Have you even tried K-Meleon? If you had you'd notice it is in fact geekier than Firefox. Firefox is just easier to setup and configure than K-Meleon. With Firefox more things a user would want to change are fairly easy to access through a GUI. In fact Firefox is about on par with IE when it comes to setting options. With K-meleon many times your manually editing a text file to achieve basic functions. That's not a flaw, that's the way they want it and more power to them.
Firefox isn't a geeky app. Automatic plug-in detection was the last hurdle it being useable by "Joe consumer" and now that that's done there is no reason why anyone shouldn't be using it. If you think Firefox is geeky than I can't possibly fathom how your able to use MS Office or even change your homepage to something other than msn.com.
"This is one reason that SS is fundamentally flawed."
Your take, not fact.
Btw I'd like to point out that the reason most people need social security is because the most productive years of their lives are behind them and they need it because they have no more earning power. If you were "immortal" you could just keep working and wouldn't need SS.
Well there are photo organizers for Linux out there. They aren't in the awesome category or as slick as Picassa but they work and you can manage and organize photos on Linux pretty easily.
I know its not completely done but have you even looked at F-spot? http://www.gnome.org/projects/f-spot/ how about gThumb http://gthumb.sourceforge.net/ or digiKam http://digikam.sourceforge.net/Digikam-SP IP/rubriq ue.php3?id_rubrique=3
Compared to what the older version of Picassa offered these aren't so aweful. Pre 2.0 Picassa sucked for image enhancement and only had a nice visual experience going for it. Its not like its organizational tools were very good so I don't know why you were so hung up on having it for Linux. With 2.0 yes, Linux users should be jealous, but pre that I thought it was just average with a gimmicky but fun timeline feature.
Anyway, the picasa people did say to post if you wanted a Linux version of it. This is at there forums, so drop by and add to the "Picassa for Linux" thread http://forums.picasa.com/viewforum.php?f=1 Maybe they'll actually listen?
The Effects tools are great. Nice easy ways to fix brightness, highlights, shadows etc. This will fix most problems people have with photos. One wicked cool tool is the Filtered B&W. And you thought desaturate was how to make B&W pics...
Problems. The Sharpeness tool is lacking and things become corse and grainy really quick. Almost all digital cameras benefit from some sharpenging, but here its below average and needs work. The only other glaring fault is the red eye tool zooms out and makes it harder to select eyes, not easier. It does work well though so its not all bad. I just wish it was easier to select people's eyes.
Overall though a really nice consumer photo organizer and light editor app. Hell for $40 it would be a nice app. I'm impressed that they addressed some of the shortcomings from the old version and kept it free and of course Slick feeling and looking. No need to be jealous of IPhoto anymore. Nice job Google.
"Every home machine that's been cracked has been cracked through a router"
No it hasn't. Beyond the false assumption that every machine ever cracked was directly beyond a router(aka cheapo linksys), many/most zombies come from people plugged directly into to the Net with no buffer. How do you think all of those worms spread so fast when all they do is simple port scans to find hosts to propagate with? Scans that a router running NAT would block. The real threat comes from users plugged directly into their cable modem or dumb dsl modem with pppoe etc which is what that person was reffering to. These people have no firewall/NAT to block outside attacks and thus join the legions of zombies out there every time a new worm comes out.
"till this day I've not had an alternative to Microsoft Outlook at work"
The whole Small business world has wanted an Outlook alternative on Windows for years now. Evolution is a excellant Outlook clone and finally brings a solid Outlook alternative to Windows not to mention the fact that its OSS. I really really really hope they bring PDA sync over as well. We can't keep waiting around hoping that someday Sunbird gets finished and Thunderbird actually becomes more than a basic pop3 client for home users(a still important role btw).
btw Beagle, on windows...falls over... A top quality OSS search engine which unlike Google's shitty app might actually work with Firefox and other OSS apps like OO.org? Say it isn't so...
