OK, default scenario - you want to copy a paragraph off of a web site. On screen, it looks like plain text. You drag your mouse over it and copy it, and paste it into word, expecting the _same behaviour_ as if you had done it in say, notepad.
And suddenly you have a hideous block of text in a different font, which looks like HTML, which is _not_ what you (or what most people) want.
I remember being 8 years old and being at school. I used to program the BBC micro back then - I wrote some multiplication test software for the teacher:-) (actually, I was closer to 10, but what the heck)
What I also rember, is that only about the top 5/6 people in the class of 30 could use the computer without help, the rest still had trouble even if they were being guided through it.
OK, we are in a more computerised world now, but even so - your 8 year old is good on a computer because (from what you say) he has full access to one at home, which is great - I wish all kids had that kind of access but without any stats to back me up whatsoever, I'm going to hazard a guess that for every 8 year old like yours, there's at least another one who has never used a computer.
I had a quick browse of the web (cos I was sure that there was at least _some_ educational software for linux somewhere) and found this site
I don't know the quality or status of most of the software - the only program that I have tried in the past was tuxtype, which is quite fun for five minutes (I'm guessing young children getting to grips with learning the layout of a QWERTY keyboard might get more out of it though:-))
Well I use debian, because it doesn't seem to get many dependency problems:-)
Incidentally though, I just tried to update Windows 98 using Microsoft update. Tried 3 times in fact - IE keeps crashing after locking up for 5 minutes, so I can't actually update it to get rid of the bug that's stopping me from updating it - now that's what I call a dependency problem:-)
Perhaps if I get a chance to use Windows 2000 for a couple of days I will be convinced that it's better than Linux, but if that happens, it will be the first version of Windows that has convinced me.
I actually think that your missing a point here - the desktop _is_ ready to be used (I've had my mother up and running on the web easily), but the installation isn't.
But then again, I bet your granny couldn't install any other operating system you care to mention either.
In both cases, what happens is that someone comes to the computer, installs whatever OS they want on it plus software then leave them to it.
Also, in elementary schools, we would not be expecting topics like "And today children, we shall teach you how to grep your way around the linux cvs". What you would want is a system with nice big buttons so that kids are one click away from getting the program that they are supposed to be using, one desktop so that they don't get lost, and a couple of elementary school educational programs (there happen to be a couple, I can't remember what they are off-hand)
Perhaps, what we need is a distro which focuses on the school market. It would be minimalistic (no apache, etc.), focus on educational software, have a web browser, wordprocessor, etc and that would be it.
Even better, start up a company which sells computers with the distro preinstalled and configured, and provides support.
1. I cannot seem to find any way to stop animated GIFs. Is there some buried command for this, or am I SOL?
Right click to get the popup menu, click "Stop animations"
The bookmarks menu demands that I hold down the mouse button while swishing through my bookmark folders. If I accidentally let go, I end up with the wrong site, or all too commonly, get the "edit bookmarks" page.
No it doesn't, at least not on my computer.
Hmmm... what version are you using? Remember that new features and bug fixes are being added on a daily basis. Perhaps an upgrade is in order...
A three line patch would be very easy to re-write and call your own...
However, if the person that you was ripping-off was a good contributor, I can assure you that by doing so you would piss him off - therefore they would stop contributing, therefore your project would lose out and, if you took this attitude enough, eventually fail.
The best way round it for me is to do what Troll-tech did - be honest. They released a propietary version of QT first, followed by a GPL'ed version (I'm ignoring the free software fight that happened to make the license GPL). Anyone who wants to use the software to devlop free software - well great. Anywone who wants to develop in-house software, but still under the GPL, well great. Anyone who wants to withold the source, so that only they can make money from their work, well they pay.
The slave system is purely a human one. How or why a machine would pick up one of the worst human behavoirs is simple called watching too much sci-fi and being paranoid
Unfortunateley, if you where to direct someone to do what is best for themselves, you would get a slave system - you see, it's this human trait called selfishness which is why the rich don't see why they should give to the poor, and why your everyday person doesn't give money to begging homeless people. Because it doesn't help number one.
Thing is, most people look after themselves - the only time they look after other people is when it is in there own interests to do so, either because it makes them feel bad to think they haven;t, or becase they expect to gain from it in the long run - human nature's like that, you see.
There is no reason whatsoever why computers shouldn't be any different. They are programmed by us, so they will be like us unless either a) we don't understand them enough to program them with what happens to be the majority of humanities values, or b), we make them so intelligent that they see our values for the self obsessed values that they are, and choose to ignore them.
