So wait a minute. You're saying that your experience installing Windows 2000-- on a no-name box built at the discount mall, no doubt-- was unpleasant, but that the exact same process to install Linux is somehow acceptable? Talk about your double standards.
So I'll suggest again that you're implicitly arguing...
Suggest all you like. I'm being quite explicit, if you'll notice. I'm not mincing words here. Linux sucks as a single-user operating system.
And anyway, I have apt-rpm installed...
So once again, it comes down to having to have special knowledge to make the system work. Great endorsement, friend.
Maybe it doesn't seem intuitive to you, a Windows user...
Did you miss the part where I talked about OS X? I haven't used Windows for the better part of a year, and before that I only used it occasionally. Windows is definitely not my thing, nor is it my basis for comparison. Since Windows is not UNIX in any sense of the term, it's not productive to think about what's wrong with Linux in terms of what's right with Windows. That's like talking about what's wrong with your car in terms of what's right with my umbrella. Instead, it makes sense to compare a successful single-user UNIX system, Mac OS X, to an unsuccessful single-user UNIX, Linux.
Oh, and as for installing software? I don't really care much for your "simple" method. I just drag the icon from the disk image to my Applications folder. No dependencies, no incompatibilities. Doesn't get any simpler than that.
So what you've just argued is that Linux isn't usable because it doesn't have Microsoft's monopoly.
HUH? I'm arguing that Linux isn't usable because it's a pain in the ass to set up and use. Shifting that burden from the end user to the OEM wouldn't make Linux any better. It'd still be a pain in the ass.
In order for Linux to be on par with either Mac OS or Windows, a huge amount of work is going to have to go into things like software installation, a unified framework for managing and controlling daemons and other non-interactive software services, how to manage shared libraries and other components, drivers and modules, and so on. These are the things that make Linux a pain in the ass.
Putting a pretty UI and some poorly designed "wizards" on top of Linux as it stands today is like spray-painting a turd.
That has nothing at all to do with peer-to-peer. Let's get this clear right now: P2P != distributed, nor vice versa. As you pointed out yourself, Akamai is the canonical example of a distributed content network, and there's nothing remotely P2P-like about it.
Oh, goddammit. I bet you think you're pretty smart using my own words against me like that.;-)
Okay, I said that, but I shouldn't have. I was being careless. What I meant to say was the more verbose version I gave you last time. My bad, mea culpa, foot-in-mouth, and so on.
Initally you were trying to imply a black and white point that a gun is the ONLY thing that could be used therfore its existance is justified and P2P had no purpose as other tools could be used.
That's what I mean. That was not, and is not my assertion. My point is that guns should continue to be legal because they have non-trivial legitimate uses. By "legitimate uses" I mean that, as I said, there are significant legal and appropriate tasks for which a gun is the best option. I should not have said the thing about how a gun is the only tool; I was being careless.
P2P, on the other hand, has no non-trivial legitimate uses, by which I mean that there are no significant legal and appropriate tasks for which P2P is the best option. And P2P is most widely used for illegal purposes. So it should be gotten rid of.
I choose to use a P2P in my examples because it is convienent, quick, does the job well and efficiently over other methods.
Even if that were true-- it's not; FTP is better-- it ignores the fact that more people use P2P technology for copyright infringement than for all other uses combined. You're basically saying that biological weapons should be allowed because weaponized anthrax makes a kick-ass gopher repellant. You're saying that P2P should continue to be allowed because a tiny percentage of its users claim to use it for something that they really ought to be using something else for. Dumb argument; doesn't hold water.
P2P took off because it combined many tools into one and added many others that were not available.
Are you challenged? P2P took off because college kids used Napster to download music without paying for it. When Napster came under fire for having absolutely no non-trivial legitimate use, people tried to generalize the idea into things like Kazaa and Gnutella and whatnot so they could still get their free goodies but hide behind a veil of legitimacy. It's all crap, and a sensible person can see right through it.
What the media conglomerates are trying to do is shut it ALL down and pretend that the non infringing uses don't exist.
No. What they're trying to do is to put a stop to widespread piracy by opposing the use of-- if not the mere existence of-- tools and technologies that exist for no purpose other than to facilitate it.
