"Luckily, the worst is probably over. Around the time when 800-Mhz processors came out, users stopped the driving need to upgrade constantly. Most users today can complete their work without waiting hours for the computer to perform its tasks."
What's his basis for this? I see no improvement on the horizon at all, unless that new Cell processor is the cure. When I first looked at the PC I was disappointed in how many mundane tasks the CPU had to perform. Checking the keyboard for new input? Working around memory refresh cycles? Trying to stay ahead of the TWO character "buffer" that most modems had? It seemed to me that the early designers of the PC went out of their way to avoid offloading work to specialized devices.
We currently have handwriting recognition and will no doubt encourage more speech recognition interfaces in the future and what you want to bet that they don't implement these things totally in an external device of some sort (as they easily could). From a task management, and ordinary computing point of view, today's PCs don't do anything that couldn't be done with the room-filling mainframes from the 70's... you know, the ones that had a maximum memory capacity of 16-Meg. Those systems in fact supported hundreds or thousands of users, often running batch processes in the background and not going down for months at a time.
It is in fact an embarrassment that a PC of today can't at least support a small department of users, and in fact they could, if all the I/O activities were isolated from the CPU and memory used for user-land applications.
I really think our dependance on a duopoly "monoculture" has held back much innovation. Hopefully that will soon change, and hopefully the US will play a major role and not just stand still slack-jawed wondering why we didn't think of it before the emerging technology superpowers.
A couple years ago when I observed a mobile IBM user (one who was always on assignment with no permanent desk at IBM) I saw little that they did that depended deeply on Windows. E-mail could have been anything. Timesheet and expenses and other administrative things all seemed to be based around interfacing with MAINFRAME applications written in REXX or some such. The only thing I can think of that would be particularly problematic would be Microsoft Project. Since it has it's own ways of doing things, if you are interacting with a customer that uses Project, you have to too.
Of course, most of the project plans I've seen come out of my IBM friend, or anyone else since MS Project was invented for that matter, are pure science fiction anyway. Along with the project planning tool for air-heads came air-head project planners I guess.
I'm very surprised that one of the big 8 (6 or whatever) accounting firms hasn't come up with their own proprietary methodology that would combine a slick (web based ideally) tool for planning big projects that would go along with the high-power/expensive consulting services that they pawn off^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H sell to big busnesses around the world.
I haven't tried Panther yet, but on jaguar I found that many X11 apps were much faster (or seemed so) than their aqua counterparts. It wasn't that unusual for me to be running KDE and Mozilla in X11 rather than bothering with the Aqua alternatives.
I was glad to hear that X11 was even better integrated into Panther...but at the same time, the download for X11 for Jaguar silently disappeared, and in fact when I located the few remaining links to it on the Apple site it was really downloaded an Panther-only version. Having had some hardware problems with my iBook I suddenly found I had to depend on a third-party X11 interface.
This is the compromise you have to make with commercial software. You upgrade, or you better have a CD full of the old version of things or you are out of luck. That software upgrade cycle, eventually and mysteriously, force you to buy a faster machine with more memory at some point. The "upgrade treadmill" as I've heard someone refer to it may be due to cost cutting, incompetence, or some sinister plan at Apple, but it doesn't matter, the outcome is the same, I, the user have little control over the use of my own equipment.
I'm very tempted by the new Apple mini, but if I get one I may just install Linux on it to begin with and avoid the treadmill altogether. The other advantage is that such a system integrates seamlessly with my existing menagerie of PCs (also running Linux.)
I'm sure Google has the terms somewhere, which state something along the lines of "user accepts all risk" and "Google shall not be held responsible for" That's a pretty good indication you're depending on something you shouldn't.
The problem is that most commercial software has these same caviats in the final release of their software as well, making the distinction between Beta and Production fairly meaningless.
Now, if you could without too much trouble sue a software company for damages beyond the purchase price of the software it would be a different matter. In such a case I suspect many titles would be released as Beta, and stay that way for years at a time.
Get off the MMORPG treadmill. Buy some of the incredibly good single-player games that have recently been released, like Half-Life 2, Vampire: Bloodlines, or Rome: Total War if you're a strategy fan. I have a feeling that it's going to be a very looong time before MMO games have even the potential for fun factor and immersion of high-quality PC games.
Or buy into an open-ended online 3D-VR program where users can build their own games.
But I'm pretty sure Linux was well on its way in China before 2002. They have their own distro in fact.
