Its all a matter of perspective. It seems like Windows NT/2k/XP works pretty good for knowledgable end users (Which you seem to be one...). I have a W2K box that as a box works pretty good at what it does (though it does have some rather strange memory related problems.. but not nasty enough to justify a re-install...)
However, atleast for me, after running Linux, Mac OS X and now FreeBSD as my primary desktop, I have a different perspective on how an operating system should work.
I actually find the *nix desktops to be easier to work with. Not only are there a lot more cool features (ie mozilla has lots of neat features over Internet Explorer, same with KDE vs Explorer, etc..) but the entire system seems laid out much more logical. When programs install on my FreeBSD box, I know exactly what files it has installed and where (not to mention it is really easy to remove ALL the related files compared to the add/remove feature in Windows). I can quickly find what applications are running, I have a lot more information available to me as far as what is going on "under the hood" and most importantly, I can access all critical features on a fast SSH connection instead of trying VNC or some other cumbersome GUI interface.
So whats my point? Well I suppose when my Windows using buddies, relatives and customers call me with yet_another_windows_problem (sobig, blaster, other viruses, adware, whatever..) I tend to think that "well if they were running *nix, would they have this problem? (usually not)" and "if they were running *nix, I could simply SSH to their box and fix the problem in a few minutes instead of explaining how to setup VNC over the phone and trying to troubleshoot it remotely (with their side being a 28.8k dial up connection)) or hopping in my car and physically sitting in front of the computer and hacking away at it..
Whats my point? I dunno. I guess I have found the *nix systems to be generally better than the Microsoft offerings. Since using *nix, I have different expectations to how my computer should work and at this time, Microsoft does not meet these expectations. Infact, when I am using Windows boxes, I have found that I get frusterated with the machine because it doesn't work like I am use to.
hehe.. I like this thread. Fortunately I haven't had nearly as many problems with the local Frys (Phoenix, AZ). Probably 10-15% return rate on the stuff I buy there.
Fortunately this location seems pretty good about labeling their returns. I don't think I have had an experience buying something that appeared new that was infact a return.
Though like the other Fry's, this one is very similar -- you cannot go in there without knowing what you want and doing your homework and knowing what products are good.
My BIGGEST gripe was recently. They were selling Western Digital 200GB drives w/rebate for $130 (after rebate). Stocked on the shelf were only returned drives with the UPC removed on every single package! Naturally, knowing my way around Fry's, I bugged a floor drone to go in the back and get me a non-returned drive, however, I feel for all of those people who go to the store, pick up a drive, install it then realize after installing the UPC was missing. What a joke.
In anycase, I never recommend Fry's to anyone unless they are tech saavy and do their homework. Atleast other places (the compusas, bestbuys, circuit city's, etc..) seem to stock better overall products (even if their prices tend to be a bit higher)
10 years ago..
on
Assembly '03
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Second Realty by Future Crew was entered at this event (Assembly'93). I always thought it would be cool to have a 10 year anniversary redo of that classic demo. Keep all the same routines, just beef them up to todays capabilities.:)
It all depends. It seems like all but two major distro (according to distrowatch) uses KDE as its default GUI. This includes lycoris, xandros, lindows, knoppix, suse, mandrake and slackware. The only two still defaulting to Gnome is Red Hat and Debian. Granted, those two distros are pretty well respected & supported but I have to wonder about a few things that could impact the ability for Gnome to compete.
#1 Novell purchase of Ximian.
#2 "And though I don't like gnome2" seems to be pretty common. Perhaps Gnome just isn't delivering what the wider community wants/needs?
#3 Red Hat's plan for community developed Red Hat. Seems like red hat could care less about maintaining their distro & want the community to do it for them. Perhaps the community will decide to change the default desktop to KDE? I know a lot of people using red hat + kde already. With #2 being true, it is plausible.
I would probably guess that like you, in 3-4 years, both desktops will still be around and more similar than ever. Though perhaps, just maybe, the community will decide that standardizing on one desktop is a small price to pay for consistency between applications and better development tools that are targeted & optimized for the default desktop. Time will tell.
Too many options. Do you code to Gnome standards? KDE standards? your own standards? GTK? QT? unfortuantely (fortunately?) unlike Windows there is no one interface standard to abide by. As a result, programmers get more freedom to decide what to do with their app. While from a programmers POV, this is probably a good thing as they are not locked into a framework which just doesn't meet their requirements, it doesn't do much for someone wanting a consistent desktop.
