I hate to nitpick, but I think you mean a shallow learning curve. The curve is something like ability to use something vs time interacted with. A steep curve would imply ability increases rapidly, wherease a shallow one implies it increases slowly.
I have that same problem with mine, which is about to go out of warranty so I think it's time to get to work on it.
My guess would be a shim + glue would be a great help.
I was absentmindedly resting my head on my hand and my elbow on my TiBook (mercury) when *crack* there it went.
Very few stories seem to survive the initial slashdotting anymore... seriously, I think it's time for/. to start doing some mirroring or something. It's really getting annoying.
I'm in favor of the mirror-before-post-and-email-the-site-admin approach where when the traffic hits the admin can say, "yes, please put up your mirror"
I am also a bit bewildered about community input. What happened to the old Fedora packages, the project with which they merged? I still use Freshrpms on the Fedora machines I administer. Setting up apt-rpm repositories with them is the first thing I do after an install.
I really think their quality is improving. FC2 test3 is a nice system, and I think adequately simplified for most home users. It's great that they're almost right on the edge of the major stuff (KDE, kernel, GNOME, X, etc), most distributions seem to lag pretty heavily. In additon, the access to ISOs has been pretty spectacular, not something I could say for RH8, RH9.
Some people see building defenses as giving us a tactical offensive advantage, which it does. That is to say, if we have a fleet of these while nobody else does, that delicate balance that existed during the cold war would be no more. The threat of retaliation in kind is reduced, if not eliminated.
It's no big deal on its own, but as Dennis Leary once said, "We've got the bombs, okay people? Nuclear f*cking weapons!"
That changes things some.
I'm all for anything that actually improves our safety, but often a lot of money goes into things that are supposed to but don't. This could well end up being one of those things. It's also better if we don't piss off the neighbors in the process.
If your whole selling point relies on that the next version of Windows is absolutely going to contain critical kernel flaws, then something is wrong with your argument.
It's not that Windows getting worse is an advantage for Linux. I'm sure it will get better, as it certainly did when they moved over to the NT kernel for everything. It's that it once again won't be nearly as good as they think it can be, nor as good as they are telling everyone it will be. Hype is something they do very well.
The idea (and I'll admit I came off somewhat idealistically) is that as long as MS keeps rolling out minor improvements every once in a while, people keep upgrading and locking themselves in to be compatible with all the others doing the same. Larger corporations are behind the curve a little, I'll admit, but I've certainly seen this in several locations. The window argument is that there will be little activity from Redmond, and that people may start to look at alternatives where the cost of switching things over would have been too high relative to a Windows upgrade before. It may become worth the initial investment for the cost savings.
This coupled with all the news lately about Linux desktop rollouts strikes me as a good sign.
That home user thing is interesting... As for not needing to reboot, I had a discussion with a friend of mine (who is the most amazing programmer I have ever met) about if there could be a possibility of upgrading a kernel without rebooting. We agreed it would be technologically pretty near impossible, at least with the current hardware schemes available.
If Microsoft can overcome that hurdle, consider me beyond impressed.
Mass rejection of DRMed CDs has shown that the general public doesn't always just roll over. Addtionally, per my comment above, I can tell you that most of the people I've encountered (and these are mostly business students, very very nontechie in most cases) are sick of it. They've had it. They can't afford a couple hours of downtime per week removing viruses and spyware or having them removed for them. Of course, many of them also have no idea that there is an alternative, nor a free one at that.
People are resistant to change. That applies to operating systems but it also applies to CDs, etc. You want to see someone pissed off? Sell them a brand new CD they've been dying to hear then watch as they can't play it in their $400 200W+ car sound system.
As someone who does tech support of pretty much all windows machines on a windows network (only as a part time job) I can tell you that people are getting fed up and looking for alternatives.
A friend of mine is at a university where nobody can use their computers anymore due to the worms. She likes video games but she's no technophile. I offered to fix her problems but she said she didn't have time right now with finals and all, so I burned her a knoppix cd (the latest, 3.4), did an example boot for her in VMWare, and gave the disc to her.
Her first comments a day or two later were along the lines of, "I'm glad I can use my computer. Linux is pretty neat but I miss AIM." I pointed her to GAIM. Next comment? "LINUX IS AWESOME!!"
