I wonder if anyone is reading this -- I'm posting it a bit late, but a thought struck me.
We reboot (some) computer systems to restore a stable environment. This can be compared to a revolution in a country.
Now-a-days, we have open source developers making systems that need very little rebooting.
I wonder what this would be like when applied to government. E-Voting on any particularly interesting issue. Get up in the morning, head to issues.gov, vote on the 5 that interest you, read the paper, and go to work.
Just a thought.
Disclaimer: I'm lazy........but does anyone have any links to any studies that talk about this?
That probably has to do with differences in hardware -- the parent doesn't seem incompetent to me, at least. =P
The interesting thing is that while Microsoft has all the hardware companies publishing Windows drivers before they ship the hardware, and those same companies pay relatively tiny amounts of attention to Linux (if any), that Microsoft has the hardware compatibility problems that it does (Read: Win2K - do some research on driver oddities, even new hardware) and yet (that I know of) Linux isn't too difficult to get working.
I'm sure there are plenty of exceptions, but I haven't heard of any major studies on Linux hardware compatibility. I just know that I keep updating my hardware and I only have to install a RAID and video driver to get everything working.
...and prefer light-weight soft languages like Visual Basic and Java where they can do rapid programming and where they don't need to care much about good software design.
How much Java work have you done? It's nearly impossible to begin a Java program until you're already done, thanks to the hardlined-OOP standards. Of course I'm generalizing...
And BTW, it's Assembly Language, not Assembler. *g* As they say, a common mistake...
I hope you're being sarcastic when you mention a "fair" bias...
I recall they took down an article regarding Palladium the other week. I didn't personally deem it particularly negative to MS, but it wasn't a positive post presenting a Clean, Marketable Image (TM).
Why pay more for something that should be free? Privacy over a telephone line should be guaranteed, IMO.
Why? Because, *in theory*, people run the country, and the people want privacy. Thus, we tell the gov't we want privacy, and they do so (*sigh* in theory).
Corporate greed is a given -- our market is *BASED* on that guarantee.
What we need is a semi-reliable government. We can't count on regular people to handle this, they're ignorant and apathetic, a fact which the government was *BASED* on.
Do I see this happening? No. Which is why I'm idly considering where I want to move in 5-10 years...
There are too many battles for the common person to fight every day. People like you love to tell us, "Well, don't buy it!"
The problem with that is, most corporations try and take advantage of the populus anyway -- that's a lot of battles to fight. Besides the fact that people with lives don't have that kind of time, most folks are ignorant and apathetic anyway.
This is why we invented "Government." These elected people spend their entire day fighting the battles we don't want to, at least in theory. It's an imperfect system, but it's better than depending on the people to solve every issue that comes up instead of doing something productive. You can study examples in history for such examples.
That's not to totally excuse him by any means, but just to point out that it's not nearly as black and white as you point out.
You are correct, I wasn't meaning to make it sound so black and white -- I am familiar with history and I do know why some of the things he did were helpful. I was just bringing that up in a general way, sorry for not being more specific.
Bush is NOT taking citizens on the grounds of unamerican activities or what have you.
That's not what I said -- I said (read the bottom of my post) that it is possible for this to happen, if a gov't official becomes corrupt. That ability is not a mole hill.
We're talking about a handful of non-US citizens that are believed to be associated with terrorists... This is not "anyone." This is not on "any grounds." You are distorting the facts.
I'll give you that -- only multi-nationals are being arrested, at least in the US. But while "any grounds", truthfully, is not completely correct, they may arrest anyone suspected of being related to terrorism. They try them under non-public military courts.
I'm sorry, but I'm absolutely opposed to the idea of releasing someone who sneaks into this country illegally, who is KNOWN to be involved with terrorists organizations, either back into this country on bail or to deport them
People who are KNOWN to be involved should be arrested immediately -- and they are. But this "Patriot Act" goes a bit farther than that. It uses the word 'suspected', which is a very general word with no specific degree....merely because we can't find sufficient evidence to convict them in a traditional court of the more serious crime that they're probably involved in.
