Or, if you prefer the mouse, you can try out some gestures. Just move the mouse up, then right or left (like an upside-down L) to go to the next/prev tab. At least, that's how it works in Galeon and in Opera, I forget if you need a plugin to get Mozilla to do it or not.
Hmm, now that I think about it, it would be nice if they also implemented a way to change windows by holding down the right mouse button and then scrolling with the wheel. This would be much more efficient (do they do this in Opera? I forget now, but it reminds me of Opera's way of going back and forward by holding down the right button and clicking the left, or holding the left button and clicking the right).
So he downloads the ISO and burns it to disc, as will every other geek. Lycoris can no longer afford to pay its developers
Sure they can - you forgot about those two oh-so-crucial steps: 1.... 2. profit
But seriously, while I think your logic is completely accurate, you're forgetting that Lycoris/Suse are not alone in the Linux for My Mom market. If I'm faced with the decision of paying $40 to install one of these versus downloading Mandrake or Red Hat, I'll opt for the latter (despite that annoying feeling inside that I *should* do the Right Thing and buy one of these). Unfortunately, until Mandrake and Red Hat start forcing me to buy their products too, I'll probably keep going with whatever's free. Hell, if they started forcing me to pay, I might be inclined to install Debian or (my personal favorite) Source Mage. After all, I'm the one doing the installation/configuration - my parents will still see the same pretty KDE interface either way. Even on their Windows machine, it's not like they ever delve as far as the control panel. If there is a problem with their computer, they'll be contacting me. (Incidentally, here's another place where Linux would be great - if I'm not home, I can walk them through starting up ssh and then from there I can just log in remotely and fix the problem).
If you just decided to start up Cheeko's Toasters, Inc., you probably wouldn't make a profit selling them at $50 a pop. Trying to compete with $20 toasters will end up with you getting burned.
I think you're missing the point. Cheeko's Toasters, Inc isn't trying to compete with $20 toasters. If the additional features had any use to some portion of the population, you can make some sales, even if most normal people wouldn't pay the extra price. Think along the lines of those PDA-Phone combos, which obviously do not compete for the same market as normal cell phones. Or those high-tech toilets they mentioned on Slashdot once (hell, anything just about any gadget they mention here). Or a Ferrari. You get the point.
But there will shortly be ports to Linux, Mac OS X, and other Unices; we are confident these OSes are just as prone.
Aside from all the other comments made in defense of these other OSes here, most of which I wholeheartedly agree with, I'd also like to point out that I think this is something that User Mode Linux will help to avoid. UML makes it a bit safer to play around with installing software that could potentially add cruft. You can have a UML file that has programs you're experimenting with, and then once you're confident that the programs work well and that you won't later decide that you don't need them, install them to your main Linux installation.
I'm not postive about this, but I think the difference is that with Debian most packages are created (or at the very least checked) by Debian's package maintainers. Windows does not enforce any kind of rules for what programs get added to the software database - for that matter, Windows does not even have a centralized database of software that you can install. As long as you install everything with apt-get in Debian, there shouldn't be any stray files left around if you choose to get rid of the application.
While we're plugging things, I'd add that Source Mage definitely does a decent job of avoiding the addition of cruft in a way similar to Debian's. Every time an application ("spell") is installed ("casted"), Source Mage tracks all the installed files. If you want to get rid of a program, just "dispel" it and all the files will be removed. You only can possibly run into problems if you modify these files (Source Mage has an option to either delete or keep modified files...neither is ideal though), which generally does not happen except possibly if they install something to/etc/. Furthermore, you can "gaze alien" to get a list of all the files that are not being tracked by Source Mage, so that you can try to manually remove any cruft that managed to sneak in. Finally, Source Mage strictly enforces the LSB standards, and casting will never put anything in/usr/local/, so generally things that you install manually that can potentially add cruft have a good chance of being isolated in there.
Finally, I'd assume that most of the above is also true of Gentoo, though I can't say I know from personal experience.
