Professional audio? Don't even bother. ESounD, ARTS, JACKD, now PulseAudio seems to be the big name in useless sound daemons...but that doesn't mean everyone will standardize on it. As if we needed yet another sound daemon anyway. If the Linux kernel is supposedly so "flexible" that it can be used in any range of devices from computers to cell phones, then why is it that 18 years or more later after the first release, there -still- isn't an easy way to do very low-latency, high quality audio recording on Linux? Linux distributions could _EASILY_ supplant a lot of the Windows based environments for professional audio if the kernel was up to the task. And for those out there who think that Audacity and Ardour are adequate replacements for ProTools...wake up.
I don't know about the rest of your points, but I can definitely argue this one.
If you're looking for "easy" low latency audio recording, I'd think Ubuntu Studio or 64Studio or a host of other alternatives would give you easy access to a preinstalled low-latency kernel and all the audio/video tools you need to make your own high-grade recordings.
Just because Pro-Tools is the piece of software which is handed out with most pieces of pro audio equipment doesn't mean there's no support for them.... My studio has been powered by ardour and JACK for the last few years, and I've been watching more and more people pick up this software. (See the forums and donations flooding into PBD on the ardour page for evidence of this.) Whereas I may have agreed with you a few years ago, saying that "ardour isn't a replacement for protools", I don't think that really holds water anymore. If you really have knowledge of some feature that you want in ardour so badly, go and put your money where your mouth is. I'm sure Paul would appreciate the support, and you'd get the features you want. </shameless plug>
(As an additional anecdote, one of my friends was going to school for audio engineering and mixing in Florida, and mentioned that the school he was going to actually *encouraged* use of Ardour and friends down there... )
Also, please don't bring audacity into a pro audio discussion. There are plenty of better tools for handling audio than audacity unless you're doing cutting or other simple tasks -- it's more of a "Cool Edit Pro" replacement than anything.
Saddam was a horrible asshole. Everyone can agree with that. But, like when Tito died in Yugoslavia, sometimes when you have some horrible asshole in charge, it keeps a difficult balance of people who would otherwise kill each other.
Now we get to be the assholes keeping everyone from killing each other...
I own an N800, have owned a 770, and haven't had an install of Windows in about 7 years. I've been able to use Ubuntu to manage every aspect of the device, so I'm not quite sure where you're coming from with that comment about requiring an install of Windows.
It has the ability to use vpnc for Cisco VPNs, I'm sure any other VPN clients can be ported easily if the source is available.
Also, don't look at this as some overpriced phone accessory. It's more like a small Linux machine you can carry in your pocket, with Wifi, Bluetooth, and the ability to write your own apps for it. As an application platform, it's quite nice, and I'm looking forward to Chinook (the new version of maemo's SDK) to go gold, since it looks to make it a lot easier to port apps to run on maemo / Hildon Desktop.
(As an aside, I did hear that they were allowing USB host mode in this new release, but I am hoping that they are allowing USB charging, since it would allow me to get rid of one of my car chargers.)
Muslims need not be of the "murderous, extremist" variety to promote Islam, which creates oppressive societies where Muslims have enough people to press the issue. Albert Speer was a presentable Nazi. That did not make Nazism OK.
Godwin's Law, anyone?
Actually, it sounds a heck of a lot like good ol' fashioned bigotry, hidden behind a little bit of xenophobia. As an example, atheism doesn't necessarily breed people like the Nazis any more than it breeds governments like the one in the old USSR, so I don't really see how a religion which advocates peace could be seen as such a catalyst for creating awful regimes. Last I checked, Christianity and Judaism both talk about doing some pretty awful things to people, and we love stomping all over the Earth killing people even though both are supposedly peaceful religions... But wait, it's okay because we don't behead people, and I guess killing women and children is okay, so long as it's done under our flag?
The scariest part of this entire thread seems to be that supposedly rational people are advocating throwing people into a bottomless pit, or having their government play "Big Brother" with them, all in the sake of "save us from the hordes of head-chopping Islamic Fundamentalist Terrorists!" or whatever name the current US administration is parroting for the citizens of the Middle East.
I wrote something that wasn't intended to troll for karma, or make people laugh, and most people here look at it as a troll. That'll teach me to post an honest opinion on slashdot.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that World of Warcraft has every ability to be just as destructive to someones' life as, say, heroin.
I actually have friends who have tried to hit me up for their membership fee when they couldn't afford it, and others who actually spent time and talked to me more when they were on heroin than when they played WoW. It's amazing, but the behavior patterns are the same, in my opinion (although IANA-whatever). I even know someone who lied to their wife about how many accounts he was actively playing...
