i've been using Linux for about 10 years now. when i first started using it it was still an underground underdog scrapping to get a little attention.
well 10 years later it has all the attention it needs but much of it the likes of cnet.com.com.com.com.com. so the majority of attention it gets these days is geared towared the business sect.
so it's quite nice to hear people chatting up linux on multiple levels AND hear a bit of the old attitude creeping back into it. i'm sorry but watered-down, business-suit linux is nothing more than microsoft without the unpredictable software.
i say more of this. i say Linux TV. i say let's bring back the days when linux.com was a real strong dream and a place where linux users could go and get help.
don't get me wrong - i love the fact that big businesses are supporting linux. but that big money doesn't mean linux has to shed it's underdog attitude where you couldn't see a linux ad without the words "world domination" somewhere in the ad.
i think the linux community should approach G4 TV and tell them they need to start a Linux TV show. hell, i'm an actor, maybe i'll pitch them the idea.
carry around a copy of putty on a usb drive. if you're using a windoze machine at work, insert the usb drive, fire up putty, and secure shell to a machine that will allow you to send as much email as you please.
this also assumes that you have shell access somewhere. but don't we all?
of course they could go ape shit and block port 25 on you.
the very fact that a word can be copywritten to the point that even a reference to said word can be turned into a legal battle.
remember the old joke article (from the onion i believe) about microsoft copywriting ones and zeros? that seems to have some sort of merit these days.
imagine if, long ago, someone put a copywrite on the word "computer". if that happened many of us would now be using "electro-calculating-guified-giggy-boxes". of course that assumes Tandy at one point didn't copywrite "calculating" and the United States Pimp Union didn't copywrite the word "boxes".
remember shakespeare said long ago: the first thing we do, kill the lawyers (King Henry VI part 2 act IV scene 2).
i have to disagree with you somewhat. first of all i'm in the profession. i've been a professional actor for nearly 15 years now. so this is not necessarily coming from straight-up opinion.
there are very few truly good actors in hollywood. there are, however, plenty of very good directors. however, even those very good directors can't pull something out of someone who doesn't have it. acting is a very challenging skill to hone. it takes years of practice to really get it. many of these hollywood stars don't actually get it. mcgregor is one of them.
what tends to happen in hollywood is that scripts are cast not by talent but by marketability and personality. when a script is sold in hollywood it is sold primarily based on the appeal of a particular actor. and typical audiences are not looking for actual talent - they are looking for personalities. i.e. when you go to see Jack Nickelson in a movie you want to see "Jack Nickelson". you don't want to see Jack do something other than himself. Same thing with Sean Connery.
and there's very little talent necessary in developing a personality unless it's an actual departure from the real person.
but anyway - i digress a bit.
george lucas is a horrendous director. he makes horrible casting choices and settles for mediocre performances at best.
hating gays is not political. hating gays is inhumane, ignorant, and - well - homophobic. i don't care what your politics are - if you're are against the right of an entire culture to marry one another then you're unamerican (if you're in the US of course).
it might not make the movie less good. and i might still see it. but if there's any sort of anti-gay sentiment in it you can bet i'll walk right out.
this contest was pretty much a joke. instead of getting the opinions of the people that actually use GNOME the splash screen contest:
didn't post the judging criteria
didn't use any judges other than those that run the footnotes site
didn't listen to the feedback they received regarding the winning choice
shunned a good amount of popular opinion
i could go on but i won't.
i was a proud GNOME user for years until it seemed the GNOME developers stopped hearing our cries. for example - the gpilotd project failed and when the users cried out - no one seemed to listen. all the while the KDE developers were busy taking in all the feedback from their user base and, when their next version was released, it was obvious they took that feedback to heart.
i honestly don't know what the issue is. GNOME used to be (from my point of view) the desktop of the "common man" for the Linux community. not so any more. now it's become about as user-unfriendly as possible (i.e. spatial file managers and hard-to-create desktop icons).
when is this going to change? or is it? is KDE going to become the defacto standard for more and more users while GNOME finds itself being used only by those the develop it?
it seems to me that GNOME is now what Linux was nearly a decade ago - a project for the elitist/hobbiest/hacker and not the masses.
i've been a Linux user for about 10 years and a Mac user for about 2. when i went to install OpenOffice on my ibook i had to jump through hoops i hope to never have to jump through again.