I know this may seem a bit redundant/off topic, but it seems that all the responses so far have suggested msconfig or something similar. For what it's worth, I find that it actually works a lot better to turn the option off in RealPlayer so that it does not later try to override the change you made to msconfig. Just start up RealPlayer, go to its preferences (I think it's in the view menu?), look for something about SmartCenter in the default tab, click settings, and uncheck the enable box. It will probably tell you about all the wonderful things SmartCenter does and beg and plead with you to change your mind, but just say "I'm sure" and you should be good to go.
Or, better yet, don't ever install it. Do you really need a media player better than Winamp, plus maybe Windows Media Player (down- I mean upgraded to version 6.4, of course) and *maybe* Quicktime?
I could be wrong about this, but I was under the impression that gcc-3.2 will be incompatible with 3.1, and therefore it seems strange for me for Mandrake to make the switch so quickly, when there are still some issues with 3.1 and it's more or less a dead-end in terms of compatibility. Hopefully they'll use 3.2 (scheduled for release within the next week according to the site) on the final version.
Oh, here's the quote from GCC's page about 3.2 incompatibility:
GCC 3.1 [sic, should be 3.2] has a number of C++ ABI fixes in it which make its C++ compiler binary incompatible with the C++ compilers found in earlier GCC releases, including GCC 3.1 and GCC 3.1.1
Actually, that is not necessarily true. Check out this article at The Register, about how Palm's new OS division is dominated by ex-Be employees.
Re:Bury them in proof, nice programming exercise.
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RIAA to Sue You Now
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· Score: 1
The downside of course, is that filesharing users would get sick of downloading garbage files, but then again it also might push people to start using P2P for legit purposes...
It seems that you're understating this downside a little bit. You're suggesting a way to undermine the RIAA by helping them far more than their lawsuits would ever help themselves. Essentially, you're saying "you can't kill us if we've already killed ourselves" - great, so now the RIAA wouldn't have to kill us, the P2P networks would be useless anyway.
Of course, if you're suggesting that P2P networks have legal uses beyond downloading copywritten music, fine, then I guess you're right - people using the service for legal purposes would be unaffected. However, these people would be unaffected by the RIAA's actions anyway, so what would you gain by helping the RIAA fuck with illegal users?
As a user of Source Mage, I'll respond briefly to your issues with source distros...
The user needs to have all development tools installed - including, depending on what packages they want to install, compilers for very obscure languages (how many of us have installed compilers for, say, Modula 3 and Objective-CAML?)
While it may be a bit of a pain to have things like these on your computer, it is all done automatically in Source Mage; just cast the spell and it will download and install anything required to install it. I don't think your hypothetical "Joe User" would even really notice this. Also, I don't see why this is so much worse than the dependencies that all package systems utilize.
Installation takes forever. This is not a problem for small packages, but how do you explain to Joe User that, after clicking "Install KDE 3.0", he can't use his new KDE 3.0 for a couple of hours? This is a real problem on slower machines - Compiling, for example, OpenOffice takes approximately 13 hours on an Athlon 1800 with 1.5 GB RAM. Imagine installing it from source on a Pentium with 128 MB RAM...)
This is definitely true. Source Distros demand reasonably good computers and quick Internet access, and they still often take a while to install things. Of course, it's not like you're installing a new version of your KDE/X/Mozilla/your kernel every day - these are major upgrades that you only need to do once in a while, and you can choose to hold the updates if you don't want to deal with the long install. Plus, you don't have to be there during the installation - I can cast something or (more often) run "sorcery update" to automatically update all the programs on my box, then walk away/go to sleep/whatever. Hell, make it a crontab job.
How do you handle binary-only stuff? In an ideal world, of course, you don't use any. But try explaining to Joe User why he can't see websites using Flash... I'm all for banning binary-only software, while it's there it needs to be handled.
There is not a whole lot of stuff that isn't available in an open-source form. And spells exist for proprietary programs like Opera and Flash (they tend to feel sort of like "hacks", but they work fine). For Quicktime the CrossOver plugin works fine.
