You make it sound like end users just being picky, when it is about end users not being able to do their job or the OS/Apps not being capable of providing the features they need.
The word used in the German article was "Kinderkrankheiten" and this word is used for little annoyances and less important failures which are expected to go away as the system matures (literally translated it's "children's illnesses"). You certainly wouldn't speak of "Kinderkrankheiten" if the system isn't capable of the features you need (well, the marketing department might, but that's a different story).
Whoever rated this post as a "troll" post didn't read it and has no idea at all about the situation in Switzerland. I assume that was maxwell-demon.
I don't know how you get the idea I did it. Anyways, the Slashdot moderation system doesn't allow to moderate on a story you already posted on, so I cannot have given that moderation. But I can assure you, I wouldn't have given it even if I had been able to.
Wait, what? The back/forward buttons working and having bookmarkable URLs are one of the major pluses of web apps, which require work to duplicate in a native app.
My point was that for web apps, usually the forward/back buttons and bookmarks don't work correctly, while you would expect them to, because it's in a browser. Heck, back/forward don't always work as intended even here on Slashdot!
Republicans have run for quite a while of FUD, tax cuts for the rich and corporatism. Whereas Democrats have run more on emotions and notion that things ought to be more just and that we can do better than what we're currently achieving.
I'm sure this was sarcasm. While I don't completely rule out someone seriously considering corporations "god-like beings", I consider it extremely unlikely, and even more unlikely that someone like that would post on Slashdot.
You call this a gray area? Its Southern cotton growers saying they benefit consumers by using slave labor to harvest their crops.
But that's not true. The cotton growers are better of with workers they are paying the same they would have to pay for feeding and housing slaves (or maybe even less), and when they cannot work any more, instead of paying money to buy new slaves, they just employ the next underpaid worker. It's far cheaper for them. Slavery is only lucrative if there's no supply of workers who are willing to do the work despite of extremely low pay and being treated like slaves.
"OK, we agreed that I do no further murders. But what about rapes?" "Rapes? Did you ever rape someone?" "No, because I murdered them. Since I cannot murder them in the future, I want to rape them instead." "Well, what do you have to offer?" "Well, I offer to never rob a bank." "You haven't yet robbed a bank, have you?" "But I could start to, and then it would cost you money to catch me." "OK, makes sense. So, you never rob a bank, and we allow for one rape per year. You have to register each rape with us, though, with full details. And of course, should you ever rob a bank, your rape license will be void, and we will prosecute you for all rapes you already did." "Well, the conditions seem reasonable. But only one rape a year? I thought more of something like one per month." "That's not acceptable, sorry. The absolutely most we can offer you is three rapes per year. But that's our last offer." "I'd say we have a deal."
As I understand it, all they agreed to was to not actively contact each other's employees to offer them jobs. In other words, the employees could at any time have asked the other company if they had better jobs, it's just that they would have to become active themselves. Right?
If so, then how is this keeping wages artificially low? It only means that people not actively seeking for a position with more money not getting offers for such a position. In which case I'd say, if they don't seek for it, they cannot complain that they don't get it. After all, there's no inherent right to get job offers you didn't ask for. Otherwise, could the jobless who never contacted a potential employer also complain because no potential employer ever contacted him?
Interesting that you mention "locked to local data" as disadvantage of native apps. "Locked to web data" is the main disadvantage of web apps. That local apps don't need to be locked to native data is exemplified by every native email client supporting IMAP (also note that the browser itself is a native app acting on non-local data).
And isn't Browser incompatibilities a worse problem than DLL/library issues? (At least, as user I've run into the former often enough, but just once into the latter).
Also note that for web apps, you get a tension between what you expect from web browsing (such as, being able to use your back button, or being able to bookmark things) and what you expect from apps. Not to mention that keyboard shortcuts are extremely limited for web apps.
Yes, web apps have their place. But they are not a replacement for native apps. The browser is not an operating system.
Be careful choosing a X environment: the popularity of Ubuntu these days hides the fact that it can be obnoxious and overcomplicated for end users. A smaller, lighter and more orthogonal desktop environment (like XFCE) could be better.
XFCE also is an X environment (guess why it starts with "X"). Basically, today there's no graphical environment for Linux which isn't based on X.
