First of all, that is wrong. Just off the top of my head I can point you to Byzantium that had hundreds of years of "continuous government". Perhaps you meant "continuous democratic government, but I would say that perhaps that is because everytime something goes wrong in European countries we tend to change our form of government rather than adapt our citizenship to it.
I don't accept the ancestors thing by the way. There is no such thing as a common American history - your ancestors might have come from Europe and you might feel European but I think that is not a global feeling in your country.
Yes you are right. Let's have all us Europeans forget our languages, our history (that goes back 3000 years) and our cultures because we would be "incompatible". Let's all forget our centuries old philosophy and worship the Matrix technobabble.
Sometimes people's inability to put things into perspective and understand there is a world outside the good old US of A makes me despair.
The question is have you ever seen any Unix machines booting? I have an Ultra 5 Sparcstation running Solaris 9 and I get to xdm in about 3 minutes. That's on a 400MHz machine.
1. Linux and all free software is, well, free. Packaging everything and supporting it is not. Suse are notoriously open about their licencing, once you buy a copy you can install it on as many machines you have access to. I really cannot imagine it being better than that for a commercial distribution. If you have something against commercial distros, well there's free ones that you can use.
2. You said you had to recompile stuff and then yast was broken after updating the xine libraries. This is wrong. Is the way suse go about it the best way to do things? Well, I don't really know, I don't own suse and I don't therefore have responsibility on their actions, I'm pretty sure management weighed the pros and cons of crippling suse and came up with that solution. I find it pretty easy to add a yast source and frankly if you search for "suse dvd" on linux you'll quickly come across this solution, or another that is equally elegant.
3. Not everyone who disagrees with you is an apologist, as far as I am concerned I just pointed out you did not know what you were talking about, an assessment I maintain even after your flaming. I don't see why I have to justify my liking suse to a random/. user whose misconceptions I corrected, nor why I am a "fan" of a company when I point out that you have no idea what you are talking about. I enjoy all flavours Linux and, frankly, the only distro I actually have a strong opinion about is Mandrake or whatever the hell it's called, and that opinion is a negative one - I hate it. If suse is not to your liking, install whatever you want or Windows for that matter. But please go against the/. trend and actually form an opinion after you have experienced the product you are criticising.
What are you talking about? First of all, the mp3 support is fixed by suse themselves when you first update your distribution. Second, updating the xine library from the packman repository and installing the w32codecs package gives you full video functionality.
I really wish people stoped talking about things they obviously know nothing about, but then again, this IS slashdot.
Yes, but then it wouldn't cost 500EUR and, more importantly, it would not be as compact. I'm pretty sure one of the next revisions of the mini will have an optical out (because it just makes sense), so I'll just wait a bit.
iTunes' functionality is better replicated in Amarok. Comparing xmms's cataloging functions to itunes means you never used iTunes. Try it, it truly is excellent.
Ever used iTunes? Short of having no id3 information or all your mp3s named track???.mp3, it makes organising and searching easy as hell. It does not expect any organisation, it just expects to find data that is supposed to be there and it sorts through it.
and I find it amazing that there are people speaking of the possibility of discovering lost gospels as if something like that would be extraordinary. There is a series of lost gospels, otherwise called the "Nag Hamadi library" (google for it) that gave rise to a modern revival of the gnostic church, a set of believes that have deeply influenced popular culture (the Matrix is full of gnostic elements, for example.
Elaine Pagels work in the subject is fascinating - gnosticism itself is fascinating in its contradictions and, if anything, shows how different christianity might have been.
Kpdf and xpdf are not ready. Kpdf is buggy as hell, several pdfs have crashed it, including ones created by OSX's pdf engine and OOo ones. Neither can handle forms and comments.
There are people out there who actually need these functionalities. There are companies that cannot accept that kpdf or whatever random viewer might produce a different output. Can you guarantee a company that pdfs in kpdf will handle exactly like in Windows? Would you stake your job on it?
It's all good writing comments in/. but for us living in the real world and earning real money by offering real solutions, Acrobat reader is a godsend.
Well, if a company says "here is the specification, you have a licence to implement it in whichever way you want as long as it passes standard test A", I don't know, but that actually is the definition of a standard.
I know that most slashdotters live in their own la-la land where everything is ascii and png but for real people in the real world who want to do work on a Linux workstation, Adobe's reader is a brilliant solution to a real problem.
Also, might I remind you that postscript is an Adobe technology.
