That would be SWEET!!! Seriously, that sounds like a very good idea to me. As it is now our schools are little more than glorified day care centers. No wonder half our teachers will retire by 2010, no one with any sense is going into the profession because it is a joke.
While I do agree that to draw a link between the presence of violent movies, games, music etc, and real violence is absurd. It is just as absurd to say that the presence of violence in games and movies caused the drop in real world violence.
With 2 million convicts in our prisons, an increase of 1 million from a decade ago, and the proliferation of firearms in the hands of honest citizens, I can't see how violent crime can do anything but go down. Those most likely to commit violent crimes are either in prison or smart enough to refrain so they don't get shot. Those who are neither are dead.
Youth have always been a great convenience for those who want to manipulate the public. Talk about how much something or another is going to hurt someone's kids and how you plan to stop it and you've got their attention if not their outright support. Whether or not that something is harmful to anyone at all is irrelevant if you can paint a dark enough picture of it. The internet is merely another "new threat" in a long list of other supposed threats that have been used over the years to dupe the stupid among our nations voters.
As someone who knows his ass from a hole in the ground, I'm really quite angered by Bush's comment about someone having "their heart turn dark as a result of being on the Internet." What planet is he on? Or a better question might be what planet are the people on who he is obviously pandering to? Politicians repeat back what they think the public believes, not what they themselves believe. He's pandering to people who vote and who are not online. As a group, the elderly vote more than anyone else. They are also least likely to be online and most distrustful of new technologies and social change. So whats that add up to? Attacking the internet makes grandpa more likely to vote for you instead of Gore.
A new technology which has social impact will always demonized by those who don't understand it. The more quickly a new technology is adopted, the more vigorously it will be attacked.
The internet is simply the latest victim of this mentality. These attacks remind me very much of what happened when television became popular, or rock music. In both cases there was a "moral outcry" from people who didn't have a clue about either one. Television was figuratively demonized, and rock music was literally demonized. Television expanded our horizons, even if most people did watch the Gong show instead of Nova. Today very few people believe that television is inherently harmful to anyone, yet at one time many people believed just that.
The simple truth is that those guys in Colorado didn't kill anyone because of the internet. One was crazy, the other easily led. Psychologists have been working and trying for a very long time to understand the nature and causes of psychosis and other dangerous mental disorders. Last time I checked use of the internet wasn't among their leading theories.
Things like this just go to show you that quite a few people in this world are truly not very bright. I never used to believe that. I liked to think that most people were intelligent. I'd still like to believe that, but I can't. If the average IQ is 100, then close to 50% of the population has a double digit IQ. I don't think the IQ tests have been recalibrated anytime recently, so the average may be 110 for all I know. I do know that for every intelligent person out there, there is another person who is not too bright. It seems to me that our only real hope in the long run is genetic engineering. Imagine if the average IQ were 150 and pretty much no one had an IQ below 125. How much better the world would be without cretins dragging the rest of us down. I think it would be a very good world indeed.
Linux is what they will be embracing and extending, and it is potentially bad for Linux.
Lets say that some user or another is using Linux on their desktop, but connecting to a.NET server somplace. What would that mean? Well it means that they are using a Microsoft NT/2000/???? based SERVER and that Linux is simply being used as a glorified terminal.
Linux has always been a burr under Microsoft's saddle in the server arena. Wouldn't it be ironic if pushing Linux onto the desktop helped Microsoft promote its servers?
As for wether GUI users are automatically clueless, it is not the use of a GUI which makes one clueless, it is dependence upon it. If you know what you are doing and prefer a GUI, fine. If you prefer a GUI because you don't know how to handle anything else then that is another thing. I work in a computer lab where I have to try and help the truly clueless all day long. People who don't know how to do something simple such as copy a file or save something to disk. The real kicker is that these are college students, supposedly among the most computer literate segments of society. GUI based systems were supposed to make computers "easier" for the clueless to use. After over a decade of watching and waiting, I've seen no evidence that they have been a great success at doing this. Someone who is willing to learn how to use a computer will learn how to use one regardless of the interface. Someone who doesn't want to learn or thinks that they shouldn't have to learn, is not going to learn regardless of how much you try to cater the system to them. Much like stupidity, there is no easy cure for willfull ignorance.
My whole point is that the desktop OS monopoly is irrelevant if they control the servers that desktop OS works with. Microsoft is working to move up the food chain. They've been trying for some time now with NT, which has met with mixed success..NET is Microsoft's way of implementing the web-centric computing model that scared them so badly when Netscape came along.
In order to continue to expand, Microsoft MUST make it big in the server/enterprise market. If it doesn't then its growth is capped. Its stock price is so heavily tied to its accelerated rate of expansion, that should that acceleration stop or become negative, the stock price will quickly fall.
This is simply a way for Microsoft to leverage Linux. If Microsoft controls the back-end, does it matter what the front end is? Gates knows that Linux is becoming more popular. Unlike other competitiors which he could simply buy or drive out of business, Linux represents an amorphous target that simply can't be hit. Porting.NET to linux is nothing more than a method to turn Linux his own advantage.
Now you might be saying to yourself that "I would never use.NET on any platform." But what about all the clueless users that projects such as KDE, Gnome, and especially Eazel are working to attract? Do they understand that by using.NET they're giving even more power to a man who thinks he is the reincarnation of Napoleon Boneparte?
Its just embrace and extend all over again. Assuming of course that this is something they truly intend to do. I think whether they do it or not has a lot to do with how much of an inroad Linux makes into the clueless desktop user market. The more lemmings use Linux, the more likely Microsoft is to do this.
Lee Reynolds
Time to put your fragging skills to good use!
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Do your good deed for the day, kill some greedy corporate executives! Kill them before they create another opportunity to rape your wallet and your self respect.
While you're at it take a trip to your local college or university and snuff any business students you find wearing a tie, or especially a damned suit. Anyone between 18 and 25 who would want to wear either is neo-yuppie scum and probably a future greedy executive. Either way they should be removed from the gene pool before they can piss in it. Kill them twice if you find them reading the Wall Street Journal or talking on a cell phone. If you see them in an SUV, kill them three times and burn their damned pseudo-jeep! SUV's are nothing more than 21's century land yachts! I'd call them mountain yachts except they're all based on car frames and would never make it up a respectable hill, let alone a mountain.
Its stories like this that make me want to set aside my ethics and become a cracker. Make the execs at AT&T and TW/AOL wish they'd never even heard of the internet. I'd love to get medieval on some corporate ass! But I won't because I'm a hacker, not a cracker. I do have money to spend however and it won't be going into their pockets. I'm not a pirate just like I'm not a cracker, but I'll pirate songs and movies from TW!