We can't go around arresting people, even foreigners (although we know foreigners have no rights, they're not Americans!). If you have not enough evidence, you have no grounds to arrest. Depriving someone of due process because you have a hunch is wrong, regardless of what 'clues' you have to terrorist activities.
If a woman dies, her husband is a suspect. But the police don't (or at least shouldn't) arrest him until they have *evidence* linking him to the crime. They then hold him while they gather *more* evidence to *prove* he did it. While I will digress that many of these arrests of suspected terrorists are handled in the same manner, I'm also confident that many are based on much less of a foundation.
When you have solid evidence, arresting someone is expected. But you can fit the bill of being 'suspected of being related to terrorsts' without hardly any hard evidence. And after the 9/11, people are crying "Witch hunt!" I know some of them personally.
D) As for history, this cuts both ways. History has shown time and time again that you can't placate bullies, whether they be dictators in charge of a country or a terrorist leader. Some of the same policies that Bush has enacted are policies that should have been enacted in WWII and are being attacked by people like you.
At the risk of sounding like I'm throwing rocks at glass houses, if you want to dissect my argument, give me some examples.
E) It's a blatant stretch to assert that Bush, or anyone in this government, is so far gone in their change of policy that they're beyond control of the people.
It will be very difficult to turn a democracy into a police state, or anything similar. But the problem is, when there is so much secrecy surrounding the issue, and when this is done only to a minority, it is difficult for the public to pin down. That is what I am afraid of -- a small minority having their rights violated. That is happening now (Read: Due process), and has the potential to get worse. Once the government is given a power, it will be difficult to take that power away. This issue will last a long time, but it cannot last forever in the degree it is perceived to be now.
The software resellers will. Microsoft, Adobe, etc. etc.
But the vast majority of software development (75% or so as I recall) is done in-house. For example, my company needed a system to develop documentation. So I took SDMS, an open source 'Simple Documentation Managament System,' and worked with it. In the end, that didn't fit our needs, so we developed a proprietary system, but you get the idea. Most development is done for in-house.
Companies will eventually stop writing software and reap the benefits over the coming years (Read: Windows 98 is still $90 for the UPGRADE in Best Buy), and will turn to a support business model. My company is looking at that model. Instead of out selling point being our product, our selling point will be our entire solution. We sell the software, but what we're really hooking the client on is the fact that we will provide for their every need in regards to our software - custom solutions, support, setup, maintenance, everything. They pay us and they don't worry about it anymore because we'll handle it.
Support models are where software is going. Open source development methods are better than closed source in almost every area (Read: speed of development, reliability, security, creativity), and they're free. Software, IMO, is going to be commoditized and we'll be looking at selling a support package.
I don't know if I'm missing something in your argument, but Linux doesn't need MS Office.
OpenOffice AbiWord, gnucash, gnumeric koffice
There are a few others that I can't remember off the top of my head and am too lazy to look up.
I'm a college student -- I haven't used office except in the comp. labs in a long time. And even when I generate MS Word documents on Word, I read them and print them and save them to be read in Word again fine.
You have an interesting point and analysis regarding Microsoft's incursion into the Linux Office market, but as I see it, if they keep Office on the Windows OS, it doesn't hurt us any.
Ximian is working on a control panel like application, and although it loses a bit of the power from the original Gnome Config, it's quite similar to Windows and easy to use.
In my experience, a RH 7.1 install w/Ximian GNOME involves very few steps. I found it to be less painful than a Windows (to be fair, 98) install.
It's not exactly where you and I would like it *yet*, but it's damn slick, and very close, at least IMO.
I have a habit of telling a semi-friend of mine RTFM when he asks for help. But that's because he's doing system administration.
The whole point of this article is to promote help to newbies who just want to use Linux as a desktop. While many people were forced to read manuals for Windows, these days you can ask the 8 year old next door. We need to make Linux that easy to learn, but for now, the best we can do is give help with what we've got -- or it'll take a much longer time to get a large user base.
