No, they didn't. In 2001 Congress passed a resolution passed authorizing military force in Afghanistan. Then in 2003, Congress passed a resolution authorizing military force in Iraq. At no point did Congress pass a declaration of war. Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution grants to Congress the power to declare war.
How the heck does this guy think that "Iraq didn't pose a clear and present danger to the United States."
Iraq was the source of the terrorism.
Saddam Hussein doesn't like the U.S. He did a lot of terrible things. But he didn't have anything to do with 9/11.
The 9/11 Commission found no links between Iraq and 9/11. Check out their report here.
This past Sunday on Meet the Press, the Secretary of State, Colin Powell, said "I have seen nothing that makes a direct connection between Saddam Hussein and that awful regime, and what happened on 9/11."
President Bush, when pressed, has said that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. Here is President George W. Bush, on Sept 17 2003: "No, we've had no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with September the 11th"
Um, that would be a CD full of songs to which you own the copyright, right? Riiiiight... You can't have it both ways. We are either allowed to share music, or we aren't.
Well, you have a point, but just to play devil's advocate...
Maybe you purchased the songs on iTunes Music Store and you are giving those songs to your special someone in the form of a mix CD. Maybe you then delete the original from your hard drive, or transfer the song electronically to them (not sure if this is possible, but anyway...). Maybe the person is your spouse, and the mix CD is staying in the house.
There are ways of doing what they're saying without straying off the straight and narrow wrt copyright.
>>But honestly how many config files do you have to hand edit under Linux still, compared to none for windows).
>Ummm... if you pick a good distro, none.
I've used Redhat, and Slackware most. I've played with others. What do you call a good distro?
Mandrake. Currently I use Mandrake 10.0. I have also used SuSE, and I consider it to be the second best distro in terms of usability. I've recently used Red Hat 9, and while it's not a bad distro, it's nowhere near as polished as Mandrake or SuSE in terms of ease of use.
In any case you can't be arguing that its as easy as Windows.
I can and I am. In Mandrake, nearly everything just works - no manual configuration required. In Mandrake 10.0 this includes my USB scanner/printer, USB digital camera, dhcp ethernet, and USB Palm Pilot - all worked without any manual configuration.
About the only thing I've had to do that required the command line was installing Java, Flash, and Acrobat Reader. And most of the time I use KGhostView, so Acrobat Reader isn't essential.
If you use Slackware or LFS, you will have lots of manual configuration required. If you use Red Hat, you might have some manual configuration. If you use Mandrake, you'll do virtually no manual configuration.
>>I'm seriously considering recommending Mandrake 10 to my mom - over Mac OS X. Do really hate your mom that much? Are you serious?
First let me say up front - I am a longtime Mac user, and I love OS X.
Next, no, I don't hate my mom, and yes I am serious.
>>The Mandrake Control Center is a match for the one in OS X, plus it provides an easy mechanism for finding and managing software.
Uh, you mean like Software update or drag and drop install/uninstall in OSX? Riiight! So you can just drag an new module for the control center and have it work like you can in OSX by dragging a prefspane into ~/Library/PreferencePanes or/Library/PreferencePanes?
I stand by my statement - the Mandrake Control Panel is as easy to use as the Mac OS X control panel.
Is it as easy to add new preferences to the Mandrake Control Center? No. Did I mention adding new preferences? No. Do very many Mac users even know you can do that in OS X? No.
As far as Software Update, Mac OS X software update has an edge in usability over Mandrake. I say that only because it runs automatically and tells you when something needs to be updated. But, that said, once you run it, the Mandrake update util in the Control Center is very well designed and very easy to use. Can you just drag and drop apps to install them like is OS X? No. I wish you could. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your viewpoint) the way most Linux apps are designed, they use lots of external libraries and need dependency tracking. But, Mandrake ships with virtually all the apps you need or want. Installing, uninstalling, and updating through the Control Center is trivial. And finally, most non-power users don't regularly install software. In either OS X or Mandrake, I will set up my mom's computer, then she will use it. Software updates and control panels are things she won't be messing with no matter what the OS.
I've used several distros and I have not experienced what you experienced. Changing resolutions in X? Getting X to recognize your hardware? Starting up KDE or Gnome? Fun stuff indeed.