Every time I hear about some awful DDoS attack, some small part of me hopes that it's the WoW servers... I imagine millions of dateless wonders and pimply faced teens who have never seen the light of day, jonesing for their digital fix.
Brilliant, Blizzard, brilliant. You managed to create a dangling carrot of a game with no perceivable ending, where millions and millions of people slave away to do... absolutely nothing. Substance W anyone?
My girlfriend, and some of my friends were sick and tired of having Windows crap out on them, having to reload every couple months, and various other problems.
Were they still on Windows 98/Me?
The vast majority of people I've done Ubuntu installs for were running Win XP or Vista. They've complained about a number of different things, but usually the propensity for the system to start bogging down after a large number of applications were installed and/or the crapware that came with the computer started seriously impeding their ability to work.
Even if the issues with WinXp / Vista are the application developers' faults, the end user doesn't see it that way -- it usually is just easier to migrate them to something else, fairly similar, that "just works". Enter... Ubuntu.
Also, I've noticed that most of the "unusual cases" which have been cited in response to this article have been involving initial hardware setup. Unless I'm mistaken, simply purchasing a pre-installed version of Ubuntu on a machine (or making your machine-savvy friend or neighbor install it for you) seems to completely circumvent this, and is vaguely the equivalent of having someone install a pirated version of XP or Vista for you, but without the guilt... or at least without the "Genuine Software" warnings. I remember when "games don't work" was an acceptable excuse for not using Ubuntu, but sadly quite a few games will work with Cedega or Wine which won't work on Vista due to that nagging "forced DX10" thing...
There is absolutely nothing wrong with making a mix cd. However if the RIAA is gonna go on a crusade of lawsuits against copyright infringing people and this action is the same as what brought the other suits then the twins should be prosecuted just like anyone else. It is the job of the president to lead by example. If they can get away with this then every other infringement lawsuit from the RIAA should be dropped as well.
I know this is like shooting fish in a barrel these days...
But when exactly was this guy concerned with leading by example?
And if he is leading by example, I think I can safely say that we're all *really* screwed.
I've had a pretty good run using Ardour, JACK, JAMIN and occasionally JACK Timemachine on an Athlon 2800+ with 256 MB of memory.
The most expensive piece of sound equipment seems to be the AD/DA converters (whether on or off board). I ended up with an RME Hamerfall 9652 (yes, the original one) and a Behringer Ultragain ADA-8000 (inexpensive at 230 USD). I also use a Behringer BCF-2000 for automation control, and a bunch of other rackmount processors. The sound is better than a studio I had recorded at a while back which used a Mackie D8B and a bunch of very expensive and fancy looking equipment.
I guess it depends what you want to get out of it. If you want to spend 30$ on a cheapie sound card, expect it to sound like that.... The audio *software* is available for Linux, so the only limitation is how much green you want to sink into your setup. (Hint, Behringer has a 30$ USB sound card available if you're looking to do recording "on the cheap" which would sound a bit better than an internal sound card, considering that you can move the AD/DA conversion process a bit further away from your machines' clock chips.)
This is about bugs in PHP itself, not applications written in PHP. Both have an utterly appalling security record though.
I'm not sure how I feel about that statement.
I'm the primary developer of an opensource PHP-based application, and I can attest that PHP security is more in the hands of the application developer. Yes, we've all heard some of the stupid PHP Nuke exploits, people not quoting their SQL properly... but should the PHP interpreter developers really be held accountable for other peoples' shoddy coding practices? How many of the bugs in the wild that you're referring to are actually PHP application developers who don't know their ass from their elbow and don't bother to patch known vulnerabilities in a timely fashion?
I understand it has become fashionable to dump on PHP whenever languages are being discussed, but I believe, and have for some time, that it's not the language (unless you run up against intrinsic limitations of said language), but how people choose to develop in it. I'm sure there are secure VB apps, just as there are shoddy crashy Java apps out there.
You've just summed up--in one short comment--everything I hate about PHP. I've been a PHP developer for several years and it was my first introduction to the OSS community, but I still remember that wild discovery: "You mean have to take down the entire service just because it wasn't compiled against this or that library? That's INSANE! What the hell is Linux FOR?"
I understand the point you're making, but why don't you just run it in CGI mode if you don't want to recompile, or use dl() to load the extension you want at runtime? I can't fault a language for needing extensions to be compiled... it's more the fault of it being an Apache module than anything, since it simply needs to be reloaded to "see" its new modules.
