Re:Linux apps too hard to configure?
on
Build Your Own PVR
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· Score: 5, Insightful
Here's the problem with comparing Linux PVR projects with Windows PVR's or a dedicated machine like a Tivo: variety. With a dedicated machine, the manufacturer can pick the hardware they want to use, and then tell their developers to write code to fit the hardware. With windows, the hardware manufacturers make the drivers, etc. so the PVR coders don't have to. With linux, we lose on both fronts - not only do the PVR developers have to code their software to work for a variety of different platforms (hardware/software encoders, different remotes, distributions, etc), but they also have to rely on other sets of open source developers who work on the drivers for the sound cards (ALSA), video cards (ivtv, v4l), tv-out video cards, etc. It makes the programs a lot more complex, slows down development time, etc.
On the other hand, they're free, and you can add your own features if you want. I'm a happy mythtv user who didn't like its mythweb module. So I rewrote it and gave it back, and now the project is better than ever (imho, the web interface to mythtv makes it more useful than any other PVR solution - I don't have to walk into the other room to set up or manage recordings, or can schedule recordings I've forgotten about before leaving on vacation).
Yet froogle insists on attaching a price to every result returned on a search, often an incorrect one.
The prices listed for the actual froogle results are as as correct as the vendors say they are, since they come from vendor-supplied feeds (I know, I had to write a script to do this for my company). As for the other results, did you miss the little qualifier that the put above them? "The results below were automatically extracted from web pages. Price and category information are uncertain." None of the other listings that you mentioned do this - in fact, I don't know of any other price-search service that does this.
Of course, the annoying thing about this is that the price filters don't affect these items, either. On the other hand, froogle is still listed as beta, so it can only get better.
The Monroe Institute has something a lot cheaper that will do the same thing. By using sound to alter brain waves, they can induce something that works like mild hypnosis, but give you control over yourself. I researched their "Sweet Dreams" audio suite while I was in college, and though I didn't have enough subjects (only had 4 or so) to have any significant results, there was a very visible trend to suggest that the cassettes (no cd's available at the time) were doing just what they said they would. Personally, I had my dream recall rates go from virtually none to 2-4 long dreams per night.
It's a little new-agey, but this stuff is all based in science with lab results, etc. Worth checking out.
the average user wants to just point and click [to install software]
And how is this different from Ximian's Red Carpet, or the Redhat Update agent that comes with fedora (and now points to free repositories)? It tells you when there are updates, and even has options to auto-update for you. A more knowledgeable user can easily add more apt/yum repositories for 3rd-party software. This blows away anything that OSX or Windows has - not only do you get updates for core packages, but for your favorite applications, too.
I haven't used Gimp in awhile - so tell me is it still missing the ability to do connected line segments with the selection tool, or is it still just "freehand"?
Never tried, but from a quick attempt just now, I'd say no. And yes, the ability to switch on-the-fly between freehand and "connect the points" selection mode is almost essential for me to do photo touchups. After my most recent attempt to test this, I also notice that GIMP's selection stuff is extremely confusing - somehow I created a selection that "select none" wouldn't unselect, and I could only paint inside of it.
Honestly, photoshops filters and layering/type effects are the biggest things I miss when working in GIMP. (well, other than the tool names/hotkeys, but I've been using photoshop since at least version 2.5 and am used to names like "marquee" instead of "rectangular selection" and "eliptical selection", and that's not really a power/feature difference - although photoshop's handling of hotkeys for temporarily switching tools, zooming, etc. do seem to work better for me than GIMP stuff.)
On the other hand, GIMP's scripting implementations make it a lot more powerful than photoshop in that respect, so like I said, it's getting better, and will eventually catch up and presumably surpass Photoshop.
Why would 99% of legitimate users ever need to scan a bill?
Maybe not 99%, but I can see a need for graphic artists to use currency (or pieces of currency) in graphics projects. Heck, how is the treasury department supposed to advertise their new peach-colored bills if their graphic artists can't load the images into Photoshop to create the ads in the first place? It's not like people have much choice about which graphics program to use - GIMP is getting better, but it's still nowhere near as powerful as Photoshop.
By using Gnome you are re-affirming your American ideals and supporting the open doctrine of truth, liberty, and justice for all.
Yeah, even if they don't ask for it, don't want it, and fight you to prevent it from happening. How "free" is so-called freedom that's shoved down your throat?
