(and if I was Linus Torvalds, ala "Being Linus Torvalds" in which I stumble in a portal somewhere in San Jose which lets you see and feel everything Linus does, then pick up conveniently single pretty Maximum Linux columnists*... )
* Hey, just joking about that part!:)
* also, this would not technically be cheating on Mrs. Torvalds, since it would really be me inside the Finnish Love Machine**.
** I don't think anyone has ever put the words "Love," "Machine" and "Finnish" in that particular order before, certainly not in this context.
No (Yes?), I do know where and how to get a Slashdot one and eventually would like to, and may even end up with a VA Polo eventually, but I think corporate polos require a better procurement channel than simple T-shirts, so I just wonder where they got theirs;)
that's all;)
Tim
lo, forsooth, we *did* do this one at least;)
on
Going Up?
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· Score: 1
HerringFlavoredFowl wrote: "If you want some real action become a Nasa click worker at http://clickworkers.arc.nasa.gov/top
Maybe Slashdot will even do a story on it...
BigBlockMopar wrote: "Listen, I'm not a Saab fan, and I'm not an Escort fan. Neither is a car that I like.
But to compare the reliability of a 14 year old turbocharged luxury car against a 5 year old econobox is patently unfair.
Because of its age, it's probable that the Saab had more miles on it. It's also probable that the Saab, being a turbocharged alleged sports car was also driven harder. It's a luxury car, too - more complicated, with more things to break or wear out."
True on all counts, and I don't fault your taste -- I don't like most other people's cars, and frankly am surprised that I like the S900 *or* the escort (though in different ways).
The comparison *is* unfair, but not completely; the Saab was driven by the proverbial little old lady, and was approximately the same mileage at purchase that the escort was.
I must admit to lacking your car-sense (very worthwhile, my admiration for yours), though I'd like to develop more. Still, I do go in for routine maintenance, make sure that oil and filters are up to par, inspect tire pressure... not much, but from what I've seen more than most people do!
Given slightly different circs, I might go in for a pickup with a garage to play with it in, too -- right now, no room. Ah well!
a) that's not my idea, it's Mayor Quimby's. All I did was post his story.
b) But I would like to see cheap knockoffs in the hopes that several years down the line the overall quality and variety of LED devices available would be greater.
Just like all the Japanese companies which currently are renowned for high-quality products (Nikon, Honda, Seiko) were correctly considered imitators for a long time, but aren't now. They made (cameras / cars / watches) of acceptable quality cheap, and quickly ramped the quality up. Hondas today are high-quality, low-maintenance, reasonable price -- a net customer benefit. (I say that as a Ford owner with what is basically a Mazda engine.)
So. Wasn't a strange idea from timothy, but now it is.
You're right, Word has the ability to create clearer / more open file formats -- and I assume (though I don't have it even on the Windows partition of this laptop) that you can probably change the default output in Word's preferences. But the default output is more important that it's changeability implies, because most people probably aren't even aware that it *can* be changed, and of those who do, probably most never change it anyhow. Inertia and indifference are like the paired nuclear forces there;)
And as for how BeOS being opened (if it were, which it won't be in the medium-term, I know I know) and cross-platform file formats, well... the reason I hope that would encourage file-format neutrality is by dint of being *another* OS running on common hardware, and therefore a likely target for text files, web pages, spreadsheets, movies, etc. Software producers, at least and especially the commerical ones, want to sell to as many desktops as possible; it's in their interest (I allege) to provide file fomats which allow their products to work more than one place / context.
I think the less the OS running on a particular machine, and the harder it will be to assume that a certain subgroup of users are using the same OS, the better argument can be made for providing output that works cross-platform. You wrote: "... but if Microsoft wants to make theirs proprietary, that is their choice after all. There are open alternatives, and their reluctances to use them may well bite them in the ass one day."
Agreed on both points. It *is* Microsoft's choice, and surely defensible on some grounds. Just not my preference as someone mailed too many Word documents;)
another data point arguing for the importance of platform-neutral file formats and programs which produce them by default.
To argue for that, let me argue for a second against the opposite situation;)
Microsoft Word, though I'm not a fan, is an adequate program for manipulating strings of words. It has find-and-replace (my favorite missing feature in pine;) ), a spelling checker, etc. Without getting into my particular complaints, I concede that many people like MS Word. But MS Word *could* be a morally / aesthetically acceptable program to me for all its failings, but it's not now. Why? Because its default file format is obfuscated and proprietary, and requires someone else to have either their own copy of Word or a special limited-purpose reader, and is difficult on anything but a Mac or Windows-running PC.
That's lunacy. Analogies fail. It's as if... how would you like medical charts that required every doctor who wanted to look at them and even had your permission couldn't do so without having the same brand of printer that created them?
At any rate, I'd like to see an open sourced BeOS (not that it seems to be in the cards) if it would poke people with the idea that HTML, SGML, RTF, plain text and other such *un*obfuscated formats are the way to go. Documents in (even half-decent) HTML I think will be more likely legible than Word version X in 20, 30, 100 years.
I'd rather keyboards have a left component and a right component, perhaps communicating by bluetooth... despite their assertion, this looks anything but comfortable to use while lying down, because you would have to scrunch your shoulders to the center in order to grasp the device. Lying on your side? Forget it!
How about a simple (not chording) keyboard that's split in the middle not by a few degrees of angle, but not a cord that lets you position them a few feet apart?
