Except for hackers and tinkerers, hardly anyone spends any great percentage of their computer time installing operating systems, applications, or new hardware. Usability and stability are what count for most users.
Example: my wife and I recently had a 7-year-old grandaughter staying with us, and to Kionna the only *usability* difference between Windows and Linux was that when she was looking at Java-intensive "kiddie" Web sites and they crashed Netscape on my wife's Windows computer, it took several minutes to reboot, but when Netscape crashed on one of my Linux PCs, it only took a second to restart Netscape.
Within a week, given a choice, Kionna headed for one of the Linux boxes and ignored our one remaining Windows computer.
This is not a scientifically valid survey, but if "our" little girl is any indication, Linux is now at least as easy to *use* as Windows for someone who has no prior experience with either OS.:)
BTW, Kionna likes Gnome better than KDE. While I use KDE as my default desktop, it was no big deal to set Kionna up with her own Gnome-as-default user account. Try *that* in Windows. Not only that, but she had played hell with some settings on my wife's Windows PC by pushing random keys, and had to be told what and what not to touch, while on the Linux PCs she could do anything she wanted without doing any harm.
For everyone else: Bruce knew the idea of doing this Q & A thing was pre-alpha, and kindly consented to participate in the experiment. And as always happens in such situations, it turned out to be lots more work than we expected. Plus (again, as usual) we both had lots of other stuff happen in our lives to mess up the week.
Some great questions, though. And great answers, Bruce.
Fixed. You know how it is when something runs way past deadline -- and you end up having to redo a whole bunch of page-busting HTML to remove hard-coded line breaks etc. in a hurry, besides.:)
The others asked pretty much same questions as the ones we forwarded to Bruce. That's what the "editorial selection" process really was: eliminating duplicates.
This was our first try at a "reader generated" interview. Next time, it'll be smoother, and the selection process will be more open.
And I'm sure that Bruce will not only be checking in here later on (he has other things to do, you know) but will do other things with us in the future, as well.
Of course! I read almost *all* Slashdot comments. And I respond to all the e-mail I get, too, most of which says, "Don't pay any attention to anonymous flamers, you're doing fine.";-)
I don't claim to know everything. I take all feedback, both negative and positive, quite seriously. I just don't feel that I'm important enough to be worth much public discussion, so I tend to confine my responses to private e-mail instead of making them in public.
For instance, the story to which *this* comment is appended is about Bruce Perens, a truly nice man for whom I have tremendous respect, and I feel bad about taking up even this little bit of *his* limelight.
If you want to continue this discussion, let's do it by e-mail, okay?
I'd like to see lots of small, low-power radio stations because, in times of major societal breakdown or other calamity, they are less likely to be disabled than the Internet. I am not a survivalist or a conspiracy theorist, but I believe that having plenty of small, distributed xmtrs is a Good Thing. One reason the U.S. would be almost impossible to invade and conquer is the fact that we have an armed populace and millions of CBs that populace can use to communicate. LPFM extends the commo capability. If, in good times, we get to hear some offbeat music and political views, that's fine, too, but as far as I'm concerned, that's just a fringe benefit.
Naah. No pay. A reader sent in the item, and I posted it, because the idea of super-staid Wal-Mart selling "spy stuff" is kind of funny. And note that a whole bunch of people immediately posted URLs for places that sell similar items for less.
I wouldn't let any Andover sales person *ever* plant a story in Slashdot. In fact, part of my job is here to keep them from even thinking about it. I'll play around, sure, but when it comes to maintaining editorial integrity, I do not joke. Ever.
Well, one thing is sure: we wouldn't be reading ANY of this if Comcast and excite@home had their way. Six months ago, here in Maryland, they closed down their "subscribers only" bulletin boards when they started to fill up with posts from people tired of crappy service, as in mail and member page servers going down as often as once a day, a problem that still continues and probably will until they have competition from another broadband Internet pipeline, which they don't currently have and are unlikely to have for several years in this part of the country.
Those of you who support the monopolists have a right to your opinion, but if the monopolists manage to take control of your 'net access, you'd better keep on taking their side, because open debates like this one will stop.
