I'm part of the group of people who always thought Maple did better integration, while Mathematica yielded somewhat "awkward" answers (that is, not quite what you find by hand). Anyways, there's a lot of material regarding Mathematica's shortcomings on the Net...But Wolfram Research does a great marketing job, with all those Flashy animations. I thought the curated data sets were a great idea, though.
As to your installation problems, they really are a Linux problem. I had the following problem: when I upgraded from Debian to Ubuntu, my licensed Maple would not install. I had to "hack" to get it working. And then, it installed, after searching through that horrible non-documentation of Ubuntu (PHP Web forums? Are they kidding? Hey, ever heard of Usenet?...). Next Ubuntu release, it broke the installation. Anyways, because of what I perceived as a messy state of affairs in La la Linux land, I just dumped Linux for FreeBSD and got it working with the Linux binary emulation layer (I used the RedHat one for that).
Linux takes a lot of pride in not providing stable ABIs. Therefore, your only solution is to stick with a vendor-supported Linux. This will, in most cases, be RedHat, SuSE, on Mandriva. You can use CentOS, the RedHat piggy-backing distro if you like, I imagine.
I use FreeBSD (and Mac OS X) for a variety of reasons and this was just one defining experience, for me, of just how much Linux sucked, and how much more savvy the BSD guys are. IMHO. And, frankly, judging by what I read, and knowing what the philosophy of Linux developers are (the Cult of the FSF), I don't think they give a shit if you can't install much-needed proprietary software on it. The fact is, some of us do, and there's no free software alternative.
The moral of the story is: if you really want to stick with Linux, choose a distro vendors support (hint, hint: it's not Debian/Ubuntu/Slackware/Arch Linux/Satanic Linux/Linux for Girls/etc.).
I mention this because today's story shows that sites like Reddit and Digg actually make life a lot easier for spin doctors and propaganda.
We all know there's quite a lot of propaganda in the U.S., such as the U.S. army funding Hollywood movies. (I think/. ran this story before. See here, here, and and here). Also, some people think prime time television is getting audiences to get used to the idea of torture. See here.
The point is that sites like Digg, Reddit and Wikipedia are maybe things that actually makes the a government's propaganda job easier, by making authority and authoritative opinion a more diffuse concept. There's no such concept as "reputation" or "editorial independence", like you have in the press.
IMHO, this is a twist on things. In particular, the younger generation that is growing up with such sites and with little or no concept of the traditional media outlets concern me the most. Newspaper sales are going down all over the world, for instance.
Some of you early Reddit users might remember that Reddit had a page explaining that part of their funding came from an NSA (National Security Agency) research grant. Eventually, it was taken down. Remember? Is Reddit part of of a larger NSA project to gather data on the Internet? Do you think? Is it fair that they don't inform that anymore?
Yeah, I know, I'm gonna be modded down by somebody who never saw the page.
"Child-distros"...This term seeks to disqualify other distros and aims to affirm Debian's superiority.
How ridiculous...PR newspeak for Debian.
Fact: a large contingent has simply dropped Debian because of their inability to get their act together, and their propensity for "bikeshed arguments."
Actually, you got it tremendously wrong. And that because you fail to grasp the fundamental fact that code is immaterial, because it is information. Information can be shared without depleting the source and, has the nice quality that, by sharing it, you are making everyone more information-rich, which, by creating a richer environment, creates a payback mechanism that enriches you. A real-life example: Science works that way. When you place constraints on the use of information, you try to "make water not wet" as Bruce Schneider says.
The behaviour of the GPL license is exactly like that of proprietary license: you play by my rules, and I'll let you have it. The difference is that, in proprietary license schemes, you are paid back in money. In the case of GPL, it is code, albeit in some cases useless or irrelevant (decreasing signal/noise ratio). In terms of use target, the effect is the same as freeware. Empirical evidence appears to indicate that most open source project prefer non-GPL, non-viral variants. The ones who do prefer the GPL are usually somehow tied to the physical reality of hardware (e.g., the Linux kernel, where all players seal a "non-aggression pact" because they all depend on the same hardware features) or betraying the political view of the FSF and the reason that Stallman crafted the license in the first place, by deploying dual-license schemes (selling a proprietary license).