COBOL/MVS wrote: "Face it, Virginia Beach got caught with their pants down and they knew it. Rather than face up to illegally (sp?) using Windows and other MS stuff, they paid the fiddler and called it even. Rules are rules. The GPL has rules and MS licenses have rules. Whether you like them or not, if you don't follow them, you'll get smacked!"
two responses to that part of it;) 1) some of those unfindable licenses are probably actually illegal -- burned CD-Rs of Word etc. However, there are probably lots of licenses unfindable for the reasons which other people have already pointed out -- re-installs using technicians copies rather than the per-machine copy after system failures, simple bad record-keeping, etc. 2) Agreed. I'm not saying they shouldn't pay -- if they entered the agreement, they ought to pay according to its terms. 129,000 is pocket change for VA Beach, at least if their overall budget is any indication (go read the speech by their Mayor about where they're spending money!).
More important, though, is the stuff you said first: "Try running Office, or VB or any other MS tool that most entities running Windows uses. Linux is not the answer all the time, especially if you can't run the tools that run your business (or government) on it. And don't try to tell me "you can convert to StarOffice, blah, blah, blah" because if you have thousands of documents to convert, you'll end up spending a lot of money. And, if those documents have macros embedded in them that are written in VBA, you're really into a dilly of a pickle."
Ok, we may be looking at a half-full glass and saying "Oh, it's a plastic cup!" but...
IMHO, the real problem with using (most)(proprietary) software is file formats. Like you say, switching is expensive. Import filters for Word --> StarOffice etc exist but are flakey, and will always be subject to leapfrogging by MS.
This is why I think it's a bad idea to be dependent on file formats which are subject to such whims. If VA Beach had required long-term document storage to be in (say) RTF or SGML, it would be a lot easier for them to convert not just to Linux or another Free OS, but also for instance to Sun etc. Document portability that way works easier with well-standardized, open formats not only between sw vendors but between hardware tiers -- if you're running UNIX servers served by guys running Solaris or Linux workstations, and Windows clients elsewhere, you need either 2nd machines or other workarounds for the UNIX guys to read the same documents that everyone else can, if they're in Word format. Will cops have iPAQs or similar?
And about using Office, VB, etc... this is hard to prove, but my conclusion based on very limited knowledge is that most documents written in Office shouldn't have been;) -- it's the expanding memo theory. KOffice has kinks, but ask a long-time Word user (I was in a former job) whether Word has any showstoppers, and boy does it. (Starting with viruses.) But most of these documents containing scripting and such are written with no maintainability in mind and shouldn't have been written that way. I know, that doens't change that they exist and may still be useful, but at what point do you say "Hey, this might not even work for the next version of word, guys, so let's not embed quite so much complexity in our office docs."?
I work on a Linux box every day, and plenty of people who read Slashdot do too. That doesn't mean it's "ready for everyone" but I'd certainly recommend Mandrake over Windows to a computer newbie for both ease of install and included applications. Most software is horrible, but on a relative scale, I don't think Windows is "easier than Linux" necessarily, as it's been painted.The problem is, Windows isn't "ready for everyone" either! But workable, slick WYSIWYG word processors? KWord is nice, AbiWord is better in some ways but has some bad flaws, too. Plenty of browsers, etc. (I used konqueror last night and was duly impressed; does IE have any tangible advantages over konqueror?).
Sigh. I'm rambling, I know, but my point in saying that you could get an awful lot of Open Source software for 129,000 is not that this will magically make the city able to replace all it's MS stuff overnight, but that in the long term it's smart not to be beholden to proprietary and expensive formats. (And it will get worse with "rental by the month" software.)
Sure, it comes with WinCE on it, but enough people and their Web pages are willing to tell you how to convert it to Linux that it's hard to complain that none exist.
Affordable... well, an iPAQ is around 500 bucks, but for that you don't get a PC Card sleeve, modem, or other things you'd probably want. (But then, you don't get a CD drive or a number of other things with many ultra-tiny laptops at much higher prices). For under a thousand dollars, you could get the equivalent of an MP3 player (strongarm 206 Mhz should be enough, right?), palm-thingie (less the all important long battery life -- we can dream, I guess), gameboy (if you can live with the available games*) and many functions of a notebook, including ethernet access, plus handwriting recognition. (Add USB keyboard for sitting-still enjoyment.)
Whether that's affordable is hard to say -- it probably is close to affordable to folks with their own houses, expensive cars and nice suits because they have jobs in IT for successful businesses; it's probably not affordable to starving artists, students and a lot of other people! (Like commercials that talk about "the most affordable [fill in expensive car name] yet." -- context is all important;) ) I am not about to drop a thousand dollars on a palm-sized computer, but in a few years I might, maybe sooner. If I win the lottery, I'll happily change my mind;)
Note that I don't have one or have any vested interest in anyone getting an iPAQ, a YOPY or any other device, except in making them ubiquitous and thus cheaper;) [That way I can get one, too;)]
timothy
*As not much of a gamer, I could -- I like X-bill and snake just fine, since I usually see games as simple mind clearing rather than ends in themselves -- though the great ones are amazing art. I wonder what tuxracer would look like at that resolution...
but I'd be a lot happier to carry around (for instance) an iPaq and a visor than (as I often do) a laptop and a visor. The Visor is my addressbook, random-idea-on-subway, jotted-notes thing, the laptop is for modem / ethernet / typing stuff. With a folding keyboard and the PC card slots, a lot (most) of what I would use a laptop for could be done with the iPAQ (or a wearable, for that matter, but that goes without saying...) For a reason that may sound silly (street cleaning), I often work for the hours of 11-2 every monday in my car. My laptop is too big to open comfortably in the driver's seat no matter how far I scoot it back.
