second Linux became profitable and useable by the masses of computer geeks, it became not elitist. And so when BSD reaches this point, where it becomes massively accepted and useful for many things, will you then decide it too is not elite enough for you?
Is Microsoft Windows the greatest? No. Is Linux the greatest? No. Is MacOS the greatest? No. Is BSD the greatest? No. Every single one has something about them that someone doesn't like. Personally, I'm really learning to love linux, but it's taking time. Will I tell others how I think Linux is generally better for a lot of productivity and security things? Yes. Will I try cramming it down their throats how brain-dead and worthless everything about MS Windows is? No, not unless I feel like being a real ass.
BTW, good job with making this post a subtle enough troll not to get you modded down as such. Too bad people actually modded it up.
DVD stands for Digital Versatile Disk, not Digital Video Disk. It's not SUPPOSED to be limited to your 'high quality crisp audio/video.' If I can use a DVD to store twice the number of lossy format mp3's and still play on my car stereo, then it's worth it to me.
Hmm... which kind of 'courier' service is he running that the city might not approve of either. Suspicious. Video games are being backed by the "bad guys"! :-p
I criticize the Chinese government because one of their pilots acting irresponsibly in the air in international boundaries knocks one of OUR (US) planes out of the sky, and then blames the whole thing on us, and glorifies its 'hero' of a showboat pilot! Oh yeah, their government also jails and executes thousands of people, especially those practicing Christianity, each year. I know there are billions of wonderful Chinese in the country of China, but unfortunately, their government is still our (US) enemy.
Well, giving the worst nation on earth normalized trade status was just plain dumb (China), but at least W isn't dumb enough to keep trade restrictions from 20 years ago on US tech firms in place for no reason. Free trade is good and all, but we shouldn't be giving more business to our enemies in the first place. Our only consolation is that hopefully the increased overseas business for US companies will mean more envelope pushing technologies for 'us', before 'them.'
Oh yes, and in addition to my above post, this one is quite true. For a measly $32 I got an AMD Duron 750, another $25 got it overclocked very stably to 995MHz in Win2k and Mandrake 8.1.