Until quite recently, I've been setting up Slackware on workplace machines, not because I have any ideological bias against any other distro, but because it is very quick and easy to get a productive and useful platform with Dropline Gnome. I have never had any complaints that it is too hard for non-techies to use, though I don't expect any of these users to do any command-line activity to maintain these systems.
Since it now appears that maintenance of the Dropline Gnome distribution is being happening very slowly, I now use Arch Linux, which has all of Slackware's advantages but with a less conservative focus. This works perfectly for me, but it'll be a couple of months yet before I start rolling out disk images for the users.
I wouldn't go as far as to say it's undeserved. I understand that a lot of the more flagrant bugs have now been squished, but when it first came out it was a godawful piece of shit, and everybody knew it. That kind of dirt tends to stick, and no-one should be surprised if people are reluctant to get bitten again.
Windows 7 may well be a great product (I don't care one way or another, I'm not in their market) but most people will view it with suspicion for a while. Its acceptance will probably be driven by the OEM market, as was Vista's.
I'm guilty of talking and emailing when I should be carefully listening to another person.
So am I from time to time, though I usually prefer to let the phone just ring out. The person to whom you're talking is left with a much more favourable impression, and voicemail does the rest.
...other social networking sites (yes, that's what skype is, and it fosters an even closer-knit community than facebook or others ever will, as people actually _talk_ to others, as opposed to poking them...
Why the hell did you post that as AC? What you say is entirely true.
I don't have a Facebook account, but my wife does. The amount of time she spends on it is scary, though she is definitely intelligent enough to know that it is only a substitute for real interaction. Skype, however, is a genuinely useful service (regardless of its shortcomings) because the "social networking" requires a certain amount of cerebral input, rather than a generic off-the-peg poke to say "I still exist, and your name just farted across my synapses for 0.3 nanoseconds".
Nevertheless, from the point of view of one who has glanced at twitter and decided that it was a boring waste of space, this astroturfing is just one more reason to shun the site.
What is your question? RPM is on a GNU GPL licence, so is free for anyone to use if they so wish. The parent poster said nothing against freedom of choice.
Indeed, but then COBOL often used to be defined as "COmmon Batch Oriented Language". It is very, very good at that kind of processing. If we wanted anything interactive, well, that was what Fortran was for.
In fact, I have worked at a couple of financial institutions where EVERYTHING was coded in Fortran (long after it was trendy), and that code was beautiful to behold.
Quick disclaimer: IAACP (or rather I was in an earlier life, when I had to be).
COBOL's main drawback was never any real technical issue. It is simply that it can be very tedious to do. Having said that, once you understand it, it is also a very easy language to code in. But there's certainly no reason to throw away the code just because it isn't trendy any more.
Having said that, I do remember working on a site in the UK back in the '80s where the COBOL source to some important routines had long since disappeared, and my job was to patch the binary directly. Now that DOES take a bit of concentration. (Fun, though.)
Yes, there has been a handful of object lessons, but for the most part, banks are still rolling in profits as much as they ever did. Sure, the profits might not be quite as obscene as before, but you never see a banker on a bicycle. Yeah, I hate MBAs too.
It also has a more general meaning related to property.
...and that, since I usually do choose my words fairly carefully, is exactly what I meant. My remark also stands as you say with regard to closed-source, but what I meant was that every package system I can conveniently recall in the Linux world is GPL or similar, which frees it from the ties of property you mention.
And I notice the GP hasn't taken me up on that challenge...
There is no common way to install and remove software.
Who cares? It's not rocket science.
There is no stable base to write drivers (thus no hardware support)
Linux supports far many more devices out of the box than Windows or OS X.
There are too many distros with too many proprietary ways of doing things. Too many proprietary repositories, too many proprietary package systems, to many proprietary filesystem layouts.
Too many distros for whom? There are different flavours for different purposes and/or different levels of technical ability. And I challenge you to name even ONE proprietary package system used on Linux.
Gimp is *not* Photoshop. Sorry. I know I mentioned this, but I'll repeat it again. You insult people who actually use Photoshop by making this claim.
