I like most of your sentiment, but your anti-American elitism is showing.
Let's face it, if its a democratic society (and I mean that in the sense of Democracy, not democrats being in power, you guys should look into changing that ambiguity)
Yeah, because no other democracies have a party with a derivative of that word in their name, right?
What I don't understand?! I sell Ubuntu machines, man. Don't talk to me about what I do or don't understand. I'm well aware of the process of theming a Gnome desktop. I do it every fucking day. (Well, actually, not anymore. I'm in the process of migrating my offerings to a KDE-based platform, presently Kubuntu, although I'm not married to that choice, and if anyone out there in Slashdot-land would like to recommend another user-friendly KDE-centric distro, I'd love to hear it.)
But you know what's even easier for Dell to do than that? To not do that.
Not a lot by any stretch. 10 per month. I do have another part-time job that keeps me in beer. And although you didn't ask, my rent's cheap, I live in a pretty good renter's market.
I am obviously not Dell. I am a person selling computers to people. I am one guy. Also unlike Dell, I know my customers and can provide a level of personal service that they can't.
But I've been doing this for a few years now, and in that time I've certainly sold more than 200 machines all told, and converted at least half as many Windows machines. I'm obviously not a giant in the field, but but the very least, admit that that is a non-trivial sample size. In that time, I have had one client express dissatisfaction with the software. One. I bat 1.000, and that's something I take a hell of a lot of pride in.
Okay, I've spent most of my time on this thread bashing Dell, but if there's no 10.04 offerings on the page, might it be because Ubuntu's new UI is trash?
Ubuntu is pretty restrictive in some things. Try running KDE in Ubuntu. You can't (you can install the libraries and get the apps running though), that's why there's Kubuntu.
I sell machines with Ubuntu on them. To yoga instructors and flight attendants and 85 year old women. It's easier. Universally, across the board easier. Every single customer says so. You don't have to trust me, but I trust them, because they pay my rent. I mean, if you're comfortable being out-geeked by an 85 year old great grandma, okay, but don't blame the machine.
To me, what immediately put it as "not easy to use" was the moment that I realized I needed things like "sudo" or any other commands to make things happen.
No you don't. You enter your password into the box that pops up that says "enter your password." You know, kinda like on... uh, Windows... except that they stole the idea from us.
How in God's holy name is that simpler than Ubuntu Software Centre? Open the program. Pick a category. Pick a program. You are done. If your precious "number of clicks" truly do matter, then you're doing it wrong.
No, I get it, I just can't imagine any particular article being worth five bucks. There is no scarcity of news sources that would necessitate me paying that.
Nothing stopping us from having personal jetpacks today except that they'd be hellishly expensive. FTL, at least in modern SF, is most often used as a plot driver than a serious scientific proposal. (You can't have a galaxy-spanning story arc without it). I am not familiar with "atomic rockets."
Very few SF writers have the background to make any kind of credible analysis.
I'm really starting to think you're just a troll. This is patently untrue. Asimov wrote more non-fiction science than he did fiction and many of them are considered seminal works in their fields. Arthur C. Clarke had a physics degree and made a serious proposal for a worldwide satellite communications network in the '40s. I don't have time to sit on Wikipedia all night and do this, but you're just stupid and wrong.
Indeed, the first colony on Martian soil in those excellent, excellent books is in just such a lava tube. However, the actual first settlement is on one of the moons (it's the one inhabited initially by Arkady and the anarchists and first serves as a port before becoming the terminus of the first Martian space elevator. I think there's lessons all over that.
God damn, I'm gonna go start reading those again tonight.
Different rules apply here. Different gravity, different atmospheric pressure (or lack thereof), different materials to actually dig through. Someone above in this thread laid out some of the engineering problems associated with building stuff on the moon, and they're right, that shit's not easy. But the actual digging seems like it should be the easiest part.
Your point, sir, and I should check my facts better before I run my mouth. In my defense, I was in junior high at the time, but your correction is well taken.
And that was over a lack of cooperation with weapons inspectors, who were looking for (and not finding) WMD manufacturing.
