There are plenty of people that work in telemarketing too, who "aren't evil". They are there out of necessity. However, that doesn't mean we have to make it nice for them. I am personally being violently cruel to all telemarketers who call now and encourage others to do the same. My point is that if the job becomes very hard to tolerate, then maybe folks won't want to work in that field. With any luck, that field will disappear. So... it's your duty to let your friend know how much it sucks that she is working for M$. Oh yeah... make sure you tell off a telemarketer or threaten them and their employer in some way (lawsuits or challenging them to a duel usually works)..
We're all guilty of calling other folks names. In reality they are just words which have no real meaning at all. But, the intent behind Enderle's comment is very clear. Much like the Bush administration, he is attempting to instill fear and possibly even incite a riot. Enderle would LOVE to see the "Linux Zealots" get a posterchild who blew someone's head off with a gun or beat the tar out of someone at a rally. It would give him the ability to say "See? I Told you so". I also wouldn't be surprised if things got bad enough that "Linux Zealots" were planted at any kind of public demonstration to start trouble. Now that Linux is getting more attention, times may call for desperate measures for the anti-Linux crowd. BE careful out there folks...
Although many of the free programs that compete with the Adobe products aren't 100% comparable, they do an admirable job for us folks at home. I stopped buying Adobe software with Photoshop 4, since I don't have to go to print unless you count my Epson (which is great for the home photos, but little else). Now, they've bought Cool Edit Pro (and Syntrillium software) as well, so I guess it's time to start exploring Ardour. The basic point here is... it's not going to affect me or people like me, so there isn't much of a story here... Especially considering that the best folks on/. are very much like me. Spread that free software goodness mates.
Hmmmm... I don't see any Windows install fests giving out free software and help to the general public. I have to question Microsoft's motives if they aren't doing good for their fellow man. Of course, I suppose some people define "fellow man" as stockholders. Now that is a sad statement on our society.
From the article: I can't think of desktop applications where you would need more than 4 gigabytes of physical memory
Didn't he make a statement like that a few decades ago? And wasn't he wrong? I figure that UIs in the future are going to need a LOT of RAM. In fact, this one VERY good voice recognition software that a company I'm dealing with has, requires a mimimum of 1 Gig of RAM just for their app. This is what makes it poerate so well. I'm sure there will be plenty of apps (especially in the UI realm) that will make use of more than a gig of RAM.
Why do you think they are giving Linux so much attention these days? I think this means we are now in between the "They laughed at us" and "They tried to fight us" part.
And if we follow Mahatma Gandhi's approach, the best approach is to keep doing what we do while letting MS bash away. Eventually it will become quite evident as to which side is interested in doing good for their fellow man.
Re:Sadly you wont see many more of these ...
on
Silicon Artwork
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· Score: 1
You blathered: "some jerk-off designer"
Some of us have a sense of style when it comes to engineering and computers. You need a visit from the Fab5.
I THINK JOHN WALKER FOUND THE COMPLAINT GENERATOR
on
Trusted Computing
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· Score: 1
The definitive proof that he didn't write this but it was generated by a script is the use of the word "fora". NO ONE in their right mind uses the word "fora" when they are talking about forums.;P
Please mod parent up. I've wondered about this for a long time. Bush DOES have the look of a dyslexic, it wouldn't surprise me if he WAS a dyslexic. And findout out that it runs in his family is another sure sign.
Precisely my point. Eye-candy shouldn't factor into grading in an English class, a history class or for that matter any class that isn't art or graphic design.
If it's a paper for school maybe it's supposed to have references, as footnotes? If it's for work maybe form is as much a concern as content. For instance I draft a few affidavits, and they have to have a facing page in two column format, and formatting, such as the size of the left-margin and even the line leading is actually prescribed by statute.
I made it through school with an Atari ST 1024 running 1ST Word and a Canon Injet Printer. There were no font selections, or color or options for multicolumn layout. And this worked for me from 1988 when I started to 1994 when I was done (yeah yeah... six year plan and I dropped out for a year because school was intensely boring). Just because other folks were using laser printers and typsetting on Macs for their papers didn't mean that I had to. I got plenty of decent grades and they weren't affected by the layout. That's the way it SHOULD be. If you want to be judged on layout, take a graphic design course (that's what I did). If you want to be judged on intellect, then do your homework and focus on the content (I also did that).
