I think software companies should bundle REAL things in the box, like manuals, action figures, cloth maps, anything to reward people for purchasing the package. A bunch of tossware would be pointless.
Unfortunately they stopped doing this a while ago for a good reason - paper, books, generally anything physical is expensive. Gone are the days when desktop publishing software would come with a 200 page manual describing the concepts of good publication design, when adventure game software would come with a 100 page color manual describing the history, culture, and civilation of the world created for the game, when operating system software would come with a dummie's guide to programming in BASIC, and teach basic programming constructs, when graphics manipulation software would come with an introduction describing how the human eye perceives color, textures, and shadows, and the history behind drawings and paintings in society.
Do we really want to encourage everyone in an entire city to take part in a single network which seems almost inherently insecure? I can't imagine they'd use any kind of WEP, as that would defeat the purpose of having a city-wide network. I know I feel a lot safer behind my router's firewall than I ever do warchalking.
Why couldn't you just treat it with the same trust as you do the internet? That is, always have a firewall between your system and the wireless connection.
3. They don't do it but that's not the point. They should. It's an easy menu item and it would be no problem to implement, since you can already do it by editing files. The problem is, who wants to memorize user-agent strings? These are simple and don't change, so why not code them in?
They shouldn't do it. What would be the point of user-agent strings if they were not accurate?
Now as for those who get new ones to "fix" the old ones, you have to consider that these days, with computer repairs still being relatively expensive, it can often be cheaper to just buy a new computer than to have to deal with an old one that's warranty has run out.
I don't think anyone gets a new computer to get rid of spyware (which is really just a different way of using the computer, anyways - there is nothing "broken", therefore nothing to "fix"). For sure, the average Joe realizes the absurdity of buying a new stereo because he turned the volume up and now wants the volume lower, or buying a new car because it got dirty, or buying a new house because he rearranged the furniture in the living room and doesn't like the new arrangement. Realize this: the average person is not as stupid as the mass media makes them out to be.
Now it might make sense to buy a new computer when the harddrive and power supply have failed, since as you mentioned, computer repairs are relatively expensive. This makes sense in the same way that buying a new car makes sense if you get into an accident and the total cost of repair approaches or exceeds the current value of the car. The average Joe realizes this.
From what I've seen, lots of people get new computers because they have extra cash and don't know what to spend it on. So they buy a new PC that provides a few days of titillation until the novelty wears off. The average Joe realizes this is what he is doing, but does it anyways in a desperate attempt to be happy. To this I respond: whatever floats your boat - it's your money, not mine.
Easy installation of any Linux software. Don't give me RPM-hell, dependency hell, command-line compiling, proprietary click-n-run depositories, or any other excuses. Only the Mac does it right: you drag the icon to your Applications folder. Voilà. The first distro to accomplish this will be king.
That's a very hard thing to do. The closest most distros have come is custom software repositories to serve packages in the right format for their distro. But as long as there is more than one linux, this problem will remain. It requires more then just a distro to solve this problem - arguably, apt repositories or emerge or similar already provide a solution from the distro's perspective. The other parts of the solution are not under the distro's control.
... that the good folks @ Google are prepared for their first massive *shrug* from the masses. It would take something extraordinary for me to switch from Firefox at this point. I would imagine the same from a lot of people. They could cash in on the IE-weary public, looking for a change, but those of us using Gecko-based browsing are quite fanatical about it.:)
*Maybe*, if they base their browser on mozilla/firefox, they could succeed more at bringing Gecko-based browsing to IE users than Firefox and Mozilla have. Mozilla/Firefox users will continue to use Mozilla/Firefox, but IE users might take a second look at GBrowser, with it's name brand recognition. If they like GBrowser, they might start investigating further and discover Firefox and related apps.
One thing I would like fixed is the XUL Error pages behaviour. Currently if I enter an invalid URL or something, it displays the error page, but the back button is disabled. Clicking Reload actually goes back to the previous page, and clicking Try Again tries to the load the page again, which is kind of counter-intuitive.
Of course I could use the message box errors, but those are just annoying (even more so with tabbed browsing, because you're more likely to be loading pages in the background).
Are they talking about sharing files and printers *across* a firewall? If you purposely make holes in your firewall to let others on the other side to access your files and printers, wouldn't you expect everyone on the other side to have access, unless you had some sort of special authentication process or IP based rule to only allow some access?
In other words... we're running into "That's not a bug, that's a feature!" terroritory. If you ask Windows to share your files and printers accross an IP-based networks, you should be sure that the network is separated by a real firewall from the rest of the Internet. Fail to do that, and you might as well expect this is going to happen.