The fault does not lie with Google. They are doing nothing more than providing a service where people can upload video. I recall Napster tried that defence. Didn't work very well.
The difference is, I think, that Napster's main purpose was to distribute copyrighted music; non-copyrighted stuff was the exception not the rule. YouTube's main purpose is to distribute bad karaoke videos and other things in the same vein, but happens to have people posting copyrighted material.
"Gran Paradiso". Sounds like a "professional" name for an old hooker.
Thank you. I never thought I'd have to worry about shooting coffee out my nose while reading some inconsequential slashdot article on Firefox... but here we are.
"Have you ever tried to burn a CD out of the box on Winblows? Oh wait... you need to spend $90 on Nero??? Even then, it takes 100MB of RAM and 2 hours to actually _find_ the "burn" option. For all the people that complain about options in KDE, there are about 20 times as many in Nero" Thats a flat out lie, In XP you can burn anything just useing the system. Put CD in, Drag files to CD,BURN. How easy it that?? If you want features "then" you should get nero or what ever buring program.
That is true; it does come with a CD burning program. It does not, on the other hand, have the ability to easily burn CDs from many formats. It's just like saying that Windows comes with a word processor (neither Notepad nor Wordpad is really usable at all for anything more that very rudimentary editing). Built-in burning capabilities are pretty awful, and you really do need a third party piece of software to do anything much more useful than burn a backup of some data. Even Ubuntu's built-in CD burning capabilities are superior, though I prefer k3b over the built-in stuff.
Also, the base windows install DOES have a word processor, graphics manipulation software and CD burning software from your list.
A horribly *crippled* word processor (Wordpad? I mean, please...), awful paint program, and the worst excuse for a CD burner I've ever seen.
Let's compare apples to apples here. Wordpad isn't as useful as Openoffice Writer, MS Paint or Imaging or whatever trainwreck they're including now doesn't do what the GIMP or any of the other image manipulation programs standard with a Linux distro. Their CD burner doesn't really do much and has nasty limitations compared to the Ubuntu standard burner (or my favorite, k3b).
Besides, if it *came* with a good word processor, how would they bend you over for a copy of MS Office?
In the end, the difference between a company like Apple or Microsoft and the opensource movement is that Apple and Microsoft have a responsibility to their shareholders to extract every last cent from Joe Sixpack. I would have to think that their motives for getting Windows-anything on laptops for a whole new class of computer consumer would be anything but humanitarian.
I also use Linux every day, both on servers and on both of my workstations. I don't have any continuing problems with it as an OS, and I haven't had a copy of Windows-anything running on any of my machines in 4-5 years. All experiences with it come from dealing with other peoples' installs.
Your reasons for not liking Linux on the desktop ("Anyway, Linux sucks for the average users for the same reasons its sucked.") carry about as much weight as my comment on Mac OS X... I just don't like the way it's put together, and haven't really liked using it the few times I've been put in that position. I didn't feel any need to critique everything I disagree with, simply stating that I'm not very fond of Mac OS in its current incarnation is sufficient since you were just attacking Linux on the desktop, not necessarily pushing Mac OS as an alternative.
As for homogeny, I was referring to supporting large groups of users. (I should have been more specific about this in my original post.) Supporting your parents or relatives is one thing, but supporting a diverse group of machines with a cornocopia of differing operating systems, versions and software is a nightmare. The ability to standardize on one platform has been trumpeted in corporate America as a necessity, at least in pushing Windows as the only alternative for corporate computing. I'd just rather support something I consider to be a bit more sane of an operating system, considering that the UI is very functional and workable. I'd like to think that my sensibilities haven't "devolved", as you put it, simply because I was recommending something different for a corporate computing platform, or at least as something to be supported across a wide range of computers. Honestly, I don't care what you or anyone else uses on your computer, so long as it doesn't affect my computing experience.
I also wasn't condemning dialog regarding improving Linux and its associated GUIs ; I'd rather see continued improvement, but I'm not about to say that it isn't a workable solution. I pointed out Ubuntu as a good example of a very workable distribution which has disproven many peoples' assumption that Linux can't "just work" for them. I'm not "thuggishly trumpeting" Linux as a solution, just asking that people try the best example of it, without dismissing it as not being "as good as Windows". Would you have people looking at Windows ME as an example of how wonderful Windows is?
The biggest problem that I can see has been people trying to push Windows-anything into the server room. I really don't see any reason for it unless you're using some system that *requires* a windows server. And for the most part, there are fine alternative that exist in the opensource space. How many groupware suites do you need before you can move away from Exchange Server, anyway?
