Sadly both xine and mplayer have horrible GUIs by default. Totem on the other hand, which uses the xine libs for it's video playback, has a nice clean GUI that is actually usable. Personally I use mplayer from the command line out of habit, but the lack of a gui that doesn't suck would be a nice option.... I think even jwz ranted about this some time back/me puts on mod-proof undies
Moral questions aside, if you use Microsoft software, you have no way of knowing if you are going to be hacked, you have no way of knowing what new exploits will be discovered, and you have no legal recourse when black hats damage you or your corporation.
Just to play devils advocate here, but this is no different from Linux/OSS/BSD/Apple software. There have been SSH problems surfacing lately, and who knows if there will be say, an exploit to own someone box through apple's mail.app tomorrow.
There's just as little legal recorse with OSS or apple as Micrsoft or ibm or dell or.... whoever. On the other hand, should Dell be held responsible if a terrorist used a dell notebook to say, plan an attack?
I'm all for kicking MS in the gnards if I can, but this is pretty shakey ground.
Agreed. I do contract programming and even with multiplying my time estimates by 50% or even doubling them, I still find that more often than not the client will come to me halfway through and say "oh, yea, we also need [xyz] feature" or "oh you thought we meant this, but we actually needed that.." or whatever. Some of these details can be dealt with in the contract (not really applicable for OSS), but a lot of them end up being easier to just do than fark around with ammending the contract, re-doing estimates, etc.
Hourly rates are much better, unless of course you talk half the time you estimated, and end up screwing yourself by being *too* efficient!:)
It works fine yes, but if it could start up faster, ie: have X up and going at the start of the init startup process instead of the end, for example, and then load the rest of the daemons as X/gnome/kde is starting. Most of the stuff started in the init process isn't needed to work as a workstation, aside from networking maybe.
I personally find it fine, but I also think it could be made better.
Most of the infomercials I flip past (or watch in some sort of strange demented fascination) have a banner that pops up occasionally saying something like "the views expressed here are only those of blah blah" or "this is a paid program from the blah blah"
The 1 Windows CD includes an OS, some minor utilities (calculator, sol.exe, wordpad), configuration tools, etc.
The three redhat CDs contain an OS, all the utilities, several major databases, a bunch of server services (apache, postfix, php, sendmail), office tools (openoffice, abiword, koffice, gnome office) two separate desktop environments, each with their own tools, utilities, and applications, and much more.
I think a better comparision woud be something like the Knoppix LiveCD which is a single CD and lets you run the OS, and utilities and applications.
The issue with MS office files has been more with the ability to present it back to the user the same, not reading the file. Various programs have been able to "read" (grab text from) ms office formats for ages, the issue is that noone has been able to write a word processor that shows a moderately complex document/spreadsheet/powerpoint back to the user closely enough to the same. Don't get me wrong, some are close, but if you're tweaking your fonts and whatnot for say, an investor, you don't want OOo to go and convert everything so that it mucks up the tables and converts all the fonts to 12pt arial.
For a programmer or geek, or even someone just using it (OOo or similar) as a word processor to write letters to mom, not a big deal. But in a corporate environment, it's gotta be exact. At work (in the education industry, and therefor with lots of macs) everyone uses PDFs, but in the non-mac world, it's.doc/.xls/.ppt that is the "standard"
They lie! My main bitch about the optical mice I've used is that because they are sliding around generally on the desk without a mousepad the feet that they glide on get horribly gummed up from dust and whatever random junk ends up on your desk, making them stick and feel like they give me far worse control than my venerable old MS OEM ball mouse which slides along it's 3m mousepad and has a ball that requires far less cleaning than my optical mouses feet:(
Not sure about the first (it pisses me off as well btw), but I think there are keybindings for the second. I seem to remember being able to bind a key combo for maximize vertically after I saw how well the 'zoom' behaviour worked in os/x. Search around in the control panel and you should be able to find it.
I used to think the same way as you did, hated the lack of features, bitched on the lists, etc. But at some point I forgot to switch from Metacity to sawfish and grudgingly used it, and after a while, found I didn't miss the features I fought so hard to have. Pageflip is nice, but do I use it? Nope. Maybe it's just me as a user adapting to the lack of features, or maybe it's the fact that as a user I didn't really use that feature enough.
Try this: Make a list of all the things that MC is missing vs sawfish (or The Ultimate Window Manager) and then work as you do normally and tick the times you miss each feature. I'd be willing to bet that in an honest test you'll find that you don't use them nearly as often as you think you do.