I tend to think KDE will eventually become the "face of Linux" so to speak. As soon as this happens (majority of the market is using one particular configuration) programmers will start writing to that particular framework, development tools will be designed to meet the criteria and apps will be coded to those standards so they interact with each other much more smoothly.
Will this happen? I dunno. I think it would be nice -- it doesn't seem to be a problem that several key server daemons have become defacto standards (apache, squid, samba, netatalk, bind, etc..) and I *hope* to see something similar for the desktop. Time will tell.
Thanks for the info on urpmi.. sounds like a nice system. Does it also allow for things like recursive removal (ie I want to remove XFree86, can I specify a flag that will remove all RPMs that depend on XFree86 (ie kde, gnome, apps, etc..)) Definitely will be on my list of things to check out.:)
The simple answer is "People hate change". It is as simple as that. People need to see true benefit to change their routine.
Sys Admins & Programmers have found that the various free *nix platforms provides this added benefit. As primarily a sysadmin, the rock solid nature of the platform coupled with ease of administration & no licensing issues was enough benefit for me to justify learning a new platform and using it. Am I glad I did it? Of course. The more I use it, the more benefits I realize.
However, it IS a different situation for a desktop user. Am I using *nix as my desktop? Sure. Is it better than WinXP or OS X? Unfortunately its not.
You mentioned all of the attributes that makes WinXP & OS X better than Linux. Will Linux ever make enough headway to compete with Windows as a desktop platform? Possibly. Will it be relevant? Not too sure.
On the server side, there was a lot of hashing and slashing until a lot of standard pieces came together (apache, perl, sql, php, samba, squid, bind, etc..) that became the core of many server configurations.
The desktop side is still trying to find leaders to rally behind for all the various pieces that go into a desktop system. Will Gnome or KDE win out? While it is nice to have choices, one NEEDS to become dominate if desktop linux succeeds. By having a dominate GUI, it lets the pieces fall into place. Application developers have a standardized toolkit to program against (consistency among all apps which will be HUGE), some of the domiante apps like OpenOffice, Mozilla, Gimp, etc will be written to interface nicely with the dominate interface (ideally) and as desktop usage grows, more and more developers will be geared toward ease-of-use interfaces (hopefully?)
I honestly feel that it the community can get Linux to that point (which in and of itself will be a huge feat) then perhaps more cross platform work will be done by commercial software vendors (macromedia, adobe for two big ones) and perhaps any maojr benefits linux holds for the average desktop user will be enough to make people jump.
While that is all fine and dandy, I think this unified front for Linux development is WAY WAY too far off and quite frankly not a huge priority for the community as a whole. The desktop works "good enough" for community needs and is still "leet" enough to keep the common folk out. To be perfectly honest with you.. it isn't something that is terribly bad. The less and less I work with MS troubleshooting, the more and more I dont really care if someone uses Linux or not. I use it, it works for me. I'm happy.
**kinda tired, rant mode off**
Are you going after tourist? If so, why not have a class for people who travel -->
"Making the most of your computer while traveling"
Some topics could include "finding great rates (air/hotels/cruises/etc) online, wireless connections, tech saavy hotels, etc" as well as how to allow them to be the "mobile techie" -- ie getting connected to the internet from various locations, using webmail, gps & computers, etc.
If you want to gear toward the locals, decide on what YOU want to do -- if your looking for larger classes, then you will probably need to stick with the basics "Intro to the Internet, email, computers" with perhaps a few lan parties for the kiddies every few weeks:)
Please don't think RPM is even close to apt-get and ports. Nothing quite like trying to install an RPM that *SHOULD* work only to have it complain about tons of dependencies. I like the FreeBSD way much better as it will go fetch the required parts, compile & optmize and be done with it.:)
The RPM based distros really should go to something like apt-get, ports or portage (gentoo)
Just think about where Microsoft has gone in the past 10 years (Windows 3.11 for workgroups to Windows 2003 server) -- and in another 10 or so, where could it be?
When MS released WinCE to compete with Palm, people laughed it off. When MS released IE, people laughed at it as an inferior browser to Netscape... Microsoft Word? haha.. everyone had Wordperfect.
Never under estimate MS. Plain and simple. If MS needs to build Windows on a *nix core in order to have the entire enterprise running on the MS platform, then by all means, they will do it. plain and simple. Just because something doesn't work today doesn't mean that it won't become the defacto standard tomorrow.