I encourage competition and free speech. If you disagree with my opinion, that's fine. You and Bill Gates now have something in common.:)
It was a newbie mistake on my part. Sorry. I let my personal interests creep in. What caught my eye was that radio modem support is included in the most recent AC patches, and my biggest current hardware desire, er, I mean need, is a Linux notebook equipped with a radio modem.;-)
*I* am not saying anything. The guy who sent in the comment said it all. There is no "article" here in the sense of linking to MSNBC or CNN, just an ongoing discussion of potential importance to open source and/or free software developers and users, many of whom regularly read and post to Slashdot. If software licensing issues aren't your cup of tea, that's okay. Different people have different interests.:)
A new group of townhouses is being built near where I live (Elkridge, MD; 30 miles N. of DC) and they're going for $120K. I live in a mobile home myself, a very fancy one with a fireplace and all, in a park with underground utilities and other upscale trimmings. Total cost $600/month. And cable modem service is readily available.
I got a job feeler a few months ago from a Silicon Valley company for a salary 25% higher than I was (then) getting here. There was no way I could have afforded to make the move.
Oh, well. I'm old enough to remember when San Jose was cheaper than San Francisco, not that anyone I knew wanted to live there. Too tacky!
As far as $350/month rents *in* DC, yeah, that's only in shooterville neighborhoods. Anyplace in town where you have a fighting chance that your car won't get broken into regularly, a decent 2-bedroom apartment with secure off-street parking (which I need for my limousine) goes for $1200+.
I avoided this problem in the original posted story (above) by spelling out "computer graphics." If I had used an abbreviation it would have been CG to avoid confusion with "the other" CGI.
I avoided this problem in the story (above) by spelling out "computer graphics." If I had used an abbreviation it would have been "CG" to avoid confusion with "the other CGI."
I wrote that piece online, virtually in realtime. A few of the earliest readers watched me go through three drafts in about 10 minutes as I tried to figure out a way to tie together all the latest stories (and the excellent BeDope satire) about Amiga's mind-changes. It was an experiment that I will not repeat. I guess the old saw about no one wanting to see what goes on in the kitchen of a fancy restaurant applies here too. In the future I'll keep the kitchen doors closed and only deliver the plate to your table after all the food and garnish is correctly arranged on it.:)
...to the store. My wife says so. But I won't disable comments while I'm gone -- or ever. I've been a Slashdot moderator as long as anyone, and I have never downgraded a post. (I've upgraded a few though.) (And made more than my share of parenthetical statements.)
Correct on both counts! And "This Old PC" on Netly News begat "Cheap Computing" @ Andover.net, which led to doing more and more work for Andover, where I'm now a senior editor (and still write Cheap Computing every week). But I still own the limo service and I still hear from Virtuanna and Peter Bell and some of the old alt.tasteless crew.
According to The Plan, I was going to remain invisible on slashdot (except for being the same grumpy member I've been for close to two years now) for some time yet, but jumped in, unprepared, along with Cowboy Neal today to keep the site alive while Taco and Hemos were powerless.
Apparently the local power company had a problem across town from/. and only has two repair crews out today. Phones, says Hemos, "are cutting in and out." They promise to post - phone - e-mail the second everything's working again.
Most Andover writers and hackers are long-time, dedicated/. readers. We like the site just as it is (except for the bandwidth problems and some of the typos) ourselves, and will scream as loudly as anyone else if the suits try to screw things up.
But don't worry. That won't happen. Andover has *very cool* management. I can honestly say that in 15 years of writing non-fiction for print and online publishers, they are the smartest media managers I've ever worked for.
I am writing this as an individual, as a Slashdot reader, and as a Linux user, not as an Andover flack. And I didn't ask anyone for permission to make this post. Andover is the kind of company that backs its writers and editors instead of messing with them. If it wasn't, I wouldn't work there myself. And if I thought they were going to mess with Slashdot, I would have sent Rob a "Don't do it" e-mail before the deal went through.
Dude, answering you is like responding to a guy who believes Art Bell's "black helicopter" conspiracy theories so strongly that every time he hears whirring blades over his head he runs for cover.