Gimp is indeed not Photoshop. In some ways it's better. I learned to use Gimp before Photoshop, and it does a fine job. Like Photoshop, however, it is a big, powerful tool and needs time to learn how to use it. Which brings me to my next point:
You freely admit to playing with blender for 30 seconds before giving up and going back to something else. Now whatever the merits or demerits of Blender (I don't know or care about it one way or the other), if you dismiss a piece of software after 30 seconds acquaintance (i.e. without bothering to take the trouble to see how it works) then you are simply telling us you are an ignorant fanboy whose opinion isn't worth our attention.
When I was in college in Miami, I used to have some girls working for me, so I could keep my lifestyle.
I provided them with basic infrastructure (phones, bedrooms at my apartment on the beach, taxi rides) and some bodyguards to help them when they were going to outcalls.
Besides my part of their money, they used to give me plenty of free sex, and they are the best women to deal with, as they think they are totally worthless, so if you ORDER (like a MALE, COMMANDING them! Not like a fag-geek, begging...) them to do anything they will do without a sigh.
What a revelation.
I am definitely not new here, and I am accustomed to reading opinions with which I disagree on Slashdot, and I don't have a problem with that. But I don't recall encountering an unrepentant asswipe pimp on this forum before.
I have never seen any point in making a "foes" list here, but if you had the balls to post non-AC you would be on it.
Stupidly, Handbrake now almost never works, especially on Windows.
Would you care to elucidate? The reason why I ask is because I put dvd ripping on the back burner about a year ago (having failed to get any of the options I tried - which did not include handbrake - to work nicely on Linux), but a number of posters below seem to highly recommend it.
The submitter was asking for a Linux solution. I can't say I'm an obsessive purist, but if a piece of software needs to run on Wine, I'd rather just do without.
I've found the 2.6 builds of GIMP work quite well with Mac (and yes, 24-bit colour has been supported for a long time). There are testing versions available for native "aqua" interface, but there are still a few issues with it, so I prefer the X11 version. However, the older 2.4 versions were a lot more snappy than 2.6, and just as functional. To be honest, Gimp seems to have less speed-bumps on my Linux machines, though I can't think of any good reason why.
As a matter of interest, what's your problem with X11? It should "just work" once you have installed it off your OS X DVD.
The worm would need some way to compile itself, of course (unless written in Javascript or other scripting language where the interpreter is included with Windows).
A way of getting around this would be to code your virus in a self-modifying assembled object. Ah, there's hope for us old Real Programmers yet. Just when you kiddies thought we were all getting a bit smelly...;-P
For the last time, this has already been voted down in parliament once.
Sure. But until it is slapped down definitively, Conroy is going to keep talking the thing up. Trouble is, there are still far too many nanny-state idealogues in Parliament, and I am not nearly so confident that this censorship won't be imposed. There are also too many naive twits there who fail to see the "thin end of the wedge" aspect of the thing with regard to freedom of speech.
Well, they didn't give $900 to me. Despite the fact that my income for the year was zero, and all the rest of it. If they actually spent the money on infrastructure such as this, I would be much more convinced of their bona fides than I am with these much-hyped handouts which never eventuated.
The next Liberal government will just privatise...
Sure. Just like the present Liberal government.;-)
Although I was one of those who helped elect Rudd, I was never under any illusions that current Labor party policy is in any way distinguishable from the Liberals'. We just needed to get rid of that vile little twerp John Howard and his posse of jackbooted fascists.
Rudd's short tenancy has been characterised by the odd ray of sunshine here and there, but for the most part he has been a sheep in sheep's clothing.
Slashdot Mirror
Until quite recently, I've been setting up Slackware on workplace machines, not because I have any ideological bias against any other distro, but because it is very quick and easy to get a productive and useful platform with Dropline Gnome. I have never had any complaints that it is too hard for non-techies to use, though I don't expect any of these users to do any command-line activity to maintain these systems.