And as far as "people don't need"... well, all these needs are relative anyhow. No one needs a standalone MP3 player either, but if a combo exists which saves space and number of breakable electronics, hey, sounds interesting.
You're right, with those things, the ingredients for a wearable are all there. I'm guessing that the sleeve you mention would cost... what, $250? (the current sleeve costs $160 at jandr.com, probably not the greatest price but first I checked -- so I hope $250 is pretty conservative.)
Ethernet card? Well, I dunno what special thingies the iPAQ needs, but i have a nice linksys 56k & 10/100 PC card, so maybe I'm covered. VGA cards as PCMCIA, though... the only one listed on Pricewatch is an HP that costs 156 dollars.
The head-mounted display is the problem... I've not seen any yet that I really liked.
Still, since that's a cost you're going to have to face anyhow. you're right that this combo sounds like a pretty economical wearable!
I used to laugh at the iPAQ, echoing the usual "ha! If it's that small, I want a long-battery life palm. Who needs more than that in a palm-top?!" argument, which argument I am not belittling;) [Got a visor last year which keeps on rocking despite drops and battery malnourishment.]
However, now I've seen the iPAQ up close a few times (and the itsy, which has a much cooler shape and color!), and I'm 98 percent convinced that iPAQ (or similar) is an actually great idea.
The cons:
- battery life. No getting around it, only choosing better paths.
- Whuddeye miss?
The pros:
- Bright, legible screen. Good enough that with an external keyboard, I'd be happy to use it for a writing station, and OK for it as a web-browsing thing as well, (perhaps with an even slimmer Galeon or a mini-Konqueror?)
- plays mini-movies, MP3s, etc. Which might have been silly a few years ago, but when it's closer to trivial, it's hard to ignore.
- 802.11 via plug-in module - email, in hand, on couch....
- Runs X (pro or con, your choice)
In short, I think at $500 (plus accessories) this is coming in very well compared to other tiny computing choices, and even better then those tiny folding keyboards for it are widely avaible.
Carnage4Life wrote (accurately enough): "This article is similar to asking a bunch of random Windows users where Windows(TM) development should go and expecting a coherrent answer."
OK, but what's wrong with that?!:)
You're right that asking a lot of users (vs. developers) won't result in definitive, future-defining moments. What it might do is provide a public place where a *lot* of users can point out what they'd most like to see.
Linus et al are free (by definition) to make / not make whatever changes they want, but fixing annoyances and adding cool features seems to make them happy.
a) snol, you're right. Putting on Linux is far harder than it ought to be, and there are a lot of non-intuitive steps to it. [Everyone who's given up on a Debian installation, please raise your hands...]
b) However, I don't think you're *all* right;) I recently put together a box in order to do nothing but play around with different distros (and esp. their installation procedures) in order to better understand them all. I would suggest to you these distros as being easier to install than others:
1) Mandrake: Even if you decide not to stick with this as your final distro, Mandrake uses the DiskDrake formatting tool, so other distros which have no partitioning tool included can use the spaces you create with it. Also, Mandrake does the nicest job I've seen of nicely *keeping* an underlying Windows partition if that's what you want to do. Also, I think that Mandrake 7.2 is the most likely to support your cool video card.
2) Stormix: It's debian based, but with much less confusion than the raw Debian install you can get X and other things working.
3) SuSE 7.X - much nicer install than the 6.X versions, really walks you through things, with good sidebar explanations of what each step in the process means.
But there are lots of others to try, too... RedHat 7.X is way better than the 6.X series when it comes to installation, for instance. I forget whether it includes a tool like DiskDrake, which is the chief reason I rank Mandrake so high.
The ease of use issues you mention are very important, undeniably... On the other hand, I've never been a big fan or user of Windows, and I have plenty of complaints about the windows interface (to modify my internet connection, I hit a button called start, then choose a line that says "Settings" then a line that says "control panels" before opening a folder which may or may not allow me to establish a connection? Yoiks! Call *that* intuitive;)
We're all affected by different things differently; I get along better with the design decisions (esp. for file placement etc) on the Mac than Windows, but linux / unix systems fall somewhere between those two.
Autotodetection of more settings would be a good thing, sure, but as you mention there are some big issues on the hardware makers' end too. For the particular hardware (none of it bleeding edge or terribly obscure -- mostly low-end as of 18 months ago and definitely low-end now), the current distros seem to find and recognize most of it. (But not, as you say, network parameters, etc.)
And of course, companies like to hear specific probs or complaints;) If something doesn't work and you tell them about it, could be that next time it will work.
What I meant by that off-the-cuff line was only that in comparison to a more expensive commercial product, Plex86 will seem more attractive (less expensive) to people using it to run those things which Plex86 and VMWare can both handle.