If I hadn't read this article, I probably would have never known that I could (or at least there was intended functionality to let me) share files and printers across a firewall without letting everyone else on the other side of the firewall in.
If there's firewall security installed anywhere else on the way to the Internet, such as at the edge router where firewalls really belong, Windows XP isn't so dumb as to pierce that level of security.
Well it's not really Windows XP being not dumb enough to let outsiders in through the firewall, it's that it really can't let outsiders in, as it can't really control it (except for this uPNP thing for routers, can anyone explain what that is?).
There's a particular comment which we'll see about a thousand times on this thread alone, the gist of which will be, "See? Even open source has bugs/security holes! It's no better than Microsoft!"
Um, actually I haven't seen it once in this thread yet. You sure this is the right thread?
Don't know what's so magical about "1.0+" but it's certainly there.
For some applications, 1.0 signals a sort of "backward-compatibility freeze". In other words, anything after 1.0 strives to be compatible with 1.0, while that may not be true for 1.0. Also, there is usually a longer than usual feature freeze some while before 1.0 (usually 9.0 or so), so that *may* help make 1.0 more stable. I don't know how mozilla development works though.
And people complain about Gentoo's installation, while it's brilliant in my opinion! You can use the tools of a mini-distro to partition your drives with fdisk etc, and you just see your own kernel building; it makes much more sense than another non-standard installation interface that does everything behind a progress bar! And portage is the most futuristic thing to hit the open-source world, in my opinion. Although I don't always use it. (which doesn't pose a problem either)
(Following discussion not aimed specifically at parent)
I agree, that's why I think Gentoo is the ideal newbie distro - it is by far the most consistent, transparent, and well documented distro I've seen. I don't know where people get the idea that some automated behind-the-scenes installation process that doesn't work half the time is going to help newbies. I hope everyone agrees that the worst thing that can happen when trying to learn something new is to encounter a whole bunch of discrepencies, contradications, and inconsistencies, while being forced to do things with no apparent rhyme or reason - this applies to learning *anything*, not just Linux. For example, do you think it would be better for a newbie to calculus to begin by memorizing derivatives (to get up and running quickly! After all, that's what newbies want), or by first defining some terminology and learning about limits, riemann sums, etc? Which do you think would be the more positive and comforting experience? We all know how it feels to not be able to fall back on something (e.g. good, clear documentation) when encountering new concepts.
After using Gentoo as a stepping stone to Linux, though, I find that there is one big disadvantage for its daily use - time consumption.
I'm sure you can make Gentoo's KDE as 'fast' as Yope's since it can do all those things Yope does with gcc,
It's hard to compare things with Gentoo, as there's really no "default" to compare against. I think the point is that Yoper has a bunch of performance tweaks out of the box, and *some* people use Gentoo primarily for the ability to add performance tweaks. For those people, Yoper may be competition because they may prefer the significantly faster installation and upgrade time for apps that comes with a binary-based distro.
Wow...after five huge revisions, and countless years of work, MS has an operating system that doesn't crash (often)! What a great reason to like them.
No, it's not a great reason to like them. It's not a reason to like them at all. It *is* a good reason to like Windows XP. You can simultaneously hate Microsoft if you want - that shouldn't affect your evaluation of a particular product.
I find that sub-pixel antialiasing actually sort of works on LCD monitors - especially for fonts such as Verdana or Tahoma, not so well for Times New Roman. On CRTs, the text is already sort of fuzzy so any kind of antialiasing makes things worse.
Gentoo is a good starting distro, probably the best one to start with. However, for day-to-day use, it is a pain to have to wait 3 hours for some application to emerge when you need it *now*. Keeping it up to date is quite time-consuming as well, if you can't leave your system on during the night.
So that said, the only disadvantage of Gentoo is compile time. Otherwise, it is the most consistent, clearly layed-out, well-documented, and generally user friendly distro out there right now. However that one disadvantage is a big one. Any speed increases gained by custom compiling for your system are usually offset by the fact that you are emerging something in the background while you work anyways.
If Longhorn's display technology ever makes it, it'll fix all this. Or if Apple beats them to the punch. It'll be nice to run a monitor at 1600x1200 and not have to press my nose against the glass to read text... I have poor eyesight, too.
