I doubt Java is the flavor of the day. Sure it has its detractors...but I suspect it may be the future and it is superior to a lot of other things out there. It's isn't the latest thing on the block, and its performance issues are being resolved.
No, i don't want a languages flamewar, if you do, yell at someone else. this is just what i think and have heard.
yeah. my university replaces a pc lab every year. We have about 10 labs, at 20 systems a peice. we just got new dells, i think next year it'll be one of the um...4 sun labs that gets upgraded.
One of the fun things I enjoy is trying to find a way to break the sun systems. I try to avoid crashing the NT/2K's, but I like to try and actually get one of the SunBlades to do something it shouldn't. I did it. Once.
moderators...wouldn't mind spending a few points on this guy would you? He raises a _very_ excellent point - and one you don't have to be a slashbot or a linux zealot to see. Linux and Open source have always been for the user, and all about freedom. pmz is right - "Microsoft is not a friend of academia no matter how friendly they appear."
MS is a business, and their motive for this is colored green. If it becomes profitable to hurt the universities and academics instead of helping...guess what they're gonna do?
curses. how far along is this and what's his name? I'm in CSE 331 & 320 at that same institution and I rather hate VC++, and i'm used to *NIX and g++. What is going on? i've heard the complaints/rumors about.net in 231...?
Hey, i LIKE those Enlarge Your Wang emails!!! So far, I've gained 24 inches (and still going!) and my ejaculations have increased 5000%!!! Not only that, but with Bob's Boobie cream I now have a great pair of knockers (54DDD!!!)
why bother..they charge for it. Might as well get the industry standard, Office.
Office is the standard in fact - and it is unfortunate that they are the standard. Using SO is not taking the hard road to avoid MS, in fact a lot of the "linux zealots" here on slashdot do use MS products. It's about cheaper, better, and more secure.
And to your sig...that isn't security, that's removing stupid little annoyances like you.
The (valid) point of this anecdote is that if you market yourself right and raise your prices, you can be quite successful. the grandma had little to do with it. The point is valid in SO's case, and very much so. Once you charge for something, a business sees you as a serious producer, where if you just gave it away people would not bother to notice.
I have seen analyses where business X rejects StarOffice 5.x because it was free, and Sun might drop it any time they needed to cut back. Now that they are charging, they are a "real" contender.
The frustrating thing is that it seems the more Sun charge's for StarOffice the more they will be respected by businesses, and probably the more product they will sell. People don't judge a product by its true value, but on what someone is charging for it. If i were Sun, i'd charge $99/seat for businesses, and $49/seat for personal, non-commercial use.
Take this route: every new desk you have to add, give them SO or OO, depending on their needs. Every time an MS office desktop starts getting buggy, install SO/OO, depending on the needs of the user. Trust me, even if you are only upgrading...I think you'll like the SO/OO upgrade path a lot better than Microsoft's... Hey, you might even miss the next big MS virus, you never know...
While that last sentance was meant to be humorous, the rest is serious. coming from using MS office for all of my life, learning the basics of OO and StarOffice takes all of maybe 5 minutes, and anything beyond that is just a quick question or a little playing around. No $500 training, and rarely are there $100 days wasted. Again...being (mostly) funny - there are days when MS office will waste something that's been worked on for a while...although maybe officeXP is less prone to document-munching.
And stop picking on Roblimo. there will be better, more complete reviews out, certainly on the ZD's and the Cnet's of the world. Write your own, of OpenOffice at least - it's not hard. This is just a first review, and it's good and informative enough for the geeks out there. First news is better than no news.
This is something that really needs to be brought out. Linux let's you choose everything, from your distribution and your kernel, down to your wordprocessor, browser, window manager, file manager, your ftp/web/database server, and a myriad of other things. Just pick a free one, and run with it. If you don't like it, switch. Linux provides a marvelous amount of choice...
Now, for a big company, or a new user, choice isn't so good. they want to just use X, Y, and Z application so that there is less to learn (and administer). Not me...I like 'exploring' applications...but i'm not the vast majority of people.
For me, I'd like a distribution that included every application that it could cram in...possibly with Disk 1 very supported...and Disk 3 being "extra apps we like and threw in." Disk 1 could have all the core apps, so Bob Person could just stick it in and get all he wants and needs. While I have my extras on the other disks. It's just a suggestion.
