I totally agree. Worse, you have to install nepomuk when you install KDE. Why? Shouldn't that be optional? If not, why isn't there a stub that does nothing?
So my normal prodedure when installing a new machine after it's up and running is to go to/usr/bin and "sudo chmod 000 nepo* akonadi*" and then reboot.
What we're doing with those "tiny netbooks" is carrying around a couple of dozen reference books, many PDFs, a bundle of Word docs, my trusty Onenote notebooks, and an environment where I can try experiments of what I'm reading about (I am a programmer). I can read whatever I want, make notes from it, do reviews, and type up needed docs in Word... then sync up back to wherever when I get to a network. Because I can install normal Windows software, I'm basically able to do everything you do on your large 18" laptop, or at least everything that doesn't require huge screens.
I wouldn't try to create my DB schemas on my netbook (and the software would be horribly slow anyway), but I find the machines easy to carry around and useful. In many ways, the ASUS Transformer would be ideal for the way I use a netbook if only it ran MS-Word and MS-Onenote. There are replacements for Word (and now we have Word for Android as of recently); I'm still waiting on the Onenote replacement that I can use without a network connection. Once that comes, I can wave good-bye to MS and full laptops.
The thing about netbooks (tiny laptops) is that they still allow for content creation, assuming you don't have large hands and fingers. I find that incredibly useful.
Copyrights are effectively unlimited now. My father-in-law was born the year Mickey Mouse was created. He recently died and the copyright for Mickey Mouse is still going. So for him (and many others) it was beyond his lifetime and ability to build on... and therefore unlimited. That seems pretty wrong to me in keeping with the original spirit of the Constitution.
Agreed, I liked the idea that was Notebook. Worse, they wouldn't release the source as a good-will gesture when they killed it. If they aren't going to do anything with it, why not release it into the wild?
One can easily argue that the price of the e-books shouldn't be dirt cheap because the content is what you're really paying for.
A hardcover is about $25 for a novel, a paperback is about $8.
Paperbacks are much cheaper for a couple of reasons: 1. the materials; 2. they aren't as "new" so it's like they're on sale compared to the hardback. I don't know if it should be that way, but that's the way it seems to go. I will admit that the hardbacks do last longer, so perhaps the better materials should cost more. Personally, I prefer the paperbacks.
One can easily argue that the price of the e-books shouldn't be dirt cheap because the content is what you're really paying for. What should be true is e-books are the price of the physical book minus all the expenses that physical books have the e-books don't (e.g. paper, printing, shipping, etc) plus a few cents for the server. I don't know what percent that is of a physical book, but that does seem reasonable. I'm disgusted when I see the e-book costing the same or more than a physical book.
Last I heard, the FCC requires them to put 1 totally black frame before the commercial break and 1 just after (before the show starts again). If that's true, then to defeat this, they would have to get the FCC to change that ruling. Maybe they can, maybe they can't, but looking for 1 totally black frame makes skipping pretty easy.
My wife works for a company that helps people relocate internationally and according to her, heat/cold/water isn't your problem (although do your best to keep moisture out). Your biggest concern is it arriving at all.:) She says a large percentage (25-50%) of the cargo containers just don't get there at all, getting lost who knows where along the way, or arrive severely damaged. Her company's advice is to ship as much as you possibly can by air and only put the stuff that's easily replaceable in the cargo container.
Gotta agree, I don't find PHP docs to be all that good. Much of the stuff I need in the docs are only found in the "comments section".
Top-tier docs? Perl jumps to mind. You can't release a module on CPAN without it having docs. Java's pretty decent with JavaDocs for the library and bookshelves of "paper" docs to buy; C is the same way.
Because users actually prefer MS Office and are willing to pay for using it?
Users don't necessarily prefer MS Office as much as they are locked into it.
Compatibility is a crapshoot and I think there may be active work on MS side to decrease it further.
Err, no. Some of us prefer MS Office (as much as I wished I didn't).
First, does LO come with OneNote? Yeah, I didn't think so and OneNote is the killer app in the suite for me. Word complements it nicely as I can use it to polish my drafts from OneNote. If MS Office came with only OneNote and Word (at a reduced price), I'd be fine for using LO for everything else.