Seriously - gnome, kde, whatever.. As long as they all interoperate (which could use some work, but is improving), choice is a good thing.
Considering 99% of the 70+ million people out there with digital copies of their songs in WMV, or MP3 have never heard of OGG
Considering that 99% of them think that the only difference between wma, aac, mp3, ogg, rma and others are those three letters on the end of the filenames, I think that Apple and others have a lot of other work ahead of them, too.
The fact that you have a secure method to communicate with X, Y, and Z becomes evidence that the four of you might have something to hide.
Um, of course there are things to hide. They're called trade secrets, passwords, customer credit card info, etc. There are reasons why things like SSH and IPSEC were designed, and I'm guessing that at least 99.999% of them were completely legitimate.
Remember, in the past, it took a warrant to get a wire tap, but since the Patriot Act and its relatives, no warrant is needed. The FBI or whoever can just start a tap on anyone they claim is involved in "terrorism" (which happens to include drug dealing and other similar crimes now). If we're talking VOIP, they could just start random data feeds, archiving everything they need, or just scanning the conversations to find people who might be saying subversive things. It's a scary thought.
How do they propose to tap VOIP conversations over private networks? I can understand how federal regulations might get them permission to tap into the networks of the growing VOIP phone providers, but a lot of people (companies, geeks) set up their own internal VOIP networks over IPSEC, secure VLAN's and other such things that would be nearly(?) impossible to detect as VOIP traffic. Not to mention p2p type VOIP clients like those built into the various instant messenging programs that are, well, peer to peer, and don't go through some central server.
greenhouse gases (like CO2) would help plants grow, and that would make it cheaper and easier to grow food for our growing world population
We don't have any trouble growing enough food to feed teh world's population - there area more than enough resources. The problem is that those who have don't want to share with those who don't. So in countries like the US, when there are fears that if all fields are farmed, it would cause inflation, the FDA pays farmers not to grow anything, instead of subsidizing them to grow food that could be sent as aid to so-called 3rd-world countries. All of this is about economics.
Global warming, on the other hand, is an actual scientifically-demonstrated fact - the average temperature of the planet is rising, and has been for a long time. Whether this is due to primarily to human interaction or (more likely) is a natural stage in planetary evolution that has been horribly accelerated by human interaction is up for debate.
Pros? Well, sun tans look nice for a few years until you get skin cancer. Air conditioner salesmen will get rich. Not really anything I'd trade for cool temperatures and biodiversity.
Most DSL connections are charged per GB of transfer
Huh? Since when? I've been a DSL subscriber (on 4-5 different providers) in two states over the past 4 or so years, and have never seen size limitations. In fact, the only limit I've seen, other than the obvious speed limitations, is a lower cost 2-hours-on/2-hours-off plan offered by QWest.
But if you're concerned, get a real DSL ISP who won't cap your speeds, block ports, and will actually believe that you know what you're doing (and still give you tech support) when you tell them that you're running a linux-based firewall with a small server farm behind it.
And yet most of these "improvements" really are that. Microsoft improved upon Apple's original ideas, and then Apple made things better with OSX. I see things in the mockups (like the "drag other stuff here" sections) that seems pretty new to me. And so far, the linux dialogs are the only ones I've found that let me type an entire path into the "file" box - this alone is a HUGE convenience for a console-geek like myself. They may all borrow from each other, but there have been improvements along the way.
I work for one of the more prominent server integrators. We're a small company, but have a number of large clients (realnetworks, MIT, several divisions of Microsoft) and are growing quickly. One market that the owners haven't tried to move into is the desktop market. Sure, we do build/sell desktops as a favor to customers who want them, but we can't compete with a company like Dell, who can sell an entire machine for less than we pay wholesale for just the motherboard and CPU.
So we've focused on a different market. There is no "Dell or Compaq" in the server market - sure they sell rackmount machines, but they can't get the same discounts on them as they do on desktop hardware, so small companies like us can compete with the "big guys" (and we usually come out below their prices). We also offer better quality workmanship and customized modifications (something that can't always be said of our competitors) - the case manufacturers don't always understand that 1/16 of an inch tall or wide can make a difference between "fits" and "doesn't fit" in a rack, or that certain pieces of metal
sticking up might short out certain motherboards.
I agree. From the article posting, which says that "75% of web connections do not use a browser" I assumed that this meant that 75% of http_referer codes were coming up NULL (eg. the user clicked on a URL in an email or IM). However, when I clicked to read the article, it became quite clear that it's "75% of INTERNET connections are not web browsers".