As for desktop users, I used to be part of the "use anything you want on the Desktop" camp. Mac users are fine, as long as they're self sufficient... it's a nice looking UI on top of a fugly BSD core which was painful to use for a long time. It has been getting a bit better recently, but still, I'm not a fan. Just don't ask me to support it, it takes far too long to navigate the GUI. Windows desktops seem to accumulate crap, whether it be programs that the users install or spyware/adware/crapware that is installed without their knowledge. Package management? Since when has installshield junk been anything to even consider comparing to Debian or Redhat's package managers, especially considering the GUIs that have cropped up in the last few years?
I remember the days of "use Linux, it's better, I swear", and then painful weeks of supporting small differences. This even happened with my brother, a love-hate relationship with Linux that lasted about five years.... then Ubuntu. I haven't had a single person who has switched to or tried Ubuntu complain at all about anything, not even the UI. Your post was relevant a year or so ago, maybe, but the latest breed of distributions seems to have that problem solved.
Excuse me if I take this with a Buick-sized grain of salt, at least the part dealing with the Bush-Gore recount. You said that "even using Gore's suggested recount" that Bush would have won. The Wikipedia article on the election confirms this, but points out that there was a horrendous problem with "overvotes", which although Gore did not request an official recount of overvotes, if they were to be considered, he would have won. You made it seem as though any outrage over the election was pointless as Bush would have won in any circumstance, which simply isn't the entire truth... and I didn't particularly care for the disenfranchising of minorities in Florida, either. A candidate who has to win by trying to convince people not to vote, throwing out their registration cards, or any of the other awful scenarios which we saw in the 2000 elections, probably shouldn't be considered a clear victor, and certainly not the better of the two candidates.
Unfortunately, the issue isn't that there is an error or irregularities, but that only a small percentage of the voting population actually has any sort of choice about the election. David Brin wrote a great article about this, pointing out that incubents almost always win, and most states are "no contest" for a particular party, so the only way to produce change is to vote in a primary (see the recent Lieberman loss in Connecticut).
As for the Kennedy-Nixon election in 1960, I think that although there are a number of scenarios which were very similar (voting fraud, etc) to the 2000 elections, the voters were dealing with a pretty awful choice: Kennedy, the good looking guy who brought us to the brink of WW III, or Nixon, the weasely guy who eventually redefined presidential corruption and dishonesty.
I dare say that Al Gore, though he may have seemed to be a relatively boring candidate for president, could not have done a worse job in terms of cronyism, rampant constitutional revisionism, and astroturfing support for an unpopular war in another country. That's leaving out the lying to the American public thing (about something actually *pertinent* to the country), the dismal response to Hurricane Katrina (not even placing all the blame on him, he *did* put the idiot in charge of FEMA who sat on his thumbs for a few days while New Orleans was being flooded), or the list of shady and probably indictable characters on his staff.... No president should *ever* have to have the American public look past all of that. We're a laughingstock, and our knee-jerk reactions to terrorism (removing personal liberties and spying on Americans) indeed looks like we've allowed terrorists to *win*, as opposed to the UK reaction.
You can hold any political opinion you want... but it's very difficult to make a case that this guy has done a good job, and justifying why he's in office seems like an equally poor idea.
If we are talking about software installers, people in the Windows world can keep their installshield wizards.
As far as I'm concerned, a good package manager is a thousand times more elegant than a bunch of installers which all get to have their own weasely way with your system, and never really uninstall properly.
And if it comes down to pretty graphics, there are tons of usable frontends for things like apt (kynaptic), urpmi (gurpmi) and up2date (I think it's called up2date-gnome or something similarly strange) which allow complete management and upgrade of system packages in batches without ever having to see a scary command line. I think anti-opensource people are barking up the wrong FUD on this one.
As for software being complex, Linux distributions can be either complex or simple, depending on which distribution and how you decide to use it. I know people who use Ubuntu and have never seen a command prompt, and others who use Slackware or Linux from Scratch and don't bother with a GUI at all... it's all about choice. And not like the Ford Model T color options, either...
Just because the largest portion of MySpace users seem to have hideous pages doesn't mean that those running MySpace are complete morons and can't manage their system.
I honestly believe that the applications and/or the variety of applications has less to do with the migration of Windows users to Linux than basic human nature.
People just don't like change, and Linux (Ubuntu, etc) just isn't Windows. In many ways it is far superior in terms of work flow and/or functionality, but it isn't the same, and those changes frighten people enough to want to stay with what they know. Why do you think Mr Gates & co spend all that time and money getting people in college to buy "academically priced" versions of their software?