You know I'm still not sure how I feel about Novell's longterm impact on Linux. Being a CNA from a while back my main memories of them are being a big proprietary technology company who screwed up everything they did after Netware 4.11 came out. I will say that in the last year they have finally started to win me over with what they are givning back to the community.
I have to say that's not really Insightful since that's hardly commmon. I have 6 drives in my house all over 24 months old and haven't had a single issue yet. Some of these, 30GB ones, are like 4 years old and run constantly except for when I go away for a weekend or week whatever. If these are from different vendors then there is Definitely something wrong with your setup, like your Power supply or mobo is killing them. Hard drives don't keep dying in less than a year unless something is wrong with their environment. Stop buying drives and replace your PSU and/or mobo.
Not to rain on your parade but if you need to deal with Word documents on a regular basis your going to need to spend as much as your Mac Mini costs to buy MS Office to remain compatible with Word. No app in world does.doc files perfectly so if you do lots of.doc editing get ready to spend $400.
Don't get me wrong the app looks nice and the template are beautiful, but unless Apple hired the MS engineers who developed the.doc format you'll be just as stuck as you are with OO.org which has best of breed MS import capabilities and yet still can't format.doc files correctly.
1. Its not a Beta. Its a Final finished product that Giant has been shipping for some time. If someone bought Photoshop CS from Adobe and then called it "My Photo Editor Beta" would you really consider it a Beta product? I agree that some consideration should be given to the fact that MS may actually do some work on this before they call it final, but this really isn't a Beta in the true sense and should be able to stand up to some scrutany.
2. Well cookies were really the first form of spyware. Not finding them is a flaw. I like you think ignoring them might be a good idea, but the option should be there and its a mark against MS's product that it can't do whats expected from a modern spyware product these days.
3. Good that it can find hijacked homepages, bad that they don't give you the option to set your own homepage if the program really does think your page was hijacked. That's a no-brainer and something MS should have fixed already. Saying "well its Free isn't it?" is a total copout.
4. I agree asking MS to support a competitor let alone an OSS one is too much to hope for. But if Firefox becomes a popular browser for many Windows users then they need to keep an open mind.
"How could Monsanto develop those seeds if once the farmer bought them he could replant the seeds grown on his soil? "
Just like every other company or person continues to survive after they've sold their developed seeds or plants. Keep putting out quality products and charge a fair price. This whole "we own the product afterwards" when it comes to organic matter is bullshit. What you think this is a unique situation where Monsanto is the first company who has spent time and money on developing a particular blend of product? The practice of "splicing" plants goes back a long freaking time. Just because the times change and IP is now easier to manipulate does that mean that the rules are supposed to change and now every company who has spent dime one on developing a crop gets to have full control over their products lifecycle and any products that are a byproduct of their product? If a pig poops out bio-engineered grain and then eats it again is the farmer now liable for paying twice for the same feed?
Yea just great. An entire world stuck at the mercy of some Bio company would holds all of the important patents for a particular crop. And once every farmer becomes dependant on them and they decide to charge $500 per seed then what?
If Bio-engineered seed companies want to play by those rules then we don't need them.
That is the $64 question isn't it? Can Microsoft learn to make an OS that doesn't slow down massively over time. I just did a fresh install on my one machine that runs XP and its night and day. Over time XP just gets slower and slower. Of course the battle cry for MS defenders is "its the fault of 3rd party drivers and apps". Well, then make freaking OS that doesn't let "3rd party" apps run it into the ground. Why do I even need to use an app's uninstaller? Why by default doesn't XP know exactly how to remove every last bit of registry crap that got shoved in there in the first place? How come it take 10 minutes for the start menu to come up after I've been using the OS for a while? How come many explorer operations still lock up the OS and stop whatever work you doing cold? When will MS make an OS that you can actually multitask on no matter what's going on in the background? MS has a lot of work to do and somehow I get the feeling that they haven't learned their lessons yet.