Yes, I have all of those features on my computer, too, and I didn't have to spend dozens or hundreds of hours making it all work.
You are the typical Linux elitist. You have managed to cobble together a computer that is almost as good as a Windows PC. Congratulations, here's your cookie.
Let me give you just one example of how your computer is not the hot shit that you think it is: you said, "Yes, I have handwriting recognition via xscribble!" Great. My computer also has handwriting recognition, via Ink. Let's see how they compare.
To get xscribble working on your computer, you first had to be aware that it exists. Don't laugh; we're talking about Linux for average folks here. Then you had to find it-- Google makes this easy in this case, but that's still an extra step, and one that would be far from obvious to a novice user. I spent three or four minutes popping around the xscribble home page looking for a link that said "click here to install," with no luck, so obviously finding the software takes more than three or four minutes. If you're lucky enough to find a compatible binary package, there's still the problem of installing it: depending on which sub-flavor of Linux you have, this could be anything from running command-line RPM to a half-finished graphical tool to god knows what. Maybe it includes a kernel module that requires you to manually update modules.conf or some such. And that's if you're lucky enough to find a binary for it. Building from sources is another circle of hell altogether.
You know how I got Ink working on my computer? I plugged in my tablet. That's it. That's the beginning and ending of it, the alpha and the omega.
Before you go bragging about how your little hobby "rules," you might want to spend a moment reflecting on the facts of the situation.
All the/etc files are there, but they're not used... that SUCKS...
That hasn't been true since 10.1, and it wasn't even true then. For example, host name lookups are handled by lookupd. In 10.1 and earlier, lookupd was configured to ignore/etc/hosts by default, but could very easily be changed. In 10.2 and later, lookupd uses/etc/hosts by default. That's just one example.
I'm sure we're both going to be moderated as trolls or flamebaits or whatever for this, but it's true. Yet another year has gone by with no sign, not even an inkling, of a suitable Linux-based desktop operating system.
OS X, on the other hand, just keeps getting better, proving that user-friendly yet powerful UNIX is not only possible, but damn profitable.
I was commenting on your all encompassing statement that a gun was the ONLY tool that could be used.
Never said that. I said that there are non-trivial, legitimate uses that cannot be as well served with anything other than a gun. In other words, there's a need for a gun. It serves a purpose.
P2P software serves no legitimate purpose. On the other hand, it does a great deal of harm. So abolish it. Q.E.D.
How in the hell are you going to find these ftp servers and search through there contents for what your looking for?
Ever heard of archie? It may well be before your time, but it worked very, very well for just this purpose. Getting archie back up and running would be a trivial task compared to the energy that went into writing all these horribly unstable, spyware-laden P2P programs.
What happens when those anonymous FTP servers also have MP3's on it, does that now make FTP illegal?
No, because (see if you can follow along here) there are non-trivial, legitimate uses that cannot be as well served with anything other than an FTP server. See the logic now?
Besides, abolishing all this P2P crap and getting back to FTP will put the focus of this problem back where it belongs: on the users who are breaking the law, rather than on subversive and illegitimate software tools that should never have been created in the first place.
You can hunt with many tools like arrows, traps, spears, rod and reel, sling shot, knife, stun gun etc...
Try to bring down an elk or a reindeer with a spear. Go right ahead. When you make it back-- if you make it back-- you can tell me how it went.
But more importantly, you forgot the most important legitimate use of a gun: defense.
I have downloaded and upload gigs worth of blah blah from P2P, all non MPAA/RIAA and free to distibute.
Fine. But you could have done it better with other tools, tools that have non-trivial legitimate uses.
Where else can I post and share my material with others and NOT have to go through a third party commercial entity that charges per GB or can hold a few GB's of material for as cheap as P2P can do from my home PC?
If you can do it with Kazaa or whatthehellever, you can do it with an anonymous FTP server. Unless your ISP prohibits it, of course, in which case the answer is "you can't do that."
Add that it be non centralized and searchable for everyone to use freely and participate.
I can see it being a useful tool for working around censorship, for example.
