OS X doesn't straddle anything. At no point during the regular usage of OS X must you ever even consider using the command line.
I'll have to take your word for it. Although I will note that in the limited support I've given to OS X, the command line was involved. That might be because I was willing to do it and the solutions I found involved it - there might have been different ways.
Last time I installed Ubuntu I had to pull out the command line to setup my network card. WTF?
Yeah - that sucks. But from what I've seen, when the hardware has better Linux support this isn't an issue. My current laptop network card (wireless and ethernet) both worked out of the box on fresh installs - no CLI shuffling required on my part.
It is a question of choice. Everything 99.999% of the population needs to do can be done through the GUI in OS X. And with a single mouse button to boot.
Linux still forces you to pull the command line sometimes. Eg FF 3 crashes yet again and doesn't get cleaned up correctly. Even if you force quit.
You pull out the command line if and only if you decide to. Everything else is simply wrong.
I'm curious as to what you have to do with a command line to clean up after FF3. Ubuntu offers perfectly good GUI options for managing processes and files. Of course, I don't use them. I like the command line - I use that. But the option IS there.
Having said that - WHY is pulling out a command line "simply wrong"? What magic does the GUI invoke that a command line can not? I've seen end users just as confused by a myriad of check boxes and nested menus as a blinking command line. And I've agonized over trying to guide people through a GUI configuration over the phone just as much (if not more) as conveying a string of commands to be typed in at a blinking cursor.
Yeah, but that's a pretty small proportion of people. Which was my point.
I'd say its a fairly larger proportion of people than you seem to believe it is. That's my point.
And people didn't call you until they had a problem they required your help to solve. So you really have no clue how many of those people solved their own problem using the GUI (or CLI), or didn't have a problem in the first place.
I could make some educated guesses based on the number of systems known to be in the environment vs. the number of cases pending. What percentage of those systems are being self-serviced is always one of those dark arts numbers that management was always trying to gleen.
Because Apple doesn't have the resources to write a modern OS from scratch, NOT because OS 9 was a horrible, terrible thing.
No - it wasn't a horrible, terrible thing. But it wasn't THAT good either. But hey - it was indeed well known as a system with no command line.
It makes the system require less support because people are more likely to be able to find the solutions to their own problems. Discoverability.
Again - its not that GUIs are bad. It's not that they don't have advantages and their place. But the belief that you can give a user a GUI and call it good is false. I've had plenty of cases where I had to poke around the GUI for the end user. "Discoverabilty" did nothing for them.
There's nothing magical about the GUI. Turning to a command line isn't an automatic point of failure in the process. Sometimes its the best path (and sometimes the GUI can be more frustrating). That is - if your system HAS a command line I suppose. But these days, they tend to. And the trend is towards it rather than away.
You don't believe in the "mystical power of the GUI" because you, personally, do things that require its use?
Yes. And so has anyone who's had to dig deep in to their system to try and fix something that's gone wrong. Or at least... they've had someone else do it for them.
Of course, you say that most users do have to resort to the CLI to get something done, then you say only people with your particular interests do. What makes you think most people share your particular interests? Do you have any data to back that up? (Sounds like a contradiction to me.)
Actually - what I say is that the idea that users never have to resort to such arcane technicalities is just as wrong as the assumption that they must always resort to them (and I was talking about two entirely separate environments).
And now how about talking about the "mystical power of the GUI" from the perspective of the other 99.999% of users?
I'm sure your arbitrary "99.999%" sample would really enjoy having a big button that reads "do it" which would do anything and everything they needed to do without any thought as to whats involved. Sounds good to me too. But that's fantasy.
This observation doesn't come from a "works for me" attitude. I've spent years around various IT tech; many earlier years behind helpdesks and doing desktop support. I've had to support GUIs of all types (to include early MacOS which you mention here shortly). And I've had my hand in working people through various fixes both simple clicky-clicky and arcane strings of commands.
For the record, Classic Mac OS quite literally had no CLI at all and yet was often praised as being one of the best designed and most usable computer interfaces ever made. Apple doesn't get their reputation for ease-of-use from OS X, OS X's UI is a hog compared to Mac OS Classic.
And yet here we are today - MacOS 9 and previous incarnations a historical footnote. Huh.