OTOH, this sort of gets at what I was trying to say. The Clinton administration found no WMDs in Iraq, so they bombed them. The Bush II administration also found no WMDs in Iraq. So they bombed them. My aim here is not to score points on Bill Clinton, but to suggest that our aggressive posture toward Iraq (and other middle eastern nations) is not a left thing or a right thing or a neocon thing. It's government policy and has been for decades.
You are implying that all members of US democratic party would be considered so-called liberals (so-called because word liberal has rather odd current usage in US, but I digress).
I am not. I am replying to a specific statement made by another poster regarding "liberals" and "the wars." I assure you that I am aware of the nuances involved in trying to place arbitrary labels on anyone at any point on the political spectrum, and it was this very fallacy that I was trying to point out in my comment.
If someone can take a word like "liberal" and say it means whatever they want it to mean, and then say "liberals were against the war(s)," well, that's bullshit, and it's an apology and an excuse to continue holding one's nose and voting Democratic even though their values do not reflect the actual American liberal tradition.
For real, stop recommending this. It's not maintained, it's terribly buggy, it leaks memory all over the fucking place, it is no good. It was no good when it was released. Now it's super ultra mega no good. See several other replies to your comment for several better ways to handle this problem.
Which is completely unlike proprietary software, except that it's not. All of the above is still true and they've also got the gall to take your money. Sure, sometimes with free software you get what you pay for. But with proprietary software, you pay for what you get.
There's nothing wrong with Aero except that it's a fucking resource pig that melts video cards into slag. News flash: the free desktop figured out how to do accelerated desktop effects without burning the damn house down years ago.
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I like most of your sentiment, but your anti-American elitism is showing.
Let's face it, if its a democratic society (and I mean that in the sense of Democracy, not democrats being in power, you guys should look into changing that ambiguity)
Yeah, because no other democracies have a party with a derivative of that word in their name, right?
I'm on board. What do you propose to do?
What I don't understand?! I sell Ubuntu machines, man. Don't talk to me about what I do or don't understand. I'm well aware of the process of theming a Gnome desktop. I do it every fucking day. (Well, actually, not anymore. I'm in the process of migrating my offerings to a KDE-based platform, presently Kubuntu, although I'm not married to that choice, and if anyone out there in Slashdot-land would like to recommend another user-friendly KDE-centric distro, I'd love to hear it.)
But you know what's even easier for Dell to do than that? To not do that.
Get it yet?
Pick a decade. Any decade ever in recorded history. Okay, pick the pre-eminent power in that decade.
That will without exception be the power that killed the most civilians in that decade. There's nothing at all special about America.
Not a lot by any stretch. 10 per month. I do have another part-time job that keeps me in beer. And although you didn't ask, my rent's cheap, I live in a pretty good renter's market.
I am obviously not Dell. I am a person selling computers to people. I am one guy. Also unlike Dell, I know my customers and can provide a level of personal service that they can't.
But I've been doing this for a few years now, and in that time I've certainly sold more than 200 machines all told, and converted at least half as many Windows machines. I'm obviously not a giant in the field, but but the very least, admit that that is a non-trivial sample size. In that time, I have had one client express dissatisfaction with the software. One. I bat 1.000, and that's something I take a hell of a lot of pride in.
Okay, I've spent most of my time on this thread bashing Dell, but if there's no 10.04 offerings on the page, might it be because Ubuntu's new UI is trash?
Ubuntu is pretty restrictive in some things. Try running KDE in Ubuntu. You can't (you can install the libraries and get the apps running though), that's why there's Kubuntu.
You're retarded.
I sell machines with Ubuntu on them. To yoga instructors and flight attendants and 85 year old women. It's easier. Universally, across the board easier. Every single customer says so. You don't have to trust me, but I trust them, because they pay my rent. I mean, if you're comfortable being out-geeked by an 85 year old great grandma, okay, but don't blame the machine.
To me, what immediately put it as "not easy to use" was the moment that I realized I needed things like "sudo" or any other commands to make things happen.
No you don't. You enter your password into the box that pops up that says "enter your password." You know, kinda like on... uh, Windows... except that they stole the idea from us.
In short, you are full of crap.
