Unlike Windows, where it takes a few weeks to get everything downloaded and installed, and where you always have to put up with a significant amount of data loss, Linux O/S upgrades are relatively painless.
A few WEEKS?? I've gone from booting from the Windows installation CD to back in full operation in a day, including patches, application installation, and data restoration. It's a long day, full of waiting while stuff runs, but it's still a day. Heck, I've started at 9 or 10 at night, and was done by 5 or 6 AM (why in the name of everything that's decent I stayed up all night to do it is beyond me...maybe I'm a closet obsessive-compulsive case.)
"those of us that JUST PAID FOR IT - a few years ago"
What's wrong with this statement?
I "just" paid for my cell phone four years ago -...
I think you misunderstood the statement. The parent post was saying that, a few years ago, he bought a boxed copy of RH9, only to find RH9 support/development cut with little warning shortly after he paid for it. The complaint was not about support being cut four years after buying RH9.
It's not as if vote counting is a technically demanding job, and there's no argument for keeping secret the process by which it's done.
This is true, and yet it seems impossible to develop vote-counting software to do it accurately. I'm not referring to the 18,000 undervotes here, I'm referring to election reports in times past where it was reported that machines were counting several thousand more votes than voters in the particular precincts; while not voting in a particular race COULD result in the aforementioned undervotes, it is IMPOSSIBLE (or at least should be) for more votes than voters to be registered. It is the occurrence of the "impossible" that should have the public up in arms.
The excuse of "it's not significant to affect the results" doesn't work; if this is one easily detectable anomaly, what about the undetected anomalies? The overcount (is that a word?) shows that there is a problem, and the machines cannot be presumed accurate. It's that simple.
Votes recorded on paper. Public access to the counting process. It really is THAT simple.
Considering that you are in the advertising industry, I'm not surprised that your user love the "animations and "pretty" stuff. The ad industry is about images that portray something positive and desirable about the advertised product to the target audience. Thus, users being focused on the visual appearance of Vista and Office 2007 is no surprise.
How do the hybrid cars do in bitter cold conditions? Do they run well? How does the heater work? I'm thinking of environments where the temperature is, say, -15 degrees Fahrenheit.
How do they do on really long hills? Up a 7% grade for 15 miles at 50 MPH?
My 2003 Prius hasn't given me any trouble in winter at 95,000 miles. The heater runs like it does in most cars, pulling heat out of the engine coolant.
Now, there is a twist; if you use the vents, defroster, or a combination of the two, there are electric heating elements that will give you heat within a minute or two, even when it is below freezing. Strange that the electric elements don't work with the floor heater...but that's the design, I checked the electrical wiring diagrams to confirm my heater controls weren't fubar.
Driving through the mountains in western Pennsylvania between Wisconsin and Washington DC was never an issue either; the engine would wind up pretty high and mileage uphill would suffer as one would expect, but I always had enough oomph when I needed it. It was also nice that going downhill was largely a no-gas scenario, but not as no-gas as often or as long as I would have hoped; maybe the road grade wasn't as extreme as I thought it was.
Anyway, with double the mileage on average of my former vehicle (2000 Ranger with 5-speed manual on a 2WD, 4 cyl drivetrain), no complaints here.
Diesel is not refined as much as gasoline, and it's exactly the same stuff as home heating oil, yet it's more expensive most places.
More expensive than gasoline or heating oil?
More expensive than gasoline probably because it's not as widely used, so the supply at your local gas station is lower perhaps.
More expensive than heating oil because of the road taxes. If you drive a diesel, you could theoretically pump heating oil into your tank and the car will run just fine. I heard a story once that heating oil burned in a road vehicle is illegal unless you pay the fuel taxes and that it will burn a noticeably different color in a car (although I really don't believe that.)
When they asked the laptop connected to the engine, it said "windows down" was worse than "A/C on", but when they did the actual "who runs out of gas first" test, windows down went considerably further than A/C on with the same amount of fuel -- proving that (as any Prius owner will tell you) the computer is often wrong when it comes to mileage. It was a statistically significant difference too -- I recall that the vehicles used got about 13 mpg, and out of a single tank there was a difference of about 12 miles traveled before running out. (Later mileage tests use a much more sane 5 gallon fill-up so they don't have to drive all day, but on this one they filled them completely.)
And when they did the two different tests, didn't they also do them at different speeds? That will influence which one does better, since higher speeds are more affected by aerodynamics than the A/C compressor and vice versa at low speeds.