And don't try telling me that you do things for other people because "it's the right thing to do" you fo them because doing so makes you feel good. However we look at it, everything that the majority of humanity ever does is selfish.
From what I've heard, Office 2000 is basically the same format as '97 (don't take this as gospel, though) So as far as I understand, Office 2000 is not XML.
Koffice from the beginning has been an gz'zipped XML file.
RTF doesn't support tables, embedded objects, headers/footers, TOC, index, etc.
Let's be honest though - doing anything complex with tables is a PITA (the interface for manipulating tables in office is totally un-intuitive, and trying to do everything right so that TOC and indexes render correctly is a PITA. I have little experience with embedded obects so can't comment.
But except for them, everything that you mentioned, trying to implement them is a PITA anyway.
IANAL, but I'm sure that if I write a c/c++ source file and put "Copyrighted by me" (obviously where me happens to be my name) at the top of it, then if it get's submitted, I still "own" that piece of code, and it could not be un-GPL'd without my express permission, even if it later got split up and placed into several c/c++ files written by someone else. Obviously, they could remove my code, rewrite it themselves and I wouldn't have any say over it then.
Hmmm... IANAL, whenever I see that, I always want to add comma-space in the relevant place...
Surely dynamic address allocation will, even if it speeds up routers, mean that DNS servers will be hopelessly out of date, permanantely?
Since I dial up on a modem at the moment, where I get a dynamically allocated IP address, I cannot set myself up as a web server, simply because my address changes every time I reconnect to the internet (OK, I'm not serious about making a web server over a 56k modem but you get my point).
I thought that every time your IP changed, you had to broadcast this inforrmation to the DNS servers, which take a while to propogate and tell each other who is who? If everyone is doing this constantly, the DNS servers would become hopelessly confused... or am I missing something obvious?
Of course, Windows Media Player's ASF support for Linux would be great, but I see no mention of it in the press release. Given that Microsoft went after Virtual Dub [virtualdub.org] for its support of ASF files (read the news archive):
Although not an integrated solution, if you just want to view downloaded.asf files, then you can use mplayer, a pretty neat little movie player, and the most durable that I have found on linux.
It requires the dll's from microsoft to play them, but if I remember correctly, they are freely downloadable.
I'm not saying it's a good solution (I hate having windows dlls in Linux), but it is a solution.
I assume that they must have changed it recently then.
Admittedly, last time I checked out Bearshare was about 6 months ago, and at the time I'm sure that there was no way to deselect the adware - I only found out about it after coming across a few angry pages about it on the internet, at which point I discovered it.
My days of surfing finished when I foolishly stopped using Altavista.
Ah, those were the days though, when I considered altavista to be the ULTIMATE search engine.
I mean, it only used to take me, ooh, I dunno, half hour perhaps to find the information I was looking for?
And oh, what beautiful side tracks there were amongst the pages returned! Anything from garden weaving to train spotting, Black holes to pot-holing. Ahh, those were the days...
But then along came a new search engine in town, and someone introduced me to Google. What can I say, I was sceptical. But this so-called-friend persuaded me to try it out, never once warning me of the change that he was about to inflict upon me.
What can I say, I was young and naive, and tried it anyway. And such wonders it gave! What a buzz! When I typed something in to the magic search box, and clicked search, I found what I wanted first time, no longer did I waste most of my life looking for what I wanted - with Google, I had found it.
Only now, after reading this article do I realise the part of my life that I have lost. No longer can I search for something I want to find and get sidetracked. I tried to go back, but couldn't. The power of Google was just too much. My case is too far gone. I can't quit, I have tried switching back to altavista, but it just doesn't "do" anything for me any longer.
Oh well, gotta use google again. Maybe - just maybe - it will find something totally unrelated to what I'm after. Maybe...
Hasn't it always done that? I thought that if you typed in an invalid domain, it went straight to a search engine, assuming that you was trying to search for something.
I assume you could set up which search engine it falls back on, but it doesn't suprise me that it defaults to MSN
Of course, if it does the same thing for hyperlinks, that would be different...
NB - I haven't used IE explorer for 3 months having changed over to Linux and KDE. Never looked back.
How far KDE has come. KDE is really impressive nowadays (2.1). I'm amazed that the linux companies hasn't dared to say yet that Linux is ready for the desktop.
I'm almost inclined to agree. KDE itself is an absolutely great desktop. For me, the only thing that I think Linux needs is a consistent way to install programs. RPM's are great, Debian files are great, but there are still quite a few unpackaged programs that are distributed as tar.gz's. When we have a packaging system which can install any of them, and remember them in the same way so that they can be easily uninstalled, and which can figure out dependicies between the different systems, I will consider Linux ready for the desktop period.
