This is news because a lot of people pay attention to every tiny little thing Apple does, and so they want to know about it. The objective importance of this is about the same as potato chips in a new flavor, or a new McSomething at McDonalds. That there's so much hype about those things because the companies involved market the hype. What's not news is that Apple is doing the same thing that every other company that sells products to consumers does, i.e. gets people to believe that unimportant things are important.
Remember, any kind of space travel was thought impossible at one time... until the multi-stage rocket was invented. We need more creative thinking and less of this overly pessimistic nay-saying.
First, you seem to have forgotten the difference between "free as in free of charge" and "free as in freedom." Richard Stallman isn't saying that all software should be free of charge, but that morally you have a right to use the software you have in the way that you want; in practical terms that means access to the source code. Stallman never said that you can't sell it, or sell support for it.
Second, having a family to feed is irrelevant to this discussion if Stallman is right about the moral status of non-free software. His contention has always been that it is morally wrong to distribute non-free (as in freedom) software. If you had other alternatives, would it be okay for you to pick someone's pocket so that you can feed your family?
Third, your point about open source not being the savior of humanity or bringing world peace is a classic straw-man argument. Nobody is saying that "open source" is going to do those things. You may not like or agree with Stallman's positions or his arguments for them, but you should at least respond to what he's actually saying, and not some other thing which he didn't say.
What I don't understand is that people like you aren't intelligent enough to realize that a man like Doc Brown, who's smart and skilled enough to build an actual working time machine wouldn't be smart enough to compensate for the spatial displacement.
Of course Canonical did everything right just as you said. There's one thing they haven't done, though, which is absolutely necessary for widespread adoption of any OS: pre-installation. If you could easily buy a PC with Ubuntu on it (say, as easily as you can buy a Mac), adoption would go up a lot. I have no idea by how much, but look at how well Android is doing. Android uses a Linux kernel, and lots of people who have Android phones have never heard of Linux. This is how MS Windows became #1 - you didn't have to install it. You could just walk into a computer shop and buy a Windows machine, take it home and have it up and running in less than half an hour. If you could do that with a Linux machine (they should probably give it some nice but generic name, e.g. "Diamond Computer") in the same way, lots more people would be using them.
Pretty much. I would add that any F/LOSS which depends on the good will of a large corporation should be ready at any time to cut and run. Nothing against big business (at least regarding this question) but the goal of a corporation is ultimately to make money. The goals of people who write free/open source software are many, though profit for it's own sake isn't usually at the top of the list. For Linus, it was at least originally "just for fun," for Stallman it's always been about the right to freedom - and you could make a long list of other reasons. Some people in the Linux and BSD communities of developers like to write software in an environment where making a mistake won't get them fired from their paying job. OpenOffice.org has been the flagship productivity suite for Linux for a while now. Since the acquisition of Sun by Oracle, it's only been a matter of time before some kind of split. I'm rooting for the fork, whatever they end up calling it, not because I don't like Oracle (I don't like Oracle, but that's not really the issue here), but because a truly independent office suite would be good to have. I hope that at least some of the devs who have been with this project for a long time continue to work on Libre Office.
Every adult (including parents and non-parents) seems to have lots of opinions on how best to raise children.
Here are mine:
1) Love them
a) Do not harm them
2) Protect them
Everything else is open to interpretation. If you are a parent, teacher, or someone else who has regular contact with children, follow those guidelines and the kids will will mostly be fine (you can't protect them from every danger, nor should you try) - and remember at some point they start making their own choices.
On the subject of interactive books: this was going to happen sooner or later. Still, there should come a time in a person's maturation when reading without aid of images is not only possible but enjoyable.
I know, I know, "'Ubuntu' is an African word meaning 'I'm too stupid for Slackware'"... I don't use it myself (I use another distribution, not going to plug it here), but I've installed it for a number of friends and family members, and just installed Lynx for my brother, because:
1) Ease of install/configuration
2) Pretty easy transition from Windows
3) Lots of software in the repos
And some other reasons. LL is pretty sweet, so I think Shuttleworth & Co. are on the right track in many, if not all, ways.
So I think the announcement is pretty exciting. Gnome 3 looks very promising... so next June' Maverick Meerkat could be pretty interesting.
What's up with this nasty summary? "Social notworking site"? I have no interest in Facebook, but why do we get these unprofessional summaries in this news aggregator?
Oh right. Slashdot. Never mind.
That's a very good point you make. We really should hold the companies responsible. Also, we've pretty much passed the point when we could put much economic pressure on China; we're too dependent on them now.