Ubuntu is going to destroy Apple Computers! It's going to take down the great Mac. Beleive it!
Uh... wake up dreamers. Apple is a solid computer with a long list of great applications. Dont expect Ubuntu to take out Apple when it cant even take out windows.
This doesn't really follow. You're basically saying that Ubuntu should be able to "take on" Apple only if it can defeat Microsoft? Microsoft still has the majority OS share, and Apple is still a niche market.
I personally use Ubuntu (Dapper right now). I haven't had any problems with any of the four laptops and four or five PCs that I have set this OS up under, with the exception of a well known bug in the Xorg synaptics touchpad driver. It seems as though any time any discussion regarding Linux (in this case Ubuntu in particular) and its ability to perform on the desktop, people either say "it didn't work in an isolated incident, so it must be junk" or the old "Linux is fine in the server room, but leave the desktop to the real OSes" meme. I haven't had to use OS X or Windows anything in a number of years, and don't miss a thing. For every example of bad UI design, bad configuration and bad application concept that comes up for Linux apps, several are also present in Windows and Mac applications, but for some reason Linux apps are lambasted for every problem, no matter how small...
Apple is the "Madonna" of computing. It keeps reinventing itself every time that people think its dead. Of course, they aren't really making the majority of their money from software anymore, people think they are making more money from those cute little iDoohickeys now. I never much cared for the Macintosh line of computers ; they seem more toys than anything, but that's just one person's opinion.
(This is, by the way, not to detract from putting idiots who keep telling everyone how much Linux or Ubuntu or whatever is going to pwn every other OS in their place. That is the kind of thing that gives OSS advocates a bad name.)
I have to say that if nothing else, Google Pages has been very *fun*. Or at least a complete waste of spare time.
I mean, I couldn't justify wasting bandwidth on something like a Freedonia Tourist Site, but now, the whole world can enjoy the follies of a small country run by a ruthless dictator with a grease-paint mustache...
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I don't know about the rest of your points, but I can definitely argue this one.
If you're looking for "easy" low latency audio recording, I'd think Ubuntu Studio or 64Studio or a host of other alternatives would give you easy access to a preinstalled low-latency kernel and all the audio/video tools you need to make your own high-grade recordings.
Just because Pro-Tools is the piece of software which is handed out with most pieces of pro audio equipment doesn't mean there's no support for them.... My studio has been powered by ardour and JACK for the last few years, and I've been watching more and more people pick up this software. (See the forums and donations flooding into PBD on the ardour page for evidence of this.) Whereas I may have agreed with you a few years ago, saying that "ardour isn't a replacement for protools", I don't think that really holds water anymore. If you really have knowledge of some feature that you want in ardour so badly, go and put your money where your mouth is. I'm sure Paul would appreciate the support, and you'd get the features you want. </shameless plug>
(As an additional anecdote, one of my friends was going to school for audio engineering and mixing in Florida, and mentioned that the school he was going to actually *encouraged* use of Ardour and friends down there ... )
Also, please don't bring audacity into a pro audio discussion. There are plenty of better tools for handling audio than audacity unless you're doing cutting or other simple tasks -- it's more of a "Cool Edit Pro" replacement than anything.
Not defending Saddam Hussein at all, but there's some historical basis for Iraq and Kuwait being the same country.
The west has been fooling around with that region for a *very* long time, and it hasn't necessarily done very much good.
Saddam was a horrible asshole. Everyone can agree with that. But, like when Tito died in Yugoslavia, sometimes when you have some horrible asshole in charge, it keeps a difficult balance of people who would otherwise kill each other.
Now we get to be the assholes keeping everyone from killing each other ...
I own an N800, have owned a 770, and haven't had an install of Windows in about 7 years. I've been able to use Ubuntu to manage every aspect of the device, so I'm not quite sure where you're coming from with that comment about requiring an install of Windows.
It has the ability to use vpnc for Cisco VPNs, I'm sure any other VPN clients can be ported easily if the source is available.
Also, don't look at this as some overpriced phone accessory. It's more like a small Linux machine you can carry in your pocket, with Wifi, Bluetooth, and the ability to write your own apps for it. As an application platform, it's quite nice, and I'm looking forward to Chinook (the new version of maemo's SDK) to go gold, since it looks to make it a lot easier to port apps to run on maemo / Hildon Desktop.
(As an aside, I did hear that they were allowing USB host mode in this new release, but I am hoping that they are allowing USB charging, since it would allow me to get rid of one of my car chargers.)
Godwin's Law, anyone?
