...if Linux is going to grow up from a hobby thing to something more usefull for the bussiness.
Why is this a necessity? I don't care if businesses can use it or not. What I really care about is whether I can use it or not. So far Linux has provided me with a very inexpensive way of automating my house, building my own appliances and completely customizing my desktops for the ultimate usability. From my perspecitve Linux has been very successful from day one with it's injection into business being a less important and happy accident.
Sure, the assistance from corporate coders who have contributed to Linux has been wonderful. But it should be taken as it is: it's free, volunteer effort dedicated to the betterment of the human condition through computing. There is only one reason to be involved with Linux and one reason only: because you love computer technology and OSes for what they are: cool toys.
The thing that always irks me is the people who think that if Linux is going to "survive" it needs to somehow become this hugely popular OS that is commercially successful. This is not a requirement at all. It's a side effect of the dreck that has polluted American capitalism. Profit is not the only reason to do something. If anything profit should only be a side-effect in fair capitalism. That's real competition. Surviving by your own real abilities without putting any kind of spin on it. Microsoft puts a spin on everything because they have lost their center (or possibly never had it). For them the center is profit and the OS and software are secondary with the customer coming last. They only throw crumbs to the customer to keep them buying: "It's fixed this time. You just need to upgrade that's all!"
If you were to completely corporatize Linux, it wouldn't get any better. It would just *LOOK* better. That's the difference. Good looks are never a good substitute for quality. Those of us that eschew Windows and embrace Linux know this to be true.
I think it varies from person to person. Some people are better equipped at splitting their attention than other people. It's the same thing as people who can watch CNN while reading the sidebars and news tickers and getting the full story all at the same time. My wife hates the sidebars because they distract her from the news anchor. I think they should develop a test to see who is capable of driving while talking and who isn't. I'll bet you find that a majority of the population is not safely able to do both.
We're not talking about the english language. We are talking about a proper understanding of technological terms. One of the biggest problems with technology these days is that people *think* they understand it, but they don't. It's not that they are not intelligent enough though. It's that computer technology is still too complicated for most people. In the computer technology world, emulation only means one thing, and it's not what you think it is.
Just because it doesn't meet some zealot's political muster doesn't mean it was a bad idea.
Oh I HOPE you AREN'T talking about me! I am not a zealot. I just get annoyed when I hear misinformed people talking down a decent program. Photoshop is fine. But GIMP just isn't that far beneath it. For *my* needs (ie. not a professional, not wealthy, but artistically inclined) GIMP is just what I need. And for most people, it's just what they need too. There is no justifying the price tag for Photoshop when you can have something that will allow you to do the same kind of work at no cost. Again, I speak for those of us who work at home and have no need to print our graphics. Printing is not necessary to most people unless they are doing pro work. Therefore, CMYK is pointless at home. If I were a professional, I would understand the need for something like Photoshop. Never did I say that GIMP is the best program in the world. I simply said that it is suitable for 90% of the people out there. Professional designers with a clue and real talent can use any program. That was my point. Photoshop is not going to allow just any Joe off the street to become a pro graphics guy. I can't tell you how many fools I've seen who have bought or pirated Photoshop only to produce complete crap. I've also seen a lot of people use GIMP to produce beautiful works of true art.
Nobody is forced to produce, and nobody is forced to consume.
Nice. Isn't it interesting that today's "capitalism" is going directly counter to that? We are forced to produce because you can't live in the US without a job. We are forced to consume because if you don't you can't live a "normal" American life. I'm glad I've found ways to skirt around the system and still be a productive member of society. Thank god for the non-profits.
A lot of people bring up print as a necessity. However, it is not. I don't do print. I'm not a professional. But professional does not equal artist and vice-versa. I am not going to spend a ton of money on Photoshop just to edit my vacation photos. Saying that... yes I have used the latest Photoshop and I still don't see what the difference is if you REALLY KNOW how to use GIMP. Just having a few extra steps to take to get to a finished product isn't a big deal to me. I can do anything with GIMP that a Photoshop user can (barring print).
The other issue someone mentioned is fonts. Again, don't use something if you don't know what you are doing or how to do it right. If you understand the font system in X, it's possible to get output that rivals Windows or the Mac. It requires research and is not for the faint of heart, but I've been doing this for a while now. So the font issue is non-existent if you are persistent and intelligent.
I've used both and I can attest to the fact that GIMP is every bit as good as Photoshop. The differences between the two have to do with how well you know the apps AND most importantly how much talent you have.