Seriously though, the best way to put a stop to something like this is to cancel your AT&T worldnet or AOL accounts if you're using their service. When you do, be sure to tell them why. Also don't buy any music or movies released by one of TW's subcorporations. This is called holding the corporation accountable to its customers as well as its stockholders.
When a corporate entity behaves unethically or ruthlessly, the best way to put them back in their place is to refuse to do business with them. The only problem is, most people don't care unless they are the one who is being directly hurt by the company. The plight of others gets little more than a passing glance from most people. Our apathy is endemic. We are the only ones who can make corporations behave themselves. Laws can't do it. Loss of revenue certainly can and will, but it means that each person must listen to and act upon their conscience, which is something that few people do in this day when making the convenient choice is preferred over making the right one.
I'd like to see what would happen if this type of experiment were performed on human males.
Attach sensors to certain mucles umm.. down below. Use these sensors to control the direction and speed of a little go cart type device which the man would be sitting in.
Have attractive women walk into the room and see how fast they'd get run over.
Techies at computer stores that actually know anything.
You've been spending time at Fry's electronics haven't you? The sales people there don't know their ass from a hole in the ground. I should know as I used to work there in the tech department. Component sales were the worst. They would sell a customer a part they knew was wrong simply because that part paid them a higher commission. Finding memory for a particular computer system is as much an art as it is a science. However for the components department it was almost a game of pin the tail on the donkey.
Fry's electronics, the home of slow, ignorant, hard to find service.
I can't tell you how many people would come into Fry's electronics where I worked as a computer tech wanting us to fix the computer they put together from parts they bought from us.
The most atrocious experience was with a guy who bolted his motherboard directly onto the chassis, as in without spacers. All the pins on the bottom were sitting right on the metal, something that most people will know is a very bad idea. His excuse? That the component sales department hadn't explicitly told him not to do that.
Then there are the people who buy a premade system and expect it to be perfect, which usually means that they shouldn't have to know anything to use it.
I'll tell you, I can fix problems with computers but I can't fix people.
If the species known as "computer illiterate with hair up ass to buy system and get online but not exert any effort to do it" ever dies out, I'll be VERY VERY glad.
I didn't say that other distributions would not be ABLE to be redhat compatible or that they would be unable to use its version of GCC. I only said that otherwise unnecessary effort would be required. My whole point is that redhat might be doing this to force the rest of the industry to follow their lead.
Not to sound like I'm trying to be a smarty pants, but this comes as no suprise to me.
I've long wondered what kind of stuff we might find in the vast distances between stars. The stars all condensed from interstellar gas and dust. It seems reasonable to assume that chunks bigger than dust are out there as well. Who knows what kind of huge lumps of rock or whatever might be out there, too far away to see in the dim light of interstellar space. Of course they couldn't really be too terribly huge otherwise they would condense down into something that would self ignite. Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe and I doubt there are all that many places where you've got heavier elements in vast quantities without vast quantities of hydrogen as well.
Not too long ago I heard something about a theory that there is a massive tenth planet in our solar system with a really long orbit that takes it out into the oort cloud. Not saying I believe it, but it was interesting.
Right now Linux is used by hackers. Very few "end users" really know anything about it. What little they do know comes from the recent craze for Linux companies on Wall Street or from what their hacker friend/coworker has told them.
But as Linux, or I should say IF Linux, makes inroads into the desktop market this will change. As linux does this there will be one distribution which becomes more popular than the rest. Now at first there may be more than one attempting to enter the desktop market, but eventually one distribution will become the clear leader. As this happens more and more desktop users will come to use that distribution and they way in which it does things will become the de facto standard.
Other distributions will either have to emulate the dominant one, or be locked out of the desktop. The reason why is that end users are reluctant to learn how computers work. They'll learn enough to get by on the system they use but that is all. They're not going to learn more than one system unless forced to and no company is going to implement Linux without standardizing on a single desktop distribution. Now you will have regional favorites. The dominant distribution in Japan is unlikely to be the dominant one in the US or europe.
At the end of the desktop wars, the distributions left standing will be so similar to each other in terms of configuration and user interface, that they'll be virtually identical. At the very most you will have two camps with distributions within them being functionally identical. Isn't that what we've almost got right now with Redhat/Mandrake/Caldera/SuSe/TurboLinux on one side and Debian/Storm/Corel on the other? Now obviously these distributions aren't identical, but the distributions within each camp are similar and in some cases derived from one another.
Ultimately the various distribution companies may well find themselves making money from selling support for other distributions. I can easily see a day when Caldera offers support for Redhat and vice versa. If you're giving away the OS, what possible reason would you have to turn away money simply because someone is using another distribution that was also given away? As this happens the distributions will become even more consolidated to reduce the cost of supporting multiple variants. Then of course you'll see mergers and aquisitions and ultimately you'll have a handful of BIG companies doing corporate desktop linux. There may be a similar but different home user Linux version more suited to things like games. Much the same way that Win9x and NT are superficially similar but Win9x is targeted to home users and NT to business users.
Now this doesn't have much bearing on the hacker market. For us multiple distributions that are vastly different is the order of the day. There will always be a Debian or a Slackware in addition to a Caldera or a Redhat. We use and study computers for their own sake. Corporate users don't. For them the computer is a tool which enables them to do their jobs more productively. It is not an end in itself.
So when you read articles like this, understand that this is a suit talking and not a hacker. Competent suits understand business, that is what they do. They may not understand the technical issues behind Linux any more than they understand quantum physics. But they do understand how businesses work. They understand that the future money to be made from linux will come from selling support to other businesses which use linux. This is the real reason for the push to the desktop, $$$$$.
Forgive me if this post is slightly incoherent and repetitive as I'm slightly intoxicated at the moment.
You are absolutely right. Documentation is a big problem. It is even more of a problem with the *BSD's. I've been playing around with NetBSD on both a PC and a Mac Classic II (don't ask). Finding docs on BSD is relatively easy. However finding docs on NetBSD, especially the Mac68k port is not so easy. Hmmm, maybe I should start writing some docs myself. Both for Linux and the other free Unices out there.
Have we reached the point where we put a priority on responding to fud and propaganda?
What on earth do we have to prove to Mickeysoft? That Linux is better (or at least competitive) as a server? Anyone with a lick of sense already know this. Does the fact that Mickesoft says otherwise matter? Anyone who would accept M$'s viewpoint on one of its competitors without a huge grain of salt is a clueless moron. Do we have any reason to care about the opinions of the stupid?