No job should require layout to be a part of writing documents until the very end. That's what a graphic artist or possibly a secretary are for. Why should someone doing work that isn't related to the creative (DTP) or the mundane (columns for legal papers, etc..) have to bother? The biggest problem I have with word processors is that they get in the way of thinking. There are so many distractions that keep people from actually thinking about the flow of what they are trying to say. Take those away, and intellectual content quality will increase. Leave the formating to the very end.
If what you're saying was really true, then why would big word processors be so popular?
One word: marketing
People have been convinced that they NEED word processing. Personally, I only know one person who actually makes a lot of use of a word processor at home. And that's only because he's a paper freak. My wife doesn't do any word processing at home. Neither do my parents or her parents. One of my friends who is back in school at 32 got Office XP just this year. But he's made it through the first year and a half with just Wordpad. In fact, if you ask most people what word processor their bundled computer from Dell or HP came with, they will tell you "Ummm... Microsoft Word" even if they have Wordperfect. Most people can't even tell the difference. To them "MS Word" = any wordprocessor. I've even seen people call Wordpad "MS Word".
If there are so many people out there who actually use these features, then they must just like to play dumb considering how many people don't seem to even be familiar enough to tell the difference. It's all marketing. Microsoft Word is such a prevalent brand in the minds of most users, that they assume any word processor is Microsoft Word. These are the same people who, upon finding out that you don't use MS Windows on your PC, exclaim, "But, but, but... What DO YOU run if you don't use Windows??!" Just a lot of really strong PR and advertising. And all that takes is a lot of money. No talent or quality required.
I use Wordpad. Fast, stable, and has every fucking feature 99% of the population needs.
I love pointing this out... the troll has a point. Most people don't need anything beyond simple text entry, spell checking, bold, italic and underline. When you write a paper for school or work, it's not supposed to be interesting looking, it's supposed to have CONTENT. That's what a lot of people seem to NOT understand these days. With all the options for fonts, graphics and color text, the message is getting lost in the medium.
Sir! I take offense to that! As a GNU/Linux hippy, I must say that "hippy" is a word squarely aimed at our platform. Please get your countercultures straight!;P
I am gald to see the luminaries got early posts. Congrats to Sexual Asspussy, Eric Ass Raymond and Fecal Troll Matter. May you all live long and continue to post heartily. Props to Subject Line Troll as well. While I may not be a troll, I respect those who troll well.
The problem is that a lot of people from the Windows side have been trained to think in the Microsoft way. A lot of them had enough trouble getting to understand A:\ and C:\. Suddenly they are confronted with this alien hierarchy that doesn't even have drive letters and uses / instead of \.
But I have a little tale to illustrate the point. When I came over to Windows 3.1 from Mac OS 7 in 1994, I was used to long file names, no file extensions and a logical personally defined file hierarchy. I would leave the System and Finder folders on their own and I would create a personalized set of folders on the hard drive. It was "organized" according to me:
Programs Documents Games Downloads
Inside of each of the Program folder I would have: Word Processing Graphics Internet
and so on within each of the other folders...
It made sense to me and I love it. What I REALLY loved was that I could move a program from one category to another, or reorganize the folders and the program would still run.
Then I moved to Windows 3.1. When I installed it, it wanted to go in C:\WINDOWS. I thought that was ugly and installed it in C:\SYSTEM instead. Then I created directories in C:\ that followed my old Mac hierarchy:
C:\PROGRAMS C:\DOCUMENT C:\GAMES C:\DOWNLOAD
Again, it wasn't optimal like the Mac had been, but it made sense to me and made it easy to find stuff on my system. Of course, I got bit by quite a few applications that were hard coded to look for C:\WINDOWS. I didn't know enough about DOS to get around this, so eventually I re-installed and used C:\WINDOWS.
When I moved to Linux, I was now confronted with no drive letter and '/'. Getting used to '/' wasn't that bad since it was a lot like using FTP. But, it took me a while to wrap my mind around the concept of no drive letters. Once I "got it" I could see the beauty in the layout. Basically, it's not device dependent. With the exception of a few directories that must be in the root, most directories can exist on any drive, across multiple drives, on network drives, any combination. The other thing is that as long as the apps are well written, there are standard locations for everything (as someone points out later on down this thread).