The only people who think that Photoshop is better than GIMP are people with very little original creativity. They rely solely on filters and have no idea how to truly create a work of art using *ANY* tool. These are the same people who call themselves graphic designers and web designers but put up garish images that they didn't create with their own hands. They used filters and pulled source images from royalty free libraries. This is what's wrong with the world today: crafts are being mistaken for art.
Give a true artist a #2 pencil and some paper and they will give you a valuable work of art. Give a hack a fine set of brushes, oil paints and a canvas, and they will give you crap.
That would make GIMP the fine set of brushes, oil paints and canvas. And people like you, hacks.
Time to learn and understand what emulation is... To a person who actually knows something about emulation, it is the imitation of hardware in software. Wine does not do this. Wine doesn't pretend to be an x86 (or any other) processor like Bochs does. What Wine DOES do, is present an imitation of the SOFTWARE calls that the Windows API presents. This allows the software to run very quickly since no CPU cycles are wasted while pretending to be a different processor.
That is why an Amiga emulator like UAE *IS* and emulator. It's pretending to be a Motorola 68x00 processor. This is why NESTicle is an emulator, it's pretending to be a 16 bit NES console. This is why DOSBox is an emulator. It's pretending to be an x86 processor and associated hardware with an implementation of DOS running on it. And all of these emulators have a performance hit since they have to pretned to be some other hardware AND allow an executable to run on that emulated hardware.
Again... WINE doesn't do this. So Wine Is Not an Emulator.
...if you're a suit or a "coder" who is driven more by profit motive than a true interest in the technology, then you are going to put productivity AND profit above all else.
Hey. That's the "Microsoft" way. That's why they have so many problems with security even with their new "Trusted Computing" paradigm. It's profitable so it keeps them in beer and chips quite handily. But mediocrity is something that all of the biggest, successful companies seem to live on. McDonald's, AOL and Disney all make atrociously mediocre products, but they are damn successful. This is because "Joe Average" doesn't know any better. When it really comes down to it, it's an education issue. If, by some miracle, every "Joe and Jane Average" out there were to understand the benefits of GNU/Linux and open source software (or other OSes like the *BSDs and MacOS X) tomorrow, Microsoft's dominance would probably end pretty quickly. That's why it's important to keep the public positively informed about alternatives in all venues. And preferably without any zealotry. Of course, that term in itself is pretty subjective. Anything said positively about a subject that other's find distasteful is going to be labeled zealotry whether or not it really is.
If anything, the newcomers envisioned by transhumanists will be better equipped to pursue that kind of happiness. Kurzweil argues the newcomers will likely protect our rights by grandfathering into their society those of us who'd prefer not to be enhanced. Those people, the MOSH (Mostly Original Substrate Humans), would be free to live and love as before, to the best of their limited abilities....that humans are nothing more than a bunch of arrogant apes. We've forgotten where we come from, and we don't want to see anything better than us. The interesting thing is that most Christians would probably have massive problems with the idea of a man made being that is better than them. Yet if a mystical being (the Christian god or angels) is better than them, there is nothing wrong with it. Very entertaining.
Aside from the fact that Dan Quayle is possibly the stupidest man alive (although he might have more smarts than G.W. Bush), he probably doesn't even know what the environment is. Hmmmm maybe it's that third missing section of the bible?;P
After I got a subscription to an ISP back in 1997, I noticed that my productivity went down with regards to music composition and production. It was quite a shock to me since I'd always been able to come up with new things almost every day. Then, at one point, I was reading the online diary of one of my favorite musicians (Ryuichi Sakamoto) and he noted that ever since he started using the web, he'd become less productive. He suggested that it was a combination of the distraction it provides, the wealth of information that exists as it relates to your own personal interests and the "six degrees" nature of most web content that leads you from one of your interests to another. His personal approach was to schedule time that he was allowed to use the web. After reading this, I applied this approach to my own life by completely removing the ability of my audio production system to do anything on the Internet. It can only share files and mount other shares on my LAN, but that's it. This could be done in a number of ways. So, if you have more than one machine, I'd suggest that you dedicate one to being your development machine and leave off any ability to access the web. It's worked for me, although I will say, that if you catch yourself spending less time at the "development" machine, you might want to check your web usage vs. your productivity.
That would make our election system a lot like Slashdot. Especially where trolling is concerned. No matter. That's what Scalia was in the 2000 elections anyway.;P
See my journal entry on dieting for remarkable information on why some of us may be getting bellies, but not necessarily getting a lot heavier. It's not always fat. Sometimes it's just bloat.
