Slackware was (and still is), on the other hand, is just a simple, dirty and very humble OS that just keeps working.
Simple: yes, in spades. Very humble: maybe. Keeps working: definitely, but... Dirty: ??? How dare you? You should wash your keyboard with bleach after typing that.:-D
Those with low UIDs are just the people who signed up for the new accounts as soon as they were available.
I think I had one of those, but I lost the password somehow, and I never cared enough to do anything about it. Having been playing in the internet since it was ARPANET, a lot of the gloss had worn off by then anyway...:-|
Microsoft DOES want people to like their product, don't they?
Well, maybe they rationalise it like this:
* People liked DOS about 20 years ago. DOS allowed you to use 1 application at a time. So... * If they sell an OS that allows you to do twice as much as you did on DOS, you'll like the new OS twice as much...
Of course, the obvious alternative would be for people to just dig out their old copies of Windows 3.1.
That could cope quite well with running two applications, just so long as you didn't sneeze or look at the machine sideways. But the proviso of course applies just as much to later releases. The advantage here is that your two applications will run (or crash) blazingly fast...
Maybe it's the fact that no-one really knows how big the Linux share really is. The Linux "share of the market" is undefined, since it doesn't really take part in the "market" as such. The Mac or Windows share can (I guess) more or less be inferred from their bottom line on the balance sheet, but unless Linux users take the trouble to register at the Linux counter, the only stats that are available have to come from their browsers' useragent tagline, which is easily spoofed for convenience.
...but if you redirect ad sites to localhost it helps to run a web server that does nothing but serve up a blank image file for any requests...
Not necessary: such requests don't time out, they are rejected immediately. If you run Firefox, it immediately notifies you that:
"Firefox can't establish a connection to the server at dodgywebsite.biz
Though the site seems valid, the browser was unable to establish a connection.
* Could the site be temporarily unavailable? Try again later.
* Are you unable to browse other sites? Check the computer's network connection.
* Is your computer or network protected by a firewall or proxy? Incorrect settings can interfere with Web browsing."
Thus, if you see this, you can be pretty sure that it is you blocking it.
I've been to websites where no amount of "allow" privileges will get the darn thing to work.
I believe one of them was my banks website.
I've tried to stay out of the debate about NoScript so far, despite the post to which you're all replying...
...But where NoScript falls down is at the human interface. Sooner or later you have to inject a layer of trust into what you're doing if you want to get anything out of the internet at all. If you want to see anything on that webpage, you only find out whether or not it was worth it if you click that "S".
But having the extension enabled while you are doing your banking is just silly. You more or less HAVE to trust your bank - otherwise go and find yourself a different one.
This is why I don't use it. My combo of hosts file/adblock/flashblock knocks out almost all unwanted content with very little intervention.
* How long does each operating system take to install?
Perhaps more relevant would be a "swearing quotient". I have found that most installations of Windows have involved a lot of swearing, e.g. where Windows arbitrarily decides there is something wrong with hardware that was perfectly OK five minutes ago...
Whereas most Linux installs tend to be fairly cruisy. Ubuntu is not my distro of choice, but installation is very quiet.;-)
The trouble with Flash is that it is usually a triumph of form over content. It encourages a policy of delivering content in bites easily digested by a sparrow, which I find less than admirable. It is more cumbersome to maintain, so it usually isn't maintained at all. Lots of glitzy display does not help communicate information. The best way to do this is to use basic HTML, which people can bookmark or copy/paste as required, on any machine, without swallowing up megabytes of bandwidth.
And a combo of hosts-file, Adblock and Flashblock is almost unbeatable. I often get comments from people who use my computers that the browser seems a lot less cluttered with ads than theirs. This is because I take steps not to see ANY advertisements unless I ask for them.
FYI, I've yet to find one of these which I suspect is because in addition to running AdBlock Plus, I also regularly use NoScript.
Adblock is great for fine-grained filtering of sites. I use it fairly sparingly, since I maintain a large hosts file to kill traffic with any server I find to be suspect. NoScript works, but I just find it too intrusive to be my weapon of choice. But my combo kills nearly all traffic I don't want to see...
And how often does Apple actually do point upgrades ? They usually save them up, and then sell you the next full version with all the bug fixes included.