What kind of crap is this? Honestly.. I might agree with you if it was 2-3 years ago, but today?? gimme a break.
Seems like any mainstream distro you install today (mandrake, suse, redhat) will boot you directly into a GUI.. just like Windows. It has a web browser, email client, programs menu just like windows.. it has a desktop just like windows. Go into an email client and it walks you setup by setup on how to setup your email account.
The learning curve is not steep in my opinion. I have sat people down in front of Linux boxes all the time and they might ask what the various icons do (get use to the interface) but are off and running in no time.
For the average user that does web browsing, email, word processing and perhaps a spread sheet or two, a Windows and Linux desktop is virtually identical.
Have you installed Linux lately? Its not hard to install.. far from it. I'd rather install Linux than Windows. Seems like Windows I am popping in lots of disks of software, searching around the web for drivers, etc.. Linux comes with all of that stuff and makes it a lot easier to install to a fully functioning system.
The installation problem comes into play when Linux needs to co-exist with Windows. Try this sometime -- on a Linux only box, install Windows and see how easy that is. I'll bet you getting Linux to coexist with a Windows install is a LOT simpler.
I have been doing the same thing --> deploy a linux server/gateway and charge a certain fee for initial deployment & configuration. A monthly fee is charged for security updates & monitoring. Additional add-on support is billed on an hourly basis as needed.
It works out really nice. Maytag repair guy is just about right. These boxes just run and run and run without problems.
It is all about consistency. Consistent menu layouts, consistent hot keys/key combinations, consistent dialog boxes, etc.
Unfortunately two of the core apps that make up the backbone of most office distros (mozilla & openoffice) are very losely integrated with the desktop (gnome/kde).
I am not sure how feesible it would be, but it would be very cool to see the core technologies of these projects abstracted from the interface. Have a team of interface experts integrate the applications into the window managers (consistent dialog boxes, hot keys, icons, look and feel, etc..) Seems like there is a huge lack of desire to do this from the core developers of these various projects.
This review sounds about right for the state of Linux on the desktop. Lots of polish, lots of nice icons and fonts and anti-alias, but when it comes to native core productivity apps, the polish starts to lack.
While I haven't tried Ximian OpenOffice.org, it seems like a step in the right direction -- a bit nicer interface, tighter integration with the desktop, etc.. Seems like lots of smaller apps (and KDE apps) have this nice consistent look and I'll be very pleased as more and more apps achieve this consistent professionalism.
In anycase, the review is just about right. With the continued interest of Linux desktop from major distros, governments and corporations, I would have to guess that a lot of these rough edges will ultimately be addressed and the future for Desktop Linux will be very bright.
I was offered a position to be the tech guy at a school.. after learning about the parent tech committee (which the principal thought was a great idea), I decided to decline the position. I'm glad to see that my intuition was right about the meddling of parents and their inability to deal with network security even though they "work in technology"
If the drive was guaranteed to not fail within five years, then sure.. sounds great. However, I think your scenario is completely theoretical and not applicable to current real world usage where even the most reliable models still have some units that simply fail far too soon (just like anything)
Given the current state of drives and costs of other backup mediums (tapes, CD-RW, etc..), the costs of throwing in another hard drive and mirroring makes sense to me. Throw it in, setup a mirror and your set. Do incremental backups to the mirror and rotate a CD-RW for critical data and I'm sitting happy.
Hard drives are cheap.. hard drives are big.. lots of motherboards come with hardware mirroring.. there is software mirroring.. use it.
Pretty much every system I build that has any type of important data on it, I'll throw in two drives (RAID 1). I don't treat this as my ultimate backup (critical data still gets stored offsite on some other medium) but I have seen so many drives fail (IDE & SCSI) that the extra upfront cost to assure against a hard drive failure is minimal compared to the rebuilding of a system from scratch (loading software, recreating documents, downloading stuff.. yada yada yada)
Lets face it, with todays drive prices at around $1/GB (cheaper with rebates) it just makes sense.
Well lets see.. He gives away 98% of his wealth.. currently worth around $45 billion... that leaves around $900 million..
First off.. man.. if I could say 2% of my wealth was almost $1 billion.. that would be sweeeet.
But second, it truly is a situation of "what am I *REALLY* going to do with 44 billion dollars?" -- With that 900 million or so.. even if he didn't earn a penny off of it for the rest of his life (lets say 55 more years), he could spend $16 million a year, each year -- about $44k per day.