These days, my hierarchy is back under my home directory:
What really makes the filing system beautiful is that I've used this same exact structure for most of the years I've been using Linux (since 1997). I mean this literally. Once I understood how things worked in Linux, I've been able to completely wipe systems with the exception of the drive that holds my home directory and start clean. About the only thing I need to do going between versions of RedHat is clean up the . directories in my home dir. Such as when GNOME went from one version to another and changed some things.
It all comes down to getting used to something. The problem is that most people are lazy and don't want to have to get used to something new once they've gotten used to something that works for them.
Yes, it's partly due to subpar products from Micrsoft. But it's also based on the culture of users that don't see themselves as targets. Just the other day I was talking to a fellow admin and happened to mention that on the one Windows XP box I have to use for work (at home) I run as a Power User and just use the RUNAS command to become the administrator. His jaw dropped and he said, "You actually DON'T run as an administrator"? He couldn't believe that I would inconvenience myself for a little extra security. THAT is the problem. Even someone as knowledgable as another Windows admin simply doesn't want to deal with the inconveniences of not running as Administrator (or root in *nix).
Since Microsoft encourages that people run as Administrator by the way the defaults are set up, there's going to be many situations where there are security problems until this practice changes. The real answer is that anyone using broadband should be behind a gateway of some kind. It makes all the difference in the world. If ISPs were really smart, they'd include a broadband router/firewall box with the DSL/Cable modem or have an all-in-one box. They'd also provide the users with access to the administrative functions on that box *if* they plan to run servers. It won't stop every security problem that Windows has, but it would alleviate many as there wouldn't be a direct connection to the internet.
...can agree with this one. When you have enough space whether it's real or virtual, you don't have to shuffle your windows constantly. The "Show Desktop" button in Windows doesn't cut it.
My typical layout is 4-6 virtual desktops and a pager. On the first desktop I run my mail client (Evolution) and any basic work related stuff that requires me to use e-mail. On my second desktop, I usually run miscellaneous short term projects. Usually multiple xterms into a few different *nix boxes or maybe an Xnest session to one of those same boxes. My third desktop is reserved for non-work related web stuff. Mozilla is usually running there with Slashdot opened and maybe my webmail as well as a few other tabs in Mozilla for any other sites I am interested in that might have been links from Mozilla. My fourth is usually Stuff like GAIM, an ssh session to my server at home (which is tunneling my private jabber server, a Vorbis stream, vnc and internal web stuff from my house). My fifth and sixth desktops are used for multiple related xterms. If I am connected to a certain host with four different sessions, it will go on desktop five and another four connections to another host on desktop six. Then all I have to do to change my focus is use the desktop pager to move from one operating mode to another. Hehehe.. it also makes a great "panic button". But I will vouch that having plenty of space to leave applications running in associated groups increases productivity instead of hunting and pecking for the right Window on the Windows task bar.
They've never innovated. Most of their "innovations" are things that other people have been doing for decades that they've simply renamed with a friendlier name. Microsoft isn't really a technology company at all, they're more of a PR firm with the power to buy lots of stuff from other companies who MAY have innovated at one point or another. But witness this:
1. Unix: mount points with no drive letters. Windows 2000 introduces this in their "change drive letters" feature allowing people to mount a volume on an empty folder.... otherwise known as a mount point for decades in the Unix world. 2. Unix/DEC VMS: The X protocol for "network tranparent" remote application execution. Combine this with Xnest for the export of a full desktop. VNC also comes along and offers it multiplatform. Windows: "Remote Desktop" introduced in Windows XP as a brand new innovation. Even though it's a rehash of their rdp protocol from Windows Terminal Server Edition. Created to try and kill off Citrix. Hmm... nothing new here, but Unix has been doing it since 1984. 3. Unix: Multiple X servers running on the same host with a different desktop for each user allowing a fast switch between users with Ctrl-Alt-F(key). Windows XP: The introduction of "fast user switching". Does EXACTLY the same thing, but puts a simple, "friendly" GUI over it that bears a strong resemblance to GDM in GNOME. Again, nothing new. Just more of the rename game. 4. Unix: ssh becomes available as a protocl to allow far more than just telnet. No need for passwords any more if you use public key authentication. You can tunnel TCP traffic from systems on the other side of your remote host to your local host allowing you VPN-like abilities. You can remotely execute programs and tunnel the X protocol securely. Windows 2000: Kerberos/Telnet server introduced as a standard part of the OS. It ONLY provides remote access to the C:\> prompt. Well la-dee-da!