No beginner-friendly error messages. How do you explain a newbie what foo.cc:123: invalid conversion from `const void*' to `void*' is supposed to mean? (It's typically an indication of broken code that happened to work with gcc 2.x, but doesn't work with gcc 3.x anymore - but how does a newbie know or fix it?)
Hopefully errors like this don't seep through. All the spells must be tested before making it into the grimoire, and can be set (by the spell maintainer, not Joe User) to use gcc 2 or 3 - whichever is known to work. Of course, errors sometimes occur, but the backed up compile logs (gaze compile spell) make it easy for the developers to figure out the problem, and a user with "voyeur" turned off (thus hiding the compilation messages) just sees a friendly little "problem detected" message on his screen.
Unfortunately, you're right - so many people are putting so much effort into making Sorcerer great that not a whole lot of attention has been paid to creating lots of documentation. The mailing lists, however, are always there if you need help; you can find them here.
I highly encourage everyone to give Sorcerer a shot (for a veteran Linux user it is extremely easy to get the hang of - and not too tough for someone with relatively little experience, and the installation has menus and whatnot to make it fairly simple). However, if you're weary about making the plunge without adequate documentation, you can probably expect to see a story on Slashdot a few weeks from now once all the kinks have been worked out (it has only been a few weeks since Sorcerer's creator quit and tried to bring his project down with him, so we're still scrambling to get everything perfect).
And, of course, the Sorcerer community recently split, so those looking for a long-term commitment on their distro might feel safer with Gentoo.
While what you say about Sorcerer is for the most part true, it should be noted that the "post-split" Sorcerer community, of which I am a (very small) part, has actually stabilized significantly, and is probably now at a point where it is more dependable longterm than it was under its original leadership. Specifically, there was one person, Kyle Sallee, in control before, who did an admirable job given the vast amount of work required for him. However, he often refused to be flexible in his ideals, so when people made suggestions, instead of considering them, he would get angered and insulted by them. Anyway, to make a long story short, it is now run in a much more democratic fashion, and the people in charge are constantly putting safeguards in place to make sure that they won't screw everything up if they suddenly decide to "abort" the project in a way similar to what Kyle did a month ago.
The new Sorcerer is growing quickly, and it's definitely something worth taking a look at (and the same can be said about Gentoo). While both distributions clearly have a lot of the same benefits, one thing that I must say is nice about Sorcerer is the built-in mnemonic it has for its commands. While some find the commands corny, they are definitely easy to remember and it makes installing programs pretty fun. Just type "cast name-of-program" and Sorcerer takes care of the rest. Typing "sorcery update" will update the "grimoire" (database of "spells" or programs) and then automatically update any programs that are dated (after asking you to confirm, of course). For those concerned about stability, I think a new version of Sorcerer supporting separate "stable/test/devel" grimoires is in the work (like Debian, though the stable version would still be far more up-to-date). Another nice feature of Sorcerer is its fairly straightforward, guided installation (though of course this is still not as newbie-friendly to set up, as, say, Mandrake, I found it very usable after only a few months experience with Linux and I definitely learned a lot by using it). Finally, it's really nice and easy to create new spells; if you want a program added to the grimoire, it's generally just a matter of copying one or two files from another spell and modifying a few fields to reflect different download urls/filenames.
Hopefully I've sold a few of you on Sorcerer - I encourage you to give it a shot (as well as Gentoo, which from what I hear is also great). The web site is sorcerylinux.org, oh and while the documentation isn't yet that comprehensive, the mailing lists are very helpful for finding out stuff, so feel free to ask there (see the web site for info about the mailing lists).
Last year at OSCON there was an Open Source Business Summit. On one of the days they had a panel talking about business models. They had some CEO's and financial analysts talking shop (see the conference notes if you want more info). Basically, they all agreed that there was no viable Open Source Business Model.
A quick scan of the web for more info on this summit unfortunately did not turn up a whole lot of information. Most of what I found was information about what they will be speaking about (written before the conference took place); the best I could come up with was this column, by one of the panelists, but even that doesn't really have much information about what was said. Anyone know anywhere with a more thorough summary of the panel discussion?