I've been reading and submitting articles to Linux Today since it went online. Believe me, Dave Whittinger, who runs Linux Today, knows who I am no matter what e-mail address I use.;-)
I even used to read (and enjoy) Three Point's Linux News, the online publication Dave ran before he started Linux Today. In fact, I reviewed Three Point's favorably in TechSightings last September, which is how I originally started corresponding with him.
As far as Jack Bryar, his opinions are his own. I don't always agree with him (or with other Andover columnists, either). The great thing about writing for Andover is that the people who run it give all columnists complete editorial freedom, including the freedom to screw up now and then.
Perhaps you'd like Andover better if its owners forced all their writers to spout a Microsoft-style corporate party line?
Kurt Gray and I are both writing here as ourselves, not as corporate flacks. Kurt is a programmer. I'm a writer. We live and work 400 miles apart. We both use Linux. We both read and like Slashdot. Other than that, we hardly have anything in common -- except respect for our bosses at Andover, who let columnists write what they want, right or wrong, without censoring their words, even when they're a little, um, embarassing.
There's a difference between news produced by a publication's in-house staffers and an OPINION column written by an outsider. Astute readers know this. They also know that, by definition, a columnist gets editorial control over what he or she writes -- and takes responsibility for it.
There's a big difference between reporting and opinion writing. But don't worry. They'll explain all this to you next year in the fifth grade. At least, that's when *I* learned it.:)
$20,000 is a typical advance for a specialized computer book in today's market. It's not big bucks, but a professional WRITER can do four or five of them a year.
Remember, writing is just as much of a craft as programming. I can "write" a PERL script, but someone who's spent a lot of time studying PERL can do it better and faster than I can. There is no way I could turn out enough usable PERL code per day to make a living at it.
Now turn the above paragraph around.
The ideal writer for a Gnome manual would be a team, not a single person. Put a good programmer and a good writer together and you'd have a hell of piece of work.
(I'm not looking for the job, thanks. I have too much to write already...)
Slashdot Mirror
Except for hackers and tinkerers, hardly anyone spends any great percentage of their computer time installing operating systems, applications, or new hardware. Usability and stability are what count for most users.
:)
Example: my wife and I recently had a 7-year-old grandaughter staying with us, and to Kionna the only *usability* difference between Windows and Linux was that when she was looking at Java-intensive "kiddie" Web sites and they crashed Netscape on my wife's Windows computer, it took several minutes to reboot, but when Netscape crashed on one of my Linux PCs, it only took a second to restart Netscape.
Within a week, given a choice, Kionna headed for one of the Linux boxes and ignored our one remaining Windows computer.
This is not a scientifically valid survey, but if "our" little girl is any indication, Linux is now at least as easy to *use* as Windows for someone who has no prior experience with either OS.
BTW, Kionna likes Gnome better than KDE. While I use KDE as my default desktop, it was no big deal to set Kionna up with her own Gnome-as-default user account. Try *that* in Windows. Not only that, but she had played hell with some settings on my wife's Windows PC by pushing random keys, and had to be told what and what not to touch, while on the Linux PCs she could do anything she wanted without doing any harm.
New Linux slogan: "Best OS for grandchildren!"
For everyone else: Bruce knew the idea of doing this Q & A thing was pre-alpha, and kindly consented to participate in the experiment. And as always happens in such situations, it turned out to be lots more work than we expected. Plus (again, as usual) we both had lots of other stuff happen in our lives to mess up the week.
Some great questions, though. And great answers, Bruce.
Fixed. You know how it is when something runs way past deadline -- and you end up having to redo a whole bunch of page-busting HTML to remove hard-coded line breaks etc. in a hurry, besides. :)
The others asked pretty much same questions as the ones we forwarded to Bruce. That's what the "editorial selection" process really was: eliminating duplicates.
This was our first try at a "reader generated" interview. Next time, it'll be smoother, and the selection process will be more open.
And I'm sure that Bruce will not only be checking in here later on (he has other things to do, you know) but will do other things with us in the future, as well.