The best tool for working around censorship is the photocopier. We had this argument in the context of Freenet a few months ago. The conclusion was that there is no non-trivial legitimate use of this sort of decentralized technology. In an oppressed country where speaking one's mind can lead to imprisonment or worse, the audience to which you want to send your message certainly does not have computers. Technology like this is useless for circumventing unjust censorship. But running off a thousand copies of something and passing them around clandestinely will work as well today as it did in the 1700's.
Guns have tons of legitimate uses that cannot be carried out with any other tool: hunting, sport shooting, defense. P2P networks have no legitimate uses at all that cannot be (better!) carried out with another tool.
On the list of things I would abolish if I were king of the world, all this P2P crap would be #3. Right after terrorism and "Everybody Loves Raymond."
There's nothing stupid about Intertrust's DRM designs. They're intended to protect the rights of the licensee just as much as the rights of the licensor. I wrote some pretty lengthy posts about this in the last Intertrust thread; if you're interested in knowing more, I'd suggest you go back and read them and the surrounding discussion for more information.
And if you're not interested in knowing more, I'd suggest, respectfully, that you not call it "stupid DRM."
I have a dual GHz system, too, but I didn't spring for the Geforce card. I've got the Radeon 9000. I haven't run WCIII yet, but if I notice any difference, I'll post about it.
I seem to remember reading that iTunes drew the widgets on its own, rather than using the system's facilities for doing so.
This may well be true. If I recall correctly, iTunes predates the "brushed metal" appearance, and Mac OS X in general. It probably still draws its UI itself, the same way QuickTime 4 did.
So, is there a work-around for mail.app, or do I need to move to another client?
No work-around is necessary. If you send an attachment with a resource fork on it to a person who uses a mail client that is not RFC 1740 compliant, that person will see two attachments: one large one representing the data fork and one very small one representing the resource fork. That person need only ignore the very small attachment, which is useless to them anyway, and use the larger one.
Advantages: less pollution (air travel is a huge polluter!)
So's electricity generation, Sparky. If you can get the world to say okay to nuclear fission, then large-scale electrical transportation will make sense environmentally. But plenty of people have a negative opinion of fission, what with Chernobyl and all.
As a consequence, the A380 is designed to use the existing slots more efficiently (by transporting more people per slot)
The problem with that, though, is that airlines are having a hard enough time filling their existing planes. The A380 will replace the 747-400 on some high traffic, long-haul routes, like LA and DFW to Sydney, London to Sydney, New York to Hong Kong, and London to Singapore.
What the US domestic market needs is actually more sub-hundred-passenger aircraft. Unfortunately, as you pointed out, the problem then becomes the airports.
But to see how airlines ought to work, just look at Southwest Airlines. They're, as far as I know, the only profitable national airline flying today. They fly one plane-- the 737-- on all their routes, and they fly into smaller airports. Rather than flying into JFK they fly into Islip. Rather than flying into DFW they fly into Dallas Love. Their service is impeccable, if not exactly first class, and their ticket prices are low, low.
What surprises me is replacing the 767 rather than the much older 737.
The only resemblance between the original 737 and the 737-900 is that the planes are roughly the same size. Virtually every component has been upgraded-- engines, avionics, cockpit, everything. Even the airframe and the wing have been substantially upgraded.
And I think Outlook ought to be able to handle attachments encoded with the industry-standard, thoroughly documented AppleDouble format. Can't be that hard.
Slashdot Mirror
So wait a minute. You're saying that your experience installing Windows 2000-- on a no-name box built at the discount mall, no doubt-- was unpleasant, but that the exact same process to install Linux is somehow acceptable? Talk about your double standards.
So I'll suggest again that you're implicitly arguing...
Suggest all you like. I'm being quite explicit, if you'll notice. I'm not mincing words here. Linux sucks as a single-user operating system.
And anyway, I have apt-rpm installed...
So once again, it comes down to having to have special knowledge to make the system work. Great endorsement, friend.
Maybe it doesn't seem intuitive to you, a Windows user...