Actually, no. They arrive fairly frequently; current version is 10.5.6. And miscellaneous updates occur on a week-by-week basis as required, usually with decreasing frequency as the major version matures - in fact, pretty much identically to the pattern of Linux kernel revisions.
You don't have to be anybody's fanboy to get your facts right.
Compare to Apple... I get a Mac.. 30 days later 10.5.x comes out, and my software's obsolete and not updatable, when it's only a month old, and there's already lots of software out the brand new machine won't run.
I'm not necessarily a huge fan of the Apple business model, but that is factually inaccurate.
Your software is not obsolete. As an earlier poster mentioned, point releases in the 10.5 cycle are free, just as in earlier versions. In fact, Apple is still providing support for 10.4, I haven't come across any software that won't run on that other than bluetooth drivers using A2DP.
Also, depending on who you bought your Mac through, there is usually some cheaper or free option for upgrading to the next major release if it is let out of the bag within a short period after your purchase.
That might change if people could see at first hand how bad Microsoft's code really is.;-)
The thing about FOSS is that it can lead to a much higher quality product than many commercial offerings.
From the perspective of someone who has had to spend a lot of time fixing Windows installations, I personally find it a source of frustration that people actually pay good money for such a crock of shit. The Linux desktop has been here for years, however, and it just gets better. But in a perverse way, the fact that it is free counts against it to those who see "free" as "inferior".
I'm sure the scenario you have illustrated must have already occurred to Microsoft. What you're overlooking, though, is people's expectation that the machine should work "out of the box".
If they tried to gouge customers like this, I'm fairly sure they would see a mass exodus of their customers to Mac.
"GIMP has no CMYK support" is in the same category as "You will lose copyright on anything made with GPL software". It is constantly being repeated by Microsoft marketing people despite being obviously false.
It is also repeated as a mantra mostly by those who have never had to publish a printed work in their lives. Even those who do such work tend to make a mess of it 8 times out of 10.
Why not? Sure, it doesn't do everything in the same way as Photoshop, but there's no reason why it should. It certainly does, however, perform most (if not all, with 3rd-party scripts) of the same functions.
I know this will go against the grain with the fanboys, but I learned to use Gimp long before PS, and I still use it by preference even though I now have both available to me.
Remember, Australia is simply a hot and barren wasteland, bordered by some hot and tropical rain forest.
You're digging yourself into a hole here. Most of the world has the occasional chuckle about the ignorance of the "average American", whatever that might be, but you at least seem to fit the description, since you apparently have no idea where Australia is.;-)
I was in Tasmania for the first 2 weeks of December, and yes, there was occasional snowfall on Mt. Wellington.
The mainland, however, sees almost none: our chilliest city, Melbourne, has had rail lines buckling in the heat in the last week. Here in Perth, it's business as usual - it's always hot at this time of year...
I don't see how a verbal talk to the superiors isn't just as good or better without forcing a decision...
Except that a verbal talk is deniable. Or avoidable by the simple expedient of being on holiday or otherwise out of the office.
A middle-manager needs to be able to cover his ass, and the only way to do that is in writing. Preferably with an accessible copy in case upper-management decide to shaft him.
Been there, too many times. You can't trust anybody, but if you acquire a rep for playing it straight, and you don't take sides, you'll mostly be left alone to do your job.
I do agree that the base should be better standardized (where files are for network config, etc). It's getting better, but everyone still does it a little different.
Yup. And everyone should standardise on Slackware's init scripts. (OK, I'm joking, but not much...:-))
Almost the first thing that pissed me off about Ubuntu (apart from the coprophiliac theme) was the fact that they had arbitrarily fucked around with inittab, and I had to go looking for it. I've nothing against change where it's useful, but I do object to developers being craniorectal just for the sake of it.
Just because various countries are sovereign states doesn't mean it's inappropriate to criticize them
I didn't say it was.
I was referring to the far more overt thuggery in which the US has engaged for decades. There's a big difference between criticising another country's government and flying in, abducting its citizens and throwing them in a foreign jail without charge or right of appeal.
Slashdot Mirror
Slackware was (and still is), on the other hand, is just a simple, dirty and very humble OS that just keeps working.
:-D
Simple: yes, in spades.
Very humble: maybe.
Keeps working: definitely, but...
