What distros actually do this? The distros I've tried come with default browsers that tell the truth. I think Linux usage on the desktop really is about as low as Google Zeitgeist would imply.
I think he's right on. Mozilla's "marketing" is pathetic. If I were to tell a non-technical person that there's this cool browser (Mozilla Firebird) that offers tabbed browsing and blocks popups, I wouldn't be able to give them a link to go to (off the top of my head). It's not obvious how to get there from mozilla.org. So they would have to google for "mozilla firebird", and they would find this amateurish looking page There is no obvious icon that indicates "download Mozilla Firebird!". Instead there's 4 paragraphs of techno-babble and then this:
Testing pleasure? Does a user want to be a tester? Does a user know what a "nightly" or a "milestone" is? Probably not, but they do know that Version 0.6 means Not Ready For Prime Time, if they are semi-quasi-kinda-sorta tech savvy (as I would expect anyone to be who would even consider trying an alternative browser). That's misleading, because Mozilla Firebird, while lacking a few features, really is ready. I use it all the time.
By contrast, if I were to recommend Opera (I wouldn't), I could say "go to opera.com" and there's a red button right there that says "free download." I should be able to say "go to mozillafirebird.com and get it" (.com not.org) and a user should find something similar.
Yeah, these are the same Republicans who thought that 2 days of bombing would "shock and awe" the Iragis into submission, and that cutting taxes on the rich would reduce unemployment.
It helps if you have a mate who's into the same thing you are. I had a professor whose wife was another professor, and they would be in the lab together 14 hours a day. If they had not had the same occupation, those hours would have most likely ruined the marriage.
It's probably not so easy for the average scientist to find a marriage-worthy mate who is researching the same obscure thing he/she is.
The article was about "280 great scientists" in history. Unless you're some elite physicist who hangs out with Stephen Hawking, you've probably never even met one.
It's a bunch of crappy non-science. Sociobiologists explain any behavior they can find with some half-assed Darwinian theory. It's not testable or falsifiable, so it's not science.
A direct quote from the book, at the beginning of chapter 4:
strace/truss(Solaris)
These programs trace system calls a program makes as it makes them.
Useful options:
1.
-f (follow fork)
2.
-ffo filename (output trace to filename.pid for forking)
3.
-i (Print instruction pointer for each system call)
Whether my fears are actually founded or not is beside the point - most people are at least as ignorant of these things as I am, and will probably be scared into upgrading by MS's "trusted computing" media blitz (they will have to push security issues, real or imagined, to get people to upgrade, because Windows 2000 is good enough and there's really no reason to upgrade). That means that Windows 2000 will end up with too small of a market share to be worth supporting for id when they make Doom 5, so enthusiasts will still be forced to "upgrade" if they want to properly use their shiny toys (or read a document in Word 2006 format for that matter).
Linux runs faster on my computer than Windows 98 did (2000 wouldn't even install on this old piece of crap). That's because I'm using fluxbox and xterm instead of gnome and gnome-terminal. In the open-source world there are usually alternatives to bloatware if you don't need bells and whistles.
I'm not aware of a good, fast alternative to Mozilla, unfortunately. Dillo is blazingly fast, but chokes on a lot of pages. Hopefully it will be ready for prime time soon. Does anyone know of a better alternative?
I don't totally understand MS's policies, but it looks like mainstream support for Windows 2000 ends March 2005, less than 2 years away.
If I understand correctly this would mean no patches for the usual weekly cavalcade of Windows vulnerabilities. Personally, I wouldn't want to run 2000 under those circumstances, even with Mozilla/Eudora/Agent. I'm sure they'll use these fears to "force" people to updgrade.
in my nearly 10 years of using Linux, I still have yet to see a distro that installs and everything works 100% out of the box.
Have you tried Knoppix, by any chance? That's the only distro where everything worked out of the box for me.
(ok, so I had to run sndconfig and press return about 4 times, and a point and click printer wizard and internet detection utility which were both in the KDE start menu. No comparison to the nightmares that were called Slackware and Mandrake, though).
There's a Knoppix spin-off called Morphix, hosted at sourceforge, which comes in several flavors, including a Gnome version. I can't vouch for it personally, but it may be what you're asking for.
With Knoppix, you go into a rootshell and type "knx-hdinstall" and it installs it for you.. you have to know how to partition a drive with ncurses and a few other things that are fairly basic but might daunt a total newbie. Far, far easier than the official debian install, though. If you could even dream of successfully installing debian the normal way, with Knoppix it'll be a snap.