Well, one way to encourage "change from within" is to impose sanctions on countries which have policies that allow what amounts to slave labor. You don't like to call it that, you say they "choose" to work under these conditions, but that's what it is.
We imposed sanctions on South Africa because of Apartheid. Why can't we do the same thing with China because of working conditions?
Is it because people would have a "shitfest," as you say, if prices went up on what are, for the most part, luxury items?
Yes, prices would almost certainly go up if the US, the EU, Canada, Japan, etc. put pressure on China to reform its labor laws. For me it would be worth it if I knew it meant that children weren't working 15 hours a day 6-7 days a week just so that I could have an inexpensive mouse.
Okay, even if there is or was at some time life on Mars, evidence of microbes isn't very intersting; also, just about any way you look at it, such evidence would still leave us, as you say, "alone in the great big dark."
Still, the universe is unimaginably large. Even the distance to the nearest star boggles the human imagination. Do you really think that among all those stars and all those galaxies made up of all those stars, there is absolutely no other life than on our planet, and no intelligent life of any kind?
With a staff of 40, they'll be swamped. I don't even work in IT, and I get 5-10 calls a week from family members and "friends" who want me to help them remove viruses and spyware from their machines (some I help, some I don't). Nobody will be able to get through, even with an automated system to help those who know at least a little about what to do.
Well, if you're talking about official documentation that comes with a particular application, or HOWTOs on various subjects, I think there is a lack of good documentation for beginners etc. in quite a few areas. But most distributions have help forums, (some better than others) and that plus a little googling provides lots of very helpful information for the less experienced users.
Remember back when any application you bought came with a big fat manual (the paper kind, I mean)? I'm thinking of when I was using WordPerfect 5.1 in DOS. Well, those days are gone, and the "missing manuals" which you can buy are both very expensive and sometimes innacurate.
Sure, GNU/Linux and associated applications and DEs could use better official documentation, but there's a lot of good information out there as well.
[Scene: A New York apartment. Someone knocks on the door.]
Woman: [not opening the door] Yes?
Voice: (mumbling) Mrs. Arlsburgerhhh?
Woman: What?
Voice: (mumbling) Mrs. Johannesburrrr?
Woman: Who is it?
Voice: [pause] Flowers.
Woman: Flowers for whom?
Voice: [long pause] Plumber, ma'am.
Woman: I don't need a plumber. You're that clever shark, aren't you?
Voice: [pause] Candygram.
Woman: Candygram, my foot. You get out of here before I call the police. You're the shark, and you know it.
Voice: Wait. I-I'm only a dolphin, ma'am.
Woman: A dolphin? Well...okay. [opens door].
I wouldn't be too worried about this effect. This isn't going to show up on the radars of most people even as much as all those "Save Farscape" flyers which were all over the place when that show got cancelled. "Joe Public" (a.k.a. Joe Sixpack, a.k.a. Aunt Milly) doesn't even know enough about F/OSS to give a rat's. If F/OSS is ever going to become widely adopted by home users, it will be the same way Windows was - because that was what came installed on the computers people were buying at the time. Netbooks may help with this. Handing out CDs on street corners almost certainly won't.
I'd guess that you being a Linux geek and she being a literary geek won't have much effect on your marriage. Other things, such as what you each expect from marriage, how you communicate (or whether you communicate at all!), how considerate each is of the other's needs, and so on, are more important.
Forget the marriage/relationship books. They're pretty useless, and for the most part sell well because lots of people think that there can be manual for everything. It's not true; some things you just have to learn by doing.
I've been happily married for 15 years. It takes patience and work to get through rough spots, but the good times make all that more than worth it.
I do a little Windows maintenance for beer money, so what I'm about to write probably doesn't apply to you. Anyway, if I remove viruses or fix some other problem for somebody and then tell them how avoid the problem in the future, often they admit it's their fault. If they do that, I'll fix the same problem without question. If they blame me, I tell them to fix it themselves and never go back there again.
"Why is IE still relevant and why is it worth spending money on rendering engines when there are open source ones available that can respond to changes in Web standards faster?"
"That's cheeky, but a good question, but cheeky," Ballmer said.
What the story doesn't mention is that the developer who asked that question was found dead later that day with a folding chair wrapped around his neck.