We need this more than just for those with poor eyesight, though. Monitor resolution is quite low when compared to print resolution, so it would be nice to one day have 300dpi-equivalent monitors. Font anti-aliasing is (IMO) just a band-aid solution in the mean time. We really shouldn't need antialiasing at all. If we prepare for these types of monitors (by ensuring software supports high pixel density), then it will make adoption and availability of these monitors much easier.
You make it sound like there are two competing standards, IE's and everyone else's. Frankly, I'd rather build my site to standards established to level the playing field for competition and fuel innovation, rather than one established by a single commercial entity that will only innovate when there are competitors to squish.
Actually, my view is that IE is broken. *But*, if the author intends for some media to be viewed using a broken viewer, then I *want* to view that particular media using the intended broken viewer. If the author intends for some media to be viewed using a standards-compliant viewer, then I *want* to view that particular media using a standards-compliant viewer.
If I am *building* a site, then yes, I would build it to standards.
It's the MS replacement for HTTP and HTML, and... oops, it's been cancelled.
No I shouldn't, because most web designers do not write their webpages for Blackbird.
HTML was not and is not designed to be a layout language
True, but web designers cannot seem to comprehend this, and often make the function of their webpages dependent on layout or non-standard things. When table cells start becoming twice as wide as my screen, or menus open up under graphics on the page, usability is a problem. This is becoming a greater problem with the increased migration to Firefox/Mozilla, because now there are webpages that only display properly in standards-compliant browsers (such as Firefox) but not in others (such as Internet Explorer). But there are still webpages that do the opposite. So there is no one browser that can be used to optimally view all webpages.
and you can actually view a page the way its supposed to look while using IE
I don't care how a page is supposed to look. I want to view pages the way the author intended for them to be viewed. If that's also the way they're supposed to look, fine, if not, too bad.
Slashdot Mirror
For projects involving a creative element, it is probably a good idea to have one "single vision". Perhaps that's why we have directors for movies.
If so, there is a problem somewhere. It may be your LCD. It may not be.
Unfortunately they stopped doing this a while ago for a good reason - paper, books, generally anything physical is expensive. Gone are the days when desktop publishing software would come with a 200 page manual describing the concepts of good publication design, when adventure game software would come with a 100 page color manual describing the history, culture, and civilation of the world created for the game, when operating system software would come with a dummie's guide to programming in BASIC, and teach basic programming constructs, when graphics manipulation software would come with an introduction describing how the human eye perceives color, textures, and shadows, and the history behind drawings and paintings in society.
Why couldn't you just treat it with the same trust as you do the internet? That is, always have a firewall between your system and the wireless connection.
They shouldn't do it. What would be the point of user-agent strings if they were not accurate?
I don't think anyone gets a new computer to get rid of spyware (which is really just a different way of using the computer, anyways - there is nothing "broken", therefore nothing to "fix"). For sure, the average Joe realizes the absurdity of buying a new stereo because he turned the volume up and now wants the volume lower, or buying a new car because it got dirty, or buying a new house because he rearranged the furniture in the living room and doesn't like the new arrangement. Realize this: the average person is not as stupid as the mass media makes them out to be.
Now it might make sense to buy a new computer when the harddrive and power supply have failed, since as you mentioned, computer repairs are relatively expensive. This makes sense in the same way that buying a new car makes sense if you get into an accident and the total cost of repair approaches or exceeds the current value of the car. The average Joe realizes this.
From what I've seen, lots of people get new computers because they have extra cash and don't know what to spend it on. So they buy a new PC that provides a few days of titillation until the novelty wears off. The average Joe realizes this is what he is doing, but does it anyways in a desperate attempt to be happy. To this I respond: whatever floats your boat - it's your money, not mine.
That's a very hard thing to do. The closest most distros have come is custom software repositories to serve packages in the right format for their distro. But as long as there is more than one linux, this problem will remain. It requires more then just a distro to solve this problem - arguably, apt repositories or emerge or similar already provide a solution from the distro's perspective. The other parts of the solution are not under the distro's control.
*Maybe*, if they base their browser on mozilla/firefox, they could succeed more at bringing Gecko-based browsing to IE users than Firefox and Mozilla have. Mozilla/Firefox users will continue to use Mozilla/Firefox, but IE users might take a second look at GBrowser, with it's name brand recognition. If they like GBrowser, they might start investigating further and discover Firefox and related apps.
Of course I could use the message box errors, but those are just annoying (even more so with tabbed browsing, because you're more likely to be loading pages in the background).
Are they talking about sharing files and printers *across* a firewall? If you purposely make holes in your firewall to let others on the other side to access your files and printers, wouldn't you expect everyone on the other side to have access, unless you had some sort of special authentication process or IP based rule to only allow some access?