A second suggestion: Is it just me or is Abiword, Kword, and OO/SO have only MS office as a standard document type between them? I suggest that all of the open-source office people get together and decide on one format, and then support their own if they want to.
thought: is it better to "warn" people that OO might make things look a little funny, and then be able to discuss how capable your _very_ inexpensive OpenOffice product is... ...or is it better to never even tell them, because they probably will never realize that your formatting problem wasn't just a problem with MS Office...
I, too, have been very happy with my Openoffice build. On linux it's 641, and I think the same in windows. Openoffice is not blazing fast but it gets the job done. No slower than MS office that isn't auto-starting, in my opinion.
And Windows is only $100-$300 if your time is either a) worthless or b) you can fix random crashes, eliminate fun viruses, solve stupid bugs, understand obfuscated software, and deal with all the other general crap in 0 time. And you don't mind installing MS spyware and adware.
And before you remind me that XP and 2K don't crash as much and things aren't all that bad - remember that about half of the Windows users are still on the 9x's, and won't be leaving too soon. Yes, microsoft has done a lot of good in bringing PC's to the masses in a (fairly) user-friendly way, but please don't say that windows maintenance is free. or even that much cheaper than running a linux system.
No, actually it is being sold as being comparable to that MHz class of Pentium IV, it's primary competition. therefore, it helps to inform the innocent customer, not mislead him. However, I suspect you might just be an Intel fan, and that's fine...i'm not.
However, it might also help to point out that (the rumor is anyway), intel saw the way people were buying processors. MHz = Performance in many people's minds. They thought a bit, and then designed a low-IPC, high MHz processor. In that light...it seems that maybe intel is sticking it to the customer.
I use Mandrake because it is a good transition from windows...and perhaps i'll stay with it once i've learned what all of the neat-o tools do behind the scenes. If a mandrake distro can do with a GUI what other tools require learning command line tools for, then Mandrake and its GUI is what i'll give to my friends. I, however, will make good and sure to learn those command line tools and config files.
a) it's what being a guru is being all about. increase your skill, increase your worth. I'm just a student now, so my worth is low but i'm working on it. b)knowing obscure commands sure helps when your gui is busted. For example,/etc/fstab was messed up today (i'd been playing with my pretty gui diskdrake and a spare hard drive) and i had to know exactly what was wrong in the config file, to get to my gui. : ( , but i knew what i was doing (thank you linuxdoc.org).
c)Last, I just like to know what's going on. The reason I love thee, linux, is because you are open and i can tell nicely what is going on. i don't have to hack a registry, i can just go to my config files. In this aspect, windows blows. Yes, there is control panel, Power tools, and all that...but linux is designed to be customizable and user-configurable. ahh. i love it.
...linux is only free if your time is worthless...
and my response to this much-used statement is - And all that crap that Wastes Your Time (TM) in windows is free????
yeah.right. i've run linux, winXP, 2K, 98, 3.11, DOS, a little bit of BSD, Solaris...and the easiest, fastest, and most stable has been Linux. sure I'm a tiny bit a zealot...but if windows was better for my needs i _would_ run it. but it isnt'.
I don't know if you are being sarcastic, or not. but if you are, may i direct you to this site and particularly this link labelled "source code." Also interesting is this graphic on the same site, given what we know now, and what CNET reports about them. *shrug*.
I was talking to a friend today. He runs an ftp here at my school and is a good computer programmer. We got on the subject of operating systems* and he asked why i didn't run winXP, as it is provided free to all CSE students. I explained that it didn't run some games/apps (notably abandonware like the Cmdr Keen which I did pay for back in the day) and I told him that XP reports a lot of what you do back to MS. yay. gettin' monitored. I run windows 98SE for games. Now with a good version of Xine in my new OS, i don't need 98 for movies any more.
My friend blew off hte privacy issue, and that worried me. I mean, this guy trades warez, he has illegal movies, pirated MS office, and he doesn't worry about MSspyware XP. sigh. and this guy is supposed to be a computer-smart CS student.
*i mentioned how i was soon going to install mandrake 8.2, which btw, is beautiful, and i love you mandrake-linux. its just so...good...