I should like to say I am actually grateful that companies haven't said that Linux is ready for the desktop yet - by premature announcement of the fact, they leave Linux wide open to criticism for claims that it cannot (quite yet) forfill. I'd rather that things are got just right, and then big announcements made.
But technically speaking, neither is the Windows GUI. (at least in 95/98, I'm guessing it's the same in 2000 however...)
In case you haven't noticed, the GUI is a program called Explorer.exe
You can change it if you like, I think it's the first line in System.ini, or one of the other system text files.
You can change it to a different program though there don't appear to be any out there that actually work very well...
I've seen the odd program that does this to get maximum performance out of games - by not loading the Windows GUI at all and booting straight into the game.
But if you want to talk about the Windows kernel, then like the Linux GUI'S, you have to disregard all of the fancy enhancements to the Windows desktop, by your own arguments.
KDE/Gnome/Netscape etc also crash a whole lot more than Explorer. I don't know what you're talking about.
Erm, which version are you using?
I mean, if you choose to use the most unstable releases out there, so that you are on the cutting edge, (like I do), well then you get crashes. If you choose a stable release IMHO, you don't. (I don't consider Netscape has having a stable release however - it's a buggy piece of crap and I don't use it:-) ).
On the other hand, you also get updates to the software daily, so a lot of those bugs vanish quickly. For instance, I recently sent in a bug report on KWord - it was fixed in a couple of days, I will be downloading the updated version later today.
Incidentally, I use a Windows NT system where crashing Internet explorer in a particular way caused the system to go down - for the life of me, I can't understand how that could have anything to do with dodgy drivers.
I haven't used Windows 2000 - I can't afford it, and my university hasn't upgraded to it yet.
Slashdot Mirror
OK, default scenario - you want to copy a paragraph off of a web site. On screen, it looks like plain text. You drag your mouse over it and copy it, and paste it into word, expecting the _same behaviour_ as if you had done it in say, notepad.
And suddenly you have a hideous block of text in a different font, which looks like HTML, which is _not_ what you (or what most people) want.
I remember being 8 years old and being at school. I used to program the BBC micro back then - I wrote some multiplication test software for the teacher :-) (actually, I was closer to 10, but what the heck)
What I also rember, is that only about the top 5/6 people in the class of 30 could use the computer without help, the rest still had trouble even if they were being guided through it.
OK, we are in a more computerised world now, but even so - your 8 year old is good on a computer because (from what you say) he has full access to one at home, which is great - I wish all kids had that kind of access but without any stats to back me up whatsoever, I'm going to hazard a guess that for every 8 year old like yours, there's at least another one who has never used a computer.
I had a quick browse of the web (cos I was sure that there was at least _some_ educational software for linux somewhere) and found this site
:-))
I don't know the quality or status of most of the software - the only program that I have tried in the past was tuxtype, which is quite fun for five minutes (I'm guessing young children getting to grips with learning the layout of a QWERTY keyboard might get more out of it though
Well I use debian, because it doesn't seem to get many dependency problems :-)
:-)
Incidentally though, I just tried to update Windows 98 using Microsoft update. Tried 3 times in fact - IE keeps crashing after locking up for 5 minutes, so I can't actually update it to get rid of the bug that's stopping me from updating it - now that's what I call a dependency problem
Perhaps if I get a chance to use Windows 2000 for a couple of days I will be convinced that it's better than Linux, but if that happens, it will be the first version of Windows that has convinced me.
I actually think that your missing a point here - the desktop _is_ ready to be used (I've had my mother up and running on the web easily), but the installation isn't.
But then again, I bet your granny couldn't install any other operating system you care to mention either.
In both cases, what happens is that someone comes to the computer, installs whatever OS they want on it plus software then leave them to it.
Also, in elementary schools, we would not be expecting topics like "And today children, we shall teach you how to grep your way around the linux cvs". What you would want is a system with nice big buttons so that kids are one click away from getting the program that they are supposed to be using, one desktop so that they don't get lost, and a couple of elementary school educational programs (there happen to be a couple, I can't remember what they are off-hand)
Perhaps, what we need is a distro which focuses on the school market. It would be minimalistic (no apache, etc.), focus on educational software, have a web browser, wordprocessor, etc and that would be it.
Even better, start up a company which sells computers with the distro preinstalled and configured, and provides support.
1. I cannot seem to find any way to stop animated GIFs. Is there some buried command for this, or am I SOL?
Right click to get the popup menu, click "Stop animations"
The bookmarks menu demands that I hold down the mouse button while swishing through my bookmark folders. If I accidentally let go, I end up with the wrong site, or all too commonly, get the "edit bookmarks" page.
