It's nice to see another Avigo fan out there. I picked mine up for $80 at Office Depot about 4 years ago - right before the idiots at TI stopped all dev work on it and discontinued the whole line. I haven't had a single problem with it since I bought it four years ago.
Yes, it's only monocrome...No, you can't play MP3's on it, but there's a whole bunch of independently-produced software for it, and hardware hacks to bump the available memory from 1mb up to 4mb (there is a 1mb upgrade to take it up to 2mb, but the hardware hack consists of adding additional SMD memory chips to the unit and the memory card). It syncs-up with IntelliSync perfectly.
It's too bad that TI had to give-up on this gem so early in the game.
Since when is the ammount of hacking attacks / attempts directly equivalent to the number of Windows boxen?
As I can remember, this is *not* the first time that a lead topic posting could be considered as "Flamebait" - but obviously, the/. topic-nazi's look the other way when it's virtually an ad hominem attack against Windows.
I wonder if the/. "Penguin Fetishists" would be interested enough to find-out how many Warez Servers are running Linux or a Linux-derrivative OS and Apache?
Nah - It's been my experience that Linux-o-Philes and Penguin Fetishists are just the other side of the coin of Warez Pirates.
I sincerely hope that the Dept. of Justice and the California State Attorney General rake Ellison and Oracle over the coals as roughly as they have done to Gates and Microsoft - but since The People's Republic of California will protect their own leftist bed-fellows, I see Ellison walking away with a "now, Larry - don't do that again".
It's so entertaining to read posts on/. - where the supposedly "intellectual elite" who are smart enough to use *nix OS's, and they can't even spell a simple word like "receipt"...even more so when they use cute constructs lile "IANAL". He even spelled "contractual" correctly, but totally whiffled on "receit"
may-b they're just 2 31337 to spel rite.
ScottKin - doing as James Tiberius Kirk said: "...I'm LAUGHING at the 'Superior Intellect'..."
Typical bovine fertilizer from a penguine fetishist.
Oh, I'm sorry - if you don't understand the word "fetishist", go upstairs from your stinky basement and ask your parents; depending on how old you are, you'll either get your mouth washed out with soap or your parents will cry with joy because you found out that there's something else beyond the joy of typing "fsck" or "nmake"
Did you ever THINK that quite possibly the transcriber (who probably knows little if nothing about the speaker's topic) got it wrong?
Wow! It looks like cburley is guilty of the kind of FUD Distribution that the linux-o-philes hate.
Let's examine each point and see what we can see, shall we?
Perhaps what you run into is more the result of volunteers carefully considering the degree to which you'll actually value the efforts they make to help you -- which, apparently, is pretty close to zero.
The previous poster made a valid point, and you try to twist it around and stuff words into his mouth. If your comments are the case, I'd call these "volunteers" nothing but a bunch of meelee-mouthed Wilbur Milktoast-clones. Support is SUPPORT, dammit - If you're not going to fully support the software you make, there are plenty of jobs at Target to fill your "free" time.
Next:
Meanwhile, if you want reliable support, you have to pay for it, at least in this universe.
If, on the other hand, you believe you can get along with free, ad-hoc support, on the whole, it seems the free-software community at least equals, perhaps betters, the proprietary-software community.
The FUD is getting deeper and deeper here....
"free, ad-hoc" support. What a joke. Ad-hoc support is always inconsistant, frequently self-contradictory, and usually way over the help-seekers head. People that provide support for Linux have a problem that most linux-o-philes have; they don't know how to shift gears from geek-speak to a form of language understandable by your average user - possibly due to the fact that they erroneusly conclude that since they're uber-geeks because they're running Linux that everyone else who is running or trying to run Linux is also technically "|337" as they are.
The day that support for open-source products like Linux will equal the level of support offered by companies like Microsoft is the day that Linus Torvalds is worth $50Billion from direct sales of the Linux kernel and the sales of Linux can pay for things like Support Engineers that get PAID for their work, actually have some sort of PLAN to provide support and have greated such a knowledge-base that 1000 people can call-in with the same question and all 1000 of the people that call get the same answer to their problem, and all of them get that problem resolved to one point or another.