The list goes on and on and on... A lot of what MS has in IE was purchased from other companies, slagged on by their code monkeys and then "updated" in teh same way that they updated QDOS WAYYYY back when.
And saying that they "won" the browser war is kinf od silly. They will not have won the browser war until there are no other browsers out there. Unless, of course, your definition of winning is that of the United States presidential administration with regard to Iraq.;P
I agree about killing all spammers. But... was this guy REALLY a spammer? He wasn't sticking it to people like you and me. He was directly annoying some very powerful people. I think THAT'S why the penalty is so steep. Because of our twisted version of capitalism, people like the spam king, Ralsky, will never see this kind of penalty. Basically because in our society, if there is money to be made, the method doesn't matter in the least. We've all sent off the threatening/annoying anonymous e-mails with anonymizers and using rooted boxes in the past, but that is NOT spam. This guy wasn't trying to "make money fast" or "get big penis". He was simply voicing an unpopular set of opinions at a group of people who didn't want to listen. Said group had the money and the power to "get him" and I'm sure they'll win in the end. Yet more proof that capitalism is as corrupt as communism ever was.
...but is there such a good thing as a good free virus checker?
Look at Clam AV for a great, free Linux based antivirus program. With the use of the 'freshclam' command and cron in Linux, you can have the system update it's virus database daily (or as many times a day as you want). The 'clamscan' command is good for an overall system scan (including the Windows partition). Again, this can be set with cron to happen at a time when no one will be using the laptop (assuming it's left on).
A good free email client?
I live by Evolution myself on the Linux side, but Mozilla's mail client and Thunderbird aren't bad at all.
A handy web browser?
Ditto here about Mozilla for both with Windows and Linux platforms. Lots of very nice features and easy to use.
As far as other software, I would HIGHLY recommend OpenSSH even though it might seem like something that the average user might not use. Mostly because having VPN-like capabilities at no cost is VERY attractive. If you are, at all, technically capable, it's not too hard to get ssh configured for non-CLI tunneling. I use it all the time to work on my Linksys web admin from the outside world without opening port 80 to the outside.:) Someone REALLY needs to write some GUI apps to configure sshd_config and ~/.ssh/config for the average Joe. Consider Cygwin for Windows as that will give you a free ssh server and client.
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There are plenty of people that work in telemarketing too, who "aren't evil". They are there out of necessity. However, that doesn't mean we have to make it nice for them. I am personally being violently cruel to all telemarketers who call now and encourage others to do the same. My point is that if the job becomes very hard to tolerate, then maybe folks won't want to work in that field. With any luck, that field will disappear. So... it's your duty to let your friend know how much it sucks that she is working for M$. Oh yeah... make sure you tell off a telemarketer or threaten them and their employer in some way (lawsuits or challenging them to a duel usually works)..
Damn! I love it. An annoying troll got trolled by a non-troll! That is why you are on my friends list.
Mr. Anderson! What good is a military, when you're not the president?
We're all guilty of calling other folks names. In reality they are just words which have no real meaning at all. But, the intent behind Enderle's comment is very clear. Much like the Bush administration, he is attempting to instill fear and possibly even incite a riot. Enderle would LOVE to see the "Linux Zealots" get a posterchild who blew someone's head off with a gun or beat the tar out of someone at a rally. It would give him the ability to say "See? I Told you so". I also wouldn't be surprised if things got bad enough that "Linux Zealots" were planted at any kind of public demonstration to start trouble. Now that Linux is getting more attention, times may call for desperate measures for the anti-Linux crowd. BE careful out there folks...
Although many of the free programs that compete with the Adobe products aren't 100% comparable, they do an admirable job for us folks at home. I stopped buying Adobe software with Photoshop 4, since I don't have to go to print unless you count my Epson (which is great for the home photos, but little else). Now, they've bought Cool Edit Pro (and Syntrillium software) as well, so I guess it's time to start exploring Ardour. The basic point here is... it's not going to affect me or people like me, so there isn't much of a story here... Especially considering that the best folks on /. are very much like me. Spread that free software goodness mates.
Hmmmm... I don't see any Windows install fests giving out free software and help to the general public. I have to question Microsoft's motives if they aren't doing good for their fellow man. Of course, I suppose some people define "fellow man" as stockholders. Now that is a sad statement on our society.