Did you miss the part where I talked about OS X? I haven't used Windows for the better part of a year, and before that I only used it occasionally. Windows is definitely not my thing, nor is it my basis for comparison. Since Windows is not UNIX in any sense of the term, it's not productive to think about what's wrong with Linux in terms of what's right with Windows. That's like talking about what's wrong with your car in terms of what's right with my umbrella. Instead, it makes sense to compare a successful single-user UNIX system, Mac OS X, to an unsuccessful single-user UNIX, Linux.
Oh, and as for installing software? I don't really care much for your "simple" method. I just drag the icon from the disk image to my Applications folder. No dependencies, no incompatibilities. Doesn't get any simpler than that.
So what you've just argued is that Linux isn't usable because it doesn't have Microsoft's monopoly.
HUH? I'm arguing that Linux isn't usable because it's a pain in the ass to set up and use. Shifting that burden from the end user to the OEM wouldn't make Linux any better. It'd still be a pain in the ass.
In order for Linux to be on par with either Mac OS or Windows, a huge amount of work is going to have to go into things like software installation, a unified framework for managing and controlling daemons and other non-interactive software services, how to manage shared libraries and other components, drivers and modules, and so on. These are the things that make Linux a pain in the ass.
Putting a pretty UI and some poorly designed "wizards" on top of Linux as it stands today is like spray-painting a turd.
That has nothing at all to do with peer-to-peer. Let's get this clear right now: P2P != distributed, nor vice versa. As you pointed out yourself, Akamai is the canonical example of a distributed content network, and there's nothing remotely P2P-like about it.
Here is what you said:
;-)
Oh, goddammit. I bet you think you're pretty smart using my own words against me like that.
Okay, I said that, but I shouldn't have. I was being careless. What I meant to say was the more verbose version I gave you last time. My bad, mea culpa, foot-in-mouth, and so on.
Initally you were trying to imply a black and white point that a gun is the ONLY thing that could be used therfore its existance is justified and P2P had no purpose as other tools could be used.
That's what I mean. That was not, and is not my assertion. My point is that guns should continue to be legal because they have non-trivial legitimate uses. By "legitimate uses" I mean that, as I said, there are significant legal and appropriate tasks for which a gun is the best option. I should not have said the thing about how a gun is the only tool; I was being careless.
P2P, on the other hand, has no non-trivial legitimate uses, by which I mean that there are no significant legal and appropriate tasks for which P2P is the best option. And P2P is most widely used for illegal purposes. So it should be gotten rid of.
I choose to use a P2P in my examples because it is convienent, quick, does the job well and efficiently over other methods.
Even if that were true-- it's not; FTP is better-- it ignores the fact that more people use P2P technology for copyright infringement than for all other uses combined. You're basically saying that biological weapons should be allowed because weaponized anthrax makes a kick-ass gopher repellant. You're saying that P2P should continue to be allowed because a tiny percentage of its users claim to use it for something that they really ought to be using something else for. Dumb argument; doesn't hold water.
P2P took off because it combined many tools into one and added many others that were not available.
Are you challenged? P2P took off because college kids used Napster to download music without paying for it. When Napster came under fire for having absolutely no non-trivial legitimate use, people tried to generalize the idea into things like Kazaa and Gnutella and whatnot so they could still get their free goodies but hide behind a veil of legitimacy. It's all crap, and a sensible person can see right through it.
What the media conglomerates are trying to do is shut it ALL down and pretend that the non infringing uses don't exist.
No. What they're trying to do is to put a stop to widespread piracy by opposing the use of-- if not the mere existence of-- tools and technologies that exist for no purpose other than to facilitate it.
Yes, I have all of those features on my computer, too, and I didn't have to spend dozens or hundreds of hours making it all work.
You are the typical Linux elitist. You have managed to cobble together a computer that is almost as good as a Windows PC. Congratulations, here's your cookie.
Let me give you just one example of how your computer is not the hot shit that you think it is: you said, "Yes, I have handwriting recognition via xscribble!" Great. My computer also has handwriting recognition, via Ink. Let's see how they compare.
