He is not talking about normal use, he is talking about working round a bug in the installer. A comparable situation is were the recent bugs with the upgrade to MacOS X Tiger, some of which did require going to the command line to fix.
KDE looks very like Windows in most distros default. KDE on Suse is VERY like Windows. There are lots of configuration options, but non-geeks users never even see most of them.
Gnome is usually reasonably Windows like by default, apart from the fact that the "taskbar" (as a Windows user will call it) is (gasp!) at the top of the screen and has "applications", "system" and "places" buttons instead of a single "start" button. Wow, that must take all 30 seconds to get the hand of! Far from having lots of configuration options Gnome config menus are incredibly sparse and elegant.
So presumably your point is that if you combine the worst of several Linux desktops the end result is worse than Windows? It reminds me of the way Windows proponents do security comparisons.
When an obvious troll like that gets modded insightful, it disproves idea that Slashdot is biased in favour of open source.
What the hell is that comment meant to mean:
That KDE and Gnome have low market share compared to Windows? We knew that.
Perhaps it means that there is something wrong with the open source desktops? In that case, what? I far prefer KDE to Windows (I hated having to use Windows at work, I used someone else's Windows laptop recently and found it horrible) and I know plenty of other people who do as well.
Wait, I know, it means someone who has probably never used them (or possibly used version 1.0 of each), think they are not as good as Windows. Well thanks, for your opinion, mine is different.
I was not in the least surprised. Having backup for this would increase the capital cost of supplying the isotopes (possibly by as much as the two thirds it represents), which is a very significant increase in the overall cost.
From the point of view of the governments that make the decision, it will probably be OK not to have backup, whereas having backup will definitely cost.
What's more likely is that this is someone who got bored at work (at the Vatican etc), and decided to put their personal opinions in.
Particularly given that the article (on Northern Irish republican leader Gerry Adams) edited from the Vatican IP address was one that: 1) the Vatican as an institution has no stake in, and, 2) a number of people working at the Vatican are likely to have personal opinions about.
I am inclined to be a little bit more suspicious of the edits this article is about: it could be a deliberate effort.
The "Orwellian" comment is over the top, but there is a problem. For one thing people do read it between a biased or disruptive edit and that edit being corrected. For another, it means controversial topics have endless edit wars. Finally, it can take a long time for bad edits on less popular topics.
The problem may be the requirement that there is no submarine patent risk. I am not sure how to satisfy this short of the codec being at least 20 years old (US patent law being the problem).
If you want a minus they are going to have to change the name: using a name already used by a very well known piece of software is a bad idea. They could have googled for "sage" before choosing the name.
It being a different type of app is no help: remember Pheonix/Firebird?
As other people said: do not use Acrobat reader. Especially do not use Acrobat Reader on Windows (the Linux version is somewhat less bloated).
Also,do not open PDFs in the browser, open them in a PDF reader. One simple browser setting change and PDFs will be a LOT more usable.
The last time I saw the default PDF readers on Mac and Gnome systems, they were fast and had a good interface. I use KPDF (the default reader for KDE) and it is a lot better than reading a Word document - although not as good for reading on screen as HTML.
Also anti-competitive pressures on PC manufacturers to bundle Windows, anti-competitive pricing (co-marketing in particular), anti-competitive site-licensing, etc. This is there offensce.
Also network effects.
I do think you are right about the monopoly in the mind of the consumers. Everyone I know of who has been persuaded to try Linux or MacOS prefers them: but it remains hard to persuade people to try anything new (presumable because they think the learning curve is as steep as that of Windows).
1) it is obviously not true. The BBC has a very popular site.
2) The BBC's own numbers show it is wrong: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/bbcinternet/2007/11/linux_figures_1.html
3) Even the revised BBC numbers may well undercount: Linux users are much more likely to change their UA strings.
I wonder if the "official" reason is the real one. Are they really deluded enough to think there is a realistic chance of getting any damages given that they have agreed (either in the EULA or the site licensing agreement) to low caps on damages?