So bad where these hoops that i've pretty much tossed OO (using X11) and am using NeoOfficeJ with fairly good success.
If the OO team wants Mac users to migrate from MS Office to OO it would probably be smart to focus some time and energy on a native port. Very few people are willing to take all the necessary steps to get OO running on OS X with X11. not only that but it's slow, doesn't have nearly as nice an interface, and DRINKS DOWN the memory.
when my dad told me he wanted a computer the very first thing i did was familiarize him with Linux. i knew he was the type that wouldn't listen to my best advice and not click here and install there and try to watch the latest j-lo video or install desktop babes software.
so without the ability to install these apps he was home free. for nearly 4 years my dad was trouble free with his Linux box and his cable modem.
but this christmas he bought himself a laptop with windows xp. the first thing is did was install FireFox (and set it as the default), thunderbird, and OpenOffice. i made sure he couldn't figure out how to open IE or Outlook.
i think told him to not open an attachment unless it came from me.
so far so good. but he is using XP and i'm sure that within the year he'll be wanting me to either install Linux on the laptop or i'll have to re-install XP.
it's very simple - our country (the US) is run by greed. if the government actually did something that made sense they would be putting a lot of people out of work. and heaven forefend they do that.
i wish we could move to a much simpler system. for a number of reasons - such as the rich wouldn't be able to buy themselves a ton of loopholes with the help of high-powered tax attorneys and consultants.
the US is so totally corrupted by greed that there's probably little to no hope for us ever becoming enlightened enough to realize that maybe less is more.
you see - i always thought (and maybe this is me being star-crossed) that the majority of virus/spoof/worm writers were simply targeting Microsoft because it was/is an evil empire.
what's the deal? are hackers no longer content with having a cause? or are they like the younger generations of today and the "me" cause is the only cause that matters?
i've been using Linux for nearly 10 years now. all the while i've had to deal with people saying "you just wait until Linux gets popular - then you'll see all sorts of viruses and worms". well Linux is popular and i've yet to see this rise of nasties. could it be that the majority of hackers DO have a conscious and are still content with wreaking havoc on MS?
democracy by definition is supposed to be "of the people for the people" type leadership. that's the way it was created. unfortunately the politicians and the parties have twisted it into being something all together different.
i think we could possibly save our country if we begin by getting rid of the partisan system. once that is gone we allow the people to actually vote on all issues, systems, and governances.
but the US government would never allow such a system because it would take the power away from them.
i only wish this country had the balls to actually revolt. but we've become so apathetic and numb we'd rather just sit in front of our plasma televisions watching reality tv as our rulers take more and more rights away from usl.
i tried posting something about this guy friday (or was it saturday) only to get my post pimp-slapped down the shitter.
guess membership does in fact have its privvies doesn't it?
teach people how to properly organize their folders and files. one of the biggest problems i see with the 'average computer user' is that they've no clue how to organize a computer. they think if they just download a file it's 'on the computer somewhere'. instead they don't understand the power of actually creating specific directories for specific things. do that correctly and a search function is hardly needed.
of course i do use 'locate' now and then.;-)
as much as i hate this i'm no longer purchasing music unless i can buy it directly from the artist. i've grown so tired of the recording industry pulling lame stunts (and bending the laws just enough to suit their needs) like this that i can't willingly give them any more cash.
i just hope like heck RUSH starts selling their own music or i'll be biting my tongue come their next release.
never the less - up yours recording industry! this little stunt lost you a customer.
i installed 0.9.0 over my 0.9.1 installation (via tarball) and now firefox is sllllllllllow to start up. has anyone else noticed this? or is it just my lame hinder?
well said. for some of us - the UI is very important. i spend a lot of time tweaking the way my desktop looks. in fact i enjoy doing this. and i think it's one aspect of Linux that some people forget is a real selling point. being able to configure your desktop to look really cool has actually swayed some people i know over to linux. no matter how you feel you can't deny that it's a plus. and if Linux were to step up again and develop a 3D UI (before MS does) there would be even more people going "cool i want that!"
i'm actually kind of shocked to see so many "i don't want a browser with soul" replies here. i remember the first Linuxworld i attened (i think it was 1999 maybe or 2000). it was in raleigh-durham at the triangle. walking through there proved to me that a software can and does have "soul". why? because the people coding these applications poured their souls and hearts into their work.
