One of the reasons Ubuntu has been so successful is that (unlike, say, Slackware) you don't have to go through and choose which programs and window manager/desktop system you want.
So Ubuntu is Linux for the easily confused and befuddled geek? But isn't that Apple's demographic?
There is a certain sort of person who will try to install Linux on anything that stands still in front of them for too long. The only computing hardware that people won't try getting to run Linux is computing hardware that's already running Linux. And even then, they'll try to swap in a *custom* version of Linux. It's what they do.
The Apple business model has always required strict control over their products. That way they focus their resources on fewer apps and less hardware and achieve the excellent experience they do provide, limited only by the sacrifice of your choices.
That's just Apple's way of doing things. Don't expect them to change for any reason; they think they have it right and they seem to do well with it.
After 10+ years, it's still the same stuff that needs fixing:
1. Better documentation, including better man pages with examples.
2. Apps that are multi-screen-aware and, most importantly, network-aware. Some apps send way too much traffic over the local network when run remotely.
3. Awareness of existing design standards and guidelines and compliance with them.
I've used Linux for the past ten years after first seeing it mentioned in BOOT magazine (along with BeOS).
My initial frustration with it led me to join a LUG and the big struggles back then were getting X11 running, configuring a sound card and getting PPP working. The latter led me to write an article for MaximumLinux magazine (Killer PPP) and eventually contribute to the Red Hat/Fedora Unleashed series with Bill Ball and continue writing for LinuxFormat magazine. Lot of good people and lots of fun.
Those were great times and it is good in many ways to see how Linux has grown, but also troubling to see how much like "them" it has become.
There have been efforts to replicate the success of Linux, but I suspect that the perfect combination of time, place, and people will be elusive.
And by the way, EVERY year has been the year of Linux on the desktop -- if you were smart enough.
Hoyt Duff
From the "I-Told-You-So" Department:
Years ago in my LinuxFormat column, I questioned de Icaza's contribution to the Open Source movement and what his advocation of.Net might mean. Sadly, his endorsement of a poorly defined "standard" reinforces my opinion of him as a "sellout". Shame on us and those who have supported him.
The best and the brightest rarely become school principals. No one in the third grade looks around school and says to themselves "Yeah! I'm wanna work hard and be a school principal when I grow up!"
With few exceptions, principals are people stuck in an education career who hate the classroom and want to earn a few meager more bucks.
The students were wrong to do what they did and they need to learn from the experience; that's what growing up is about. The principal should already know better, however, and has demonstrated his unfitness to administer a school. His next career should involve the implementation of "suggest sell" (aka "Would you like fries with that?") where he can develop a closer relationship with children and humility while building on his people skills.
A lesson learned for everybody.
The kind of Slashdot topics are always entertaining and generate lots of activity. they have ever since the first "X versus Y" arguments were made and are the preferred intellectual geek sport. My inner geek wants a say, so here it is.
X11 is a wonderful "desktop". You can decorate it any way you want with Gnome or KDE or many other excellent window managers and desktop environments that all server different needs and are highly customizable. Just take your pick and expend a little effort and your GUI desktop becomes your servant, supporting your productivity and enjoyment. Do we want just one way? Hell no!
If there is and "Holy Grail" in computing, it is the design of applications to be as platform and OS agnostic as possible. There are many technical reasons why a particular piece of hardware is the best for a job or a particular OS is the best for a job or a particular app is best, but no hardware/OS/app is useful universally and diversity will encourage innovation and provide more and better choice.
The real threat is that the hardware/OS/app thing is used in an anti-competitive way for vendor lock-in; that just mucks things up and rarely results in anything good for the end user. From hardware manufacturers to OS vendors to software developers, those who ply their craft and ignore standards and interoperability should be exposed and ridiculed and shunned. The tolerance for pushing out crap should be reduced. Best practices should be the hallmark of everyone if we want things to get better, because the "Best Practices versus Ass" arguments is mercifully short. We can argue all day over Best Practices, but at least that keeps us headed in the right direction all the time.