Look - I'm not saying the GUI is a dead end. It's a Good Thing. Most tasks really should have a good GUI interface to accomplish them; Linux included (although I'd like the GUI options and command-line options to both exist and play nice together). But what I do reject is the idea that having a GUI somehow makes a system more supportable as the parent implied.
Like other posters have alluded to, I first picked up vi because if you learn it you're set on almost any *nix command line you will ever touch. I've done a fair amount of *nix work over the years so I've developed some (limited compared to some of the vi nuts I've known) familiarity with it.
But these days, I use vim mostly on my own desktop where I have a ful GUI going on. It's not because I don't want GUI flash. My vim sessions are running in shiny translucent windows that (as best as I can make it) look like glass. And with it I can do things like shift-v,highlight block of text,s/^/# to comment out a block or s/^#// to uncomment it. When I do find myself using a GUI editor, I'm always wanting to use vi commands. You use the tools you're most familiar with, I guess.
I could always use gvim. But its not as shiny as my gnome terminal. And then there's the times I'm SSH'd out to some colo and want to use the vi/vim tricks I'm accustomed to (instead of reaching for a pull-down menu).
Honestly, being a casual Linux user, sound card support is not the defining factor holding back Linux adoption. While Ubuntu goes a long way to improving the user experience with Linux, even to get it to a 'standard' setup, I needed to use the console no less than 5 times. That's *needed* to, there was no GUI way to do what I was trying to do.
While I personally have no problem doing that, I shudder at the idea of talking someone like my father through it. The day that I can combine Linux stability with ease of use... that will be the year of the Linux desktop. Driver integration and support goes a long way to doing that, and a flushed out menu system will put it over the top.
I have come to disbelieve in the mystical power of the GUI. The GUI does not solve all problems. It can not provide radio buttons and check-marks for every situation. And it does not invoke a state of bliss for helping the wayward neophyte in a state of confusion. I accept that some will see this as heresy.
Granted - I've long been a heretic. The command line is what ultimately turned me from Windows to Unix. But I understand that I am not a "normal user" and so I was willing to accept that GUIs are generally Good Ideas. And I still think they are; I used them in my Linux environment all the time for a lot of tasks. But there are times when it just doesn't work as well as a command line.
This isn't a Linux concept. Various proprietary Unix environments have long straddled the fence between GUI and command line. And that includes today's most celebrated consumer Unix environment: MacOS X. Even Microsoft has given the command line increasing attention. And that's not even covering such dark arts as registry hacking.
But wait! Most users never see a registry hack! Yet Linux must always resort to the command line. Right? Not in my experience.
It's probably due to my particular interests - but I've always found a reason to dig in to the guts of a system. Either I'm doing something unique for my own use, cleaning up after having broken something, or cleaning up after someone else having broken something. And that's always required a registry editor or a command line (and sometimes a command line even when a GUI option was available as I just found it easier). And when I'm not doing something too out-of-the-ordinary, I've found the base Unbuntu install gives me a perfectly suitable environment. The clicky-clicky magic is baked right in. Here. Today.
And when it doesn't? Its often a cruddy driver involved that trips up Ubuntu's autoconfig magic. That "driver integration" goes further than given credit for.
That doesn't mean "Linux" can't use improvement. There's plenty of room for it. Cruddy drivers included.
Wrong. Pornography is never inappropriate. Anybody who considers visual depictions of sex to be inappropriate in any environment has some very serious problems. If somebody needs to use packet sniffers to determine that people are viewing this material then it is obvious that there is a problem with the appropriate behaviour of Management. If viewing pictures of Mars does not have a negative effect on workplace productivity then neither should nude bodies, whatever they happen to be engaged in.
If you're working in the porn industry, porn has a place at work. If you're in the furniture business, images of furniture has it's place. And if you're in a space-related industry, images of Mars are likely appropriate. That doesn't mean these all are now acceptable everywhere.
Go ahead - rage against the machine. Fight the good fight and deny the Puritan ideology that infects our culture. But don't be foolish. Claiming that pornography is "never inappropriate" is ludicrous. There are plenty of other subjects and behaviors that are acceptable in some instances, and (to various degrees) inappropriate in others. And while sex is something of a hot-button, it isn't unique in this regard.
It's bizarre how or why some wierdo in your company would consider "skin" to be "suspect".
I'm surprised that this confuses you. You see, most people when they have sex tend to do it in various degrees of undress and often completely naked. As such, pornography tends to involve a lot of exposed skin. So any image that might involve a lot of exposed skin is suspected of being pornography.