Next:
Finally, if you want to be able to choose your own team to support the software you use, then you can pretty much write off using proprietary software entirely, since supporting software without access to its source code is a nightmare.
By the way, whether you pay for the software or get it for free is orthagonal to all of the above. You can get Internet Explorer for free, but, presumably, without source, which means you'll have no hope of improving it to fit your needs (beyond whatever hooks MS provides). And you can pay $$ to get Redhat Linux, and hire your own support staff (or just a consultant, whatever) to improve it however you see fit, since it's free software (in the gnu.org sense; it comes with source code).
Again, more FUD for "free" (as in stolen beer)...
cburley seems to be hopelessly engrained into thinking that software support=source code access. Do companies like Adobe, AutoDESK, Macromedia and Microsoft provide the source code to customers so they can support their product? NO!! Why? Because their software products are so VASTLY superior to open-source products in quality and stability that fixing a problem does NOT require the user to re-compile the code...but, of course, that's what open-source advocates/evangelists love to do; it's their life-blood. If cburley's attitude was taken to the process of changing the air-filter on my car, I'd be an expert at rebuilding Honda engines by now - which is NOT what I want to do with my time; I want my system to work, reliably, with little fuss, and not have to learn Linux Kernel programming to keep my system working. His example with Internet Explorer is laughable at best, and misleading; I've added and removed quite a few add-ons to increase IE's functionality, and have done so without the need to modify source code; I just run the installation program to add the feature, and VOILA!!.
Next:
With free software, for every single product, you can choose whether to: a) acquire the software for free and maintain it on your own dime; b) acquire the software for free and pay a fee to a support vendor of your choice to support it; c) buy a distribution of the software and maintain it on your own dime (which probably means the cost of the distribution does not incorporate the cost of support, e.g. a Cheapbytes CD); and d) buy a distribution of the software and employ the support of the seller of the distribution (assuming that's part of the deal).
All in all, it seems that you're complaining that free software offers choices a, b, and c, rather than forcing you, as is generally the case for proprietary software, to accept "choice" d.
"Choice D" is what everyone who buys commercial software products does. You PAY for the product (!= free, as in speech OR Stolen Beer) and get support from that company, if at all. Software support for choices A thru C is shotty, unreliable and teduous at best.
Next:
(I'll only lightly touch on the fact that, while my purchased Redhat Linux 7.1 permits a presumably-limited number of systems registered for support in their data base for a limited time, the licensing for the system in no way limits me to a fixed number of systems on which I may choose to, in fact, install it. I can even hand it out to a neighbor and let them copy it onto their system. Legally. I can do none of this with Windows 98, and I won't even get into the fact that proprietary software is written with a mindset that the software serves the vendor rather than its user, which is almost never the case with free software -- e.g. MS Encarta refusing to let you print a picture from its data base because it's "copyrighted".)
cburley illuminates what will become the ultimate failure of attempts to bring Linux into use en-mass by the "general public". If it evades you, let me help:
SCENARIO 1:
1) Linux Distributions that are "free" (as in your friend's Beer) do not come with support, but you can give it away.
2) People try to install it, get frustrated with the lack of support and chuck the CD into the garbage.
3) Company/Group/Team/Hacker-club that produced the Distro doesn't get paid for their work, so in order to survive they get a job writing code for some bank or energy cooperative and don't have time to support their product.
4) Linux Distribution ceases to exist.
SCENARIO 2:
1) Big software company gets someone into a management position who is a rabid Linux user/coder/penguine fetishist and convinces the company that they should have a Linux Distro
2) Linux Distro released, but due to ineffective support capabilities, company stops selling their Distro.
3) Users of Distro are stranded, toss their CD, re-format their systems and try to look for other alternatives.