People complain we have no culture then complain it's invading their own and dominating the thoughts and behavior of their hollywood aspiring youth. There is a difference between culture and crap. What we have is crap. While France has the Louvre, we have what? WWF? While Europe and the UK have great popular dance music, we have what? Britney, Eminem and Beyonce? Sorry, there is a HUGE difference in quality between what the US produces and what the rest of the world has. Their stuff is better. Some examples:
Movies: Wings of Desire by Wim Wenders (Europe) City of Angels (United States) Bottom line: Wings of Desire was a better movie in every way.
Television: Murder In Mind (UK) Any mystery show from the US Bottom line: The Brits do mystery better than we do in terms of quality.
Music (even pop crap): Sophie Ellis Bextor (UK) Disco Montego (AUS) Towa Tei (JP) X-tina (US) Bottom line: All of those other countries do pop dance better than the US in terms of quality.
Sorry. The US might have what some people want to call a culture, but it's really more of a product to be bought and sold. Not art to be truly admired.
Re:Before all the flamers get in.
on
Qt On DirectFB
·
· Score: 1
BTW, Citrix is merely for remote configuration, not centralized.
It all depends on the finesse of your work environment. Where I work, we use Citrix to have centralized desktops for our users. The only thing we have to do to resolve problems at the user end is go out and swap out a bad monitor or Winterm. The same situation exists with X and X terminals. There are plenty of reasons people use X and Citrix for centralized desktop environments. But the most important one is efficiency. It's stupid to have power sitting on the user end. Power belongs on the back end.
Spot on my good man! Spot on! Welcome to my friends list. It's embarassing to live in a country that just seems to be going backwards more and more every day.
Bring on the jingoist attitudes of stupid Americans once again. It's called "culture". We all have differences in our cultures. Well... except for most Americans who have no culture at all. Yes, I am American, but I can't stand the non-culture anymore. The only things we export to the world are our own ignorance and our own fear. These are truly sad times.
I don't think it would be that hard to just pick up a copy of Norton Ghost and transfer the image to another system, then use Linux to make new FAT32 partitions and dump the image back to those. Finally, set up grub to boot to the partition that houses Windows XP Home.
Slashdot Mirror
Why is this a necessity? I don't care if businesses can use it or not. What I really care about is whether I can use it or not. So far Linux has provided me with a very inexpensive way of automating my house, building my own appliances and completely customizing my desktops for the ultimate usability. From my perspecitve Linux has been very successful from day one with it's injection into business being a less important and happy accident.
Sure, the assistance from corporate coders who have contributed to Linux has been wonderful. But it should be taken as it is: it's free, volunteer effort dedicated to the betterment of the human condition through computing. There is only one reason to be involved with Linux and one reason only: because you love computer technology and OSes for what they are: cool toys.
The thing that always irks me is the people who think that if Linux is going to "survive" it needs to somehow become this hugely popular OS that is commercially successful. This is not a requirement at all. It's a side effect of the dreck that has polluted American capitalism. Profit is not the only reason to do something. If anything profit should only be a side-effect in fair capitalism. That's real competition. Surviving by your own real abilities without putting any kind of spin on it. Microsoft puts a spin on everything because they have lost their center (or possibly never had it). For them the center is profit and the OS and software are secondary with the customer coming last. They only throw crumbs to the customer to keep them buying: "It's fixed this time. You just need to upgrade that's all!"
If you were to completely corporatize Linux, it wouldn't get any better. It would just *LOOK* better. That's the difference. Good looks are never a good substitute for quality. Those of us that eschew Windows and embrace Linux know this to be true.
I think it varies from person to person. Some people are better equipped at splitting their attention than other people. It's the same thing as people who can watch CNN while reading the sidebars and news tickers and getting the full story all at the same time. My wife hates the sidebars because they distract her from the news anchor. I think they should develop a test to see who is capable of driving while talking and who isn't. I'll bet you find that a majority of the population is not safely able to do both.
We're not talking about the english language. We are talking about a proper understanding of technological terms. One of the biggest problems with technology these days is that people *think* they understand it, but they don't. It's not that they are not intelligent enough though. It's that computer technology is still too complicated for most people. In the computer technology world, emulation only means one thing, and it's not what you think it is.