If I hadn't read this article, I probably would have never known that I could (or at least there was intended functionality to let me) share files and printers across a firewall without letting everyone else on the other side of the firewall in.
Well it's not really Windows XP being not dumb enough to let outsiders in through the firewall, it's that it really can't let outsiders in, as it can't really control it (except for this uPNP thing for routers, can anyone explain what that is?).
Um, actually I haven't seen it once in this thread yet. You sure this is the right thread?
Yes it is true. There is a checkbox in system settings under the System Failure section that says "Automatically restart". It is checked by default.
For some applications, 1.0 signals a sort of "backward-compatibility freeze". In other words, anything after 1.0 strives to be compatible with 1.0, while that may not be true for 1.0. Also, there is usually a longer than usual feature freeze some while before 1.0 (usually 9.0 or so), so that *may* help make 1.0 more stable. I don't know how mozilla development works though.
(Following discussion not aimed specifically at parent)
I agree, that's why I think Gentoo is the ideal newbie distro - it is by far the most consistent, transparent, and well documented distro I've seen. I don't know where people get the idea that some automated behind-the-scenes installation process that doesn't work half the time is going to help newbies. I hope everyone agrees that the worst thing that can happen when trying to learn something new is to encounter a whole bunch of discrepencies, contradications, and inconsistencies, while being forced to do things with no apparent rhyme or reason - this applies to learning *anything*, not just Linux. For example, do you think it would be better for a newbie to calculus to begin by memorizing derivatives (to get up and running quickly! After all, that's what newbies want), or by first defining some terminology and learning about limits, riemann sums, etc? Which do you think would be the more positive and comforting experience? We all know how it feels to not be able to fall back on something (e.g. good, clear documentation) when encountering new concepts.
After using Gentoo as a stepping stone to Linux, though, I find that there is one big disadvantage for its daily use - time consumption.
It's hard to compare things with Gentoo, as there's really no "default" to compare against. I think the point is that Yoper has a bunch of performance tweaks out of the box, and *some* people use Gentoo primarily for the ability to add performance tweaks. For those people, Yoper may be competition because they may prefer the significantly faster installation and upgrade time for apps that comes with a binary-based distro.
No, it's not a great reason to like them. It's not a reason to like them at all. It *is* a good reason to like Windows XP. You can simultaneously hate Microsoft if you want - that shouldn't affect your evaluation of a particular product.
I find that sub-pixel antialiasing actually sort of works on LCD monitors - especially for fonts such as Verdana or Tahoma, not so well for Times New Roman. On CRTs, the text is already sort of fuzzy so any kind of antialiasing makes things worse.
Do you use an LCD or CRT monitor?
So that said, the only disadvantage of Gentoo is compile time. Otherwise, it is the most consistent, clearly layed-out, well-documented, and generally user friendly distro out there right now. However that one disadvantage is a big one. Any speed increases gained by custom compiling for your system are usually offset by the fact that you are emerging something in the background while you work anyways.
We need this more than just for those with poor eyesight, though. Monitor resolution is quite low when compared to print resolution, so it would be nice to one day have 300dpi-equivalent monitors. Font anti-aliasing is (IMO) just a band-aid solution in the mean time. We really shouldn't need antialiasing at all. If we prepare for these types of monitors (by ensuring software supports high pixel density), then it will make adoption and availability of these monitors much easier.
Actually, my view is that IE is broken. *But*, if the author intends for some media to be viewed using a broken viewer, then I *want* to view that particular media using the intended broken viewer. If the author intends for some media to be viewed using a standards-compliant viewer, then I *want* to view that particular media using a standards-compliant viewer.
If I am *building* a site, then yes, I would build it to standards.
No I shouldn't, because most web designers do not write their webpages for Blackbird.
HTML was not and is not designed to be a layout language
True, but web designers cannot seem to comprehend this, and often make the function of their webpages dependent on layout or non-standard things. When table cells start becoming twice as wide as my screen, or menus open up under graphics on the page, usability is a problem. This is becoming a greater problem with the increased migration to Firefox/Mozilla, because now there are webpages that only display properly in standards-compliant browsers (such as Firefox) but not in others (such as Internet Explorer). But there are still webpages that do the opposite. So there is no one browser that can be used to optimally view all webpages.
I don't care how a page is supposed to look. I want to view pages the way the author intended for them to be viewed. If that's also the way they're supposed to look, fine, if not, too bad.