Didn't he make a statement like that a few decades ago? And wasn't he wrong? I figure that UIs in the future are going to need a LOT of RAM. In fact, this one VERY good voice recognition software that a company I'm dealing with has, requires a mimimum of 1 Gig of RAM just for their app. This is what makes it poerate so well. I'm sure there will be plenty of apps (especially in the UI realm) that will make use of more than a gig of RAM.
Hah! 640K. WHAT was he thinking?
Why do you think they are giving Linux so much attention these days? I think this means we are now in between the "They laughed at us" and "They tried to fight us" part.
And if we follow Mahatma Gandhi's approach, the best approach is to keep doing what we do while letting MS bash away. Eventually it will become quite evident as to which side is interested in doing good for their fellow man.
Some of us have a sense of style when it comes to engineering and computers. You need a visit from the Fab5.
The definitive proof that he didn't write this but it was generated by a script is the use of the word "fora". NO ONE in their right mind uses the word "fora" when they are talking about forums. ;P
And in other news... on this day in 1974, man with chocolate bar runs into man with bottle of peanut butter. A new taste sensation is born.
Please mod parent up. I've wondered about this for a long time. Bush DOES have the look of a dyslexic, it wouldn't surprise me if he WAS a dyslexic. And findout out that it runs in his family is another sure sign.
Precisely my point. Eye-candy shouldn't factor into grading in an English class, a history class or for that matter any class that isn't art or graphic design.
I made it through school with an Atari ST 1024 running 1ST Word and a Canon Injet Printer. There were no font selections, or color or options for multicolumn layout. And this worked for me from 1988 when I started to 1994 when I was done (yeah yeah... six year plan and I dropped out for a year because school was intensely boring). Just because other folks were using laser printers and typsetting on Macs for their papers didn't mean that I had to. I got plenty of decent grades and they weren't affected by the layout. That's the way it SHOULD be. If you want to be judged on layout, take a graphic design course (that's what I did). If you want to be judged on intellect, then do your homework and focus on the content (I also did that).
No job should require layout to be a part of writing documents until the very end. That's what a graphic artist or possibly a secretary are for. Why should someone doing work that isn't related to the creative (DTP) or the mundane (columns for legal papers, etc..) have to bother? The biggest problem I have with word processors is that they get in the way of thinking. There are so many distractions that keep people from actually thinking about the flow of what they are trying to say. Take those away, and intellectual content quality will increase. Leave the formating to the very end.
One word: marketing
People have been convinced that they NEED word processing. Personally, I only know one person who actually makes a lot of use of a word processor at home. And that's only because he's a paper freak. My wife doesn't do any word processing at home. Neither do my parents or her parents. One of my friends who is back in school at 32 got Office XP just this year. But he's made it through the first year and a half with just Wordpad. In fact, if you ask most people what word processor their bundled computer from Dell or HP came with, they will tell you "Ummm... Microsoft Word" even if they have Wordperfect. Most people can't even tell the difference. To them "MS Word" = any wordprocessor. I've even seen people call Wordpad "MS Word".
If there are so many people out there who actually use these features, then they must just like to play dumb considering how many people don't seem to even be familiar enough to tell the difference. It's all marketing. Microsoft Word is such a prevalent brand in the minds of most users, that they assume any word processor is Microsoft Word. These are the same people who, upon finding out that you don't use MS Windows on your PC, exclaim, "But, but, but... What DO YOU run if you don't use Windows??!" Just a lot of really strong PR and advertising. And all that takes is a lot of money. No talent or quality required.
It's running a custom installed Linux and acting as a firewall. It rocks.
I love pointing this out... the troll has a point. Most people don't need anything beyond simple text entry, spell checking, bold, italic and underline. When you write a paper for school or work, it's not supposed to be interesting looking, it's supposed to have CONTENT. That's what a lot of people seem to NOT understand these days. With all the options for fonts, graphics and color text, the message is getting lost in the medium.
Sir! I take offense to that! As a GNU/Linux hippy, I must say that "hippy" is a word squarely aimed at our platform. Please get your countercultures straight! ;P
I am gald to see the luminaries got early posts. Congrats to Sexual Asspussy, Eric Ass Raymond and Fecal Troll Matter. May you all live long and continue to post heartily. Props to Subject Line Troll as well. While I may not be a troll, I respect those who troll well.