Actually, it sounds a heck of a lot like good ol' fashioned bigotry, hidden behind a little bit of xenophobia. As an example, atheism doesn't necessarily breed people like the Nazis any more than it breeds governments like the one in the old USSR, so I don't really see how a religion which advocates peace could be seen as such a catalyst for creating awful regimes. Last I checked, Christianity and Judaism both talk about doing some pretty awful things to people, and we love stomping all over the Earth killing people even though both are supposedly peaceful religions... But wait, it's okay because we don't behead people, and I guess killing women and children is okay, so long as it's done under our flag?
The scariest part of this entire thread seems to be that supposedly rational people are advocating throwing people into a bottomless pit, or having their government play "Big Brother" with them, all in the sake of "save us from the hordes of head-chopping Islamic Fundamentalist Terrorists!" or whatever name the current US administration is parroting for the citizens of the Middle East.
Thanks, StikyPad.
I wrote something that wasn't intended to troll for karma, or make people laugh, and most people here look at it as a troll. That'll teach me to post an honest opinion on slashdot.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that World of Warcraft has every ability to be just as destructive to someones' life as, say, heroin.
I actually have friends who have tried to hit me up for their membership fee when they couldn't afford it, and others who actually spent time and talked to me more when they were on heroin than when they played WoW. It's amazing, but the behavior patterns are the same, in my opinion (although IANA-whatever). I even know someone who lied to their wife about how many accounts he was actively playing ...
Every time I hear about some awful DDoS attack, some small part of me hopes that it's the WoW servers... I imagine millions of dateless wonders and pimply faced teens who have never seen the light of day, jonesing for their digital fix.
Brilliant, Blizzard, brilliant. You managed to create a dangling carrot of a game with no perceivable ending, where millions and millions of people slave away to do ... absolutely nothing. Substance W anyone?
The vast majority of people I've done Ubuntu installs for were running Win XP or Vista. They've complained about a number of different things, but usually the propensity for the system to start bogging down after a large number of applications were installed and/or the crapware that came with the computer started seriously impeding their ability to work.
Even if the issues with WinXp / Vista are the application developers' faults, the end user doesn't see it that way -- it usually is just easier to migrate them to something else, fairly similar, that "just works". Enter ... Ubuntu.
Also, I've noticed that most of the "unusual cases" which have been cited in response to this article have been involving initial hardware setup. Unless I'm mistaken, simply purchasing a pre-installed version of Ubuntu on a machine (or making your machine-savvy friend or neighbor install it for you) seems to completely circumvent this, and is vaguely the equivalent of having someone install a pirated version of XP or Vista for you, but without the guilt ... or at least without the "Genuine Software" warnings. I remember when "games don't work" was an acceptable excuse for not using Ubuntu, but sadly quite a few games will work with Cedega or Wine which won't work on Vista due to that nagging "forced DX10" thing...
I know this is like shooting fish in a barrel these days...
But when exactly was this guy concerned with leading by example?
And if he is leading by example, I think I can safely say that we're all *really* screwed.
I've had a pretty good run using Ardour, JACK, JAMIN and occasionally JACK Timemachine on an Athlon 2800+ with 256 MB of memory.
The most expensive piece of sound equipment seems to be the AD/DA converters (whether on or off board). I ended up with an RME Hamerfall 9652 (yes, the original one) and a Behringer Ultragain ADA-8000 (inexpensive at 230 USD). I also use a Behringer BCF-2000 for automation control, and a bunch of other rackmount processors. The sound is better than a studio I had recorded at a while back which used a Mackie D8B and a bunch of very expensive and fancy looking equipment.
I guess it depends what you want to get out of it. If you want to spend 30$ on a cheapie sound card, expect it to sound like that.... The audio *software* is available for Linux, so the only limitation is how much green you want to sink into your setup. (Hint, Behringer has a 30$ USB sound card available if you're looking to do recording "on the cheap" which would sound a bit better than an internal sound card, considering that you can move the AD/DA conversion process a bit further away from your machines' clock chips.)
I understand ; I was complaining about the general dumping on PHP applications which seems to follow any thread with the word "PHP" in it.
I'm not sure how I feel about that statement.
I'm the primary developer of an opensource PHP-based application, and I can attest that PHP security is more in the hands of the application developer. Yes, we've all heard some of the stupid PHP Nuke exploits, people not quoting their SQL properly ... but should the PHP interpreter developers really be held accountable for other peoples' shoddy coding practices? How many of the bugs in the wild that you're referring to are actually PHP application developers who don't know their ass from their elbow and don't bother to patch known vulnerabilities in a timely fashion?