Though I can't say I normally use any parts of an office suite other than the word processor (which I'm pretty sure is the case with most users), why has nobody mentioned two other alternatives to SO/OO that work great - AbiWord and KWord? I don't do anything heavy-duty, but these word processors both work great for basic day-to-day use. Personally I favor AbiWord, but both are quick/unbloated, can read word files without problems, and I have yet to encounter a task that I haven't been able to do in one or both of these.
I think a good way to shorten the movie might have been to just not feel so restricted by the boundaries of the book. Instead of ending FotR right where the book ends, why not end it a few scenes earlier? Admittedly, my memory of the books isn't great, but I think a lot more happens in the first than in the next two anyway, so moving the end of FotR to the start of the Two Towers might have been one way to add room for those missing parts of FotR.
As usual, the general consensus here seems to be quite an extreme reaction. The New York Times article I saw in the paper this morning paints a slightly better picture, apparently it was more of a misunderstanding by the people behind Kazaa/Grokster/Limewire than it was an intentional "conspiracy" of sorts...
This (free registration required of course) is the Times article I read. I'll paste in some relevant points:
The companies that produce LimeWire, Grokster and KaZaA have since posted new versions of their software, without the tracking program. The maker of LimeWire also issued an apology.
...
The game is free, although users first view an advertisement. The program collects information about sites visited over the last two days to better place ads.
...
Mike Calderone, president of Strategic Advertising Services Inc., which runs the ClickTillUWin game, said outside distributors had been instructed to get users' permission before installing the software -- but that was not done.
Greg Bildson, chief technology officer of LimeWire L.L.C., said the company was led to believe the program did no more than link to a game, making the permission request unnecessary.
Robert Regular of Cydoor Technologies Inc., which distributed the ClickTillUWin software to the file- sharing companies, said the program was not supposed to collect information until users activated it -- and had an opportunity to be notified and decline if they so chose.
Mr. Regular said he did not believe that deception was intended by any of the parties.
So while we shouldn't excuse these companies for doing something wrong, I think we should at least accept their apologies and believe them when they say that they did not intend for it to be as bad as it is.
And as for the spyware in general, I never install it personally, but I say if people choose to install it and as a result it helps these software companies to make some money, then I see nothing wrong with them including it with their installation programs (of course with an option not to use it).
OT... Series 7: The Contenders
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Goodbye, "Majestic"
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Sorry for the OT post, but your post reminded me a lot of a recent movie called Series 7: The Contenders. This is a great dark satire, making fun of reality TV shows. It's about a reality show where the players are all given guns and the object is for them to be the last one alive. They're allowed to kill each other without getting in trouble, just cause they're part of the game. Definitely worth the cost of a rental.
Whoa there, calm down a second...
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The Eyes Have It
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Now I definitely agree with everyone criticizing this system, but lets not jump to conclusions. The Yahoo article definitely does NOT definitively say that these will be used in airports. Slashdot's summary says "... may be used...". The word "may" implies speculation, and for once it seems Slashdot's summary isn't so far from the truth. To be sure, let's examine the exact wording from the article:
Scientists have developed an instant lie detector technique which picks up mini hot flushes around the eyes and
could [emphasis added] lead to truth tests becoming standard at airport check-ins.
I could just as easily say "scientists have developed a new kind of extra-powerful gun, which could lead to people using it to kill each other" (err perhaps I should have chosen a less touchy example...) How about this: "Linux makes a computer so powerful that a user could use it to do malicious things." You get the point here. Moving along in the article...
Polygraphs have long been
considered [emphasis again added] for increasing security at airports but current technology, which links tiny changes in heart and breathing rates to blood pressure and sweating, takes too long to process, making it impractical for large numbers of people.