So true. I had nimda on a couple of computers i use, and after cleaning and cleaning and scanning and scanning...i almost had to just get out my flamethrower. Careful, surgical cleans can be nice if they work...but my mandrake rescue disk is for times when surgical work is not enough and it's time to just rm like there's no tomorrow. *smiles*...and its always a good feeling to completely wipe windows off of a machine...using a text-only interface...it just feels...so good inside.
host a cache of the pages/whatever that is linked too, for subscribing members only. That way, you _know_ you can get to the article, so long as you are a subscriber. People will still whine, they never stop...but it might just push a few more subscriptions.
some thoughts: must be opt-in only. Example: slashdot emails admin@site_to_be_crushed.com and says, "hey, we are about to slashdot your server as soon as i post this article. wanna let us cache it for you? We'll send you pageview statistics, and allow our cache of the page to link to your ad's." Now, what would be wrong with that idea?
Or even better, subscribers could get access to slashdot's ftp, with the kernel/distro that was just linked on the main page available for download. whaddya think, good idea, or bad idea?
I use linux because:
1. I am very curious about it. I hear good things.
2. It's UNIX - which is good for me as a CompSci student (we run sun boxes at my school)
3. It's good for servers. I like servers.
4. It's secure, and stable. also, it's stable, and secure. it needed saying 2x...yes Julie, Nimda did eat your win98 partition, but Julie...there is something...better...
5. It's UNIX - which is just...good.
6. Great applications: I don't, and can't, list all the goodness on the three cd's of mandrake 8.1, and the thoughts of 8.2 make me drool.
7. Free applications: again, i'm a CS student, which means i'm poor. free OS+free apps is good...although i'm thinking of scraping some cash up to support Mandrake.
8. Yes, it is cool to be different. and linux is different. and ridiculing people when their win98 box goes boom is always entertaining. Not to mention the flamewars i get to have with windows people!
9. Vi comes on Mandrake cd's. i'm too lazy to get a windows version, although i'm sure one exists. Vi is probably my favorite app of all time, that might be because of all the hours i've logged on it trying to get my C++ code to compile.
Slashdot Mirror
I doubt Java is the flavor of the day. Sure it has its detractors...but I suspect it may be the future and it is superior to a lot of other things out there. It's isn't the latest thing on the block, and its performance issues are being resolved.
No, i don't want a languages flamewar, if you do, yell at someone else. this is just what i think and have heard.
yeah. my university replaces a pc lab every year. We have about 10 labs, at 20 systems a peice. we just got new dells, i think next year it'll be one of the um...4 sun labs that gets upgraded.
One of the fun things I enjoy is trying to find a way to break the sun systems. I try to avoid crashing the NT/2K's, but I like to try and actually get one of the SunBlades to do something it shouldn't. I did it. Once.
"People with personality don't use MS" is probably one of the stupidest things ever posted on Slashdot, and that is saying something.
Ouch...I think that's the insult-of-the-day. Nice.
moderators...wouldn't mind spending a few points on this guy would you? He raises a _very_ excellent point - and one you don't have to be a slashbot or a linux zealot to see. Linux and Open source have always been for the user, and all about freedom. pmz is right - "Microsoft is not a friend of academia no matter how friendly they appear."
MS is a business, and their motive for this is colored green. If it becomes profitable to hurt the universities and academics instead of helping...guess what they're gonna do?
curses. how far along is this and what's his name? I'm in CSE 331 & 320 at that same institution and I rather hate VC++, and i'm used to *NIX and g++. What is going on? i've heard the complaints/rumors about .net in 231...?
Hey, i LIKE those Enlarge Your Wang emails!!! So far, I've gained 24 inches (and still going!) and my ejaculations have increased 5000%!!! Not only that, but with Bob's Boobie cream I now have a great pair of knockers (54DDD!!!)
...wait...
: )
Yeah thats right...no one cared at all about the votes in florida. that's why they were only counted 50 times...
why bother..they charge for it. Might as well get the industry standard, Office.
Office is the standard in fact - and it is unfortunate that they are the standard. Using SO is not taking the hard road to avoid MS, in fact a lot of the "linux zealots" here on slashdot do use MS products. It's about cheaper, better, and more secure.
And to your sig...that isn't security, that's removing stupid little annoyances like you.
The (valid) point of this anecdote is that if you market yourself right and raise your prices, you can be quite successful. the grandma had little to do with it. The point is valid in SO's case, and very much so. Once you charge for something, a business sees you as a serious producer, where if you just gave it away people would not bother to notice.