As for films and music, I didn't mean to imply that China would lead the way in piracy. But as their market grows (ditto India, Brazil, others) the Hollywood, RIAA gang shrinks in importance. At some point, the folly of fighting piracy, combined with a shrinking world market share, might actually shake some sense into them.
The costs of producing music, and movies here in America are, to be blunt, fscked up. I see a future where Hollywood and the RIAA will be DELIGHTED to have fans download their content, because the likelihood of people around the world paying $10 a pop to see it in theaters or buy it on a CD is next to nill.
As I mentioned, I don't currently watch TV. That has nothing to do with Open source. it has to do with most of it being CRAP!
I see a future in which Internet downloads take the place of live performances/movie theaters now in driving CD and DVD sales or eventually replacing those sales with pay-per-download. Our entertainment industries are too self absorbed to think about that as a possibility. But they'll change. Or die.
Microsoft is desperate for growth opportunities that would justify its price/earnings ratio of over 30, and Windows Media Center is one of the few Microsoft products currently available that has the potential to build new revenue streams.
I think the problem is that in their desperation to duplicate their success with Windows they are forced to make moves riskier than they would really like (Xbox) or safe/easy where the return on investment is zero to low (Slate). I think the media center falls into that latter category. People aren't going to pay a $300 premium just to know that the thing is running Windows. The imagined "ease of use" issue that are applied to Windows don't apply to a device with a remote control. Especially when there isn't a sugar daddy (like IBM) who has already established a market for the hardware and done all the hard design work (not to mention a host of software companies that have all but solved those problems as well).
I'll buy a Linux based solution because I know I am less likely to be locked into a no-choice-but-to-upgrade future. Microsoft can only succeed at this if they convince almost everyone to go along and nominate them as the gatekeeper of everyone else's profitability. I can't see Hollywood or the RIAA going for that. On the other hand, worse things could happen than to see MS beat the crap out of the movie and music industry, they do, in some ways deserve it.
Meanwhile, I expect Linux, which has no market share, share price, or bottom line to protect to continue to nip at the heals of these media bastards, all of them. In the end if it takes, HP, IBM, or mainland China to be the champion of freedom for certain types of intellectual property (IE that not owned by a mega corporation) then so be it.
I'll be in line to buy one of these (although I haven't watched TV in 3 years and still listen to my own MP3s made from my own CDs and records made prior to 1990.)
Exactly, people complain about XP's startup time as it is, now they want to host all their apps and the OS on a network drive at the ISP's head end? Why does this make more sense? Users can simply still run a virus that will just fsck their files over the network drive.
I think you are missing the point of the article (or I am).
Gmail is a perfect example of the phenomena I think he describes. I would have never used a web-based email package except as an aid during travel until Gmail, and better bandwidth came along. I use it because not only do I like the interface, but it's actually FASTER than my local mail handlers for most tasks. I even cut-and paste text into the composition window to do quick spell checks rather than use local alternatives for the same reason.
I am not currently doing word processing on the web, but I have in the past, and given the right interface (and cost) I'd certainly consider it again.
Your apparent assumption that the network replacement for what yo are doing now would have to look so much like what you are doing now that it would require actually running a Windows instance on the network is not valid for most people. Citrix was eating into their base enough to cause MS to buy control of the product as a hedge, but I think for almost all home users an online Office-Lite package running on a server and being operated by any operating system (and it wouldn't likely be Windows due to cost at the server end) would be just fine.
Users who wanted to could keep their full blown PCs for gaming and be relieved of the admin responsibilities for their important documents. New PC buyer might opt for a very minimal system just to do work, family record keeping, etc. Having a very inexpensive terminal such as this for each member of the family would not be at all out of the question as it now is for many.
As others have said, Microsoft could do this too, and in fact WOULD do this if they were not afraid of the impact it would have on their bottom line. Like so many companies, in it's old age, Microsoft is becoming timid, unsure of how it got where it is or how to repeat successes of the past.
Maybe this is a nit, but it's what turned me off about Unix many years ago. The standard utility names are mostly silly or meaningless. The mainframe system I used to use had long meaningful names for standard commands: copyfile, rename, delete, listfile, filelist (the latter fancier than the former). You could use any abbreviation for any of these commands that uniquely identified it, or you could invent your own synonyms. This meant that you only had to type a couple of letters to identify a command when you were working interactively, but in scripts you could spell out command names for readability.