Since it now appears that maintenance of the Dropline Gnome distribution is being happening very slowly, I now use Arch Linux, which has all of Slackware's advantages but with a less conservative focus. This works perfectly for me, but it'll be a couple of months yet before I start rolling out disk images for the users.
Vista has a pretty undeserved bad reputation
I wouldn't go as far as to say it's undeserved. I understand that a lot of the more flagrant bugs have now been squished, but when it first came out it was a godawful piece of shit, and everybody knew it. That kind of dirt tends to stick, and no-one should be surprised if people are reluctant to get bitten again.
Windows 7 may well be a great product (I don't care one way or another, I'm not in their market) but most people will view it with suspicion for a while. Its acceptance will probably be driven by the OEM market, as was Vista's.
Oops. sorry... 8-|
I'm guilty of talking and emailing when I should be carefully listening to another person.
So am I from time to time, though I usually prefer to let the phone just ring out. The person to whom you're talking is left with a much more favourable impression, and voicemail does the rest.
...other social networking sites (yes, that's what skype is, and it fosters an even closer-knit community than facebook or others ever will, as people actually _talk_ to others, as opposed to poking them...
Why the hell did you post that as AC? What you say is entirely true.
I don't have a Facebook account, but my wife does. The amount of time she spends on it is scary, though she is definitely intelligent enough to know that it is only a substitute for real interaction. Skype, however, is a genuinely useful service (regardless of its shortcomings) because the "social networking" requires a certain amount of cerebral input, rather than a generic off-the-peg poke to say "I still exist, and your name just farted across my synapses for 0.3 nanoseconds".
Nevertheless, from the point of view of one who has glanced at twitter and decided that it was a boring waste of space, this astroturfing is just one more reason to shun the site.
Do you know how many distros use rpm?
What is your question? RPM is on a GNU GPL licence, so is free for anyone to use if they so wish. The parent poster said nothing against freedom of choice.
One of the first languages I learned was PL/M.
Now there's a blast from the past. I never used PL/M, but I did use PL/1 back when the Earth was newly cooled and dinosaurs ruled the planet.
They used to say that without PL/1, Apollo would never have got to the moon.
Indeed, but then COBOL often used to be defined as "COmmon Batch Oriented Language". It is very, very good at that kind of processing. If we wanted anything interactive, well, that was what Fortran was for.
In fact, I have worked at a couple of financial institutions where EVERYTHING was coded in Fortran (long after it was trendy), and that code was beautiful to behold.
Quick disclaimer: IAACP (or rather I was in an earlier life, when I had to be).
COBOL's main drawback was never any real technical issue. It is simply that it can be very tedious to do. Having said that, once you understand it, it is also a very easy language to code in. But there's certainly no reason to throw away the code just because it isn't trendy any more.
Having said that, I do remember working on a site in the UK back in the '80s where the COBOL source to some important routines had long since disappeared, and my job was to patch the binary directly. Now that DOES take a bit of concentration. (Fun, though.)
See also the bank failures for examples of this.
Yes, there has been a handful of object lessons, but for the most part, banks are still rolling in profits as much as they ever did. Sure, the profits might not be quite as obscene as before, but you never see a banker on a bicycle. Yeah, I hate MBAs too.
It also has a more general meaning related to property.
...and that, since I usually do choose my words fairly carefully, is exactly what I meant. My remark also stands as you say with regard to closed-source, but what I meant was that every package system I can conveniently recall in the Linux world is GPL or similar, which frees it from the ties of property you mention.
And I notice the GP hasn't taken me up on that challenge...
There is no common way to install and remove software.
Who cares? It's not rocket science.
There is no stable base to write drivers (thus no hardware support)
Linux supports far many more devices out of the box than Windows or OS X.
There are too many distros with too many proprietary ways of doing things. Too many proprietary repositories, too many proprietary package systems, to many proprietary filesystem layouts.
Too many distros for whom? There are different flavours for different purposes and/or different levels of technical ability. And I challenge you to name even ONE proprietary package system used on Linux.