Slashdot Mirror
This is news because a lot of people pay attention to every tiny little thing Apple does, and so they want to know about it. The objective importance of this is about the same as potato chips in a new flavor, or a new McSomething at McDonalds. That there's so much hype about those things because the companies involved market the hype. What's not news is that Apple is doing the same thing that every other company that sells products to consumers does, i.e. gets people to believe that unimportant things are important.
Remember, any kind of space travel was thought impossible at one time ... until the multi-stage rocket was invented. We need more creative thinking and less of this overly pessimistic nay-saying.
First, you seem to have forgotten the difference between "free as in free of charge" and "free as in freedom." Richard Stallman isn't saying that all software should be free of charge, but that morally you have a right to use the software you have in the way that you want; in practical terms that means access to the source code. Stallman never said that you can't sell it, or sell support for it.
Second, having a family to feed is irrelevant to this discussion if Stallman is right about the moral status of non-free software. His contention has always been that it is morally wrong to distribute non-free (as in freedom) software. If you had other alternatives, would it be okay for you to pick someone's pocket so that you can feed your family?
Third, your point about open source not being the savior of humanity or bringing world peace is a classic straw-man argument. Nobody is saying that "open source" is going to do those things. You may not like or agree with Stallman's positions or his arguments for them, but you should at least respond to what he's actually saying, and not some other thing which he didn't say.
What I don't understand is that people like you aren't intelligent enough to realize that a man like Doc Brown, who's smart and skilled enough to build an actual working time machine wouldn't be smart enough to compensate for the spatial displacement.
Of course Canonical did everything right just as you said. There's one thing they haven't done, though, which is absolutely necessary for widespread adoption of any OS: pre-installation. If you could easily buy a PC with Ubuntu on it (say, as easily as you can buy a Mac), adoption would go up a lot. I have no idea by how much, but look at how well Android is doing. Android uses a Linux kernel, and lots of people who have Android phones have never heard of Linux. This is how MS Windows became #1 - you didn't have to install it. You could just walk into a computer shop and buy a Windows machine, take it home and have it up and running in less than half an hour. If you could do that with a Linux machine (they should probably give it some nice but generic name, e.g. "Diamond Computer") in the same way, lots more people would be using them.
Pretty much. I would add that any F/LOSS which depends on the good will of a large corporation should be ready at any time to cut and run. Nothing against big business (at least regarding this question) but the goal of a corporation is ultimately to make money. The goals of people who write free/open source software are many, though profit for it's own sake isn't usually at the top of the list. For Linus, it was at least originally "just for fun," for Stallman it's always been about the right to freedom - and you could make a long list of other reasons. Some people in the Linux and BSD communities of developers like to write software in an environment where making a mistake won't get them fired from their paying job. OpenOffice.org has been the flagship productivity suite for Linux for a while now. Since the acquisition of Sun by Oracle, it's only been a matter of time before some kind of split. I'm rooting for the fork, whatever they end up calling it, not because I don't like Oracle (I don't like Oracle, but that's not really the issue here), but because a truly independent office suite would be good to have. I hope that at least some of the devs who have been with this project for a long time continue to work on Libre Office.
"There is no such thing as an absolute truth."
Is the above statement absolutely true?
Throws them "a bone" or "the bone?"
Every adult (including parents and non-parents) seems to have lots of opinions on how best to raise children.
Here are mine:
1) Love them
a) Do not harm them
2) Protect them
Everything else is open to interpretation. If you are a parent, teacher, or someone else who has regular contact with children, follow those guidelines and the kids will will mostly be fine (you can't protect them from every danger, nor should you try) - and remember at some point they start making their own choices.
On the subject of interactive books: this was going to happen sooner or later. Still, there should come a time in a person's maturation when reading without aid of images is not only possible but enjoyable.
John Connor did this way back in '91 ... which means the machines ... oh shit.
I know, I know, "'Ubuntu' is an African word meaning 'I'm too stupid for Slackware'" ... I don't use it myself (I use another distribution, not going to plug it here), but I've installed it for a number of friends and family members, and just installed Lynx for my brother, because:
1) Ease of install/configuration
2) Pretty easy transition from Windows
3) Lots of software in the repos
And some other reasons. LL is pretty sweet, so I think Shuttleworth & Co. are on the right track in many, if not all, ways.
So I think the announcement is pretty exciting. Gnome 3 looks very promising ... so next June' Maverick Meerkat could be pretty interesting.
What's up with this nasty summary? "Social notworking site"? I have no interest in Facebook, but why do we get these unprofessional summaries in this news aggregator? Oh right. Slashdot. Never mind.