I don't think that I was the only one who though of Unix as a goofy college experiment where the pioneers of the system wanted it to be a cryptic as possible to maintain their "elite" image.
While it's nice that there is such a wide selection of shell environments, scripting languages and utilities from which to choose, it would also be nice if there were a widely accepted core set of these things that EVERYONE was familiar with. Maybe the popularity of Linux will create such a core set of components as a defacto standard in the long run. I don't see it happening in any formal way.
Most people don't notice, those that do just think you're illiterate. You might think that people are laughing with you when you put underpants on your head at a party, but actually they're laughing at you.
Quite the contrary. I make sure to explain a fair number of my little jokes to those around me. Once properly conditioned, my associates think that every dumb thing I say is intentional. They think I am a comedic genius rather than an illeterate moron.
I've never been able to get a laugh with that underpants thing. Have you?
Nah. The article exaggerates what the scientists have actually done, unless you read it very carefully. The Slashdot blurb hypes it up even more, and the Slashdot title is pure science fiction.
Translation: They have some small machines that can move around. They have some other experiments that can "digest" organic matter and produce energy. They have some ideas about making small flying machines that don't need much power. Put all these things together 20 years from now and you MIGHT get a "Tiny Aircraft Feeds Itself With Dead Flies". Or not.
I wish that gmail would learn from my "not spam" clicks and use that to influence future spam filtering --- I'd hoped that was what they were doing, and it's natural, but I've seen repeat misclassififications so I'm unconvinced.
As far as I can tell the "Not Spam" button does nothing more than move the message(s) back into your Inbox. Placing the sender in your contacts list has no effect other than cluttering your contact list with names you never send to.
If I have to CAREFULLY read through my Spam folder every day then they might as well not filter spam at all. Work is definitely needed in this area.
Did you notice they are owned by Wendy's? That might have something to do with it. The focus is not particularly Canadian, or coffee. (Not that I have anything against Wendy's)
Ya know, that's strange. A couple of years back one of my old government consulting friends put me on the phone with a blind guy that was retrofitting all of their applications to run with JAWS. I had worked in that shop when JAWS was selected for the effort and installed and tested it (as a formality mostly since I'm not blind) for use on government equipment. My only negative comment on the software at the time was that it was outrageously expensive. Seemed like the company justified the expense of the product by suggesting that anyone who needed it should get their employer, insurance, or the government in one way or another to pay for it. It was sad to hear of people who didn't have access to these things.
In any event, my friend told me about how wondrous the blind guy was, using various gadgets to debug the software he was working on, he literally seemed to have a sixth sense for what was going on in those programs and was soon helping them fix bugs, having nothing to do with JAWS, that had eluded them for months.
One day, my friend gave the blind guy a ride home and ended up in his apartment and taking a look at his computer set-up. The guy turned his monitor on for the benefit of my friend while he gave him a tour of how he uses the computer at home. It quickly became apparent he wasn't using Windows though. It was Linux. Next thing you know he had called me and put us on the phone together. I don't remember if I asked him what text-to-speech software he was using, but I know he was using Lynx for web browsing and did a large part of his work in command mode. As the old time Unix users often say, you can get a whole lot done faster WITHOUT the GUI if you know what you're doing, and this guy apparently did. He was the LAN admin and web master for a local web site for the blind and had no trouble doing most of his work by remote control from home. I checked out his web site and it not only was optimized for blind use but had graphics, color scheme, and organization beyond what many sighted webmasters are able to do these days.
It was all done with Linux and related tools, Debian as I recall, which might be one reason I decided to give it a try again myself (I had been using Suse previously). I'm still using it today. The idea that Linux wasn't usable by blind people came as news to me. Maybe this fellow was just really special.
Slashdot Mirror
From the article:
"Luckily, the worst is probably over. Around the time when 800-Mhz processors came out, users stopped the driving need to upgrade constantly. Most users today can complete their work without waiting hours for the computer to perform its tasks."
What's his basis for this? I see no improvement on the horizon at all, unless that new Cell processor is the cure. When I first looked at the PC I was disappointed in how many mundane tasks the CPU had to perform. Checking the keyboard for new input? Working around memory refresh cycles? Trying to stay ahead of the TWO character "buffer" that most modems had? It seemed to me that the early designers of the PC went out of their way to avoid offloading work to specialized devices.