I'll bite simply because I'd feel ashamed if I didn't say something...
This means that, yes, sometimes people do need to be held without a public trial.
Everyone looks back on McCarthy as a retard, with hindsight, but now we are allowing the government the same, if not more, power.
The day the government has the ability to arrest anyone and hide them away and do what they will to them without public knowledge is the day we become like Nazi Germany, Stalinist Russia, etc. That day has come.
From what I understand, people are being arrested and held for extended periods of time without being charged with anything. Trials and prisoner treatment are not observable by the public, in at least some cases.
Freedom is based upon certain rights, one of which is Due Process (TM). These rights, in the US, are unalienable. Nobody can take them away, under the constitution. To take away due process is in direct violation of the constitution, and why there isn't a shitstorm over this I have no clue.
The bottom line is that it violates the constitution. The bottom line is that while they might not do anything wrong with it (honestly, do you believe this?), giving them this power allows them to do what they want -- and it is hard to take given powers away (Read history). And if any involved government official becomes corrupt, this power *will* be abused.
As a side note, another popular idea that some think this country was founded on is that of open government -- the idea that citizens should be able to monitor the vast majority of government activities.
A man went into a novelty shop and saw an item that caught his fancy almost immediately. It was a stuffed rat. The man couldn't take his eyes off it, and finally asked how much it cost. The answer was "$79.95, but if you buy it, you can't return it for any reason." The man thought this was a bit odd, but he was really taken by the stuffed rat so he bought it.
As he headed down the street with the stuffed rat, several live rats started following him. He thought this was really odd, but he kept walking. Within a few blocks, he had a huge pack of rats behind him. When he got to the river, he threw the stuffed rat into the river, and all the live rats jumped into the river and drowned.
The man returned to the shop. As soon as he walked in, the owner said "I told you you couldn't return the stuffed rat!"
The man said "No! I don't want to return it! I was wondering if you had any stuffed lawyers."
Laugh (TM). =)
The pendulum swings, and we're heading to the age of complete political correctness, corporate control, and Rule By Lawyer.
Fireworks are labled to be "dangerous - emits flaming balls," etc., because some moron out there got the idea that he could get some money by sueing a company for his own stupidity. There will always be people like this, and we can't just kill them, so we must depend on the courts to drop cases such as this. But they don't.
(Note: Some things need to be labeled, e.g. coffee that is served 30-50 degrees hotter than usual, but this has all gone too far.).
Our freedom to sue others comes out of the idea that nobody is above the law and that a citizen can take matters into his own hands, through the courts, to earn his due (due to injury, theft, scams, etc.) to propagate good judgement over matters that might not be seen otherwise.
However, judges are now letting this get out of hand. As the parent poster said, 'intelligent law' is gone. Judges and lawyers feel a responsibility to the people to fix all matters, trivial or not, under the impression that they must fix the wrongs of the world. At least that's how I see it.
I suggest we all take special interest in the judicial system and those we elect to it, directly or otherwise.
Her ego is not inflated, she's expecting a user to understand cause and effect.
Example: Mouse moves up. Cursor moves up. Duh.
She also expects a person to remember a simple three step process after she's told it to him/her 10 times. If your college professor told you how to do something for a project 10 times and you didn't remember it, what do you think your grade would be?
Oh, and BTW, programmers aren't geniuses. I know a few genius programmers personally, but programming is no harder than speaking Spanish as a second language (from English as your first).
Why do I say this? Because I was a non-programmer 6 years ago, and I can remember what learning it was like. I also know that I'm not particularly 'gifted'. Oh, and I can hold a meager conversation in Spanish.
My parents can barely surf the web, but they could program a for loop and understand object oriented priniples through my babbling about projects I'm doing.
And regarding your comments on computers remembering tasks... let me ask you this. You turn left in your car a lot, correct? When you barely turn the wheel to the left, should your car automatically make it a 90 degree turn? Of course not...