That's a very good point you make. We really should hold the companies responsible. Also, we've pretty much passed the point when we could put much economic pressure on China; we're too dependent on them now.
Well, one way to encourage "change from within" is to impose sanctions on countries which have policies that allow what amounts to slave labor. You don't like to call it that, you say they "choose" to work under these conditions, but that's what it is. We imposed sanctions on South Africa because of Apartheid. Why can't we do the same thing with China because of working conditions? Is it because people would have a "shitfest," as you say, if prices went up on what are, for the most part, luxury items? Yes, prices would almost certainly go up if the US, the EU, Canada, Japan, etc. put pressure on China to reform its labor laws. For me it would be worth it if I knew it meant that children weren't working 15 hours a day 6-7 days a week just so that I could have an inexpensive mouse.
Okay, even if there is or was at some time life on Mars, evidence of microbes isn't very intersting; also, just about any way you look at it, such evidence would still leave us, as you say, "alone in the great big dark."
Still, the universe is unimaginably large. Even the distance to the nearest star boggles the human imagination. Do you really think that among all those stars and all those galaxies made up of all those stars, there is absolutely no other life than on our planet, and no intelligent life of any kind?
With a staff of 40, they'll be swamped. I don't even work in IT, and I get 5-10 calls a week from family members and "friends" who want me to help them remove viruses and spyware from their machines (some I help, some I don't). Nobody will be able to get through, even with an automated system to help those who know at least a little about what to do.
Well, if you're talking about official documentation that comes with a particular application, or HOWTOs on various subjects, I think there is a lack of good documentation for beginners etc. in quite a few areas. But most distributions have help forums, (some better than others) and that plus a little googling provides lots of very helpful information for the less experienced users. Remember back when any application you bought came with a big fat manual (the paper kind, I mean)? I'm thinking of when I was using WordPerfect 5.1 in DOS. Well, those days are gone, and the "missing manuals" which you can buy are both very expensive and sometimes innacurate. Sure, GNU/Linux and associated applications and DEs could use better official documentation, but there's a lot of good information out there as well.
[Scene: A New York apartment. Someone knocks on the door.] Woman: [not opening the door] Yes? Voice: (mumbling) Mrs. Arlsburgerhhh? Woman: What? Voice: (mumbling) Mrs. Johannesburrrr? Woman: Who is it? Voice: [pause] Flowers. Woman: Flowers for whom? Voice: [long pause] Plumber, ma'am. Woman: I don't need a plumber. You're that clever shark, aren't you? Voice: [pause] Candygram. Woman: Candygram, my foot. You get out of here before I call the police. You're the shark, and you know it. Voice: Wait. I-I'm only a dolphin, ma'am. Woman: A dolphin? Well...okay. [opens door].
Will it still blend?
I wouldn't be too worried about this effect. This isn't going to show up on the radars of most people even as much as all those "Save Farscape" flyers which were all over the place when that show got cancelled. "Joe Public" (a.k.a. Joe Sixpack, a.k.a. Aunt Milly) doesn't even know enough about F/OSS to give a rat's. If F/OSS is ever going to become widely adopted by home users, it will be the same way Windows was - because that was what came installed on the computers people were buying at the time. Netbooks may help with this. Handing out CDs on street corners almost certainly won't.
I'd guess that you being a Linux geek and she being a literary geek won't have much effect on your marriage. Other things, such as what you each expect from marriage, how you communicate (or whether you communicate at all!), how considerate each is of the other's needs, and so on, are more important. Forget the marriage/relationship books. They're pretty useless, and for the most part sell well because lots of people think that there can be manual for everything. It's not true; some things you just have to learn by doing. I've been happily married for 15 years. It takes patience and work to get through rough spots, but the good times make all that more than worth it.
I do a little Windows maintenance for beer money, so what I'm about to write probably doesn't apply to you. Anyway, if I remove viruses or fix some other problem for somebody and then tell them how avoid the problem in the future, often they admit it's their fault. If they do that, I'll fix the same problem without question. If they blame me, I tell them to fix it themselves and never go back there again.
What about the dorks!?! When are they going to get their rightful place in society?
If Stallman says he isn't sure whether or not Firefox is free software, I'll just play it safe and surf the web with HURD.
"Why is IE still relevant and why is it worth spending money on rendering engines when there are open source ones available that can respond to changes in Web standards faster?"
"That's cheeky, but a good question, but cheeky," Ballmer said.
What the story doesn't mention is that the developer who asked that question was found dead later that day with a folding chair wrapped around his neck.