I dunno.. even if I was living on a grand scale, I think I'd find it hard to spend $44k a day, each day. Granted, I know for a fact that this is absolutely not going to be the case ($900 million.. do some poor investing, make 7% or so.. generate ~44 million per year after capital gains..) -- $120k per day.
So whats the motivation? It seems pretty simple to me. There are the three motivators --> wealth, power and prestige.
He has been pretty successful with the first two -- wealthiest man in the world and a significant amount of power.. but what about prestige?
I'd have to argue that outside of perhaps the Microsoft fan-boys (shareholders, MCSEs, MS employees, etc..) there is not a lot of prestige. People seem to dislike Gates for his money and power. People poopoo the products, security issues, etc..etc.. (not that I am saying this isn't justified)
So what would someone that already has proven himself to have power & wealth really want? Prestige. Prestige to the likes of Andrew Carnegie (who seems to be perhaps a role model for Gates) who went beyond the steel industry and was able to achieve to a high degree the 3 goals of wealth, power and prestige.
From what I have read about the Gates Foundation, it truly does seem to be a noble cause that is not some type of marketing scheme (now Microsoft's own personal persuits of umm.. charity leave much to be desired..) I'll be interested to see where the Gates foundation is in 10 to 15 years from now. Given Gate's current selling pattern of Microsoft stock over the next 8 or so years, I'd expect to see a LOT of his wealth go toward the foundation, assuming of course, he is truly motivated to do what he claims.:)
According to Forbes, Ballmer is worth $11.9 billion.. (lets see.. he is 46 years old.. lets say he lives until 100.. thats a daily burn rate of about $603,000..)
I think the issue with "cashing out" is a simple matter of personal interest in the company. I mean, lets face it, Ballmer was one of the first Microsoft employees way back when it was nothing more than a speck of dirt and has helped guide it to what it is today. I dunno.. IF I was involved in a company like that for 20+ years, I'd find it hard to just "cash out"..
Though if I had that type of money and I was him... I'd probably invest heavily into some hair regrowth biotech company...:-)
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Its all a matter of perspective. It seems like Windows NT/2k/XP works pretty good for knowledgable end users (Which you seem to be one ...). I have a W2K box that as a box works pretty good at what it does (though it does have some rather strange memory related problems .. but not nasty enough to justify a re-install...)
However, atleast for me, after running Linux, Mac OS X and now FreeBSD as my primary desktop, I have a different perspective on how an operating system should work.
I actually find the *nix desktops to be easier to work with. Not only are there a lot more cool features (ie mozilla has lots of neat features over Internet Explorer, same with KDE vs Explorer, etc..) but the entire system seems laid out much more logical. When programs install on my FreeBSD box, I know exactly what files it has installed and where (not to mention it is really easy to remove ALL the related files compared to the add/remove feature in Windows). I can quickly find what applications are running, I have a lot more information available to me as far as what is going on "under the hood" and most importantly, I can access all critical features on a fast SSH connection instead of trying VNC or some other cumbersome GUI interface.
So whats my point? Well I suppose when my Windows using buddies, relatives and customers call me with yet_another_windows_problem (sobig, blaster, other viruses, adware, whatever..) I tend to think that "well if they were running *nix, would they have this problem? (usually not)" and "if they were running *nix, I could simply SSH to their box and fix the problem in a few minutes instead of explaining how to setup VNC over the phone and trying to troubleshoot it remotely (with their side being a 28.8k dial up connection)) or hopping in my car and physically sitting in front of the computer and hacking away at it..
Whats my point? I dunno. I guess I have found the *nix systems to be generally better than the Microsoft offerings. Since using *nix, I have different expectations to how my computer should work and at this time, Microsoft does not meet these expectations. Infact, when I am using Windows boxes, I have found that I get frusterated with the machine because it doesn't work like I am use to.
hehe.. I like this thread. Fortunately I haven't had nearly as many problems with the local Frys (Phoenix, AZ). Probably 10-15% return rate on the stuff I buy there.
Fortunately this location seems pretty good about labeling their returns. I don't think I have had an experience buying something that appeared new that was infact a return.
Though like the other Fry's, this one is very similar -- you cannot go in there without knowing what you want and doing your homework and knowing what products are good.