We currently have handwriting recognition and will no doubt encourage more speech recognition interfaces in the future and what you want to bet that they don't implement these things totally in an external device of some sort (as they easily could). From a task management, and ordinary computing point of view, today's PCs don't do anything that couldn't be done with the room-filling mainframes from the 70's... you know, the ones that had a maximum memory capacity of 16-Meg. Those systems in fact supported hundreds or thousands of users, often running batch processes in the background and not going down for months at a time.
It is in fact an embarrassment that a PC of today can't at least support a small department of users, and in fact they could, if all the I/O activities were isolated from the CPU and memory used for user-land applications.
I really think our dependance on a duopoly "monoculture" has held back much innovation. Hopefully that will soon change, and hopefully the US will play a major role and not just stand still slack-jawed wondering why we didn't think of it before the emerging technology superpowers.
A couple years ago when I observed a mobile IBM user (one who was always on assignment with no permanent desk at IBM) I saw little that they did that depended deeply on Windows. E-mail could have been anything. Timesheet and expenses and other administrative things all seemed to be based around interfacing with MAINFRAME applications written in REXX or some such. The only thing I can think of that would be particularly problematic would be Microsoft Project. Since it has it's own ways of doing things, if you are interacting with a customer that uses Project, you have to too.
Of course, most of the project plans I've seen come out of my IBM friend, or anyone else since MS Project was invented for that matter, are pure science fiction anyway. Along with the project planning tool for air-heads came air-head project planners I guess.
I'm very surprised that one of the big 8 (6 or whatever) accounting firms hasn't come up with their own proprietary methodology that would combine a slick (web based ideally) tool for planning big projects that would go along with the high-power/expensive consulting services that they pawn off^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H sell to big busnesses around the world.
I haven't tried Panther yet, but on jaguar I found that many X11 apps were much faster (or seemed so) than their aqua counterparts. It wasn't that unusual for me to be running KDE and Mozilla in X11 rather than bothering with the Aqua alternatives.
I was glad to hear that X11 was even better integrated into Panther...but at the same time, the download for X11 for Jaguar silently disappeared, and in fact when I located the few remaining links to it on the Apple site it was really downloaded an Panther-only version. Having had some hardware problems with my iBook I suddenly found I had to depend on a third-party X11 interface.
This is the compromise you have to make with commercial software. You upgrade, or you better have a CD full of the old version of things or you are out of luck. That software upgrade cycle, eventually and mysteriously, force you to buy a faster machine with more memory at some point. The "upgrade treadmill" as I've heard someone refer to it may be due to cost cutting, incompetence, or some sinister plan at Apple, but it doesn't matter, the outcome is the same, I, the user have little control over the use of my own equipment.
I'm very tempted by the new Apple mini, but if I get one I may just install Linux on it to begin with and avoid the treadmill altogether. The other advantage is that such a system integrates seamlessly with my existing menagerie of PCs (also running Linux.)
it will be good to have it over with!
I'm sure Google has the terms somewhere, which state something along the lines of "user accepts all risk" and "Google shall not be held responsible for" That's a pretty good indication you're depending on something you shouldn't.
The problem is that most commercial software has these same caviats in the final release of their software as well, making the distinction between Beta and Production fairly meaningless.
Now, if you could without too much trouble sue a software company for damages beyond the purchase price of the software it would be a different matter. In such a case I suspect many titles would be released as Beta, and stay that way for years at a time.
Get off the MMORPG treadmill. Buy some of the incredibly good single-player games that have recently been released, like Half-Life 2, Vampire: Bloodlines, or Rome: Total War if you're a strategy fan. I have a feeling that it's going to be a very looong time before MMO games have even the potential for fun factor and immersion of high-quality PC games.
Or buy into an open-ended online 3D-VR program where users can build their own games.
Just a thought.
I've never understood what the purpose of these NxN arrays of LCDs is.
To obtain NxN times the purchase price of just one.
Thanks for the links (all interesting).
But I'm pretty sure Linux was well on its way in China before 2002. They have their own distro in fact.
As for films and music, I didn't mean to imply that China would lead the way in piracy. But as their market grows (ditto India, Brazil, others) the Hollywood, RIAA gang shrinks in importance. At some point, the folly of fighting piracy, combined with a shrinking world market share, might actually shake some sense into them.
The costs of producing music, and movies here in America are, to be blunt, fscked up. I see a future where Hollywood and the RIAA will be DELIGHTED to have fans download their content, because the likelihood of people around the world paying $10 a pop to see it in theaters or buy it on a CD is next to nill.