It also might shock you to know that pornography is entirely inappropriate in some environments. Especially that particular one. This would explain the interest in possible pornographic images.
And who said anything about email? The vast majority of these images came from HTTP. Not that it makes that much difference; it's still the organization's network being used.
Having said that... you apparently confuse me with someone who thinks this was all a good idea. I found it to be an enormous waste of resources. The project did little more than provide a guise of "doing something" and feeding particular individual power-trips. Meanwhile there were real risks and threats for the infosec group to work on that went largely ignored.
GPL is not only viral, it is weaponized, so you can use it to fuck over or shut down projects and companies you don't like. I doubt that is what most people have in mind when selecting their licence, but it seems to be all the licence is used for these days.
Amazingly enough, companies can avoid malcontents shutting them down but simply following the license. It's not that difficult. And if following the terms of the GPL does present issues... use something else.
One of the environments I worked in had a sniffer that grabbed all the images (and associated session information) it could see on the wire for that organization (or at least a subset - there was a LOT of traffic involved). It would then process those images and generate a "skin folder" of suspect imagery. We could then sift through that skin folder looking for illicit browsing, etc.
Yeah - it caught porn. But it also contained a lot of imagery of furniture, mars landscapes, deserts (it really liked the time pictures of camel spiders in Sandland were the hot topic of emails) and other such not-skin-oriented imagery.
It's not like Asus doesn't know how to market a computer, build a computer, or ship computers, they are one of the largest OEM's out there. Anyone second guessing them needs a shot in the arm of some serious reality.
That's a fair enough point. However, keep in mind that companies ARE fallible. Just because they perceive the market in one way, doesn't mean that's the absolute truth.
Sucks, to be sure. I like Linux. BUT, like most people, I tire of the endless "getting something to work".
I agree. There are plenty of areas where Linux needs improvement. But I've also found that Windows (since that's the subject at hand) also needs improvement too. It seems I'm always doing something nonstandard that involves plenty of tweaking of whatever platform I'm using. I just happen to like tweaking the Linux stuff more than Windows.
Just use some decent hardware, stop trying to get your bleeding edge graphics card or 1999 ATI PCI card to work, and you won't have NEAR the problems.
Use hardware that supports your platform. Now THAT is common sense; applied to both Linux and Windows.:)
Actually, it was to show people who don't use Vista but are unhappy with it that once they actually try it they are perfectly happy with it.
Apparently if you already have Vista but are unhappy, it's simply because you are yet a user. Only happy customers are users. Unhappy customers are people who have not yet truly began to use vista. It's all very Zen.
Sure, if your only exposure to Vista is from slashdot. In the real world, most new computers are sold with Vista and people are perfectly happy with it.
Yup - that's why they did The Mojave Experiment; to show people that they're happy. Because if you don't tell happy people that they are, in fact, happy they wouldn't know. And that means your happy people are unhappy. You don't want unhappy happy customers.
My point is: Not a WHOLE lot of money to be made in supporting something that has a great reliability track record. Hence the reason my consulting company didn't JUST support *nix, they did pretty much everything.
I would have to disagree. Every critical (or otherwise important) system I've ever had a hand in running has had a support contract. That includes support contracts from Sun, Dell, and Redhat (which I mention because of their Linux / Unix ties - there's plenty of other kit I'm not mentioning). It's not because these systems are unreliable but rather my employer had the budget to ensure a minimal amount of downtime. Some of those contracts saw a lot of use. Some of them saw very little use. I would imagine the ideal support contract would be for a very stable system that requires little attention as this means (almost) free money.
As a parting exercise for the reader, I would ask why IBM has so much interest in Linux.
And once they have Linux running on so much of their datacenter, there will be a lot of companies who want their data processors running on the same system. A company with a polished desktop will be well poised to step in there, and from there the path to the rest of the organization is fairly simple (even if still a long road).
Don't get me wrong - I still think such a market is in the future. But that's the future. If you want money now, you go where the market is now.
To me Linux has never been profitable in the Desktop-User side, but in the Servers Side. How can one make profit in the desktop world? Free software is mostly based on services not software license selling and it's not only libre but gratis (free as beer).