I understand it has become fashionable to dump on PHP whenever languages are being discussed, but I believe, and have for some time, that it's not the language (unless you run up against intrinsic limitations of said language), but how people choose to develop in it. I'm sure there are secure VB apps, just as there are shoddy crashy Java apps out there.
I understand the point you're making, but why don't you just run it in CGI mode if you don't want to recompile, or use dl() to load the extension you want at runtime? I can't fault a language for needing extensions to be compiled ... it's more the fault of it being an Apache module than anything, since it simply needs to be reloaded to "see" its new modules.
The difference is, I think, that Napster's main purpose was to distribute copyrighted music; non-copyrighted stuff was the exception not the rule. YouTube's main purpose is to distribute bad karaoke videos and other things in the same vein, but happens to have people posting copyrighted material.
A horribly *crippled* word processor (Wordpad? I mean, please ...), awful paint program, and the worst excuse for a CD burner I've ever seen.
Let's compare apples to apples here. Wordpad isn't as useful as Openoffice Writer, MS Paint or Imaging or whatever trainwreck they're including now doesn't do what the GIMP or any of the other image manipulation programs standard with a Linux distro. Their CD burner doesn't really do much and has nasty limitations compared to the Ubuntu standard burner (or my favorite, k3b).
Besides, if it *came* with a good word processor, how would they bend you over for a copy of MS Office?
In the end, the difference between a company like Apple or Microsoft and the opensource movement is that Apple and Microsoft have a responsibility to their shareholders to extract every last cent from Joe Sixpack. I would have to think that their motives for getting Windows-anything on laptops for a whole new class of computer consumer would be anything but humanitarian.
I also use Linux every day, both on servers and on both of my workstations. I don't have any continuing problems with it as an OS, and I haven't had a copy of Windows-anything running on any of my machines in 4-5 years. All experiences with it come from dealing with other peoples' installs.
Your reasons for not liking Linux on the desktop ("Anyway, Linux sucks for the average users for the same reasons its sucked.") carry about as much weight as my comment on Mac OS X ... I just don't like the way it's put together, and haven't really liked using it the few times I've been put in that position. I didn't feel any need to critique everything I disagree with, simply stating that I'm not very fond of Mac OS in its current incarnation is sufficient since you were just attacking Linux on the desktop, not necessarily pushing Mac OS as an alternative.
As for homogeny, I was referring to supporting large groups of users. (I should have been more specific about this in my original post.) Supporting your parents or relatives is one thing, but supporting a diverse group of machines with a cornocopia of differing operating systems, versions and software is a nightmare. The ability to standardize on one platform has been trumpeted in corporate America as a necessity, at least in pushing Windows as the only alternative for corporate computing. I'd just rather support something I consider to be a bit more sane of an operating system, considering that the UI is very functional and workable. I'd like to think that my sensibilities haven't "devolved", as you put it, simply because I was recommending something different for a corporate computing platform, or at least as something to be supported across a wide range of computers. Honestly, I don't care what you or anyone else uses on your computer, so long as it doesn't affect my computing experience.
I also wasn't condemning dialog regarding improving Linux and its associated GUIs ; I'd rather see continued improvement, but I'm not about to say that it isn't a workable solution. I pointed out Ubuntu as a good example of a very workable distribution which has disproven many peoples' assumption that Linux can't "just work" for them. I'm not "thuggishly trumpeting" Linux as a solution, just asking that people try the best example of it, without dismissing it as not being "as good as Windows". Would you have people looking at Windows ME as an example of how wonderful Windows is?
The biggest problem that I can see has been people trying to push Windows-anything into the server room. I really don't see any reason for it unless you're using some system that *requires* a windows server. And for the most part, there are fine alternative that exist in the opensource space. How many groupware suites do you need before you can move away from Exchange Server, anyway?
As for desktop users, I used to be part of the "use anything you want on the Desktop" camp. Mac users are fine, as long as they're self sufficient... it's a nice looking UI on top of a fugly BSD core which was painful to use for a long time. It has been getting a bit better recently, but still, I'm not a fan. Just don't ask me to support it, it takes far too long to navigate the GUI. Windows desktops seem to accumulate crap, whether it be programs that the users install or spyware/adware/crapware that is installed without their knowledge. Package management? Since when has installshield junk been anything to even consider comparing to Debian or Redhat's package managers, especially considering the GUIs that have cropped up in the last few years?
