Last night the iraqies invaded the united states, some terrorists pockets seem to be resisting the invaders.
Obviously they are resisting the abolishment of their corrupt government, the abuse of the poor by the wealthy. The beatings by police in the streets. Forced reeducation, which teaches an altered more patriotic version of history in order to garner support for their corrupt government rather than what actually happened. The masses dying of starvation on the streets.
Lets face it folks, these are terrorists. There is no possible way they could be the teaming masses united against a common foreign invader. There is no way they could really be those who are yearning to breathe free.
No matter how corrupt your nation allegedly is (remember, the only ones contesting the 90+% popularity ratings of Saddam are the guys supporting the war who CLAIM with NO EVIDENCE those numbers are forced, or that any of those alleged atrosities are actually happening). There ARE those who will stand together and fight a foreign enemy who has invaded their soil. If Iraq had a dictator, as far as iraq was concerned, that was there problem and a far less severe one than being conquered by the US.
I'm curious, wouldn't the maximum speed of transmission be "virtually" instant with a fluid gate.
The speed of signaling of course would be a bottleneck limited to the speed of sound... but if you send a photon on a trip down a fibre optic cable, THAT photon has to reach the other side to transmit data.
With fluid however you merely displace a molecule on one end and a molecule on the other end drops off, it doesn't take any longer regardless of distance right?
This doesn't even break our guessed rules since nothing is actually traveling faster than the speed of light (any given molecule is traveling only a molecule length at the speed of sound right?).
dunno, since the firewall is tied to windows RPC that would depend on what bugs are found in windows RPC tomorrow.
Who knows, next we might find that 3 pings at the correct offset intervals with the correct amount of data to the correct port number, cause windows RPC to internally overflow/self destruct in a manner that opens the firewall wide open.
More likely though they'll just infect you via IE (Internet Executable-loader) and have their spyware nuke the firewall or simply initiate communications.
Firewalls yes, your speaking of how the firewall is supposed to work. It doesn't work properly 99% of the time.
The way it's supposed to work is that local apps are able to access the services they need and selected hosts can access selected ports on the system. The way it really works is you turn on MS firewall, you get the "your network cable has been unplugged" notification in your system tray. 99% is dramatizing of course, my actual experience has been closer to 60%.
The MS firewall or any software firewall running on windows is a poor idea and not a secure solution for a home, certainly not for a home business, and should be illegal for anything more serious.
As a general rule of thumb, NEVER rely on anything that depends on MS software for security. That goes double for actually relying on MS software to BE THE SECURITY!
No it's a disease. Being emotional wrecks and staying in a drunken slumber 24/7 does NOT make an alcoholic.
Being born with a physical condition which causes alcohol to mix with certain endorphines in your brain creating a substance with addictive characteristics similar to herioine. THAT makes you an alcoholic.
Alcoholism IS a disease, a very real physical disease. An alcoholic can never see or drink alcohol in their life and their no less an Alcoholic.
"Yes, turning it off is recommended if you don't need it at all, but if you need it (e.g. for local machines) then it's not a solution."
The point is that turning on the MS firewall is the same as turning off those services whether you need them or not. And it's not flexible enough to fix.
Not having a network connection to other systems is a good way to assure that network services wont work eh?
Actually people were complaining that the firewall was worthless and that it caused problems if enabled in exchange for absolutely no protection of any kind.
It was enabled by default about 30% of the time already, it seemed to be a pretty random thing.
Thanks to SP2 we have a worthless, buggy, problematic firewall which yields no benefit whatsoever, turned on all the time by default! yay.
While there is no shortage of people who believe just that, those aren't exactly companies with a rock solid history of nothing but underhanded, slimy, and unethical practices like MS.
There are few universal truths. But here are a couple. If there is something bad that could be done, people will accuse Microsoft of doing it, whether there is evidence or not. 99% of the time, those people are right;)
"Why are people against this? I think it's because the google technology is in itself innovative, and using this hack only strives to stifle that innovation."