SCENARIO 3:
1) Group of Linux coders/penguine fetishists get together and form a company to make and distribute their own brand of Linux
2) Coders feel that their approach is so much better because they're "|337", that they end-up making their Linux distro virtually incompatable with the original kernel specs.
3) Marketing-types (or people that THINK they could be "marketing-types" if they could just look as smooth as Nick Carter) try in vain to convince users and potential customers that their approach is best
4) Managers and Board members decide that they need to "address" this lack of compatability, and spend the next 3 years re-coding to strike some balance between their |337-ness and compatability, while every user of that distro patiently awaits the stable, RC1-level distro like it was the Second Coming.
Next:
In the meantime, while I share many of the frustrations you express with the quality of software and support in the free/volunteer world (and probably have many more pet peeves of my own), I see no reason to look a gift horse in the mouth, especially in a public forum, especially by singling out "offenders" who refuse to cater to my every whim for free, as you seem prone to do.
Now, it seems that cburley is trying to turn the tables on the original poster by making HIM look like the bad-guy. Unfortunatley, cburley is 180 degrees off on the previous poster's comments. Support for open-source products is so poor, inconsistent and unreliable that one should consider it virually non-existent.
Additionally,/. is not a "public forum"; it's a glorified, self-serving blog that strokes the ego's of the open-source community.
In conclusion; if I use something that someone has made, whether I paid for it was given to me as a gift (as open-source is), I would expect that "someone" to help me fix it, and in a manner that I would understand. I'll take an OS written by paid professionals and backed by paid, professional support people than an OS written by "volunteers" and provided with "ad-hoc" support any day of the week.
As I've said in all of my other posts related to open-source software on/. - Linux and other open-source products are great for academia or for hobbyists, but at it's current state it will take decades for it to be as widely accepted as OS'es from Microsoft, Sun and other commercial software companies. I have no animosity against open-source itself - I happen to be running Win2K on my system with an open-source Shell Replacement running, and I find it superior in many aspects to the standard Explorer Shell - so if you think this is a tirade against open-source, think again!
I just love seeing posts like this - it re-assures me that the group-think brainwashing going on in our colleges today concerning open-source software is progressing as well as it is. Open-source works well in college because you can borrow someone's code from the class you're taking; unfortunately, open-source doesn't cut it in the corporate world.
For those of you who will now go on and spew poetic on how you have that OS with the stupid penguin as a mascot running your web servers; If something happened to Linus Torvalds that prevented him from continuing to develop the Linux kernel, you'd all be either running around like decapitated chicken or nervous school-boys at their first school dance, wondering what to do when the music started. The only reason that open-source software like Linux is being used in the corporate world today is because these uber-geeks who slipped it in via the back door were brainwashed about the supposed superiority of open-source software to the point that if they don't have it running on a machine that's less than 20 feet away from them, they begin to suffer from "separation anxiety" - how else could you explain the ultra-geeky idea of having Linux on a friggin' PDA?
I'm sure glad you chose to post this as an Anonymous moron - If anyone found out who you were, we'd be calling your boss to tell him what a total GIT you are.
"...train my workers to use ONE browser...." - are you effing serious?!?! I didn't think that chimps were allowed to be employed...but then again, look at the current software abortions coming from the eliteist "open-source" community, Mozilla being the best example.
What do you have to train your workers to use? The buttons on the menu bar that are pretty much the same between IE and Mozilla? The phrase coming to mind is "red herring", or better yet....TROLL!!!
Agreed - Pedophilia is a mental instability and a mental disease. This is a mental disease which, studies have shown becomes more uncontrollable when the level of stimuli is such that uncontrollable thoughts of incest/child rape or other pedophiliactic activities arrise. They feel that the must act-out their sick, deviant desires.
Why feed the disease? Why give the pedophilias a source for their disgusting, evil activities?
Would you feel any differently if a computer-generated picture of your own child was found being circulated by these sick, mental degenerates?
Think about it.
ScottKin - who would love to see all pedophiles locked-away in mental institutions for life...or the gas chamber! DEATH TO NAMBLA!!!