Computers are the same. A desktop can't know every move you're going to make. An ATM should... it doesn't need to be that powerful. An E-Machine possibly should, at least for some things. But a fully fledged desktop? This is why I don't use Word -- because it assumes to much.
ok..why should you HAVE to remember them ? think about it... user interfaces are meant for the user. the computer should do all the handholding necessary if a user cant remember the steps required.
It's argueable that walking through a door and locking it is as abstract and simple as copy and pasting. When was the last time a door held your hand through the process?
I love OSS because: 1) I have the freedom to choose *every* aspect of the software 2) I get great quality the majority of the time 3) It is free in cost
Almost everywhere you go, a corporation has their fingers into something. Almost everywhere you go, ads cover everything.
But I can get away from that with OSS. When I use OSS and related areas (Read: Slashdot), I don't deal with that. No corps. who play pimp. Relatively rare ads. Nothing seems to be shoved down my throat, and I get good quality. Why? Because OSS people in general have half a brain, relatively good morals and just "love the game."
Money is needed for everything. But isn't the backbone of OSS the love of the game? We do it because we want to, because we love to?
My only problem was downloading drivers for my NIC card, and I will admit, that was a b*tch. However, the card was new, and it's supported in newer versions.
You're having sound problems, hmm? I remember the first time I installed 6.2, I had to run sndconfig manually to get my sound card initialized. Maybe try this?
Also, IRC, mailing lists, forums, etc., are *very* helpful. I can't stress this enough! Find a related IRC chat or forum or such and ask for help. This applies to anything Linux. Often when asking for help about a certain program or project, you'll wind up talking to one of the developers in person. People do OSS (Open Source Software) because they love to do it, and it really does show.
Please feel free to email me with more information, I'd be happy to help. =)
Links you might be interested in: linuxnewbie.com linuxdoc.org rpmfind.net
Try google for something similar to "Windows to Red Hat Linux transition guide." I'm sure there is a good one out there.
What's so difficult about making Red Hat do Windows tasks?
Try RH 7.1+ with Ximian GNOME as your desktop. AbiWord Gnumeric Spreadsheet OpenOffice Evolution Red Carpet GnuCash
I can open DOC, XLS, PPT, read email like in Outlook, update most any area of software on my computer, and manage my finances. I saw a nice pluging for Mozilla that you can buy for $30 or so to allow you to view nearly any movie format and tons and tons of other things in your browser (too tired to search for it).
Given the state my computer is in, my entire family could use it (or install it), and I'm the only one you could safely call 'computer literate' among my semi-close relatives, save perhaps my uncle.
I'm just jumping on this because I see a *lot* of Linux advocates and a lot more MS advocates that think Linux is too hard to use. However, recent versions of Red Hat, Mandrake and SuSE seem to be to the contrary.
And I've heard speculation that Microsoft's attempt to control the Internet has failed.
*sigh*
Hold me... I'm scared. =(
Well, only kidding, MS has spent the last few years upgrading the weapon in their hand from a slingshot to a 50mm cannon with armor piercing rounds and they're about to blow their leg off.
Slashdot Mirror
I wonder if anyone is reading this -- I'm posting it a bit late, but a thought struck me.
....but does anyone have any links to any studies that talk about this?
We reboot (some) computer systems to restore a stable environment. This can be compared to a revolution in a country.
Now-a-days, we have open source developers making systems that need very little rebooting.
I wonder what this would be like when applied to government. E-Voting on any particularly interesting issue. Get up in the morning, head to issues.gov, vote on the 5 that interest you, read the paper, and go to work.
Just a thought.
Disclaimer: I'm lazy....
Russian Military Advisor: Sir, we haven't been able to find a supercomputer cheap enough to put in our new planes; our funding just isn't enough.
Russian General: Well, what options have we?
Advisor: Well, sir, we could take the 486's from our floggers and move them over to our new jets.
General: Would that be enough computing power to handle targeting data from our new, advanced systems?