In what manner is it innovative? They aren't the first to offer gigabyte email accounts, their spam filtering isn't the best. So what exactly is innovative here?
" though I had to look way back in the thread to remember what we were originally talking about."
Aye we've wandered a little bit. I don't think either of us are trolling, we simply disagree. But I don't think either of us is convincing the other either.
"Thankfully all applications do not, there are 'green' programs which do not. It fills me with joy each time i find one. And NO, they SHOULD allow the user the choice, not follow a boorish dictate of a mega cooperation."
Or you could have 100% of programs work correctly by configuring your network in the correct manner. As opposed to improper configuration of a windows network which results in you having to hunt for "green" programs (needles in the haystack). I'd be willing to wager that 99% of those programs you find HAVE NO USER SPECIFIC DATA.
It's not as if it takes more than a couple hours to setup a samba server with roaming profiles. It's easy and it makes life easy. For one thing your programs will all work. All your shortcuts, documents, bookmarks, browser cache, cookies, everything will all be tied to your login.
That means next time bitrot strikes on windows, when you reinstall all your settings are there upon login. If you have the apps on a network share then your shortcuts won't even be broken (since your drive mapping can be done in your login script). Hell even your clock will be automagically set correctly.
I'd say that is better supporting the user ALL the users, then completely breaking the standard scheme by which multiple users are handled on the OS to support a hack configuration which offers no benefits over roaming profiles.
"It doesn't as it is. So that's easy enough."
Your improper configuration doesn't work, the app works fine.
"Actually no it isn't, since it doesn't support the Javascript 100% the user agent is irrelevant."
Find pages in which the javascript isn't broken that don't render correctly in firefox, then you have an argument.
"In the interest of saving time, i have reduced you reply to "Yes.""
Well my reply can be properly reduced to either "You don't know what your talking about." or "Yes it does". Take your pick.
"[shrug] Maybe not, but you just type apt-get install [program name] if you want to install a program."
That assumes you already know what you want to install. And your right, most things you can name off the top of your head, will in fact be in the repository (assuming you can figure out what it's listed under, often it's not the programs name or some odd variation of it)... at least with debian or 3rd party repositories with fedora (not much is actually included with fedora). The problem arises when you want a program which accomplishes task x and you go googling for an answer, you'll find a program in notime flat.
"Sure -- the dependencies are there for a reason -- so that you have all the software needed to use the package."
Your reading me backwards, they do NOT include those dependencies, they simply require them. A properly made rpm doesn't have dependencies. As any experienced rpm packager will tell you;)
"[shrug] Hence the use of popular RPM sources."
Takes me 5 minutes to find something not in those repositories, how about you?
I'm afraid I fail to understand the logic behind an argument that it's ok to ignore parts of what constitute a complete project because you assume that the magic rpm fairy will take care of it all for you.
Providing good rpms would be nice, but again, that is a packaging format and not an end user solution.
"That it save pages using the page title as the filename, instead of using the filename of the webserver. Usually the title is something meaningful, and the filename is something like 2jf9j3aWookie77.htm. IE uses the title. I can usually use it as is, with Firebird I generally have to type something."
Can't help there, nothing jumping out at me on the extensions page. I never save pages that way to be honest, usually I save the source file and ie changes it from something like "index.htm" to asdfslkjwoieuroiooo.txt (or whatever it's named in temp internet files).
"2) That when saving a bookmark, I could create a new folder after I start saving the bookmark, instead of saying oops, going back and making a new folder, then back to saving the bookmark. Again, like IE."
There's an extension called "openbook" that should be perfect for this, when you go to "get new extensions" in firefox it should be in the list. I think you need at least 0.8 for it though, it sounds like you need to update anyway:)
"And if i'm going to use something else it must be able to run out of it's own directory, firefreak and mossila insist on using that my documents setting crap."