That's a completely different thing from what MS did, which was to implement a new way of doing things specifically to prevent others from supporting it.
Can you say "Paranoid"?
I challenge you to provide, in a reply to my post, any URL or document that Microsoft created, stating that their Kerberos implementation was done to specificaly prevent others from supporting it - you won't find it, and no one else has proved it because it would be utter stupidity for Microsoft to block Kerberos authentication with MS Servers via products like Samba.
You can now return to your previous state of paranoia.
And what will happen when it's time for them to upgrade?
"ummm....what does "nmake" do again??"
"I have to re-build my OS!?!?! Why the hell do I have to do that???"
If your wife had to do it, would she HONESTLY been able to install Linux on her system by her self and get it working as it was when you were finished? Would she have been able to do the same thing with Windows?
Thanks for the commentary and concern; it's nice to hear sanity above the crush of fanaticism of the "Linux Love-fest" that/. is.
I think you'll find it interesting that my Karma = 4 and I've never been mod'ed below 0 - which, after re-reading the post I thoroughly deserved.
I'm thoroughly aware of the techno-political leanings of/. and it's open-source/Linux advocacy and it's decidedly rabid, Anti-Microsoft bent; oddly enough, I'm a huge supporter of an open-source project known as LiteStep (the most popular and most stable Shell Replacement for Win32's SHELL32.DLL), and as being on the Development side of things (member of the Kernel, API & Test group for Windows NT 3.1) as well as the end-user side of things I know enough about Systems, Development and Users to make a fairly qualified stand.
I think Linux is an outstanding OS in certain cases, such as Web Servers. I also think that Linux has a very long road-to-hoe before it reaches the level of stability on all hardware and ease-of-use and maintenance as Windows does, especially on desktop-centric systems. Linux users are always complaining that hardware manufacturers are not producing quality drivers, if any at all for Linux. That will change once hardware manufacturers see that Linux *is* a viable OS.
You can't have light without darkness - you can't have good without evil. If you think that MS = Evil, consider me "The Devil's Advocate".
Lumpy, the hard facts I have are over 20 years in the PC Industry, being in the Data Processing industry as a whole since 1979, and actually working with both UNIX (since 3.2 BSD), Linux and Windows.
I'd seriously be interested in seeing that data collection of yours concerning Gnome under Linux usability. However, my issue (if you would have taken the time) has to do with issues like upgrading, configuation management and raw installation. please feel free to email me at the address given.
Yes, builds like Mandrake have made Linux *infinitely* easier to install, but not as easy as the Windows OS's since Win95. Hardware support is *still* lacking in comparison to Microsoft OS'es.
Yes, Linux is stable...Yes, in some cases Linux IS better that Windows; but not ALL cases.
Great for you that it works and is stable on your hardware! You are now one of the "washed and blessed" of Linux.
However, for the "unwashed and cursed" who have a hard enough time with computers that they have to take a Continuing Education course in Windows, throwing Linux at them as an alternative is like giving them a Moxi Mediacenter to replace their 15-year-old Emerson CD player.
Slashdot Mirror
It's nice to see another Avigo fan out there. I picked mine up for $80 at Office Depot about 4 years ago - right before the idiots at TI stopped all dev work on it and discontinued the whole line. I haven't had a single problem with it since I bought it four years ago.
Yes, it's only monocrome...No, you can't play MP3's on it, but there's a whole bunch of independently-produced software for it, and hardware hacks to bump the available memory from 1mb up to 4mb (there is a 1mb upgrade to take it up to 2mb, but the hardware hack consists of adding additional SMD memory chips to the unit and the memory card). It syncs-up with IntelliSync perfectly.
It's too bad that TI had to give-up on this gem so early in the game.
Since when is the ammount of hacking attacks / attempts directly equivalent to the number of Windows boxen?
/. topic-nazi's look the other way when it's virtually an ad hominem attack against Windows.