To get xscribble working on your computer, you first had to be aware that it exists. Don't laugh; we're talking about Linux for average folks here. Then you had to find it-- Google makes this easy in this case, but that's still an extra step, and one that would be far from obvious to a novice user. I spent three or four minutes popping around the xscribble home page looking for a link that said "click here to install," with no luck, so obviously finding the software takes more than three or four minutes. If you're lucky enough to find a compatible binary package, there's still the problem of installing it: depending on which sub-flavor of Linux you have, this could be anything from running command-line RPM to a half-finished graphical tool to god knows what. Maybe it includes a kernel module that requires you to manually update modules.conf or some such. And that's if you're lucky enough to find a binary for it. Building from sources is another circle of hell altogether.
You know how I got Ink working on my computer? I plugged in my tablet. That's it. That's the beginning and ending of it, the alpha and the omega.
Before you go bragging about how your little hobby "rules," you might want to spend a moment reflecting on the facts of the situation.
All the /etc files are there, but they're not used... that SUCKS...
/etc/hosts by default, but could very easily be changed. In 10.2 and later, lookupd uses /etc/hosts by default. That's just one example.
That hasn't been true since 10.1, and it wasn't even true then. For example, host name lookups are handled by lookupd. In 10.1 and earlier, lookupd was configured to ignore
I didn't mean to imply that OS X lacked everything unixy, just that it didn't have enough for my tastes.
/dev. If you don't want to use /dev, use IOKit.
/etc/hosts and /etc/hostconfig) or in plist files (which are XML).
But it has everything that you mentioned on your list.
1. Use whatever shell you like. Sh, csh, tcsh and bash are included, and anything else can be compiled from sources if you like.
2. Find whatever you like under
3. Configurations are stored either in old-style text files (like
4. Yes, there's a terminal.
5. Yes, the fork/exec model is used for launching processes.
So what's your bitch about OS X again?
I second this nomination.
I'm sure we're both going to be moderated as trolls or flamebaits or whatever for this, but it's true. Yet another year has gone by with no sign, not even an inkling, of a suitable Linux-based desktop operating system.
OS X, on the other hand, just keeps getting better, proving that user-friendly yet powerful UNIX is not only possible, but damn profitable.
I was commenting on your all encompassing statement that a gun was the ONLY tool that could be used.
Never said that. I said that there are non-trivial, legitimate uses that cannot be as well served with anything other than a gun. In other words, there's a need for a gun. It serves a purpose.
P2P software serves no legitimate purpose. On the other hand, it does a great deal of harm. So abolish it. Q.E.D.
How in the hell are you going to find these ftp servers and search through there contents for what your looking for?
Ever heard of archie? It may well be before your time, but it worked very, very well for just this purpose. Getting archie back up and running would be a trivial task compared to the energy that went into writing all these horribly unstable, spyware-laden P2P programs.
What happens when those anonymous FTP servers also have MP3's on it, does that now make FTP illegal?
No, because (see if you can follow along here) there are non-trivial, legitimate uses that cannot be as well served with anything other than an FTP server. See the logic now?
Besides, abolishing all this P2P crap and getting back to FTP will put the focus of this problem back where it belongs: on the users who are breaking the law, rather than on subversive and illegitimate software tools that should never have been created in the first place.
You can hunt with many tools like arrows, traps, spears, rod and reel, sling shot, knife, stun gun etc...
Try to bring down an elk or a reindeer with a spear. Go right ahead. When you make it back-- if you make it back-- you can tell me how it went.
But more importantly, you forgot the most important legitimate use of a gun: defense.
I have downloaded and upload gigs worth of blah blah from P2P, all non MPAA/RIAA and free to distibute.
Fine. But you could have done it better with other tools, tools that have non-trivial legitimate uses.
Where else can I post and share my material with others and NOT have to go through a third party commercial entity that charges per GB or can hold a few GB's of material for as cheap as P2P can do from my home PC?
If you can do it with Kazaa or whatthehellever, you can do it with an anonymous FTP server. Unless your ISP prohibits it, of course, in which case the answer is "you can't do that."
Add that it be non centralized and searchable for everyone to use freely and participate.
Yup. Remember archie?
I love that word; it's so... subjective.
Huh?