Come on, people, this is Slashdot. You should know better than to think that "web" and "internet" are synonymous!
*Not* drinking caffeine (a painkiller) means that now I feel the migraines I've apparently been getting for a few years (according to my doctor). They're pretty infrequent, though, so I just keep a bottle of aspirin around.
Funny. My mom's migraines almost completely stopped when she stopped drinking coffee.
Why is it that Apple has, what, 2% of the market, when Dell, which doesn't innovate at all in its product, has a huge chunk of the market?
Could it possibly be because Dell doesn't have to compete with Microsoft? People have always been afraid to switch to MacOS because it's "incompatible" with the rest of the (business) world. OSX is changing this by including tools like samba, but it's a slow battle.
Microsoft have had their share of vunerabilities over the last year but not significantly more than linux has
Yes, they may have. But unlike Windows, all of the linux software had patched versions out within a matter of hours. You are correct, however, in that it's up to the admins to apply the patches, but in my experience, linux admins are a lot more vigilant about this sort of thing.
Also, no linux "virus" ever filled my inbox with hundreds of huge attachments claiming that I needed to update Windows or see the latest cool screensaver.
Oh, and if you're using firewall "software" in linux, you're doing something wrong. All you need is a little knowhow and iptables (or even ipchains), and you'll see that machine FAR outperform any non-kernel-based solutions.
Similar studies about printed media have shown that page-scans for right-left readers are almost mirrored from those of left-right readers. Since most web pages follow the top/left nav/margin rule, I'm curious how this affects readers who spend the rest of their time reading right-to-left (Hebrew, Arabic, etc.).
Sorry folks, a programmer with no degree but lots of Open Source experience will still have a tougher time getting a job than a C.S. student with no experience.
I'm not so sure about that. Every job I've interviewed for was more interested in the fact that I had experience (demonstrated by having their programmers look at my code) than the fact that I don't have a CS degree (my degrees are in other fields). I've been programming professionally since just out of high school (makes a good side-job in college), and those 13+ years of experience have made a difference in my getting (and keeping!) jobs.
Granted, I'm talking about industry-experience, not specifically open-source experience, and just because you write some open source software doesn't make you a good coder. But experience and demonstrated skill will almost always outweigh a degree with no experience to back it up.
Whereas in the original series we just had to take for granted that the Cylons were the embodiment of evil, now we understand why
I didn't get that at all. In fact, what I saw was more of a "we have to kill them before they try to wipe us out again" mentality from the Cylons. This came through especially at the end, when the human-like Cylons were debating chasing down the fleeing humans - "We must, or they will someday come after us again; it's their nature."
This, coupled with the romance between Cylon and human, makes them a very believable (and downright "human") enemy, that is motivated by more than just a sense of evil - love, revenge, self-preservation. I don't remember much from the original series, but I thought that the mini series created some very strong characteristics and motivations in most of their main characters, and look forward to any series that SciFi might come up with (that, and I was upset to have them leave it essentially at a cliff hanger).
their real customers would seem to be the [book buyers]
Don't discount the revenue of advertisers to retailers. If Amazon is anything like most grocery/department stores, they get a lot of money for product placement. When I was just out of high school, I worked for a company that was paid to go around to grocery stores, take down a bunch of product from the shelves and put it back up in a different order. Why? Because the stores don't own the layout on the shelves - certain products do (in my case, Gillette happened to own the shaving cream and deodorant shelf layouts).
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On the other hand, they're free, and you can add your own features if you want. I'm a happy mythtv user who didn't like its mythweb module. So I rewrote it and gave it back, and now the project is better than ever (imho, the web interface to mythtv makes it more useful than any other PVR solution - I don't have to walk into the other room to set up or manage recordings, or can schedule recordings I've forgotten about before leaving on vacation).
I mean, really, they're feeling sorry because a company that makes money by doing something illegal is going out of business?
The prices listed for the actual froogle results are as as correct as the vendors say they are, since they come from vendor-supplied feeds (I know, I had to write a script to do this for my company). As for the other results, did you miss the little qualifier that the put above them? "The results below were automatically extracted from web pages. Price and category information are uncertain." None of the other listings that you mentioned do this - in fact, I don't know of any other price-search service that does this.
Of course, the annoying thing about this is that the price filters don't affect these items, either. On the other hand, froogle is still listed as beta, so it can only get better.