Oh, you mean like IE does? And like all applications on windows systems are supposed to do? The app does run out of a directory, preferences and user specific settings are stored under that users profile. Otherwise the application doesn't work with windows roaming profiles or multiple users with different preferences on a computer.
That's why any even half arsed program functions this way.
"Its still not compatible with MSIE javascript."
I'm sure there must be some, but I haven't seen any in a long time. The answer is to set your useragent string to lie and say it's IE. Most sites that don't load, don't load because they think only IE works. Personally I like to use the user agent switcher plugin for this, but you can do it manually to.
"Also it can't store favourites in a msie compatible way."
Yes it uses a simple html file which is completely non-proprietary unlike IE. However the first time you load it, it imports all your IE favorites (in fact EVERY time you load it so it's always up to date). IE however doesn't have this capability, or most useful capabilities for that matter, so if you want to import the firefox bookmarks (favorites) you have to actually manually go to file->import.
That's just one of hundreds of features IE lacks that firefox provides of course.
"This is precisely what I said: most experienced computer users learn the hard way. This is how authors do it and then they write documentation that is easier for people to understand."
No you defined the hard way as talking to other experienced users and the developers.
"What is your point? Have you not read anything I've written?"
The point being that is exactly how you stated these authors are supposed to learn. The hard way I defined is impossible since there is no useful documentation (at least not that is useful without already knowing the answers), and the information found on google is usually inaccurate or extremely out of date for a project that has been around any length of time.
"This is flat-out untrue, and now I am sure you are a troll and/or an idiot. Books are an invaluable resource for everyone, even for highly experienced programmers."
Books on programming languages yes, languages change slowly overall. Individual open source applications often change rapidly. The books come out at best 6 months to a year after a version of the application comes out. By that time there may already have been several versions released (depending on the project).
Granted not everything moves that fast, but more projects than not do. And follow the philosophy that if there is signficant gain in doing so they can and WILL break compatiblity for that gain.
"You still aren't reading what I wrote. Successful projects provide enough documentation for experienced computer users. The entire topic has been about improving the documentation for OPEN SOURCE PROJECTS to allow them to be used by inexperienced computer users."
Providing enough documentation to struggle through and providing adequate documentation that one does not have to struggle are entirely different things. Perhaps this topic has magically in your own mind turned into something concerning inexperienced users, but the topic is about poor documentation, it does not classify. Within your own mind you've created a world in which it's acceptable to spend hours searching for the answer to a common problem or simple configuration option. The rest of use, experienced or otherwise don't believe simply being possible to find the answer is enough, but that it should actually be SIMPLE to find the answer.
"Get your fucking head on straight and then continue the conversation, or just go fuck off."
If that means agreeing with someone who can't remember what he himself said in his own post. And if you can't come up with anything better to contribute than calling me a troll and an idiot as opposed to actually providing a counter argument, then I most definately will do so. Because obviously continuing this dicussion is a waste of time.
Because no distro is all inclusive, NONE of them. And short of random installation, you really never find things browsing through a list like you get with yast or synaptic.
A user needs to be able browse the web for "linux webserver" or some such, find something he likes and click on the official site for it, and download + install that thing.
Even when the official site points to a 3rd party with rpms for instance. There is no quality control, nobody who works with the application is checking those packages. Often those packages have numerous dependencies or are all in all crappy and useless. More often than not they are outdated. But worst of all, if it's a popular project with a reputation, they can be considered a trusted source, but since they do no review of the 3rd party the rpms cannot be trusted.
I might trust Apache, but if apache says this guy builds rpms, or has an rpm contrib directory (which they don't do with the main http_server but there ARE other things on their site they do this with). Then I can't trust there are no backdoors added.
"experienced computer users do, and by interviewing users familiar with the software and even the developers themselves"
I don't know many experienced computer users who do it that way. Most I know beat the software with a stick and if all else fails check the documentation, if that fails check google. If that fails check other engines. If that fails, find other software.