That's not paraphrased. People are really getting sick of it. Even the Joe Sixpacks. A free alternative is there, and while it's not perfect (went through 3 distros with my GF who was sick of her windows problems, before we found one that worked well enough) it's getting very very close. The progress I've seen lately is exponential so I think the window is big enough.
bill that would make it impossible for photographers to protect their work in any digital format is set for a hearing in the House on Wednesday, May 12. In response, Professional Photographers of America has been making the rounds on Capitol Hill to rally opposition to the legislation.
Key emotional words (some of which are outright lies as well) are impossible and rally. Not too bad so far, though starting off with a lie in the first paragraph is a bad sign.
Known as H.R. 107, the Digital Media Consumer Rights Act would give hackers explicit permission to distribute software and hardware devices designed to defeat copyright protection technology. Other provisions of the bill would set a dangerous precedent by making copyright owners who use anti-copying technology on music discs subject to regulation and fines from the Federal Trade Commission unless they meet extensive labeling and regulatory requirements.
Many of us will disagree with the use of hackers here, but explicit has dirty connotations, even if it's not a dirty word. We all know what the general public thinks hacker defines, anyway.
My favorite is the "dangerous precedent" -- a slippery-slope argument
PPA believes that a strong grassroots effort combined with its recent lobbying efforts should be enough to keep this harmful bill locked in the subcommittee on Commerce, Trade, and Consumer Protection until Congress adjourns. To that end, we encourage all members to contact their Representative and urge them to oppose H.R. 107 the Digital Media Consumer Rights Act.
Just a plea here, nothing too exciting.
Of course, the comments with the post of the article are just as bad but you all must be used to reading that point of view by now.
The culture at microsoft, as far as I can tell as an outsider, seems to focus on things in this order.
Business savvy
Proprietary lock-in
DRM
Features
Security
I don't think they're actually capable of producing the kind of product you'd expect at over $100 per license, whereas Apple seems to be.
I keep watching them say it's all going to be done right, and from the very beginning I knew they'd do what they'd always do. It's like an addictive disease. They just can't resist shoving another product out the door before they ought to. Thus, they have announced that they'd cut features (you'll hear this spun different ways, but yes, they're cutting features) to get it out the door closer to the predicted release date.
I predict (and in this I don't think I'm a great tech forecaster, it's just painfully obvious) that once again, it won't be ready even by 2006, but people will be waiting, and they'll be watching Linux encroach, and an expensive, unfinished product will roll out the door once more.
This is the time for Linux. Everyone is getting sick of Microsoft's incompatibility with standards. As more people use non-IE browsers and non-MS server software once again, fewer and fewer sites require MSIE. The worms and viruses are an additional "blessing" (though I have to fix them all the time at work -- ugh) in that they give users another reason to get fed up with Redmond.
You're also right in that the game has to be played right. Linux distros jumping the gun and trying to foist unpolished products on the market could come back to bite them in the ass. I guess only time will tell.
Shouting is unneccessary, but RTFM is an important lesson.
Give a man a fish, he eats for a day.
Teach a man to fish and he'll drive you out of business, or something.
Uh there is a lot of stuff that computers do that can be done manually.
However, we depend on them to do that stuff for us, and to do it quickly and correctly, something humans often have a hard time doing.
Of course, that assumes that the computers are coded and working properly.
*weak attempt to stifle laughter*
I work in a computer lab at a University, and I can tell you that we can't depend on this Windows network for anything, except causing problems and becoming infected by viruses. Thank God I'm done in a week and a half. I'm not responsible for patching and such but I do have to handle a lot of the requests to fix people's laptops.
Hell yes, I was stymied by the Blender interface a while back and gave up because I didn't have the time to mess with it. Then a project came along where it would really be great to have a 3D model of our device and I cracked down to learn it.
Within an hour I was moving stuff around like it was second nature. Awesome hotkey setup. I love how the most commonly used buttons are all near the standard left-hand keyboard position. Of course, this might irritate lefties who have their left hand on the keyboard...
My 1991 Saturn does at least 110, but that's as high as the spedometer goes. It's a great car. Such a great one that I'm about to replace it with a 1995 make of the same model.
I don't know if anyone has posted one of these (so many posts!) but there have been two guys at my university over the last four years named "Loong Kwok"
One's in my chinese class this semester.
As someone who thirsts for newer and better computers, I'll try not to be too hypocritical here...
I suck at golf. When I was younger I wanted better clubs, because mine were old hand-me-downs from my grandparents. My father told me, "How you play has nothing to do with the clubs. They only make things a little better once you've already got the skills."