The advantage of Windows was that, although it might sometimes fail badly even for experts, it would generally work okay even for idiots.
Do you have any indication that migrating to (instead of starting with) Windows would have worked any better? (OK, there's a clear advantage for that direction: Most Linux applications are also available on Windows). And do you have any indication that starting with Linux would have worked less well than starting with Windows? (Besides, we don't know if in this case things started well with Windows, either.)
Wrong. Much more entertaining are screen savers popping up while answering a question, or random alert windows popping up during the talk (especially messages telling that the computer isn't secure).
But unfortunately, that is precisely the rhetoric that the OSS community is accused of brandishing all the time. The bottom-line is people do not care about the principles of freedom of code and other Stallmanisms when they are at work (which may come as a surprise on Slashdot). There are certain applications for Windows that just don't have a replacement on Linux yet, period. I'm sorry you can't argue with that fact.
But if you had read the article, it didn't mention a single such application which was a problem. The main problems were: * An extremely bad choice of the free email system (it explicitly said that other systems existed which would have provided the missing functionality). * A proprietary data base (and unfortunately they didn't even choose one of the major ones). There are definitely good free databases; moreover there are also closed source databases running on Linux. * Mistakes which were completely unrelated to the migration being blamed on the migration.
The number of people who have to work with the system are clearly in the minority. Most people never have any contact with the system, and believe whatever the press tells them about it.
Because the press has blamed Linux for everything (including things which clearly are not Linux's fault), and they couldn't withstand the public pressure any more. Note that 80% of the users were satisfied with the new desktop, and a further 10% just complained about transient problems.
"You apply these changes one evening, and the next morning, 20 thousand workstations across your network are rebooted so that they receive this policy on startup."
OK, I'd prefer to be able to do this without rebooting.
Indeed. Imagine the slightly changed scenario: The organization-wide video broadcast is needed not tomorrow, but today, in five hours. Do you really want to reboot your whole network during work time (and lose valuable work time, not to mention the angry reactions of employees you'll have to expect) to enable that video?
The windows data base they were speaking about was a product named "Konsul" (a proprietary data base developed by a swiss company). No, I didn't hear about that data base before either (I had to google it to find out it was a swiss product, although I suspected it due to the name), and of course it got lost in the Google translation.
Personalized searches I've heard of. But personalized translations are new to me. I get: "Delays in the implementation, immature software, eaten employees"
Actually the German text contains "angefressene Mitarbeiter"; while "angefressen" literally indeed means "partially eaten", this is an idiomatic usage in which it means "angry".
Slashdot Mirror
The word used in the German article was "Kinderkrankheiten" and this word is used for little annoyances and less important failures which are expected to go away as the system matures (literally translated it's "children's illnesses"). You certainly wouldn't speak of "Kinderkrankheiten" if the system isn't capable of the features you need (well, the marketing department might, but that's a different story).
ignoring the fact that at the time he arrives, the hole is already mostly filled.
At least that's what I get from the article.
I don't know how you get the idea I did it. Anyways, the Slashdot moderation system doesn't allow to moderate on a story you already posted on, so I cannot have given that moderation. But I can assure you, I wouldn't have given it even if I had been able to.
My point was that for web apps, usually the forward/back buttons and bookmarks don't work correctly, while you would expect them to, because it's in a browser. Heck, back/forward don't always work as intended even here on Slashdot!
Visual processing is done on the opposite side of the brain, at the back of the head.
Let me guess: You are for the Democrats, right?
So in the future, they'll demand a scan of your forehead, and if that region isn't large enough, you'll not get employed?
I'm sure this was sarcasm. While I don't completely rule out someone seriously considering corporations "god-like beings", I consider it extremely unlikely, and even more unlikely that someone like that would post on Slashdot.
But that's not true. The cotton growers are better of with workers they are paying the same they would have to pay for feeding and housing slaves (or maybe even less), and when they cannot work any more, instead of paying money to buy new slaves, they just employ the next underpaid worker. It's far cheaper for them. Slavery is only lucrative if there's no supply of workers who are willing to do the work despite of extremely low pay and being treated like slaves.
"OK, we agreed that I do no further murders. But what about rapes?"
"Rapes? Did you ever rape someone?"
"No, because I murdered them. Since I cannot murder them in the future, I want to rape them instead."
"Well, what do you have to offer?"