I didn't mean the actual price, only relative. I think you're right -- VMWare's price could drop if they want it to compete for home users under those circumstances (of course, running Win95 isn't what most users want nowadays, I'd guess), but until Plex86 can run 98, NT, 2000, Me, or whatever else, VMWare does seem to have a pretty fat corporate target for a while...
warning, IANAPST (I am not a public school teacher), but I know a few at least somewhat. One is the mother of my housemate, who teaches at Centennial High school of Ellicott City, Md;) Sara (the housemate) says that her mom the teacher complains that in your average classroom's worth of scantron tests, at least a few are misread. I've even had a few misread when I attended that school, in fact! (Tedious down-the-line readings in class usually revealed a few kids whose answers were "interpreted" incorrectly.)
So you want to vote with *that*?:) Scantron has no hanging chads, but it's not a highly reliable system, and it doesn't get rid of the ambiguities of the double-punching ballot; only better instructions can do that. (I've seen kids who marked multiple answers on one-answer scantrons, with good justifications for both answers -- whattaya gonna do when the analogous situation comes up on an election ballot?)
timothy
p.s. Check out the book The Tyranny of Testing for more revealing info. on multiple choice tests, too. Out of print, I'm sure, but a quick read and worth it if you're near a large library.
Compare the populations -- 275 million people vs. 260 for the entire UK. Land area, etc too. I bet there are parts of this country less accessable to a voting booth than the furthest stretch of the UK is from one (though convenience is hard to quanitify, and we could probably both come up with some mind-stretching hard-luck cases;))...
If you've seen any shots of the florida recounters, I think you might be screaming for a greater involvement of electronics, actually!:) (elderly people squinting at ballots, then keeping count with the old "4 lines and a crosshatch" method).
actually, I've seen enough of it for my satisfaction, and I think plenty to get the jist of the movie. The references were not all that subtle;)
Frankly, I didn't know it was a Tim Burton movie when I went in (I'm forgetful to check things like that, though I should). Maybe that's why I didn't like it -- I thought the Hudsucker Proxy sucked too, despite the very sexy Jennifer Jason Leigh and cool-actor Paul Newman (he was in that, right?).
I just didn't think it was *funny* -- humor being very personal of course. Just like I thought the 2nd Austin Powers movie was nowhere near as funny as the first, though it had a few moments. MiniMe made me laugh, and Scott Evil is hilarious, Fat Bastard is amazingly gross, and the simple fact of being a sequel allowed certain James Bond jokes to be done. It still didn't grab me.
Oh, I've never seen Mission To Mars, only Mars Attacks!...
I thought it was pretty bad. It at least has some bright spots (Jack Nicholson, Miss Portman) but overall? Not worth Matinee prices. Dollar theatre, maybe.
Mission to Mars sounds like it was worse, but the review cobbled together about it by those/. authors who did see it made me save my money on that one;)
I do agree that this isn't (what we think of as) a book, but... what do you propose as a better term? [OTOH, books aren't always written on paper (could be parchment, or vellum, or whatnot) and they *can* be subject to change, only not with the ease of an online version. (addenda can be mailed, next editions reflect changes, etc -- the Mac Bible, for instance, used to and perhaps still comes with a year of updates by mail.)]
For instance, "Document" is accurate, but just a shade less vague than "artifact" or "thing." There are things like "eBook" but they're to gag on and die.
In this case, there really is a print version as well; this makes me feel not-so-bad about calling the electronic version a "book" as well.
I can't think of a replacement that works *better* than book; sort of like a "sedan" has not always meant a certain kind of internal-combustion-engine automobile, I think the term "book" will probably just become more inclusive.
My birthday is the 18th of December. I would appreciate it if you could release the kernel on that date. Since I'm now too old to get any good presents from my parents, and my girlfriend won't give me a present until I find out who she is and where she's been hiding, I would really like a new kernel as consolation prize.
My mom was there a few months ago volunteering through her church at a place called Hope Ranch, which I think is actually quite a ways from Whitefish, but that's the nearest real town or city. (Which do you consider it? I dunno...)
She mentioned that the ranch has no regular phone connection, only a radio to town (though I was unclear as to whether 2-way telephone calls could be had over it). She was asking whether there were ways to get Internet service in a place with no phone lines, and I had to tell her "Well, there's Hughes... but that still needs a phone for outgoing requests. Anything else is way too expensive." Sounds like I'm wrong now, unless there are factors like satellite declination which mean it won't be available there. I'd much rather have internet conectivity than phone, for obvious reasons!
That area of the country is so beautiful, I'd rather like to live there if there were lower taxes (sorry to hear about that -- just wrecked my plans!) and good access.
So that's why I picked Whitefish. Besides which, it's the only town I could think of there;)
StormyMonday wrote: "If you don't vote, you've got no right to complain about the Gov't for the next four years. So get your sorry arse to the polls or SHUT THE FUCK UP!!!"
I disagree. This morning, I left the house at 6:50 a.m. and pulled my levers (well... filled out my ScanTron form) for the only pres. candidate I consider worth thinking about and a few seemingly less-evil local candidates. But people who don't vote because the choices are insane (forcing myself to vote was a big struggle, but I did it) have a legitimate reason not to.
Put it this way: if your community was having a vote "Do we or do we not burn StormyMonday's residence, what with all of his constant bongo playing and seditious views?" would you believe you had no right to complain unless you were one of the few who voted No? I think you have a right to complain about being screwed even if you refuse to designate the exact form of the screwing.
Slashdot Mirror
I would make the date November 20th.
* Hey, just joking about that part! :)
* also, this would not technically be cheating on Mrs. Torvalds, since it would really be me inside the Finnish Love Machine**.
** I don't think anyone has ever put the words "Love," "Machine" and "Finnish" in that particular order before, certainly not in this context.