My BIGGEST gripe was recently. They were selling Western Digital 200GB drives w/rebate for $130 (after rebate). Stocked on the shelf were only returned drives with the UPC removed on every single package! Naturally, knowing my way around Fry's, I bugged a floor drone to go in the back and get me a non-returned drive, however, I feel for all of those people who go to the store, pick up a drive, install it then realize after installing the UPC was missing. What a joke.
In anycase, I never recommend Fry's to anyone unless they are tech saavy and do their homework. Atleast other places (the compusas, bestbuys, circuit city's, etc..) seem to stock better overall products (even if their prices tend to be a bit higher)
Second Realty by Future Crew was entered at this event (Assembly'93). I always thought it would be cool to have a 10 year anniversary redo of that classic demo. Keep all the same routines, just beef them up to todays capabilities. :)
It all depends. It seems like all but two major distro (according to distrowatch) uses KDE as its default GUI. This includes lycoris, xandros, lindows, knoppix, suse, mandrake and slackware. The only two still defaulting to Gnome is Red Hat and Debian. Granted, those two distros are pretty well respected & supported but I have to wonder about a few things that could impact the ability for Gnome to compete. #1 Novell purchase of Ximian. #2 "And though I don't like gnome2" seems to be pretty common. Perhaps Gnome just isn't delivering what the wider community wants/needs? #3 Red Hat's plan for community developed Red Hat. Seems like red hat could care less about maintaining their distro & want the community to do it for them. Perhaps the community will decide to change the default desktop to KDE? I know a lot of people using red hat + kde already. With #2 being true, it is plausible. I would probably guess that like you, in 3-4 years, both desktops will still be around and more similar than ever. Though perhaps, just maybe, the community will decide that standardizing on one desktop is a small price to pay for consistency between applications and better development tools that are targeted & optimized for the default desktop. Time will tell.
Too many options. Do you code to Gnome standards? KDE standards? your own standards? GTK? QT? unfortuantely (fortunately?) unlike Windows there is no one interface standard to abide by. As a result, programmers get more freedom to decide what to do with their app. While from a programmers POV, this is probably a good thing as they are not locked into a framework which just doesn't meet their requirements, it doesn't do much for someone wanting a consistent desktop.
I tend to think KDE will eventually become the "face of Linux" so to speak. As soon as this happens (majority of the market is using one particular configuration) programmers will start writing to that particular framework, development tools will be designed to meet the criteria and apps will be coded to those standards so they interact with each other much more smoothly.
Will this happen? I dunno. I think it would be nice -- it doesn't seem to be a problem that several key server daemons have become defacto standards (apache, squid, samba, netatalk, bind, etc..) and I *hope* to see something similar for the desktop. Time will tell.
Thanks for the info on urpmi .. sounds like a nice system. Does it also allow for things like recursive removal (ie I want to remove XFree86, can I specify a flag that will remove all RPMs that depend on XFree86 (ie kde, gnome, apps, etc..)) Definitely will be on my list of things to check out. :)
The simple answer is "People hate change". It is as simple as that. People need to see true benefit to change their routine. Sys Admins & Programmers have found that the various free *nix platforms provides this added benefit. As primarily a sysadmin, the rock solid nature of the platform coupled with ease of administration & no licensing issues was enough benefit for me to justify learning a new platform and using it. Am I glad I did it? Of course. The more I use it, the more benefits I realize. However, it IS a different situation for a desktop user. Am I using *nix as my desktop? Sure. Is it better than WinXP or OS X? Unfortunately its not. You mentioned all of the attributes that makes WinXP & OS X better than Linux. Will Linux ever make enough headway to compete with Windows as a desktop platform? Possibly. Will it be relevant? Not too sure. On the server side, there was a lot of hashing and slashing until a lot of standard pieces came together (apache, perl, sql, php, samba, squid, bind, etc..) that became the core of many server configurations. The desktop side is still trying to find leaders to rally behind for all the various pieces that go into a desktop system. Will Gnome or KDE win out? While it is nice to have choices, one NEEDS to become dominate if desktop linux succeeds. By having a dominate GUI, it lets the pieces fall into place. Application developers have a standardized toolkit to program against (consistency among all apps which will be HUGE), some of the domiante apps like OpenOffice, Mozilla, Gimp, etc will be written to interface nicely with the dominate interface (ideally) and as desktop usage grows, more and more developers will be geared toward ease-of-use interfaces (hopefully?) I honestly feel that it the community can get Linux to that point (which in and of itself will be a huge feat) then perhaps more cross platform work will be done by commercial software vendors (macromedia, adobe for two big ones) and perhaps any maojr benefits linux holds for the average desktop user will be enough to make people jump. While that is all fine and dandy, I think this unified front for Linux development is WAY WAY too far off and quite frankly not a huge priority for the community as a whole. The desktop works "good enough" for community needs and is still "leet" enough to keep the common folk out. To be perfectly honest with you .. it isn't something that is terribly bad. The less and less I work with MS troubleshooting, the more and more I dont really care if someone uses Linux or not. I use it, it works for me. I'm happy.