You're focused on the wrong thing. It doesn't matter if it's "desktop" or "server". What matters is who is doing the buying. Consumers / end users don't spend the big money on services. Enterprises do. And so what you want to do is provide a product that meets needs of the Enterprise. If enterprise customers want desktop Linux support, then that's a nice market to be in. The reality is that such a market is still very limited and niche. But enterprise customers are doing plenty of Linux deployments in the datacenter. That market is sizable and growing. That's where the money is.
I've never used nlite. Looks interesting - I'll have to check it out in more detail.
Having said that, if I wanted to do a minimalistic Ubuntu install (as described by the parent), it doesn't take burning a special install disk. It's there. Included. And just as viable as the full-on all-defaults-enabled distro. No additional 3rd party apps and unexpected hacks required.
Whether "the masses" would do this or not... possibly not. But I'm not sure how that's a factor.
Re:Flexibility and freedom are its raison d'Ã
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Is Ubuntu Getting Slower?
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Indeed. I might have to go install something like XPLite or create my own installation media with nlite/vlite. It's really taxing firing up a GUI and unticking a few boxes.
Yes, unticking boxes is easy. So's deleting a file. But what happens after the fact?
Those utilities do look like a step in the right direction. Pity they're from a third party and a complete hack (albiet a very cool looking one). What happens when Microsoft releases a service pack? What happens if you change your mind and want to install a component?
I know with Ubuntu I'm removing a package using the very same tools provided by the base distro. When I update, I only update whats installed. And I know I can always install / re-install anything missing at a later time.
Windows Fundamentals (based on XP Embedded) is included in included in my Volume License Agreement from Microsoft. Our agreement is fairly basis so I suspect it is included in most (if not all) volume license agreements that include Client operating systems (Vista and XP).
Great. If you happen to have a Volume License Agreement. And if you have a WinXP disk? What do you do then? With an Ubuntu install... any Ubuntu install... the option exists.
Apart from XP Embedded, where you can choose which parts of the OS are installed.
I've heard of such a beast but never have seen it. I would hazard to guess that XP Embedded isn't accessible to most folks; it's not an option with their standard XP install. In contract, anyone who has access to Ubuntu could go this "Thinbuntu" route.
I can disable services I don't want. I can uninstall (or simply not install at the outset) components I don't need. I have the control panel to customize, e.g., the video depth and turn off video-hungry components.
In all seriousness: at this level (not the recompile level), what's the difference?
Linux (and Unix for the most part) tends to be a lot more modular than Windows. Windows does provide options. But not to the same degree. If you want to really dig in to a Windows system, it takes a lot more shennanigans than it does with a Linux distro (and then you're at the risk of losing all your changes at the next service pack).
Note that this isn't an Open Source thing. Proprietary Unix environments tend to work much in the same way.
One final point - Linux is no silver bullet. You still have to make trade-offs. There are still dependencies involved and removing something might mean removing a desired application. However, I've rarely run in to a situation where that decision is all that difficult or unexpected.
It is flaimbait because the statement is designed to do exactly what's going on here - spawn an irrelevant debate over the merits of WoW's graphics (of which I'll resist the temptation of getting involved in).
Obviously the user interface bothers you. But really, you think there is a better phone interface out there? I guess everyone who owns an iPhone must be a fanboy cause the only ones I have heard who don't like them are techies who want a shell prompt for their phone, everyone else seems to love it.
I didn't read anything about the interface being bad - what I read was whether it was "intuitive". There's a difference. The interface might be easy to use once the person knows how it works. But that doesn't mean they didn't have to learn about it first. And that, according to to the parent, negates the "intuitive" label.
Running your finger around a circle to change the volume is not intuitive? So... is rotating a number to change the volume not intuitive?
Everything you are ranting about is because you've been trained, poorly, by some other piece of software to do something silly.
Yeah - I know. You meant turning a knob. The thing is, I don't do that. Almost every device I have that involves a volume control has buttons - either separate or a toggle. The only thing in my household that uses a circular pattern is... an iPod. Maybe I don't have enough overpriced electronics.:)
Having said that - we're comparing interfaces. It's not that buttons, a knob, or emulating either is "intuitive" itself. It's a matter of familiarity. And I agree completely that familiarity doesn't mean good design - "intuitive" or otherwise.
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OS X doesn't straddle anything. At no point during the regular usage of OS X must you ever even consider using the command line.