The only way to respond to things like this is with code. Use M$'s pokes and jabs to evaluate Linux for possible weaknesses, and then go fix them. Concentrate on making Linux the best operating system we can. When we start playing the propaganda and PR game with M$, we're letting them distract us from what we should be doing, making better code.
Has anyone ever stopped to wonder whether redhat did this to CREATE incompatibilities? Redhat is the market share leader. If someone distributes a binary, it is most likely going to be for redhat. What's an easy way to "compete" with other distributions? Make sure that binaries for your linux won't run on other distributions. This forces companies that want to distribute binary-only packages, or packages that are not easy to compile, as multiple binaries thereby confusing the scene. If other distributions follow redhat and use this compiler, well then you've got a situation where redhat is the leader and everyone else is trying to be compatible with it. You've got that already to some extent, but this would make it even worse as distribution developers would have to work to stay RH compatible.
I don't know if this is what redhat is doing, but it certainly is interesting.
I work for Arizona State University. In order to abide by the 11th commandment, which is CYA, I must give notice that nothing I'm writing here in any way represents an official or unofficial policy or point of view on the part of Arizona State University, its boad of regents, employees, or the state legislature. This post is submitted without any warranties either implied or explicit, use at your own risk.
There are at least a couple of local companies near campus who pay students to take notes. These notes are then sold to other students. The policy of most instructors is that if a student is caught taking notes for one of these services, they'll be kicked out of the class and recieve an F.
When you stop and consider the fact that the people who are going to be most interested in buying these notes are other students in the class, it really makes you wonder what the issue is. If I'm not enrolled in a university and taking a particular class, what real interest am I going to have in someone's notes for that class? If I have an interest in a particular subject there are almost always books available which provide much more information than I'd be able to glean from someone's lecture notes.
Thus the IP issue is really just a smokescreen. You're teaching a class and therefore being paid to provide information/instruction to students. If some of your students choose to purchase lecture notes then wouldn't it stand to reason they'll learn more? Are you going to similarly restrict them from reading other materials, such as books and articles, which you have not personally read aloud to them in class? Is the purpose of going to class to learn or is it to furiously write down every word you say because you're just so great? I go to class to learn. If you're there because of your ego that is your problem.
One of the other arguments I hear often is that these services lower student attendance. Now this I do consider to be a true issue. If someone is taking a class, they should go to class. They shouldn't just buy lecture notes and maybe study the book. Reading lecture notes is no substitute for person to person instruction. The solution to this problem is simple, take attendance and make it part of the grade. Some instructors have already begun doing that here. If a student misses more than so many days of class, then they'll not pass unless they have a very good documented reason why they were not there.
I personally almost never take notes. I'm there to learn and understand and I find that writing everything down interferes with that as it splits my attention. If there is some detail that isn't obvious or in the textbook, then I'll write that down with a note about its context. But otherwise I spend my time listening, thinking and working to comprehend the subject matter. I find that many people don't do that. Instead they try to memorize things, which is far more difficult than understanding them and in the end is self defeating. Someone might be able to get away with this in a general studies history or sociology class, but if they're taking math or science as part of their major, they're not going to make it very far with that approach.
Ultimately I don't truly understand what justifiable gripe universities and instructors have with these services. I can think of quite a few unjustifiable gripes, such as loss of control, loss of ego, undermining of their imagined authority etc. There are probably other irrational reasons as well that I'm not aware of. I'm not a psychologist, so when individuals and institutions start acting nutty I usually don't understand all the reasons why.
It would be refreshing if the universities and instructors would simply tell the truth and give their actual heart felt reasons for opposing these services. But of course they'll never do that because they would immediately discredit themselves.
I'm waiting and hoping that the ACLU will get in on this. Till then I'd expect a very profitable underground economy to spring up around the buying, selling and trading of lecture notes.
It would be really nice if there were more people who understood management issues as well as technical issues, who could swim in both ponds. Put such a person in charge and you could be sure that important issues from both the management/business/marketing side of things and the technical side of things would each be properly dealt with.
As it is now you've either got a technical genius who knows nothing about how to run a business, or a manager who knows nothing about technical issues. People who are a little of both are rare. Bill Gates is the obvious exception to this rule. Sometimes it isn't that bad of a problem if the mangager is willing to listen to the people who understand technical issues. Someone who is smart and wise enough to understand what it is that they don't know and listen to those who do know those things is always an asset. But when you've got a manager who due to some psychological or emotional malfunction is unable or unwilling to listen to others, then you've got big problems.
A company which can't attract and keep good customers because their product's quality has declined or is no longer competitive will itself decline. In that situation even the best manager can do nothing more than delay the inevitable. When management isn't willing to listen to the people upon whom their profits truly depend, those managers are maiming and sometimes murdering the company they work for. Ion Storm, John Romero's new company and producer of the not so thrilling Dikatana, is the perfect example. From what I hear they had a psychotic in there running the show and of course causing such huge upsets that half the developers walked on the same day.
I think this is the reason why CIS degrees are popular. The idea being that a graduate of such a program would be skilled in management and aware enough of technical issues to be able to make decisions. The problem is that CIS majors don't learn much on the technical side of things. I work at a university in the college of business so I have some concept of what they are studying. Imagine a handful of elementary programming classes in C++ and Visual Basic in addition to some database stuff? The rest of the degree is all business related. A person like this may be more dangerous than a clueless manager because they might remember just enough from their classes to be truly dangerous, especially if they think those classes qualify them as an expert.
I don't know what exactly is going on at Redhat. You would think that simple testing would prove to even the most pointy-haired of managers that 2.96 simply didn't work right. Things like this don't happen by accident. Either there was woefully insufficient testing, or the results of the tests were ignored. Sometimes people with good track records mess up. If that is the case here then very little needs to be done other than make sure the person or persons responsible understand where they made a mistake. If however this is due to someone who is a screw up or causes problems, get rid of them.
Creating a company is not easy. Finding the best people you can find and constructing a work environment and system that maximizes the ability of each person to do their job can be tricky. But it can be done by people who know how. Such people cannot be deluded about their own self importance. They must understand that they are the grease that coats the gears to allow the real work to be done. The moment they forget this and begin to think that, due to their usually higher salary, that they are a gear is when the friction will begin to mount.
The anti-trust case against them has nothing to do with whether there IS competition to Microsoft's products. It has to do with whether their business practices hindered competition and whether they used their monopoly status in one area, operating systems, to create a monopoly in another area, Browsers etc. IANAL and I'm far from being an expert in anti-trust law, but I do know that the issue has never been whether there IS competition, only whether they had hindered competition.