As I can remember, this is *not* the first time that a lead topic posting could be considered as "Flamebait" - but obviously, the
Absolutely!
/. "Penguin Fetishists" would be interested enough to find-out how many Warez Servers are running Linux or a Linux-derrivative OS and Apache?
I wonder if the
Nah - It's been my experience that Linux-o-Philes and Penguin Fetishists are just the other side of the coin of Warez Pirates.
I dare anyone to prove me wrong!
Caution: Flame-thrower detected in previous post!
As if Open-Hole Software works flawlessly!
The moron that mod'ed the parent-post to this should be flogged with Cat5 cable.
BHAH!!!
ScottKin
Spoken like a true Oracalian.
How long have you been on Oracle's payroll?
ScottKin
I sincerely hope that the Dept. of Justice and the California State Attorney General rake Ellison and Oracle over the coals as roughly as they have done to Gates and Microsoft - but since The People's Republic of California will protect their own leftist bed-fellows, I see Ellison walking away with a "now, Larry - don't do that again".
I'd love to see Ellison do hard-time.
ScottKin
It's so entertaining to read posts on /. - where the supposedly "intellectual elite" who are smart enough to use *nix OS's, and they can't even spell a simple word like "receipt"...even more so when they use cute constructs lile "IANAL". He even spelled "contractual" correctly, but totally whiffled on "receit"
may-b they're just 2 31337 to spel rite.
ScottKin - doing as James Tiberius Kirk said: "...I'm LAUGHING at the 'Superior Intellect'..."
WOW! FLAMEBAIT MODERATION!!!!
It only goes to show that one man's flamebait/troll is another man's honesty and truth.
If it rings true and hurts, it is "flamebait"?
ScottKin
Isnt' that just trading chit that smells one way with chit that smells differently?
Check your underwear.
Typical bovine fertilizer from a penguine fetishist.
Oh, I'm sorry - if you don't understand the word "fetishist", go upstairs from your stinky basement and ask your parents; depending on how old you are, you'll either get your mouth washed out with soap or your parents will cry with joy because you found out that there's something else beyond the joy of typing "fsck" or "nmake"
Did you ever THINK that quite possibly the transcriber (who probably knows little if nothing about the speaker's topic) got it wrong?
Stupid putz!
ScottKin
Let's examine each point and see what we can see, shall we?
Perhaps what you run into is more the result of volunteers carefully considering the degree to which you'll actually value the efforts they make to help you -- which, apparently, is pretty close to zero.
The previous poster made a valid point, and you try to twist it around and stuff words into his mouth. If your comments are the case, I'd call these "volunteers" nothing but a bunch of meelee-mouthed Wilbur Milktoast-clones. Support is SUPPORT, dammit - If you're not going to fully support the software you make, there are plenty of jobs at Target to fill your "free" time.
Next:
Meanwhile, if you want reliable support, you have to pay for it, at least in this universe.
If, on the other hand, you believe you can get along with free, ad-hoc support, on the whole, it seems the free-software community at least equals, perhaps betters, the proprietary-software community.
The FUD is getting deeper and deeper here....
"free, ad-hoc" support. What a joke. Ad-hoc support is always inconsistant, frequently self-contradictory, and usually way over the help-seekers head. People that provide support for Linux have a problem that most linux-o-philes have; they don't know how to shift gears from geek-speak to a form of language understandable by your average user - possibly due to the fact that they erroneusly conclude that since they're uber-geeks because they're running Linux that everyone else who is running or trying to run Linux is also technically "|337" as they are.
The day that support for open-source products like Linux will equal the level of support offered by companies like Microsoft is the day that Linus Torvalds is worth $50Billion from direct sales of the Linux kernel and the sales of Linux can pay for things like Support Engineers that get PAID for their work, actually have some sort of PLAN to provide support and have greated such a knowledge-base that 1000 people can call-in with the same question and all 1000 of the people that call get the same answer to their problem, and all of them get that problem resolved to one point or another.