Dear god, the very idea of communicating with other users BEFORE you are knowledgable enough to hold your own is offensive.
"How do you propose a dedicated, professional author be paid for his/her work if they don't write a book and get paid for it"
The same way professional programmers working on open source projects are getting paid for it. The documentation and simplified installation are every bit as important the program itself.
The program is worthless if nobody can use it. Or if only people who have learned through a chain of word of mouth, starting from the developers, can use it.
"I haven't seen many books written for projects by the developer's themselves. The vast majority of technical books for open source software are written by third-party authors, who get paid for their work directly."
I've seen plenty, check o'reilly, there are almost no books pertaining to open source that aren't co-authored by a prominent project developer. Now if you were thinking something along the lines of dummy books, I certainly wasn't talking about that.
For that matter I'm not even sure the dummies series of books DESERVES existance. O'Reilly books are better examples. O'Reilly books don't require you to be experienced to understand, but aren't dumbed down to the point of being useless either.
There are three reasons I don't believe books are the answer to documentation. 1, it takes too long, by they time they go through all the levels of red tape, editing, rewritting, (loop 200000 times) and then go through a similar process except pertaining to actual printing and advertising etc. They are outdated by the time they hit the shelves.
Second, nobody is going to use an application if they have to buy a book to get it installed and in a basic functional configuration. Rule of thumb, if there is any chance a company with less than 500 employees might do it, or a user at home, then it's a basic functional configuration and nothing involved should be considered "advanced".
Third, there are a shitload of books out there, how am I to know which is the up to date project approved documention for "Program X". Or are you suggesting that as well as providing no useful information for actually running a program, the project should not even have a 3rd party they ensure has that available?
Of course this level of documentation seems daunting, at present it IS for most projects. Ease of documenting and ease of use go hand in hand.
Simplify the use of the software, and you've simplified documenting that use. Reduce the number of "exceptions" and places things can break, and you've greatly simplified documentation.
That is one of the most obvious mindsets for combating ease of use problems and one ignored for the most part. It's one that lets us utilize our laziness to achieve productivity.
Want to make your software easier to work with but don't know how? Start writing documentation and redesign your interfaces to make documentation easier, magically the software becomes easier to use.
Lets see if I can find a few projects that don't offer rpms. Remember, what 3rd parties offer doesn't matter.
Apache:
Here you will find a nice webserver, with source downloads only and a handy windows installer... that is useless since it lacks ssl I might add. http://httpd.apache.org/download.cgi
Bind:
Good old source, and only source. http://www.isc.org/index.pl?/sw/bind/
Linux:
Again we have a choice, between source, and source. http://www.kernel.org
Dvd::Rip
On this one I admit he does helpfully link to 3RD PARTY binary packages where he can. http://www.exit1.org/dvdrip/doc/install.cipp #sourc e_download
Gnome: http://www.gnome.org/start/2.6/
I could continue, but I won't. Alot more projects at least have links to 3rd party binaries on their sites. I found TWO that included dependencies and had installers out of 15 projects I just checked (picking random things on my own system, all common).
This needs resolved, that should be more along the lines of 15/15 with installers and all dependencies coupled with them.
I felt that way once, but then I figured out the great secret. Whatever the features are of IE that give you that comfort, bitch here on slashdot about Mozilla not doing it. BAM within 5minutes you'll have 12 extensions that make moz/ff behave just that way. Be sure to mention IE does whatever it is though, if you don't it won't work as well.
Seriously, try it.
Believe it or not, it usually gets a faster response than "I just wish linux did... windows does it".
Slashdot Mirror
Updated news, tommorow's headlines:
Last night the iraqies invaded the united states, some terrorists pockets seem to be resisting the invaders.
Obviously they are resisting the abolishment of their corrupt government, the abuse of the poor by the wealthy. The beatings by police in the streets. Forced reeducation, which teaches an altered more patriotic version of history in order to garner support for their corrupt government rather than what actually happened. The masses dying of starvation on the streets.