The final thoughts were that no modern air conditioning system should vastly impact gas mileage.
They even tested it on some SUV and came out with very similar gas mileage. (Windows down actually caused slightly more loss).
I'm sure someone will chime in here and clear this up a bit. I was just a bit confused when the article claimed air conditioning was a gas hog. (Note, on an older car I had when I kicked in the AC I really did feel the engine jump to compensate, but this was ages ago.)
I remember that one too. If I remember right, they did the test twice; the first run was two SUVs on a test track at 45 MPH (one A/C, one open windows) and the second run was on the open road at 65 MPH.
What struck me when they did the test the second time is that the speed on the second run was HIGHER than the first run. At higher speeds, the aerodynamic drag of the open windows will tend to offset teh lower power requirement of the A/C being turned off. At slower speeds, the A/C load will be greater than the aerodynamic drag of open windows.
This varies with car to car; my 2003 Prius gets better mileage on the highway with the A/C on and windows closed; the exact opposite happens in the city, in quite drastic fashion.
(I may be wrong on the MythBusters test; what I do remember the clearest is that the repeated test conditions were inconsistent, changing more than one test variable from one set of runs to the next.)
(1) I canceled my cable service for the same reason, and I do remember when cable was touted as being ad-free thanks to paid subscribers.
(2) I think you missed the word play connection I made on the "intimate bond with consumers" as stated in the article and my pointing out that we're already getting fucked. It was a joke.
I was under the impression that we were already paying for the phone service. Granted that there is advertising on Sky and cable services but this is just a drain on battery power. Just because you can doesn't mean you should.
This is true, you are paying for the phone/data service. However, Verizon isn't beaming the ads directly to your phone. FTA:
"Beginning early next year, Verizon Wireless will allow placement of banner advertisements on news, weather, sports and other Internet sites that users visit and display on their mobile phones, company executives said."
It reads to me like this is the same as placing ads on regular Web sites. You may pay your local ISP for Internet access, not the content of the websites themselves. To say that you shouldn't get ads because you are paying for access says that your ISP should block ads from the websites you visit on your PC.
Now, if you are paying Verizon for CONTENT, that's a different story. In that case, if you are paying Verizon for the content of the web pages you visit via mobile phone, then yes, the ads should not be present.
I find it hard to believe that a mobile phone screen even has room for ads, since it's barely big enough for the content as it is.
Yes, you're already paying for it... but the cell phone providers and advertisers are really just looking our for your best interest... as the article says:
"The interest of advertisers in the medium stems from a theory that ads placed on mobile phones could create a particularly intimate bond with consumers"
Hmmm... interesting theory. I used to work in marketing, and always love how marketing/advertising folks have this idea that everyone loves ads and that ads make their lives better.
Again, had the author simply used Debian's 'apt-get' method of installing, all of the extra work would have been unnecessary. If anything, his installation of Firefox and Thunderbird demonstrate the freedom of Linux, not the difficulty of it.
Not being familiar with 'apt-get,' how does that work? Does the application need to be in some sort of Debian-maintained database? (I ask because I really don't know; the only install package I have any experience with is RPM, and that was before Fedora came into being, to give you an idea of the time.)
If it is a Debian-maintained database, what if the app you want isn't in that database?
The real question is: what happens when non-popular-linux-website folks attempt to install a Debian Etch on an old thinkpad? I'm not sure the report would be so peachy...
Good question...and the answer, my friend, explains why Linux won't make it to the mainstream desktop for quite some time. I'm going to focus my comments on hitting a particular target audience, and neglect the technical/security superiority of one platform over another.
FTA:
Tops on my list of applications are Firefox and Thunderbird, and I always get rid of modified versions and substitute the pristine versions direct from Mozilla.org. So I downloaded both, unzipped and untarred them into/usr/lib/, where Debian likes to keep them, and created symlinks in/usr/bin/ pointing to/usr/lib/firefox/firefox and/usr/lib/thunderbird/thunderbird, where the system expects to find them.
I tried Firefox first, but it wouldn't load. I tried it again, this time by typing firefox from a console window, and noticed that the program was sending out an error message ("error while loading shared libraries") regarding a file called "libstdc++.so.5" that it either couldn't load or find. A quick bit of googling led me to install the missing library, using the command (as root): apt-get install libstdc++5. Thankfully, that was all it took to get the pure, Mozilla.org-supplied Firefox running on my desktop.