The FSF is technological reformationist movement, revered by some as a cult of personalities, whose philosophical underpinnings is moralism.
Looking at it from an objective point of view, one of the reasons Linux gets so much press space is precisely because there's always some non-technical brouhaha going on. Either it's the GPL or some skirmish between members of the community. Compare this with BSDs, which keep cooly advancing and perfecting their products, without all the noise. However, without all the press, too.
So fanboys are really a great marketing technique, as any religion with fanatics will demonstrate.
Personally, I find this sad. This fanatic attitude is also keeps part of the open source software community from evaluating products with objectivity (e.g., OpenSolaris, Ubuntu).
You know, reading your insightful comment, I just realized how much some open source projects are leeches. Take GNU Step, for instance. If it exists at all, it's because of its copycat thrust. Even so, it just stagnated on a GUI that was abandoned long ago...Likewise, if the community has a Mach microjernel that works at all, it's thanks to Apple, not the GNU Hurd people.
Apple contributed code and patches to FreeBSD. It didn't contribute to Linux, huh? Too bad. Guess what the GPL had to do with it?
Also, Apple took the Mach kernel and, as opposed to the GNU project, got it to work, documented it and released code under Darwin. What more do you want? Oh, that they release it under the GPL...right.
Listen, some people like the BSD license. I use both Mac OS and FreeBSD (and I don't use Linux - got sick of waiting for Debian's releases). I'm glad that Apple uses FreeBSD userland. Much better than the alternative, IMHO.
You concept of "predator" is pathetic. A predatory practice is a +/- game. Nothing is "lost" when people use BSD (and other business-friendly licenses) and don't contribute back (and even this is from the standpoint of the "victim" - general Goodness went up), because code is immaterial. So the argument is retarded. Even so, in the case of Apple, it has been a +/+ for FreeBSD.
It's just that you GNU fanboys and followers of the Stallman Cult think that, when others behave differently, they have lost their way. In a nutshell: you cry "heresy!"
Some of you might find it interesting to compare the US situation with other countries (comparisons are always nice for parameters)... Brazil's equivalent of the IRS (Receita Federal) offers its version for federal income tax software for download for Windows, Linux, Macintosh and jar files for any other OS Yes, they use Java. It makes sense. http://www.receita.gov.br/PessoaFisica/ReceitaNet/ RecnetJava.htm
I am still waiting for the perfect (or even near-perfect) office suite. OOo is the closest, with open (if complex) code, and an open (and well-documented) file format.
I've bough a SoftMaker Office suite license for my FreeBSD, and I'm pretty satisfied. It's much more compatible than anything you'll be able to find (even more so for Unix/Linux). Opens complex Excel documents. Not perfect, but I've had it with OO.org. I can't be wasting time with stupid errors. Give it a try (it's a fair 69.95 - and they also have academic prices and bundles).
What kind of users do you imagine when you say that? I imagine you imagine students, or housewifes. I imagine Joe Blow, that has a report to present on Monday. His whole firm works with Microsoft. He needs garanteed interoperability with Microsoft Office and their formats (because that's what is expected of him and that what everybody uses). The best way to do that, of course, is using Microsoft Office. He needs the browser, e-mail, PowerPoint, Word and Excel. Let's face it, Microsoft developed the killer app for most business users.
OpenOffice.org still has stupid little buges everywhere. Just recently, I was using it for some interest rates calculations, and instead of obtaining an answer, I keot getting "?#NAME" in the cell. WTF.
Microsoft's market share did not develop naturally. Everyone knows that. This story was but another chapter on how Microsoft is willing to play dirty to hurt the competition. For instace, during the mid-90s, they were hell-bent on breaking just about every standard they could. Hence Google's "don't be evil."