You know that is a great point. Ever time the subject of Itunes and things like the hymn project come up we have to listen to post after post from Apple users saying "Hey you bought Apple's product knowing the Terms of Service. Deal with it or don't buy it!". So now we are supposed to go against that and ignore Apple's terms of service and try to install extra memory while at the same time keeping our warranty. Sorry but that just wouldn't be honest or in keeping with what Apple wanted. If you don't agree with Apple's policy on memory than don't buy a Mini Mac. Anything else if of course illegal. So, how does your situational ethics sit with you now apologists? Very well from every post I'm seeing here and at Mac sites telling people not to pay for Apple's overpriced memory.
Most users would know that once some weird web page comes up that they maybe should be careful. But what if it looks like the picture above? You only see an installer and no webpage and you just want to play a file? At that point its not even clear that you were directed to a website since a webpage can be easily hidden leaving only the installer visible. Chances are most people just think they are agreeing to a media files licensed terms.
So yea its debatable what's at fault here, but by design WMP is flawed if this is what can happen if you simply try to play a Windows Media file. Scary stuff.
This is what I posted about recently. Will MS now for the first time choose who gets to install what on Windows or will they as your implying roll over and allow "good spyware" aka partnet company spyware to be installed? Someone high up in the tech press really needs to have that question answered directly.
You know I was ready to call B.S. as I was reading the article because I got to here and read "There are fewer communists in the world today than there were". I thought man, saying that Bill called everyone communists was a bit of stretch but then I read a little further, "There are some new modern-day sort of communists who want to get rid of the incentive for musicians and moviemakers and software makers under various guises."
Yep, he pretty much just said that if you don't support IP then your a Communist. What a douchebag. That statement is going to haunt him for a long time and rightly so. The world's richest man and still as greedy as ever. Again, what a douchebag. Oh btw for the 12 year olds among you who can't think like adults yet, yes you can still be a douchebag and be philanthropic at the same time.
Or maybe its really the fault of the politicans who pass the laws and the people who hire lawyers to sue for them. Or yet another way to put it, do guns kill or do people kill? Kill all of the lawyers fine. You'll still have the crappy laws on the books and horrible people who are actually the ones who bring suit.
That is what I was going to answer because its true.Anaconda doesn't run on every arch. But why should x86 users, ie 80%+ of Debian users have to suffer without a great installer like Anaconda just so somebody using some obsure arch has the same aweful install experience(yes I know the installer has improved). Cater to your base which is x86. Let the rest get by with a lesser installer. They have till now and won't go away just because x86 as usual gets all of the goodies.
That or continue to watch as all of your users flee to distros like Ubuntu.
I find this interesting because traditionally Microsoft has always had an open door policy about which software can be installed on Windows. There are many pieces of software that legitimate companies install which users and many anti-spyware companies consider spyware and thus remove. Microsoft up until this point has had no public policy on semi-legit software which users have unwittingly been installing. So now here we have MS now denying them the ability to install their semi-legit software. Will they now be able to sue MS for keeping them off of the Windows platform? Did ms tweak the rules so that companies like Claria can continue to push Gator?
Think about that for a moment. There is plenty of malicious software out there but there is also plenty of "grey" software which drives users nuts but is in reality legal. Is it ok for software to change a user's homepage and install fake ad killers? Can companies no longer sell software which preys on users who are used to quickly hitting the OK button? I'd be interested to know what ISV's Microsoft is now for the first time denying access to Windows even though they develop semi-legit software. Are big legal battles about the start up?
Wow, you made sense until that last paragraph. If that's really the way you view Windows users your unbelievably conceited and elitist. Oh and as someone who uses Windows but was using Linux probably years before you ever even heard of it I have to say that your theory on sheeps and geeks is full of shit.
Just was I was going to say. Everywhere where MS has attempted to branch out to outside of their core technologies of Windows and Office has been a failure. The one notable success is PDA's. MSN, MSNBC, IIS etc as has been pointed out never lead to a monopoly in everything. So no like the parent pointed out just because MS decided to enter a market doesn't mean they will come to dominate it. Microsoft smartphone anyone?