Oh I HOPE you AREN'T talking about me! I am not a zealot. I just get annoyed when I hear misinformed people talking down a decent program. Photoshop is fine. But GIMP just isn't that far beneath it. For *my* needs (ie. not a professional, not wealthy, but artistically inclined) GIMP is just what I need. And for most people, it's just what they need too. There is no justifying the price tag for Photoshop when you can have something that will allow you to do the same kind of work at no cost. Again, I speak for those of us who work at home and have no need to print our graphics. Printing is not necessary to most people unless they are doing pro work. Therefore, CMYK is pointless at home. If I were a professional, I would understand the need for something like Photoshop. Never did I say that GIMP is the best program in the world. I simply said that it is suitable for 90% of the people out there. Professional designers with a clue and real talent can use any program. That was my point. Photoshop is not going to allow just any Joe off the street to become a pro graphics guy. I can't tell you how many fools I've seen who have bought or pirated Photoshop only to produce complete crap. I've also seen a lot of people use GIMP to produce beautiful works of true art.
Nice. Isn't it interesting that today's "capitalism" is going directly counter to that? We are forced to produce because you can't live in the US without a job. We are forced to consume because if you don't you can't live a "normal" American life. I'm glad I've found ways to skirt around the system and still be a productive member of society. Thank god for the non-profits.
A lot of people bring up print as a necessity. However, it is not. I don't do print. I'm not a professional. But professional does not equal artist and vice-versa. I am not going to spend a ton of money on Photoshop just to edit my vacation photos. Saying that... yes I have used the latest Photoshop and I still don't see what the difference is if you REALLY KNOW how to use GIMP. Just having a few extra steps to take to get to a finished product isn't a big deal to me. I can do anything with GIMP that a Photoshop user can (barring print).
The other issue someone mentioned is fonts. Again, don't use something if you don't know what you are doing or how to do it right. If you understand the font system in X, it's possible to get output that rivals Windows or the Mac. It requires research and is not for the faint of heart, but I've been doing this for a while now. So the font issue is non-existent if you are persistent and intelligent.
...no matter how well it's written.
I've used both and I can attest to the fact that GIMP is every bit as good as Photoshop. The differences between the two have to do with how well you know the apps AND most importantly how much talent you have.
The only people who think that Photoshop is better than GIMP are people with very little original creativity. They rely solely on filters and have no idea how to truly create a work of art using *ANY* tool. These are the same people who call themselves graphic designers and web designers but put up garish images that they didn't create with their own hands. They used filters and pulled source images from royalty free libraries. This is what's wrong with the world today: crafts are being mistaken for art.
Give a true artist a #2 pencil and some paper and they will give you a valuable work of art. Give a hack a fine set of brushes, oil paints and a canvas, and they will give you crap.
That would make GIMP the fine set of brushes, oil paints and canvas. And people like you, hacks.
Time to learn and understand what emulation is... To a person who actually knows something about emulation, it is the imitation of hardware in software. Wine does not do this. Wine doesn't pretend to be an x86 (or any other) processor like Bochs does. What Wine DOES do, is present an imitation of the SOFTWARE calls that the Windows API presents. This allows the software to run very quickly since no CPU cycles are wasted while pretending to be a different processor.
:)
That is why an Amiga emulator like UAE *IS* and emulator. It's pretending to be a Motorola 68x00 processor. This is why NESTicle is an emulator, it's pretending to be a 16 bit NES console. This is why DOSBox is an emulator. It's pretending to be an x86 processor and associated hardware with an implementation of DOS running on it. And all of these emulators have a performance hit since they have to pretned to be some other hardware AND allow an executable to run on that emulated hardware.
Again... WINE doesn't do this. So Wine Is Not an Emulator.
God I love feeding the trolls.
Hey. That's the "Microsoft" way. That's why they have so many problems with security even with their new "Trusted Computing" paradigm. It's profitable so it keeps them in beer and chips quite handily. But mediocrity is something that all of the biggest, successful companies seem to live on. McDonald's, AOL and Disney all make atrociously mediocre products, but they are damn successful. This is because "Joe Average" doesn't know any better. When it really comes down to it, it's an education issue. If, by some miracle, every "Joe and Jane Average" out there were to understand the benefits of GNU/Linux and open source software (or other OSes like the *BSDs and MacOS X) tomorrow, Microsoft's dominance would probably end pretty quickly. That's why it's important to keep the public positively informed about alternatives in all venues. And preferably without any zealotry. Of course, that term in itself is pretty subjective. Anything said positively about a subject that other's find distasteful is going to be labeled zealotry whether or not it really is.