I have seen analyses where business X rejects StarOffice 5.x because it was free, and Sun might drop it any time they needed to cut back. Now that they are charging, they are a "real" contender.
The frustrating thing is that it seems the more Sun charge's for StarOffice the more they will be respected by businesses, and probably the more product they will sell. People don't judge a product by its true value, but on what someone is charging for it. If i were Sun, i'd charge $99/seat for businesses, and $49/seat for personal, non-commercial use.
Take this route: every new desk you have to add, give them SO or OO, depending on their needs. Every time an MS office desktop starts getting buggy, install SO/OO, depending on the needs of the user. Trust me, even if you are only upgrading...I think you'll like the SO/OO upgrade path a lot better than Microsoft's... Hey, you might even miss the next big MS virus, you never know...
While that last sentance was meant to be humorous, the rest is serious. coming from using MS office for all of my life, learning the basics of OO and StarOffice takes all of maybe 5 minutes, and anything beyond that is just a quick question or a little playing around. No $500 training, and rarely are there $100 days wasted. Again...being (mostly) funny - there are days when MS office will waste something that's been worked on for a while...although maybe officeXP is less prone to document-munching.
And stop picking on Roblimo. there will be better, more complete reviews out, certainly on the ZD's and the Cnet's of the world. Write your own, of OpenOffice at least - it's not hard. This is just a first review, and it's good and informative enough for the geeks out there. First news is better than no news.
try submitting a bug report...I've opened up most combinations of Draw, Writer, Calc, Math, etc, and have not had your problem. More info maybe?
This is something that really needs to be brought out. Linux let's you choose everything, from your distribution and your kernel, down to your wordprocessor, browser, window manager, file manager, your ftp/web/database server, and a myriad of other things. Just pick a free one, and run with it. If you don't like it, switch. Linux provides a marvelous amount of choice...
Now, for a big company, or a new user, choice isn't so good. they want to just use X, Y, and Z application so that there is less to learn (and administer). Not me...I like 'exploring' applications...but i'm not the vast majority of people.
For me, I'd like a distribution that included every application that it could cram in...possibly with Disk 1 very supported...and Disk 3 being "extra apps we like and threw in." Disk 1 could have all the core apps, so Bob Person could just stick it in and get all he wants and needs. While I have my extras on the other disks. It's just a suggestion.
A second suggestion: Is it just me or is Abiword, Kword, and OO/SO have only MS office as a standard document type between them? I suggest that all of the open-source office people get together and decide on one format, and then support their own if they want to.
thought: is it better to "warn" people that OO might make things look a little funny, and then be able to discuss how capable your _very_ inexpensive OpenOffice product is...
...or is it better to never even tell them, because they probably will never realize that your formatting problem wasn't just a problem with MS Office...
I, too, have been very happy with my Openoffice build. On linux it's 641, and I think the same in windows. Openoffice is not blazing fast but it gets the job done. No slower than MS office that isn't auto-starting, in my opinion.
hmmm...
Linux is only free if your time is worthless
And Windows is only $100-$300 if your time is either a) worthless or b) you can fix random crashes, eliminate fun viruses, solve stupid bugs, understand obfuscated software, and deal with all the other general crap in 0 time. And you don't mind installing MS spyware and adware.
And before you remind me that XP and 2K don't crash as much and things aren't all that bad - remember that about half of the Windows users are still on the 9x's, and won't be leaving too soon. Yes, microsoft has done a lot of good in bringing PC's to the masses in a (fairly) user-friendly way, but please don't say that windows maintenance is free. or even that much cheaper than running a linux system.
No, actually it is being sold as being comparable to that MHz class of Pentium IV, it's primary competition. therefore, it helps to inform the innocent customer, not mislead him. However, I suspect you might just be an Intel fan, and that's fine...i'm not.
However, it might also help to point out that (the rumor is anyway), intel saw the way people were buying processors. MHz = Performance in many people's minds. They thought a bit, and then designed a low-IPC, high MHz processor. In that light...it seems that maybe intel is sticking it to the customer.
I use Mandrake because it is a good transition from windows...and perhaps i'll stay with it once i've learned what all of the neat-o tools do behind the scenes. If a mandrake distro can do with a GUI what other tools require learning command line tools for, then Mandrake and its GUI is what i'll give to my friends. I, however, will make good and sure to learn those command line tools and config files.