After all, it's the quest for the Holy Grail that's important, not the Grail itself.
There are 11 types of people in the world, those who know binaries and those who don't.
At the risk of being labeled a pedant, that joke is only funny if you use 'binary' instead of 'binaries'; those are different things. It's almost like people who 'duel' boot their computers or ask you to 'bare' with them, except those are unintentionally funny.
Homophonic Joke ---->
O
-+-
| - Product of American Public Education
/ \
"Obviously, the 'Three R's' don't include spelling."
Lot's of people have great ideas that never reach fruition for reasons that have nothing to do with them. And sometimes, those ideas can take off and be promoted for reasons that have nothing to do with them. Often these things offend our sense of fairness.
Yet life is not fair and often people have regrets and indulge in "what if" fantasies.
For something like this, even if the fellow gets no money, he can get publicity and recognition and might be able to leverage that into something to get him more money if that's what he wants.
The past is past and the price for obtaining "justice" and "fairness" can be quite high and more than one should have to pay; you can lose your future doing it.
Learn from the past and develop a plan to move forward and leverage on the lessons learned; the best revenge is always living well.
. . . but not smart enough to backup his wife's precious data?
Please be considerate, since this is a very personal subject. As fellow geeks, we all know he's "backing up" his wife's "precious data" every damn chance he gets.
[Insert all sophomoric computer/sexual euphemisms here.]
Wouldn't you if you had the social skliz to have a wife? (Fantasy women do not count in this instance but, hey, enjoy yourself.)
After all, they had to create a 6000 page document without releasing any information on how to make their "open" standard work. There are so many statements like "functions as per Word 95" without explaining what that means. They must have worked long hours creating a specification that doesn't actually specify how to implement it.
MS intends to release the complete implementation details as soon as optical disc technology catches up and 8 Terabyte quad layer discs become commonplace and the drives are available on all Compaq and Dell computers; MS will open source its BlakDeth-Ray(tm) technology to speed the development process, however, the BlakDeth-Ray(tm) SDK requires an NDA, a per-seat license and a DRM dongle compatible with Windows Vienna. It must also "function as per Microsoft Bob".
MS also needs to locate a programmer named Karl to produce his code comments for the Word 95 spec, but they have been saved in Multi-Tool Word format and are currently unreadable in Office 2007.
Virginia is an "at will" state; employment can be terminated at any time if no contract exists that says otherwise and the contract need not be in writing.
That said, you can be fired for no reason, but if a reason is given, it must be justifiable. If you are fired for a performance issue or tardiness for example, the employer must have followed their policies or the employee has a basis for a wrongful termination lawsuit. There are no punitive damages available in a contract dispute lawsuit; only performance of the contract can be enforced.
Also in Virginia, if you are fired for no reason, you are eligible for state unemployment compensation, but if you are fired "for cause", you are ineligible in most circumstances. This is the disincentive to fire employees for "no reason". There is a 6-week initial period where no reason for termination need be given and no eligibility for unemployment compensation exists.
Any notice from either party in the absence of a contract is a courtesy as is any payment for work not performed or any tying up of loose ends or training a replacement.
Expect nothing; give in accordance with you character. Then get on with your life.
So this fellow was, based on your description, willing to produce out of the goodness of his heart for a company that, based on you description, didn't value him from the start. And he knew it within the first two months.
Then he gets miffed because he finally realizes his hopes and dreams won't be met by a company that he already knows doesn't treat him fairly and mans up and votes with his feet. Good for him; their loss.
At that time, I'm having to assume that the original rationale for his accepting poor treatment no longer existed, i.e. the relative got well.
He claims the moral high ground when realizes he has been had, but when his former employer acts consistently with how they have acted for the entire duration of his employment, suddenly he feels justified in setting his morals aside and behaving in a ruthless and immoral (for him) manner.
The moral of your story is that anybody will sell their soul and be an asshole, it's just a matter of circumstance.