With the outcome of the anti-trust case still uncertain, the last thing that Microsoft needs is bad publicity. If they were to actually sue someone for trying to improve Linux's NTFS compatibility, it would be nothing but bad publicity. It would also reinforce the government's case against them in the public eye.
I like to think that the NTFS developers knew this and simply told Microsoft where to stick it. That's certainly what I would have done. Microsoft, seeing that attempts at intimidation had backfired, knew there was nothing they could really do that wouldn't cost them more than it was worth in the long run. So they backed down and "apologized" before the situation turned into a PR disaster.
One of the most effective tools anyone can use against a company like Microsoft is a good publicist. Someone who knows how to attract the attention of the media and therefore the public is every bit as frightening to a corporation like Microsoft as its lawyers are to everyone else.
Microsoft may or may not lose their legal appeal. However they've already been tried and convicted in the court of public opinion. Win or lose in court, business as usual is over for them.
Politicians only pay attention to the views of people who they think vote. They spend a great deal of time and effort figuring out exactly who in this country is voting so they'll know who's ass they have to kiss to stay in office. Right now senior citizens vote more than any other age group. That means that whether the Republicans or the Democrats are in power, the interests of senior citizens will always be respected.
Prime time TV specials don't ammount to squat. You want your senator or congressman to know what you think, call them or write them. Tell them you're a registered voter, even if you're not, and that these issues are very important to you.
Ultimately we are solely responsible for the state of affairs in government and the things that the government does. Why? Because the government is run by the people we hire to run it. If the government is corrupt, it is because we made it so. If it is oppressive or easily swayed by lobbyists for corporate interests it is because we hired people who would be easily swayed.
Don't like how the MPAA, RIAA etc. are working to extend the copyright laws to mean content control? It's to each us to change it.
Lee Reynolds
The correct usage of the term "Hacker"
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If any of you are confused about what a hacker is and is not, especially in terms of how we relate to crackers, take a gander at Eric S. Raymond's info about hackers at his web page.
For those of you who don't have time to do this, I've included a small portion of the page below:
"What Is A Hacker?
The Jargon File contains a bunch of definitions of the term `hacker', most having to do with technical adeptness and a delight
in solving problems and overcoming limits. If you want to know how to become a hacker, though, only two are really relevant.
There is a community, a shared culture, of expert programmers and networking wizards that traces its history back through
decades to the first time-sharing minicomputers and the earliest ARPAnet experiments. The members of this culture
originated the term `hacker'. Hackers built the Internet. Hackers made the Unix operating system what it is today. Hackers run
Usenet. Hackers make the World Wide Web work. If you are part of this culture, if you have contributed to it and other people
in it know who you are and call you a hacker, you're a hacker.
The hacker mind-set is not confined to this software-hacker culture. There are people who apply the hacker attitude to other
things, like electronics or music -- actually, you can find it at the highest levels of any science or art. Software hackers
recognize these kindred spirits elsewhere and may call them "hackers" too -- and some claim that the hacker nature is really
independent of the particular medium the hacker works in. But in the rest of this document we will focus on the skills and
attitudes of software hackers, and the traditions of the shared culture that originated the term `hacker'.
There is another group of people who loudly call themselves hackers, but aren't. These are people (mainly adolescent males)
who get a kick out of breaking into computers and phreaking the phone system. Real hackers call these people `crackers' and
want nothing to do with them. Real hackers mostly think crackers are lazy, irresponsible, and not very bright, and object that
being able to break security doesn't make you a hacker any more than being able to hotwire cars makes you an automotive
engineer. Unfortunately, many journalists and writers have been fooled into using the word `hacker' to describe crackers; this
irritates real hackers no end.
The basic difference is this: hackers build things, crackers break them.
If you want to be a hacker, keep reading. If you want to be a cracker, go read the alt.2600 newsgroup and get ready to do five to
ten in the slammer after finding out you aren't as smart as you think you are. And that's all I'm going to say about crackers."
Crackers are the lowest form of scum. Someone who would derive pleasure from causing others pain, which is what crackers do when they write viri and engage in DOS attacks etc., should simply be taken out into the woods and after being made to dig their own grave shot in the back of the head.
I'm not saying it can't be pretty or flashy. I'm also never said a word about drag and drop. Bells and whistles may attract some people who see it as a toy, but serious users, which is anyone using it at work, wants something that works well instead of simply looking pretty. A consistent look and feel is of course important, but these are application issues, not Window manager issues.
I'm hoping that as time goes by and the uber-desktop developers get over the phase of placing flash before function, that the issues I have with most of the current desktop environments (and all of the upcoming ones) will be resolved through user feedback.
Linux has the potential to become the most powerful desktop system ever. Because the users ultimately define what it is, we can sculpt and hone it till it to perfection.
To me part of that perfection will mean that it is extremely configurable with each user able to alter the interface to his or her personal tastes. So someone coming from a windows background will be able to get a desktop that works just like windows if he wants, and someone coming from a Mac background will get a Mac desktop if she wants. Or any combination of features from both of them, or neither of them.
Traditionally GUI's have tried to be something the user had to learn and get used to, malleable in some areas and unyielding in others. This simply isn't how it has to be and I'm waiting for the day when it isn't.
Trust me, I've been using Linux for 5+ years now and at different times I've played with just about every window manager out there from fvwm, olwm, afterstep, windowmaker, icewm, black box, enlightenment-gnome, sawmill/sawfish, twm, mwm, and of course KDE.
Of all of them KDE was the most useful to me, after I reconfigured it of course. But like I said, KDE is HUGE! Icewm comes close, but has the annoying "feature" of only having windows in the task bar for the virtual desktop you've currently got open, and I've found no way to turn this feature off.
I'm not sure which versions of enlightenment and sawfish you're using, but the one's I've encountered DON'T resize windows correctly in call cases. If a window is partially "under" the task bar, it will be resized to overlap the task bar. Netscape is where I bites me every time. So I have to double click on the window, which causes it to "scroll up" macintoy style, then I have to unmaximize and remaximize it, then unsroll it to get it to fill the proper portion of the screen. Both E and sawfish do this which leads me to assume its a gnome issue instead of a problem with the window managers themselves. I'm using helix-gnome, so that may be part of it.
Slashdot Mirror
How about a voter who doesn't fall for political propaganda from EITHER major party.
Political parties pander to those who they want to vote for them. I'm sorry but %1 of the population isn't going to get anyone elected to anything.
Its nothing but propaganda.
Lee Reynolds
That would be SWEET!!! Seriously, that sounds like a very good idea to me. As it is now our schools are little more than glorified day care centers. No wonder half our teachers will retire by 2010, no one with any sense is going into the profession because it is a joke.