Lets face it folks, these are terrorists. There is no possible way they could be the teaming masses united against a common foreign invader. There is no way they could really be those who are yearning to breathe free.
No matter how corrupt your nation allegedly is (remember, the only ones contesting the 90+% popularity ratings of Saddam are the guys supporting the war who CLAIM with NO EVIDENCE those numbers are forced, or that any of those alleged atrosities are actually happening). There ARE those who will stand together and fight a foreign enemy who has invaded their soil. If Iraq had a dictator, as far as iraq was concerned, that was there problem and a far less severe one than being conquered by the US.
Likely because like me, and most people using an open source *nix application, they find linux superior for their particular application.
No market price is not the same thing as a market price of $0. In fact the appropriate term is priceless.
Physics geek speak up here.
I'm curious, wouldn't the maximum speed of transmission be "virtually" instant with a fluid gate.
The speed of signaling of course would be a bottleneck limited to the speed of sound... but if you send a photon on a trip down a fibre optic cable, THAT photon has to reach the other side to transmit data.
With fluid however you merely displace a molecule on one end and a molecule on the other end drops off, it doesn't take any longer regardless of distance right?
This doesn't even break our guessed rules since nothing is actually traveling faster than the speed of light (any given molecule is traveling only a molecule length at the speed of sound right?).
dunno, since the firewall is tied to windows RPC that would depend on what bugs are found in windows RPC tomorrow.
Who knows, next we might find that 3 pings at the correct offset intervals with the correct amount of data to the correct port number, cause windows RPC to internally overflow/self destruct in a manner that opens the firewall wide open.
More likely though they'll just infect you via IE (Internet Executable-loader) and have their spyware nuke the firewall or simply initiate communications.
Firewalls yes, your speaking of how the firewall is supposed to work. It doesn't work properly 99% of the time.
The way it's supposed to work is that local apps are able to access the services they need and selected hosts can access selected ports on the system. The way it really works is you turn on MS firewall, you get the "your network cable has been unplugged" notification in your system tray. 99% is dramatizing of course, my actual experience has been closer to 60%.
The MS firewall or any software firewall running on windows is a poor idea and not a secure solution for a home, certainly not for a home business, and should be illegal for anything more serious.
As a general rule of thumb, NEVER rely on anything that depends on MS software for security. That goes double for actually relying on MS software to BE THE SECURITY!
No it's a disease. Being emotional wrecks and staying in a drunken slumber 24/7 does NOT make an alcoholic.
Being born with a physical condition which causes alcohol to mix with certain endorphines in your brain creating a substance with addictive characteristics similar to herioine. THAT makes you an alcoholic.
Alcoholism IS a disease, a very real physical disease. An alcoholic can never see or drink alcohol in their life and their no less an Alcoholic.
"Yes, turning it off is recommended if you don't need it at all, but if you need it (e.g. for local machines) then it's not a solution."
The point is that turning on the MS firewall is the same as turning off those services whether you need them or not. And it's not flexible enough to fix.
Not having a network connection to other systems is a good way to assure that network services wont work eh?
That depends on what and where the connections are coming from. If you compromise windows rpc, you compromise the firewall.
Actually people were complaining that the firewall was worthless and that it caused problems if enabled in exchange for absolutely no protection of any kind.
It was enabled by default about 30% of the time already, it seemed to be a pretty random thing.
Thanks to SP2 we have a worthless, buggy, problematic firewall which yields no benefit whatsoever, turned on all the time by default! yay.
"Symmantec and McAffee"
;)
While there is no shortage of people who believe just that, those aren't exactly companies with a rock solid history of nothing but underhanded, slimy, and unethical practices like MS.
There are few universal truths. But here are a couple. If there is something bad that could be done, people will accuse Microsoft of doing it, whether there is evidence or not. 99% of the time, those people are right
"The Earthern Moon is, by definition, not a planet."