Two points of interest here:
(1) The author had to create symbolic links to make Firefox and Thunderbird work.
(2) "A quick bit of googling" was required to get the missing library installed.
Read the first quoted paragraph again. Note the author had to unzip and untar the files into the directory "where Debian likes to keep them," and make the symlinks where "where the system expects to find them." Does the Debian distro put Firefox and Thunderbird in a different directory than the Ubuntu or Fedora? How about Slackware?
Lots of Linux fans berate Microsoft for stooping to the lowest common denominator, i.e. the common user, when it comes to making Windows more or less configurable. These same Linux fans point out that most users are just doing Web surfing, e-mail, word processing, and playing multimedia files/viewing photos--activities that don't require knowledge on configuring user permissions or defining firewall rules or any other low-level ("low level" as in base system) settings.
If these users are the ones that the Linux community are trying to get to migrate to Linux, there's a long road ahead of them. These "commoners" aren't going to know about installing libraries, or making symbolic links because "the system" expects the files in one locations but that particular distro "like them" somewhere else. Here's the real kicker; they don't CARE about these things. They want to read and send e-mail. They want to look at Web pages. They want to look at the pictures taken with their digital cameras. They know "click the setup.exe" files and the installation takes care of the rest, including installing other library files that may be needed. Click the desktop icon, and your program starts.
You want the masses to migrate to Linux? Make application installations "point and click" operations, including all necessary dependency checks and library installations as part of that initial click of the mouse button. Installing apps has to be that easy. There's no getting around it. Computers are no longer the domain for the tech-savvy (and haven't been for some time) and have to be made easy to use, like a television or microwave oven. Computers are a commodity, not an oddity.
Before you go off accusing me of being a MS apologist or fanboy, note that the only thing I use Windows for is playing a couple of games on rare occasion. The rest of time I'm on an OS X platform. I've used Linux in some research projects and tried to convert comp
Are we still calling it now that Lynksys/Cisco has a product called that?
I'm waiting for Apple to unleash its lawyers on Cisco for infringing on the "iName" trademark. Since Apple has well-established the iName (iChat, iLife, iTunes, iPod, etc.) I wonder if this would be a legitimate trademark infringement case. After all, when you say "iPhone", don't you first think Apple?
Especially with the advent of social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook, and with user-supplied content, a-la YouTube. It's tough to keep a firm grasp on your privacy these days if you're at all part of any aspect of modern culture.
Agreed. I submitted a story to/. on 11 December (still pending??) about an article in TIME magazine.
But two Bank of America employees at a private function celebrating the company's merger with MBNA couldn't have anticipated what happened to them. Their over-the-top rendition of U2's "One" (with custom lyrics like "Integration has never had us feeling so good") wound up being mocked by thousands of Internet critics. (Adding injury to insult, lawyers for U2's record label threatened a lawsuit for copyright infringement.)
Cheap video technology (esp. video-capable cellphones) and social sites make it all possible.
Simply being in public can get you on these social sites, whether you actually use them (or have even HEARD of them) or not. In the end, the only way to ensure your privacy is to not become a part of society. If you venture into public, you too could end up on some social web site.
And remember--this is the PUBLIC engaging in a type of surveillance on the PUBLIC. For the tinfoil hats out there, it's not just the government's watchful eye you have to be careful around; it's that video-capable cellphone in the hands of the seemingly innocent rider sitting across from you on the train, too.
I know a lot of people don't like it, but tapping the track pad works perfectly for me. With the addition of two-finger tapping for a right mouse button I'm perfectly happy.
And as I already stated, that doesn't work for a click-drag operation.
Actually, it might.
On my iBook, I use the double one-finger-tap in place of a left-click on the mouse. Do a double tap, then on the second tap drag instead of lifting your finger. I can then drag, lift, drag, lift, drag, etc. as needed to select all the text/whatever I am selecting, and the click stays locked until I do a single finger-tap again. (Although you're probably aware of this little trick.)
I don't have the two finger right-click though, that's apparently a MacBook/MBP feature. I would suspect that it would work the same, locking the "click" on the second rapid tap-drag combo, releasing on the next two-finger tap.
Apple does the same thing with Safari. Or does that not count? If bundling is bad, hold everybody to the same standard.
I don't think it's that bundling in and of itself is bad; as you stated, Safari is bundled with OS X. Konqueror/Mozilla/other browsers are bundled with various Linux distros.