No (Yes?), I do know where and how to get a Slashdot one and eventually would like to, and may even end up with a VA Polo eventually, but I think corporate polos require a better procurement channel than simple T-shirts, so I just wonder where they got theirs ;)
;)
that's all
Tim
HerringFlavoredFowl wrote: "If you want some real action become a Nasa click worker at http://clickworkers.arc.nasa.gov/top
:)
4 23 8
Maybe Slashdot will even do a story on it...
I wait with herring baited breath"
You mean like this?
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/12/16/184
timothy
BigBlockMopar wrote: "Listen, I'm not a Saab fan, and I'm not an Escort fan. Neither is a car that I like.
... not much, but from what I've seen more than most people do!
But to compare the reliability of a 14 year old turbocharged luxury car against a 5 year old econobox is patently unfair.
Because of its age, it's probable that the Saab had more miles on it. It's also probable that the Saab, being a turbocharged alleged sports car was also driven harder. It's a luxury car, too - more complicated, with more things to break or wear out."
True on all counts, and I don't fault your taste -- I don't like most other people's cars, and frankly am surprised that I like the S900 *or* the escort (though in different ways).
The comparison *is* unfair, but not completely; the Saab was driven by the proverbial little old lady, and was approximately the same mileage at purchase that the escort was.
I must admit to lacking your car-sense (very worthwhile, my admiration for yours), though I'd like to develop more. Still, I do go in for routine maintenance, make sure that oil and filters are up to par, inspect tire pressure
Given slightly different circs, I might go in for a pickup with a garage to play with it in, too -- right now, no room. Ah well!
timothy
Dear Bilestoad:
a) that's not my idea, it's Mayor Quimby's. All I did was post his story.
b) But I would like to see cheap knockoffs in the hopes that several years down the line the overall quality and variety of LED devices available would be greater.
Just like all the Japanese companies which currently are renowned for high-quality products (Nikon, Honda, Seiko) were correctly considered imitators for a long time, but aren't now. They made (cameras / cars / watches) of acceptable quality cheap, and quickly ramped the quality up. Hondas today are high-quality, low-maintenance, reasonable price -- a net customer benefit. (I say that as a Ford owner with what is basically a Mazda engine.)
So. Wasn't a strange idea from timothy, but now it is.
timothy
You're right, Word has the ability to create clearer / more open file formats -- and I assume (though I don't have it even on the Windows partition of this laptop) that you can probably change the default output in Word's preferences. But the default output is more important that it's changeability implies, because most people probably aren't even aware that it *can* be changed, and of those who do, probably most never change it anyhow. Inertia and indifference are like the paired nuclear forces there;)
... the reason I hope that would encourage file-format neutrality is by dint of being *another* OS running on common hardware, and therefore a likely target for text files, web pages, spreadsheets, movies, etc. Software producers, at least and especially the commerical ones, want to sell to as many desktops as possible; it's in their interest (I allege) to provide file fomats which allow their products to work more than one place / context.
And as for how BeOS being opened (if it were, which it won't be in the medium-term, I know I know) and cross-platform file formats, well
I think the less the OS running on a particular machine, and the harder it will be to assume that a certain subgroup of users are using the same OS, the better argument can be made for providing output that works cross-platform. You wrote: "... but if Microsoft wants to make theirs proprietary, that is their choice after all. There are open alternatives, and their reluctances to use them may well bite them in the ass one day."
Agreed on both points. It *is* Microsoft's choice, and surely defensible on some grounds. Just not my preference as someone mailed too many Word documents;)
Anyhow, idle chatter,
timothy
another data point arguing for the importance of platform-neutral file formats and programs which produce them by default.
... how would you like medical charts that required every doctor who wanted to look at them and even had your permission couldn't do so without having the same brand of printer that created them?
...
To argue for that, let me argue for a second against the opposite situation;)
Microsoft Word, though I'm not a fan, is an adequate program for manipulating strings of words. It has find-and-replace (my favorite missing feature in pine;) ), a spelling checker, etc. Without getting into my particular complaints, I concede that many people like MS Word. But MS Word *could* be a morally / aesthetically acceptable program to me for all its failings, but it's not now. Why? Because its default file format is obfuscated and proprietary, and requires someone else to have either their own copy of Word or a special limited-purpose reader, and is difficult on anything but a Mac or Windows-running PC.
That's lunacy. Analogies fail. It's as if
At any rate, I'd like to see an open sourced BeOS (not that it seems to be in the cards) if it would poke people with the idea that HTML, SGML, RTF, plain text and other such *un*obfuscated formats are the way to go. Documents in (even half-decent) HTML I think will be more likely legible than Word version X in 20, 30, 100 years.
Anyhow, the continuing rant
timothy
I'd rather keyboards have a left component and a right component, perhaps communicating by bluetooth ... despite their assertion, this looks anything but comfortable to use while lying down, because you would have to scrunch your shoulders to the center in order to grasp the device. Lying on your side? Forget it!
How about a simple (not chording) keyboard that's split in the middle not by a few degrees of angle, but not a cord that lets you position them a few feet apart?
timothy
COBOL/MVS wrote: "Face it, Virginia Beach got caught with their pants down and they knew it. Rather than face up to illegally (sp?) using Windows and other MS stuff, they paid the fiddler and called it even. Rules are rules. The GPL has rules and MS licenses have rules. Whether you like them or not, if you don't follow them, you'll get smacked!"