That has what connection to his crack about the litter we left on the PLANET Mars?
"Why are people against this? I think it's because the google technology is in itself innovative, and using this hack only strives to stifle that innovation."
In what manner is it innovative? They aren't the first to offer gigabyte email accounts, their spam filtering isn't the best. So what exactly is innovative here?
" though I had to look way back in the thread to remember what we were originally talking about."
Aye we've wandered a little bit. I don't think either of us are trolling, we simply disagree. But I don't think either of us is convincing the other either.
It really is a shame the only ones who even know about (let alone recognize) system administrators day, are the system administrators.
"Thankfully all applications do not, there are 'green' programs which do not. It fills me with joy each time i find one. And NO, they SHOULD allow the user the choice, not follow a boorish dictate of a mega cooperation."
Or you could have 100% of programs work correctly by configuring your network in the correct manner. As opposed to improper configuration of a windows network which results in you having to hunt for "green" programs (needles in the haystack). I'd be willing to wager that 99% of those programs you find HAVE NO USER SPECIFIC DATA.
It's not as if it takes more than a couple hours to setup a samba server with roaming profiles. It's easy and it makes life easy. For one thing your programs will all work. All your shortcuts, documents, bookmarks, browser cache, cookies, everything will all be tied to your login.
That means next time bitrot strikes on windows, when you reinstall all your settings are there upon login. If you have the apps on a network share then your shortcuts won't even be broken (since your drive mapping can be done in your login script). Hell even your clock will be automagically set correctly.
I'd say that is better supporting the user ALL the users, then completely breaking the standard scheme by which multiple users are handled on the OS to support a hack configuration which offers no benefits over roaming profiles.
"It doesn't as it is. So that's easy enough."
Your improper configuration doesn't work, the app works fine.
"Actually no it isn't, since it doesn't support the Javascript 100% the user agent is irrelevant."
Find pages in which the javascript isn't broken that don't render correctly in firefox, then you have an argument.
"In the interest of saving time, i have reduced you reply to "Yes.""
Well my reply can be properly reduced to either "You don't know what your talking about." or "Yes it does". Take your pick.
"[shrug] Maybe not, but you just type apt-get install [program name] if you want to install a program."
;)
That assumes you already know what you want to install. And your right, most things you can name off the top of your head, will in fact be in the repository (assuming you can figure out what it's listed under, often it's not the programs name or some odd variation of it)... at least with debian or 3rd party repositories with fedora (not much is actually included with fedora). The problem arises when you want a program which accomplishes task x and you go googling for an answer, you'll find a program in notime flat.
"Sure -- the dependencies are there for a reason -- so that you have all the software needed to use the package."
Your reading me backwards, they do NOT include those dependencies, they simply require them. A properly made rpm doesn't have dependencies. As any experienced rpm packager will tell you
"[shrug] Hence the use of popular RPM sources."
Takes me 5 minutes to find something not in those repositories, how about you?
I'm afraid I fail to understand the logic behind an argument that it's ok to ignore parts of what constitute a complete project because you assume that the magic rpm fairy will take care of it all for you.
Providing good rpms would be nice, but again, that is a packaging format and not an end user solution.
"That it save pages using the page title as the filename, instead of using the filename of the webserver. Usually the title is something meaningful, and the filename is something like 2jf9j3aWookie77.htm. IE uses the title. I can usually use it as is, with Firebird I generally have to type something."
:)
Can't help there, nothing jumping out at me on the extensions page. I never save pages that way to be honest, usually I save the source file and ie changes it from something like "index.htm" to asdfslkjwoieuroiooo.txt (or whatever it's named in temp internet files).
"2) That when saving a bookmark, I could create a new folder after I start saving the bookmark, instead of saying oops, going back and making a new folder, then back to saving the bookmark. Again, like IE."