I'm no fan of the HIG and the cutting and slashing of features in the latest GNOME, but I'm also finding that a lot of it's not all that bad, because a lot of times It Just Works.
He turned into the main character of Bloom County though after a while. I think basically the character took hold and turned into the focus of the strip, much like the dust puppy did in userfriendly.
A single card that provides complete and total identification of ourselves in every form imaginable, to any system in the world (or off it) that requires identification. This sort of super card would be used for everything from providing our drivers license to storing a DNA workup, and would be compatible with every type of card reader in existance./douglas adams
Good ideas, but in these days of spammers googlebombing and whatnot I'd rather not have the directors or titles of my movies be "wild and crazy romps with horny bitches at www.foobarjizz.com":)
Point 1 sounds a lot like how the OS/2 desktop tried to do it. Good ideas though, I'm not sure about all of it, but this sort of thinking is what innovation is made of. Feel free to submit patches to the gnome/kde maintainers:)
I'm still trying to fathom why you would buy one period. Maybe if you're a trendy japanese female or something, but $2000+ for a fake dog that walks around? Cool technology demo, but people spent real money on these things???
Sadly itunes is only an option for people who are a - mac owners (though this is rumored to change, but until it does I consider it vapor b - live in the US
Still a big market, but excluding a lot of people who would like to use the services.
Part of the responsiveness of the mouse is the new input core, which makes my mouse fly across the screen even though I have the sensitivity set to the lowest setting!:)
Yup. My gf's grandmother just got a computer and wants me to get her the internet (the whole internet apparently). I've resisted, and luckily she hasn't pressed the issue (she is quite old, and quite computer illiterate, and forgets that you have to double click on things to make them do something, ending in a call to my gf saying that the computer was broken).
However if she ever does get on I fear for her or anyone who isn't technically able (and there is no shortage of those people around, and the ISPs certainly are happy to sell to just about anyone). I've been on this interweb thing a while now and get frustrated at the amount of crap I have to wade through on a daily basis.
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Sadly both xine and mplayer have horrible GUIs by default. Totem on the other hand, which uses the xine libs for it's video playback, has a nice clean GUI that is actually usable. Personally I use mplayer from the command line out of habit, but the lack of a gui that doesn't suck would be a nice option.... I think even jwz ranted about this some time back /me puts on mod-proof undies
Actually so do I, but didn't want to sound like I tried to screw customers by charging horrendously more than it would actually be :)
Moral questions aside, if you use Microsoft software, you have no way of knowing if you are going to be hacked, you have no way of knowing what new exploits will be discovered, and you have no legal recourse when black hats damage you or your corporation.
Just to play devils advocate here, but this is no different from Linux/OSS/BSD/Apple software. There have been SSH problems surfacing lately, and who knows if there will be say, an exploit to own someone box through apple's mail.app tomorrow.
There's just as little legal recorse with OSS or apple as Micrsoft or ibm or dell or.... whoever. On the other hand, should Dell be held responsible if a terrorist used a dell notebook to say, plan an attack?
I'm all for kicking MS in the gnards if I can, but this is pretty shakey ground.
Agreed. I do contract programming and even with multiplying my time estimates by 50% or even doubling them, I still find that more often than not the client will come to me halfway through and say "oh, yea, we also need [xyz] feature" or "oh you thought we meant this, but we actually needed that.." or whatever. Some of these details can be dealt with in the contract (not really applicable for OSS), but a lot of them end up being easier to just do than fark around with ammending the contract, re-doing estimates, etc.
:)
Hourly rates are much better, unless of course you talk half the time you estimated, and end up screwing yourself by being *too* efficient!
It works fine yes, but if it could start up faster, ie: have X up and going at the start of the init startup process instead of the end, for example, and then load the rest of the daemons as X/gnome/kde is starting. Most of the stuff started in the init process isn't needed to work as a workstation, aside from networking maybe.
I personally find it fine, but I also think it could be made better.
or find some sort of convoluted workaround
:)
You mean like kazaa?
Most of the infomercials I flip past (or watch in some sort of strange demented fascination) have a banner that pops up occasionally saying something like "the views expressed here are only those of blah blah" or "this is a paid program from the blah blah"
Nice troll, and I'll bite....
The 1 Windows CD includes an OS, some minor utilities (calculator, sol.exe, wordpad), configuration tools, etc.
The three redhat CDs contain an OS, all the utilities, several major databases, a bunch of server services (apache, postfix, php, sendmail), office tools (openoffice, abiword, koffice, gnome office) two separate desktop environments, each with their own tools, utilities, and applications, and much more.