I'll have to take your word for it. Although I will note that in the limited support I've given to OS X, the command line was involved. That might be because I was willing to do it and the solutions I found involved it - there might have been different ways.
Last time I installed Ubuntu I had to pull out the command line to setup my network card. WTF?
Yeah - that sucks. But from what I've seen, when the hardware has better Linux support this isn't an issue. My current laptop network card (wireless and ethernet) both worked out of the box on fresh installs - no CLI shuffling required on my part.
It is a question of choice. Everything 99.999% of the population needs to do can be done through the GUI in OS X. And with a single mouse button to boot.
Linux still forces you to pull the command line sometimes. Eg FF 3 crashes yet again and doesn't get cleaned up correctly. Even if you force quit.
You pull out the command line if and only if you decide to. Everything else is simply wrong.
I'm curious as to what you have to do with a command line to clean up after FF3. Ubuntu offers perfectly good GUI options for managing processes and files. Of course, I don't use them. I like the command line - I use that. But the option IS there.
Having said that - WHY is pulling out a command line "simply wrong"? What magic does the GUI invoke that a command line can not? I've seen end users just as confused by a myriad of check boxes and nested menus as a blinking command line. And I've agonized over trying to guide people through a GUI configuration over the phone just as much (if not more) as conveying a string of commands to be typed in at a blinking cursor.
Yeah, but that's a pretty small proportion of people. Which was my point.
I'd say its a fairly larger proportion of people than you seem to believe it is. That's my point.
And people didn't call you until they had a problem they required your help to solve. So you really have no clue how many of those people solved their own problem using the GUI (or CLI), or didn't have a problem in the first place.
I could make some educated guesses based on the number of systems known to be in the environment vs. the number of cases pending. What percentage of those systems are being self-serviced is always one of those dark arts numbers that management was always trying to gleen.
Because Apple doesn't have the resources to write a modern OS from scratch, NOT because OS 9 was a horrible, terrible thing.
No - it wasn't a horrible, terrible thing. But it wasn't THAT good either. But hey - it was indeed well known as a system with no command line.
It makes the system require less support because people are more likely to be able to find the solutions to their own problems. Discoverability.
Again - its not that GUIs are bad. It's not that they don't have advantages and their place. But the belief that you can give a user a GUI and call it good is false. I've had plenty of cases where I had to poke around the GUI for the end user. "Discoverabilty" did nothing for them.
There's nothing magical about the GUI. Turning to a command line isn't an automatic point of failure in the process. Sometimes its the best path (and sometimes the GUI can be more frustrating). That is - if your system HAS a command line I suppose. But these days, they tend to. And the trend is towards it rather than away.
The horror! What travesty could befall Microsoft if they ever did adopt GPL code?! We can only hope they will survive the ordeal.
I believe he was interested in throwing chairs AT (or at least around) developers.
You don't believe in the "mystical power of the GUI" because you, personally, do things that require its use?
Yes. And so has anyone who's had to dig deep in to their system to try and fix something that's gone wrong. Or at least... they've had someone else do it for them.
Of course, you say that most users do have to resort to the CLI to get something done, then you say only people with your particular interests do. What makes you think most people share your particular interests? Do you have any data to back that up? (Sounds like a contradiction to me.)
Actually - what I say is that the idea that users never have to resort to such arcane technicalities is just as wrong as the assumption that they must always resort to them (and I was talking about two entirely separate environments).
And now how about talking about the "mystical power of the GUI" from the perspective of the other 99.999% of users?
I'm sure your arbitrary "99.999%" sample would really enjoy having a big button that reads "do it" which would do anything and everything they needed to do without any thought as to whats involved. Sounds good to me too. But that's fantasy.
This observation doesn't come from a "works for me" attitude. I've spent years around various IT tech; many earlier years behind helpdesks and doing desktop support. I've had to support GUIs of all types (to include early MacOS which you mention here shortly). And I've had my hand in working people through various fixes both simple clicky-clicky and arcane strings of commands.
For the record, Classic Mac OS quite literally had no CLI at all and yet was often praised as being one of the best designed and most usable computer interfaces ever made. Apple doesn't get their reputation for ease-of-use from OS X, OS X's UI is a hog compared to Mac OS Classic.
And yet here we are today - MacOS 9 and previous incarnations a historical footnote. Huh.