I reforamtted it manually. Now it looks better. :)
AbiWord also reads MS Word docs fairly well without taking over your whole screen the way StarOffice does. Nice!
Of course! I read almost *all* Slashdot comments. And I respond to all the e-mail I get, too, most of which says, "Don't pay any attention to anonymous flamers, you're doing fine."
I don't claim to know everything. I take all feedback, both negative and positive, quite seriously. I just don't feel that I'm important enough to be worth much public discussion, so I tend to confine my responses to private e-mail instead of making them in public.
For instance, the story to which *this* comment is appended is about Bruce Perens, a truly nice man for whom I have tremendous respect, and I feel bad about taking up even this little bit of *his* limelight.
If you want to continue this discussion, let's do it by e-mail, okay?
I'd like to see lots of small, low-power radio stations because, in times of major societal breakdown or other calamity, they are less likely to be disabled than the Internet. I am not a survivalist or a conspiracy theorist, but I believe that having plenty of small, distributed xmtrs is a Good Thing. One reason the U.S. would be almost impossible to invade and conquer is the fact that we have an armed populace and millions of CBs that populace can use to communicate. LPFM extends the commo capability. If, in good times, we get to hear some offbeat music and political views, that's fine, too, but as far as I'm concerned, that's just a fringe benefit.
Thanks for the heads-up, Steve. I linked to the "old" IBM developer site by mistake. Change made.
Naah. No pay. A reader sent in the item, and I posted it, because the idea of super-staid Wal-Mart selling "spy stuff" is kind of funny. And note that a whole bunch of people immediately posted URLs for places that sell similar items for less.
I wouldn't let any Andover sales person *ever* plant a story in Slashdot. In fact, part of my job is here to keep them from even thinking about it. I'll play around, sure, but when it comes to maintaining editorial integrity, I do not joke. Ever.
Well, one thing is sure: we wouldn't be reading ANY of this if Comcast and excite@home had their way. Six months ago, here in Maryland, they closed down their "subscribers only" bulletin boards when they started to fill up with posts from people tired of crappy service, as in mail and member page servers going down as often as once a day, a problem that still continues and probably will until they have competition from another broadband Internet pipeline, which they don't currently have and are unlikely to have for several years in this part of the country.
:)
Those of you who support the monopolists have a right to your opinion, but if the monopolists manage to take control of your 'net access, you'd better keep on taking their side, because open debates like this one will stop.
I encourage competition and free speech. If you disagree with my opinion, that's fine. You and Bill Gates now have something in common.
It was a newbie mistake on my part. Sorry. I let my personal interests creep in. What caught my eye was that radio modem support is included in the most recent AC patches, and my biggest current hardware desire, er, I mean need, is a Linux notebook equipped with a radio modem. ;-)
*I* am not saying anything. The guy who sent in the comment said it all. There is no "article" here in the sense of linking to MSNBC or CNN, just an ongoing discussion of potential importance to open source and/or free software developers and users, many of whom regularly read and post to Slashdot. If software licensing issues aren't your cup of tea, that's okay. Different people have different interests. :)
A new group of townhouses is being built near where I live (Elkridge, MD; 30 miles N. of DC) and they're going for $120K. I live in a mobile home myself, a very fancy one with a fireplace and all, in a park with underground utilities and other upscale trimmings. Total cost $600/month. And cable modem service is readily available.
I got a job feeler a few months ago from a Silicon Valley company for a salary 25% higher than I was (then) getting here. There was no way I could have afforded to make the move.
Oh, well. I'm old enough to remember when San Jose was cheaper than San Francisco, not that anyone I knew wanted to live there. Too tacky!
As far as $350/month rents *in* DC, yeah, that's only in shooterville neighborhoods. Anyplace in town where you have a fighting chance that your car won't get broken into regularly, a decent 2-bedroom apartment with secure off-street parking (which I need for my limousine) goes for $1200+.
I avoided this problem in the original posted story (above) by spelling out "computer graphics." If I had used an abbreviation it would have been CG to avoid confusion with "the other" CGI.