Second, I know a lot of it is experience, but Word is a lot easier to use than LO (Write or whatever the writing module is called). The last time I used LO (a few weeks ago?) I took nearly 2 minutes searching for how to turn "track changes" on and I couldn't find it. I'm sure it's there, but it was invisible to me. In Word I can do that in a few seconds. Perhaps if someone made the menus in LO look like the menus in Word, I'd feel more charitable about LO.
Third, LO is a pig when it comes to resources and "slower than molasses in January" as the saying goes. Word isn't a lightweight, but it at least starts faster. I've heard you can turn the java part of LO off to help it out, but why should I have to? Shouldn't LO not turn that on unless it really needs it?
I'd love for LO to be truly competitive and let me toss Word; I'd even give LO $50 every major release. I'd also love Basket Note Pads to be competitive with OneNote. With both of those, I could ditch MS Office and almost give up my XP VM install (and might even decide I could live without the remaining Windows programs). But I do prefer MS Office enough that I have an VM dedicated to it.
I'm with you, why should I upgrade XP when I really don't need to? An OS only has 2 reasons to exist: 1. manage HW resources, 2. launch programs; and XP does both of those just fine. MS-Windows is mature software and the only reason we get new versions is so that MS can make some more money.
I need MS-Office, the real thing, to run OneNote -- my killer app for Windows. I've got a couple of other programs that only run in Windows and I've not found a Linux replacement for and that I can't get to work under Wine. That means XP isn't going away anytime soon (nope, IE never gets launched as I have modern FF or Chrome).
To future proof it, I've installed XP in VMware (running on Linux) so drivers aren't an issue and it can run on any future machine I want with no worries. I don't see getting rid of XP for a very long time. My gaming machine is Win7, but for "business like" work my XP install is here to stay.
I buy MP3's, no DRM. The vast majority of ebooks I buy are also DRM free.
I have a few that came with DRM and I'm aware of removal methods for it to make them something I can hand down like all the normal books on my self. But I think the best answer is just to ignore the DRM encumbered books, let the publishers know why I don't buy them, and buy DRM free books to encourage that practice.
You mean like in that car in the latest Mission Impossible movie? That would be very useful and even safer. But other than highlighting "driving hazards", I'm with everyone else in that the entertainment stuff needs to be kept out of the front seat.
... It's about user experience. And Apple's got that all wrapped up in a pretty little bow....
I have to agree that user experience is very important. However, I don't like the Apple kool-aide. My preferred user experience doesn't force me to use iTunes, or interact with the device in only the way Steve Jobs envisioned, or only with Apple hardware. I prefer my "bow" to be difference than the Apple approved one. So, Apple may "win" for you, but not for a lot of us and I think that number is growing.
I completely agree that the context and audience of the conversation will strongly influence what I call myself. If I had mod points you'd get some here.
There's a lot of good advice in the article, but the "don't call yourself a programmer" point was not a good one, IMO.
I have to disagree. You're so concerned about streaming that you almost (but not quite) ignore mailing DVDs. For those of us who can't really download movies because we live in an area where it's impossible to get a high enough bandwidth to download the amount of content that makes up a movie, mailing DVDs is the only way to get access to a wide selection of movies.
So yes, Blockbuster is still a very real competitor to Netflix for those like me. I'm not aware of anyone else who mails disks, which is unfortunate, as I'd like to see more competition in this area.
It would be really nice for them to acknowledge that their OS is mostly mature and they're really only changing the GUI between releases. Of course, they can't completely act like that because it would kill one of their cash cows, but I could dream of no more MS-Windows installs, and just service pack releases to fix/change the GUI (and therefore ignore them when I don't like a release).
I have a folding Bluetooth KB which is very portable; that would solve your problem. Of course, the Asus Transformer is my favorite solution to text content creation.
I don't update every version, usually just every other release. However, because the developers keep working on new major versions that don't really give us anything truly useful, that means that the existing code never has obvious bugs fixed.