...
... this is hard to prove, but my conclusion based on very limited knowledge is that most documents written in Office shouldn't have been;) -- it's the expanding memo theory. KOffice has kinks, but ask a long-time Word user (I was in a former job) whether Word has any showstoppers, and boy does it. (Starting with viruses.) But most of these documents containing scripting and such are written with no maintainability in mind and shouldn't have been written that way. I know, that doens't change that they exist and may still be useful, but at what point do you say "Hey, this might not even work for the next version of word, guys, so let's not embed quite so much complexity in our office docs."?
two responses to that part of it;) 1) some of those unfindable licenses are probably actually illegal -- burned CD-Rs of Word etc. However, there are probably lots of licenses unfindable for the reasons which other people have already pointed out -- re-installs using technicians copies rather than the per-machine copy after system failures, simple bad record-keeping, etc. 2) Agreed. I'm not saying they shouldn't pay -- if they entered the agreement, they ought to pay according to its terms. 129,000 is pocket change for VA Beach, at least if their overall budget is any indication (go read the speech by their Mayor about where they're spending money!).
More important, though, is the stuff you said first: "Try running Office, or VB or any other MS tool that most entities running Windows uses. Linux is not the answer all the time, especially if you can't run the tools that run your business (or government) on it. And don't try to tell me "you can convert to StarOffice, blah, blah, blah" because if you have thousands of documents to convert, you'll end up spending a lot of money. And, if those documents have macros embedded in them that are written in VBA, you're really into a dilly of a pickle."
Ok, we may be looking at a half-full glass and saying "Oh, it's a plastic cup!" but
IMHO, the real problem with using (most)(proprietary) software is file formats. Like you say, switching is expensive. Import filters for Word --> StarOffice etc exist but are flakey, and will always be subject to leapfrogging by MS.
This is why I think it's a bad idea to be dependent on file formats which are subject to such whims. If VA Beach had required long-term document storage to be in (say) RTF or SGML, it would be a lot easier for them to convert not just to Linux or another Free OS, but also for instance to Sun etc. Document portability that way works easier with well-standardized, open formats not only between sw vendors but between hardware tiers -- if you're running UNIX servers served by guys running Solaris or Linux workstations, and Windows clients elsewhere, you need either 2nd machines or other workarounds for the UNIX guys to read the same documents that everyone else can, if they're in Word format. Will cops have iPAQs or similar?
And about using Office, VB, etc
I work on a Linux box every day, and plenty of people who read Slashdot do too. That doesn't mean it's "ready for everyone" but I'd certainly recommend Mandrake over Windows to a computer newbie for both ease of install and included applications. Most software is horrible, but on a relative scale, I don't think Windows is "easier than Linux" necessarily, as it's been painted.The problem is, Windows isn't "ready for everyone" either! But workable, slick WYSIWYG word processors? KWord is nice, AbiWord is better in some ways but has some bad flaws, too. Plenty of browsers, etc. (I used konqueror last night and was duly impressed; does IE have any tangible advantages over konqueror?).
Sigh. I'm rambling, I know, but my point in saying that you could get an awful lot of Open Source software for 129,000 is not that this will magically make the city able to replace all it's MS stuff overnight, but that in the long term it's smart not to be beholden to proprietary and expensive formats. (And it will get worse with "rental by the month" software.)
Cheers,
timothy
iPAQ;)
... well, an iPAQ is around 500 bucks, but for that you don't get a PC Card sleeve, modem, or other things you'd probably want. (But then, you don't get a CD drive or a number of other things with many ultra-tiny laptops at much higher prices). For under a thousand dollars, you could get the equivalent of an MP3 player (strongarm 206 Mhz should be enough, right?), palm-thingie (less the all important long battery life -- we can dream, I guess), gameboy (if you can live with the available games*) and many functions of a notebook, including ethernet access, plus handwriting recognition. (Add USB keyboard for sitting-still enjoyment.)
...
Sure, it comes with WinCE on it, but enough people and their Web pages are willing to tell you how to convert it to Linux that it's hard to complain that none exist.
Affordable
Whether that's affordable is hard to say -- it probably is close to affordable to folks with their own houses, expensive cars and nice suits because they have jobs in IT for successful businesses; it's probably not affordable to starving artists, students and a lot of other people! (Like commercials that talk about "the most affordable [fill in expensive car name] yet." -- context is all important;) ) I am not about to drop a thousand dollars on a palm-sized computer, but in a few years I might, maybe sooner. If I win the lottery, I'll happily change my mind;)
Note that I don't have one or have any vested interest in anyone getting an iPAQ, a YOPY or any other device, except in making them ubiquitous and thus cheaper;) [That way I can get one, too;)]
timothy
*As not much of a gamer, I could -- I like X-bill and snake just fine, since I usually see games as simple mind clearing rather than ends in themselves -- though the great ones are amazing art. I wonder what tuxracer would look like at that resolution
but I'd be a lot happier to carry around (for instance) an iPaq and a visor than (as I often do) a laptop and a visor. The Visor is my addressbook, random-idea-on-subway, jotted-notes thing, the laptop is for modem / ethernet / typing stuff. With a folding keyboard and the PC card slots, a lot (most) of what I would use a laptop for could be done with the iPAQ (or a wearable, for that matter, but that goes without saying ...) For a reason that may sound silly (street cleaning), I often work for the hours of 11-2 every monday in my car. My laptop is too big to open comfortably in the driver's seat no matter how far I scoot it back.