Gimp is *not* Photoshop. Sorry. I know I mentioned this, but I'll repeat it again. You insult people who actually use Photoshop by making this claim.
Gimp is indeed not Photoshop. In some ways it's better. I learned to use Gimp before Photoshop, and it does a fine job. Like Photoshop, however, it is a big, powerful tool and needs time to learn how to use it. Which brings me to my next point:
You freely admit to playing with blender for 30 seconds before giving up and going back to something else. Now whatever the merits or demerits of Blender (I don't know or care about it one way or the other), if you dismiss a piece of software after 30 seconds acquaintance (i.e. without bothering to take the trouble to see how it works) then you are simply telling us you are an ignorant fanboy whose opinion isn't worth our attention.
You mean like...
$ man woman
No manual entry for woman
$
When I was in college in Miami, I used to have some girls working for me, so I could keep my lifestyle. I provided them with basic infrastructure (phones, bedrooms at my apartment on the beach, taxi rides) and some bodyguards to help them when they were going to outcalls. Besides my part of their money, they used to give me plenty of free sex, and they are the best women to deal with, as they think they are totally worthless, so if you ORDER (like a MALE, COMMANDING them! Not like a fag-geek, begging...) them to do anything they will do without a sigh.
What a revelation.
I am definitely not new here, and I am accustomed to reading opinions with which I disagree on Slashdot, and I don't have a problem with that. But I don't recall encountering an unrepentant asswipe pimp on this forum before.
I have never seen any point in making a "foes" list here, but if you had the balls to post non-AC you would be on it.
Stupidly, Handbrake now almost never works, especially on Windows.
Would you care to elucidate? The reason why I ask is because I put dvd ripping on the back burner about a year ago (having failed to get any of the options I tried - which did not include handbrake - to work nicely on Linux), but a number of posters below seem to highly recommend it.
The submitter was asking for a Linux solution. I can't say I'm an obsessive purist, but if a piece of software needs to run on Wine, I'd rather just do without.
I've found the 2.6 builds of GIMP work quite well with Mac (and yes, 24-bit colour has been supported for a long time). There are testing versions available for native "aqua" interface, but there are still a few issues with it, so I prefer the X11 version. However, the older 2.4 versions were a lot more snappy than 2.6, and just as functional. To be honest, Gimp seems to have less speed-bumps on my Linux machines, though I can't think of any good reason why.
As a matter of interest, what's your problem with X11? It should "just work" once you have installed it off your OS X DVD.
The worm would need some way to compile itself, of course (unless written in Javascript or other scripting language where the interpreter is included with Windows).
;-P
A way of getting around this would be to code your virus in a self-modifying assembled object. Ah, there's hope for us old Real Programmers yet. Just when you kiddies thought we were all getting a bit smelly...
Maybe Conroy is smarter than he looks.
He would have to be.
Yes, I did see that, thank you, and I am somewhat pleased. Fact is, though, that we're unlikely to see much change outside the major towns.
In this case, the earthquake was just being politely late...
For the last time, this has already been voted down in parliament once.
Sure. But until it is slapped down definitively, Conroy is going to keep talking the thing up. Trouble is, there are still far too many nanny-state idealogues in Parliament, and I am not nearly so confident that this censorship won't be imposed. There are also too many naive twits there who fail to see the "thin end of the wedge" aspect of the thing with regard to freedom of speech.
Well, they didn't give $900 to me. Despite the fact that my income for the year was zero, and all the rest of it. If they actually spent the money on infrastructure such as this, I would be much more convinced of their bona fides than I am with these much-hyped handouts which never eventuated.
Never believe a politician.
The next Liberal government will just privatise...
;-)
Sure. Just like the present Liberal government.
Although I was one of those who helped elect Rudd, I was never under any illusions that current Labor party policy is in any way distinguishable from the Liberals'. We just needed to get rid of that vile little twerp John Howard and his posse of jackbooted fascists.
Rudd's short tenancy has been characterised by the odd ray of sunshine here and there, but for the most part he has been a sheep in sheep's clothing.