No it doesn't, at least not on my computer.
Hmmm... what version are you using? Remember that new features and bug fixes are being added on a daily basis. Perhaps an upgrade is in order...
A three line patch would be very easy to re-write and call your own...
However, if the person that you was ripping-off was a good contributor, I can assure you that by doing so you would piss him off - therefore they would stop contributing, therefore your project would lose out and, if you took this attitude enough, eventually fail.
The best way round it for me is to do what Troll-tech did - be honest. They released a propietary version of QT first, followed by a GPL'ed version (I'm ignoring the free software fight that happened to make the license GPL). Anyone who wants to use the software to devlop free software - well great. Anywone who wants to develop in-house software, but still under the GPL, well great. Anyone who wants to withold the source, so that only they can make money from their work, well they pay.
The slave system is purely a human one. How or why a machine would pick up one of the worst human behavoirs is simple called watching too much sci-fi and being paranoid
Unfortunateley, if you where to direct someone to do what is best for themselves, you would get a slave system - you see, it's this human trait called selfishness which is why the rich don't see why they should give to the poor, and why your everyday person doesn't give money to begging homeless people. Because it doesn't help number one.
Thing is, most people look after themselves - the only time they look after other people is when it is in there own interests to do so, either because it makes them feel bad to think they haven;t, or becase they expect to gain from it in the long run - human nature's like that, you see.
There is no reason whatsoever why computers shouldn't be any different. They are programmed by us, so they will be like us unless either a) we don't understand them enough to program them with what happens to be the majority of humanities values, or b), we make them so intelligent that they see our values for the self obsessed values that they are, and choose to ignore them.
And don't try telling me that you do things for other people because "it's the right thing to do" you fo them because doing so makes you feel good. However we look at it, everything that the majority of humanity ever does is selfish.
From what I've heard, Office 2000 is basically the same format as '97 (don't take this as gospel, though) So as far as I understand, Office 2000 is not XML.
Koffice from the beginning has been an gz'zipped XML file.
RTF doesn't support tables, embedded objects, headers/footers, TOC, index, etc.
Let's be honest though - doing anything complex with tables is a PITA (the interface for manipulating tables in office is totally un-intuitive, and trying to do everything right so that TOC and indexes render correctly is a PITA. I have little experience with embedded obects so can't comment.
But except for them, everything that you mentioned, trying to implement them is a PITA anyway.
You mean the most popular, security is for wimps, platform
wimps... Windows, Icons, Menus, and pointer?
Hmmm... I always thought firewalls and the like made for better security...
Hmmm... just found out that Romeo & Juliet act 3 is actually an implementation of the DeCSS...
Hmm... depends on how much you write I suppose.
IANAL, but I'm sure that if I write a c/c++ source file and put "Copyrighted by me" (obviously where me happens to be my name) at the top of it, then if it get's submitted, I still "own" that piece of code, and it could not be un-GPL'd without my express permission, even if it later got split up and placed into several c/c++ files written by someone else. Obviously, they could remove my code, rewrite it themselves and I wouldn't have any say over it then.
Hmmm... IANAL, whenever I see that, I always want to add comma-space in the relevant place...
Why doesn't the Government of Brazil just pirate Windows?
If they respect drug licensing laws, why should they respect software ones?</i>
I suppose the difference is, that I can't see pirating windows saving lives...
Surely dynamic address allocation will, even if it speeds up routers, mean that DNS servers will be hopelessly out of date, permanantely?
Since I dial up on a modem at the moment, where I get a dynamically allocated IP address, I cannot set myself up as a web server, simply because my address changes every time I reconnect to the internet (OK, I'm not serious about making a web server over a 56k modem but you get my point).
I thought that every time your IP changed, you had to broadcast this inforrmation to the DNS servers, which take a while to propogate and tell each other who is who? If everyone is doing this constantly, the DNS servers would become hopelessly confused... or am I missing something obvious?
Of course, Windows Media Player's ASF support for Linux would be great, but I see no mention of it in the press release. Given that Microsoft went after Virtual Dub [virtualdub.org] for its support of ASF files (read the news archive):
.asf files, then you can use mplayer, a pretty neat little movie player, and the most durable that I have found on linux.
Although not an integrated solution, if you just want to view downloaded
It requires the dll's from microsoft to play them, but if I remember correctly, they are freely downloadable.
I'm not saying it's a good solution (I hate having windows dlls in Linux), but it is a solution.
I assume that they must have changed it recently then.