/etc/fstab was messed up today (i'd been playing with my pretty gui diskdrake and a spare hard drive) and i had to know exactly what was wrong in the config file, to get to my gui. : ( , but i knew what i was doing (thank you linuxdoc.org).
a) it's what being a guru is being all about. increase your skill, increase your worth. I'm just a student now, so my worth is low but i'm working on it.
b)knowing obscure commands sure helps when your gui is busted. For example,
c)Last, I just like to know what's going on. The reason I love thee, linux, is because you are open and i can tell nicely what is going on. i don't have to hack a registry, i can just go to my config files. In this aspect, windows blows. Yes, there is control panel, Power tools, and all that...but linux is designed to be customizable and user-configurable. ahh. i love it.
...linux is only free if your time is worthless...
and my response to this much-used statement is - And all that crap that Wastes Your Time (TM) in windows is free????
yeah.right. i've run linux, winXP, 2K, 98, 3.11, DOS, a little bit of BSD, Solaris...and the easiest, fastest, and most stable has been Linux. sure I'm a tiny bit a zealot...but if windows was better for my needs i _would_ run it. but it isnt'.
- dave.
Let's hear it for open source gnutella clients!
I don't know if you are being sarcastic, or not. but if you are, may i direct you to this site and particularly this link labelled "source code." Also interesting is this graphic on the same site, given what we know now, and what CNET reports about them. *shrug*.
I was talking to a friend today. He runs an ftp here at my school and is a good computer programmer. We got on the subject of operating systems* and he asked why i didn't run winXP, as it is provided free to all CSE students. I explained that it didn't run some games/apps (notably abandonware like the Cmdr Keen which I did pay for back in the day) and I told him that XP reports a lot of what you do back to MS. yay. gettin' monitored. I run windows 98SE for games. Now with a good version of Xine in my new OS, i don't need 98 for movies any more.
My friend blew off hte privacy issue, and that worried me. I mean, this guy trades warez, he has illegal movies, pirated MS office, and he doesn't worry about MSspyware XP. sigh. and this guy is supposed to be a computer-smart CS student.
*i mentioned how i was soon going to install mandrake 8.2, which btw, is beautiful, and i love you mandrake-linux. its just so...good...
good point. makes me smile, too... heh. underdog...heh.
So true. I had nimda on a couple of computers i use, and after cleaning and cleaning and scanning and scanning...i almost had to just get out my flamethrower. Careful, surgical cleans can be nice if they work...but my mandrake rescue disk is for times when surgical work is not enough and it's time to just rm like there's no tomorrow. *smiles*...and its always a good feeling to completely wipe windows off of a machine...using a text-only interface...it just feels...so good inside.
CmdrTaco: how to make money:
host a cache of the pages/whatever that is linked too, for subscribing members only. That way, you _know_ you can get to the article, so long as you are a subscriber. People will still whine, they never stop...but it might just push a few more subscriptions.
some thoughts: must be opt-in only. Example: slashdot emails admin@site_to_be_crushed.com and says, "hey, we are about to slashdot your server as soon as i post this article. wanna let us cache it for you? We'll send you pageview statistics, and allow our cache of the page to link to your ad's." Now, what would be wrong with that idea?
Or even better, subscribers could get access to slashdot's ftp, with the kernel/distro that was just linked on the main page available for download. whaddya think, good idea, or bad idea?
I use linux because:
1. I am very curious about it. I hear good things.
2. It's UNIX - which is good for me as a CompSci student (we run sun boxes at my school)
3. It's good for servers. I like servers.
4. It's secure, and stable. also, it's stable, and secure. it needed saying 2x...yes Julie, Nimda did eat your win98 partition, but Julie...there is something...better...
5. It's UNIX - which is just...good.
6. Great applications: I don't, and can't, list all the goodness on the three cd's of mandrake 8.1, and the thoughts of 8.2 make me drool.
7. Free applications: again, i'm a CS student, which means i'm poor. free OS+free apps is good...although i'm thinking of scraping some cash up to support Mandrake.
8. Yes, it is cool to be different. and linux is different. and ridiculing people when their win98 box goes boom is always entertaining. Not to mention the flamewars i get to have with windows people!
9. Vi comes on Mandrake cd's. i'm too lazy to get a windows version, although i'm sure one exists.
Vi is probably my favorite app of all time, that might be because of all the hours i've logged on it trying to get my C++ code to compile.