Software that isn't mature is exempt from my rant...:)
I'm really started to get burnt out on all the new versions for "mature" packages. There are multiple examples of this: MS-Windows, Firefox, KDE, even the Linux kernel (which recently rev'd major numbers just because). All of these things and others are mature; they do what they basically need to do and new major versions haven't really add anything all that useful lately. I'm tired of getting new GUIs, frameworks, etc just because the developers need to be seen as doing something. Stop it! How about fixing the existing bugs instead?
We know what OSes do and they do it well. Browsers get a bit of slack because of the new HTML5. But all the GUI changes "just because" are killing me (and a lot of others) because they force me to learn something new that doesn't give me anything to help me do my job better. Developers -- please think that thru very carefully! Please?!
When something truly new and innovative comes along, then I'll understand the new major version.
Really, why should I care about FF any more? They're killing us and themselves with all of these major version releases. As many others have pointed out, it's painful when dealing with web development, plugin usage, or even just to know what version is "latest". And that doesn't count all the pain with the major bugs that just languish while the UI is endlessly tweaked for no good reason (exactly why was the status bar removed?).
I'm sorry FF, but I'm sticking to the 3.6 series. As soon as that doesn't work anymore because of 1 OS upgrade too many, I'll stop using FF. If you can get things fixed and find sanity again before then, I'll stay. Otherwise, it's been a good 8 years we've had together.
Yep, this is how I get internet: radio on the roof pointing to a water tower 3 miles away that has a DS3 at the bottom of it. I've had it well over 5 years and the company that provides this has a large overlap with Verizon. However, I suspect that most who use this tech are like me: FIOS is not available to my street (in a semi-rural area) and Verizon has no plans to make it so.
...Having lived all over, it seems to be that if your road isn't even paved, give up broadband. You probably won't get it for a while. If you have to drive for an hour to buy meat (any meat), give it up forever, unless people migrate there en masse. Do your kids a favor and move, too.
Yes and no, because it depends on where you live. I live in a semi-rural area (or the extreme suburbs of a major US city); the paving stops about 100 yards from my property. I think FIOS stops about 1 mile down the road in a subdivision, as I've seen the orange conduit go in there. The local phone company who controls that told me they have no plans to extend FIOS to the rest of us down the road. This really makes me want the line infrastructure to be owned by the government so the ISPs become a true service. Splitting the infrastructure and the service would help a lot, I think (same as it would help with the cell phone industry).
As for me, the best I can do is a radio on the roof pointing at a local water tower (with a DS3 at the bottom). The radio connects with 802.11b and is supposed to give me 1Mb down and 512Kb up speeds -- I usually get about half to three-quarters that for $50 a month. There are 2/4/6Mb down options at higher prices.
I consider myself lucky to get that, as I know that some who live 25 miles further out have even less. Move closer in, you say? Sorry, I really like my acreage, something that's not affordable were I to move closer in. It sucks not to have better speed, but what we have isn't really all that bad. If I need a new Linux ISO, I just download it at work instead of at home.
I'll agree with that thought and it is at the heart of the controversy here. In the past 140 years or so, the "liberals" have controlled education and history, giving us what we "know" today. Before 1859-1870, we wouldn't be having this conversation. From the article: "...the board's five Democrats criticized the Republican majority for injecting their political and religious views into the curriculum". That's completely stupid. No matter what side you're on, you will "inject your views". Also, "I think we've corrected the imbalance we've had in the past and now have our curriculum headed straight down the middle." I don't know if what they have is "straight down the middle", but to me, any correction the other way is a good thing after 140 years of liberal guidance.
The summary is inflammatory and incorrect, but this is Slashdot, so why should I be surprised that it's wrong. There is no more "political spin" here than in the past. The only difference is that the direction of the spin is changing slightly. American history has been written differently than what happened, if you go digging for the facts. The "founding fathers" are depicted quite differently from what they say in their personal letters. Various "facts" have been quietly dropped, giving a different "spin" on why Americas was started as a country and what was important to us.
How about we all put our computer games away for awhile, go pick up some history books (preferably those written before 1870), read about what happened and was said, and make up our own minds based more on facts rather than what some educator says.