It's the manner in which the bundling is done; IE cannot be easily, completely removed from a Windows installation. I can easily, completely remove Safari from OS X and replace it with Firefox and feel no ill effects in my day-to-day OS X use. How can I remove IE from Windows easily and not feel ill effects in day-to-day use of Windows? Maybe there is a way; I have little need to go hunting it down because I don't use Windows much.
If MS want to bundle IE with Windows, let them do so. However, make sure there is an easy, safe way to completely remove it and replace it with the browser of the user's choice (or even no browser if that's what the user wants to do.)
I had a similar situation arise, but I "lost" the original 40 GB drive when I replaced the drive in my iBook it with an 80 GB unit (yes, I did it myself, and didn't lose any of the bazillion screws I had to remove).
Fortunately (and wisely) I backed up my drive weekly (sometimes more often) using Synchronize X! Pro which will make a bootable backup of your drive. Now, I have a external USB drive so I can't boot from it (Macs won't boot from USB apparently, but will boot from Firewaire drives) so all I did was boot using the recovery CD, partition the new drive, do a straight copy from the backup drive to the new one, and reboot--wham-o, machine is back in action.
That's what I like about OS X--all I did was do a straight copy of the old drive contents to the new drive and reboot. The backup data on the external drive is in a usable form (standard HFS+ journaled file format) so I can cherry-pick files off of it as needed simply by copying the files via the Finder. No specialized data recovery software, and I can manually pick out files as needed, if needed. None of this running multitudes of installation programs to recover the system.
But to be on-topic, I'll second others whom say to have the same stuff you would keep on a recovery CD--registration keys, drivers, and installation files for hardware-specific installations (touch pads, video, etc.) Everything else had damn well better be backed up somewhere else--chances are that you will have too much to keep on a flash drive.
BTW, has Knoppix been put on a flash drive and used to boot a system?
Aww crap, never mind...I re-watched the video and it used a distributed set of custom sensors. not the campus Wi-Fi network. So disregard my previous comment.
A key point though is that while the CNN video title is "Tracked through your iPod", it is NOT the iPod being tracked or doing the tracking; no iPod is necessary for this to work.
All I can say about their finding is a big outstanding "DUHHH." The whole point of the device is to "track" you. It uses a proprietary 802.11 signal.
A thought just came to me (and it's offtopic but an interesting thought)...
If the device can be tracked on any 802.11 wireless network (I watched the CNN video on the story, where the device was tracked on the U. of Washington campus via the Wi-Fi network), it's logical to assume that the device uses a Wi-Fi link to talk to the transceiver on the iPod.
Does this then make the transceiver the first iPod Wi-Fi adapter? Could this be used to give your iPod W-Fi capability?
Hmm, last time I checked the military academies were still hazing new members. I mean, the upperclassmen still treat freshmen like dirt, and haze them mercilessly, don't they? "Beast Barracks" still exists, doesn't it? Fraternities can't hold a candle to some of the crap I've read about - oh, but that's "tradition" for the U.S. military, isn't it?
Right--one reason I got out of the service. And our CO was pretty hard-core against any hazing. The whole sub squadron got hard-core against hazing when one night, a guy who wouldn't reveal who tacked on his dolphins so hard he got big-ass bruises shot himself while on topside watch.
So because you unfortunately had some bad officers (and I daresay some irresponsible members who didn't pay their dues), somehow fraternities in general are bad? Are you saying you've never heard stories about lack of accountability, or money being lost or wasted, while in the Navy? What planet were you stationed on, by the way?
Did I say all fraternities and sororities were bad based on my bad experience? You must have missed this part of my post where I pointed out my experience may have been an anomaly:
"Maybe I just had the misfortune to have a bad experience, but everything that you mentioned (management and leadership) can be learned elsewhere, without sacrificing one's dignity as the price of entry."
This line really made me chuckle. Yes, as we all know, no Naval officer ever covers his ass when he screws up. Everyone is always accountable for his mistakes. The guilty are always punished, and the innocent are always rewarded. Sure, you betcha. What brand of Kool-aid did they serve you?
In my experience, yes. The submarine fleet is a world apart from the surface Navy, where everybody is accountable by necessity--one mistake by one crewmember can cost everybody their lives. Did my division officer lose paperwork and try to pass it off on me? Sure. I'm not talking about those sorts of CYA tactics. I'm talking about REAL leadership and management where lives are at stake.
But if you're going to condemn Greeks for those things, you're being a hypocrite if you don't condemn the Navy (and practically every other organization since the dawn of time) for exactly the same things.