As I mentioned, I don't currently watch TV. That has nothing to do with Open source. it has to do with most of it being CRAP!
I see a future in which Internet downloads take the place of live performances/movie theaters now in driving CD and DVD sales or eventually replacing those sales with pay-per-download. Our entertainment industries are too self absorbed to think about that as a possibility. But they'll change. Or die.
Microsoft is desperate for growth opportunities that would justify its price/earnings ratio of over 30, and Windows Media Center is one of the few Microsoft products currently available that has the potential to build new revenue streams.
I think the problem is that in their desperation to duplicate their success with Windows they are forced to make moves riskier than they would really like (Xbox) or safe/easy where the return on investment is zero to low (Slate). I think the media center falls into that latter category. People aren't going to pay a $300 premium just to know that the thing is running Windows. The imagined "ease of use" issue that are applied to Windows don't apply to a device with a remote control. Especially when there isn't a sugar daddy (like IBM) who has already established a market for the hardware and done all the hard design work (not to mention a host of software companies that have all but solved those problems as well).
I'll buy a Linux based solution because I know I am less likely to be locked into a no-choice-but-to-upgrade future. Microsoft can only succeed at this if they convince almost everyone to go along and nominate them as the gatekeeper of everyone else's profitability. I can't see Hollywood or the RIAA going for that. On the other hand, worse things could happen than to see MS beat the crap out of the movie and music industry, they do, in some ways deserve it.
Meanwhile, I expect Linux, which has no market share, share price, or bottom line to protect to continue to nip at the heals of these media bastards, all of them. In the end if it takes, HP, IBM, or mainland China to be the champion of freedom for certain types of intellectual property (IE that not owned by a mega corporation) then so be it.
I'll be in line to buy one of these (although I haven't watched TV in 3 years and still listen to my own MP3s made from my own CDs and records made prior to 1990.)
No horse? No metal outfit? No big long pointy thing?
Heck with it then.
And while we're at it, I wonder just how much Molly Knew?
Exactly, people complain about XP's startup time as it is, now they want to host all their apps and the OS on a network drive at the ISP's head end? Why does this make more sense? Users can simply still run a virus that will just fsck their files over the network drive.
I think you are missing the point of the article (or I am).
Gmail is a perfect example of the phenomena I think he describes. I would have never used a web-based email package except as an aid during travel until Gmail, and better bandwidth came along. I use it because not only do I like the interface, but it's actually FASTER than my local mail handlers for most tasks. I even cut-and paste text into the composition window to do quick spell checks rather than use local alternatives for the same reason.
I am not currently doing word processing on the web, but I have in the past, and given the right interface (and cost) I'd certainly consider it again.
Your apparent assumption that the network replacement for what yo are doing now would have to look so much like what you are doing now that it would require actually running a Windows instance on the network is not valid for most people. Citrix was eating into their base enough to cause MS to buy control of the product as a hedge, but I think for almost all home users an online Office-Lite package running on a server and being operated by any operating system (and it wouldn't likely be Windows due to cost at the server end) would be just fine.
Users who wanted to could keep their full blown PCs for gaming and be relieved of the admin responsibilities for their important documents. New PC buyer might opt for a very minimal system just to do work, family record keeping, etc. Having a very inexpensive terminal such as this for each member of the family would not be at all out of the question as it now is for many.
As others have said, Microsoft could do this too, and in fact WOULD do this if they were not afraid of the impact it would have on their bottom line. Like so many companies, in it's old age, Microsoft is becoming timid, unsure of how it got where it is or how to repeat successes of the past.
His results were shocking.
(or the whole thing is a myth)
Looks like an article well worth reading in its entirety at some point.
Maybe this is a nit, but it's what turned me off about Unix many years ago. The standard utility names are mostly silly or meaningless. The mainframe system I used to use had long meaningful names for standard commands: copyfile, rename, delete, listfile, filelist (the latter fancier than the former). You could use any abbreviation for any of these commands that uniquely identified it, or you could invent your own synonyms. This meant that you only had to type a couple of letters to identify a command when you were working interactively, but in scripts you could spell out command names for readability.
I don't think that I was the only one who though of Unix as a goofy college experiment where the pioneers of the system wanted it to be a cryptic as possible to maintain their "elite" image.