Look - I'm not saying the GUI is a dead end. It's a Good Thing. Most tasks really should have a good GUI interface to accomplish them; Linux included (although I'd like the GUI options and command-line options to both exist and play nice together). But what I do reject is the idea that having a GUI somehow makes a system more supportable as the parent implied.
Like other posters have alluded to, I first picked up vi because if you learn it you're set on almost any *nix command line you will ever touch. I've done a fair amount of *nix work over the years so I've developed some (limited compared to some of the vi nuts I've known) familiarity with it.
But these days, I use vim mostly on my own desktop where I have a ful GUI going on. It's not because I don't want GUI flash. My vim sessions are running in shiny translucent windows that (as best as I can make it) look like glass. And with it I can do things like shift-v,highlight block of text,s/^/# to comment out a block or s/^#// to uncomment it. When I do find myself using a GUI editor, I'm always wanting to use vi commands. You use the tools you're most familiar with, I guess.
I could always use gvim. But its not as shiny as my gnome terminal. And then there's the times I'm SSH'd out to some colo and want to use the vi/vim tricks I'm accustomed to (instead of reaching for a pull-down menu).
Honestly, being a casual Linux user, sound card support is not the defining factor holding back Linux adoption. While Ubuntu goes a long way to improving the user experience with Linux, even to get it to a 'standard' setup, I needed to use the console no less than 5 times. That's *needed* to, there was no GUI way to do what I was trying to do.
While I personally have no problem doing that, I shudder at the idea of talking someone like my father through it. The day that I can combine Linux stability with ease of use... that will be the year of the Linux desktop. Driver integration and support goes a long way to doing that, and a flushed out menu system will put it over the top.
I have come to disbelieve in the mystical power of the GUI. The GUI does not solve all problems. It can not provide radio buttons and check-marks for every situation. And it does not invoke a state of bliss for helping the wayward neophyte in a state of confusion. I accept that some will see this as heresy.
Granted - I've long been a heretic. The command line is what ultimately turned me from Windows to Unix. But I understand that I am not a "normal user" and so I was willing to accept that GUIs are generally Good Ideas. And I still think they are; I used them in my Linux environment all the time for a lot of tasks. But there are times when it just doesn't work as well as a command line.
This isn't a Linux concept. Various proprietary Unix environments have long straddled the fence between GUI and command line. And that includes today's most celebrated consumer Unix environment: MacOS X. Even Microsoft has given the command line increasing attention. And that's not even covering such dark arts as registry hacking.
But wait! Most users never see a registry hack! Yet Linux must always resort to the command line. Right? Not in my experience.
It's probably due to my particular interests - but I've always found a reason to dig in to the guts of a system. Either I'm doing something unique for my own use, cleaning up after having broken something, or cleaning up after someone else having broken something. And that's always required a registry editor or a command line (and sometimes a command line even when a GUI option was available as I just found it easier). And when I'm not doing something too out-of-the-ordinary, I've found the base Unbuntu install gives me a perfectly suitable environment. The clicky-clicky magic is baked right in. Here. Today.
And when it doesn't? Its often a cruddy driver involved that trips up Ubuntu's autoconfig magic. That "driver integration" goes further than given credit for.
That doesn't mean "Linux" can't use improvement. There's plenty of room for it. Cruddy drivers included.
Wrong. Pornography is never inappropriate. Anybody who considers visual depictions of sex to be inappropriate in any environment has some very serious problems. If somebody needs to use packet sniffers to determine that people are viewing this material then it is obvious that there is a problem with the appropriate behaviour of Management. If viewing pictures of Mars does not have a negative effect on workplace productivity then neither should nude bodies, whatever they happen to be engaged in.
If you're working in the porn industry, porn has a place at work. If you're in the furniture business, images of furniture has it's place. And if you're in a space-related industry, images of Mars are likely appropriate. That doesn't mean these all are now acceptable everywhere.
Go ahead - rage against the machine. Fight the good fight and deny the Puritan ideology that infects our culture. But don't be foolish. Claiming that pornography is "never inappropriate" is ludicrous. There are plenty of other subjects and behaviors that are acceptable in some instances, and (to various degrees) inappropriate in others. And while sex is something of a hot-button, it isn't unique in this regard.
It's bizarre how or why some wierdo in your company would consider "skin" to be "suspect".