and this heart and soul is part of the reason Linux is where it is today.
i use Linux for many reasons. one of those reasons is passion. i'm passionate about Linux and about converting people from MS to Linux. it's not about uptime and about maximizing or any other business term-du-jour. it's about the heart and soul of change and freedom.
if you use IE or Windows because it is "the most feature rich" or it has "market share" then your heart and soul are in the wrong place.
i'm glad that the man heading mozilla has such passion. his passion, and the passion the mozilla teams puts into their products, will keep me using FireFox.
oh and i do happen to love the fact that i can make FireFox pretty. that IS a big selling point for some of us. i refuse to sit and stare at a bland screen all day.
i'm talking about people in general. and it would seem that "people in general" outnumber us *nix people.
at least by my last count.
and that is another "exaggeration".
well in every release from Red Hat 9 through FC1 it was horribly broken. even after a clean install i could try to add it to the panel and the minute the daemon would start CRASH! i chatted up the ximian users list and found out the guy maintaining gnome-pilot was in fact not keeping the tool up to date so no one knew when the code would be worked on.
i recently switched from GNOME to KDE. i was using GNOME in it's infancy but found lately that there were certain tools (gnome-pilot for example) that were trash.
and then the gang at GNOME pull off this wonderful new "spatial" feature which seems to me just a nice and fancy way to describe "opens a new window every time you click on something".
what was wrong with the method that millions upon millions of people had grown accustomed to? and no - it's not a "you're just a windows user" thing because i've not had windows on a computer of mine since 1997.
it's hard enough to get people to accept Linux as it is. people are simply afraid of change. i think it's time the Linux community accepted this and just improved on the already working interfaces we already have.
and stop giving behaviors fancy names to try to trick people into thinking it's oh so new and oh so improved. instead - just make the darn think work as well as it always has...
and maybe kill some of the memory leaks and, for the love of all things good, someone please fix gnome-pilot!
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i've been using Linux for about 10 years now. when i first started using it it was still an underground underdog scrapping to get a little attention. well 10 years later it has all the attention it needs but much of it the likes of cnet.com.com.com.com.com. so the majority of attention it gets these days is geared towared the business sect. so it's quite nice to hear people chatting up linux on multiple levels AND hear a bit of the old attitude creeping back into it. i'm sorry but watered-down, business-suit linux is nothing more than microsoft without the unpredictable software. i say more of this. i say Linux TV. i say let's bring back the days when linux.com was a real strong dream and a place where linux users could go and get help. don't get me wrong - i love the fact that big businesses are supporting linux. but that big money doesn't mean linux has to shed it's underdog attitude where you couldn't see a linux ad without the words "world domination" somewhere in the ad. i think the linux community should approach G4 TV and tell them they need to start a Linux TV show. hell, i'm an actor, maybe i'll pitch them the idea.
carry around a copy of putty on a usb drive. if you're using a windoze machine at work, insert the usb drive, fire up putty, and secure shell to a machine that will allow you to send as much email as you please.
this also assumes that you have shell access somewhere. but don't we all?
of course they could go ape shit and block port 25 on you.
the very fact that a word can be copywritten to the point that even a reference to said word can be turned into a legal battle.
remember the old joke article (from the onion i believe) about microsoft copywriting ones and zeros? that seems to have some sort of merit these days.
imagine if, long ago, someone put a copywrite on the word "computer". if that happened many of us would now be using "electro-calculating-guified-giggy-boxes". of course that assumes Tandy at one point didn't copywrite "calculating" and the United States Pimp Union didn't copywrite the word "boxes".
remember shakespeare said long ago: the first thing we do, kill the lawyers (King Henry VI part 2 act IV scene 2).
i have to disagree with you somewhat. first of all i'm in the profession. i've been a professional actor for nearly 15 years now. so this is not necessarily coming from straight-up opinion.
there are very few truly good actors in hollywood. there are, however, plenty of very good directors. however, even those very good directors can't pull something out of someone who doesn't have it. acting is a very challenging skill to hone. it takes years of practice to really get it. many of these hollywood stars don't actually get it. mcgregor is one of them.