"Well, I offer to never rob a bank."
"You haven't yet robbed a bank, have you?"
"But I could start to, and then it would cost you money to catch me."
"OK, makes sense. So, you never rob a bank, and we allow for one rape per year. You have to register each rape with us, though, with full details. And of course, should you ever rob a bank, your rape license will be void, and we will prosecute you for all rapes you already did."
"Well, the conditions seem reasonable. But only one rape a year? I thought more of something like one per month."
"That's not acceptable, sorry. The absolutely most we can offer you is three rapes per year. But that's our last offer."
"I'd say we have a deal."
"Don't do evil" was dead long ago. Just look at past Slashdot stories (hint: search for donoevil).
As I understand it, all they agreed to was to not actively contact each other's employees to offer them jobs. In other words, the employees could at any time have asked the other company if they had better jobs, it's just that they would have to become active themselves. Right?
If so, then how is this keeping wages artificially low? It only means that people not actively seeking for a position with more money not getting offers for such a position. In which case I'd say, if they don't seek for it, they cannot complain that they don't get it. After all, there's no inherent right to get job offers you didn't ask for. Otherwise, could the jobless who never contacted a potential employer also complain because no potential employer ever contacted him?
Interesting that you mention "locked to local data" as disadvantage of native apps. "Locked to web data" is the main disadvantage of web apps. That local apps don't need to be locked to native data is exemplified by every native email client supporting IMAP (also note that the browser itself is a native app acting on non-local data).
And isn't Browser incompatibilities a worse problem than DLL/library issues? (At least, as user I've run into the former often enough, but just once into the latter).
Also note that for web apps, you get a tension between what you expect from web browsing (such as, being able to use your back button, or being able to bookmark things) and what you expect from apps. Not to mention that keyboard shortcuts are extremely limited for web apps.
Yes, web apps have their place. But they are not a replacement for native apps. The browser is not an operating system.
XFCE also is an X environment (guess why it starts with "X"). Basically, today there's no graphical environment for Linux which isn't based on X.
Please improve your Google Foo!
Do you have any indication that migrating to (instead of starting with) Windows would have worked any better? (OK, there's a clear advantage for that direction: Most Linux applications are also available on Windows).
And do you have any indication that starting with Linux would have worked less well than starting with Windows? (Besides, we don't know if in this case things started well with Windows, either.)
Wrong. Much more entertaining are screen savers popping up while answering a question, or random alert windows popping up during the talk (especially messages telling that the computer isn't secure).
Yeah, it clearly shows that CSS cannont compensate stupidity from the planners, and that it is very easy to put the blame on Windows instead.
No, it doesn't show that. Maybe a future story about their problems migrating back to Windows will, though :-)
But if you had read the article, it didn't mention a single such application which was a problem. The main problems were:
* An extremely bad choice of the free email system (it explicitly said that other systems existed which would have provided the missing functionality).
* A proprietary data base (and unfortunately they didn't even choose one of the major ones). There are definitely good free databases; moreover there are also closed source databases running on Linux.
* Mistakes which were completely unrelated to the migration being blamed on the migration.
The number of people who have to work with the system are clearly in the minority. Most people never have any contact with the system, and believe whatever the press tells them about it.
Because the press has blamed Linux for everything (including things which clearly are not Linux's fault), and they couldn't withstand the public pressure any more. Note that 80% of the users were satisfied with the new desktop, and a further 10% just complained about transient problems.
Indeed. Imagine the slightly changed scenario: The organization-wide video broadcast is needed not tomorrow, but today, in five hours. Do you really want to reboot your whole network during work time (and lose valuable work time, not to mention the angry reactions of employees you'll have to expect) to enable that video?
The windows data base they were speaking about was a product named "Konsul" (a proprietary data base developed by a swiss company). No, I didn't hear about that data base before either (I had to google it to find out it was a swiss product, although I suspected it due to the name), and of course it got lost in the Google translation.
It is. Google literally translated "angefressen" where it was used idiomatically (it means "angry" in that context).
Personalized searches I've heard of. But personalized translations are new to me. I get: "Delays in the implementation, immature software, eaten employees"
Actually the German text contains "angefressene Mitarbeiter"; while "angefressen" literally indeed means "partially eaten", this is an idiomatic usage in which it means "angry".