Okay, so they have considered polygraphs before, and they opted not to use them. I don't see any quotes from high-ranking airport/security people saying that this is definitely going to be implemented. So, they might think about it, but hopefully they'll come to the same conclusion I think the majority of us came to - this is FAR too inaccurate to justify its use.
Of course, with all the post-9/11 hysteria I guess I wouldn't be too surprised to see them try to implement something this ridiculous, but lets just keep in mind that they haven't decided to do that yet (of course, I do not advocate that we stop arguing).
That's pretty nice, the only problem being that I haven't quite convinced those not-so-computer-savvy friends who have trouble setting up Exact Audio Copy to give Linux a try yet. A similar solution for Windows would be the perfect way for me to convince them to switch to Ogg.
Re:just my $.01 worth (depreciated accordingly)
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Ogg Vorbis RC3 Released
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· Score: 2, Informative
Perhaps another way to get people to start using Ogg Vorbis would be a better way to rip CDs into.ogg files. I've helped a few friends who aren't as into computers get Exact Audio Copy and LAME working together, and its not exactly the easiest process - people don't want to have to configure things for 10 minutes before they can start using the program, not to mention having to search for precompiled LAME binaries and then even after it's set up, having to tie up most of their computer's resources for the next 10 minutes while they rip/encode the cd. If Ogg had a very fast and easy all-in-one way for novices to do this (perhaps along the lines of iTunes, from what I've been hearing) more mainstream computer users might start encoding files that way.
Of course, the point of my original message was that this is kind of a dumb old joke, and the comparison between a software company and a car one is obviously not a very fair comparison, but here, for your viewing pleasure, is the old "If microsoft made cars..." joke.
If Microsoft made cars...
10. New seats would require everyone to have the same butt size.
9. We would all have to switch to Microsoft Gas.
8. The U.S. government would be forced to rebuild all of the roads for Microsoft cars; they will drive on the old roads, but they run very slowly.
7. The oil, alternator, gas and engine warning lights would be replaced by a single 'General Car Fault' warning light.
6. Apple computers would make a car that was solar-powered, twice as reliable and five times as fast, but would run on only 5% of the roads.
5. You would be constantly pressured to upgrade your car.
4. You could have only one person in the car at a time, unless you bought a Car95 or CarNT -- but then you would have to buy ten more seats and a new engine.
3. Occasionally, your car would die for NO apparent reason and you would have to restart it. Strangely, you would just accept this as normal.
2. Every time the lines of the road were repainted, you would have to buy a new car.
1. People would get excited about the new features of the latest Microsoft cars, forgetting that these same features had been ailable from other car makers for years!
Good list, and you sure convinced me; some movies are definitely better than the books they were based on. But, let's remember that the Lord of the Rings is an extremely unique situation.
Disclaimer: I have only read a few of the books you listed, and I am far from a Tolkien expert, having read LotR only once about 5 years ago and not having touched the "spinoffs" (Similarion (sp?), History of Middle Earth, etc.)
I don't think any of those books would be nearly as hard to convert into movies as Lord of the Rings. In fact, I can't imagine there being more than a small handful of books ever written (if any!) that would be as ambitious a movie project as LotR. Consider the huge, extremely devoted fanbase there is for LotR. Consider the fact that there are more than 15 books, and probably tens of thousands of pages (I wish I had actual numbers to use instead of wild guesses) full of information about Middle-earth. How many other books have that? I can't imagine there being many. I think considering all the obstacles that Peter Jackson faced, he has done an amazing job so far, far better than anyone could have possibly expected of him.
Slashdot Mirror
Or, if you prefer the mouse, you can try out some gestures. Just move the mouse up, then right or left (like an upside-down L) to go to the next/prev tab. At least, that's how it works in Galeon and in Opera, I forget if you need a plugin to get Mozilla to do it or not.
Hmm, now that I think about it, it would be nice if they also implemented a way to change windows by holding down the right mouse button and then scrolling with the wheel. This would be much more efficient (do they do this in Opera? I forget now, but it reminds me of Opera's way of going back and forward by holding down the right button and clicking the left, or holding the left button and clicking the right).
1.