I would guess it is to reduce the number of apps IT needs to support. They could use the extra cost as an objection, but that leaves it more open to someone who can show a business case for spending the money (I could certainly demonstrate why I find FF more productive if I had to).
In a business setting most (not all) businesses want support contracts, even if it just makes the execs thinking they have some right to sue if something goes batshit. (when was the last person someone successfully sued Microsoft for a dodgy product is beyond me). They seem to feel more "safe" with support contracts in place.
Not sue: blame.
The point is that if something goes wrong saying "its Microsoft's fault, there was nothing we could do about it" is a perfect excuse to give a CEO who knows nothing about IT.
IBM or the like are nearly as good as MS for this. Red Hat etc. are second best because your CEO who knows nothing about IT will not be familiar with them (although at least Red Hat is a listed company). Explaining why it is a good idea to trust Debian to provide a good OS to someone like that is probably a pretty hopeless task.
Noscript is a lot better at protecting you from stuff like this: no Javascript, Flash Java etc. runs unless you let it. The malware need not be in an ad, there are a lot of other ways of getting people to their sites.
I run Firefox with Noscript on Linux, and using a different browser (I used to use a different user) for sensitive websites. Is this malware likely to affect me?
And in reality, they ceased to be a colony long ago.
Yes, we noticed. The point is that Canada became independent without a war. So did a lot of other British colonies.
If I need to I can tunnel into my own server and synchronize docs on the road.
Most people cannot. Either (in a corporate setting) IT decides it is not necessary, or (at home) they do not know how to do it, and they have a PC that is turned off when they are out rather than an always on server.
I am not saying it is not a good idea, just that it is not yet practical for most people. Using a laptop as your primary PC does work, which is why they are becoming more practical.
Google is the 800 pound Gorilla. They are not quite Microsoft yet, but they are not that far off in online advertising.
Yes, but I cannot see how Google could lock people into their advertising in the same way that Microsoft locks people into Windows, Exchange and MS Office. The cost of moving to another product will remain cheap.
If "basic human urges" could not be punished, prostitution would be legal in every state.
Prostituion is a basic human urge? Sex is, but sex per se is legal everywhere (even North Korea).
I do find the idea of making escape illegal, on the grounds that it can lead to keeping someone who is found innocent of the original offence in prison.
Its a bit like a problem with British law. To be eligible for parole, a convict must show remorse for their original crime. This means that anyone who claims to be innocent is ineligible for parole: giving those who are wrongly convicted a stark dilemma.
did you know the movie monsters we've all to come to know and love (in a platonic way, of course) have colorful histories stretching back to the earliest civilizations?
I suppose a completely ignorant illiterate might not realise that these monsters are based on folklore.
Someone who did some basic research, rather than just reproducing what Wikipedia says, might could even have written an intersting article about the subject.
This article deserves to be eaten by the Snark - one monster that is not based on folklore!
It sounds like Brazil is better than most of the red areas (at least the ones I have come across).
Most places with petty corruption (South Asia and East Africa tos tick to regions I have experience of) also also have corruption at the top - and a lot of countries without noticeable petty corruption (The UK and US for example) also have a significant (although nothing like as much as the two regions I mentioned) amount of corruption at the top.
He or she expects it to work just like his neighbour's PC.
It will, for a naive users' usage.
Joe Wal-Mart shopper will just get confused because it's not the same as every other computer he has sat in front of.
1) It does not seem to be holding Apple back - and they are not selling only to Apple loyalists or sophisticated user either.
2) That is precisely the kind of user who loves eye candy.
Joe Wal-Mart shopper buys games at Costco and Staples from a big bin in the aisle.
1) Most adult users do not play games at all. Only kids and nerds play games.
2) How many games will they buy given that the PC will probably have a bunch of games installed, and a whole lot more can be added, for free and immediately, from "add/remove programs".
OK, refine that. It opens the Word doc from work, but all of the formatting is screwed up. Or someone e-mails him a Powerpoint that won't work.