Dirty: ??? How dare you? You should wash your keyboard with bleach after typing that.
Those with low UIDs are just the people who signed up for the new accounts as soon as they were available.
:-|
I think I had one of those, but I lost the password somehow, and I never cared enough to do anything about it. Having been playing in the internet since it was ARPANET, a lot of the gloss had worn off by then anyway...
Don't you hate it when people say "whoosh"?
Microsoft DOES want people to like their product, don't they?
Well, maybe they rationalise it like this:
* People liked DOS about 20 years ago. DOS allowed you to use 1 application at a time. So...
* If they sell an OS that allows you to do twice as much as you did on DOS, you'll like the new OS twice as much...
Of course, the obvious alternative would be for people to just dig out their old copies of Windows 3.1.
;-)
That could cope quite well with running two applications, just so long as you didn't sneeze or look at the machine sideways. But the proviso of course applies just as much to later releases. The advantage here is that your two applications will run (or crash) blazingly fast...
*ducks*
what is it about desktop Linux
Maybe it's the fact that no-one really knows how big the Linux share really is. The Linux "share of the market" is undefined, since it doesn't really take part in the "market" as such. The Mac or Windows share can (I guess) more or less be inferred from their bottom line on the balance sheet, but unless Linux users take the trouble to register at the Linux counter, the only stats that are available have to come from their browsers' useragent tagline, which is easily spoofed for convenience.
...but if you redirect ad sites to localhost it helps to run a web server that does nothing but serve up a blank image file for any requests...
Not necessary: such requests don't time out, they are rejected immediately. If you run Firefox, it immediately notifies you that:
"Firefox can't establish a connection to the server at dodgywebsite.biz
Though the site seems valid, the browser was unable to establish a connection.
* Could the site be temporarily unavailable? Try again later.
* Are you unable to browse other sites? Check the computer's network connection.
* Is your computer or network protected by a firewall or proxy? Incorrect settings can interfere with Web browsing."
Thus, if you see this, you can be pretty sure that it is you blocking it.
I've been to websites where no amount of "allow" privileges will get the darn thing to work.
I believe one of them was my banks website.
I've tried to stay out of the debate about NoScript so far, despite the post to which you're all replying...
...But where NoScript falls down is at the human interface. Sooner or later you have to inject a layer of trust into what you're doing if you want to get anything out of the internet at all. If you want to see anything on that webpage, you only find out whether or not it was worth it if you click that "S".
But having the extension enabled while you are doing your banking is just silly. You more or less HAVE to trust your bank - otherwise go and find yourself a different one.
This is why I don't use it. My combo of hosts file/adblock/flashblock knocks out almost all unwanted content with very little intervention.
* How long does each operating system take to install?
;-)
Perhaps more relevant would be a "swearing quotient". I have found that most installations of Windows have involved a lot of swearing, e.g. where Windows arbitrarily decides there is something wrong with hardware that was perfectly OK five minutes ago...
Whereas most Linux installs tend to be fairly cruisy. Ubuntu is not my distro of choice, but installation is very quiet.
The trouble with Flash is that it is usually a triumph of form over content. It encourages a policy of delivering content in bites easily digested by a sparrow, which I find less than admirable. It is more cumbersome to maintain, so it usually isn't maintained at all. Lots of glitzy display does not help communicate information. The best way to do this is to use basic HTML, which people can bookmark or copy/paste as required, on any machine, without swallowing up megabytes of bandwidth.
And a combo of hosts-file, Adblock and Flashblock is almost unbeatable. I often get comments from people who use my computers that the browser seems a lot less cluttered with ads than theirs. This is because I take steps not to see ANY advertisements unless I ask for them.
FYI, I've yet to find one of these which I suspect is because in addition to running AdBlock Plus, I also regularly use NoScript.
Adblock is great for fine-grained filtering of sites. I use it fairly sparingly, since I maintain a large hosts file to kill traffic with any server I find to be suspect. NoScript works, but I just find it too intrusive to be my weapon of choice. But my combo kills nearly all traffic I don't want to see...
And how often does Apple actually do point upgrades ? They usually save them up, and then sell you the next full version with all the bug fixes included.
Actually, no. They arrive fairly frequently; current version is 10.5.6. And miscellaneous updates occur on a week-by-week basis as required, usually with decreasing frequency as the major version matures - in fact, pretty much identically to the pattern of Linux kernel revisions.