I think a better comparision woud be something like the Knoppix LiveCD which is a single CD and lets you run the OS, and utilities and applications.
I'd call it more +0 funny myself. Would be great if it was april 1.
The issue with MS office files has been more with the ability to present it back to the user the same, not reading the file. Various programs have been able to "read" (grab text from) ms office formats for ages, the issue is that noone has been able to write a word processor that shows a moderately complex document/spreadsheet/powerpoint back to the user closely enough to the same. Don't get me wrong, some are close, but if you're tweaking your fonts and whatnot for say, an investor, you don't want OOo to go and convert everything so that it mucks up the tables and converts all the fonts to 12pt arial.
.doc/.xls/.ppt that is the "standard"
For a programmer or geek, or even someone just using it (OOo or similar) as a word processor to write letters to mom, not a big deal. But in a corporate environment, it's gotta be exact. At work (in the education industry, and therefor with lots of macs) everyone uses PDFs, but in the non-mac world, it's
No ball, no sticking, no cleaning
:(
They lie! My main bitch about the optical mice I've used is that because they are sliding around generally on the desk without a mousepad the feet that they glide on get horribly gummed up from dust and whatever random junk ends up on your desk, making them stick and feel like they give me far worse control than my venerable old MS OEM ball mouse which slides along it's 3m mousepad and has a ball that requires far less cleaning than my optical mouses feet
Not sure about the first (it pisses me off as well btw), but I think there are keybindings for the second. I seem to remember being able to bind a key combo for maximize vertically after I saw how well the 'zoom' behaviour worked in os/x. Search around in the control panel and you should be able to find it.
Re: metacity vs sawfish
I used to think the same way as you did, hated the lack of features, bitched on the lists, etc. But at some point I forgot to switch from Metacity to sawfish and grudgingly used it, and after a while, found I didn't miss the features I fought so hard to have. Pageflip is nice, but do I use it? Nope. Maybe it's just me as a user adapting to the lack of features, or maybe it's the fact that as a user I didn't really use that feature enough.
Try this: Make a list of all the things that MC is missing vs sawfish (or The Ultimate Window Manager) and then work as you do normally and tick the times you miss each feature. I'd be willing to bet that in an honest test you'll find that you don't use them nearly as often as you think you do.
I'm no fan of the HIG and the cutting and slashing of features in the latest GNOME, but I'm also finding that a lot of it's not all that bad, because a lot of times It Just Works.
He turned into the main character of Bloom County though after a while. I think basically the character took hold and turned into the focus of the strip, much like the dust puppy did in userfriendly.
They haven't tried to sue the BSD people yet? Too early yet I guess, look for more exciting legal news coming soon this week! :)
A single card that provides complete and total identification of ourselves in every form imaginable, to any system in the world (or off it) that requires identification. This sort of super card would be used for everything from providing our drivers license to storing a DNA workup, and would be compatible with every type of card reader in existance. /douglas adams
Good ideas, but in these days of spammers googlebombing and whatnot I'd rather not have the directors or titles of my movies be "wild and crazy romps with horny bitches at www.foobarjizz.com" :)
Point 1 sounds a lot like how the OS/2 desktop tried to do it. Good ideas though, I'm not sure about all of it, but this sort of thinking is what innovation is made of. Feel free to submit patches to the gnome/kde maintainers :)
I'm still trying to fathom why you would buy one period. Maybe if you're a trendy japanese female or something, but $2000+ for a fake dog that walks around? Cool technology demo, but people spent real money on these things???
Sadly itunes is only an option for people who are
a - mac owners (though this is rumored to change, but until it does I consider it vapor
b - live in the US
Still a big market, but excluding a lot of people who would like to use the services.
He was talking about IE.
Part of the responsiveness of the mouse is the new input core, which makes my mouse fly across the screen even though I have the sensitivity set to the lowest setting! :)
He'll need it, as I'm pretty sure he's broke from buying a mac.
+5 insightful.
Mods take note.
Yup. My gf's grandmother just got a computer and wants me to get her the internet (the whole internet apparently). I've resisted, and luckily she hasn't pressed the issue (she is quite old, and quite computer illiterate, and forgets that you have to double click on things to make them do something, ending in a call to my gf saying that the computer was broken).
However if she ever does get on I fear for her or anyone who isn't technically able (and there is no shortage of those people around, and the ISPs certainly are happy to sell to just about anyone). I've been on this interweb thing a while now and get frustrated at the amount of crap I have to wade through on a daily basis.