Let me guess. You look at every 4x6 photo through a loupe so you can see every detail? Most photos aren't works of art and don't need to be seen at native resolution. If you want huge prints where you can see every single detail output them to analog via 20x30 prints. Most people will be just as happy see them on a low resolution TV where you can view it from 10 feet away.
Actually no it doesn't. In of itself there is nothing wrong with it as a file packaging format. Plus for resolving dependances there is yum and apt-get for rpm. If RPM did indeed "suck" by all reasonable standards I don't think you'd see Red Hat, Suse, Mandrake, and the Linux Standards Base using it.
Yes, I've been blabbering about this since Thunderbird started. But even then compare what say Evolution offers compared to what Thunderbird offers. See the difference? Thunderbird plus an available addon Calendar which doesn't do half of what Outlook can isn't an Outlook alternative. Its an Outlook Express Alternative that just happens to have a Calendar. Without the back-end server to allow for all of Outlook's features I just don't see the point in calling it an Outlook killer. That's just wishful thinking for people who know nothing about the business world and Outlook/Exchange installs.
I do think that an Email client that allows you to see other peoples calendars and make changes etc would be nice. No doubt basic email and very basic scheduling would be nice to have and find a home in some small offices. But for people who are already using Outlook/Exchange I can't possibly see them dumping that for this solution.
Have you ever read a/. article where the GIMP is mentioned before? Its post after post after post of people slamming it for its UI and color management. I'd say the ratio is at least 3 to 1 for people against it. Plus it drives Photoshop users insane whenever anyone suggests that Gimp is even remotely usable. Those Adobe fans go crazy whenever you mention Gimp let alone any OSS graphics app. No I think your wrong there and/. users (90% of whom run XP) would be highly receptive to an alternative to GIMP.
Slashdot Mirror
Have you even tried K-Meleon? If you had you'd notice it is in fact geekier than Firefox. Firefox is just easier to setup and configure than K-Meleon. With Firefox more things a user would want to change are fairly easy to access through a GUI. In fact Firefox is about on par with IE when it comes to setting options. With K-meleon many times your manually editing a text file to achieve basic functions. That's not a flaw, that's the way they want it and more power to them.
Firefox isn't a geeky app. Automatic plug-in detection was the last hurdle it being useable by "Joe consumer" and now that that's done there is no reason why anyone shouldn't be using it. If you think Firefox is geeky than I can't possibly fathom how your able to use MS Office or even change your homepage to something other than msn.com.
Actually that's 2042 not 2031.
http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/TRSUM/trsummary.html
"This is one reason that SS is fundamentally flawed."
Your take, not fact.
Btw I'd like to point out that the reason most people need social security is because the most productive years of their lives are behind them and they need it because they have no more earning power. If you were "immortal" you could just keep working and wouldn't need SS.
Well there are photo organizers for Linux out there. They aren't in the awesome category or as slick as Picassa but they work and you can manage and organize photos on Linux pretty easily.
P IP/rubriq ue.php3?id_rubrique=3
I know its not completely done but have you even looked at F-spot? http://www.gnome.org/projects/f-spot/
how about gThumb
http://gthumb.sourceforge.net/
or digiKam
http://digikam.sourceforge.net/Digikam-S
Compared to what the older version of Picassa offered these aren't so aweful. Pre 2.0 Picassa sucked for image enhancement and only had a nice visual experience going for it. Its not like its organizational tools were very good so I don't know why you were so hung up on having it for Linux. With 2.0 yes, Linux users should be jealous, but pre that I thought it was just average with a gimmicky but fun timeline feature.
Anyway, the picasa people did say to post if you wanted a Linux version of it. This is at there forums, so drop by and add to the "Picassa for Linux" thread http://forums.picasa.com/viewforum.php?f=1 Maybe they'll actually listen?
The Effects tools are great. Nice easy ways to fix brightness, highlights, shadows etc. This will fix most problems people have with photos. One wicked cool tool is the Filtered B&W. And you thought desaturate was how to make B&W pics...