Slashdot Mirror
I totally agree. Worse, you have to install nepomuk when you install KDE. Why? Shouldn't that be optional? If not, why isn't there a stub that does nothing?
/usr/bin and "sudo chmod 000 nepo* akonadi*" and then reboot.
So my normal prodedure when installing a new machine after it's up and running is to go to
What we're doing with those "tiny netbooks" is carrying around a couple of dozen reference books, many PDFs, a bundle of Word docs, my trusty Onenote notebooks, and an environment where I can try experiments of what I'm reading about (I am a programmer). I can read whatever I want, make notes from it, do reviews, and type up needed docs in Word ... then sync up back to wherever when I get to a network. Because I can install normal Windows software, I'm basically able to do everything you do on your large 18" laptop, or at least everything that doesn't require huge screens.
I wouldn't try to create my DB schemas on my netbook (and the software would be horribly slow anyway), but I find the machines easy to carry around and useful. In many ways, the ASUS Transformer would be ideal for the way I use a netbook if only it ran MS-Word and MS-Onenote. There are replacements for Word (and now we have Word for Android as of recently); I'm still waiting on the Onenote replacement that I can use without a network connection. Once that comes, I can wave good-bye to MS and full laptops.
The thing about netbooks (tiny laptops) is that they still allow for content creation, assuming you don't have large hands and fingers. I find that incredibly useful.
Copyrights are effectively unlimited now. My father-in-law was born the year Mickey Mouse was created. He recently died and the copyright for Mickey Mouse is still going. So for him (and many others) it was beyond his lifetime and ability to build on ... and therefore unlimited. That seems pretty wrong to me in keeping with the original spirit of the Constitution.
Agreed, I liked the idea that was Notebook. Worse, they wouldn't release the source as a good-will gesture when they killed it. If they aren't going to do anything with it, why not release it into the wild?
> I will stick with my LED lights and gas heater.
I like my LED lights too, but some of us don't have the option for gas heaters. My house is all electric because that's my only option.
A hardcover is about $25 for a novel, a paperback is about $8.
Paperbacks are much cheaper for a couple of reasons: 1. the materials; 2. they aren't as "new" so it's like they're on sale compared to the hardback. I don't know if it should be that way, but that's the way it seems to go. I will admit that the hardbacks do last longer, so perhaps the better materials should cost more. Personally, I prefer the paperbacks.
One can easily argue that the price of the e-books shouldn't be dirt cheap because the content is what you're really paying for. What should be true is e-books are the price of the physical book minus all the expenses that physical books have the e-books don't (e.g. paper, printing, shipping, etc) plus a few cents for the server. I don't know what percent that is of a physical book, but that does seem reasonable. I'm disgusted when I see the e-book costing the same or more than a physical book.
Last I heard, the FCC requires them to put 1 totally black frame before the commercial break and 1 just after (before the show starts again). If that's true, then to defeat this, they would have to get the FCC to change that ruling. Maybe they can, maybe they can't, but looking for 1 totally black frame makes skipping pretty easy.
My wife works for a company that helps people relocate internationally and according to her, heat/cold/water isn't your problem (although do your best to keep moisture out). Your biggest concern is it arriving at all. :) She says a large percentage (25-50%) of the cargo containers just don't get there at all, getting lost who knows where along the way, or arrive severely damaged. Her company's advice is to ship as much as you possibly can by air and only put the stuff that's easily replaceable in the cargo container.
Gotta agree, I don't find PHP docs to be all that good. Much of the stuff I need in the docs are only found in the "comments section".
Top-tier docs? Perl jumps to mind. You can't release a module on CPAN without it having docs. Java's pretty decent with JavaDocs for the library and bookshelves of "paper" docs to buy; C is the same way.
Because users actually prefer MS Office and are willing to pay for using it?
Users don't necessarily prefer MS Office as much as they are locked into it. Compatibility is a crapshoot and I think there may be active work on MS side to decrease it further.
Err, no. Some of us prefer MS Office (as much as I wished I didn't).
First, does LO come with OneNote? Yeah, I didn't think so and OneNote is the killer app in the suite for me. Word complements it nicely as I can use it to polish my drafts from OneNote. If MS Office came with only OneNote and Word (at a reduced price), I'd be fine for using LO for everything else.