2. profit
But seriously, while I think your logic is completely accurate, you're forgetting that Lycoris/Suse are not alone in the Linux for My Mom market. If I'm faced with the decision of paying $40 to install one of these versus downloading Mandrake or Red Hat, I'll opt for the latter (despite that annoying feeling inside that I *should* do the Right Thing and buy one of these). Unfortunately, until Mandrake and Red Hat start forcing me to buy their products too, I'll probably keep going with whatever's free. Hell, if they started forcing me to pay, I might be inclined to install Debian or (my personal favorite) Source Mage. After all, I'm the one doing the installation/configuration - my parents will still see the same pretty KDE interface either way. Even on their Windows machine, it's not like they ever delve as far as the control panel. If there is a problem with their computer, they'll be contacting me. (Incidentally, here's another place where Linux would be great - if I'm not home, I can walk them through starting up ssh and then from there I can just log in remotely and fix the problem).
This reminds me of that weather-forecasting toaster from a while back... Coverage of it on The Register, in case you have forgotten about it.
Aside from all the other comments made in defense of these other OSes here, most of which I wholeheartedly agree with, I'd also like to point out that I think this is something that User Mode Linux will help to avoid. UML makes it a bit safer to play around with installing software that could potentially add cruft. You can have a UML file that has programs you're experimenting with, and then once you're confident that the programs work well and that you won't later decide that you don't need them, install them to your main Linux installation.
While we're plugging things, I'd add that Source Mage definitely does a decent job of avoiding the addition of cruft in a way similar to Debian's. Every time an application ("spell") is installed ("casted"), Source Mage tracks all the installed files. If you want to get rid of a program, just "dispel" it and all the files will be removed. You only can possibly run into problems if you modify these files (Source Mage has an option to either delete or keep modified files...neither is ideal though), which generally does not happen except possibly if they install something to /etc/. Furthermore, you can "gaze alien" to get a list of all the files that are not being tracked by Source Mage, so that you can try to manually remove any cruft that managed to sneak in. Finally, Source Mage strictly enforces the LSB standards, and casting will never put anything in /usr/local/, so generally things that you install manually that can potentially add cruft have a good chance of being isolated in there.
Finally, I'd assume that most of the above is also true of Gentoo, though I can't say I know from personal experience.
Or, better yet, don't ever install it. Do you really need a media player better than Winamp, plus maybe Windows Media Player (down- I mean upgraded to version 6.4, of course) and *maybe* Quicktime?
Oh, here's the quote from GCC's page about 3.2 incompatibility:
.Actually, that is not necessarily true. Check out this article at The Register, about how Palm's new OS division is dominated by ex-Be employees.
It seems that you're understating this downside a little bit. You're suggesting a way to undermine the RIAA by helping them far more than their lawsuits would ever help themselves. Essentially, you're saying "you can't kill us if we've already killed ourselves" - great, so now the RIAA wouldn't have to kill us, the P2P networks would be useless anyway.
Of course, if you're suggesting that P2P networks have legal uses beyond downloading copywritten music, fine, then I guess you're right - people using the service for legal purposes would be unaffected. However, these people would be unaffected by the RIAA's actions anyway, so what would you gain by helping the RIAA fuck with illegal users?
The user needs to have all development tools installed - including, depending on what packages they want to install, compilers for very obscure languages (how many of us have installed compilers for, say, Modula 3 and Objective-CAML?)
While it may be a bit of a pain to have things like these on your computer, it is all done automatically in Source Mage; just cast the spell and it will download and install anything required to install it. I don't think your hypothetical "Joe User" would even really notice this. Also, I don't see why this is so much worse than the dependencies that all package systems utilize.
Installation takes forever. This is not a problem for small packages, but how do you explain to Joe User that, after clicking "Install KDE 3.0", he can't use his new KDE 3.0 for a couple of hours? This is a real problem on slower machines - Compiling, for example, OpenOffice takes approximately 13 hours on an Athlon 1800 with 1.5 GB RAM. Imagine installing it from source on a Pentium with 128 MB RAM...)