You don't have to be anybody's fanboy to get your facts right.
Compare to Apple... I get a Mac.. 30 days later 10.5.x comes out, and my software's obsolete and not updatable, when it's only a month old, and there's already lots of software out the brand new machine won't run.
I'm not necessarily a huge fan of the Apple business model, but that is factually inaccurate.
Your software is not obsolete. As an earlier poster mentioned, point releases in the 10.5 cycle are free, just as in earlier versions. In fact, Apple is still providing support for 10.4, I haven't come across any software that won't run on that other than bluetooth drivers using A2DP.
Also, depending on who you bought your Mac through, there is usually some cheaper or free option for upgrading to the next major release if it is let out of the bag within a short period after your purchase.
The year of the internet is, sadly, 1993.
I actually had to go look that up, since this so-called "eternal September" completely passed me by.
But that's because for me the internet started in 1983 with ARPANET and MILNET.
They have clear market dominance now
;-)
That might change if people could see at first hand how bad Microsoft's code really is.
The thing about FOSS is that it can lead to a much higher quality product than many commercial offerings.
From the perspective of someone who has had to spend a lot of time fixing Windows installations, I personally find it a source of frustration that people actually pay good money for such a crock of shit. The Linux desktop has been here for years, however, and it just gets better. But in a perverse way, the fact that it is free counts against it to those who see "free" as "inferior".
I'm sure the scenario you have illustrated must have already occurred to Microsoft. What you're overlooking, though, is people's expectation that the machine should work "out of the box".
If they tried to gouge customers like this, I'm fairly sure they would see a mass exodus of their customers to Mac.
No. Nothing new until this is used to clone a passport that will withstand scrutiny by US Immigration officials. Now THAT will be news.
"GIMP has no CMYK support" is in the same category as "You will lose copyright on anything made with GPL software". It is constantly being repeated by Microsoft marketing people despite being obviously false.
It is also repeated as a mantra mostly by those who have never had to publish a printed work in their lives. Even those who do such work tend to make a mess of it 8 times out of 10.
That's a pitch I never want to have to make.
Why not? Sure, it doesn't do everything in the same way as Photoshop, but there's no reason why it should. It certainly does, however, perform most (if not all, with 3rd-party scripts) of the same functions.
I know this will go against the grain with the fanboys, but I learned to use Gimp long before PS, and I still use it by preference even though I now have both available to me.
Remember, Australia is simply a hot and barren wasteland, bordered by some hot and tropical rain forest.
;-)
You're digging yourself into a hole here. Most of the world has the occasional chuckle about the ignorance of the "average American", whatever that might be, but you at least seem to fit the description, since you apparently have no idea where Australia is.
I was in Tasmania for the first 2 weeks of December, and yes, there was occasional snowfall on Mt. Wellington.
The mainland, however, sees almost none: our chilliest city, Melbourne, has had rail lines buckling in the heat in the last week. Here in Perth, it's business as usual - it's always hot at this time of year...
I don't see how a verbal talk to the superiors isn't just as good or better without forcing a decision...
Except that a verbal talk is deniable. Or avoidable by the simple expedient of being on holiday or otherwise out of the office.
A middle-manager needs to be able to cover his ass, and the only way to do that is in writing. Preferably with an accessible copy in case upper-management decide to shaft him.
Been there, too many times. You can't trust anybody, but if you acquire a rep for playing it straight, and you don't take sides, you'll mostly be left alone to do your job.
I do agree that the base should be better standardized (where files are for network config, etc). It's getting better, but everyone still does it a little different.
:-))
Yup. And everyone should standardise on Slackware's init scripts. (OK, I'm joking, but not much...
Almost the first thing that pissed me off about Ubuntu (apart from the coprophiliac theme) was the fact that they had arbitrarily fucked around with inittab, and I had to go looking for it. I've nothing against change where it's useful, but I do object to developers being craniorectal just for the sake of it.
Just because various countries are sovereign states doesn't mean it's inappropriate to criticize them
I didn't say it was.
I was referring to the far more overt thuggery in which the US has engaged for decades. There's a big difference between criticising another country's government and flying in, abducting its citizens and throwing them in a foreign jail without charge or right of appeal.