what tends to happen in hollywood is that scripts are cast not by talent but by marketability and personality. when a script is sold in hollywood it is sold primarily based on the appeal of a particular actor. and typical audiences are not looking for actual talent - they are looking for personalities. i.e. when you go to see Jack Nickelson in a movie you want to see "Jack Nickelson". you don't want to see Jack do something other than himself. Same thing with Sean Connery.
and there's very little talent necessary in developing a personality unless it's an actual departure from the real person.
but anyway - i digress a bit.
george lucas is a horrendous director. he makes horrible casting choices and settles for mediocre performances at best.
yeah and i live in an area often called Kentuckiana. i prefer Indiyucky. april fools
hating gays is not political. hating gays is inhumane, ignorant, and - well - homophobic. i don't care what your politics are - if you're are against the right of an entire culture to marry one another then you're unamerican (if you're in the US of course). it might not make the movie less good. and i might still see it. but if there's any sort of anti-gay sentiment in it you can bet i'll walk right out.
- didn't post the judging criteria
- didn't use any judges other than those that run the footnotes site
- didn't listen to the feedback they received regarding the winning choice
- shunned a good amount of popular opinion
i could go on but i won't. i was a proud GNOME user for years until it seemed the GNOME developers stopped hearing our cries. for example - the gpilotd project failed and when the users cried out - no one seemed to listen. all the while the KDE developers were busy taking in all the feedback from their user base and, when their next version was released, it was obvious they took that feedback to heart. i honestly don't know what the issue is. GNOME used to be (from my point of view) the desktop of the "common man" for the Linux community. not so any more. now it's become about as user-unfriendly as possible (i.e. spatial file managers and hard-to-create desktop icons). when is this going to change? or is it? is KDE going to become the defacto standard for more and more users while GNOME finds itself being used only by those the develop it? it seems to me that GNOME is now what Linux was nearly a decade ago - a project for the elitist/hobbiest/hacker and not the masses.i've been a Linux user for about 10 years and a Mac user for about 2. when i went to install OpenOffice on my ibook i had to jump through hoops i hope to never have to jump through again.
So bad where these hoops that i've pretty much tossed OO (using X11) and am using NeoOfficeJ with fairly good success.
If the OO team wants Mac users to migrate from MS Office to OO it would probably be smart to focus some time and energy on a native port. Very few people are willing to take all the necessary steps to get OO running on OS X with X11. not only that but it's slow, doesn't have nearly as nice an interface, and DRINKS DOWN the memory.
when my dad told me he wanted a computer the very first thing i did was familiarize him with Linux. i knew he was the type that wouldn't listen to my best advice and not click here and install there and try to watch the latest j-lo video or install desktop babes software. so without the ability to install these apps he was home free. for nearly 4 years my dad was trouble free with his Linux box and his cable modem. but this christmas he bought himself a laptop with windows xp. the first thing is did was install FireFox (and set it as the default), thunderbird, and OpenOffice. i made sure he couldn't figure out how to open IE or Outlook. i think told him to not open an attachment unless it came from me. so far so good. but he is using XP and i'm sure that within the year he'll be wanting me to either install Linux on the laptop or i'll have to re-install XP.
it's very simple - our country (the US) is run by greed. if the government actually did something that made sense they would be putting a lot of people out of work. and heaven forefend they do that. i wish we could move to a much simpler system. for a number of reasons - such as the rich wouldn't be able to buy themselves a ton of loopholes with the help of high-powered tax attorneys and consultants. the US is so totally corrupted by greed that there's probably little to no hope for us ever becoming enlightened enough to realize that maybe less is more.
you see - i always thought (and maybe this is me being star-crossed) that the majority of virus/spoof/worm writers were simply targeting Microsoft because it was/is an evil empire. what's the deal? are hackers no longer content with having a cause? or are they like the younger generations of today and the "me" cause is the only cause that matters? i've been using Linux for nearly 10 years now. all the while i've had to deal with people saying "you just wait until Linux gets popular - then you'll see all sorts of viruses and worms". well Linux is popular and i've yet to see this rise of nasties. could it be that the majority of hackers DO have a conscious and are still content with wreaking havoc on MS?
oh my gosh - this is a first for me. and all i can say to this story is - like i'm surprised!!!!!
