Maybe, except that in my experience, the majority of users never do go back to Windows once they have been exposed to a decent Linux implementation for a few weeks. This includes your grandma/grandpa type users. Obviously this does not take into account gamers or users with specialist or niche applications, but these do not even come close to forming part of the majority.
...and certainly going to try more operating systems in the future
Just so long as you're aware that BeOS and Haiku are more or less the same thing, while Slackware, Debian, Xubuntu and SuSE are also flavours of the same thing, as are the various Windows lookalikes. Except, that is, for Windows 3.1. That is not an OS.
If you really want to be cool, try dumpster-diving or fleabay for old '80s or '90s mini machines like Prime, Honeywell(/Bull) and so forth. They crop up from time to time, and offer a really useful perspective. GCOS and PRIMOS are great to work with.
Disclaimer: I worked with these machines when they were still current. You probably don't want to try anything much older unless you have a seriously large bedroom and don't object to a huge power bill.:-D
Not sure that I understand your point. Just about every Slackware user rolls his own kernel anyway. It's not hard: the generic documentation that comes with any vanilla kernel will get you through that in a pinch. (And Slackware has always shipped with vanilla kernels.)
As for your remark about forums etc.: you really can't have looked very hard.
It's pretty hard to get splatted against a rig on the other side of the road when there's a bloody great metal barrier between you and opposing traffic and you have a minimum of 2 lanes on your own side for ease of overtaking.. that's what a motorway is.. equivalent of the freeway.
Just for your information, the majority of longer country roads here in Australia are 2 lanes, with no crash barrier in the middle, except for small sections where some bureaucrat has decided otherwise. Lots of roads still aren't even sealed. Freeways are (with a few exceptions) mostly for urban traffic.
I loved slackware but got sick and tired of compiling everything myself...
Ah, but you're missing the fun. The whole point is that Slackware is perfect for people who like compiling their own software. It just gives them a world to stand on while they do so.
But it is great when you have servers up to your ears.
Slackware is a beautiful server distro, but I used to use it as my primary desktop distro until comparatively recently. The only reason why I stopped was because of a long hiatus in the maintenance of the Dropline Gnome distribution. I just don't have time to build all that stuff myself, and it used to be so good. (And no, Gentoo just does not fill that gap.) Now I am mostly using Arch Linux which is similar in the important ways to Slackware (sweet!) but with the advantage of more current package builds.
Any trailer starts to become unstable at speeds much over 100kph. It doesn't really matter whether it's a little bitty 500kg toy or a 30-tonne biggie, they both behave about the same at high speed given irregularities in wind conditions or road surface.
Note that I am not averse to a bit of high speed shenanigans on a nice empty road
That's up to you of course, but a couple of years ago when I was driving just a moderate-sized rig with three trailers in the NorthWest, an individual like yourself came off second-best when he decided I was plodding along too slowly at 100kph and suddenly found himself splatted underneath a similar rig going in the opposite direction.
If you insist on being a boy racer, you had better make damn sure you can get out of the way of heavy trucks, because not even God can stop them if you're in their way.
Semi-trailers here in Aus already have governers set to 100KPH.
Some do. They aren't mandatory.
But the fact is that the majority of road accidents in Australia (other than highly publicised exceptions) are caused by drivers of private cars dicking around without paying attention to what is going on around them.
I'm not working as a truckie at the moment (though I still have my MC, i.e. road-train licence), but I get very tired of the negative publicity that we see about trucks and their drivers.
Truck drivers have to go through many more hours of training, and they have to maintain a very high level of concentration while on the job. It's hard work. A private car can afford to drift a foot or two either side while driving, and they usually do. If a 36-metre truck did that even for a moment, it would probably kill someone. Sure, we see some fairly horrific accidents, but by comparison to the number of hours these guys are operating, the record is pretty good.
And we all know how good the average driver is at assessing those...