There's an extension called "openbook" that should be perfect for this, when you go to "get new extensions" in firefox it should be in the list. I think you need at least 0.8 for it though, it sounds like you need to update anyway
"And if i'm going to use something else it must be able to run out of it's own directory, firefreak and mossila insist on using that my documents setting crap."
Oh, you mean like IE does? And like all applications on windows systems are supposed to do? The app does run out of a directory, preferences and user specific settings are stored under that users profile. Otherwise the application doesn't work with windows roaming profiles or multiple users with different preferences on a computer.
That's why any even half arsed program functions this way.
"Its still not compatible with MSIE javascript."
I'm sure there must be some, but I haven't seen any in a long time. The answer is to set your useragent string to lie and say it's IE. Most sites that don't load, don't load because they think only IE works. Personally I like to use the user agent switcher plugin for this, but you can do it manually to.
"Also it can't store favourites in a msie compatible way."
Yes it uses a simple html file which is completely non-proprietary unlike IE. However the first time you load it, it imports all your IE favorites (in fact EVERY time you load it so it's always up to date). IE however doesn't have this capability, or most useful capabilities for that matter, so if you want to import the firefox bookmarks (favorites) you have to actually manually go to file->import.
That's just one of hundreds of features IE lacks that firefox provides of course.
"This is precisely what I said: most experienced computer users learn the hard way. This is how authors do it and then they write documentation that is easier for people to understand."
No you defined the hard way as talking to other experienced users and the developers.
"What is your point? Have you not read anything I've written?"
The point being that is exactly how you stated these authors are supposed to learn. The hard way I defined is impossible since there is no useful documentation (at least not that is useful without already knowing the answers), and the information found on google is usually inaccurate or extremely out of date for a project that has been around any length of time.
"This is flat-out untrue, and now I am sure you are a troll and/or an idiot. Books are an invaluable resource for everyone, even for highly experienced programmers."
Books on programming languages yes, languages change slowly overall. Individual open source applications often change rapidly. The books come out at best 6 months to a year after a version of the application comes out. By that time there may already have been several versions released (depending on the project).
Granted not everything moves that fast, but more projects than not do. And follow the philosophy that if there is signficant gain in doing so they can and WILL break compatiblity for that gain.
"You still aren't reading what I wrote. Successful projects provide enough documentation for experienced computer users. The entire topic has been about improving the documentation for OPEN SOURCE PROJECTS to allow them to be used by inexperienced computer users."
Providing enough documentation to struggle through and providing adequate documentation that one does not have to struggle are entirely different things. Perhaps this topic has magically in your own mind turned into something concerning inexperienced users, but the topic is about poor documentation, it does not classify. Within your own mind you've created a world in which it's acceptable to spend hours searching for the answer to a common problem or simple configuration option. The rest of use, experienced or otherwise don't believe simply being possible to find the answer is enough, but that it should actually be SIMPLE to find the answer.
"Get your fucking head on straight and then continue the conversation, or just go fuck off."
If that means agreeing with someone who can't remember what he himself said in his own post. And if you can't come up with anything better to contribute than calling me a troll and an idiot as opposed to actually providing a counter argument, then I most definately will do so. Because obviously continuing this dicussion is a waste of time.
Because no distro is all inclusive, NONE of them. And short of random installation, you really never find things browsing through a list like you get with yast or synaptic.
A user needs to be able browse the web for "linux webserver" or some such, find something he likes and click on the official site for it, and download + install that thing.
Even when the official site points to a 3rd party with rpms for instance. There is no quality control, nobody who works with the application is checking those packages. Often those packages have numerous dependencies or are all in all crappy and useless. More often than not they are outdated. But worst of all, if it's a popular project with a reputation, they can be considered a trusted source, but since they do no review of the 3rd party the rpms cannot be trusted.
I might trust Apache, but if apache says this guy builds rpms, or has an rpm contrib directory (which they don't do with the main http_server but there ARE other things on their site they do this with). Then I can't trust there are no backdoors added.