Lee Reynolds
While I do agree that to draw a link between the presence of violent movies, games, music etc, and real violence is absurd. It is just as absurd to say that the presence of violence in games and movies caused the drop in real world violence.
With 2 million convicts in our prisons, an increase of 1 million from a decade ago, and the proliferation of firearms in the hands of honest citizens, I can't see how violent crime can do anything but go down. Those most likely to commit violent crimes are either in prison or smart enough to refrain so they don't get shot. Those who are neither are dead.
Youth have always been a great convenience for those who want to manipulate the public. Talk about how much something or another is going to hurt someone's kids and how you plan to stop it and you've got their attention if not their outright support. Whether or not that something is harmful to anyone at all is irrelevant if you can paint a dark enough picture of it. The internet is merely another "new threat" in a long list of other supposed threats that have been used over the years to dupe the stupid among our nations voters.
As someone who knows his ass from a hole in the ground, I'm really quite angered by Bush's comment about someone having "their heart turn dark as a result of being on the Internet." What planet is he on? Or a better question might be what planet are the people on who he is obviously pandering to? Politicians repeat back what they think the public believes, not what they themselves believe. He's pandering to people who vote and who are not online. As a group, the elderly vote more than anyone else. They are also least likely to be online and most distrustful of new technologies and social change. So whats that add up to? Attacking the internet makes grandpa more likely to vote for you instead of Gore.
A new technology which has social impact will always demonized by those who don't understand it. The more quickly a new technology is adopted, the more vigorously it will be attacked.
The internet is simply the latest victim of this mentality. These attacks remind me very much of what happened when television became popular, or rock music. In both cases there was a "moral outcry" from people who didn't have a clue about either one. Television was figuratively demonized, and rock music was literally demonized. Television expanded our horizons, even if most people did watch the Gong show instead of Nova. Today very few people believe that television is inherently harmful to anyone, yet at one time many people believed just that.
The simple truth is that those guys in Colorado didn't kill anyone because of the internet. One was crazy, the other easily led. Psychologists have been working and trying for a very long time to understand the nature and causes of psychosis and other dangerous mental disorders. Last time I checked use of the internet wasn't among their leading theories.
Things like this just go to show you that quite a few people in this world are truly not very bright. I never used to believe that. I liked to think that most people were intelligent. I'd still like to believe that, but I can't. If the average IQ is 100, then close to 50% of the population has a double digit IQ. I don't think the IQ tests have been recalibrated anytime recently, so the average may be 110 for all I know. I do know that for every intelligent person out there, there is another person who is not too bright. It seems to me that our only real hope in the long run is genetic engineering. Imagine if the average IQ were 150 and pretty much no one had an IQ below 125. How much better the world would be without cretins dragging the rest of us down. I think it would be a very good world indeed.
Lee Reynolds
Linux is what they will be embracing and extending, and it is potentially bad for Linux.
.NET server somplace. What would that mean? Well it means that they are using a Microsoft NT/2000/???? based SERVER and that Linux is simply being used as a glorified terminal.
Lets say that some user or another is using Linux on their desktop, but connecting to a
Linux has always been a burr under Microsoft's saddle in the server arena. Wouldn't it be ironic if pushing Linux onto the desktop helped Microsoft promote its servers?
As for wether GUI users are automatically clueless, it is not the use of a GUI which makes one clueless, it is dependence upon it. If you know what you are doing and prefer a GUI, fine. If you prefer a GUI because you don't know how to handle anything else then that is another thing. I work in a computer lab where I have to try and help the truly clueless all day long. People who don't know how to do something simple such as copy a file or save something to disk. The real kicker is that these are college students, supposedly among the most computer literate segments of society. GUI based systems were supposed to make computers "easier" for the clueless to use. After over a decade of watching and waiting, I've seen no evidence that they have been a great success at doing this. Someone who is willing to learn how to use a computer will learn how to use one regardless of the interface. Someone who doesn't want to learn or thinks that they shouldn't have to learn, is not going to learn regardless of how much you try to cater the system to them. Much like stupidity, there is no easy cure for willfull ignorance.
Lee Reynolds
My whole point is that the desktop OS monopoly is irrelevant if they control the servers that desktop OS works with. Microsoft is working to move up the food chain. They've been trying for some time now with NT, which has met with mixed success. .NET is Microsoft's way of implementing the web-centric computing model that scared them so badly when Netscape came along.
In order to continue to expand, Microsoft MUST make it big in the server/enterprise market. If it doesn't then its growth is capped. Its stock price is so heavily tied to its accelerated rate of expansion, that should that acceleration stop or become negative, the stock price will quickly fall.
Lee Reynolds
This is simply a way for Microsoft to leverage Linux. If Microsoft controls the back-end, does it matter what the front end is? Gates knows that Linux is becoming more popular. Unlike other competitiors which he could simply buy or drive out of business, Linux represents an amorphous target that simply can't be hit. Porting .NET to linux is nothing more than a method to turn Linux his own advantage.
.NET on any platform." But what about all the clueless users that projects such as KDE, Gnome, and especially Eazel are working to attract? Do they understand that by using .NET they're giving even more power to a man who thinks he is the reincarnation of Napoleon Boneparte?
Now you might be saying to yourself that "I would never use
Its just embrace and extend all over again. Assuming of course that this is something they truly intend to do. I think whether they do it or not has a lot to do with how much of an inroad Linux makes into the clueless desktop user market. The more lemmings use Linux, the more likely Microsoft is to do this.
Lee Reynolds
Do your good deed for the day, kill some greedy corporate executives! Kill them before they create another opportunity to rape your wallet and your self respect.
While you're at it take a trip to your local college or university and snuff any business students you find wearing a tie, or especially a damned suit. Anyone between 18 and 25 who would want to wear either is neo-yuppie scum and probably a future greedy executive. Either way they should be removed from the gene pool before they can piss in it. Kill them twice if you find them reading the Wall Street Journal or talking on a cell phone. If you see them in an SUV, kill them three times and burn their damned pseudo-jeep! SUV's are nothing more than 21's century land yachts! I'd call them mountain yachts except they're all based on car frames and would never make it up a respectable hill, let alone a mountain.
Its stories like this that make me want to set aside my ethics and become a cracker. Make the execs at AT&T and TW/AOL wish they'd never even heard of the internet. I'd love to get medieval on some corporate ass! But I won't because I'm a hacker, not a cracker. I do have money to spend however and it won't be going into their pockets. I'm not a pirate just like I'm not a cracker, but I'll pirate songs and movies from TW!