I'm surprised that this confuses you. You see, most people when they have sex tend to do it in various degrees of undress and often completely naked. As such, pornography tends to involve a lot of exposed skin. So any image that might involve a lot of exposed skin is suspected of being pornography.
It also might shock you to know that pornography is entirely inappropriate in some environments. Especially that particular one. This would explain the interest in possible pornographic images.
And who said anything about email? The vast majority of these images came from HTTP. Not that it makes that much difference; it's still the organization's network being used.
Having said that... you apparently confuse me with someone who thinks this was all a good idea. I found it to be an enormous waste of resources. The project did little more than provide a guise of "doing something" and feeding particular individual power-trips. Meanwhile there were real risks and threats for the infosec group to work on that went largely ignored.
GPL is not only viral, it is weaponized, so you can use it to fuck over or shut down projects and companies you don't like. I doubt that is what most people have in mind when selecting their licence, but it seems to be all the licence is used for these days.
Amazingly enough, companies can avoid malcontents shutting them down but simply following the license. It's not that difficult. And if following the terms of the GPL does present issues... use something else.
Weaponized, indeed.
One of the environments I worked in had a sniffer that grabbed all the images (and associated session information) it could see on the wire for that organization (or at least a subset - there was a LOT of traffic involved). It would then process those images and generate a "skin folder" of suspect imagery. We could then sift through that skin folder looking for illicit browsing, etc.
Yeah - it caught porn. But it also contained a lot of imagery of furniture, mars landscapes, deserts (it really liked the time pictures of camel spiders in Sandland were the hot topic of emails) and other such not-skin-oriented imagery.
It's not like Asus doesn't know how to market a computer, build a computer, or ship computers, they are one of the largest OEM's out there. Anyone second guessing them needs a shot in the arm of some serious reality.
That's a fair enough point. However, keep in mind that companies ARE fallible. Just because they perceive the market in one way, doesn't mean that's the absolute truth.
Sucks, to be sure. I like Linux. BUT, like most people, I tire of the endless "getting something to work".
I agree. There are plenty of areas where Linux needs improvement. But I've also found that Windows (since that's the subject at hand) also needs improvement too. It seems I'm always doing something nonstandard that involves plenty of tweaking of whatever platform I'm using. I just happen to like tweaking the Linux stuff more than Windows.
Just use some decent hardware, stop trying to get your bleeding edge graphics card or 1999 ATI PCI card to work, and you won't have NEAR the problems.
Use hardware that supports your platform. Now THAT is common sense; applied to both Linux and Windows. :)
Actually, it was to show people who don't use Vista but are unhappy with it that once they actually try it they are perfectly happy with it.
Apparently if you already have Vista but are unhappy, it's simply because you are yet a user. Only happy customers are users. Unhappy customers are people who have not yet truly began to use vista. It's all very Zen.
Sure, if your only exposure to Vista is from slashdot. In the real world, most new computers are sold with Vista and people are perfectly happy with it.
Yup - that's why they did The Mojave Experiment; to show people that they're happy. Because if you don't tell happy people that they are, in fact, happy they wouldn't know. And that means your happy people are unhappy. You don't want unhappy happy customers.
My point is: Not a WHOLE lot of money to be made in supporting something that has a great reliability track record. Hence the reason my consulting company didn't JUST support *nix, they did pretty much everything.
I would have to disagree. Every critical (or otherwise important) system I've ever had a hand in running has had a support contract. That includes support contracts from Sun, Dell, and Redhat (which I mention because of their Linux / Unix ties - there's plenty of other kit I'm not mentioning). It's not because these systems are unreliable but rather my employer had the budget to ensure a minimal amount of downtime. Some of those contracts saw a lot of use. Some of them saw very little use. I would imagine the ideal support contract would be for a very stable system that requires little attention as this means (almost) free money.
As a parting exercise for the reader, I would ask why IBM has so much interest in Linux.
And once they have Linux running on so much of their datacenter, there will be a lot of companies who want their data processors running on the same system. A company with a polished desktop will be well poised to step in there, and from there the path to the rest of the organization is fairly simple (even if still a long road).
Don't get me wrong - I still think such a market is in the future. But that's the future. If you want money now, you go where the market is now.
To me Linux has never been profitable in the Desktop-User side, but in the Servers Side.
How can one make profit in the desktop world? Free software is mostly based on services not software license selling and it's not only libre but gratis (free as beer).