See the first line of my post where I state that any organization where I have to do dumb stuff to join is not an organization I want to be a part of.
However, Apple's update does not address all publicly known flaws in the operating system. Over the past few weeks bug hunters, as part of an initiative called the Month of the Kernel Bugs, have published details on several new vulnerabilities in Mac OS X. One of those was tagged "highly critical" by security-monitoring company Secunia.
"Apple hasn't fixed any of the bugs published during the Month of Kernel Bugs, except for the AirPort issue," said "LMH," the code name of the security researcher who started the Month of the Kernel Bugs. "Apple users are still exposed to any potential risks related to those unpatched issues."
This reads to me that Apple hasn't fixed flaws found in November. As a reminder, the month isn't over yet; bugs can't be fixed instantly. The first impression is somebody whining "we found it, is it fixed yet why isn't it fixed yet we told you about it a whole week ago what's taking so long is it done yet?"
That's just my impression.
Fixes take time and testing; would you prefer that a half-assed fix be put in place?
As someone that pledged & joined a fraternity during my undergrad I take offense to your comments. I met many life long friends, and solidified many other relationships inside this organization. It taught leadership & management skills that certainly will become precursors to strong professional lives.
First point: PLEDGING. Doing stupid stuff to earn the members' respect and loyalty. If I have to do dumb things to join ANY organization and to earn respect, that's not the kind of respect I want to earn.
Second point: Leadership and management skills. I was a member of a fraternity for one semester (and just so you don't think I'm hypocritical on point #1, it was Sigma Phi Epsilon, one of the "Balanced Man" chapters where they don't do any hazing or pledging) and that was about half a semester too long. The monthly dues were quite high ($50/month was a lot for a college student back then) and yet the almost-chapter (a few bodies short of the minimum for the charter) was supposedly always short on funds. Given the numbers we ahd at the time, if everybody paid their dues on time, the debts to the national chapter would be gone in two months; it was a full year after first starting the colony, and yet the debts were still on the books. Where was the money going? The treasurer didn't seem to have a good answer, and nobody else really seemed to care too much.
Leadership development and educational events were promoted as "dry" events; the chapter stopped at a liquor store on the way to stock up, and underage drinking was more-than-allowed. As a member of the standards board, I brought up this issue and it was overwhelmingly shoved under the carpet. There was always this attitude on one hand of respect for society and being responsible, mature citizens; yet the rules of society (and even of the fraternity at times) were scoffed at if they proved to be inconvenient. It was, overall, quite hypocritical--the "brothers" saying one thing and doing another.
Leadership and management skills...please. I quit in disgust after a semester. I got real leadership and management training in the Navy, where failures in leadership would have dire consequences.
Maybe I just had the misfortune to have a bad experience, but everything that you mentioned (management and leadership) can be learned elsewhere, without sacrificing one's dignity as the price of entry.
Slashdot Mirror
A few WEEKS?? I've gone from booting from the Windows installation CD to back in full operation in a day, including patches, application installation, and data restoration. It's a long day, full of waiting while stuff runs, but it's still a day. Heck, I've started at 9 or 10 at night, and was done by 5 or 6 AM (why in the name of everything that's decent I stayed up all night to do it is beyond me...maybe I'm a closet obsessive-compulsive case.)
I think you misunderstood the statement. The parent post was saying that, a few years ago, he bought a boxed copy of RH9, only to find RH9 support/development cut with little warning shortly after he paid for it. The complaint was not about support being cut four years after buying RH9.
Gee, this bears remarkable similarity to a guy's night out getting hammered at the local watering holes.
This is true, and yet it seems impossible to develop vote-counting software to do it accurately. I'm not referring to the 18,000 undervotes here, I'm referring to election reports in times past where it was reported that machines were counting several thousand more votes than voters in the particular precincts; while not voting in a particular race COULD result in the aforementioned undervotes, it is IMPOSSIBLE (or at least should be) for more votes than voters to be registered. It is the occurrence of the "impossible" that should have the public up in arms.
The excuse of "it's not significant to affect the results" doesn't work; if this is one easily detectable anomaly, what about the undetected anomalies? The overcount (is that a word?) shows that there is a problem, and the machines cannot be presumed accurate. It's that simple.
Votes recorded on paper. Public access to the counting process. It really is THAT simple.