The only problem with it is that it puts the home directory on the root partition, and automatically configures the user as "knoppix". A mild annoyance. Still the best solution I've found, after trying RedHat, Mandrake, Slackware, and Debian Woody.
That's a good point, but for the amount of money they're spending on Windows, the Army could develop their own easy to use GUI programs, which would then be their own property. As it is, they'll be paying these licensing fees till hell freezes over.
The problem is, if you're not in IT and don't have a guru, you don't know which shops are good and which ones will sell you crap. You see a list of specs which might as well be written in Klingon. I bought a few lemons that way (one wasn't even put together write - the screws don't align with the holes). Dell and Gateway will give good enough performance for someone who can afford to waste the money.
I'm against monopolies, that's all, because they're bad for consumers. Patents grant legal monopolies, which is bad if done excessively. Microsoft has gotten a monopoly by undercutting their competition and then making their products incompatible with everyone elses once they get a large market share. That's bad too, but has little to do with patents.
The mismanagement of Apple and Xerox is legendary. They made some bad decisions and they lost in the market. They DID have an advantage, being first to market, but they fucked it up. So what?
Maybe you think it would be better if Xerox controlled GUI based OS's? IIRC they didn't even try to make an OS for home users. Or Apple? Then we could deal with a monopoly on proprietary hardware too, and still be paying over $1000 for a cheapo box.
That's an even worse scenario that current patent law allows - companies that patent overly broad ideas and business methods with no intention of doing anything with them, except waiting for someone else to build a business and then sue them.
I should have patented DVD subscriptions and sued Netflix.
If someone else can steal your idea and put you out of business when you're the established player, you're probably doing a shitty job of running your business.
So you're OK with a WalMart coming along with all their resources and wiping out NetFlix as soon as they see that a market is there worth taking? Yeesh, so much for innovation!
First, if Wal-Mart (or anyone else) can provide a better service, why not? Second, why assume Wal-Mart would automatically win? I'm a Netflix customer and I'd never switch to Wal-Mart because they believe in Family Values (ugghh..), which means they won't stock the good stuff.
Well, that pretty much writes off any small inventor. If you have to pour $X into R&D to get a patent, you've basically walled off a class of innovators from ever bringing their ideas to market.
But the reason we have patents is supposed to be to encourage innovation. You don't want to spend 5 years in your garage (if you're the little guy) or millions of dollars (if you're the big guy) building a Gluon Hyperfrappaccinolater, only to have it get knocked off a week after it hits the market.
An idea like DVD subscriptions does not represent a comparable investment of time or money. You could think of something like that while smoking weed and watching Teletubbies.
No, the fact that they were first to market, and therefore have all of the market share and name recognition should be enough. Patents like this serve only to stifle competition and are therefore anti-free market and anti-consumer.
I can understand giving somebody an 18 year monopoly on a product that required lots of money spent on R&D, but allowing any bright idea to be patented is just idiotic.
Slashdot Mirror
What distros actually do this? The distros I've tried come with default browsers that tell the truth. I think Linux usage on the desktop really is about as low as Google Zeitgeist would imply.
Download
For your testing pleasure, we provide nightly binaries and milestones. See the Mozilla Firebird Releases page for more information. The latest release is Mozilla Firebird 0.6.
Testing pleasure? Does a user want to be a tester? Does a user know what a "nightly" or a "milestone" is? Probably not, but they do know that Version 0.6 means Not Ready For Prime Time, if they are semi-quasi-kinda-sorta tech savvy (as I would expect anyone to be who would even consider trying an alternative browser). That's misleading, because Mozilla Firebird, while lacking a few features, really is ready. I use it all the time.
By contrast, if I were to recommend Opera (I wouldn't), I could say "go to opera.com" and there's a red button right there that says "free download." I should be able to say "go to mozillafirebird.com and get it" (.com not .org) and a user should find something similar.
I think they're mistaken again.
It's probably not so easy for the average scientist to find a marriage-worthy mate who is researching the same obscure thing he/she is.
The article was about "280 great scientists" in history. Unless you're some elite physicist who hangs out with Stephen Hawking, you've probably never even met one.
It's a bunch of crappy non-science. Sociobiologists explain any behavior they can find with some half-assed Darwinian theory. It's not testable or falsifiable, so it's not science.