Seriously though, the best way to put a stop to something like this is to cancel your AT&T worldnet or AOL accounts if you're using their service. When you do, be sure to tell them why. Also don't buy any music or movies released by one of TW's subcorporations. This is called holding the corporation accountable to its customers as well as its stockholders.
When a corporate entity behaves unethically or ruthlessly, the best way to put them back in their place is to refuse to do business with them. The only problem is, most people don't care unless they are the one who is being directly hurt by the company. The plight of others gets little more than a passing glance from most people. Our apathy is endemic. We are the only ones who can make corporations behave themselves. Laws can't do it. Loss of revenue certainly can and will, but it means that each person must listen to and act upon their conscience, which is something that few people do in this day when making the convenient choice is preferred over making the right one.
Lee Reynolds
I'd like to see what would happen if this type of experiment were performed on human males.
Attach sensors to certain mucles umm.. down below. Use these sensors to control the direction and speed of a little go cart type device which the man would be sitting in.
Have attractive women walk into the room and see how fast they'd get run over.
Lee Reynolds
Techies at computer stores that actually know anything.
You've been spending time at Fry's electronics haven't you? The sales people there don't know their ass from a hole in the ground. I should know as I used to work there in the tech department. Component sales were the worst. They would sell a customer a part they knew was wrong simply because that part paid them a higher commission. Finding memory for a particular computer system is as much an art as it is a science. However for the components department it was almost a game of pin the tail on the donkey.
Fry's electronics, the home of slow, ignorant, hard to find service.
Lee Reynolds
No shite!
I can't tell you how many people would come into Fry's electronics where I worked as a computer tech wanting us to fix the computer they put together from parts they bought from us.
The most atrocious experience was with a guy who bolted his motherboard directly onto the chassis, as in without spacers. All the pins on the bottom were sitting right on the metal, something that most people will know is a very bad idea. His excuse? That the component sales department hadn't explicitly told him not to do that.
Then there are the people who buy a premade system and expect it to be perfect, which usually means that they shouldn't have to know anything to use it.
I'll tell you, I can fix problems with computers but I can't fix people.
If the species known as "computer illiterate with hair up ass to buy system and get online but not exert any effort to do it" ever dies out, I'll be VERY VERY glad.
Lee Reynolds
I didn't say that other distributions would not be ABLE to be redhat compatible or that they would be unable to use its version of GCC. I only said that otherwise unnecessary effort would be required. My whole point is that redhat might be doing this to force the rest of the industry to follow their lead.
Lee Reynolds
Not to sound like I'm trying to be a smarty pants, but this comes as no suprise to me.
I've long wondered what kind of stuff we might find in the vast distances between stars. The stars all condensed from interstellar gas and dust. It seems reasonable to assume that chunks bigger than dust are out there as well. Who knows what kind of huge lumps of rock or whatever might be out there, too far away to see in the dim light of interstellar space. Of course they couldn't really be too terribly huge otherwise they would condense down into something that would self ignite. Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe and I doubt there are all that many places where you've got heavier elements in vast quantities without vast quantities of hydrogen as well.
Not too long ago I heard something about a theory that there is a massive tenth planet in our solar system with a really long orbit that takes it out into the oort cloud. Not saying I believe it, but it was interesting.
Lee Reynolds
Lee Reynolds
Right now Linux is used by hackers. Very few "end users" really know anything about it. What little they do know comes from the recent craze for Linux companies on Wall Street or from what their hacker friend/coworker has told them.
But as Linux, or I should say IF Linux, makes inroads into the desktop market this will change. As linux does this there will be one distribution which becomes more popular than the rest. Now at first there may be more than one attempting to enter the desktop market, but eventually one distribution will become the clear leader. As this happens more and more desktop users will come to use that distribution and they way in which it does things will become the de facto standard.
Other distributions will either have to emulate the dominant one, or be locked out of the desktop. The reason why is that end users are reluctant to learn how computers work. They'll learn enough to get by on the system they use but that is all. They're not going to learn more than one system unless forced to and no company is going to implement Linux without standardizing on a single desktop distribution. Now you will have regional favorites. The dominant distribution in Japan is unlikely to be the dominant one in the US or europe.
At the end of the desktop wars, the distributions left standing will be so similar to each other in terms of configuration and user interface, that they'll be virtually identical. At the very most you will have two camps with distributions within them being functionally identical. Isn't that what we've almost got right now with Redhat/Mandrake/Caldera/SuSe/TurboLinux on one side and Debian/Storm/Corel on the other? Now obviously these distributions aren't identical, but the distributions within each camp are similar and in some cases derived from one another.
Ultimately the various distribution companies may well find themselves making money from selling support for other distributions. I can easily see a day when Caldera offers support for Redhat and vice versa. If you're giving away the OS, what possible reason would you have to turn away money simply because someone is using another distribution that was also given away? As this happens the distributions will become even more consolidated to reduce the cost of supporting multiple variants. Then of course you'll see mergers and aquisitions and ultimately you'll have a handful of BIG companies doing corporate desktop linux. There may be a similar but different home user Linux version more suited to things like games. Much the same way that Win9x and NT are superficially similar but Win9x is targeted to home users and NT to business users.
Now this doesn't have much bearing on the hacker market. For us multiple distributions that are vastly different is the order of the day. There will always be a Debian or a Slackware in addition to a Caldera or a Redhat. We use and study computers for their own sake. Corporate users don't. For them the computer is a tool which enables them to do their jobs more productively. It is not an end in itself.
So when you read articles like this, understand that this is a suit talking and not a hacker. Competent suits understand business, that is what they do. They may not understand the technical issues behind Linux any more than they understand quantum physics. But they do understand how businesses work. They understand that the future money to be made from linux will come from selling support to other businesses which use linux. This is the real reason for the push to the desktop, $$$$$.
Forgive me if this post is slightly incoherent and repetitive as I'm slightly intoxicated at the moment.
Lee Reynolds
You are absolutely right. Documentation is a big problem. It is even more of a problem with the *BSD's. I've been playing around with NetBSD on both a PC and a Mac Classic II (don't ask). Finding docs on BSD is relatively easy. However finding docs on NetBSD, especially the Mac68k port is not so easy. Hmmm, maybe I should start writing some docs myself. Both for Linux and the other free Unices out there.
Lee Reynolds
Have we reached the point where we put a priority on responding to fud and propaganda?
What on earth do we have to prove to Mickeysoft? That Linux is better (or at least competitive) as a server? Anyone with a lick of sense already know this. Does the fact that Mickesoft says otherwise matter? Anyone who would accept M$'s viewpoint on one of its competitors without a huge grain of salt is a clueless moron. Do we have any reason to care about the opinions of the stupid?