Advisor: No sir, but can you imagine a Beowulf cluster of...
That probably has to do with differences in hardware -- the parent doesn't seem incompetent to me, at least. =P
The interesting thing is that while Microsoft has all the hardware companies publishing Windows drivers before they ship the hardware, and those same companies pay relatively tiny amounts of attention to Linux (if any), that Microsoft has the hardware compatibility problems that it does (Read: Win2K - do some research on driver oddities, even new hardware) and yet (that I know of) Linux isn't too difficult to get working.
I'm sure there are plenty of exceptions, but I haven't heard of any major studies on Linux hardware compatibility. I just know that I keep updating my hardware and I only have to install a RAID and video driver to get everything working.
I know this is semi-redundant, but I couldn't help myself...
As they say -- hack some low security and get in through the back door (user's desktop) and then go for the big stuff.
You've seen Hackers, right? =P
Don't take this as a flame, it's just an honest observation, but I hope you're not a systems admin.
...and prefer light-weight soft languages like Visual Basic and Java where they can do rapid programming and where they don't need to care much about good software design.
How much Java work have you done? It's nearly impossible to begin a Java program until you're already done, thanks to the hardlined-OOP standards. Of course I'm generalizing...
And BTW, it's Assembly Language, not Assembler. *g* As they say, a common mistake...
*nit-pick pick... pick pick pick*
I hope you're being sarcastic when you mention a "fair" bias...
I recall they took down an article regarding Palladium the other week. I didn't personally deem it particularly negative to MS, but it wasn't a positive post presenting a Clean, Marketable Image (TM).
Why pay more for something that should be free? Privacy over a telephone line should be guaranteed, IMO.
Why? Because, *in theory*, people run the country, and the people want privacy. Thus, we tell the gov't we want privacy, and they do so (*sigh* in theory).
Corporate greed is a given -- our market is *BASED* on that guarantee.
What we need is a semi-reliable government. We can't count on regular people to handle this, they're ignorant and apathetic, a fact which the government was *BASED* on.
Do I see this happening? No. Which is why I'm idly considering where I want to move in 5-10 years...
*sob*
Boy meets world...
There are too many battles for the common person to fight every day. People like you love to tell us, "Well, don't buy it!"
The problem with that is, most corporations try and take advantage of the populus anyway -- that's a lot of battles to fight. Besides the fact that people with lives don't have that kind of time, most folks are ignorant and apathetic anyway.
This is why we invented "Government." These elected people spend their entire day fighting the battles we don't want to, at least in theory. It's an imperfect system, but it's better than depending on the people to solve every issue that comes up instead of doing something productive. You can study examples in history for such examples.
I typed the link incorrectly.
It's just http://www.redhat.com
That's not to totally excuse him by any means, but just to point out that it's not nearly as black and white as you point out.
... This is not "anyone." This is not on "any grounds." You are distorting the facts.
...merely because we can't find sufficient evidence to convict them in a traditional court of the more serious crime that they're probably involved in.
You are correct, I wasn't meaning to make it sound so black and white -- I am familiar with history and I do know why some of the things he did were helpful. I was just bringing that up in a general way, sorry for not being more specific.
Bush is NOT taking citizens on the grounds of unamerican activities or what have you.
That's not what I said -- I said (read the bottom of my post) that it is possible for this to happen, if a gov't official becomes corrupt. That ability is not a mole hill.
We're talking about a handful of non-US citizens that are believed to be associated with terrorists
I'll give you that -- only multi-nationals are being arrested, at least in the US. But while "any grounds", truthfully, is not completely correct, they may arrest anyone suspected of being related to terrorism. They try them under non-public military courts.
I'm sorry, but I'm absolutely opposed to the idea of releasing someone who sneaks into this country illegally, who is KNOWN to be involved with terrorists organizations, either back into this country on bail or to deport them
People who are KNOWN to be involved should be arrested immediately -- and they are. But this "Patriot Act" goes a bit farther than that. It uses the word 'suspected', which is a very general word with no specific degree.