... well, all these needs are relative anyhow. No one needs a standalone MP3 player either, but if a combo exists which saves space and number of breakable electronics, hey, sounds interesting.
And as far as "people don't need"
timothy
You're right, with those things, the ingredients for a wearable are all there. I'm guessing that the sleeve you mention would cost ... what, $250? (the current sleeve costs $160 at jandr.com, probably not the greatest price but first I checked -- so I hope $250 is pretty conservative.)
... the only one listed on Pricewatch is an HP that costs 156 dollars.
... I've not seen any yet that I really liked.
Ethernet card? Well, I dunno what special thingies the iPAQ needs, but i have a nice linksys 56k & 10/100 PC card, so maybe I'm covered. VGA cards as PCMCIA, though
The head-mounted display is the problem
Still, since that's a cost you're going to have to face anyhow. you're right that this combo sounds like a pretty economical wearable!
timothy
I used to laugh at the iPAQ, echoing the usual "ha! If it's that small, I want a long-battery life palm. Who needs more than that in a palm-top?!" argument, which argument I am not belittling;) [Got a visor last year which keeps on rocking despite drops and battery malnourishment.]
....
However, now I've seen the iPAQ up close a few times (and the itsy, which has a much cooler shape and color!), and I'm 98 percent convinced that iPAQ (or similar) is an actually great idea.
The cons:
- battery life. No getting around it, only choosing better paths.
- Whuddeye miss?
The pros:
- Bright, legible screen. Good enough that with an external keyboard, I'd be happy to use it for a writing station, and OK for it as a web-browsing thing as well, (perhaps with an even slimmer Galeon or a mini-Konqueror?)
- plays mini-movies, MP3s, etc. Which might have been silly a few years ago, but when it's closer to trivial, it's hard to ignore.
- 802.11 via plug-in module - email, in hand, on couch
- Runs X (pro or con, your choice)
In short, I think at $500 (plus accessories) this is coming in very well compared to other tiny computing choices, and even better then those tiny folding keyboards for it are widely avaible.
timothy
Carnage4Life wrote (accurately enough): "This article is similar to asking a bunch of random Windows users where Windows(TM) development should go and expecting a coherrent answer."
:)
... what's the problem? :)
OK, but what's wrong with that?!
You're right that asking a lot of users (vs. developers) won't result in definitive, future-defining moments. What it might do is provide a public place where a *lot* of users can point out what they'd most like to see.
Linus et al are free (by definition) to make / not make whatever changes they want, but fixing annoyances and adding cool features seems to make them happy.
so
timothy
a) snol, you're right. Putting on Linux is far harder than it ought to be, and there are a lot of non-intuitive steps to it. [Everyone who's given up on a Debian installation, please raise your hands ...]
... RedHat 7.X is way better than the 6.X series when it comes to installation, for instance. I forget whether it includes a tool like DiskDrake, which is the chief reason I rank Mandrake so high.
... On the other hand, I've never been a big fan or user of Windows, and I have plenty of complaints about the windows interface (to modify my internet connection, I hit a button called start, then choose a line that says "Settings" then a line that says "control panels" before opening a folder which may or may not allow me to establish a connection? Yoiks! Call *that* intuitive;)
b) However, I don't think you're *all* right;) I recently put together a box in order to do nothing but play around with different distros (and esp. their installation procedures) in order to better understand them all. I would suggest to you these distros as being easier to install than others:
1) Mandrake: Even if you decide not to stick with this as your final distro, Mandrake uses the DiskDrake formatting tool, so other distros which have no partitioning tool included can use the spaces you create with it. Also, Mandrake does the nicest job I've seen of nicely *keeping* an underlying Windows partition if that's what you want to do. Also, I think that Mandrake 7.2 is the most likely to support your cool video card.
2) Stormix: It's debian based, but with much less confusion than the raw Debian install you can get X and other things working.
3) SuSE 7.X - much nicer install than the 6.X versions, really walks you through things, with good sidebar explanations of what each step in the process means.
But there are lots of others to try, too
The ease of use issues you mention are very important, undeniably
We're all affected by different things differently; I get along better with the design decisions (esp. for file placement etc) on the Mac than Windows, but linux / unix systems fall somewhere between those two.
Autotodetection of more settings would be a good thing, sure, but as you mention there are some big issues on the hardware makers' end too. For the particular hardware (none of it bleeding edge or terribly obscure -- mostly low-end as of 18 months ago and definitely low-end now), the current distros seem to find and recognize most of it. (But not, as you say, network parameters, etc.)
And of course, companies like to hear specific probs or complaints;) If something doesn't work and you tell them about it, could be that next time it will work.
timothy
What I meant by that off-the-cuff line was only that in comparison to a more expensive commercial product, Plex86 will seem more attractive (less expensive) to people using it to run those things which Plex86 and VMWare can both handle.
...
I didn't mean the actual price, only relative. I think you're right -- VMWare's price could drop if they want it to compete for home users under those circumstances (of course, running Win95 isn't what most users want nowadays, I'd guess), but until Plex86 can run 98, NT, 2000, Me, or whatever else, VMWare does seem to have a pretty fat corporate target for a while
timothy
warning, IANAPST (I am not a public school teacher), but I know a few at least somewhat. One is the mother of my housemate, who teaches at Centennial High school of Ellicott City, Md;) Sara (the housemate) says that her mom the teacher complains that in your average classroom's worth of scantron tests, at least a few are misread. I've even had a few misread when I attended that school, in fact! (Tedious down-the-line readings in class usually revealed a few kids whose answers were "interpreted" incorrectly.)