**kinda tired, rant mode off**
Thats what you get for riding the Wildcat .. :)
Are you going after tourist? If so, why not have a class for people who travel --> "Making the most of your computer while traveling" Some topics could include "finding great rates (air/hotels/cruises/etc) online, wireless connections, tech saavy hotels, etc" as well as how to allow them to be the "mobile techie" -- ie getting connected to the internet from various locations, using webmail, gps & computers, etc. If you want to gear toward the locals, decide on what YOU want to do -- if your looking for larger classes, then you will probably need to stick with the basics "Intro to the Internet, email, computers" with perhaps a few lan parties for the kiddies every few weeks :)
Please don't think RPM is even close to apt-get and ports. Nothing quite like trying to install an RPM that *SHOULD* work only to have it complain about tons of dependencies. I like the FreeBSD way much better as it will go fetch the required parts, compile & optmize and be done with it. :)
The RPM based distros really should go to something like apt-get, ports or portage (gentoo)
Just think about where Microsoft has gone in the past 10 years (Windows 3.11 for workgroups to Windows 2003 server) -- and in another 10 or so, where could it be? When MS released WinCE to compete with Palm, people laughed it off. When MS released IE, people laughed at it as an inferior browser to Netscape ... Microsoft Word? haha.. everyone had Wordperfect.
Never under estimate MS. Plain and simple. If MS needs to build Windows on a *nix core in order to have the entire enterprise running on the MS platform, then by all means, they will do it. plain and simple. Just because something doesn't work today doesn't mean that it won't become the defacto standard tomorrow.
What kind of crap is this? Honestly .. I might agree with you if it was 2-3 years ago, but today?? gimme a break.
.. just like Windows. It has a web browser, email client, programs menu just like windows.. it has a desktop just like windows. Go into an email client and it walks you setup by setup on how to setup your email account.
Seems like any mainstream distro you install today (mandrake, suse, redhat) will boot you directly into a GUI
The learning curve is not steep in my opinion. I have sat people down in front of Linux boxes all the time and they might ask what the various icons do (get use to the interface) but are off and running in no time.
For the average user that does web browsing, email, word processing and perhaps a spread sheet or two, a Windows and Linux desktop is virtually identical.
Have you installed Linux lately? Its not hard to install.. far from it. I'd rather install Linux than Windows. Seems like Windows I am popping in lots of disks of software, searching around the web for drivers, etc.. Linux comes with all of that stuff and makes it a lot easier to install to a fully functioning system. The installation problem comes into play when Linux needs to co-exist with Windows. Try this sometime -- on a Linux only box, install Windows and see how easy that is. I'll bet you getting Linux to coexist with a Windows install is a LOT simpler.
I have been doing the same thing --> deploy a linux server/gateway and charge a certain fee for initial deployment & configuration. A monthly fee is charged for security updates & monitoring. Additional add-on support is billed on an hourly basis as needed.
It works out really nice. Maytag repair guy is just about right. These boxes just run and run and run without problems.
It is all about consistency. Consistent menu layouts, consistent hot keys/key combinations, consistent dialog boxes, etc. Unfortunately two of the core apps that make up the backbone of most office distros (mozilla & openoffice) are very losely integrated with the desktop (gnome/kde). I am not sure how feesible it would be, but it would be very cool to see the core technologies of these projects abstracted from the interface. Have a team of interface experts integrate the applications into the window managers (consistent dialog boxes, hot keys, icons, look and feel, etc..) Seems like there is a huge lack of desire to do this from the core developers of these various projects.
This review sounds about right for the state of Linux on the desktop. Lots of polish, lots of nice icons and fonts and anti-alias, but when it comes to native core productivity apps, the polish starts to lack. While I haven't tried Ximian OpenOffice.org, it seems like a step in the right direction -- a bit nicer interface, tighter integration with the desktop, etc.. Seems like lots of smaller apps (and KDE apps) have this nice consistent look and I'll be very pleased as more and more apps achieve this consistent professionalism. In anycase, the review is just about right. With the continued interest of Linux desktop from major distros, governments and corporations, I would have to guess that a lot of these rough edges will ultimately be addressed and the future for Desktop Linux will be very bright.