I see computer science kind of like that. I'm not in CS anymore (was doing a dual degree... now I just apply CS stuff to biological problems) but my friend and former roommate is an absolute genius when it comes to programming. I'm running an athlon 2800+, and he had a celeron 667 up until this past January. That never stopped him from coding circles around me. Now he has an Athlon64. The bastard.
What YaST needs (and maybe it has but I clicked through it without reading or something) is a nice big warning dialog the first time you open YaST saying, essentially:
THIS PROGRAM EDITS CONFIGURATION FILES IN/etc/sysconfig, AND APPLIES THEM USING SuSEconfig. If you do not understand what this means then ignore this message.
Obviously there are some issues with something like that, but one of the main reasons I left the windows world 4.5 years ago is that I want to know what's going on with my system.
Slashdot Mirror
Except that they're not patented.
GIF is patent encumbered outside the US. It used to be in the US as well, but that has thankfully expired.
PNG all the way.
Oh, who am I kidding. I love nitpicking!
I have that same problem with mine, which is about to go out of warranty so I think it's time to get to work on it. My guess would be a shim + glue would be a great help. I was absentmindedly resting my head on my hand and my elbow on my TiBook (mercury) when *crack* there it went.
I'm in favor of the mirror-before-post-and-email-the-site-admin approach where when the traffic hits the admin can say, "yes, please put up your mirror"
I really think their quality is improving. FC2 test3 is a nice system, and I think adequately simplified for most home users. It's great that they're almost right on the edge of the major stuff (KDE, kernel, GNOME, X, etc), most distributions seem to lag pretty heavily. In additon, the access to ISOs has been pretty spectacular, not something I could say for RH8, RH9.
I didn't say, "We've got nukes and nobody else does, let's hold the world hostage!" One, because it's untrue, and two because it's a bad idea anyhow.
Ah yes, it's been a long time since I heard it. The two words followed by three is rather amusing.
It's no big deal on its own, but as Dennis Leary once said, "We've got the bombs, okay people? Nuclear f*cking weapons!"
That changes things some.
I'm all for anything that actually improves our safety, but often a lot of money goes into things that are supposed to but don't. This could well end up being one of those things. It's also better if we don't piss off the neighbors in the process.
It's not that Windows getting worse is an advantage for Linux. I'm sure it will get better, as it certainly did when they moved over to the NT kernel for everything. It's that it once again won't be nearly as good as they think it can be, nor as good as they are telling everyone it will be. Hype is something they do very well.
The idea (and I'll admit I came off somewhat idealistically) is that as long as MS keeps rolling out minor improvements every once in a while, people keep upgrading and locking themselves in to be compatible with all the others doing the same. Larger corporations are behind the curve a little, I'll admit, but I've certainly seen this in several locations. The window argument is that there will be little activity from Redmond, and that people may start to look at alternatives where the cost of switching things over would have been too high relative to a Windows upgrade before. It may become worth the initial investment for the cost savings.
This coupled with all the news lately about Linux desktop rollouts strikes me as a good sign.
If Microsoft can overcome that hurdle, consider me beyond impressed.
People are resistant to change. That applies to operating systems but it also applies to CDs, etc. You want to see someone pissed off? Sell them a brand new CD they've been dying to hear then watch as they can't play it in their $400 200W+ car sound system.
A friend of mine is at a university where nobody can use their computers anymore due to the worms. She likes video games but she's no technophile. I offered to fix her problems but she said she didn't have time right now with finals and all, so I burned her a knoppix cd (the latest, 3.4), did an example boot for her in VMWare, and gave the disc to her.
Her first comments a day or two later were along the lines of, "I'm glad I can use my computer. Linux is pretty neat but I miss AIM." I pointed her to GAIM. Next comment? "LINUX IS AWESOME!!"
That's not paraphrased. People are really getting sick of it. Even the Joe Sixpacks. A free alternative is there, and while it's not perfect (went through 3 distros with my GF who was sick of her windows problems, before we found one that worked well enough) it's getting very very close. The progress I've seen lately is exponential so I think the window is big enough.
bill that would make it impossible for photographers to protect their work in any digital format is set for a hearing in the House on Wednesday, May 12. In response, Professional Photographers of America has been making the rounds on Capitol Hill to rally opposition to the legislation.