Next:
Finally, if you want to be able to choose your own team to support the software you use, then you can pretty much write off using proprietary software entirely, since supporting software without access to its source code is a nightmare.
By the way, whether you pay for the software or get it for free is orthagonal to all of the above. You can get Internet Explorer for free, but, presumably, without source, which means you'll have no hope of improving it to fit your needs (beyond whatever hooks MS provides). And you can pay $$ to get Redhat Linux, and hire your own support staff (or just a consultant, whatever) to improve it however you see fit, since it's free software (in the gnu.org sense; it comes with source code).
Again, more FUD for "free" (as in stolen beer)...
cburley seems to be hopelessly engrained into thinking that software support=source code access. Do companies like Adobe, AutoDESK, Macromedia and Microsoft provide the source code to customers so they can support their product? NO!! Why? Because their software products are so VASTLY superior to open-source products in quality and stability that fixing a problem does NOT require the user to re-compile the code...but, of course, that's what open-source advocates/evangelists love to do; it's their life-blood. If cburley's attitude was taken to the process of changing the air-filter on my car, I'd be an expert at rebuilding Honda engines by now - which is NOT what I want to do with my time; I want my system to work, reliably, with little fuss, and not have to learn Linux Kernel programming to keep my system working. His example with Internet Explorer is laughable at best, and misleading; I've added and removed quite a few add-ons to increase IE's functionality, and have done so without the need to modify source code; I just run the installation program to add the feature, and VOILA!!.
Next:
With free software, for every single product, you can choose whether to: a) acquire the software for free and maintain it on your own dime; b) acquire the software for free and pay a fee to a support vendor of your choice to support it; c) buy a distribution of the software and maintain it on your own dime (which probably means the cost of the distribution does not incorporate the cost of support, e.g. a Cheapbytes CD); and d) buy a distribution of the software and employ the support of the seller of the distribution (assuming that's part of the deal).
All in all, it seems that you're complaining that free software offers choices a, b, and c, rather than forcing you, as is generally the case for proprietary software, to accept "choice" d.
"Choice D" is what everyone who buys commercial software products does. You PAY for the product (!= free, as in speech OR Stolen Beer) and get support from that company, if at all. Software support for choices A thru C is shotty, unreliable and teduous at best.
Next:
(I'll only lightly touch on the fact that, while my purchased Redhat Linux 7.1 permits a presumably-limited number of systems registered for support in their data base for a limited time, the licensing for the system in no way limits me to a fixed number of systems on which I may choose to, in fact, install it. I can even hand it out to a neighbor and let them copy it onto their system. Legally. I can do none of this with Windows 98, and I won't even get into the fact that proprietary software is written with a mindset that the software serves the vendor rather than its user, which is almost never the case with free software -- e.g. MS Encarta refusing to let you print a picture from its data base because it's "copyrighted".)
cburley illuminates what will become the ultimate failure of attempts to bring Linux into use en-mass by the "general public". If it evades you, let me help:
SCENARIO 1: 1) Linux Distributions that are "free" (as in your friend's Beer) do not come with support, but you can give it away.
2) People try to install it, get frustrated with the lack of support and chuck the CD into the garbage.
3) Company/Group/Team/Hacker-club that produced the Distro doesn't get paid for their work, so in order to survive they get a job writing code for some bank or energy cooperative and don't have time to support their product.
4) Linux Distribution ceases to exist.
SCENARIO 2: 1) Big software company gets someone into a management position who is a rabid Linux user/coder/penguine fetishist and convinces the company that they should have a Linux Distro
2) Linux Distro released, but due to ineffective support capabilities, company stops selling their Distro.
3) Users of Distro are stranded, toss their CD, re-format their systems and try to look for other alternatives.
SCENARIO 3: 1) Group of Linux coders/penguine fetishists get together and form a company to make and distribute their own brand of Linux
2) Coders feel that their approach is so much better because they're "|337", that they end-up making their Linux distro virtually incompatable with the original kernel specs.