Considering that you are in the advertising industry, I'm not surprised that your user love the "animations and "pretty" stuff. The ad industry is about images that portray something positive and desirable about the advertised product to the target audience. Thus, users being focused on the visual appearance of Vista and Office 2007 is no surprise.
It's not a criticism, just an observation.
My 2003 Prius hasn't given me any trouble in winter at 95,000 miles. The heater runs like it does in most cars, pulling heat out of the engine coolant.
Now, there is a twist; if you use the vents, defroster, or a combination of the two, there are electric heating elements that will give you heat within a minute or two, even when it is below freezing. Strange that the electric elements don't work with the floor heater...but that's the design, I checked the electrical wiring diagrams to confirm my heater controls weren't fubar.
Driving through the mountains in western Pennsylvania between Wisconsin and Washington DC was never an issue either; the engine would wind up pretty high and mileage uphill would suffer as one would expect, but I always had enough oomph when I needed it. It was also nice that going downhill was largely a no-gas scenario, but not as no-gas as often or as long as I would have hoped; maybe the road grade wasn't as extreme as I thought it was.
Anyway, with double the mileage on average of my former vehicle (2000 Ranger with 5-speed manual on a 2WD, 4 cyl drivetrain), no complaints here.
More expensive than gasoline or heating oil?
More expensive than gasoline probably because it's not as widely used, so the supply at your local gas station is lower perhaps.
More expensive than heating oil because of the road taxes. If you drive a diesel, you could theoretically pump heating oil into your tank and the car will run just fine. I heard a story once that heating oil burned in a road vehicle is illegal unless you pay the fuel taxes and that it will burn a noticeably different color in a car (although I really don't believe that.)
And when they did the two different tests, didn't they also do them at different speeds? That will influence which one does better, since higher speeds are more affected by aerodynamics than the A/C compressor and vice versa at low speeds.
I remember that one too. If I remember right, they did the test twice; the first run was two SUVs on a test track at 45 MPH (one A/C, one open windows) and the second run was on the open road at 65 MPH.
What struck me when they did the test the second time is that the speed on the second run was HIGHER than the first run. At higher speeds, the aerodynamic drag of the open windows will tend to offset teh lower power requirement of the A/C being turned off. At slower speeds, the A/C load will be greater than the aerodynamic drag of open windows.
This varies with car to car; my 2003 Prius gets better mileage on the highway with the A/C on and windows closed; the exact opposite happens in the city, in quite drastic fashion.
(I may be wrong on the MythBusters test; what I do remember the clearest is that the repeated test conditions were inconsistent, changing more than one test variable from one set of runs to the next.)
(1) I canceled my cable service for the same reason, and I do remember when cable was touted as being ad-free thanks to paid subscribers.
(2) I think you missed the word play connection I made on the "intimate bond with consumers" as stated in the article and my pointing out that we're already getting fucked. It was a joke.
This is true, you are paying for the phone/data service. However, Verizon isn't beaming the ads directly to your phone. FTA:
"Beginning early next year, Verizon Wireless will allow placement of banner advertisements on news, weather, sports and other Internet sites that users visit and display on their mobile phones, company executives said."
It reads to me like this is the same as placing ads on regular Web sites. You may pay your local ISP for Internet access, not the content of the websites themselves. To say that you shouldn't get ads because you are paying for access says that your ISP should block ads from the websites you visit on your PC.
Now, if you are paying Verizon for CONTENT, that's a different story. In that case, if you are paying Verizon for the content of the web pages you visit via mobile phone, then yes, the ads should not be present.
I find it hard to believe that a mobile phone screen even has room for ads, since it's barely big enough for the content as it is.
What, we weren't getting fucked already?
Not being familiar with 'apt-get,' how does that work? Does the application need to be in some sort of Debian-maintained database? (I ask because I really don't know; the only install package I have any experience with is RPM, and that was before Fedora came into being, to give you an idea of the time.)
If it is a Debian-maintained database, what if the app you want isn't in that database?
Good question...and the answer, my friend, explains why Linux won't make it to the mainstream desktop for quite some time. I'm going to focus my comments on hitting a particular target audience, and neglect the technical/security superiority of one platform over another.
FTA:
Two points of interest here:
(1) The author had to create symbolic links to make Firefox and Thunderbird work.
(2) "A quick bit of googling" was required to get the missing library installed.
Read the first quoted paragraph again. Note the author had to unzip and untar the files into the directory "where Debian likes to keep them," and make the symlinks where "where the system expects to find them." Does the Debian distro put Firefox and Thunderbird in a different directory than the Ubuntu or Fedora? How about Slackware?