If anything, the newcomers envisioned by transhumanists will be better equipped to pursue that kind of happiness. Kurzweil argues the newcomers will likely protect our rights by grandfathering into their society those of us who'd prefer not to be enhanced. Those people, the MOSH (Mostly Original Substrate Humans), would be free to live and love as before, to the best of their limited abilities. ...that humans are nothing more than a bunch of arrogant apes. We've forgotten where we come from, and we don't want to see anything better than us. The interesting thing is that most Christians would probably have massive problems with the idea of a man made being that is better than them. Yet if a mystical being (the Christian god or angels) is better than them, there is nothing wrong with it. Very entertaining.
I think gentoo is awesome and the RIAA is stupid! (Oh bring on them underrated mods please!!!)
Aside from the fact that Dan Quayle is possibly the stupidest man alive (although he might have more smarts than G.W. Bush), he probably doesn't even know what the environment is. Hmmmm maybe it's that third missing section of the bible? ;P
After I got a subscription to an ISP back in 1997, I noticed that my productivity went down with regards to music composition and production. It was quite a shock to me since I'd always been able to come up with new things almost every day. Then, at one point, I was reading the online diary of one of my favorite musicians (Ryuichi Sakamoto) and he noted that ever since he started using the web, he'd become less productive. He suggested that it was a combination of the distraction it provides, the wealth of information that exists as it relates to your own personal interests and the "six degrees" nature of most web content that leads you from one of your interests to another. His personal approach was to schedule time that he was allowed to use the web. After reading this, I applied this approach to my own life by completely removing the ability of my audio production system to do anything on the Internet. It can only share files and mount other shares on my LAN, but that's it. This could be done in a number of ways. So, if you have more than one machine, I'd suggest that you dedicate one to being your development machine and leave off any ability to access the web. It's worked for me, although I will say, that if you catch yourself spending less time at the "development" machine, you might want to check your web usage vs. your productivity.
The parent makes an astute observation and I like the subject line. Yet another preson to add to my friend's list.
That would make our election system a lot like Slashdot. Especially where trolling is concerned. No matter. That's what Scalia was in the 2000 elections anyway. ;P
If you think breadboarding your CPU is difficult to do, YOU ARE a moron.
See my journal entry on dieting for remarkable information on why some of us may be getting bellies, but not necessarily getting a lot heavier. It's not always fat. Sometimes it's just bloat.
People complain we have no culture then complain it's invading their own and dominating the thoughts and behavior of their hollywood aspiring youth.
There is a difference between culture and crap. What we have is crap. While France has the Louvre, we have what? WWF? While Europe and the UK have great popular dance music, we have what? Britney, Eminem and Beyonce? Sorry, there is a HUGE difference in quality between what the US produces and what the rest of the world has. Their stuff is better. Some examples:
Movies:
Wings of Desire by Wim Wenders (Europe)
City of Angels (United States)
Bottom line: Wings of Desire was a better movie in every way.
Television:
Murder In Mind (UK)
Any mystery show from the US
Bottom line: The Brits do mystery better than we do in terms of quality.
Music (even pop crap):
Sophie Ellis Bextor (UK)
Disco Montego (AUS)
Towa Tei (JP)
X-tina (US)
Bottom line: All of those other countries do pop dance better than the US in terms of quality.
Sorry. The US might have what some people want to call a culture, but it's really more of a product to be bought and sold. Not art to be truly admired.
It all depends on the finesse of your work environment. Where I work, we use Citrix to have centralized desktops for our users. The only thing we have to do to resolve problems at the user end is go out and swap out a bad monitor or Winterm. The same situation exists with X and X terminals. There are plenty of reasons people use X and Citrix for centralized desktop environments. But the most important one is efficiency. It's stupid to have power sitting on the user end. Power belongs on the back end.
Because it wasn't worth a reply. You, however are. You're a moron. Now STFU.
I am not a troll. But I don't take Slashdot seriously either. No one should.
I like your criticism. :p
Spot on my good man! Spot on! Welcome to my friends list. It's embarassing to live in a country that just seems to be going backwards more and more every day.
Bring on the jingoist attitudes of stupid Americans once again. It's called "culture". We all have differences in our cultures. Well... except for most Americans who have no culture at all. Yes, I am American, but I can't stand the non-culture anymore. The only things we export to the world are our own ignorance and our own fear. These are truly sad times.
I don't think it would be that hard to just pick up a copy of Norton Ghost and transfer the image to another system, then use Linux to make new FAT32 partitions and dump the image back to those. Finally, set up grub to boot to the partition that houses Windows XP Home.