Sorry to hear that you've had bad experiences. I haven't had X problems in several years. Resizing resolutions is easy - use the Control Center or use the XRandR Kpanel applet. Either KDE or Gnome start automatically on all of the distros I've used. Mandrake uses KDE by default. I have a DVD drive, USB Palm Pilot, 19" Viewsonic monitor, USB keyboard, mouse, and trackpad, USB printer/scanner combo, and it all works very well. In the past I have also had an SCSI scanner and external SCSI Zip drive, and a couple different kinds of Hauppauge WinTV TV cards. I had to do some work to get the TV cards configured properly with MythTV, but for the most part everything just works.
Not to mention, no iTunes, iPhoto, Quicktime, expose, FUS, Photoshop, MS Office, iMovie, iDVD etc....
The Mac apps you mentioned are ahead of their Linux equivalents - but not by a lot. A lot of Linux apps have made big leaps in terms of features and usability in recent months. Of the apps you mentioned, my mom wouldn't use Photoshop, and I'm not sure what FUS is. Expose doesn't have an exact equivalent - I use virtual desktops to accomplish the same goal of window management. For the others, there are mature equivalents that are fully featured enough for what she will use it for.
iTunes - JuK
iPhoto - Digikam
Quicktime - Totem
MS Office (she uses Appleworks) - OpenOffice
iMovie - Kino or Kdenlive
iDVD - DVDStyler or Q DVD Author
The replacements for iMovie and iDVD are less mature than the others I mentioned. But they have come a long way recently, and are fully featured and user-friendly enough for general use.
Mandrake 10 with KDE has a lot of really good apps. There are a few places where the apps could be better integrated (genealogy, money management software). Overall, it's very mature with very good hardware detection and very easy to use.
The cherry on the cake is when on the rare occaision she boots into windows to use her family tree program; its not uncommon to hear her muttering how she hates windows
The lack of a geneology program was the one thing holding me back from recommending Linux to her. But I recently ran across Gramps. The interface is different than Reunion, which is what she uses now, but it imports Reunion files just fine.
A Quicken replacement is my other concern. GnuCash is definitely powerful enough, but the interface is significantly different from Quicken. Plus, I like sticking with KDE apps if I can because of the better integration (when running KDE). I'll probably show her GnuCash and KMyMoney and she what she thinks of them. Hopefully the next release of KMyMoney will support enough reports that it'll work for her.
The next time she visits, I'm going to have her try out my machine, set up with a user account like hers would be. I'm interested to see what she thinks.
The point is, modern Linux distros (at least some of them, like Mandrake 10) have become much more than a developer OS. The discussion is relevant because with the new distros, the old assumptions just aren't true any more.
I'm seriously considering recommending Mandrake 10 to my mom - over Mac OS X.
The standard KDE 3.2 apps are extremely well integrated. The Mandrake Control Center is a match for the one in OS X, plus it provides an easy mechanism for finding and managing software. Sure, if you try to do complicated things or try out beta-quality software, it may involve digging around on the command line.
But for everyday tasks like web browsing, email, word processing, digital photo management, listening to CDs and managing mp3s, syncing a Palm Pilot, managing a calendar and a to-do list, burning CDs and DVDs, checking the weather, and instant messaging, Mandrake 10 with KDE 3.2 meets or beats the usability of any other OS - bar none.
If you use User Agent Switcher you can convince the website that you're running IE on Windows. Has anyone used this technique, and then tried the demo service on Linux?
You are right in that there are problems. It is unfortunate that there is not yet a free, native port of KDE to Windows. When writing my own apps, my choice for graphics toolkits usually comes between Swing, FLTK, and wxWindows, because those are the only mature, freely available graphics toolkits I know of that all run on Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows.
You are wrong that KDE has a "moral taint." The fact that there isn't a native Windows port of KDE based on a native Windows QT port may mean that you choose not to write cross-platform apps in QT. But the lack of such a free native Windows QT toolkit doesn't give KDE a moral taint and more than the lack of QTK for Mac OS 9 gives Gnome a moral taint.
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Africus aut Europaeus?
Dude, do you really have a sig that quotes Monty Python is Latin?
I don't know whether to be impressed or embarrased...
Thank you. It's nice to occasionally hear from someone who recognizes that Episodes I and II actually do have some value.
Spaceballs 2: The Search for More Money
Oh, I don't know. I always liked the Hanna Barbara race shows. :)
They just announced an annual X Prize Cup that will take place in New Mexico.