The only way to respond to things like this is with code. Use M$'s pokes and jabs to evaluate Linux for possible weaknesses, and then go fix them. Concentrate on making Linux the best operating system we can. When we start playing the propaganda and PR game with M$, we're letting them distract us from what we should be doing, making better code.
Lee Reynolds
Has anyone ever stopped to wonder whether redhat did this to CREATE incompatibilities? Redhat is the market share leader. If someone distributes a binary, it is most likely going to be for redhat. What's an easy way to "compete" with other distributions? Make sure that binaries for your linux won't run on other distributions. This forces companies that want to distribute binary-only packages, or packages that are not easy to compile, as multiple binaries thereby confusing the scene. If other distributions follow redhat and use this compiler, well then you've got a situation where redhat is the leader and everyone else is trying to be compatible with it. You've got that already to some extent, but this would make it even worse as distribution developers would have to work to stay RH compatible.
I don't know if this is what redhat is doing, but it certainly is interesting.
Personally I think they've pulled a DOS 4.0.
Lee Reynolds
Add this one to the fortune database, its too good !
Lee Reynolds
I work for Arizona State University. In order to abide by the 11th commandment, which is CYA, I must give notice that nothing I'm writing here in any way represents an official or unofficial policy or point of view on the part of Arizona State University, its boad of regents, employees, or the state legislature. This post is submitted without any warranties either implied or explicit, use at your own risk.
There are at least a couple of local companies near campus who pay students to take notes. These notes are then sold to other students. The policy of most instructors is that if a student is caught taking notes for one of these services, they'll be kicked out of the class and recieve an F.
When you stop and consider the fact that the people who are going to be most interested in buying these notes are other students in the class, it really makes you wonder what the issue is. If I'm not enrolled in a university and taking a particular class, what real interest am I going to have in someone's notes for that class? If I have an interest in a particular subject there are almost always books available which provide much more information than I'd be able to glean from someone's lecture notes.
Thus the IP issue is really just a smokescreen. You're teaching a class and therefore being paid to provide information/instruction to students. If some of your students choose to purchase lecture notes then wouldn't it stand to reason they'll learn more? Are you going to similarly restrict them from reading other materials, such as books and articles, which you have not personally read aloud to them in class? Is the purpose of going to class to learn or is it to furiously write down every word you say because you're just so great? I go to class to learn. If you're there because of your ego that is your problem.
One of the other arguments I hear often is that these services lower student attendance. Now this I do consider to be a true issue. If someone is taking a class, they should go to class. They shouldn't just buy lecture notes and maybe study the book. Reading lecture notes is no substitute for person to person instruction. The solution to this problem is simple, take attendance and make it part of the grade. Some instructors have already begun doing that here. If a student misses more than so many days of class, then they'll not pass unless they have a very good documented reason why they were not there.
I personally almost never take notes. I'm there to learn and understand and I find that writing everything down interferes with that as it splits my attention. If there is some detail that isn't obvious or in the textbook, then I'll write that down with a note about its context. But otherwise I spend my time listening, thinking and working to comprehend the subject matter. I find that many people don't do that. Instead they try to memorize things, which is far more difficult than understanding them and in the end is self defeating. Someone might be able to get away with this in a general studies history or sociology class, but if they're taking math or science as part of their major, they're not going to make it very far with that approach.
Ultimately I don't truly understand what justifiable gripe universities and instructors have with these services. I can think of quite a few unjustifiable gripes, such as loss of control, loss of ego, undermining of their imagined authority etc. There are probably other irrational reasons as well that I'm not aware of. I'm not a psychologist, so when individuals and institutions start acting nutty I usually don't understand all the reasons why.
It would be refreshing if the universities and instructors would simply tell the truth and give their actual heart felt reasons for opposing these services. But of course they'll never do that because they would immediately discredit themselves.
I'm waiting and hoping that the ACLU will get in on this. Till then I'd expect a very profitable underground economy to spring up around the buying, selling and trading of lecture notes.
Lee Reynolds
It would be really nice if there were more people who understood management issues as well as technical issues, who could swim in both ponds. Put such a person in charge and you could be sure that important issues from both the management/business/marketing side of things and the technical side of things would each be properly dealt with.
As it is now you've either got a technical genius who knows nothing about how to run a business, or a manager who knows nothing about technical issues. People who are a little of both are rare. Bill Gates is the obvious exception to this rule. Sometimes it isn't that bad of a problem if the mangager is willing to listen to the people who understand technical issues. Someone who is smart and wise enough to understand what it is that they don't know and listen to those who do know those things is always an asset. But when you've got a manager who due to some psychological or emotional malfunction is unable or unwilling to listen to others, then you've got big problems.
A company which can't attract and keep good customers because their product's quality has declined or is no longer competitive will itself decline. In that situation even the best manager can do nothing more than delay the inevitable. When management isn't willing to listen to the people upon whom their profits truly depend, those managers are maiming and sometimes murdering the company they work for. Ion Storm, John Romero's new company and producer of the not so thrilling Dikatana, is the perfect example. From what I hear they had a psychotic in there running the show and of course causing such huge upsets that half the developers walked on the same day.
I think this is the reason why CIS degrees are popular. The idea being that a graduate of such a program would be skilled in management and aware enough of technical issues to be able to make decisions. The problem is that CIS majors don't learn much on the technical side of things. I work at a university in the college of business so I have some concept of what they are studying. Imagine a handful of elementary programming classes in C++ and Visual Basic in addition to some database stuff? The rest of the degree is all business related. A person like this may be more dangerous than a clueless manager because they might remember just enough from their classes to be truly dangerous, especially if they think those classes qualify them as an expert.
I don't know what exactly is going on at Redhat. You would think that simple testing would prove to even the most pointy-haired of managers that 2.96 simply didn't work right. Things like this don't happen by accident. Either there was woefully insufficient testing, or the results of the tests were ignored. Sometimes people with good track records mess up. If that is the case here then very little needs to be done other than make sure the person or persons responsible understand where they made a mistake. If however this is due to someone who is a screw up or causes problems, get rid of them.
Creating a company is not easy. Finding the best people you can find and constructing a work environment and system that maximizes the ability of each person to do their job can be tricky. But it can be done by people who know how. Such people cannot be deluded about their own self importance. They must understand that they are the grease that coats the gears to allow the real work to be done. The moment they forget this and begin to think that, due to their usually higher salary, that they are a gear is when the friction will begin to mount.