Why should a casual (but knowledgeable) user buy a PC and pay $270 for Vista, then another $200-$300 for Microsoft office when they can get a Unix Distro for cheap and Open office for cheap? Yes, you get what you pay for, but with Microsoft products, you don't always get what you pay for, you get less.
Hmmm...Because he's gotta deliver that financial presentation with PowerPoint by Monday morning, together with those spreadsheets? And because Excel is one motherfucking killer app in the business/financial/engineering arena? And because it works? And because MS Office can be integrated seamlessly with a whole lot of other stuff? Because OpenOffice.org is one unreliable, buggy, piece of sh... software?
Look, the most serious symptom of the disease in the Linux community is someone like Shuttleworth. Pretty Ubuntu...useless. Want to do something relevant? Straighten out or create business apps on the free Unix platforms. Make OpenOffice.org rock-solid. The day average Joe can have the same solutions Microsoft provides, you'll see change. Tip: use business-friendly license. The GPL does nothing but to throw people off (yeah, it's fine for the Linux kernel, but what do I care about the Linux kernel?) Who knows, maybe Novell will get it right...GNOME? Yeah,right. Go to Walmart or whatever and buy a simple computer (Celeron, whatever). Install GNOME. See how long it takes to opne a folder...What a joke. There's no focus in the World Domination Plan, dude.
How about integrating someone's souped up double-screen real-time trading platform with Excel, the quant's neural networks he coded in C++ and then generating PDF reports for investors? Can one do that on a Mac?
The company I work for uses 3rd party apps which are not written in Java; they are written by ISVs, in highly optimized C and C++, and they still may take hours to run a simulation. There are no Mac versions, and we wouldn't be rebuying such an expensive software for Mac anyway.
What are you in? Financial sector? This a sector that probably will never move away form Microsoft... When somebody uses, or instance an Excel spreadsheet, somebody else, proprietary as it might be any M$ product, writes a Neural Net to work with that very same spreadsheet. Then, a third ISV some document management application. It's just a whole, well, kinda open and interdependent environment. It's hard to do away with all those things for certain sectors. For corporations, I pretty much doubt anyone will move them away from Microsoft. Unless they can do away with the spreadsheet/word/database/workflow integration (which is the Office package corporations buy, right?)
First of all, it's ridiculous to think that EULAs are valid in the first place.
I don't know about your country, but in my country an EULA saying "...and should Display Eater be activated with an invalid key, the software will proceed to erase your home directory; or provoke unknown and otherwise unspecified damage to your files. Do you agree? (YES) (NO)" would be illegal.
For all your articulated diatribe, in which you display a wallowing sense of ethics, I'll just have to quit reading and tell you plain and simple:
With all likelihood, in a civilized country, you will get sued for attempting shit like this. And you will get sued in the proportionality of the damage done.
For instance, say I'm and architect, and my next million dollar project are in my/Users file. Then you're dead. Dead. You will get sued to death.
I can only say I'm 100% convinced that Autism has more forms than documented, and one of them is developed, not acquired when we don our "genes".
The OP is convinced of - whatever - because he's been reading and doing some self-diagnosis, probably. He has - it shows - no understanding of how much goes into constructing a diagnosis category. He would like very much to be deemed autistic. Rather, he would like to have an undocumented manifestation of Autism - and a form that glorifies his superior mental faculties. How convenient. Preferably one that matches a story that has appeared a lot in the media, like in Wired magazine. Until you have a proper diagnosis, with a full psychiatric examination, you can not - should not - go around thinking you have Whatever Syndrome. Diagnosis aren't a joke, and aren't achieved by reading the Wikipedia. It takes a very special database search - a physician. Even them it takes physicians acquatined with the condition and the literature. Don't expect a cardiologist to be very good at it. I bet it would really hurt to hear from a shrink that he has issues, but not Asperger's syndrome. Anyhow, I am just speculating, but this self-proclaiment of Asperger syndrome looks really suspicious. And I suggest you cease to speak as if you had any remote idea what the syndrome is - or how prevalent it is. This looks like just a case of self-pity, probably. Anyway, let's not turn this into a free therapy session. Shrinks are expensive.