3) Marketing-types (or people that THINK they could be "marketing-types" if they could just look as smooth as Nick Carter) try in vain to convince users and potential customers that their approach is best
4) Managers and Board members decide that they need to "address" this lack of compatability, and spend the next 3 years re-coding to strike some balance between their |337-ness and compatability, while every user of that distro patiently awaits the stable, RC1-level distro like it was the Second Coming.
Next:
In the meantime, while I share many of the frustrations you express with the quality of software and support in the free/volunteer world (and probably have many more pet peeves of my own), I see no reason to look a gift horse in the mouth, especially in a public forum, especially by singling out "offenders" who refuse to cater to my every whim for free, as you seem prone to do.
Now, it seems that cburley is trying to turn the tables on the original poster by making HIM look like the bad-guy. Unfortunatley, cburley is 180 degrees off on the previous poster's comments. Support for open-source products is so poor, inconsistent and unreliable that one should consider it virually non-existent. Additionally, /. is not a "public forum"; it's a glorified, self-serving blog that strokes the ego's of the open-source community.
In conclusion; if I use something that someone has made, whether I paid for it was given to me as a gift (as open-source is), I would expect that "someone" to help me fix it, and in a manner that I would understand. I'll take an OS written by paid professionals and backed by paid, professional support people than an OS written by "volunteers" and provided with "ad-hoc" support any day of the week.
As I've said in all of my other posts related to open-source software on /. - Linux and other open-source products are great for academia or for hobbyists, but at it's current state it will take decades for it to be as widely accepted as OS'es from Microsoft, Sun and other commercial software companies. I have no animosity against open-source itself - I happen to be running Win2K on my system with an open-source Shell Replacement running, and I find it superior in many aspects to the standard Explorer Shell - so if you think this is a tirade against open-source, think again!
ScottKin
No Kidding!!!
FLAMEBAIT!?!??!?!
If that's the case....
/. = flamebait
ScottKin
For those of you who will now go on and spew poetic on how you have that OS with the stupid penguin as a mascot running your web servers; If something happened to Linus Torvalds that prevented him from continuing to develop the Linux kernel, you'd all be either running around like decapitated chicken or nervous school-boys at their first school dance, wondering what to do when the music started. The only reason that open-source software like Linux is being used in the corporate world today is because these uber-geeks who slipped it in via the back door were brainwashed about the supposed superiority of open-source software to the point that if they don't have it running on a machine that's less than 20 feet away from them, they begin to suffer from "separation anxiety" - how else could you explain the ultra-geeky idea of having Linux on a friggin' PDA?
I'm sure glad you chose to post this as an Anonymous moron - If anyone found out who you were, we'd be calling your boss to tell him what a total GIT you are.
"...train my workers to use ONE browser...." - are you effing serious?!?! I didn't think that chimps were allowed to be employed...but then again, look at the current software abortions coming from the eliteist "open-source" community, Mozilla being the best example.
What do you have to train your workers to use? The buttons on the menu bar that are pretty much the same between IE and Mozilla? The phrase coming to mind is "red herring", or better yet....TROLL!!!
ScottKin
Agreed - Pedophilia is a mental instability and a mental disease. This is a mental disease which, studies have shown becomes more uncontrollable when the level of stimuli is such that uncontrollable thoughts of incest/child rape or other pedophiliactic activities arrise. They feel that the must act-out their sick, deviant desires.
Why feed the disease? Why give the pedophilias a source for their disgusting, evil activities?
Would you feel any differently if a computer-generated picture of your own child was found being circulated by these sick, mental degenerates?
Think about it.
ScottKin - who would love to see all pedophiles locked-away in mental institutions for life...or the gas chamber! DEATH TO NAMBLA!!!
Can you say "Paranoid"?
I challenge you to provide, in a reply to my post, any URL or document that Microsoft created, stating that their Kerberos implementation was done to specificaly prevent others from supporting it - you won't find it, and no one else has proved it because it would be utter stupidity for Microsoft to block Kerberos authentication with MS Servers via products like Samba.