We can't go around arresting people, even foreigners (although we know foreigners have no rights, they're not Americans!). If you have not enough evidence, you have no grounds to arrest. Depriving someone of due process because you have a hunch is wrong, regardless of what 'clues' you have to terrorist activities.
If a woman dies, her husband is a suspect. But the police don't (or at least shouldn't) arrest him until they have *evidence* linking him to the crime. They then hold him while they gather *more* evidence to *prove* he did it. While I will digress that many of these arrests of suspected terrorists are handled in the same manner, I'm also confident that many are based on much less of a foundation.
When you have solid evidence, arresting someone is expected. But you can fit the bill of being 'suspected of being related to terrorsts' without hardly any hard evidence. And after the 9/11, people are crying "Witch hunt!" I know some of them personally.
D) As for history, this cuts both ways. History has shown time and time again that you can't placate bullies, whether they be dictators in charge of a country or a terrorist leader. Some of the same policies that Bush has enacted are policies that should have been enacted in WWII and are being attacked by people like you.
At the risk of sounding like I'm throwing rocks at glass houses, if you want to dissect my argument, give me some examples.
E) It's a blatant stretch to assert that Bush, or anyone in this government, is so far gone in their change of policy that they're beyond control of the people.
It will be very difficult to turn a democracy into a police state, or anything similar. But the problem is, when there is so much secrecy surrounding the issue, and when this is done only to a minority, it is difficult for the public to pin down. That is what I am afraid of -- a small minority having their rights violated. That is happening now (Read: Due process), and has the potential to get worse. Once the government is given a power, it will be difficult to take that power away. This issue will last a long time, but it cannot last forever in the degree it is perceived to be now.
Go help out at gnome.org or apply to Ximian or convince them to go open source. =)
The software resellers will. Microsoft, Adobe, etc. etc.
But the vast majority of software development (75% or so as I recall) is done in-house. For example, my company needed a system to develop documentation. So I took SDMS, an open source 'Simple Documentation Managament System,' and worked with it. In the end, that didn't fit our needs, so we developed a proprietary system, but you get the idea. Most development is done for in-house.
Companies will eventually stop writing software and reap the benefits over the coming years (Read: Windows 98 is still $90 for the UPGRADE in Best Buy), and will turn to a support business model. My company is looking at that model. Instead of out selling point being our product, our selling point will be our entire solution. We sell the software, but what we're really hooking the client on is the fact that we will provide for their every need in regards to our software - custom solutions, support, setup, maintenance, everything. They pay us and they don't worry about it anymore because we'll handle it.
Support models are where software is going. Open source development methods are better than closed source in almost every area (Read: speed of development, reliability, security, creativity), and they're free. Software, IMO, is going to be commoditized and we'll be looking at selling a support package.
I don't know if I'm missing something in your argument, but Linux doesn't need MS Office.
OpenOffice
AbiWord, gnucash, gnumeric
koffice
There are a few others that I can't remember off the top of my head and am too lazy to look up.
I'm a college student -- I haven't used office except in the comp. labs in a long time. And even when I generate MS Word documents on Word, I read them and print them and save them to be read in Word again fine.
You have an interesting point and analysis regarding Microsoft's incursion into the Linux Office market, but as I see it, if they keep Office on the Windows OS, it doesn't hurt us any.
Please point out any flaws in my argument. =)
Read:
Red Hat 7.x with the Ximian GNOME Desktop.
Ximian is working on a control panel like application, and although it loses a bit of the power from the original Gnome Config, it's quite similar to Windows and easy to use.
In my experience, a RH 7.1 install w/Ximian GNOME involves very few steps. I found it to be less painful than a Windows (to be fair, 98) install.
It's not exactly where you and I would like it *yet*, but it's damn slick, and very close, at least IMO.
Typically, I would agree with you 100%...
I have a habit of telling a semi-friend of mine RTFM when he asks for help. But that's because he's doing system administration.