Really gives a backyard, do-it-yourself feel to the whole event. :)
That was beautiful! Can't wait to take a ride in one!
I know... I just about died when they said that. :)-
Have to say I'm impressed with the quality of this webfeed...
No, they didn't. In 2001 Congress passed a resolution passed authorizing military force in Afghanistan. Then in 2003, Congress passed a resolution authorizing military force in Iraq. At no point did Congress pass a declaration of war. Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution grants to Congress the power to declare war.
How the heck does this guy think that "Iraq didn't pose a clear and present danger to the United States." Iraq was the source of the terrorism.
Saddam Hussein doesn't like the U.S. He did a lot of terrible things. But he didn't have anything to do with 9/11.
The 9/11 Commission found no links between Iraq and 9/11. Check out their report here.
This past Sunday on Meet the Press, the Secretary of State, Colin Powell, said "I have seen nothing that makes a direct connection between Saddam Hussein and that awful regime, and what happened on 9/11."
President Bush, when pressed, has said that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. Here is President George W. Bush, on Sept 17 2003: "No, we've had no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with September the 11th"
Well, you have a point, but just to play devil's advocate...
Maybe you purchased the songs on iTunes Music Store and you are giving those songs to your special someone in the form of a mix CD. Maybe you then delete the original from your hard drive, or transfer the song electronically to them (not sure if this is possible, but anyway...). Maybe the person is your spouse, and the mix CD is staying in the house.
There are ways of doing what they're saying without straying off the straight and narrow wrt copyright.
"The new iMac G5 family features a removable desktopfoot."
iMac G5 VESA Mount Adapter Kit
$29.00
Available for order in October.
Allows your iMac G5 to be used with VESA compliant mounting solutions such as wall mounts and articulating arms.
http://www.apple.com/keyboard/
Huh?
Why do you need 2 optical drives in a G5 tower? And if you do, what's stopping you from adding a second one?
AFAIK, Apple has never shipped a machine with 2 optical drives, even as a build-to-order option.
Oh, but has it? I haven't seen Superman flying around, have you? Maybe Krypton hasn't been destroyed yet, and that's why Superman isn't here yet. :)
>Ummm... if you pick a good distro, none.
I've used Redhat, and Slackware most. I've played with others. What do you call a good distro?
Mandrake. Currently I use Mandrake 10.0. I have also used SuSE, and I consider it to be the second best distro in terms of usability. I've recently used Red Hat 9, and while it's not a bad distro, it's nowhere near as polished as Mandrake or SuSE in terms of ease of use.
In any case you can't be arguing that its as easy as Windows.
I can and I am. In Mandrake, nearly everything just works - no manual configuration required. In Mandrake 10.0 this includes my USB scanner/printer, USB digital camera, dhcp ethernet, and USB Palm Pilot - all worked without any manual configuration.
About the only thing I've had to do that required the command line was installing Java, Flash, and Acrobat Reader. And most of the time I use KGhostView, so Acrobat Reader isn't essential.
If you use Slackware or LFS, you will have lots of manual configuration required. If you use Red Hat, you might have some manual configuration. If you use Mandrake, you'll do virtually no manual configuration.
I did some looking, and Fast User Switching (FUS) is available in KDE.
Go to the K Menu, and select "Start New Session"
To switch between sessions, use Ctl-Alt-f#. Your original session will be at f7. The next session will be at f8, and so on.
Also, last week an initial version of Expose for KDE came out. It's called Kompose, and it's available here
Ummm... if you pick a good distro, none.
Do really hate your mom that much? Are you serious?
First let me say up front - I am a longtime Mac user, and I love OS X.
Next, no, I don't hate my mom, and yes I am serious.
>>The Mandrake Control Center is a match for the one in OS X, plus it provides an easy mechanism for finding and managing software. /Library/PreferencePanes?
Uh, you mean like Software update or drag and drop install/uninstall in OSX? Riiight! So you can just drag an new module for the control center and have it work like you can in OSX by dragging a prefspane into ~/Library/PreferencePanes or
I stand by my statement - the Mandrake Control Panel is as easy to use as the Mac OS X control panel.
Is it as easy to add new preferences to the Mandrake Control Center? No. Did I mention adding new preferences? No. Do very many Mac users even know you can do that in OS X? No.