So you really think that one is several thousand MS office docs having slightly odd formatting or a macro that does not work is a deal-breaker for home users? That can happen even is you are using MS Office (if you have different fonts installed, or a different version of MS Office from the other person, for example)
They probably will never come across this problem. I (and my wife) have been used Linux for six years, my father for three years, and other people I know for shorter times (me and three others for work, not home, usage). Between us, we have encountered one MS Office file that cannot be opened satisfactorily by Open Office - and I think that is actually some sort of malware (it had an Windows executable extension for a start).
Yes,because the buyers are really going to be expecting the best hardware avaiable for $200. They will expect something that works reasonably and is good value for a bottom end price.
b) Mark can't figure out why it isn't like every other computer
Given how pretty Enlightenment looks, and given the public's liking for eye-candy, most buyers are going to think"hey, this is cool". Screenshot of this PC's default theme here.
c) Mark can't make $9.99 computer game install
$200 hardware is obviously aimed at gamers
d) Mark can't make MS Word document open.
Why not? I have never had a problem opening and MS Word document on any Linux distro I have tried, click on it in the file manager. You do not even have to install any additional software, what you need is in the default install - unlike a good many cheap Windows PCs.
e) Profit?
At that price, very likely. Margins will be very low given the volumes Wal-Mart could potentially shift they do not need to be high.
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He is not talking about normal use, he is talking about working round a bug in the installer. A comparable situation is were the recent bugs with the upgrade to MacOS X Tiger, some of which did require going to the command line to fix.
Just who you does your criticism apply to?
KDE looks very like Windows in most distros default. KDE on Suse is VERY like Windows. There are lots of configuration options, but non-geeks users never even see most of them.
Gnome is usually reasonably Windows like by default, apart from the fact that the "taskbar" (as a Windows user will call it) is (gasp!) at the top of the screen and has "applications", "system" and "places" buttons instead of a single "start" button. Wow, that must take all 30 seconds to get the hand of! Far from having lots of configuration options Gnome config menus are incredibly sparse and elegant.
So presumably your point is that if you combine the worst of several Linux desktops the end result is worse than Windows? It reminds me of the way Windows proponents do security comparisons.
When an obvious troll like that gets modded insightful, it disproves idea that Slashdot is biased in favour of open source.
What the hell is that comment meant to mean:
That KDE and Gnome have low market share compared to Windows? We knew that.
Perhaps it means that there is something wrong with the open source desktops? In that case, what? I far prefer KDE to Windows (I hated having to use Windows at work, I used someone else's Windows laptop recently and found it horrible) and I know plenty of other people who do as well.
Wait, I know, it means someone who has probably never used them (or possibly used version 1.0 of each), think they are not as good as Windows. Well thanks, for your opinion, mine is different.
I was not in the least surprised. Having backup for this would increase the capital cost of supplying the isotopes (possibly by as much as the two thirds it represents), which is a very significant increase in the overall cost.
From the point of view of the governments that make the decision, it will probably be OK not to have backup, whereas having backup will definitely cost.
Particularly given that the article (on Northern Irish republican leader Gerry Adams) edited from the Vatican IP address was one that:
1) the Vatican as an institution has no stake in, and,
2) a number of people working at the Vatican are likely to have personal opinions about.
I am inclined to be a little bit more suspicious of the edits this article is about: it could be a deliberate effort.
The "Orwellian" comment is over the top, but there is a problem. For one thing people do read it between a biased or disruptive edit and that edit being corrected. For another, it means controversial topics have endless edit wars. Finally, it can take a long time for bad edits on less popular topics.
The problem may be the requirement that there is no submarine patent risk. I am not sure how to satisfy this short of the codec being at least 20 years old (US patent law being the problem).
If you want a minus they are going to have to change the name: using a name already used by a very well known piece of software is a bad idea. They could have googled for "sage" before choosing the name.
It being a different type of app is no help: remember Pheonix/Firebird?
As other people said: do not use Acrobat reader. Especially do not use Acrobat Reader on Windows (the Linux version is somewhat less bloated).
Also,do not open PDFs in the browser, open them in a PDF reader. One simple browser setting change and PDFs will be a LOT more usable.