The Monroe Institute has something a lot cheaper that will do the same thing. By using sound to alter brain waves, they can induce something that works like mild hypnosis, but give you control over yourself. I researched their "Sweet Dreams" audio suite while I was in college, and though I didn't have enough subjects (only had 4 or so) to have any significant results, there was a very visible trend to suggest that the cassettes (no cd's available at the time) were doing just what they said they would. Personally, I had my dream recall rates go from virtually none to 2-4 long dreams per night. It's a little new-agey, but this stuff is all based in science with lab results, etc. Worth checking out.
And how is this different from Ximian's Red Carpet, or the Redhat Update agent that comes with fedora (and now points to free repositories)? It tells you when there are updates, and even has options to auto-update for you. A more knowledgeable user can easily add more apt/yum repositories for 3rd-party software. This blows away anything that OSX or Windows has - not only do you get updates for core packages, but for your favorite applications, too.
Never tried, but from a quick attempt just now, I'd say no. And yes, the ability to switch on-the-fly between freehand and "connect the points" selection mode is almost essential for me to do photo touchups. After my most recent attempt to test this, I also notice that GIMP's selection stuff is extremely confusing - somehow I created a selection that "select none" wouldn't unselect, and I could only paint inside of it.
Honestly, photoshops filters and layering/type effects are the biggest things I miss when working in GIMP. (well, other than the tool names/hotkeys, but I've been using photoshop since at least version 2.5 and am used to names like "marquee" instead of "rectangular selection" and "eliptical selection", and that's not really a power/feature difference - although photoshop's handling of hotkeys for temporarily switching tools, zooming, etc. do seem to work better for me than GIMP stuff.)
On the other hand, GIMP's scripting implementations make it a lot more powerful than photoshop in that respect, so like I said, it's getting better, and will eventually catch up and presumably surpass Photoshop.
Maybe not 99%, but I can see a need for graphic artists to use currency (or pieces of currency) in graphics projects. Heck, how is the treasury department supposed to advertise their new peach-colored bills if their graphic artists can't load the images into Photoshop to create the ads in the first place? It's not like people have much choice about which graphics program to use - GIMP is getting better, but it's still nowhere near as powerful as Photoshop.
Yeah, even if they don't ask for it, don't want it, and fight you to prevent it from happening. How "free" is so-called freedom that's shoved down your throat?
Seriously - gnome, kde, whatever.. As long as they all interoperate (which could use some work, but is improving), choice is a good thing.
Considering that 99% of them think that the only difference between wma, aac, mp3, ogg, rma and others are those three letters on the end of the filenames, I think that Apple and others have a lot of other work ahead of them, too.
Um, of course there are things to hide. They're called trade secrets, passwords, customer credit card info, etc. There are reasons why things like SSH and IPSEC were designed, and I'm guessing that at least 99.999% of them were completely legitimate.
Remember, in the past, it took a warrant to get a wire tap, but since the Patriot Act and its relatives, no warrant is needed. The FBI or whoever can just start a tap on anyone they claim is involved in "terrorism" (which happens to include drug dealing and other similar crimes now). If we're talking VOIP, they could just start random data feeds, archiving everything they need, or just scanning the conversations to find people who might be saying subversive things. It's a scary thought.
How do they propose to tap VOIP conversations over private networks? I can understand how federal regulations might get them permission to tap into the networks of the growing VOIP phone providers, but a lot of people (companies, geeks) set up their own internal VOIP networks over IPSEC, secure VLAN's and other such things that would be nearly(?) impossible to detect as VOIP traffic. Not to mention p2p type VOIP clients like those built into the various instant messenging programs that are, well, peer to peer, and don't go through some central server.
We don't have any trouble growing enough food to feed teh world's population - there area more than enough resources. The problem is that those who have don't want to share with those who don't. So in countries like the US, when there are fears that if all fields are farmed, it would cause inflation, the FDA pays farmers not to grow anything, instead of subsidizing them to grow food that could be sent as aid to so-called 3rd-world countries. All of this is about economics.
Global warming, on the other hand, is an actual scientifically-demonstrated fact - the average temperature of the planet is rising, and has been for a long time. Whether this is due to primarily to human interaction or (more likely) is a natural stage in planetary evolution that has been horribly accelerated by human interaction is up for debate.