I am nominally an Australian, but I wasn't born here. I never cease to be amazed (and definitely frustrated) at how bad general driving skills are in Australia. And no, it really does NOT matter what state or city you're in.
Most accidents that I've seen are caused by a simple lack of PAYING ATTENTION to what is going on. Plus the fact that so many people seem to be able to pass a test without having acquired the basic skills of maneuvering a vehicle.
If you don't believe me, check out the site I linked earlier
Oh, I have no trouble believing you, I was just asking a serious question. Whoever decided my post was a troll was obviously unaware that I am not anti-Apple, but then who cares?
Snow Leopard is mainly a beneath-the-hood architectural upgrade.
Then how are they planning to market it to the Great Unwashed? They're never going to pursuade the fan-base to shell out dollars and cents if they can't see something new and shiny.
It has nothing to do with luck, just bad management.
Though I'm not sure why this whole discussion is under the title "Mac OS X users vulnerable..." when as the submission says the issue affects everybody. Other than to start yet amother boring FUD/flamebait war, of course.
They might not be able to withdraw any more than is in the account, but can they not still load you up with overdraft charges if they try?
No, because then it becomes a disputed transaction. Although it's a debit card, it has to follow Visa's rules, so if the transaction is disputed or fraudulent, it's the bank's problem to sort it out, not mine. I can just make sure I don't credit another cent to the account until the issue is straightened out.
So far, I haven't needed to implement this strategy with Paypal, but I like to be prepared rather than sorry.
but I think it's just crazy to let anyone directly charge your CC or worse yet, your bank account.
The only time I've had a problem with this is one that I traced to an occasion when I had no alternative to making an internet transaction on someone's Windows box while I was on holiday. Either the antivirus software didn't do its job or the machine was compromised in some other way, but shortly afterwards my c/c account was slugged for a bit over $800 by clickandbuy.com, with whom I have never had any dealings.
The first I heard about it was when I tried to make a normal transaction shortly afterwards, only to find that the bank had picked it up and frozen my account. I lost a few dollars via foreign exchange on the eventual refund, but it could all have been a lot worse.
The moral of the story that I took away was to set up my own mobile internet connection, and to take my own laptop with me on trips. In other words, trust no-one.
Taking money illegitimately without a payment system is intent to commit wire fraud and taking money illegitimately without a payment system could just be a billing error.
Ultimately, it doesn't make any difference for a lot of us. After all, how many of us (outside of the US) know a physical Paypal office address in their own country? I found a mention of an office in Richmond-Upon-Thames, but that's a long way away from Perth, Western Australia.
You have no redress through courts if Paypal isn't under your government's jurisdiction. Unless you are able to physically appear at their office and kindly offer to start breaking kneecaps, you have zero chance of getting satisfaction.
Your only recourse is to either not use Paypal or to limit Paypal's access to your funds.
paypal is basically just an (expensive) escrow service with a frankly nasty reputation for incompetence, asshattery, and penny-ante fraud(Sorry, your account is locked, hope you didn't have any money in there).
I can't say I've ever had any problems with Paypal - but then I don't trust them very much either. Fortunately, it's pretty easy with my bank to set up subsidiary accounts, and one of mine is a debit Visa card account to which I never credit more than the amount of any transaction I make. This is the one I have linked to Paypal, so there is a hard limit to how much they can attempt to withdraw.
in case you're someone who writes Linux software, I'll mention that sudo and CLIs are not familiar to most people and it's not necessary to expose users to them.
I remember when non-techie users were using their old 8086 and 8088 machines with DOS. They had no trouble learning to use a CLI then (remember there was no internet where you could find useful forum postings), so why should they now? The CLI is there as a powerful feature that you can use to get specific tasks accomplished very efficiently, and Apple provides one just as prominently as any Linux distro.
No, because outside of the US practically no private user buys Dell anyway.
My old parents over in the Channel Islands did. Much to my disgust. Both I and my brother offered to build computers for them (after all, anyone can do it) but they went ahead and ordered Dells anyway. And then called me in to get rid of all the crapware they had installed.