Second, I know a lot of it is experience, but Word is a lot easier to use than LO (Write or whatever the writing module is called). The last time I used LO (a few weeks ago?) I took nearly 2 minutes searching for how to turn "track changes" on and I couldn't find it. I'm sure it's there, but it was invisible to me. In Word I can do that in a few seconds. Perhaps if someone made the menus in LO look like the menus in Word, I'd feel more charitable about LO.
Third, LO is a pig when it comes to resources and "slower than molasses in January" as the saying goes. Word isn't a lightweight, but it at least starts faster. I've heard you can turn the java part of LO off to help it out, but why should I have to? Shouldn't LO not turn that on unless it really needs it?
I'd love for LO to be truly competitive and let me toss Word; I'd even give LO $50 every major release. I'd also love Basket Note Pads to be competitive with OneNote. With both of those, I could ditch MS Office and almost give up my XP VM install (and might even decide I could live without the remaining Windows programs). But I do prefer MS Office enough that I have an VM dedicated to it.
I'm with you, why should I upgrade XP when I really don't need to? An OS only has 2 reasons to exist: 1. manage HW resources, 2. launch programs; and XP does both of those just fine. MS-Windows is mature software and the only reason we get new versions is so that MS can make some more money.
I need MS-Office, the real thing, to run OneNote -- my killer app for Windows. I've got a couple of other programs that only run in Windows and I've not found a Linux replacement for and that I can't get to work under Wine. That means XP isn't going away anytime soon (nope, IE never gets launched as I have modern FF or Chrome).
To future proof it, I've installed XP in VMware (running on Linux) so drivers aren't an issue and it can run on any future machine I want with no worries. I don't see getting rid of XP for a very long time. My gaming machine is Win7, but for "business like" work my XP install is here to stay.
I totally agree with you, it is that easy.
I buy MP3's, no DRM. The vast majority of ebooks I buy are also DRM free.
I have a few that came with DRM and I'm aware of removal methods for it to make them something I can hand down like all the normal books on my self. But I think the best answer is just to ignore the DRM encumbered books, let the publishers know why I don't buy them, and buy DRM free books to encourage that practice.
You mean like in that car in the latest Mission Impossible movie? That would be very useful and even safer. But other than highlighting "driving hazards", I'm with everyone else in that the entertainment stuff needs to be kept out of the front seat.
... It's about user experience. And Apple's got that all wrapped up in a pretty little bow. ...
I have to agree that user experience is very important. However, I don't like the Apple kool-aide. My preferred user experience doesn't force me to use iTunes, or interact with the device in only the way Steve Jobs envisioned, or only with Apple hardware. I prefer my "bow" to be difference than the Apple approved one. So, Apple may "win" for you, but not for a lot of us and I think that number is growing.
I completely agree that the context and audience of the conversation will strongly influence what I call myself. If I had mod points you'd get some here.
There's a lot of good advice in the article, but the "don't call yourself a programmer" point was not a good one, IMO.
> Netflix does not have competitors.
I have to disagree. You're so concerned about streaming that you almost (but not quite) ignore mailing DVDs. For those of us who can't really download movies because we live in an area where it's impossible to get a high enough bandwidth to download the amount of content that makes up a movie, mailing DVDs is the only way to get access to a wide selection of movies.
So yes, Blockbuster is still a very real competitor to Netflix for those like me. I'm not aware of anyone else who mails disks, which is unfortunate, as I'd like to see more competition in this area.
It would be really nice for them to acknowledge that their OS is mostly mature and they're really only changing the GUI between releases. Of course, they can't completely act like that because it would kill one of their cash cows, but I could dream of no more MS-Windows installs, and just service pack releases to fix/change the GUI (and therefore ignore them when I don't like a release).
I have a folding Bluetooth KB which is very portable; that would solve your problem. Of course, the Asus Transformer is my favorite solution to text content creation.
I don't update every version, usually just every other release. However, because the developers keep working on new major versions that don't really give us anything truly useful, that means that the existing code never has obvious bugs fixed.
:)
Software that isn't mature is exempt from my rant...