Legitimate \Le*git"i*mate\ a. 1. Accordant with law or with established legal forms and requirements; lawful.
I can see it being a useful tool for working around censorship, for example.
The best tool for working around censorship is the photocopier. We had this argument in the context of Freenet a few months ago. The conclusion was that there is no non-trivial legitimate use of this sort of decentralized technology. In an oppressed country where speaking one's mind can lead to imprisonment or worse, the audience to which you want to send your message certainly does not have computers. Technology like this is useless for circumventing unjust censorship. But running off a thousand copies of something and passing them around clandestinely will work as well today as it did in the 1700's.
Guns have tons of legitimate uses that cannot be carried out with any other tool: hunting, sport shooting, defense. P2P networks have no legitimate uses at all that cannot be (better!) carried out with another tool.
On the list of things I would abolish if I were king of the world, all this P2P crap would be #3. Right after terrorism and "Everybody Loves Raymond."
Intertrust for stupid DRM?
There's nothing stupid about Intertrust's DRM designs. They're intended to protect the rights of the licensee just as much as the rights of the licensor. I wrote some pretty lengthy posts about this in the last Intertrust thread; if you're interested in knowing more, I'd suggest you go back and read them and the surrounding discussion for more information.
And if you're not interested in knowing more, I'd suggest, respectfully, that you not call it "stupid DRM."
This isn't true on my machine. Command-tab moves through the dock from left to right, and command-shift-tab goes the other direction.
Are you using LiteSwitch or something?
I have a dual GHz system, too, but I didn't spring for the Geforce card. I've got the Radeon 9000. I haven't run WCIII yet, but if I notice any difference, I'll post about it.
If you're using a theme, via Duality, the new widgets will fuck you up
Yet another reason why shoehorning themes are a gianormous waste of time and effort.
I seem to remember reading that iTunes drew the widgets on its own, rather than using the system's facilities for doing so.
This may well be true. If I recall correctly, iTunes predates the "brushed metal" appearance, and Mac OS X in general. It probably still draws its UI itself, the same way QuickTime 4 did.
So, is there a work-around for mail.app, or do I need to move to another client?
No work-around is necessary. If you send an attachment with a resource fork on it to a person who uses a mail client that is not RFC 1740 compliant, that person will see two attachments: one large one representing the data fork and one very small one representing the resource fork. That person need only ignore the very small attachment, which is useless to them anyway, and use the larger one.
There was this old saying... "Mac owners have more money then brains."
;-) But today, buying a Mac is definitely the smartest computer investment a person can make.
Used to be true, too.
Advantages: less pollution (air travel is a huge polluter!)
So's electricity generation, Sparky. If you can get the world to say okay to nuclear fission, then large-scale electrical transportation will make sense environmentally. But plenty of people have a negative opinion of fission, what with Chernobyl and all.
As a consequence, the A380 is designed to use the existing slots more efficiently (by transporting more people per slot)
The problem with that, though, is that airlines are having a hard enough time filling their existing planes. The A380 will replace the 747-400 on some high traffic, long-haul routes, like LA and DFW to Sydney, London to Sydney, New York to Hong Kong, and London to Singapore.
What the US domestic market needs is actually more sub-hundred-passenger aircraft. Unfortunately, as you pointed out, the problem then becomes the airports.
But to see how airlines ought to work, just look at Southwest Airlines. They're, as far as I know, the only profitable national airline flying today. They fly one plane-- the 737-- on all their routes, and they fly into smaller airports. Rather than flying into JFK they fly into Islip. Rather than flying into DFW they fly into Dallas Love. Their service is impeccable, if not exactly first class, and their ticket prices are low, low.
What surprises me is replacing the 767 rather than the much older 737.
The only resemblance between the original 737 and the 737-900 is that the planes are roughly the same size. Virtually every component has been upgraded-- engines, avionics, cockpit, everything. Even the airframe and the wing have been substantially upgraded.
And I think Outlook ought to be able to handle attachments encoded with the industry-standard, thoroughly documented AppleDouble format. Can't be that hard.
For historical reference, read about Hitler and WW2.
;-)
Does this mean the argument is over now?