Think how immense the effort Apple has put in and how long it's taking to win new customers, and it has a far superior ecosystem to Linux in the desktop world.
I would suggest that a lot of the move towards Macs has been driven by frustration with the continual struggle against viruses and malware in the Windows world. I know someone is going to pipe up with a claim that virus developers will find Macs a good target when they become sufficiently numerous to make it worthwhile, but the simple truth is that it is actually harder to install that kind of stuff on a *nix-based machine than it is on Windows.
But back to your point: Apple's record as a superior ecosystem to Linux is a somewhat patchy one. It is partly sustained by the availability of MS Office for Mac. I would be prepared to bet dollars to doughnuts that Apple wouldn't have any of its market share without MSOffice. The NeoOffice project is excellent (I have both on my Mac, and I usually prefer NeoOffice), but some people just won't let go.
There are also some things that are just done really badly on Mac. My own pet peeve is the Gimp. I have a (pirated) copy of Photoshop, but since I learned to use the Gimp first, I actually find the latter easier to use. But I have yet to come across a build for Mac that works as well as it does on Linux.
I would guess the authors of TFA are trying to get Slashdot to heat their apartments.
Putting Ubuntu on that list was pretty much equivalent to holding their asses to the flames.
Though I have to say, I sort of agree. I have made several attempts at keeping that distro installed on my machines (ditto with Gentoo, but that's a different story), but every time I did so I ended up chucking it out and going back to Slackware, or more recently Arch, which is enough like Slack to be nice to use, but with a really effective and useful package system.
Slashdot Mirror
The reason they go back to windows...
Maybe, except that in my experience, the majority of users never do go back to Windows once they have been exposed to a decent Linux implementation for a few weeks. This includes your grandma/grandpa type users. Obviously this does not take into account gamers or users with specialist or niche applications, but these do not even come close to forming part of the majority.
...and certainly going to try more operating systems in the future
:-D
Just so long as you're aware that BeOS and Haiku are more or less the same thing, while Slackware, Debian, Xubuntu and SuSE are also flavours of the same thing, as are the various Windows lookalikes. Except, that is, for Windows 3.1. That is not an OS.
If you really want to be cool, try dumpster-diving or fleabay for old '80s or '90s mini machines like Prime, Honeywell(/Bull) and so forth. They crop up from time to time, and offer a really useful perspective. GCOS and PRIMOS are great to work with.
Disclaimer: I worked with these machines when they were still current. You probably don't want to try anything much older unless you have a seriously large bedroom and don't object to a huge power bill.
Any Windows enthusiast who is "uncomfortable or outright hostile towards the use of a command line" does not qualify as a power user.
Not sure that I understand your point. Just about every Slackware user rolls his own kernel anyway. It's not hard: the generic documentation that comes with any vanilla kernel will get you through that in a pinch. (And Slackware has always shipped with vanilla kernels.)
As for your remark about forums etc.: you really can't have looked very hard.
It's pretty hard to get splatted against a rig on the other side of the road when there's a bloody great metal barrier between you and opposing traffic and you have a minimum of 2 lanes on your own side for ease of overtaking.. that's what a motorway is.. equivalent of the freeway.
Just for your information, the majority of longer country roads here in Australia are 2 lanes, with no crash barrier in the middle, except for small sections where some bureaucrat has decided otherwise. Lots of roads still aren't even sealed. Freeways are (with a few exceptions) mostly for urban traffic.
I loved slackware but got sick and tired of compiling everything myself...
Ah, but you're missing the fun. The whole point is that Slackware is perfect for people who like compiling their own software. It just gives them a world to stand on while they do so.
But it is great when you have servers up to your ears.