This is definitely true. Source Distros demand reasonably good computers and quick Internet access, and they still often take a while to install things. Of course, it's not like you're installing a new version of your KDE/X/Mozilla/your kernel every day - these are major upgrades that you only need to do once in a while, and you can choose to hold the updates if you don't want to deal with the long install. Plus, you don't have to be there during the installation - I can cast something or (more often) run "sorcery update" to automatically update all the programs on my box, then walk away/go to sleep/whatever. Hell, make it a crontab job.
How do you handle binary-only stuff? In an ideal world, of course, you don't use any. But try explaining to Joe User why he can't see websites using Flash... I'm all for banning binary-only software, while it's there it needs to be handled.
There is not a whole lot of stuff that isn't available in an open-source form. And spells exist for proprietary programs like Opera and Flash (they tend to feel sort of like "hacks", but they work fine). For Quicktime the CrossOver plugin works fine.
No beginner-friendly error messages. How do you explain a newbie what foo.cc:123: invalid conversion from `const void*' to `void*' is supposed to mean? (It's typically an indication of broken code that happened to work with gcc 2.x, but doesn't work with gcc 3.x anymore - but how does a newbie know or fix it?)
Hopefully errors like this don't seep through. All the spells must be tested before making it into the grimoire, and can be set (by the spell maintainer, not Joe User) to use gcc 2 or 3 - whichever is known to work. Of course, errors sometimes occur, but the backed up compile logs (gaze compile spell) make it easy for the developers to figure out the problem, and a user with "voyeur" turned off (thus hiding the compilation messages) just sees a friendly little "problem detected" message on his screen.
Hope that cleared some misconceptions up.
I highly encourage everyone to give Sorcerer a shot (for a veteran Linux user it is extremely easy to get the hang of - and not too tough for someone with relatively little experience, and the installation has menus and whatnot to make it fairly simple). However, if you're weary about making the plunge without adequate documentation, you can probably expect to see a story on Slashdot a few weeks from now once all the kinks have been worked out (it has only been a few weeks since Sorcerer's creator quit and tried to bring his project down with him, so we're still scrambling to get everything perfect).
While what you say about Sorcerer is for the most part true, it should be noted that the "post-split" Sorcerer community, of which I am a (very small) part, has actually stabilized significantly, and is probably now at a point where it is more dependable longterm than it was under its original leadership. Specifically, there was one person, Kyle Sallee, in control before, who did an admirable job given the vast amount of work required for him. However, he often refused to be flexible in his ideals, so when people made suggestions, instead of considering them, he would get angered and insulted by them. Anyway, to make a long story short, it is now run in a much more democratic fashion, and the people in charge are constantly putting safeguards in place to make sure that they won't screw everything up if they suddenly decide to "abort" the project in a way similar to what Kyle did a month ago.
The new Sorcerer is growing quickly, and it's definitely something worth taking a look at (and the same can be said about Gentoo). While both distributions clearly have a lot of the same benefits, one thing that I must say is nice about Sorcerer is the built-in mnemonic it has for its commands. While some find the commands corny, they are definitely easy to remember and it makes installing programs pretty fun. Just type "cast name-of-program" and Sorcerer takes care of the rest. Typing "sorcery update" will update the "grimoire" (database of "spells" or programs) and then automatically update any programs that are dated (after asking you to confirm, of course). For those concerned about stability, I think a new version of Sorcerer supporting separate "stable/test/devel" grimoires is in the work (like Debian, though the stable version would still be far more up-to-date). Another nice feature of Sorcerer is its fairly straightforward, guided installation (though of course this is still not as newbie-friendly to set up, as, say, Mandrake, I found it very usable after only a few months experience with Linux and I definitely learned a lot by using it). Finally, it's really nice and easy to create new spells; if you want a program added to the grimoire, it's generally just a matter of copying one or two files from another spell and modifying a few fields to reflect different download urls/filenames.