Problems. The Sharpeness tool is lacking and things become corse and grainy really quick. Almost all digital cameras benefit from some sharpenging, but here its below average and needs work. The only other glaring fault is the red eye tool zooms out and makes it harder to select eyes, not easier. It does work well though so its not all bad. I just wish it was easier to select people's eyes.
Overall though a really nice consumer photo organizer and light editor app. Hell for $40 it would be a nice app. I'm impressed that they addressed some of the shortcomings from the old version and kept it free and of course Slick feeling and looking. No need to be jealous of IPhoto anymore. Nice job Google.
"Every home machine that's been cracked has been cracked through a router"
No it hasn't. Beyond the false assumption that every machine ever cracked was directly beyond a router(aka cheapo linksys), many/most zombies come from people plugged directly into to the Net with no buffer. How do you think all of those worms spread so fast when all they do is simple port scans to find hosts to propagate with? Scans that a router running NAT would block. The real threat comes from users plugged directly into their cable modem or dumb dsl modem with pppoe etc which is what that person was reffering to. These people have no firewall/NAT to block outside attacks and thus join the legions of zombies out there every time a new worm comes out.
"till this day I've not had an alternative to Microsoft Outlook at work"
The whole Small business world has wanted an Outlook alternative on Windows for years now. Evolution is a excellant Outlook clone and finally brings a solid Outlook alternative to Windows not to mention the fact that its OSS. I really really really hope they bring PDA sync over as well. We can't keep waiting around hoping that someday Sunbird gets finished and Thunderbird actually becomes more than a basic pop3 client for home users(a still important role btw).
btw Beagle, on windows...falls over...
A top quality OSS search engine which unlike Google's shitty app might actually work with Firefox and other OSS apps like OO.org? Say it isn't so...
You know I'm still not sure how I feel about Novell's longterm impact on Linux. Being a CNA from a while back my main memories of them are being a big proprietary technology company who screwed up everything they did after Netware 4.11 came out. I will say that in the last year they have finally started to win me over with what they are givning back to the community.
You left too soon. Its now 3.0/768 for $29 a month if you use Verizon for local and long distance. $35 if you don't. Quite a deal.
I have to say that's not really Insightful since that's hardly commmon. I have 6 drives in my house all over 24 months old and haven't had a single issue yet. Some of these, 30GB ones, are like 4 years old and run constantly except for when I go away for a weekend or week whatever. If these are from different vendors then there is Definitely something wrong with your setup, like your Power supply or mobo is killing them. Hard drives don't keep dying in less than a year unless something is wrong with their environment. Stop buying drives and replace your PSU and/or mobo.
Not to rain on your parade but if you need to deal with Word documents on a regular basis your going to need to spend as much as your Mac Mini costs to buy MS Office to remain compatible with Word. No app in world does .doc files perfectly so if you do lots of .doc editing get ready to spend $400.
.doc format you'll be just as stuck as you are with OO.org which has best of breed MS import capabilities and yet still can't format .doc files correctly.
Don't get me wrong the app looks nice and the template are beautiful, but unless Apple hired the MS engineers who developed the
A few counterpoints
1. Its not a Beta. Its a Final finished product that Giant has been shipping for some time. If someone bought Photoshop CS from Adobe and then called it "My Photo Editor Beta" would you really consider it a Beta product? I agree that some consideration should be given to the fact that MS may actually do some work on this before they call it final, but this really isn't a Beta in the true sense and should be able to stand up to some scrutany.
2. Well cookies were really the first form of spyware. Not finding them is a flaw. I like you think ignoring them might be a good idea, but the option should be there and its a mark against MS's product that it can't do whats expected from a modern spyware product these days.
3. Good that it can find hijacked homepages, bad that they don't give you the option to set your own homepage if the program really does think your page was hijacked. That's a no-brainer and something MS should have fixed already. Saying "well its Free isn't it?" is a total copout.