You can now return to your previous state of paranoia.
ScottKin
How about reading the posts, eh?
.01 for effort
We're talking about installation, upgrading, and overall fitness for the average, WalMart-variety PC User.
Nice try - I'll mod you up
ScottKin
Thank you for making my point - it's deeply appreciated.
You installed it - she did not. When it comes time to update to the latest kernel, will you be doing it, or she?
If she does, I hope you much luck and patience - because her patience will be blown if she has to do the kernel upgrade.
ScottKin
Thanks for making my case for me - I couldn't have said it better myself.
Linux IS NOT for everyone; hence, it will NOT be as prevalent on the desktop as Windows.
Ipso Facto, baby!
ScottKin
Again, my point is made: YOU had to install it for them.
Where would their system be now if they installed it themselves? Absolutely trashed.
Next?
ScottKin
And what will happen when it's time for them to upgrade?
"ummm....what does "nmake" do again??"
"I have to re-build my OS!?!?! Why the hell do I have to do that???"
If your wife had to do it, would she HONESTLY been able to install Linux on her system by her self and get it working as it was when you were finished? Would she have been able to do the same thing with Windows?
I rest my case.
ScottKin
(Score: -1; Flamebait)
Yet Another linux-o-phile with no intelligent commentary.
You can't even retort with any valid arguments, so you resort to taudry comments.
BTW - it's "self-delusion" - it's something you should have learned in English as a "compound word".
ScottKin - "...Khan - I'm lauging at the 'Superior Intelect'"
Thanks for the commentary and concern; it's nice to hear sanity above the crush of fanaticism of the "Linux Love-fest" that /. is.
/. and it's open-source/Linux advocacy and it's decidedly rabid, Anti-Microsoft bent; oddly enough, I'm a huge supporter of an open-source project known as LiteStep (the most popular and most stable Shell Replacement for Win32's SHELL32.DLL), and as being on the Development side of things (member of the Kernel, API & Test group for Windows NT 3.1) as well as the end-user side of things I know enough about Systems, Development and Users to make a fairly qualified stand.
I think you'll find it interesting that my Karma = 4 and I've never been mod'ed below 0 - which, after re-reading the post I thoroughly deserved.
I'm thoroughly aware of the techno-political leanings of
I think Linux is an outstanding OS in certain cases, such as Web Servers. I also think that Linux has a very long road-to-hoe before it reaches the level of stability on all hardware and ease-of-use and maintenance as Windows does, especially on desktop-centric systems. Linux users are always complaining that hardware manufacturers are not producing quality drivers, if any at all for Linux. That will change once hardware manufacturers see that Linux *is* a viable OS.
You can't have light without darkness - you can't have good without evil. If you think that MS = Evil, consider me "The Devil's Advocate".
ScottKin
Typical "College Freshman" humor - how banal.
Go off now and continue trying to successfully complete a "panty raid" - but this time, try the sororities instead of the fraternities.
ScottKin
Lumpy, the hard facts I have are over 20 years in the PC Industry, being in the Data Processing industry as a whole since 1979, and actually working with both UNIX (since 3.2 BSD), Linux and Windows.
I'd seriously be interested in seeing that data collection of yours concerning Gnome under Linux usability. However, my issue (if you would have taken the time) has to do with issues like upgrading, configuation management and raw installation. please feel free to email me at the address given.
Yes, builds like Mandrake have made Linux *infinitely* easier to install, but not as easy as the Windows OS's since Win95. Hardware support is *still* lacking in comparison to Microsoft OS'es.
Yes, Linux is stable...Yes, in some cases Linux IS better that Windows; but not ALL cases.
ScottKin
Great for you that it works and is stable on your hardware! You are now one of the "washed and blessed" of Linux.
However, for the "unwashed and cursed" who have a hard enough time with computers that they have to take a Continuing Education course in Windows, throwing Linux at them as an alternative is like giving them a Moxi Mediacenter to replace their 15-year-old Emerson CD player.
ScottKin