A direct quote from the book, at the beginning of chapter 4:
strace/truss(Solaris) These programs trace system calls a program makes as it makes them. Useful options:
1. -f (follow fork)
2. -ffo filename (output trace to filename.pid for forking)
3. -i (Print instruction pointer for each system call)
Whether my fears are actually founded or not is beside the point - most people are at least as ignorant of these things as I am, and will probably be scared into upgrading by MS's "trusted computing" media blitz (they will have to push security issues, real or imagined, to get people to upgrade, because Windows 2000 is good enough and there's really no reason to upgrade). That means that Windows 2000 will end up with too small of a market share to be worth supporting for id when they make Doom 5, so enthusiasts will still be forced to "upgrade" if they want to properly use their shiny toys (or read a document in Word 2006 format for that matter).
I'm not aware of a good, fast alternative to Mozilla, unfortunately. Dillo is blazingly fast, but chokes on a lot of pages. Hopefully it will be ready for prime time soon. Does anyone know of a better alternative?
If I understand correctly this would mean no patches for the usual weekly cavalcade of Windows vulnerabilities. Personally, I wouldn't want to run 2000 under those circumstances, even with Mozilla/Eudora/Agent. I'm sure they'll use these fears to "force" people to updgrade.
Have you tried Knoppix, by any chance? That's the only distro where everything worked out of the box for me.
(ok, so I had to run sndconfig and press return about 4 times, and a point and click printer wizard and internet detection utility which were both in the KDE start menu. No comparison to the nightmares that were called Slackware and Mandrake, though).
There's a Knoppix spin-off called Morphix, hosted at sourceforge, which comes in several flavors, including a Gnome version. I can't vouch for it personally, but it may be what you're asking for.
The only problem with it is that it puts the home directory on the root partition, and automatically configures the user as "knoppix". A mild annoyance. Still the best solution I've found, after trying RedHat, Mandrake, Slackware, and Debian Woody.
Strange that autopackage.org gets more hits from Windows users than Linux users..
That's a good point, but for the amount of money they're spending on Windows, the Army could develop their own easy to use GUI programs, which would then be their own property. As it is, they'll be paying these licensing fees till hell freezes over.
The problem is, if you're not in IT and don't have a guru, you don't know which shops are good and which ones will sell you crap. You see a list of specs which might as well be written in Klingon. I bought a few lemons that way (one wasn't even put together write - the screws don't align with the holes). Dell and Gateway will give good enough performance for someone who can afford to waste the money.
That's true. You could charge $20/month for a "membership" to your DVD service, and then charge $0.01 for "rentals." Problem solved.
I don't see any contradiction.
Maybe you think it would be better if Xerox controlled GUI based OS's? IIRC they didn't even try to make an OS for home users. Or Apple? Then we could deal with a monopoly on proprietary hardware too, and still be paying over $1000 for a cheapo box.
That's an even worse scenario that current patent law allows - companies that patent overly broad ideas and business methods with no intention of doing anything with them, except waiting for someone else to build a business and then sue them.
I should have patented DVD subscriptions and sued Netflix.
If someone else can steal your idea and put you out of business when you're the established player, you're probably doing a shitty job of running your business.
So you're OK with a WalMart coming along with all their resources and wiping out NetFlix as soon as they see that a market is there worth taking? Yeesh, so much for innovation!
First, if Wal-Mart (or anyone else) can provide a better service, why not?Second, why assume Wal-Mart would automatically win? I'm a Netflix customer and I'd never switch to Wal-Mart because they believe in Family Values (ugghh..), which means they won't stock the good stuff.
Well, that pretty much writes off any small inventor. If you have to pour $X into R&D to get a patent, you've basically walled off a class of innovators from ever bringing their ideas to market.
But the reason we have patents is supposed to be to encourage innovation. You don't want to spend 5 years in your garage (if you're the little guy) or millions of dollars (if you're the big guy) building a Gluon Hyperfrappaccinolater, only to have it get knocked off a week after it hits the market.An idea like DVD subscriptions does not represent a comparable investment of time or money. You could think of something like that while smoking weed and watching Teletubbies.
If you don't understand, you probably have a girlfriend.
Surely at least ONE of the 12395812340958 mom and pop video stores that have existed since the early '80s has done subscriptions..
I can understand giving somebody an 18 year monopoly on a product that required lots of money spent on R&D, but allowing any bright idea to be patented is just idiotic.