As far as Software Update, Mac OS X software update has an edge in usability over Mandrake. I say that only because it runs automatically and tells you when something needs to be updated. But, that said, once you run it, the Mandrake update util in the Control Center is very well designed and very easy to use. Can you just drag and drop apps to install them like is OS X? No. I wish you could. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your viewpoint) the way most Linux apps are designed, they use lots of external libraries and need dependency tracking. But, Mandrake ships with virtually all the apps you need or want. Installing, uninstalling, and updating through the Control Center is trivial. And finally, most non-power users don't regularly install software. In either OS X or Mandrake, I will set up my mom's computer, then she will use it. Software updates and control panels are things she won't be messing with no matter what the OS.
I've used several distros and I have not experienced what you experienced. Changing resolutions in X? Getting X to recognize your hardware? Starting up KDE or Gnome? Fun stuff indeed.
Sorry to hear that you've had bad experiences. I haven't had X problems in several years. Resizing resolutions is easy - use the Control Center or use the XRandR Kpanel applet. Either KDE or Gnome start automatically on all of the distros I've used. Mandrake uses KDE by default. I have a DVD drive, USB Palm Pilot, 19" Viewsonic monitor, USB keyboard, mouse, and trackpad, USB printer/scanner combo, and it all works very well. In the past I have also had an SCSI scanner and external SCSI Zip drive, and a couple different kinds of Hauppauge WinTV TV cards. I had to do some work to get the TV cards configured properly with MythTV, but for the most part everything just works.
Not to mention, no iTunes, iPhoto, Quicktime, expose, FUS, Photoshop, MS Office, iMovie, iDVD etc....
The Mac apps you mentioned are ahead of their Linux equivalents - but not by a lot. A lot of Linux apps have made big leaps in terms of features and usability in recent months. Of the apps you mentioned, my mom wouldn't use Photoshop, and I'm not sure what FUS is. Expose doesn't have an exact equivalent - I use virtual desktops to accomplish the same goal of window management. For the others, there are mature equivalents that are fully featured enough for what she will use it for.
iTunes - JuK
iPhoto - Digikam
Quicktime - Totem
MS Office (she uses Appleworks) - OpenOffice
iMovie - Kino or Kdenlive
iDVD - DVDStyler or Q DVD Author
The replacements for iMovie and iDVD are less mature than the others I mentioned. But they have come a long way recently, and are fully featured and user-friendly enough for general use.
Mandrake 10 with KDE has a lot of really good apps. There are a few places where the apps could be better integrated (genealogy, money management software). Overall, it's very mature with very good hardware detection and very easy to use.
The lack of a geneology program was the one thing holding me back from recommending Linux to her. But I recently ran across Gramps. The interface is different than Reunion, which is what she uses now, but it imports Reunion files just fine.
A Quicken replacement is my other concern. GnuCash is definitely powerful enough, but the interface is significantly different from Quicken. Plus, I like sticking with KDE apps if I can because of the better integration (when running KDE). I'll probably show her GnuCash and KMyMoney and she what she thinks of them. Hopefully the next release of KMyMoney will support enough reports that it'll work for her.
The next time she visits, I'm going to have her try out my machine, set up with a user account like hers would be. I'm interested to see what she thinks.
I'm seriously considering recommending Mandrake 10 to my mom - over Mac OS X.
The standard KDE 3.2 apps are extremely well integrated. The Mandrake Control Center is a match for the one in OS X, plus it provides an easy mechanism for finding and managing software. Sure, if you try to do complicated things or try out beta-quality software, it may involve digging around on the command line.
But for everyday tasks like web browsing, email, word processing, digital photo management, listening to CDs and managing mp3s, syncing a Palm Pilot, managing a calendar and a to-do list, burning CDs and DVDs, checking the weather, and instant messaging, Mandrake 10 with KDE 3.2 meets or beats the usability of any other OS - bar none.
If you use User Agent Switcher you can convince the website that you're running IE on Windows. Has anyone used this technique, and then tried the demo service on Linux?
Typo: should be "than the lack of GTK for Mac OS 9"
You are wrong that KDE has a "moral taint." The fact that there isn't a native Windows port of KDE based on a native Windows QT port may mean that you choose not to write cross-platform apps in QT. But the lack of such a free native Windows QT toolkit doesn't give KDE a moral taint and more than the lack of QTK for Mac OS 9 gives Gnome a moral taint.