Lots of Linux fans berate Microsoft for stooping to the lowest common denominator, i.e. the common user, when it comes to making Windows more or less configurable. These same Linux fans point out that most users are just doing Web surfing, e-mail, word processing, and playing multimedia files/viewing photos--activities that don't require knowledge on configuring user permissions or defining firewall rules or any other low-level ("low level" as in base system) settings.
If these users are the ones that the Linux community are trying to get to migrate to Linux, there's a long road ahead of them. These "commoners" aren't going to know about installing libraries, or making symbolic links because "the system" expects the files in one locations but that particular distro "like them" somewhere else. Here's the real kicker; they don't CARE about these things. They want to read and send e-mail. They want to look at Web pages. They want to look at the pictures taken with their digital cameras. They know "click the setup.exe" files and the installation takes care of the rest, including installing other library files that may be needed. Click the desktop icon, and your program starts.
You want the masses to migrate to Linux? Make application installations "point and click" operations, including all necessary dependency checks and library installations as part of that initial click of the mouse button. Installing apps has to be that easy. There's no getting around it. Computers are no longer the domain for the tech-savvy (and haven't been for some time) and have to be made easy to use, like a television or microwave oven. Computers are a commodity, not an oddity.
Before you go off accusing me of being a MS apologist or fanboy, note that the only thing I use Windows for is playing a couple of games on rare occasion. The rest of time I'm on an OS X platform. I've used Linux in some research projects and tried to convert comp
I'm waiting for Apple to unleash its lawyers on Cisco for infringing on the "iName" trademark. Since Apple has well-established the iName (iChat, iLife, iTunes, iPod, etc.) I wonder if this would be a legitimate trademark infringement case. After all, when you say "iPhone", don't you first think Apple?
Ask me again after I wash my eyes out with battery acid.
Agreed. I submitted a story to
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15994151/site/newswee
From that story, a good example:
Cheap video technology (esp. video-capable cellphones) and social sites make it all possible.
Simply being in public can get you on these social sites, whether you actually use them (or have even HEARD of them) or not. In the end, the only way to ensure your privacy is to not become a part of society. If you venture into public, you too could end up on some social web site.
And remember--this is the PUBLIC engaging in a type of surveillance on the PUBLIC. For the tinfoil hats out there, it's not just the government's watchful eye you have to be careful around; it's that video-capable cellphone in the hands of the seemingly innocent rider sitting across from you on the train, too.
Actually, it might.
On my iBook, I use the double one-finger-tap in place of a left-click on the mouse. Do a double tap, then on the second tap drag instead of lifting your finger. I can then drag, lift, drag, lift, drag, etc. as needed to select all the text/whatever I am selecting, and the click stays locked until I do a single finger-tap again. (Although you're probably aware of this little trick.)
I don't have the two finger right-click though, that's apparently a MacBook/MBP feature. I would suspect that it would work the same, locking the "click" on the second rapid tap-drag combo, releasing on the next two-finger tap.
Can anybody with a MacBook/MBP confirm/deny this?
I don't think it's that bundling in and of itself is bad; as you stated, Safari is bundled with OS X. Konqueror/Mozilla/other browsers are bundled with various Linux distros.
It's the manner in which the bundling is done; IE cannot be easily, completely removed from a Windows installation. I can easily, completely remove Safari from OS X and replace it with Firefox and feel no ill effects in my day-to-day OS X use. How can I remove IE from Windows easily and not feel ill effects in day-to-day use of Windows? Maybe there is a way; I have little need to go hunting it down because I don't use Windows much.
If MS want to bundle IE with Windows, let them do so. However, make sure there is an easy, safe way to completely remove it and replace it with the browser of the user's choice (or even no browser if that's what the user wants to do.)
I had a similar situation arise, but I "lost" the original 40 GB drive when I replaced the drive in my iBook it with an 80 GB unit (yes, I did it myself, and didn't lose any of the bazillion screws I had to remove).
Fortunately (and wisely) I backed up my drive weekly (sometimes more often) using Synchronize X! Pro which will make a bootable backup of your drive. Now, I have a external USB drive so I can't boot from it (Macs won't boot from USB apparently, but will boot from Firewaire drives) so all I did was boot using the recovery CD, partition the new drive, do a straight copy from the backup drive to the new one, and reboot--wham-o, machine is back in action.