How in God's holy name is that simpler than Ubuntu Software Centre? Open the program. Pick a category. Pick a program. You are done. If your precious "number of clicks" truly do matter, then you're doing it wrong.
Ah, everyone you live with?
No, I get it, I just can't imagine any particular article being worth five bucks. There is no scarcity of news sources that would necessitate me paying that.
So let me get this straight. Their plan is to lose readers, lose money, then convince their competitors to lose readers and lose money?
Call me crazy, but I don't see that going well.
WHAT? Five bucks an hour?! No deal. Five bucks a month and we might be talking.
Most 'sci-fi' writers are of around average intelligence who recycle materials, ideas, and memes that other people have created.
Sure. Just like engineers.
(Personal jetpacks, FTL, 'atomic rockets', etc... etc...)
Nothing stopping us from having personal jetpacks today except that they'd be hellishly expensive. FTL, at least in modern SF, is most often used as a plot driver than a serious scientific proposal. (You can't have a galaxy-spanning story arc without it). I am not familiar with "atomic rockets."
Very few SF writers have the background to make any kind of credible analysis.
I'm really starting to think you're just a troll. This is patently untrue. Asimov wrote more non-fiction science than he did fiction and many of them are considered seminal works in their fields. Arthur C. Clarke had a physics degree and made a serious proposal for a worldwide satellite communications network in the '40s. I don't have time to sit on Wikipedia all night and do this, but you're just stupid and wrong.
Indeed, the first colony on Martian soil in those excellent, excellent books is in just such a lava tube. However, the actual first settlement is on one of the moons (it's the one inhabited initially by Arkady and the anarchists and first serves as a port before becoming the terminus of the first Martian space elevator. I think there's lessons all over that.
God damn, I'm gonna go start reading those again tonight.
Collapse? On the moon? Think it through.
Different rules apply here. Different gravity, different atmospheric pressure (or lack thereof), different materials to actually dig through. Someone above in this thread laid out some of the engineering problems associated with building stuff on the moon, and they're right, that shit's not easy. But the actual digging seems like it should be the easiest part.
Being that windows is easier to maintain by the average joe
Obviously it is not. It is easier to fuck up. That's a different thing altogether.
As far as I'm aware, kde-screensaver is simply a wrapper for xscreensaver. I could be wrong though, and I'm too drunk to do my own research.
Four days in 1998. Not years — four *days*.
Your point, sir, and I should check my facts better before I run my mouth. In my defense, I was in junior high at the time, but your correction is well taken.
And that was over a lack of cooperation with weapons inspectors, who were looking for (and not finding) WMD manufacturing.
OTOH, this sort of gets at what I was trying to say. The Clinton administration found no WMDs in Iraq, so they bombed them. The Bush II administration also found no WMDs in Iraq. So they bombed them. My aim here is not to score points on Bill Clinton, but to suggest that our aggressive posture toward Iraq (and other middle eastern nations) is not a left thing or a right thing or a neocon thing. It's government policy and has been for decades.
You are implying that all members of US democratic party would be considered so-called liberals (so-called because word liberal has rather odd current usage in US, but I digress).
I am not. I am replying to a specific statement made by another poster regarding "liberals" and "the wars." I assure you that I am aware of the nuances involved in trying to place arbitrary labels on anyone at any point on the political spectrum, and it was this very fallacy that I was trying to point out in my comment.
If someone can take a word like "liberal" and say it means whatever they want it to mean, and then say "liberals were against the war(s)," well, that's bullshit, and it's an apology and an excuse to continue holding one's nose and voting Democratic even though their values do not reflect the actual American liberal tradition.
For real, stop recommending this. It's not maintained, it's terribly buggy, it leaks memory all over the fucking place, it is no good. It was no good when it was released. Now it's super ultra mega no good. See several other replies to your comment for several better ways to handle this problem.
Which is completely unlike proprietary software, except that it's not. All of the above is still true and they've also got the gall to take your money. Sure, sometimes with free software you get what you pay for. But with proprietary software, you pay for what you get.
There's nothing wrong with Aero except that it's a fucking resource pig that melts video cards into slag. News flash: the free desktop figured out how to do accelerated desktop effects without burning the damn house down years ago.