I'm really started to get burnt out on all the new versions for "mature" packages. There are multiple examples of this: MS-Windows, Firefox, KDE, even the Linux kernel (which recently rev'd major numbers just because). All of these things and others are mature; they do what they basically need to do and new major versions haven't really add anything all that useful lately. I'm tired of getting new GUIs, frameworks, etc just because the developers need to be seen as doing something. Stop it! How about fixing the existing bugs instead?
We know what OSes do and they do it well. Browsers get a bit of slack because of the new HTML5. But all the GUI changes "just because" are killing me (and a lot of others) because they force me to learn something new that doesn't give me anything to help me do my job better. Developers -- please think that thru very carefully! Please?!
When something truly new and innovative comes along, then I'll understand the new major version.
Really, why should I care about FF any more? They're killing us and themselves with all of these major version releases. As many others have pointed out, it's painful when dealing with web development, plugin usage, or even just to know what version is "latest". And that doesn't count all the pain with the major bugs that just languish while the UI is endlessly tweaked for no good reason (exactly why was the status bar removed?).
I'm sorry FF, but I'm sticking to the 3.6 series. As soon as that doesn't work anymore because of 1 OS upgrade too many, I'll stop using FF. If you can get things fixed and find sanity again before then, I'll stay. Otherwise, it's been a good 8 years we've had together.
Yep, this is how I get internet: radio on the roof pointing to a water tower 3 miles away that has a DS3 at the bottom of it. I've had it well over 5 years and the company that provides this has a large overlap with Verizon. However, I suspect that most who use this tech are like me: FIOS is not available to my street (in a semi-rural area) and Verizon has no plans to make it so.
...Having lived all over, it seems to be that if your road isn't even paved, give up broadband. You probably won't get it for a while. If you have to drive for an hour to buy meat (any meat), give it up forever, unless people migrate there en masse. Do your kids a favor and move, too.
Yes and no, because it depends on where you live. I live in a semi-rural area (or the extreme suburbs of a major US city); the paving stops about 100 yards from my property. I think FIOS stops about 1 mile down the road in a subdivision, as I've seen the orange conduit go in there. The local phone company who controls that told me they have no plans to extend FIOS to the rest of us down the road. This really makes me want the line infrastructure to be owned by the government so the ISPs become a true service. Splitting the infrastructure and the service would help a lot, I think (same as it would help with the cell phone industry).
As for me, the best I can do is a radio on the roof pointing at a local water tower (with a DS3 at the bottom). The radio connects with 802.11b and is supposed to give me 1Mb down and 512Kb up speeds -- I usually get about half to three-quarters that for $50 a month. There are 2/4/6Mb down options at higher prices.
I consider myself lucky to get that, as I know that some who live 25 miles further out have even less. Move closer in, you say? Sorry, I really like my acreage, something that's not affordable were I to move closer in. It sucks not to have better speed, but what we have isn't really all that bad. If I need a new Linux ISO, I just download it at work instead of at home.
I'll agree with that thought and it is at the heart of the controversy here. In the past 140 years or so, the "liberals" have controlled education and history, giving us what we "know" today. Before 1859-1870, we wouldn't be having this conversation. From the article: "...the board's five Democrats criticized the Republican majority for injecting their political and religious views into the curriculum". That's completely stupid. No matter what side you're on, you will "inject your views". Also, "I think we've corrected the imbalance we've had in the past and now have our curriculum headed straight down the middle." I don't know if what they have is "straight down the middle", but to me, any correction the other way is a good thing after 140 years of liberal guidance.
The summary is inflammatory and incorrect, but this is Slashdot, so why should I be surprised that it's wrong. There is no more "political spin" here than in the past. The only difference is that the direction of the spin is changing slightly. American history has been written differently than what happened, if you go digging for the facts. The "founding fathers" are depicted quite differently from what they say in their personal letters. Various "facts" have been quietly dropped, giving a different "spin" on why Americas was started as a country and what was important to us.
How about we all put our computer games away for awhile, go pick up some history books (preferably those written before 1870), read about what happened and was said, and make up our own minds based more on facts rather than what some educator says.