Have you tried XFCE 4.4's Thunar file manager? It includes the previewing capabilities of Nautilus and is a huge interface improvement over xffm.
No, I haven't, couldn't get it compile on FreeBSD 6.2 (maybe I didn't try hard enough - but I got better things to do then to tweak desktops all day long).
Yes, but when 90% of people asked say, for example, that they despise the Gnome file dialog, maybe it's time to step back and reevaluate the decision.
Say, if Apple gets a bad rap on some feature, repeatedly, on the specialized press, I'd say they'd be pretty much concerned about the comments, and might actually listen. Same with Microsoft. GNOME, OTOH, sees people saying the same old thing, over and over again, on forums, web pages, etc., but just doesn't care. Why? Possible reasons:
1) They work in IT - hence, they are autistic, just like Linus Torvalds.
2) They work focusing on stupid corporation users that are migrating from Windows to Linux, and they don't give a shit about what you and I say on Slashdot;
3) They just don't give a shit, because they conduct no usability studies (actually, IIRC, Novell might have conducted some, right? Please say I'm right.);
4) They don't give a shit. Period. Whether you send them patches or not, because, so far, they have a bad track record in even looking at the patches people send them, let alone merging them.
5) They are gnomes. Hence, they have differing usability concerns from the rest of the population.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm part of the group of people who always thought Maple did better integration, while Mathematica yielded somewhat "awkward" answers (that is, not quite what you find by hand). Anyways, there's a lot of material regarding Mathematica's shortcomings on the Net...But Wolfram Research does a great marketing job, with all those Flashy animations. I thought the curated data sets were a great idea, though.
As to your installation problems, they really are a Linux problem. I had the following problem: when I upgraded from Debian to Ubuntu, my licensed Maple would not install. I had to "hack" to get it working. And then, it installed, after searching through that horrible non-documentation of Ubuntu (PHP Web forums? Are they kidding? Hey, ever heard of Usenet?...). Next Ubuntu release, it broke the installation. Anyways, because of what I perceived as a messy state of affairs in La la Linux land, I just dumped Linux for FreeBSD and got it working with the Linux binary emulation layer (I used the RedHat one for that).
Linux takes a lot of pride in not providing stable ABIs. Therefore, your only solution is to stick with a vendor-supported Linux. This will, in most cases, be RedHat, SuSE, on Mandriva. You can use CentOS, the RedHat piggy-backing distro if you like, I imagine.
I use FreeBSD (and Mac OS X) for a variety of reasons and this was just one defining experience, for me, of just how much Linux sucked, and how much more savvy the BSD guys are. IMHO. And, frankly, judging by what I read, and knowing what the philosophy of Linux developers are (the Cult of the FSF), I don't think they give a shit if you can't install much-needed proprietary software on it. The fact is, some of us do, and there's no free software alternative.
The moral of the story is: if you really want to stick with Linux, choose a distro vendors support (hint, hint: it's not Debian/Ubuntu/Slackware/Arch Linux/Satanic Linux/Linux for Girls/etc.).
I mention this because today's story shows that sites like Reddit and Digg actually make life a lot easier for spin doctors and propaganda.
/. ran this story before. See here, here, and and here). Also, some people think prime time television is getting audiences to get used to the idea of torture. See here.
We all know there's quite a lot of propaganda in the U.S., such as the U.S. army funding Hollywood movies. (I think
The point is that sites like Digg, Reddit and Wikipedia are maybe things that actually makes the a government's propaganda job easier, by making authority and authoritative opinion a more diffuse concept. There's no such concept as "reputation" or "editorial independence", like you have in the press.