By the way, I wouldn't hire a guy who acted the way he did at a former job if I was aware of it; someday I might offend or disappoint him and he would screw me over too. And I wouldn't work for the company he did; life's too short.
Makes a good parable, though . . .
I just looked an old CD-ROM of the original DOOM. It is filled with copies of every other title that id published then and they could all be unlocked if you ran a small app to generate a code, called a phone number and gave them money in exchange for the unlock code. IIRC, a code generator program was easily found on the Internet. I still like DOOM and it plays well with Linux.
Excellent. If you filter through the other posts on this topic, you'll find some useful advice. In general, you'll be able to determine what kind of impression you actually make vice what you intend and can adjust your message accordingly.
Good luck. Have fun.
The Canadians always seem to take a practical, business-based approach to anything that doesn't involve French.
I recall when protesters got the Playboy Channel removed from the local cable service. Now one need only watch Springer, Oprah,or broadcast TV for that matter for similar content.
How long will it be before the USA protests begin? I, for one, will not support another doomed invasion of an almost rational country even if would liberate Canada from Quebec.
The first step for a small non-profit wannabe is to recruit a like-minded lawyer to handle the legalities at little or no charge. Then you solicit funds. This effort sounds bogus or the organizers are naive, either of which can spell disaster to such a good idea.
However, is this project even needed? The software is already available for download and anybody may copy and distribute it, so the distribution channel is already in place (unless the community is so remote or impoverished that no one has Internet access or a CD burner or doesn't know of someone who does), so I would speculate this effort would primarily focus on promotion, or "getting the word out" and perhaps mailing the occasional CD. Aren't there already groups doing this? Why not ally with them?
Folks: Get you organisation established by using your local resources and only then reach out for broader support; any decent person or any Nigerian scammer can create a website and tout their altruistic intent. First obtain some legitimacy, then look for the most economic way of achieving your goal. Your efforts and our money will work better and go farther.
Just because MS has a big user base doesn't mean that all those users are lovin' it; most just don't know any better. Because of MS marketing, some of which is illegal, Microsoft owns a huge market share; it doesn't make them the best. Apple has insisted on being a hardware/software company and limiting peripheral support do provide super support for a limited range of hardware. MS is heavily targeted by crackers and hacker because it is the most prevalent OS. But _all OSes have vulnerabilities and they all could do better at writing more secure code and fixing bugs. Basically, the Macs "just work", but software and hardware support are limited. MS Windows has broader hardware and software support, but is more vulnerable to exploits and is more difficult to fix when broken. Linux and other OS choices have their own problems. In general, all are improving, but bug-fixing always takes a back seat to feature bloat. Always.
Every OS has its strengths and weaknesses. You're supposed to pick the one that gets _your_ job best done for you. If every OS would only adopt standard interoperability protocols and quit trying to lock in customers through the back door, they would all be better off and so would we.
All this BS about DRM is a backdoor for platform lock-in. If DRM is is financially crucial to the creative people behind it, there are people smart enough people to develop a scheme that is platform agnostic and the DRM mechanism itself would be freely available; you would need only pay a fair price for what you use under the restrictions of current copyright laws (which means that you can make copies for personal use). And our techno-ignorant elected officials need to stay out of DRM and let the free market decide; they just need to make sure we _have_ a free market, man up and honor their oath of office, not their promise to whichever scumbag bought the election for them.
I just wish that all these people would put their time and efforts towards stopping SPAM, the biggest time waster and IT cost sinkhole in existence, instead of wasting time and money on restrictive DRM controls that people smarter than they can circumvent with ease. Do some good for a change and fix their freakin' buggy OSes and software. The "next big thing" in computing should be "stuff that really works".
And while I'm at it, let's have the press (including Slashdot) stop supporting these "Windows vs. Mac" hallmarks of lazy journalism. Report the facts; don't manufacture the news; don't be advertising whores; locate your balls and use them.
My apologies for the rant. Mod me down if you want, but you know I'm right.
Slashdot Mirror
But will we still need a translation of the political jargon?