The last time I saw the default PDF readers on Mac and Gnome systems, they were fast and had a good interface. I use KPDF (the default reader for KDE) and it is a lot better than reading a Word document - although not as good for reading on screen as HTML.
Also anti-competitive pressures on PC manufacturers to bundle Windows, anti-competitive pricing (co-marketing in particular), anti-competitive site-licensing, etc. This is there offensce.
Also network effects.
I do think you are right about the monopoly in the mind of the consumers. Everyone I know of who has been persuaded to try Linux or MacOS prefers them: but it remains hard to persuade people to try anything new (presumable because they think the learning curve is as steep as that of Windows).
And simulation training is part of how the military overcome people's reluctance to kill.
1) it is obviously not true. The BBC has a very popular site. 2) The BBC's own numbers show it is wrong: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/bbcinternet/2007/11/linux_figures_1.html 3) Even the revised BBC numbers may well undercount: Linux users are much more likely to change their UA strings.
I wonder if the "official" reason is the real one. Are they really deluded enough to think there is a realistic chance of getting any damages given that they have agreed (either in the EULA or the site licensing agreement) to low caps on damages?
I would guess it is to reduce the number of apps IT needs to support. They could use the extra cost as an objection, but that leaves it more open to someone who can show a business case for spending the money (I could certainly demonstrate why I find FF more productive if I had to).
The point is that if something goes wrong saying "its Microsoft's fault, there was nothing we could do about it" is a perfect excuse to give a CEO who knows nothing about IT.
IBM or the like are nearly as good as MS for this. Red Hat etc. are second best because your CEO who knows nothing about IT will not be familiar with them (although at least Red Hat is a listed company). Explaining why it is a good idea to trust Debian to provide a good OS to someone like that is probably a pretty hopeless task.
We need a new moderation option: doing the editors' job for them.
Noscript is a lot better at protecting you from stuff like this: no Javascript, Flash Java etc. runs unless you let it. The malware need not be in an ad, there are a lot of other ways of getting people to their sites.
I run Firefox with Noscript on Linux, and using a different browser (I used to use a different user) for sensitive websites. Is this malware likely to affect me?
And in reality, they ceased to be a colony long ago. Yes, we noticed. The point is that Canada became independent without a war. So did a lot of other British colonies.
Most people cannot. Either (in a corporate setting) IT decides it is not necessary, or (at home) they do not know how to do it, and they have a PC that is turned off when they are out rather than an always on server.
I am not saying it is not a good idea, just that it is not yet practical for most people. Using a laptop as your primary PC does work, which is why they are becoming more practical.
Yes, but I cannot see how Google could lock people into their advertising in the same way that Microsoft locks people into Windows, Exchange and MS Office. The cost of moving to another product will remain cheap.
I do find the idea of making escape illegal, on the grounds that it can lead to keeping someone who is found innocent of the original offence in prison.
Its a bit like a problem with British law. To be eligible for parole, a convict must show remorse for their original crime. This means that anyone who claims to be innocent is ineligible for parole: giving those who are wrongly convicted a stark dilemma.
Someone who did some basic research, rather than just reproducing what Wikipedia says, might could even have written an intersting article about the subject.
This article deserves to be eaten by the Snark - one monster that is not based on folklore!
It sounds like Brazil is better than most of the red areas (at least the ones I have come across).
Most places with petty corruption (South Asia and East Africa tos tick to regions I have experience of) also also have corruption at the top - and a lot of countries without noticeable petty corruption (The UK and US for example) also have a significant (although nothing like as much as the two regions I mentioned) amount of corruption at the top.
They probably will never come across this problem. I (and my wife) have been used Linux for six years, my father for three years, and other people I know for shorter times (me and three others for work, not home, usage). Between us, we have encountered one MS Office file that cannot be opened satisfactorily by Open Office - and I think that is actually some sort of malware (it had an Windows executable extension for a start).
I have a simple test that can show that a company is paying bribes. If they get government contracts in the red areas of this map, or do business with any regularity in the dark red areas, then they must pay bribes.