Admittedly, last time I checked out Bearshare was about 6 months ago, and at the time I'm sure that there was no way to deselect the adware - I only found out about it after coming across a few angry pages about it on the internet, at which point I discovered it.
Either way though, my point remains the same.
My days of surfing finished when I foolishly stopped using Altavista.
Ah, those were the days though, when I considered altavista to be the ULTIMATE search engine.
I mean, it only used to take me, ooh, I dunno, half hour perhaps to find the information I was looking for?
And oh, what beautiful side tracks there were amongst the pages returned! Anything from garden weaving to train spotting, Black holes to pot-holing. Ahh, those were the days...
But then along came a new search engine in town, and someone introduced me to Google. What can I say, I was sceptical. But this so-called-friend persuaded me to try it out, never once warning me of the change that he was about to inflict upon me.
What can I say, I was young and naive, and tried it anyway. And such wonders it gave! What a buzz! When I typed something in to the magic search box, and clicked search, I found what I wanted first time, no longer did I waste most of my life looking for what I wanted - with Google, I had found it.
Only now, after reading this article do I realise the part of my life that I have lost. No longer can I search for something I want to find and get sidetracked. I tried to go back, but couldn't. The power of Google was just too much. My case is too far gone. I can't quit, I have tried switching back to altavista, but it just doesn't "do" anything for me any longer.
Oh well, gotta use google again. Maybe - just maybe - it will find something totally unrelated to what I'm after. Maybe...
<sniff>
Unfortunately, there have already been cases where spyware gets installed without your knowledge - take Bearshare for example.
It's only one step up from that to this sort of software being installed without your knowledge too.
Hasn't it always done that? I thought that if you typed in an invalid domain, it went straight to a search engine, assuming that you was trying to search for something.
I assume you could set up which search engine it falls back on, but it doesn't suprise me that it defaults to MSN
Of course, if it does the same thing for hyperlinks, that would be different...
NB - I haven't used IE explorer for 3 months having changed over to Linux and KDE. Never looked back.
How far KDE has come. KDE is really impressive nowadays (2.1). I'm amazed that the linux companies hasn't dared to say yet that Linux is ready for the desktop.
I'm almost inclined to agree. KDE itself is an absolutely great desktop. For me, the only thing that I think Linux needs is a consistent way to install programs. RPM's are great, Debian files are great, but there are still quite a few unpackaged programs that are distributed as tar.gz's. When we have a packaging system which can install any of them, and remember them in the same way so that they can be easily uninstalled, and which can figure out dependicies between the different systems, I will consider Linux ready for the desktop period.
I should like to say I am actually grateful that companies haven't said that Linux is ready for the desktop yet - by premature announcement of the fact, they leave Linux wide open to criticism for claims that it cannot (quite yet) forfill. I'd rather that things are got just right, and then big announcements made.
Just my $0.02
And what about when the person doesn't understand the manuals? Sometimes it's nice to hear something explained in a slightly different manner.
They usually start their comment with something like "I've looked at the manual but I can't understand this bit of it..."
And ask about a particular detail of the manual.
Can't comment on the second paragraph, I haven't really experienced it myself.
That's not a very nice thing to say to God...
But technically speaking, neither is the Windows GUI. (at least in 95/98, I'm guessing it's the same in 2000 however...)
In case you haven't noticed, the GUI is a program called Explorer.exe
You can change it if you like, I think it's the first line in System.ini, or one of the other system text files.
You can change it to a different program though there don't appear to be any out there that actually work very well...
I've seen the odd program that does this to get maximum performance out of games - by not loading the Windows GUI at all and booting straight into the game.
But if you want to talk about the Windows kernel, then like the Linux GUI'S, you have to disregard all of the fancy enhancements to the Windows desktop, by your own arguments.
KDE/Gnome/Netscape etc also crash a whole lot more than Explorer. I don't know what you're talking about.
:-) ).
Erm, which version are you using?
I mean, if you choose to use the most unstable releases out there, so that you are on the cutting edge, (like I do), well then you get crashes. If you choose a stable release IMHO, you don't. (I don't consider Netscape has having a stable release however - it's a buggy piece of crap and I don't use it
On the other hand, you also get updates to the software daily, so a lot of those bugs vanish quickly. For instance, I recently sent in a bug report on KWord - it was fixed in a couple of days, I will be downloading the updated version later today.
Incidentally, I use a Windows NT system where crashing Internet explorer in a particular way caused the system to go down - for the life of me, I can't understand how that could have anything to do with dodgy drivers.
I haven't used Windows 2000 - I can't afford it, and my university hasn't upgraded to it yet.