The problem is that a lot of people from the Windows side have been trained to think in the Microsoft way. A lot of them had enough trouble getting to understand A:\ and C:\. Suddenly they are confronted with this alien hierarchy that doesn't even have drive letters and uses / instead of \.
/home/blacksmith/
But I have a little tale to illustrate the point. When I came over to Windows 3.1 from Mac OS 7 in 1994, I was used to long file names, no file extensions and a logical personally defined file hierarchy. I would leave the System and Finder folders on their own and I would create a personalized set of folders on the hard drive. It was "organized" according to me:
Programs
Documents
Games
Downloads
Inside of each of the Program folder I would have:
Word Processing
Graphics
Internet
and so on within each of the other folders...
It made sense to me and I love it. What I REALLY loved was that I could move a program from one category to another, or reorganize the folders and the program would still run.
Then I moved to Windows 3.1. When I installed it, it wanted to go in C:\WINDOWS. I thought that was ugly and installed it in C:\SYSTEM instead. Then I created directories in C:\ that followed my old Mac hierarchy:
C:\PROGRAMS
C:\DOCUMENT
C:\GAMES
C:\DOWNLOAD
Again, it wasn't optimal like the Mac had been, but it made sense to me and made it easy to find stuff on my system. Of course, I got bit by quite a few applications that were hard coded to look for C:\WINDOWS. I didn't know enough about DOS to get around this, so eventually I re-installed and used C:\WINDOWS.
When I moved to Linux, I was now confronted with no drive letter and '/'. Getting used to '/' wasn't that bad since it was a lot like using FTP. But, it took me a while to wrap my mind around the concept of no drive letters. Once I "got it" I could see the beauty in the layout. Basically, it's not device dependent. With the exception of a few directories that must be in the root, most directories can exist on any drive, across multiple drives, on network drives, any combination. The other thing is that as long as the apps are well written, there are standard locations for everything (as someone points out later on down this thread).
These days, my hierarchy is back under my home directory:
~ =
~/bin
~/Programs --> ~/bin
~/Documents
~/Games
~/Downloads
What really makes the filing system beautiful is that I've used this same exact structure for most of the years I've been using Linux (since 1997). I mean this literally. Once I understood how things worked in Linux, I've been able to completely wipe systems with the exception of the drive that holds my home directory and start clean. About the only thing I need to do going between versions of RedHat is clean up the . directories in my home dir. Such as when GNOME went from one version to another and changed some things.
It all comes down to getting used to something. The problem is that most people are lazy and don't want to have to get used to something new once they've gotten used to something that works for them.
Yes, it's partly due to subpar products from Micrsoft. But it's also based on the culture of users that don't see themselves as targets. Just the other day I was talking to a fellow admin and happened to mention that on the one Windows XP box I have to use for work (at home) I run as a Power User and just use the RUNAS command to become the administrator. His jaw dropped and he said, "You actually DON'T run as an administrator"? He couldn't believe that I would inconvenience myself for a little extra security. THAT is the problem. Even someone as knowledgable as another Windows admin simply doesn't want to deal with the inconveniences of not running as Administrator (or root in *nix).
Since Microsoft encourages that people run as Administrator by the way the defaults are set up, there's going to be many situations where there are security problems until this practice changes. The real answer is that anyone using broadband should be behind a gateway of some kind. It makes all the difference in the world. If ISPs were really smart, they'd include a broadband router/firewall box with the DSL/Cable modem or have an all-in-one box. They'd also provide the users with access to the administrative functions on that box *if* they plan to run servers. It won't stop every security problem that Windows has, but it would alleviate many as there wouldn't be a direct connection to the internet.
...can agree with this one. When you have enough space whether it's real or virtual, you don't have to shuffle your windows constantly. The "Show Desktop" button in Windows doesn't cut it.
My typical layout is 4-6 virtual desktops and a pager. On the first desktop I run my mail client (Evolution) and any basic work related stuff that requires me to use e-mail. On my second desktop, I usually run miscellaneous short term projects. Usually multiple xterms into a few different *nix boxes or maybe an Xnest session to one of those same boxes. My third desktop is reserved for non-work related web stuff. Mozilla is usually running there with Slashdot opened and maybe my webmail as well as a few other tabs in Mozilla for any other sites I am interested in that might have been links from Mozilla. My fourth is usually Stuff like GAIM, an ssh session to my server at home (which is tunneling my private jabber server, a Vorbis stream, vnc and internal web stuff from my house). My fifth and sixth desktops are used for multiple related xterms. If I am connected to a certain host with four different sessions, it will go on desktop five and another four connections to another host on desktop six. Then all I have to do to change my focus is use the desktop pager to move from one operating mode to another. Hehehe.. it also makes a great "panic button". But I will vouch that having plenty of space to leave applications running in associated groups increases productivity instead of hunting and pecking for the right Window on the Windows task bar.