Think Shrek.
.. it has layers. .. it doesn't have layers.
Ardour is like Shrek
Audacity is like Doneky
I was offered a position to be the tech guy at a school.. after learning about the parent tech committee (which the principal thought was a great idea), I decided to decline the position. I'm glad to see that my intuition was right about the meddling of parents and their inability to deal with network security even though they "work in technology"
If the drive was guaranteed to not fail within five years, then sure .. sounds great. However, I think your scenario is completely theoretical and not applicable to current real world usage where even the most reliable models still have some units that simply fail far too soon (just like anything)
Given the current state of drives and costs of other backup mediums (tapes, CD-RW, etc..), the costs of throwing in another hard drive and mirroring makes sense to me. Throw it in, setup a mirror and your set. Do incremental backups to the mirror and rotate a CD-RW for critical data and I'm sitting happy.
Hard drives are cheap .. hard drives are big .. lots of motherboards come with hardware mirroring .. there is software mirroring .. use it.
Pretty much every system I build that has any type of important data on it, I'll throw in two drives (RAID 1). I don't treat this as my ultimate backup (critical data still gets stored offsite on some other medium) but I have seen so many drives fail (IDE & SCSI) that the extra upfront cost to assure against a hard drive failure is minimal compared to the rebuilding of a system from scratch (loading software, recreating documents, downloading stuff.. yada yada yada)
Lets face it, with todays drive prices at around $1/GB (cheaper with rebates) it just makes sense.
Well lets see .. He gives away 98% of his wealth .. currently worth around $45 billion ... that leaves around $900 million..
.. man .. if I could say 2% of my wealth was almost $1 billion .. that would be sweeeet.
.. even if he didn't earn a penny off of it for the rest of his life (lets say 55 more years), he could spend $16 million a year, each year -- about $44k per day.
.. even if I was living on a grand scale, I think I'd find it hard to spend $44k a day, each day. Granted, I know for a fact that this is absolutely not going to be the case ($900 million .. do some poor investing, make 7% or so .. generate ~44 million per year after capital gains..) -- $120k per day.
.. but what about prestige?
:)
First off
But second, it truly is a situation of "what am I *REALLY* going to do with 44 billion dollars?" -- With that 900 million or so
I dunno
So whats the motivation? It seems pretty simple to me. There are the three motivators --> wealth, power and prestige.
He has been pretty successful with the first two -- wealthiest man in the world and a significant amount of power
I'd have to argue that outside of perhaps the Microsoft fan-boys (shareholders, MCSEs, MS employees, etc..) there is not a lot of prestige. People seem to dislike Gates for his money and power. People poopoo the products, security issues, etc..etc.. (not that I am saying this isn't justified)
So what would someone that already has proven himself to have power & wealth really want? Prestige. Prestige to the likes of Andrew Carnegie (who seems to be perhaps a role model for Gates) who went beyond the steel industry and was able to achieve to a high degree the 3 goals of wealth, power and prestige.
From what I have read about the Gates Foundation, it truly does seem to be a noble cause that is not some type of marketing scheme (now Microsoft's own personal persuits of umm.. charity leave much to be desired..) I'll be interested to see where the Gates foundation is in 10 to 15 years from now. Given Gate's current selling pattern of Microsoft stock over the next 8 or so years, I'd expect to see a LOT of his wealth go toward the foundation, assuming of course, he is truly motivated to do what he claims.
I did this in Simcity Classic with trains. I'll submit my solution (saved game) to carfree.com
And then Microsoft will release X11#
According to Forbes, Ballmer is worth $11.9 billion.. (lets see.. he is 46 years old .. lets say he lives until 100.. thats a daily burn rate of about $603,000 ..)
.. IF I was involved in a company like that for 20+ years, I'd find it hard to just "cash out" ..
... I'd probably invest heavily into some hair regrowth biotech company... :-)
I think the issue with "cashing out" is a simple matter of personal interest in the company. I mean, lets face it, Ballmer was one of the first Microsoft employees way back when it was nothing more than a speck of dirt and has helped guide it to what it is today. I dunno
Though if I had that type of money and I was him
well considering it is used in a church that has a site license for the music, i don't see this as a problem.