The whole point of this article is to promote help to newbies who just want to use Linux as a desktop. While many people were forced to read manuals for Windows, these days you can ask the 8 year old next door. We need to make Linux that easy to learn, but for now, the best we can do is give help with what we've got -- or it'll take a much longer time to get a large user base.
I'll bite simply because I'd feel ashamed if I didn't say something...
This means that, yes, sometimes people do need to be held without a public trial.
Everyone looks back on McCarthy as a retard, with hindsight, but now we are allowing the government the same, if not more, power.
The day the government has the ability to arrest anyone and hide them away and do what they will to them without public knowledge is the day we become like Nazi Germany, Stalinist Russia, etc. That day has come.
From what I understand, people are being arrested and held for extended periods of time without being charged with anything. Trials and prisoner treatment are not observable by the public, in at least some cases.
Freedom is based upon certain rights, one of which is Due Process (TM). These rights, in the US, are unalienable. Nobody can take them away, under the constitution. To take away due process is in direct violation of the constitution, and why there isn't a shitstorm over this I have no clue.
The bottom line is that it violates the constitution. The bottom line is that while they might not do anything wrong with it (honestly, do you believe this?), giving them this power allows them to do what they want -- and it is hard to take given powers away (Read history). And if any involved government official becomes corrupt, this power *will* be abused.
As a side note, another popular idea that some think this country was founded on is that of open government -- the idea that citizens should be able to monitor the vast majority of government activities.
My sig does not apply to this post.
Putting a karma point on the line to point out good info by an AC:
Mod parent up +5 informative. =)
A man went into a novelty shop and saw an item that caught his fancy almost immediately. It was a stuffed rat. The man couldn't take his eyes off it, and finally asked how much it cost. The answer was "$79.95, but if you buy it, you can't return it for any reason." The man thought this was a bit odd, but he was really taken by the stuffed rat so he bought it.
As he headed down the street with the stuffed rat, several live rats started following him. He thought this was really odd, but he kept walking. Within a few blocks, he had a huge pack of rats behind him. When he got to the river, he threw the stuffed rat into the river, and all the live rats jumped into the river and drowned.
The man returned to the shop. As soon as he walked in, the owner said "I told you you couldn't return the stuffed rat!"
The man said "No! I don't want to return it! I was wondering if you had any stuffed lawyers."
Laugh (TM). =)
The pendulum swings, and we're heading to the age of complete political correctness, corporate control, and Rule By Lawyer.
Fireworks are labled to be "dangerous - emits flaming balls," etc., because some moron out there got the idea that he could get some money by sueing a company for his own stupidity. There will always be people like this, and we can't just kill them, so we must depend on the courts to drop cases such as this. But they don't.
(Note: Some things need to be labeled, e.g. coffee that is served 30-50 degrees hotter than usual, but this has all gone too far.).
Our freedom to sue others comes out of the idea that nobody is above the law and that a citizen can take matters into his own hands, through the courts, to earn his due (due to injury, theft, scams, etc.) to propagate good judgement over matters that might not be seen otherwise.
However, judges are now letting this get out of hand. As the parent poster said, 'intelligent law' is gone. Judges and lawyers feel a responsibility to the people to fix all matters, trivial or not, under the impression that they must fix the wrongs of the world. At least that's how I see it.
I suggest we all take special interest in the judicial system and those we elect to it, directly or otherwise.
Her ego is not inflated, she's expecting a user to understand cause and effect.
... user interfaces are meant for the user. the computer should do all the handholding necessary if a user cant remember the steps required.
Example:
Mouse moves up. Cursor moves up. Duh.
She also expects a person to remember a simple three step process after she's told it to him/her 10 times. If your college professor told you how to do something for a project 10 times and you didn't remember it, what do you think your grade would be?
Oh, and BTW, programmers aren't geniuses. I know a few genius programmers personally, but programming is no harder than speaking Spanish as a second language (from English as your first).