:) Scantron has no hanging chads, but it's not a highly reliable system, and it doesn't get rid of the ambiguities of the double-punching ballot; only better instructions can do that. (I've seen kids who marked multiple answers on one-answer scantrons, with good justifications for both answers -- whattaya gonna do when the analogous situation comes up on an election ballot?)
So you want to vote with *that*?
timothy
p.s. Check out the book The Tyranny of Testing for more revealing info. on multiple choice tests, too. Out of print, I'm sure, but a quick read and worth it if you're near a large library.
Size size size.
...
:) (elderly people squinting at ballots, then keeping count with the old "4 lines and a crosshatch" method).
Compare the populations -- 275 million people vs. 260 for the entire UK. Land area, etc too. I bet there are parts of this country less accessable to a voting booth than the furthest stretch of the UK is from one (though convenience is hard to quanitify, and we could probably both come up with some mind-stretching hard-luck cases;))
If you've seen any shots of the florida recounters, I think you might be screaming for a greater involvement of electronics, actually!
timothy
actually, I've seen enough of it for my satisfaction, and I think plenty to get the jist of the movie. The references were not all that subtle;)
Frankly, I didn't know it was a Tim Burton movie when I went in (I'm forgetful to check things like that, though I should). Maybe that's why I didn't like it -- I thought the Hudsucker Proxy sucked too, despite the very sexy Jennifer Jason Leigh and cool-actor Paul Newman (he was in that, right?).
I just didn't think it was *funny* -- humor being very personal of course. Just like I thought the 2nd Austin Powers movie was nowhere near as funny as the first, though it had a few moments. MiniMe made me laugh, and Scott Evil is hilarious, Fat Bastard is amazingly gross, and the simple fact of being a sequel allowed certain James Bond jokes to be done. It still didn't grab me.
timothy
Oh, I've never seen Mission To Mars, only Mars Attacks! ...
/. authors who did see it made me save my money on that one;)
I thought it was pretty bad. It at least has some bright spots (Jack Nicholson, Miss Portman) but overall? Not worth Matinee prices. Dollar theatre, maybe.
Mission to Mars sounds like it was worse, but the review cobbled together about it by those
timothy
boo? :)
... what do you propose as a better term? [OTOH, books aren't always written on paper (could be parchment, or vellum, or whatnot) and they *can* be subject to change, only not with the ease of an online version. (addenda can be mailed, next editions reflect changes, etc -- the Mac Bible, for instance, used to and perhaps still comes with a year of updates by mail.)]
:)
I do agree that this isn't (what we think of as) a book, but
For instance, "Document" is accurate, but just a shade less vague than "artifact" or "thing." There are things like "eBook" but they're to gag on and die.
In this case, there really is a print version as well; this makes me feel not-so-bad about calling the electronic version a "book" as well.
I can't think of a replacement that works *better* than book; sort of like a "sedan" has not always meant a certain kind of internal-combustion-engine automobile, I think the term "book" will probably just become more inclusive.
Suggestions welcome!
timothy
a) You don't *roll* crack! You smoke it in a glass pipe. (The universal "you" that is.)
b) niggly means picayune or persnickety.
timothy
Dear Linus Claus:
My birthday is the 18th of December. I would appreciate it if you could release the kernel on that date. Since I'm now too old to get any good presents from my parents, and my girlfriend won't give me a present until I find out who she is and where she's been hiding, I would really like a new kernel as consolation prize.
Sincerely,
Tim
p.s. A little early is OK, too.
My mom was there a few months ago volunteering through her church at a place called Hope Ranch, which I think is actually quite a ways from Whitefish, but that's the nearest real town or city. (Which do you consider it? I dunno ...)
... but that still needs a phone for outgoing requests. Anything else is way too expensive." Sounds like I'm wrong now, unless there are factors like satellite declination which mean it won't be available there. I'd much rather have internet conectivity than phone, for obvious reasons!
She mentioned that the ranch has no regular phone connection, only a radio to town (though I was unclear as to whether 2-way telephone calls could be had over it). She was asking whether there were ways to get Internet service in a place with no phone lines, and I had to tell her "Well, there's Hughes
That area of the country is so beautiful, I'd rather like to live there if there were lower taxes (sorry to hear about that -- just wrecked my plans!) and good access.
So that's why I picked Whitefish. Besides which, it's the only town I could think of there;)
timothy
StormyMonday wrote: "If you don't vote, you've got no right to complain about the Gov't for the next four years. So get your sorry arse to the polls or SHUT THE FUCK UP!!!"
... filled out my ScanTron form) for the only pres. candidate I consider worth thinking about and a few seemingly less-evil local candidates. But people who don't vote because the choices are insane (forcing myself to vote was a big struggle, but I did it) have a legitimate reason not to.
I disagree. This morning, I left the house at 6:50 a.m. and pulled my levers (well
Put it this way: if your community was having a vote "Do we or do we not burn StormyMonday's residence, what with all of his constant bongo playing and seditious views?" would you believe you had no right to complain unless you were one of the few who voted No? I think you have a right to complain about being screwed even if you refuse to designate the exact form of the screwing.
timothy