Try actually using that excellent 3d card of yours for playing GL based game, either native or through cedega and then we'll see how quickly you become a convert.
The Economist is one of the finest magazines in circulation nowadays, exactly because sometimes they make mistakes. They are not afraid either to print controversial opinions or to say they are wrong - which, in this case they have done. They are truly independent - if you perceive them as liberal or conservative it is because you have not followed the magazine long enough.
Also, their science and technology news and analysis is brilliant, it has consistently been a joy to read in the twelve years I have been reading the magazine, and their analysis while not always on the spot is certainly interesting and thought-provoking.
Slashdot Mirror
Change the entry "when you insert a music CD open iTunes" to your favourite app. Bob's your uncle.
Good luck finding something better than itunes by the way.
Erm, what?
Sometimes people's inability to put things into perspective and understand there is a world outside the good old US of A makes me despair.
No it's not. It's a French idea to preserve their culture.
The question is have you ever seen any Unix machines booting? I have an Ultra 5 Sparcstation running Solaris 9 and I get to xdm in about 3 minutes. That's on a 400MHz machine.
Can't really imagine it being simpler.
2. You said you had to recompile stuff and then yast was broken after updating the xine libraries. This is wrong. Is the way suse go about it the best way to do things? Well, I don't really know, I don't own suse and I don't therefore have responsibility on their actions, I'm pretty sure management weighed the pros and cons of crippling suse and came up with that solution. I find it pretty easy to add a yast source and frankly if you search for "suse dvd" on linux you'll quickly come across this solution, or another that is equally elegant.
3. Not everyone who disagrees with you is an apologist, as far as I am concerned I just pointed out you did not know what you were talking about, an assessment I maintain even after your flaming. I don't see why I have to justify my liking suse to a random /. user whose misconceptions I corrected, nor why I am a "fan" of a company when I point out that you have no idea what you are talking about. I enjoy all flavours Linux and, frankly, the only distro I actually have a strong opinion about is Mandrake or whatever the hell it's called, and that opinion is a negative one - I hate it. If suse is not to your liking, install whatever you want or Windows for that matter. But please go against the /. trend and actually form an opinion after you have experienced the product you are criticising.
This is so wrong it is actually hilarious!
Suse 9.* does not have enterprise level support. Novell Linux Desktop fills that niche nicely.
I really wish people stoped talking about things they obviously know nothing about, but then again, this IS slashdot.
Thanks for the tip, the price is right too, about 70EUR.
Yes, but then it wouldn't cost 500EUR and, more importantly, it would not be as compact. I'm pretty sure one of the next revisions of the mini will have an optical out (because it just makes sense), so I'll just wait a bit.
I thought of that combination as well, but the macmini has a huge fault: no digital audio out.
iTunes' functionality is better replicated in Amarok. Comparing xmms's cataloging functions to itunes means you never used iTunes. Try it, it truly is excellent.
Ever used iTunes? Short of having no id3 information or all your mp3s named track???.mp3, it makes organising and searching easy as hell. It does not expect any organisation, it just expects to find data that is supposed to be there and it sorts through it.
Elaine Pagels work in the subject is fascinating - gnosticism itself is fascinating in its contradictions and, if anything, shows how different christianity might have been.
There are people out there who actually need these functionalities. There are companies that cannot accept that kpdf or whatever random viewer might produce a different output. Can you guarantee a company that pdfs in kpdf will handle exactly like in Windows? Would you stake your job on it?
It's all good writing comments in /. but for us living in the real world and earning real money by offering real solutions, Acrobat reader is a godsend.
As far as java is concerned, I'm pretty sure there are open-source java VMs but I might be wrong, who knows...
Or you could go to news.bbc.co.uk and read/ listen/ watch BBC news live.
I know that most slashdotters live in their own la-la land where everything is ascii and png but for real people in the real world who want to do work on a Linux workstation, Adobe's reader is a brilliant solution to a real problem.
Also, might I remind you that postscript is an Adobe technology.
The PDF format is open. You can print to PDF off every platform and office suite except Office on Windows.
Try actually using that excellent 3d card of yours for playing GL based game, either native or through cedega and then we'll see how quickly you become a convert.
That's the way cedega works.
Also, their science and technology news and analysis is brilliant, it has consistently been a joy to read in the twelve years I have been reading the magazine, and their analysis while not always on the spot is certainly interesting and thought-provoking.