Hopefully I've sold a few of you on Sorcerer - I encourage you to give it a shot (as well as Gentoo, which from what I hear is also great). The web site is sorcerylinux.org, oh and while the documentation isn't yet that comprehensive, the mailing lists are very helpful for finding out stuff, so feel free to ask there (see the web site for info about the mailing lists).
A quick scan of the web for more info on this summit unfortunately did not turn up a whole lot of information. Most of what I found was information about what they will be speaking about (written before the conference took place); the best I could come up with was this column, by one of the panelists, but even that doesn't really have much information about what was said. Anyone know anywhere with a more thorough summary of the panel discussion?
Though I can't say I normally use any parts of an office suite other than the word processor (which I'm pretty sure is the case with most users), why has nobody mentioned two other alternatives to SO/OO that work great - AbiWord and KWord? I don't do anything heavy-duty, but these word processors both work great for basic day-to-day use. Personally I favor AbiWord, but both are quick/unbloated, can read word files without problems, and I have yet to encounter a task that I haven't been able to do in one or both of these.
I think a good way to shorten the movie might have been to just not feel so restricted by the boundaries of the book. Instead of ending FotR right where the book ends, why not end it a few scenes earlier? Admittedly, my memory of the books isn't great, but I think a lot more happens in the first than in the next two anyway, so moving the end of FotR to the start of the Two Towers might have been one way to add room for those missing parts of FotR.
This (free registration required of course) is the Times article I read. I'll paste in some relevant points: So while we shouldn't excuse these companies for doing something wrong, I think we should at least accept their apologies and believe them when they say that they did not intend for it to be as bad as it is.
And as for the spyware in general, I never install it personally, but I say if people choose to install it and as a result it helps these software companies to make some money, then I see nothing wrong with them including it with their installation programs (of course with an option not to use it).
Sorry for the OT post, but your post reminded me a lot of a recent movie called Series 7: The Contenders. This is a great dark satire, making fun of reality TV shows. It's about a reality show where the players are all given guns and the object is for them to be the last one alive. They're allowed to kill each other without getting in trouble, just cause they're part of the game. Definitely worth the cost of a rental.
Of course, with all the post-9/11 hysteria I guess I wouldn't be too surprised to see them try to implement something this ridiculous, but lets just keep in mind that they haven't decided to do that yet (of course, I do not advocate that we stop arguing).
That's pretty nice, the only problem being that I haven't quite convinced those not-so-computer-savvy friends who have trouble setting up Exact Audio Copy to give Linux a try yet. A similar solution for Windows would be the perfect way for me to convince them to switch to Ogg.
Perhaps another way to get people to start using Ogg Vorbis would be a better way to rip CDs into .ogg files. I've helped a few friends who aren't as into computers get Exact Audio Copy and LAME working together, and its not exactly the easiest process - people don't want to have to configure things for 10 minutes before they can start using the program, not to mention having to search for precompiled LAME binaries and then even after it's set up, having to tie up most of their computer's resources for the next 10 minutes while they rip/encode the cd. If Ogg had a very fast and easy all-in-one way for novices to do this (perhaps along the lines of iTunes, from what I've been hearing) more mainstream computer users might start encoding files that way.
[insert obligatory if Microsoft made cars joke here]
Disclaimer: I have only read a few of the books you listed, and I am far from a Tolkien expert, having read LotR only once about 5 years ago and not having touched the "spinoffs" (Similarion (sp?), History of Middle Earth, etc.)
I don't think any of those books would be nearly as hard to convert into movies as Lord of the Rings. In fact, I can't imagine there being more than a small handful of books ever written (if any!) that would be as ambitious a movie project as LotR. Consider the huge, extremely devoted fanbase there is for LotR. Consider the fact that there are more than 15 books, and probably tens of thousands of pages (I wish I had actual numbers to use instead of wild guesses) full of information about Middle-earth. How many other books have that? I can't imagine there being many. I think considering all the obstacles that Peter Jackson faced, he has done an amazing job so far, far better than anyone could have possibly expected of him.