Key emotional words (some of which are outright lies as well) are impossible and rally. Not too bad so far, though starting off with a lie in the first paragraph is a bad sign.
Known as H.R. 107, the Digital Media Consumer Rights Act would give hackers explicit permission to distribute software and hardware devices designed to defeat copyright protection technology. Other provisions of the bill would set a dangerous precedent by making copyright owners who use anti-copying technology on music discs subject to regulation and fines from the Federal Trade Commission unless they meet extensive labeling and regulatory requirements.
Many of us will disagree with the use of hackers here, but explicit has dirty connotations, even if it's not a dirty word. We all know what the general public thinks hacker defines, anyway. My favorite is the "dangerous precedent" -- a slippery-slope argument
PPA believes that a strong grassroots effort combined with its recent lobbying efforts should be enough to keep this harmful bill locked in the subcommittee on Commerce, Trade, and Consumer Protection until Congress adjourns. To that end, we encourage all members to contact their Representative and urge them to oppose H.R. 107 the Digital Media Consumer Rights Act.
Just a plea here, nothing too exciting.
Of course, the comments with the post of the article are just as bad but you all must be used to reading that point of view by now.
I don't think they're actually capable of producing the kind of product you'd expect at over $100 per license, whereas Apple seems to be.
I keep watching them say it's all going to be done right, and from the very beginning I knew they'd do what they'd always do. It's like an addictive disease. They just can't resist shoving another product out the door before they ought to. Thus, they have announced that they'd cut features (you'll hear this spun different ways, but yes, they're cutting features) to get it out the door closer to the predicted release date.
I predict (and in this I don't think I'm a great tech forecaster, it's just painfully obvious) that once again, it won't be ready even by 2006, but people will be waiting, and they'll be watching Linux encroach, and an expensive, unfinished product will roll out the door once more.
This is the time for Linux. Everyone is getting sick of Microsoft's incompatibility with standards. As more people use non-IE browsers and non-MS server software once again, fewer and fewer sites require MSIE. The worms and viruses are an additional "blessing" (though I have to fix them all the time at work -- ugh) in that they give users another reason to get fed up with Redmond.
You're also right in that the game has to be played right. Linux distros jumping the gun and trying to foist unpolished products on the market could come back to bite them in the ass. I guess only time will tell.
More like running a crack house, you mean? (no flamebait intended)
Err yeah, meant the mouse.
Or more likely, a CounterStrike map. No wonder they were worried.
The more modest, non-visible-air-pocket Nike Airs are very comfortable walking shoes. They're pretty nondescript, just plain white leather.
Shouting is unneccessary, but RTFM is an important lesson. Give a man a fish, he eats for a day. Teach a man to fish and he'll drive you out of business, or something.
However, we depend on them to do that stuff for us, and to do it quickly and correctly, something humans often have a hard time doing.
Of course, that assumes that the computers are coded and working properly.
*weak attempt to stifle laughter*
I work in a computer lab at a University, and I can tell you that we can't depend on this Windows network for anything, except causing problems and becoming infected by viruses. Thank God I'm done in a week and a half. I'm not responsible for patching and such but I do have to handle a lot of the requests to fix people's laptops.
Hell yes, I was stymied by the Blender interface a while back and gave up because I didn't have the time to mess with it. Then a project came along where it would really be great to have a 3D model of our device and I cracked down to learn it. Within an hour I was moving stuff around like it was second nature. Awesome hotkey setup. I love how the most commonly used buttons are all near the standard left-hand keyboard position. Of course, this might irritate lefties who have their left hand on the keyboard...
My 1991 Saturn does at least 110, but that's as high as the spedometer goes. It's a great car. Such a great one that I'm about to replace it with a 1995 make of the same model.
I don't know if anyone has posted one of these (so many posts!) but there have been two guys at my university over the last four years named "Loong Kwok" One's in my chinese class this semester.
I suck at golf. When I was younger I wanted better clubs, because mine were old hand-me-downs from my grandparents. My father told me, "How you play has nothing to do with the clubs. They only make things a little better once you've already got the skills."
I see computer science kind of like that. I'm not in CS anymore (was doing a dual degree... now I just apply CS stuff to biological problems) but my friend and former roommate is an absolute genius when it comes to programming. I'm running an athlon 2800+, and he had a celeron 667 up until this past January. That never stopped him from coding circles around me. Now he has an Athlon64. The bastard.
Of course, good equipment never hurts.