Pros? Well, sun tans look nice for a few years until you get skin cancer. Air conditioner salesmen will get rich. Not really anything I'd trade for cool temperatures and biodiversity.
Huh? Since when? I've been a DSL subscriber (on 4-5 different providers) in two states over the past 4 or so years, and have never seen size limitations. In fact, the only limit I've seen, other than the obvious speed limitations, is a lower cost 2-hours-on/2-hours-off plan offered by QWest.
But if you're concerned, get a real DSL ISP who won't cap your speeds, block ports, and will actually believe that you know what you're doing (and still give you tech support) when you tell them that you're running a linux-based firewall with a small server farm behind it.
And yet most of these "improvements" really are that. Microsoft improved upon Apple's original ideas, and then Apple made things better with OSX. I see things in the mockups (like the "drag other stuff here" sections) that seems pretty new to me. And so far, the linux dialogs are the only ones I've found that let me type an entire path into the "file" box - this alone is a HUGE convenience for a console-geek like myself. They may all borrow from each other, but there have been improvements along the way.
So we've focused on a different market. There is no "Dell or Compaq" in the server market - sure they sell rackmount machines, but they can't get the same discounts on them as they do on desktop hardware, so small companies like us can compete with the "big guys" (and we usually come out below their prices). We also offer better quality workmanship and customized modifications (something that can't always be said of our competitors) - the case manufacturers don't always understand that 1/16 of an inch tall or wide can make a difference between "fits" and "doesn't fit" in a rack, or that certain pieces of metal sticking up might short out certain motherboards.
Come on, people, this is Slashdot. You should know better than to think that "web" and "internet" are synonymous!
Funny. My mom's migraines almost completely stopped when she stopped drinking coffee.
ps. Bamboo Garden rocks.
Funny, Apple says otherwise:
Power and battery
* Built-in rechargeable lithium ion battery (630 mAh)
Could it possibly be because Dell doesn't have to compete with Microsoft? People have always been afraid to switch to MacOS because it's "incompatible" with the rest of the (business) world. OSX is changing this by including tools like samba, but it's a slow battle.
Yes, they may have. But unlike Windows, all of the linux software had patched versions out within a matter of hours. You are correct, however, in that it's up to the admins to apply the patches, but in my experience, linux admins are a lot more vigilant about this sort of thing.
Also, no linux "virus" ever filled my inbox with hundreds of huge attachments claiming that I needed to update Windows or see the latest cool screensaver.
Oh, and if you're using firewall "software" in linux, you're doing something wrong. All you need is a little knowhow and iptables (or even ipchains), and you'll see that machine FAR outperform any non-kernel-based solutions.
Similar studies about printed media have shown that page-scans for right-left readers are almost mirrored from those of left-right readers. Since most web pages follow the top/left nav/margin rule, I'm curious how this affects readers who spend the rest of their time reading right-to-left (Hebrew, Arabic, etc.).
I'm not so sure about that. Every job I've interviewed for was more interested in the fact that I had experience (demonstrated by having their programmers look at my code) than the fact that I don't have a CS degree (my degrees are in other fields). I've been programming professionally since just out of high school (makes a good side-job in college), and those 13+ years of experience have made a difference in my getting (and keeping!) jobs.
Granted, I'm talking about industry-experience, not specifically open-source experience, and just because you write some open source software doesn't make you a good coder. But experience and demonstrated skill will almost always outweigh a degree with no experience to back it up.
I didn't get that at all. In fact, what I saw was more of a "we have to kill them before they try to wipe us out again" mentality from the Cylons. This came through especially at the end, when the human-like Cylons were debating chasing down the fleeing humans - "We must, or they will someday come after us again; it's their nature."
This, coupled with the romance between Cylon and human, makes them a very believable (and downright "human") enemy, that is motivated by more than just a sense of evil - love, revenge, self-preservation. I don't remember much from the original series, but I thought that the mini series created some very strong characteristics and motivations in most of their main characters, and look forward to any series that SciFi might come up with (that, and I was upset to have them leave it essentially at a cliff hanger).
Don't discount the revenue of advertisers to retailers. If Amazon is anything like most grocery/department stores, they get a lot of money for product placement. When I was just out of high school, I worked for a company that was paid to go around to grocery stores, take down a bunch of product from the shelves and put it back up in a different order. Why? Because the stores don't own the layout on the shelves - certain products do (in my case, Gillette happened to own the shaving cream and deodorant shelf layouts).
But this has nothing to do with patents.