Lee Reynolds
The anti-trust case against them has nothing to do with whether there IS competition to Microsoft's products. It has to do with whether their business practices hindered competition and whether they used their monopoly status in one area, operating systems, to create a monopoly in another area, Browsers etc. IANAL and I'm far from being an expert in anti-trust law, but I do know that the issue has never been whether there IS competition, only whether they had hindered competition.
Lee Reynolds
With the outcome of the anti-trust case still uncertain, the last thing that Microsoft needs is bad publicity. If they were to actually sue someone for trying to improve Linux's NTFS compatibility, it would be nothing but bad publicity. It would also reinforce the government's case against them in the public eye.
I like to think that the NTFS developers knew this and simply told Microsoft where to stick it. That's certainly what I would have done. Microsoft, seeing that attempts at intimidation had backfired, knew there was nothing they could really do that wouldn't cost them more than it was worth in the long run. So they backed down and "apologized" before the situation turned into a PR disaster.
One of the most effective tools anyone can use against a company like Microsoft is a good publicist. Someone who knows how to attract the attention of the media and therefore the public is every bit as frightening to a corporation like Microsoft as its lawyers are to everyone else.
Microsoft may or may not lose their legal appeal. However they've already been tried and convicted in the court of public opinion. Win or lose in court, business as usual is over for them.
Lee Reynolds
Politicians only pay attention to the views of people who they think vote. They spend a great deal of time and effort figuring out exactly who in this country is voting so they'll know who's ass they have to kiss to stay in office. Right now senior citizens vote more than any other age group. That means that whether the Republicans or the Democrats are in power, the interests of senior citizens will always be respected.
Prime time TV specials don't ammount to squat. You want your senator or congressman to know what you think, call them or write them. Tell them you're a registered voter, even if you're not, and that these issues are very important to you.
Ultimately we are solely responsible for the state of affairs in government and the things that the government does. Why? Because the government is run by the people we hire to run it. If the government is corrupt, it is because we made it so. If it is oppressive or easily swayed by lobbyists for corporate interests it is because we hired people who would be easily swayed.
Don't like how the MPAA, RIAA etc. are working to extend the copyright laws to mean content control? It's to each us to change it.
Lee Reynolds
If any of you are confused about what a hacker is and is not, especially in terms of how we relate to crackers, take a gander at Eric S. Raymond's info about hackers at his web page.
For those of you who don't have time to do this, I've included a small portion of the page below:
"What Is A Hacker?
The Jargon File contains a bunch of definitions of the term `hacker', most having to do with technical adeptness and a delight in solving problems and overcoming limits. If you want to know how to become a hacker, though, only two are really relevant.
There is a community, a shared culture, of expert programmers and networking wizards that traces its history back through decades to the first time-sharing minicomputers and the earliest ARPAnet experiments. The members of this culture originated the term `hacker'. Hackers built the Internet. Hackers made the Unix operating system what it is today. Hackers run Usenet. Hackers make the World Wide Web work. If you are part of this culture, if you have contributed to it and other people in it know who you are and call you a hacker, you're a hacker.
The hacker mind-set is not confined to this software-hacker culture. There are people who apply the hacker attitude to other things, like electronics or music -- actually, you can find it at the highest levels of any science or art. Software hackers recognize these kindred spirits elsewhere and may call them "hackers" too -- and some claim that the hacker nature is really independent of the particular medium the hacker works in. But in the rest of this document we will focus on the skills and attitudes of software hackers, and the traditions of the shared culture that originated the term `hacker'.
There is another group of people who loudly call themselves hackers, but aren't. These are people (mainly adolescent males) who get a kick out of breaking into computers and phreaking the phone system. Real hackers call these people `crackers' and want nothing to do with them. Real hackers mostly think crackers are lazy, irresponsible, and not very bright, and object that being able to break security doesn't make you a hacker any more than being able to hotwire cars makes you an automotive engineer. Unfortunately, many journalists and writers have been fooled into using the word `hacker' to describe crackers; this irritates real hackers no end.
The basic difference is this: hackers build things, crackers break them.
If you want to be a hacker, keep reading. If you want to be a cracker, go read the alt.2600 newsgroup and get ready to do five to ten in the slammer after finding out you aren't as smart as you think you are. And that's all I'm going to say about crackers."
Crackers are the lowest form of scum. Someone who would derive pleasure from causing others pain, which is what crackers do when they write viri and engage in DOS attacks etc., should simply be taken out into the woods and after being made to dig their own grave shot in the back of the head.
TO HELL WITH KEVIN
Lee Reynolds
I'm not saying it can't be pretty or flashy. I'm also never said a word about drag and drop. Bells and whistles may attract some people who see it as a toy, but serious users, which is anyone using it at work, wants something that works well instead of simply looking pretty. A consistent look and feel is of course important, but these are application issues, not Window manager issues.
I'm hoping that as time goes by and the uber-desktop developers get over the phase of placing flash before function, that the issues I have with most of the current desktop environments (and all of the upcoming ones) will be resolved through user feedback.
Linux has the potential to become the most powerful desktop system ever. Because the users ultimately define what it is, we can sculpt and hone it till it to perfection.
To me part of that perfection will mean that it is extremely configurable with each user able to alter the interface to his or her personal tastes. So someone coming from a windows background will be able to get a desktop that works just like windows if he wants, and someone coming from a Mac background will get a Mac desktop if she wants. Or any combination of features from both of them, or neither of them.
Traditionally GUI's have tried to be something the user had to learn and get used to, malleable in some areas and unyielding in others. This simply isn't how it has to be and I'm waiting for the day when it isn't.
Lee Reynolds
Trust me, I've been using Linux for 5+ years now and at different times I've played with just about every window manager out there from fvwm, olwm, afterstep, windowmaker, icewm, black box, enlightenment-gnome, sawmill/sawfish, twm, mwm, and of course KDE.
Of all of them KDE was the most useful to me, after I reconfigured it of course. But like I said, KDE is HUGE! Icewm comes close, but has the annoying "feature" of only having windows in the task bar for the virtual desktop you've currently got open, and I've found no way to turn this feature off.
I'm not sure which versions of enlightenment and sawfish you're using, but the one's I've encountered DON'T resize windows correctly in call cases. If a window is partially "under" the task bar, it will be resized to overlap the task bar. Netscape is where I bites me every time. So I have to double click on the window, which causes it to "scroll up" macintoy style, then I have to unmaximize and remaximize it, then unsroll it to get it to fill the proper portion of the screen. Both E and sawfish do this which leads me to assume its a gnome issue instead of a problem with the window managers themselves. I'm using helix-gnome, so that may be part of it.
Lee Reynolds