A very tiny community, compared to the overwhelming majority who a) [SNIP]
"very tiny community" = minority
"inclusive" does not imply exclusion of any minority
"accessable" does not mean "Microsoft Windows only"
You appear to fail to appreciate the irony of the story, Joe, which is why it was posted to Slashdot instead of CNN.
Which raises a big WTF flag over your comment, buddy. I'm guessing the answer is "clueless".
One of the reasons Ubuntu has been so successful is that (unlike, say, Slackware) you don't have to go through and choose which programs and window manager/desktop system you want.
So Ubuntu is Linux for the easily confused and befuddled geek? But isn't that Apple's demographic?
There is a certain sort of person who will try to install Linux on anything that stands still in front of them for too long. The only computing hardware that people won't try getting to run Linux is computing hardware that's already running Linux. And even then, they'll try to swap in a *custom* version of Linux. It's what they do.
Nalied that, he did. And we're damn proud of it.
Of course they won't.
The Apple business model has always required strict control over their products. That way they focus their resources on fewer apps and less hardware and achieve the excellent experience they do provide, limited only by the sacrifice of your choices.
That's just Apple's way of doing things. Don't expect them to change for any reason; they think they have it right and they seem to do well with it.
At this point in time it does not appear to be wildly used,
Perhaps hackers will become more enthusiastic about it with time.
After 10+ years, it's still the same stuff that needs fixing:
1. Better documentation, including better man pages with examples.
2. Apps that are multi-screen-aware and, most importantly, network-aware. Some apps send way too much traffic over the local network when run remotely.
3. Awareness of existing design standards and guidelines and compliance with them.
4. Desktop- and distro- agnostic applications.
I've used Linux for the past ten years after first seeing it mentioned in BOOT magazine (along with BeOS). My initial frustration with it led me to join a LUG and the big struggles back then were getting X11 running, configuring a sound card and getting PPP working. The latter led me to write an article for MaximumLinux magazine (Killer PPP) and eventually contribute to the Red Hat/Fedora Unleashed series with Bill Ball and continue writing for LinuxFormat magazine. Lot of good people and lots of fun. Those were great times and it is good in many ways to see how Linux has grown, but also troubling to see how much like "them" it has become. There have been efforts to replicate the success of Linux, but I suspect that the perfect combination of time, place, and people will be elusive. And by the way, EVERY year has been the year of Linux on the desktop -- if you were smart enough. Hoyt Duff
And yet polygamists continue to multiply.
From the "I-Told-You-So" Department: Years ago in my LinuxFormat column, I questioned de Icaza's contribution to the Open Source movement and what his advocation of .Net might mean. Sadly, his endorsement of a poorly defined "standard" reinforces my opinion of him as a "sellout". Shame on us and those who have supported him.
The best and the brightest rarely become school principals. No one in the third grade looks around school and says to themselves "Yeah! I'm wanna work hard and be a school principal when I grow up!" With few exceptions, principals are people stuck in an education career who hate the classroom and want to earn a few meager more bucks. The students were wrong to do what they did and they need to learn from the experience; that's what growing up is about. The principal should already know better, however, and has demonstrated his unfitness to administer a school. His next career should involve the implementation of "suggest sell" (aka "Would you like fries with that?") where he can develop a closer relationship with children and humility while building on his people skills. A lesson learned for everybody.
The kind of Slashdot topics are always entertaining and generate lots of activity. they have ever since the first "X versus Y" arguments were made and are the preferred intellectual geek sport. My inner geek wants a say, so here it is.
X11 is a wonderful "desktop". You can decorate it any way you want with Gnome or KDE or many other excellent window managers and desktop environments that all server different needs and are highly customizable. Just take your pick and expend a little effort and your GUI desktop becomes your servant, supporting your productivity and enjoyment. Do we want just one way? Hell no!
If there is and "Holy Grail" in computing, it is the design of applications to be as platform and OS agnostic as possible. There are many technical reasons why a particular piece of hardware is the best for a job or a particular OS is the best for a job or a particular app is best, but no hardware/OS/app is useful universally and diversity will encourage innovation and provide more and better choice.