IMHO, this is a twist on things. In particular, the younger generation that is growing up with such sites and with little or no concept of the traditional media outlets concern me the most. Newspaper sales are going down all over the world, for instance.
Some of you early Reddit users might remember that Reddit had a page explaining that part of their funding came from an NSA (National Security Agency) research grant. Eventually, it was taken down. Remember?
Is Reddit part of of a larger NSA project to gather data on the Internet? Do you think? Is it fair that they don't inform that anymore?
Yeah, I know, I'm gonna be modded down by somebody who never saw the page.
- Does anyone have a reason to use Debian?
- Ubuntu users do.
[Then yadda yadda yadda about how Ubuntu "depends" on Debian.]
Ubuntu users have a reason to use Debian....A mindbending proposition...
"Child-distros"...This term seeks to disqualify other distros and aims to affirm Debian's superiority.
How ridiculous...PR newspeak for Debian.
Fact: a large contingent has simply dropped Debian because of their inability to get their act together, and their propensity for "bikeshed arguments."
Actually, you got it tremendously wrong. And that because you fail to grasp the fundamental fact that code is immaterial, because it is information. Information can be shared without depleting the source and, has the nice quality that, by sharing it, you are making everyone more information-rich, which, by creating a richer environment, creates a payback mechanism that enriches you. A real-life example: Science works that way. When you place constraints on the use of information, you try to "make water not wet" as Bruce Schneider says.
The behaviour of the GPL license is exactly like that of proprietary license: you play by my rules, and I'll let you have it. The difference is that, in proprietary license schemes, you are paid back in money. In the case of GPL, it is code, albeit in some cases useless or irrelevant (decreasing signal/noise ratio). In terms of use target, the effect is the same as freeware.
Empirical evidence appears to indicate that most open source project prefer non-GPL, non-viral variants. The ones who do prefer the GPL are usually somehow tied to the physical reality of hardware (e.g., the Linux kernel, where all players seal a "non-aggression pact" because they all depend on the same hardware features) or betraying the political view of the FSF and the reason that Stallman crafted the license in the first place, by deploying dual-license schemes (selling a proprietary license).
The FSF is technological reformationist movement, revered by some as a cult of personalities, whose philosophical underpinnings is moralism.
Looking at it from an objective point of view, one of the reasons Linux gets so much press space is precisely because there's always some non-technical brouhaha going on. Either it's the GPL or some skirmish between members of the community. Compare this with BSDs, which keep cooly advancing and perfecting their products, without all the noise. However, without all the press, too.
So fanboys are really a great marketing technique, as any religion with fanatics will demonstrate.
Personally, I find this sad. This fanatic attitude is also keeps part of the open source software community from evaluating products with objectivity (e.g., OpenSolaris, Ubuntu).
You know, reading your insightful comment, I just realized how much some open source projects are leeches. Take GNU Step, for instance. If it exists at all, it's because of its copycat thrust. Even so, it just stagnated on a GUI that was abandoned long ago...Likewise, if the community has a Mach microjernel that works at all, it's thanks to Apple, not the GNU Hurd people.
Apple contributed code and patches to FreeBSD. It didn't contribute to Linux, huh? Too bad. Guess what the GPL had to do with it?
Also, Apple took the Mach kernel and, as opposed to the GNU project, got it to work, documented it and released code under Darwin. What more do you want? Oh, that they release it under the GPL...right.
Listen, some people like the BSD license. I use both Mac OS and FreeBSD (and I don't use Linux - got sick of waiting for Debian's releases). I'm glad that Apple uses FreeBSD userland. Much better than the alternative, IMHO.
You concept of "predator" is pathetic. A predatory practice is a +/- game. Nothing is "lost" when people use BSD (and other business-friendly licenses) and don't contribute back (and even this is from the standpoint of the "victim" - general Goodness went up), because code is immaterial. So the argument is retarded. Even so, in the case of Apple, it has been a +/+ for FreeBSD.