"experienced computer users do, and by interviewing users familiar with the software and even the developers themselves"
I don't know many experienced computer users who do it that way. Most I know beat the software with a stick and if all else fails check the documentation, if that fails check google. If that fails check other engines. If that fails, find other software.
Dear god, the very idea of communicating with other users BEFORE you are knowledgable enough to hold your own is offensive.
"How do you propose a dedicated, professional author be paid for his/her work if they don't write a book and get paid for it"
The same way professional programmers working on open source projects are getting paid for it. The documentation and simplified installation are every bit as important the program itself.
The program is worthless if nobody can use it. Or if only people who have learned through a chain of word of mouth, starting from the developers, can use it.
"I haven't seen many books written for projects by the developer's themselves. The vast majority of technical books for open source software are written by third-party authors, who get paid for their work directly."
I've seen plenty, check o'reilly, there are almost no books pertaining to open source that aren't co-authored by a prominent project developer. Now if you were thinking something along the lines of dummy books, I certainly wasn't talking about that.
For that matter I'm not even sure the dummies series of books DESERVES existance. O'Reilly books are better examples. O'Reilly books don't require you to be experienced to understand, but aren't dumbed down to the point of being useless either.
There are three reasons I don't believe books are the answer to documentation. 1, it takes too long, by they time they go through all the levels of red tape, editing, rewritting, (loop 200000 times) and then go through a similar process except pertaining to actual printing and advertising etc. They are outdated by the time they hit the shelves.
Second, nobody is going to use an application if they have to buy a book to get it installed and in a basic functional configuration. Rule of thumb, if there is any chance a company with less than 500 employees might do it, or a user at home, then it's a basic functional configuration and nothing involved should be considered "advanced".
Third, there are a shitload of books out there, how am I to know which is the up to date project approved documention for "Program X". Or are you suggesting that as well as providing no useful information for actually running a program, the project should not even have a 3rd party they ensure has that available?
Of course this level of documentation seems daunting, at present it IS for most projects. Ease of documenting and ease of use go hand in hand.
Simplify the use of the software, and you've simplified documenting that use. Reduce the number of "exceptions" and places things can break, and you've greatly simplified documentation.
That is one of the most obvious mindsets for combating ease of use problems and one ignored for the most part. It's one that lets us utilize our laziness to achieve productivity.
Want to make your software easier to work with but don't know how? Start writing documentation and redesign your interfaces to make documentation easier, magically the software becomes easier to use.
Lets see if I can find a few projects that don't offer rpms. Remember, what 3rd parties offer doesn't matter.
p #sourc e_download
Apache:
Here you will find a nice webserver, with source downloads only and a handy windows installer... that is useless since it lacks ssl I might add.
http://httpd.apache.org/download.cgi
Bind:
Good old source, and only source.
http://www.isc.org/index.pl?/sw/bind/
Linux:
Again we have a choice, between source, and source.
http://www.kernel.org
Dvd::Rip
On this one I admit he does helpfully link to 3RD PARTY binary packages where he can.
http://www.exit1.org/dvdrip/doc/install.cip
Gnome:
http://www.gnome.org/start/2.6/
I could continue, but I won't. Alot more projects at least have links to 3rd party binaries on their sites. I found TWO that included dependencies and had installers out of 15 projects I just checked (picking random things on my own system, all common).
This needs resolved, that should be more along the lines of 15/15 with installers and all dependencies coupled with them.
I felt that way once, but then I figured out the great secret. Whatever the features are of IE that give you that comfort, bitch here on slashdot about Mozilla not doing it. BAM within 5minutes you'll have 12 extensions that make moz/ff behave just that way. Be sure to mention IE does whatever it is though, if you don't it won't work as well.
Seriously, try it.
Believe it or not, it usually gets a faster response than "I just wish linux did... windows does it".
Read my sig to find a neat one.