I avoided this problem in the story (above) by spelling out "computer graphics." If I had used an abbreviation it would have been "CG" to avoid confusion with "the other CGI."
I wrote that piece online, virtually in realtime. A few of the earliest readers watched me go through three drafts in about 10 minutes as I tried to figure out a way to tie together all the latest stories (and the excellent BeDope satire) about Amiga's mind-changes. It was an experiment that I will not repeat. I guess the old saw about no one wanting to see what goes on in the kitchen of a fancy restaurant applies here too. In the future I'll keep the kitchen doors closed and only deliver the plate to your table after all the food and garnish is correctly arranged on it. :)
...to the store. My wife says so. But I won't disable comments while I'm gone -- or ever. I've been a Slashdot moderator as long as anyone, and I have never downgraded a post. (I've upgraded a few though.) (And made more than my share of parenthetical statements.)
Correct on both counts! And "This Old PC" on Netly News begat "Cheap Computing" @ Andover.net, which led to doing more and more work for Andover, where I'm now a senior editor (and still write Cheap Computing every week). But I still own the limo service and I still hear from Virtuanna and Peter Bell and some of the old alt.tasteless crew.
According to The Plan, I was going to remain invisible on slashdot (except for being the same grumpy member I've been for close to two years now) for some time yet, but jumped in, unprepared, along with Cowboy Neal today to keep the site alive while Taco and Hemos were powerless.
Apparently the local power company had a problem across town from /. and only has two repair crews out today. Phones, says Hemos, "are cutting in and out." They promise to post - phone - e-mail the second everything's working again.
(except for the bandwidth problems and some of the typos) ourselves, and will scream as loudly as
anyone else if the suits try to screw things up.
But don't worry. That won't happen. Andover has *very cool* management. I can honestly say that in
15 years of writing non-fiction for print and online publishers, they are the smartest media managers
I've ever worked for.
I am writing this as an individual, as a Slashdot reader, and as a Linux user, not as an Andover flack.
And I didn't ask anyone for permission to make this post. Andover is the kind of company that backs its
writers and editors instead of messing with them. If it wasn't, I wouldn't work there myself. And if I
thought they were going to mess with Slashdot, I would have sent Rob a "Don't do it" e-mail before the
deal went through.
Dude, answering you is like responding to a guy who believes Art Bell's "black helicopter" conspiracy theories so strongly that every time he hears whirring blades over his head he runs for cover.
I even used to read (and enjoy) Three Point's Linux News, the online publication Dave ran before he started Linux Today. In fact, I reviewed Three Point's favorably in TechSightings last September, which is how I originally started corresponding with him.
As far as Jack Bryar, his opinions are his own. I don't always agree with him (or with other Andover columnists, either). The great thing about writing for Andover is that the people who run it give all columnists complete editorial freedom, including the freedom to screw up now and then.
Perhaps you'd like Andover better if its owners forced all their writers to spout a Microsoft-style corporate party line?
Kurt Gray and I are both writing here as ourselves, not as corporate flacks. Kurt is a programmer. I'm a writer. We live and work 400 miles apart. We both use Linux. We both read and like Slashdot. Other than that, we hardly have anything in common -- except respect for our bosses at Andover, who let columnists write what they want, right or wrong, without censoring their words, even when they're a little, um, embarassing.
There's a difference between news produced by a
:)
publication's in-house staffers and an OPINION
column written by an outsider. Astute readers know this. They also know that, by definition, a columnist gets editorial control over what he or she writes -- and takes responsibility for it.
There's a big difference between reporting and opinion writing. But don't worry. They'll explain all this to you next year in the fifth grade. At least, that's when *I* learned it.
Remember, writing is just as much of a craft as programming. I can "write" a PERL script, but someone who's spent a lot of time studying PERL can do it better and faster than I can. There is no way I could turn out enough usable PERL code per day to make a living at it.
Now turn the above paragraph around.
The ideal writer for a Gnome manual would be a team, not a single person. Put a good programmer and a good writer together and you'd have a hell of piece of work.
(I'm not looking for the job, thanks. I have too much to write already...)