The real threat is that the hardware/OS/app thing is used in an anti-competitive way for vendor lock-in; that just mucks things up and rarely results in anything good for the end user. From hardware manufacturers to OS vendors to software developers, those who ply their craft and ignore standards and interoperability should be exposed and ridiculed and shunned. The tolerance for pushing out crap should be reduced. Best practices should be the hallmark of everyone if we want things to get better, because the "Best Practices versus Ass" arguments is mercifully short. We can argue all day over Best Practices, but at least that keeps us headed in the right direction all the time.
After all, it's the quest for the Holy Grail that's important, not the Grail itself.
Did they bother to look on the P2P networks for a copy of their data files? You can still find just about anything there . . .
Lot's of people have great ideas that never reach fruition for reasons that have nothing to do with them. And sometimes, those ideas can take off and be promoted for reasons that have nothing to do with them. Often these things offend our sense of fairness.
Yet life is not fair and often people have regrets and indulge in "what if" fantasies.
For something like this, even if the fellow gets no money, he can get publicity and recognition and might be able to leverage that into something to get him more money if that's what he wants.
The past is past and the price for obtaining "justice" and "fairness" can be quite high and more than one should have to pay; you can lose your future doing it.
Learn from the past and develop a plan to move forward and leverage on the lessons learned; the best revenge is always living well.
Please be considerate, since this is a very personal subject. As fellow geeks, we all know he's "backing up" his wife's "precious data" every damn chance he gets.
[Insert all sophomoric computer/sexual euphemisms here.]
Wouldn't you if you had the social skliz to have a wife? (Fantasy women do not count in this instance but, hey, enjoy yourself.)
Dude, it's just that it's been a l o n g year . . .
MS intends to release the complete implementation details as soon as optical disc technology catches up and 8 Terabyte quad layer discs become commonplace and the drives are available on all Compaq and Dell computers; MS will open source its BlakDeth-Ray(tm) technology to speed the development process, however, the BlakDeth-Ray(tm) SDK requires an NDA, a per-seat license and a DRM dongle compatible with Windows Vienna. It must also "function as per Microsoft Bob".
MS also needs to locate a programmer named Karl to produce his code comments for the Word 95 spec, but they have been saved in Multi-Tool Word format and are currently unreadable in Office 2007.
I wasn't commenting on his actions per se, but his decision to _change_ his actions when nothing else has really changed.
The additional story about the different companies changes the original tale somewhat.
Virginia is an "at will" state; employment can be terminated at any time if no contract exists that says otherwise and the contract need not be in writing.
That said, you can be fired for no reason, but if a reason is given, it must be justifiable. If you are fired for a performance issue or tardiness for example, the employer must have followed their policies or the employee has a basis for a wrongful termination lawsuit. There are no punitive damages available in a contract dispute lawsuit; only performance of the contract can be enforced.
Also in Virginia, if you are fired for no reason, you are eligible for state unemployment compensation, but if you are fired "for cause", you are ineligible in most circumstances. This is the disincentive to fire employees for "no reason". There is a 6-week initial period where no reason for termination need be given and no eligibility for unemployment compensation exists.
Any notice from either party in the absence of a contract is a courtesy as is any payment for work not performed or any tying up of loose ends or training a replacement.
Expect nothing; give in accordance with you character. Then get on with your life.
So this fellow was, based on your description, willing to produce out of the goodness of his heart for a company that, based on you description, didn't value him from the start. And he knew it within the first two months. Then he gets miffed because he finally realizes his hopes and dreams won't be met by a company that he already knows doesn't treat him fairly and mans up and votes with his feet. Good for him; their loss. At that time, I'm having to assume that the original rationale for his accepting poor treatment no longer existed, i.e. the relative got well. He claims the moral high ground when realizes he has been had, but when his former employer acts consistently with how they have acted for the entire duration of his employment, suddenly he feels justified in setting his morals aside and behaving in a ruthless and immoral (for him) manner. The moral of your story is that anybody will sell their soul and be an asshole, it's just a matter of circumstance. By the way, I wouldn't hire a guy who acted the way he did at a former job if I was aware of it; someday I might offend or disappoint him and he would screw me over too. And I wouldn't work for the company he did; life's too short. Makes a good parable, though . . .