4. I agree asking MS to support a competitor let alone an OSS one is too much to hope for. But if Firefox becomes a popular browser for many Windows users then they need to keep an open mind.
"How could Monsanto develop those seeds if once the farmer bought them he could replant the seeds grown on his soil? "
Just like every other company or person continues to survive after they've sold their developed seeds or plants. Keep putting out quality products and charge a fair price. This whole "we own the product afterwards" when it comes to organic matter is bullshit. What you think this is a unique situation where Monsanto is the first company who has spent time and money on developing a particular blend of product? The practice of "splicing" plants goes back a long freaking time. Just because the times change and IP is now easier to manipulate does that mean that the rules are supposed to change and now every company who has spent dime one on developing a crop gets to have full control over their products lifecycle and any products that are a byproduct of their product? If a pig poops out bio-engineered grain and then eats it again is the farmer now liable for paying twice for the same feed?
Yea just great. An entire world stuck at the mercy of some Bio company would holds all of the important patents for a particular crop.
And once every farmer becomes dependant on them and they decide to charge $500 per seed then what?
If Bio-engineered seed companies want to play by those rules then we don't need them.
That is the $64 question isn't it? Can Microsoft learn to make an OS that doesn't slow down massively over time. I just did a fresh install on my one machine that runs XP and its night and day. Over time XP just gets slower and slower. Of course the battle cry for MS defenders is "its the fault of 3rd party drivers and apps". Well, then make freaking OS that doesn't let "3rd party" apps run it into the ground. Why do I even need to use an app's uninstaller? Why by default doesn't XP know exactly how to remove every last bit of registry crap that got shoved in there in the first place? How come it take 10 minutes for the start menu to come up after I've been using the OS for a while? How come many explorer operations still lock up the OS and stop whatever work you doing cold? When will MS make an OS that you can actually multitask on no matter what's going on in the background? MS has a lot of work to do and somehow I get the feeling that they haven't learned their lessons yet.
You know that is a great point. Ever time the subject of Itunes and things like the hymn project come up we have to listen to post after post from Apple users saying "Hey you bought Apple's product knowing the Terms of Service. Deal with it or don't buy it!".
So now we are supposed to go against that and ignore Apple's terms of service and try to install extra memory while at the same time keeping our warranty. Sorry but that just wouldn't be honest or in keeping with what Apple wanted. If you don't agree with Apple's policy on memory than don't buy a Mini Mac. Anything else if of course illegal.
So, how does your situational ethics sit with you now apologists? Very well from every post I'm seeing here and at Mac sites telling people not to pay for Apple's overpriced memory.
Edelman article
You try to play a file and then see this Image
Most users would know that once some weird web page comes up that they maybe should be careful. But what if it looks like the picture above? You only see an installer and no webpage and you just want to play a file? At that point its not even clear that you were directed to a website since a webpage can be easily hidden leaving only the installer visible. Chances are most people just think they are agreeing to a media files licensed terms.
So yea its debatable what's at fault here, but by design WMP is flawed if this is what can happen if you simply try to play a Windows Media file. Scary stuff.
This is what I posted about recently. Will MS now for the first time choose who gets to install what on Windows or will they as your implying roll over and allow "good spyware" aka partnet company spyware to be installed?
Someone high up in the tech press really needs to have that question answered directly.
You know I was ready to call B.S. as I was reading the article because I got to here and read "There are fewer communists in the world today than there were". I thought man, saying that Bill called everyone communists was a bit of stretch but then I read a little further, "There are some new modern-day sort of communists who want to get rid of the incentive for musicians and moviemakers and software makers under various guises."
Yep, he pretty much just said that if you don't support IP then your a Communist. What a douchebag. That statement is going to haunt him for a long time and rightly so. The world's richest man and still as greedy as ever. Again, what a douchebag. Oh btw for the 12 year olds among you who can't think like adults yet, yes you can still be a douchebag and be philanthropic at the same time.