They've never innovated. Most of their "innovations" are things that other people have been doing for decades that they've simply renamed with a friendlier name. Microsoft isn't really a technology company at all, they're more of a PR firm with the power to buy lots of stuff from other companies who MAY have innovated at one point or another. But witness this:
... otherwise known as a mount point for decades in the Unix world.
;P
1. Unix: mount points with no drive letters. Windows 2000 introduces this in their "change drive letters" feature allowing people to mount a volume on an empty folder.
2. Unix/DEC VMS: The X protocol for "network tranparent" remote application execution. Combine this with Xnest for the export of a full desktop. VNC also comes along and offers it multiplatform. Windows: "Remote Desktop" introduced in Windows XP as a brand new innovation. Even though it's a rehash of their rdp protocol from Windows Terminal Server Edition. Created to try and kill off Citrix. Hmm... nothing new here, but Unix has been doing it since 1984.
3. Unix: Multiple X servers running on the same host with a different desktop for each user allowing a fast switch between users with Ctrl-Alt-F(key). Windows XP: The introduction of "fast user switching". Does EXACTLY the same thing, but puts a simple, "friendly" GUI over it that bears a strong resemblance to GDM in GNOME. Again, nothing new. Just more of the rename game.
4. Unix: ssh becomes available as a protocl to allow far more than just telnet. No need for passwords any more if you use public key authentication. You can tunnel TCP traffic from systems on the other side of your remote host to your local host allowing you VPN-like abilities. You can remotely execute programs and tunnel the X protocol securely. Windows 2000: Kerberos/Telnet server introduced as a standard part of the OS. It ONLY provides remote access to the C:\> prompt. Well la-dee-da!
The list goes on and on and on... A lot of what MS has in IE was purchased from other companies, slagged on by their code monkeys and then "updated" in teh same way that they updated QDOS WAYYYY back when.
And saying that they "won" the browser war is kinf od silly. They will not have won the browser war until there are no other browsers out there. Unless, of course, your definition of winning is that of the United States presidential administration with regard to Iraq.
I agree about killing all spammers. But... was this guy REALLY a spammer? He wasn't sticking it to people like you and me. He was directly annoying some very powerful people. I think THAT'S why the penalty is so steep. Because of our twisted version of capitalism, people like the spam king, Ralsky, will never see this kind of penalty. Basically because in our society, if there is money to be made, the method doesn't matter in the least. We've all sent off the threatening/annoying anonymous e-mails with anonymizers and using rooted boxes in the past, but that is NOT spam. This guy wasn't trying to "make money fast" or "get big penis". He was simply voicing an unpopular set of opinions at a group of people who didn't want to listen. Said group had the money and the power to "get him" and I'm sure they'll win in the end. Yet more proof that capitalism is as corrupt as communism ever was.
Look at Clam AV for a great, free Linux based antivirus program. With the use of the 'freshclam' command and cron in Linux, you can have the system update it's virus database daily (or as many times a day as you want). The 'clamscan' command is good for an overall system scan (including the Windows partition). Again, this can be set with cron to happen at a time when no one will be using the laptop (assuming it's left on).
A good free email client?
I live by Evolution myself on the Linux side, but Mozilla's mail client and Thunderbird aren't bad at all.
A handy web browser?
Ditto here about Mozilla for both with Windows and Linux platforms. Lots of very nice features and easy to use.
As far as other software, I would HIGHLY recommend OpenSSH even though it might seem like something that the average user might not use. Mostly because having VPN-like capabilities at no cost is VERY attractive. If you are, at all, technically capable, it's not too hard to get ssh configured for non-CLI tunneling. I use it all the time to work on my Linksys web admin from the outside world without opening port 80 to the outside. :) Someone REALLY needs to write some GUI apps to configure sshd_config and ~/.ssh/config for the average Joe. Consider Cygwin for Windows as that will give you a free ssh server and client.