That's what I like about OS X--all I did was do a straight copy of the old drive contents to the new drive and reboot. The backup data on the external drive is in a usable form (standard HFS+ journaled file format) so I can cherry-pick files off of it as needed simply by copying the files via the Finder. No specialized data recovery software, and I can manually pick out files as needed, if needed. None of this running multitudes of installation programs to recover the system.
But to be on-topic, I'll second others whom say to have the same stuff you would keep on a recovery CD--registration keys, drivers, and installation files for hardware-specific installations (touch pads, video, etc.) Everything else had damn well better be backed up somewhere else--chances are that you will have too much to keep on a flash drive.
BTW, has Knoppix been put on a flash drive and used to boot a system?
That's enough rambling from me on the topic.
Aww crap, never mind...I re-watched the video and it used a distributed set of custom sensors. not the campus Wi-Fi network. So disregard my previous comment.
A key point though is that while the CNN video title is "Tracked through your iPod", it is NOT the iPod being tracked or doing the tracking; no iPod is necessary for this to work.
A thought just came to me (and it's offtopic but an interesting thought)...
If the device can be tracked on any 802.11 wireless network (I watched the CNN video on the story, where the device was tracked on the U. of Washington campus via the Wi-Fi network), it's logical to assume that the device uses a Wi-Fi link to talk to the transceiver on the iPod.
Does this then make the transceiver the first iPod Wi-Fi adapter? Could this be used to give your iPod W-Fi capability?
Right--one reason I got out of the service. And our CO was pretty hard-core against any hazing. The whole sub squadron got hard-core against hazing when one night, a guy who wouldn't reveal who tacked on his dolphins so hard he got big-ass bruises shot himself while on topside watch.
Did I say all fraternities and sororities were bad based on my bad experience? You must have missed this part of my post where I pointed out my experience may have been an anomaly:
"Maybe I just had the misfortune to have a bad experience, but everything that you mentioned (management and leadership) can be learned elsewhere, without sacrificing one's dignity as the price of entry."
In my experience, yes. The submarine fleet is a world apart from the surface Navy, where everybody is accountable by necessity--one mistake by one crewmember can cost everybody their lives. Did my division officer lose paperwork and try to pass it off on me? Sure. I'm not talking about those sorts of CYA tactics. I'm talking about REAL leadership and management where lives are at stake.
See the first line of my post where I state that any organization where I have to do dumb stuff to join is not an organization I want to be a part of.
This reads to me that Apple hasn't fixed flaws found in November. As a reminder, the month isn't over yet; bugs can't be fixed instantly. The first impression is somebody whining "we found it, is it fixed yet why isn't it fixed yet we told you about it a whole week ago what's taking so long is it done yet?"
That's just my impression.
Fixes take time and testing; would you prefer that a half-assed fix be put in place?
First point: PLEDGING. Doing stupid stuff to earn the members' respect and loyalty. If I have to do dumb things to join ANY organization and to earn respect, that's not the kind of respect I want to earn.
Second point: Leadership and management skills. I was a member of a fraternity for one semester (and just so you don't think I'm hypocritical on point #1, it was Sigma Phi Epsilon, one of the "Balanced Man" chapters where they don't do any hazing or pledging) and that was about half a semester too long. The monthly dues were quite high ($50/month was a lot for a college student back then) and yet the almost-chapter (a few bodies short of the minimum for the charter) was supposedly always short on funds. Given the numbers we ahd at the time, if everybody paid their dues on time, the debts to the national chapter would be gone in two months; it was a full year after first starting the colony, and yet the debts were still on the books. Where was the money going? The treasurer didn't seem to have a good answer, and nobody else really seemed to care too much.
Leadership development and educational events were promoted as "dry" events; the chapter stopped at a liquor store on the way to stock up, and underage drinking was more-than-allowed. As a member of the standards board, I brought up this issue and it was overwhelmingly shoved under the carpet. There was always this attitude on one hand of respect for society and being responsible, mature citizens; yet the rules of society (and even of the fraternity at times) were scoffed at if they proved to be inconvenient. It was, overall, quite hypocritical--the "brothers" saying one thing and doing another.
Leadership and management skills...please. I quit in disgust after a semester. I got real leadership and management training in the Navy, where failures in leadership would have dire consequences.
Maybe I just had the misfortune to have a bad experience, but everything that you mentioned (management and leadership) can be learned elsewhere, without sacrificing one's dignity as the price of entry.