Slackware is a beautiful server distro, but I used to use it as my primary desktop distro until comparatively recently. The only reason why I stopped was because of a long hiatus in the maintenance of the Dropline Gnome distribution. I just don't have time to build all that stuff myself, and it used to be so good. (And no, Gentoo just does not fill that gap.) Now I am mostly using Arch Linux which is similar in the important ways to Slackware (sweet!) but with the advantage of more current package builds.
Any trailer starts to become unstable at speeds much over 100kph. It doesn't really matter whether it's a little bitty 500kg toy or a 30-tonne biggie, they both behave about the same at high speed given irregularities in wind conditions or road surface.
Note that I am not averse to a bit of high speed shenanigans on a nice empty road
That's up to you of course, but a couple of years ago when I was driving just a moderate-sized rig with three trailers in the NorthWest, an individual like yourself came off second-best when he decided I was plodding along too slowly at 100kph and suddenly found himself splatted underneath a similar rig going in the opposite direction.
If you insist on being a boy racer, you had better make damn sure you can get out of the way of heavy trucks, because not even God can stop them if you're in their way.
Semi-trailers here in Aus already have governers set to 100KPH.
Some do. They aren't mandatory.
But the fact is that the majority of road accidents in Australia (other than highly publicised exceptions) are caused by drivers of private cars dicking around without paying attention to what is going on around them.
I'm not working as a truckie at the moment (though I still have my MC, i.e. road-train licence), but I get very tired of the negative publicity that we see about trucks and their drivers.
Truck drivers have to go through many more hours of training, and they have to maintain a very high level of concentration while on the job. It's hard work. A private car can afford to drift a foot or two either side while driving, and they usually do. If a 36-metre truck did that even for a moment, it would probably kill someone. Sure, we see some fairly horrific accidents, but by comparison to the number of hours these guys are operating, the record is pretty good.
And we all know how good the average driver is at assessing those...
I am nominally an Australian, but I wasn't born here. I never cease to be amazed (and definitely frustrated) at how bad general driving skills are in Australia. And no, it really does NOT matter what state or city you're in.
Most accidents that I've seen are caused by a simple lack of PAYING ATTENTION to what is going on. Plus the fact that so many people seem to be able to pass a test without having acquired the basic skills of maneuvering a vehicle.
If you don't believe me, check out the site I linked earlier
Oh, I have no trouble believing you, I was just asking a serious question. Whoever decided my post was a troll was obviously unaware that I am not anti-Apple, but then who cares?
It looks like OpenJDK now runs on MacOSX:
It does, but only with X11.
Snow Leopard is mainly a beneath-the-hood architectural upgrade.
Then how are they planning to market it to the Great Unwashed? They're never going to pursuade the fan-base to shell out dollars and cents if they can't see something new and shiny.
It has nothing to do with luck, just bad management.
Though I'm not sure why this whole discussion is under the title "Mac OS X users vulnerable..." when as the submission says the issue affects everybody. Other than to start yet amother boring FUD/flamebait war, of course.
They might not be able to withdraw any more than is in the account, but can they not still load you up with overdraft charges if they try?
No, because then it becomes a disputed transaction. Although it's a debit card, it has to follow Visa's rules, so if the transaction is disputed or fraudulent, it's the bank's problem to sort it out, not mine. I can just make sure I don't credit another cent to the account until the issue is straightened out.
So far, I haven't needed to implement this strategy with Paypal, but I like to be prepared rather than sorry.
but I think it's just crazy to let anyone directly charge your CC or worse yet, your bank account.
The only time I've had a problem with this is one that I traced to an occasion when I had no alternative to making an internet transaction on someone's Windows box while I was on holiday. Either the antivirus software didn't do its job or the machine was compromised in some other way, but shortly afterwards my c/c account was slugged for a bit over $800 by clickandbuy.com, with whom I have never had any dealings.
The first I heard about it was when I tried to make a normal transaction shortly afterwards, only to find that the bank had picked it up and frozen my account. I lost a few dollars via foreign exchange on the eventual refund, but it could all have been a lot worse.