You're focused on the wrong thing. It doesn't matter if it's "desktop" or "server". What matters is who is doing the buying. Consumers / end users don't spend the big money on services. Enterprises do. And so what you want to do is provide a product that meets needs of the Enterprise. If enterprise customers want desktop Linux support, then that's a nice market to be in. The reality is that such a market is still very limited and niche. But enterprise customers are doing plenty of Linux deployments in the datacenter. That market is sizable and growing. That's where the money is.
Maybe I'm just too wordy, but if I can say it in 120 characters, whatever, it's probably too banal to be shared.
Twitter is the new Haiku?
I've never used nlite. Looks interesting - I'll have to check it out in more detail.
Having said that, if I wanted to do a minimalistic Ubuntu install (as described by the parent), it doesn't take burning a special install disk. It's there. Included. And just as viable as the full-on all-defaults-enabled distro. No additional 3rd party apps and unexpected hacks required.
Whether "the masses" would do this or not... possibly not. But I'm not sure how that's a factor.
Indeed. I might have to go install something like XPLite or create my own installation media with nlite/vlite. It's really taxing firing up a GUI and unticking a few boxes.
Yes, unticking boxes is easy. So's deleting a file. But what happens after the fact?
Those utilities do look like a step in the right direction. Pity they're from a third party and a complete hack (albiet a very cool looking one). What happens when Microsoft releases a service pack? What happens if you change your mind and want to install a component?
I know with Ubuntu I'm removing a package using the very same tools provided by the base distro. When I update, I only update whats installed. And I know I can always install / re-install anything missing at a later time.
Windows Fundamentals (based on XP Embedded) is included in included in my Volume License Agreement from Microsoft. Our agreement is fairly basis so I suspect it is included in most (if not all) volume license agreements that include Client operating systems (Vista and XP).
Great. If you happen to have a Volume License Agreement. And if you have a WinXP disk? What do you do then? With an Ubuntu install... any Ubuntu install... the option exists.
Apart from XP Embedded, where you can choose which parts of the OS are installed.
I've heard of such a beast but never have seen it. I would hazard to guess that XP Embedded isn't accessible to most folks; it's not an option with their standard XP install. In contract, anyone who has access to Ubuntu could go this "Thinbuntu" route.
I can disable services I don't want. I can uninstall (or simply not install at the outset) components I don't need. I have the control panel to customize, e.g., the video depth and turn off video-hungry components.
In all seriousness: at this level (not the recompile level), what's the difference?
Linux (and Unix for the most part) tends to be a lot more modular than Windows. Windows does provide options. But not to the same degree. If you want to really dig in to a Windows system, it takes a lot more shennanigans than it does with a Linux distro (and then you're at the risk of losing all your changes at the next service pack).
Note that this isn't an Open Source thing. Proprietary Unix environments tend to work much in the same way.
One final point - Linux is no silver bullet. You still have to make trade-offs. There are still dependencies involved and removing something might mean removing a desired application. However, I've rarely run in to a situation where that decision is all that difficult or unexpected.
It is flaimbait because the statement is designed to do exactly what's going on here - spawn an irrelevant debate over the merits of WoW's graphics (of which I'll resist the temptation of getting involved in).
Obviously the user interface bothers you. But really, you think there is a better phone interface out there? I guess everyone who owns an iPhone must be a fanboy cause the only ones I have heard who don't like them are techies who want a shell prompt for their phone, everyone else seems to love it.
I didn't read anything about the interface being bad - what I read was whether it was "intuitive". There's a difference. The interface might be easy to use once the person knows how it works. But that doesn't mean they didn't have to learn about it first. And that, according to to the parent, negates the "intuitive" label.
Running your finger around a circle to change the volume is not intuitive? So ... is rotating a number to change the volume not intuitive?
Everything you are ranting about is because you've been trained, poorly, by some other piece of software to do something silly.
Yeah - I know. You meant turning a knob. The thing is, I don't do that. Almost every device I have that involves a volume control has buttons - either separate or a toggle. The only thing in my household that uses a circular pattern is... an iPod. Maybe I don't have enough overpriced electronics. :)
Having said that - we're comparing interfaces. It's not that buttons, a knob, or emulating either is "intuitive" itself. It's a matter of familiarity. And I agree completely that familiarity doesn't mean good design - "intuitive" or otherwise.