Or maybe its really the fault of the politicans who pass the laws and the people who hire lawyers to sue for them. Or yet another way to put it, do guns kill or do people kill?
Kill all of the lawyers fine. You'll still have the crappy laws on the books and horrible people who are actually the ones who bring suit.
That is what I was going to answer because its true.Anaconda doesn't run on every arch. But why should x86 users, ie 80%+ of Debian users have to suffer without a great installer like Anaconda just so somebody using some obsure arch has the same aweful install experience(yes I know the installer has improved). Cater to your base which is x86. Let the rest get by with a lesser installer. They have till now and won't go away just because x86 as usual gets all of the goodies.
That or continue to watch as all of your users flee to distros like Ubuntu.
I find this interesting because traditionally Microsoft has always had an open door policy about which software can be installed on Windows. There are many pieces of software that legitimate companies install which users and many anti-spyware companies consider spyware and thus remove. Microsoft up until this point has had no public policy on semi-legit software which users have unwittingly been installing. So now here we have MS now denying them the ability to install their semi-legit software. Will they now be able to sue MS for keeping them off of the Windows platform? Did ms tweak the rules so that companies like Claria can continue to push Gator?
Think about that for a moment. There is plenty of malicious software out there but there is also plenty of "grey" software which drives users nuts but is in reality legal. Is it ok for software to change a user's homepage and install fake ad killers? Can companies no longer sell software which preys on users who are used to quickly hitting the OK button? I'd be interested to know what ISV's Microsoft is now for the first time denying access to Windows even though they develop semi-legit software. Are big legal battles about the start up?
Wow, you made sense until that last paragraph. If that's really the way you view Windows users your unbelievably conceited and elitist. Oh and as someone who uses Windows but was using Linux probably years before you ever even heard of it I have to say that your theory on sheeps and geeks is full of shit.
Just was I was going to say. Everywhere where MS has attempted to branch out to outside of their core technologies of Windows and Office has been a failure. The one notable success is PDA's. MSN, MSNBC, IIS etc as has been pointed out never lead to a monopoly in everything.
So no like the parent pointed out just because MS decided to enter a market doesn't mean they will come to dominate it. Microsoft smartphone anyone?
Let me guess. You look at every 4x6 photo through a loupe so you can see every detail? Most photos aren't works of art and don't need to be seen at native resolution. If you want huge prints where you can see every single detail output them to analog via 20x30 prints. Most people will be just as happy see them on a low resolution TV where you can view it from 10 feet away.
"RPM sucks as always"
Actually no it doesn't. In of itself there is nothing wrong with it as a file packaging format. Plus for resolving dependances there is yum and apt-get for rpm. If RPM did indeed "suck" by all reasonable standards I don't think you'd see Red Hat, Suse, Mandrake, and the Linux Standards Base using it.
Yes, I've been blabbering about this since Thunderbird started.
But even then compare what say Evolution offers compared to what Thunderbird offers. See the difference? Thunderbird plus an available addon Calendar which doesn't do half of what Outlook can isn't an Outlook alternative. Its an Outlook Express Alternative that just happens to have a Calendar. Without the back-end server to allow for all of Outlook's features I just don't see the point in calling it an Outlook killer. That's just wishful thinking for people who know nothing about the business world and Outlook/Exchange installs.
I do think that an Email client that allows you to see other peoples calendars and make changes etc would be nice. No doubt basic email and very basic scheduling would be nice to have and find a home in some small offices. But for people who are already using Outlook/Exchange I can't possibly see them dumping that for this solution.
Have you ever read a /. article where the GIMP is mentioned before? Its post after post after post of people slamming it for its UI and color management. I'd say the ratio is at least 3 to 1 for people against it. Plus it drives Photoshop users insane whenever anyone suggests that Gimp is even remotely usable. Those Adobe fans go crazy whenever you mention Gimp let alone any OSS graphics app. No I think your wrong there and /. users (90% of whom run XP) would be highly receptive to an alternative to GIMP.