The moral of the story that I took away was to set up my own mobile internet connection, and to take my own laptop with me on trips. In other words, trust no-one.
Taking money illegitimately without a payment system is intent to commit wire fraud and taking money illegitimately without a payment system could just be a billing error.
Ultimately, it doesn't make any difference for a lot of us. After all, how many of us (outside of the US) know a physical Paypal office address in their own country? I found a mention of an office in Richmond-Upon-Thames, but that's a long way away from Perth, Western Australia.
You have no redress through courts if Paypal isn't under your government's jurisdiction. Unless you are able to physically appear at their office and kindly offer to start breaking kneecaps, you have zero chance of getting satisfaction.
Your only recourse is to either not use Paypal or to limit Paypal's access to your funds.
paypal is basically just an (expensive) escrow service with a frankly nasty reputation for incompetence, asshattery, and penny-ante fraud(Sorry, your account is locked, hope you didn't have any money in there).
I can't say I've ever had any problems with Paypal - but then I don't trust them very much either. Fortunately, it's pretty easy with my bank to set up subsidiary accounts, and one of mine is a debit Visa card account to which I never credit more than the amount of any transaction I make. This is the one I have linked to Paypal, so there is a hard limit to how much they can attempt to withdraw.
Well, kids are pollutants too.
*ducks*
why aren't you just using something like TextEdit?
I guess if you want, we could always take this to its logical extreme and turn this into an emacs vs. vi flamewar.
Me: Emacs is great, vi sucks.
AC: Bullshit. Emacs sucks, vi roolz!
Me: Bullshit! The only difference between vi and a bucket of shit is the bucket!
rinse and repeat ad lib...
in case you're someone who writes Linux software, I'll mention that sudo and CLIs are not familiar to most people and it's not necessary to expose users to them.
I remember when non-techie users were using their old 8086 and 8088 machines with DOS. They had no trouble learning to use a CLI then (remember there was no internet where you could find useful forum postings), so why should they now? The CLI is there as a powerful feature that you can use to get specific tasks accomplished very efficiently, and Apple provides one just as prominently as any Linux distro.
No, because outside of the US practically no private user buys Dell anyway.
My old parents over in the Channel Islands did. Much to my disgust. Both I and my brother offered to build computers for them (after all, anyone can do it) but they went ahead and ordered Dells anyway. And then called me in to get rid of all the crapware they had installed.
Think how immense the effort Apple has put in and how long it's taking to win new customers, and it has a far superior ecosystem to Linux in the desktop world.
I would suggest that a lot of the move towards Macs has been driven by frustration with the continual struggle against viruses and malware in the Windows world. I know someone is going to pipe up with a claim that virus developers will find Macs a good target when they become sufficiently numerous to make it worthwhile, but the simple truth is that it is actually harder to install that kind of stuff on a *nix-based machine than it is on Windows.
But back to your point: Apple's record as a superior ecosystem to Linux is a somewhat patchy one. It is partly sustained by the availability of MS Office for Mac. I would be prepared to bet dollars to doughnuts that Apple wouldn't have any of its market share without MSOffice. The NeoOffice project is excellent (I have both on my Mac, and I usually prefer NeoOffice), but some people just won't let go.
There are also some things that are just done really badly on Mac. My own pet peeve is the Gimp. I have a (pirated) copy of Photoshop, but since I learned to use the Gimp first, I actually find the latter easier to use. But I have yet to come across a build for Mac that works as well as it does on Linux.
I would guess the authors of TFA are trying to get Slashdot to heat their apartments.
Putting Ubuntu on that list was pretty much equivalent to holding their asses to the flames.
Though I have to say, I sort of agree. I have made several attempts at keeping that distro installed on my machines (ditto with Gentoo, but that's a different story), but every time I did so I ended up chucking it out and going back to Slackware, or more recently Arch, which is enough like Slack to be nice to use, but with a really effective and useful package system.