democracy by definition is supposed to be "of the people for the people" type leadership. that's the way it was created. unfortunately the politicians and the parties have twisted it into being something all together different. i think we could possibly save our country if we begin by getting rid of the partisan system. once that is gone we allow the people to actually vote on all issues, systems, and governances. but the US government would never allow such a system because it would take the power away from them. i only wish this country had the balls to actually revolt. but we've become so apathetic and numb we'd rather just sit in front of our plasma televisions watching reality tv as our rulers take more and more rights away from usl.
i tried posting something about this guy friday (or was it saturday) only to get my post pimp-slapped down the shitter. guess membership does in fact have its privvies doesn't it?
teach people how to properly organize their folders and files. one of the biggest problems i see with the 'average computer user' is that they've no clue how to organize a computer. they think if they just download a file it's 'on the computer somewhere'. instead they don't understand the power of actually creating specific directories for specific things. do that correctly and a search function is hardly needed. of course i do use 'locate' now and then. ;-)
as much as i hate this i'm no longer purchasing music unless i can buy it directly from the artist. i've grown so tired of the recording industry pulling lame stunts (and bending the laws just enough to suit their needs) like this that i can't willingly give them any more cash. i just hope like heck RUSH starts selling their own music or i'll be biting my tongue come their next release. never the less - up yours recording industry! this little stunt lost you a customer.
i installed 0.9.0 over my 0.9.1 installation (via tarball) and now firefox is sllllllllllow to start up. has anyone else noticed this? or is it just my lame hinder?
well said. for some of us - the UI is very important. i spend a lot of time tweaking the way my desktop looks. in fact i enjoy doing this. and i think it's one aspect of Linux that some people forget is a real selling point. being able to configure your desktop to look really cool has actually swayed some people i know over to linux. no matter how you feel you can't deny that it's a plus. and if Linux were to step up again and develop a 3D UI (before MS does) there would be even more people going "cool i want that!"
try a bike! that's my transportation of choice. it's elegant, efficient, uses no gas, and creates zero pollution.
i'm actually kind of shocked to see so many "i don't want a browser with soul" replies here. i remember the first Linuxworld i attened (i think it was 1999 maybe or 2000). it was in raleigh-durham at the triangle. walking through there proved to me that a software can and does have "soul". why? because the people coding these applications poured their souls and hearts into their work. and this heart and soul is part of the reason Linux is where it is today. i use Linux for many reasons. one of those reasons is passion. i'm passionate about Linux and about converting people from MS to Linux. it's not about uptime and about maximizing or any other business term-du-jour. it's about the heart and soul of change and freedom. if you use IE or Windows because it is "the most feature rich" or it has "market share" then your heart and soul are in the wrong place. i'm glad that the man heading mozilla has such passion. his passion, and the passion the mozilla teams puts into their products, will keep me using FireFox. oh and i do happen to love the fact that i can make FireFox pretty. that IS a big selling point for some of us. i refuse to sit and stare at a bland screen all day.
oh boy i hope you never read a carl sagan novel. it'll drive you batty!
i'm talking about people in general. and it would seem that "people in general" outnumber us *nix people. at least by my last count. and that is another "exaggeration".
oh i exaggerated it. so there!
well in every release from Red Hat 9 through FC1 it was horribly broken. even after a clean install i could try to add it to the panel and the minute the daemon would start CRASH! i chatted up the ximian users list and found out the guy maintaining gnome-pilot was in fact not keeping the tool up to date so no one knew when the code would be worked on.
i recently switched from GNOME to KDE. i was using GNOME in it's infancy but found lately that there were certain tools (gnome-pilot for example) that were trash. and then the gang at GNOME pull off this wonderful new "spatial" feature which seems to me just a nice and fancy way to describe "opens a new window every time you click on something". what was wrong with the method that millions upon millions of people had grown accustomed to? and no - it's not a "you're just a windows user" thing because i've not had windows on a computer of mine since 1997. it's hard enough to get people to accept Linux as it is. people are simply afraid of change. i think it's time the Linux community accepted this and just improved on the already working interfaces we already have. and stop giving behaviors fancy names to try to trick people into thinking it's oh so new and oh so improved. instead - just make the darn think work as well as it always has... and maybe kill some of the memory leaks and, for the love of all things good, someone please fix gnome-pilot!