While it's nice that there is such a wide selection of shell environments, scripting languages and utilities from which to choose, it would also be nice if there were a widely accepted core set of these things that EVERYONE was familiar with. Maybe the popularity of Linux will create such a core set of components as a defacto standard in the long run. I don't see it happening in any formal way.
Most people don't notice, those that do just think you're illiterate. You might think that people are laughing with you when you put underpants on your head at a party, but actually they're laughing at you.
Quite the contrary. I make sure to explain a fair number of my little jokes to those around me. Once properly conditioned, my associates think that every dumb thing I say is intentional. They think I am a comedic genius rather than an illeterate moron.
I've never been able to get a laugh with that underpants thing. Have you?
I always type, and especially SAY "viola" because it sounds funnier.
Using the wrong word also enhances the realization that the transformation implied is a false one...
"Bill Gates makes Windows security Microsoft's number one priority and VIOLA! no more need for anti-virus and anti-spyware software."
Nah. The article exaggerates what the scientists have actually done, unless you read it very carefully. The Slashdot blurb hypes it up even more, and the Slashdot title is pure science fiction.
Translation: They have some small machines that can move around. They have some other experiments that can "digest" organic matter and produce energy. They have some ideas about making small flying machines that don't need much power. Put all these things together 20 years from now and you MIGHT get a "Tiny Aircraft Feeds Itself With Dead Flies". Or not.
With wireless and what not, how fucking hard would this be to fact check?
As far as I can tell that activity no longer takes place on planet Earth. Especially by anyone paid to do so. The rest of us don't have time.
I wish that gmail would learn from my "not spam" clicks and use that to influence future spam filtering --- I'd hoped that was what they were doing, and it's natural, but I've seen repeat misclassififications so I'm unconvinced.
As far as I can tell the "Not Spam" button does nothing more than move the message(s) back into your Inbox. Placing the sender in your contacts list has no effect other than cluttering your contact list with names you never send to.
If I have to CAREFULLY read through my Spam folder every day then they might as well not filter spam at all. Work is definitely needed in this area.
Did you notice they are owned by Wendy's? That might have something to do with it. The focus is not particularly Canadian, or coffee. (Not that I have anything against Wendy's)
Ya know, that's strange. A couple of years back one of my old government consulting friends put me on the phone with a blind guy that was retrofitting all of their applications to run with JAWS. I had worked in that shop when JAWS was selected for the effort and installed and tested it (as a formality mostly since I'm not blind) for use on government equipment. My only negative comment on the software at the time was that it was outrageously expensive. Seemed like the company justified the expense of the product by suggesting that anyone who needed it should get their employer, insurance, or the government in one way or another to pay for it. It was sad to hear of people who didn't have access to these things.
In any event, my friend told me about how wondrous the blind guy was, using various gadgets to debug the software he was working on, he literally seemed to have a sixth sense for what was going on in those programs and was soon helping them fix bugs, having nothing to do with JAWS, that had eluded them for months.
One day, my friend gave the blind guy a ride home and ended up in his apartment and taking a look at his computer set-up. The guy turned his monitor on for the benefit of my friend while he gave him a tour of how he uses the computer at home. It quickly became apparent he wasn't using Windows though. It was Linux. Next thing you know he had called me and put us on the phone together. I don't remember if I asked him what text-to-speech software he was using, but I know he was using Lynx for web browsing and did a large part of his work in command mode. As the old time Unix users often say, you can get a whole lot done faster WITHOUT the GUI if you know what you're doing, and this guy apparently did. He was the LAN admin and web master for a local web site for the blind and had no trouble doing most of his work by remote control from home. I checked out his web site and it not only was optimized for blind use but had graphics, color scheme, and organization beyond what many sighted webmasters are able to do these days.
It was all done with Linux and related tools, Debian as I recall, which might be one reason I decided to give it a try again myself (I had been using Suse previously). I'm still using it today. The idea that Linux wasn't usable by blind people came as news to me. Maybe this fellow was just really special.
"Normal disclaimers apply. I am not responsible for anything, and neither is Microsoft."
Looks like he has had to turn comments off too. I wonder why?
And besides that, I'll probably be playing ORB music the rest of the night. I'm just wonderng why someone had to do this to me.
Me too. I was just wondering if there was some oblique connection. After all, flacco got an INSIGHTFUL out of it.
It caused me to buy a lot of CDs too. But does that have anything to do with NetBSD? Just wondering. Maybe I should switch OSs.