Why do I say this? Because I was a non-programmer 6 years ago, and I can remember what learning it was like. I also know that I'm not particularly 'gifted'. Oh, and I can hold a meager conversation in Spanish.
My parents can barely surf the web, but they could program a for loop and understand object oriented priniples through my babbling about projects I'm doing.
And regarding your comments on computers remembering tasks... let me ask you this. You turn left in your car a lot, correct? When you barely turn the wheel to the left, should your car automatically make it a 90 degree turn? Of course not...
Computers are the same. A desktop can't know every move you're going to make. An ATM should... it doesn't need to be that powerful. An E-Machine possibly should, at least for some things. But a fully fledged desktop? This is why I don't use Word -- because it assumes to much.
ok..why should you HAVE to remember them ? think about it
It's argueable that walking through a door and locking it is as abstract and simple as copy and pasting. When was the last time a door held your hand through the process?
I love OSS because:
1) I have the freedom to choose *every* aspect of the software
2) I get great quality the majority of the time
3) It is free in cost
Almost everywhere you go, a corporation has their fingers into something. Almost everywhere you go, ads cover everything.
But I can get away from that with OSS. When I use OSS and related areas (Read: Slashdot), I don't deal with that. No corps. who play pimp. Relatively rare ads. Nothing seems to be shoved down my throat, and I get good quality. Why? Because OSS people in general have half a brain, relatively good morals and just "love the game."
Money is needed for everything. But isn't the backbone of OSS the love of the game? We do it because we want to, because we love to?
Do we really want to change our orientation here?
Personally, I'm using:
Red Hat Linux 7.1 with XFS support and Ximian GNOME
My only problem was downloading drivers for my NIC card, and I will admit, that was a b*tch. However, the card was new, and it's supported in newer versions.
You're having sound problems, hmm? I remember the first time I installed 6.2, I had to run sndconfig manually to get my sound card initialized. Maybe try this?
Also, IRC, mailing lists, forums, etc., are *very* helpful. I can't stress this enough! Find a related IRC chat or forum or such and ask for help. This applies to anything Linux. Often when asking for help about a certain program or project, you'll wind up talking to one of the developers in person. People do OSS (Open Source Software) because they love to do it, and it really does show.
Please feel free to email me with more information, I'd be happy to help. =)
Links you might be interested in:
linuxnewbie.com
linuxdoc.org
rpmfind.net
Try google for something similar to "Windows to Red Hat Linux transition guide." I'm sure there is a good one out there.
I see Billy as an immoral man simply because of his quest to have so much control.
But in the end, he's a geek who just likes coming up with features and such, much like myself.
I don't like him as a man, but I don't think he's stoop that low.
That isn't to say that others at MS wouldn't, however. Ballmer scares me.
What's so difficult about making Red Hat do Windows tasks?
Try RH 7.1+ with Ximian GNOME as your desktop.
AbiWord
Gnumeric Spreadsheet
OpenOffice
Evolution
Red Carpet
GnuCash
I can open DOC, XLS, PPT, read email like in Outlook, update most any area of software on my computer, and manage my finances. I saw a nice pluging for Mozilla that you can buy for $30 or so to allow you to view nearly any movie format and tons and tons of other things in your browser (too tired to search for it).
Given the state my computer is in, my entire family could use it (or install it), and I'm the only one you could safely call 'computer literate' among my semi-close relatives, save perhaps my uncle.
I'm just jumping on this because I see a *lot* of Linux advocates and a lot more MS advocates that think Linux is too hard to use. However, recent versions of Red Hat, Mandrake and SuSE seem to be to the contrary.
Does anyone around here honestly think Microsoft employs a guy named "Vinny" who specializes in "knee-cap work?"
And I've heard speculation that Microsoft's attempt to control the Internet has failed.
*sigh*
Hold me... I'm scared. =(
Well, only kidding, MS has spent the last few years upgrading the weapon in their hand from a slingshot to a 50mm cannon with armor piercing rounds and they're about to blow their leg off.