I just looked an old CD-ROM of the original DOOM. It is filled with copies of every other title that id published then and they could all be unlocked if you ran a small app to generate a code, called a phone number and gave them money in exchange for the unlock code. IIRC, a code generator program was easily found on the Internet. I still like DOOM and it plays well with Linux.
Excellent. If you filter through the other posts on this topic, you'll find some useful advice. In general, you'll be able to determine what kind of impression you actually make vice what you intend and can adjust your message accordingly. Good luck. Have fun.
The Canadians always seem to take a practical, business-based approach to anything that doesn't involve French. I recall when protesters got the Playboy Channel removed from the local cable service. Now one need only watch Springer, Oprah,or broadcast TV for that matter for similar content. How long will it be before the USA protests begin? I, for one, will not support another doomed invasion of an almost rational country even if would liberate Canada from Quebec.
The first step for a small non-profit wannabe is to recruit a like-minded lawyer to handle the legalities at little or no charge. Then you solicit funds. This effort sounds bogus or the organizers are naive, either of which can spell disaster to such a good idea. However, is this project even needed? The software is already available for download and anybody may copy and distribute it, so the distribution channel is already in place (unless the community is so remote or impoverished that no one has Internet access or a CD burner or doesn't know of someone who does), so I would speculate this effort would primarily focus on promotion, or "getting the word out" and perhaps mailing the occasional CD. Aren't there already groups doing this? Why not ally with them? Folks: Get you organisation established by using your local resources and only then reach out for broader support; any decent person or any Nigerian scammer can create a website and tout their altruistic intent. First obtain some legitimacy, then look for the most economic way of achieving your goal. Your efforts and our money will work better and go farther.
Just because MS has a big user base doesn't mean that all those users are lovin' it; most just don't know any better. Because of MS marketing, some of which is illegal, Microsoft owns a huge market share; it doesn't make them the best. Apple has insisted on being a hardware/software company and limiting peripheral support do provide super support for a limited range of hardware. MS is heavily targeted by crackers and hacker because it is the most prevalent OS. But _all OSes have vulnerabilities and they all could do better at writing more secure code and fixing bugs. Basically, the Macs "just work", but software and hardware support are limited. MS Windows has broader hardware and software support, but is more vulnerable to exploits and is more difficult to fix when broken. Linux and other OS choices have their own problems. In general, all are improving, but bug-fixing always takes a back seat to feature bloat. Always. Every OS has its strengths and weaknesses. You're supposed to pick the one that gets _your_ job best done for you. If every OS would only adopt standard interoperability protocols and quit trying to lock in customers through the back door, they would all be better off and so would we. All this BS about DRM is a backdoor for platform lock-in. If DRM is is financially crucial to the creative people behind it, there are people smart enough people to develop a scheme that is platform agnostic and the DRM mechanism itself would be freely available; you would need only pay a fair price for what you use under the restrictions of current copyright laws (which means that you can make copies for personal use). And our techno-ignorant elected officials need to stay out of DRM and let the free market decide; they just need to make sure we _have_ a free market, man up and honor their oath of office, not their promise to whichever scumbag bought the election for them. I just wish that all these people would put their time and efforts towards stopping SPAM, the biggest time waster and IT cost sinkhole in existence, instead of wasting time and money on restrictive DRM controls that people smarter than they can circumvent with ease. Do some good for a change and fix their freakin' buggy OSes and software. The "next big thing" in computing should be "stuff that really works". And while I'm at it, let's have the press (including Slashdot) stop supporting these "Windows vs. Mac" hallmarks of lazy journalism. Report the facts; don't manufacture the news; don't be advertising whores; locate your balls and use them. My apologies for the rant. Mod me down if you want, but you know I'm right.