I remember the days of "use Linux, it's better, I swear", and then painful weeks of supporting small differences. This even happened with my brother, a love-hate relationship with Linux that lasted about five years .... then Ubuntu. I haven't had a single person who has switched to or tried Ubuntu complain at all about anything, not even the UI. Your post was relevant a year or so ago, maybe, but the latest breed of distributions seems to have that problem solved.
Unfortunately, the issue isn't that there is an error or irregularities, but that only a small percentage of the voting population actually has any sort of choice about the election. David Brin wrote a great article about this, pointing out that incubents almost always win, and most states are "no contest" for a particular party, so the only way to produce change is to vote in a primary (see the recent Lieberman loss in Connecticut).
As for the Kennedy-Nixon election in 1960, I think that although there are a number of scenarios which were very similar (voting fraud, etc) to the 2000 elections, the voters were dealing with a pretty awful choice: Kennedy, the good looking guy who brought us to the brink of WW III, or Nixon, the weasely guy who eventually redefined presidential corruption and dishonesty.
I dare say that Al Gore, though he may have seemed to be a relatively boring candidate for president, could not have done a worse job in terms of cronyism, rampant constitutional revisionism, and astroturfing support for an unpopular war in another country. That's leaving out the lying to the American public thing (about something actually *pertinent* to the country), the dismal response to Hurricane Katrina (not even placing all the blame on him, he *did* put the idiot in charge of FEMA who sat on his thumbs for a few days while New Orleans was being flooded), or the list of shady and probably indictable characters on his staff.... No president should *ever* have to have the American public look past all of that. We're a laughingstock, and our knee-jerk reactions to terrorism (removing personal liberties and spying on Americans) indeed looks like we've allowed terrorists to *win*, as opposed to the UK reaction.
You can hold any political opinion you want ... but it's very difficult to make a case that this guy has done a good job, and justifying why he's in office seems like an equally poor idea.
If we are talking about software installers, people in the Windows world can keep their installshield wizards.
As far as I'm concerned, a good package manager is a thousand times more elegant than a bunch of installers which all get to have their own weasely way with your system, and never really uninstall properly.
And if it comes down to pretty graphics, there are tons of usable frontends for things like apt (kynaptic), urpmi (gurpmi) and up2date (I think it's called up2date-gnome or something similarly strange) which allow complete management and upgrade of system packages in batches without ever having to see a scary command line. I think anti-opensource people are barking up the wrong FUD on this one.
As for software being complex, Linux distributions can be either complex or simple, depending on which distribution and how you decide to use it. I know people who use Ubuntu and have never seen a command prompt, and others who use Slackware or Linux from Scratch and don't bother with a GUI at all ... it's all about choice. And not like the Ford Model T color options, either ...
I honestly believe that the applications and/or the variety of applications has less to do with the migration of Windows users to Linux than basic human nature.
People just don't like change, and Linux (Ubuntu, etc) just isn't Windows. In many ways it is far superior in terms of work flow and/or functionality, but it isn't the same, and those changes frighten people enough to want to stay with what they know. Why do you think Mr Gates & co spend all that time and money getting people in college to buy "academically priced" versions of their software?
I personally use Ubuntu (Dapper right now). I haven't had any problems with any of the four laptops and four or five PCs that I have set this OS up under, with the exception of a well known bug in the Xorg synaptics touchpad driver. It seems as though any time any discussion regarding Linux (in this case Ubuntu in particular) and its ability to perform on the desktop, people either say "it didn't work in an isolated incident, so it must be junk" or the old "Linux is fine in the server room, but leave the desktop to the real OSes" meme. I haven't had to use OS X or Windows anything in a number of years, and don't miss a thing. For every example of bad UI design, bad configuration and bad application concept that comes up for Linux apps, several are also present in Windows and Mac applications, but for some reason Linux apps are lambasted for every problem, no matter how small ...
Apple is the "Madonna" of computing. It keeps reinventing itself every time that people think its dead. Of course, they aren't really making the majority of their money from software anymore, people think they are making more money from those cute little iDoohickeys now. I never much cared for the Macintosh line of computers ; they seem more toys than anything, but that's just one person's opinion.
(This is, by the way, not to detract from putting idiots who keep telling everyone how much Linux or Ubuntu or whatever is going to pwn every other OS in their place. That is the kind of thing that gives OSS advocates a bad name.)
Bash actually has the ability to do most of that with built-in functionality, so you don't even really need sed:
for FILE in *.bat; do mv -v $FILE "${FILE%%FROMtext}TOtext"; done
I mean, I couldn't justify wasting bandwidth on something like a Freedonia Tourist Site, but now, the whole world can enjoy the follies of a small country run by a ruthless dictator with a grease-paint mustache ...