It's just that you GNU fanboys and followers of the Stallman Cult think that, when others behave differently, they have lost their way. In a nutshell: you cry "heresy!"
Some of you might find it interesting to compare the US situation with other countries (comparisons are always nice for parameters).../ RecnetJava.htm
Brazil's equivalent of the IRS (Receita Federal) offers its version for federal income tax software for download for Windows, Linux, Macintosh and jar files for any other OS Yes, they use Java. It makes sense.
http://www.receita.gov.br/PessoaFisica/ReceitaNet
I am still waiting for the perfect (or even near-perfect) office suite. OOo is the closest, with open (if complex) code, and an open (and well-documented) file format.
I've bough a SoftMaker Office suite license for my FreeBSD, and I'm pretty satisfied. It's much more compatible than anything you'll be able to find (even more so for Unix/Linux). Opens complex Excel documents. Not perfect, but I've had it with OO.org. I can't be wasting time with stupid errors. Give it a try (it's a fair 69.95 - and they also have academic prices and bundles).
http://www.softmaker.com/english/
What kind of users do you imagine when you say that? I imagine you imagine students, or housewifes. I imagine Joe Blow, that has a report to present on Monday. His whole firm works with Microsoft. He needs garanteed interoperability with Microsoft Office and their formats (because that's what is expected of him and that what everybody uses). The best way to do that, of course, is using Microsoft Office. He needs the browser, e-mail, PowerPoint, Word and Excel. Let's face it, Microsoft developed the killer app for most business users.
OpenOffice.org still has stupid little buges everywhere. Just recently, I was using it for some interest rates calculations, and instead of obtaining an answer, I keot getting "?#NAME" in the cell. WTF.
High fidelity? A lot of MP3 players on the market aren't Hi Fi.
Microsoft's market share did not develop naturally. Everyone knows that. This story was but another chapter on how Microsoft is willing to play dirty to hurt the competition. For instace, during the mid-90s, they were hell-bent on breaking just about every standard they could. Hence Google's "don't be evil."
Why should a casual (but knowledgeable) user buy a PC and pay $270 for Vista, then another $200-$300 for Microsoft office when they can get a Unix Distro for cheap and Open office for cheap? Yes, you get what you pay for, but with Microsoft products, you don't always get what you pay for, you get less.
Hmmm...Because he's gotta deliver that financial presentation with PowerPoint by Monday morning, together with those spreadsheets? And because Excel is one motherfucking killer app in the business/financial/engineering arena? And because it works? And because MS Office can be integrated seamlessly with a whole lot of other stuff? Because OpenOffice.org is one unreliable, buggy, piece of sh... software?
Look, the most serious symptom of the disease in the Linux community is someone like Shuttleworth. Pretty Ubuntu...useless. Want to do something relevant? Straighten out or create business apps on the free Unix platforms. Make OpenOffice.org rock-solid. The day average Joe can have the same solutions Microsoft provides, you'll see change. Tip: use business-friendly license. The GPL does nothing but to throw people off (yeah, it's fine for the Linux kernel, but what do I care about the Linux kernel?) Who knows, maybe Novell will get it right...GNOME? Yeah,right. Go to Walmart or whatever and buy a simple computer (Celeron, whatever). Install GNOME. See how long it takes to opne a folder...What a joke. There's no focus in the World Domination Plan, dude.
How about integrating someone's souped up double-screen real-time trading platform with Excel, the quant's neural networks he coded in C++ and then generating PDF reports for investors? Can one do that on a Mac?
The company I work for uses 3rd party apps which are not written in Java; they are written by ISVs, in highly optimized C and C++, and they still may take hours to run a simulation. There are no Mac versions, and we wouldn't be rebuying such an expensive software for Mac anyway.
What are you in? Financial sector? This a sector that probably will never move away form Microsoft...
When somebody uses, or instance an Excel spreadsheet, somebody else, proprietary as it might be any M$ product, writes a Neural Net to work with that very same spreadsheet. Then, a third ISV some document management application. It's just a whole, well, kinda open and interdependent environment.
It's hard to do away with all those things for certain sectors. For corporations, I pretty much doubt anyone will move them away from Microsoft. Unless they can do away with the spreadsheet/word/database/workflow integration (which is the Office package corporations buy, right?)
Because BSD is d e a d!!!
First of all, it's ridiculous to think that EULAs are valid in the first place.
I don't know about your country, but in my country an EULA saying "...and should Display Eater be activated with an invalid key, the software will proceed to erase your home directory; or provoke unknown and otherwise unspecified damage to your files. Do you agree? (YES) (NO)" would be illegal.
For all your articulated diatribe, in which you display a wallowing sense of ethics, I'll just have to quit reading and tell you plain and simple:
/Users file. Then you're dead. Dead. You will get sued to death.
With all likelihood, in a civilized country, you will get sued for attempting shit like this. And you will get sued in the proportionality of the damage done.
For instance, say I'm and architect, and my next million dollar project are in my
Here's what the poster said:
I can only say I'm 100% convinced that Autism has more forms than documented, and one of them is developed, not acquired when we don our "genes".
The OP is convinced of - whatever - because he's been reading and doing some self-diagnosis, probably. He has - it shows - no understanding of how much goes into constructing a diagnosis category. He would like very much to be deemed autistic. Rather, he would like to have an undocumented manifestation of Autism - and a form that glorifies his superior mental faculties. How convenient. Preferably one that matches a story that has appeared a lot in the media, like in Wired magazine.
Until you have a proper diagnosis, with a full psychiatric examination, you can not - should not - go around thinking you have Whatever Syndrome. Diagnosis aren't a joke, and aren't achieved by reading the Wikipedia. It takes a very special database search - a physician. Even them it takes physicians acquatined with the condition and the literature. Don't expect a cardiologist to be very good at it.
I bet it would really hurt to hear from a shrink that he has issues, but not Asperger's syndrome. Anyhow, I am just speculating, but this self-proclaiment of Asperger syndrome looks really suspicious. And I suggest you cease to speak as if you had any remote idea what the syndrome is - or how prevalent it is.
This looks like just a case of self-pity, probably. Anyway, let's not turn this into a free therapy session. Shrinks are expensive.
How' this a flamebait? It's true. We're talking GUI, so let's slam the one-corner resizing in Mac OS. Completely off-topic but well worth slamming.
Have you tried XFCE 4.4's Thunar file manager? It includes the previewing capabilities of Nautilus and is a huge interface improvement over xffm.
No, I haven't, couldn't get it compile on FreeBSD 6.2 (maybe I didn't try hard enough - but I got better things to do then to tweak desktops all day long).
Other then weird problems mouting the devices, you mean...
Yes, but when 90% of people asked say, for example, that they despise the Gnome file dialog, maybe it's time to step back and reevaluate the decision.
Say, if Apple gets a bad rap on some feature, repeatedly, on the specialized press, I'd say they'd be pretty much concerned about the comments, and might actually listen. Same with Microsoft.
GNOME, OTOH, sees people saying the same old thing, over and over again, on forums, web pages, etc., but just doesn't care. Why? Possible reasons:
1) They work in IT - hence, they are autistic, just like Linus Torvalds.
2) They work focusing on stupid corporation users that are migrating from Windows to Linux, and they don't give a shit about what you and I say on Slashdot;
3) They just don't give a shit, because they conduct no usability studies (actually, IIRC, Novell might have conducted some, right? Please say I'm right.);
4) They don't give a shit. Period. Whether you send them patches or not, because, so far, they have a bad track record in even looking at the patches people send them, let alone merging them.
5) They are gnomes. Hence, they have differing usability concerns from the rest of the population.