I am very envious of your situation. I like public transportation for the very reasons you expressed.
How many cities in the US have public transportation that is as convenient as what you described? I would guess that only a handful do. Only the really huge metropolitan areas. My city, a suburb of 100,000 in a metropolitan area of 1.5 million, has no public transportation whatsoever.
As others have said- tolling people off of the roads is only a good idea if they have some other alternative- otherwise I think it is just unethical.
I really only use the telephone to talk to my wife or non-R&D people who aren't on IM - otherwise it is too distracting. When I am on the phone I can't really do anything that requires thought. On the other hand I can respond to an IM while I read email, check the build status, etc.
IMing does not require as immediate or as attentive responses.
Exactly, people are using email because that is all they have.
I work in a fairly large group and we have several methods of communication:
IM- for talking to one person right now. Email- for messages- Or conversations of a very temporary nature- like "where should we go for lunch" PHPBB- for almost all question/answer type communication. This is extremely helpful because the experienced architects and build team can give advice or answer questions just once. Wiki- For internal documentation and build instructions.
Since we setup the wiki and BB our email traffic has been drastically reduced. The only emails to the entire group that I see anymore are to welcome new people and announce donuts.
I stopped buying media new to make sure none of my money goes towards supporting the problem.
I buy music from Jonathan Coulton (and conceivably other independent artists if I ever found any others that I like). The old stuff- like Simon and Garfunkel or Jim Croce I buy used. The artists don't get any of that but Jim's dead anyway.
Something about your comment is troubling me. I think you are letting your frustrating experience influence your opinion of open source software to an unfair degree. Don't take my comments to be hostile. Your frustration is a very real thing and I don't judge you for giving up on OSS because of it.
I suggest that your experience with "free" DVD ripping/re-encoding software should change your mind only about the state of "open source DVD ripping software right now". My experience with DVD ripping is similar to yours except that I eventually found the package that worked the way I want it to. I had to try a lot of different applications before I found the one that worked for me. It was a pain. I wouldn't have bothered if I didn't do everything else in linux. However- this does not imply that OSS is infeasible but that DVD ripping is in an unpolished state.
When I first started using Linux (some time ago) sound card drivers were in the same state. Getting your sound card to work correctly was difficult and time consuming.
Two years ago wireless cards were like that.
Now my sound card and wireless cards work without a hitch. I could go on about tasks, such as yours, that were difficult to accomplish at one point and are now trivial- I don't have time right now. I hope you'll take my word for it for the sake of argument.
My point is that it was always possible to get what I wanted to do done- it just started out somewhat difficult and then became polished later. In my experience OSS lags somewhat in the polishing stages but leads brilliantly in the functional stages.
Right now DVD ripping may be unpolished. There isn't an accepted, default, dvd ripping package. There are a lot of packages that do half-way jobs of it but it is time consuming to sift through them to figure out which one is right. This will fix itself. In a year the "right" packages will be installed by default on Ubuntu and no one will know that it was ever difficult.
I agree with you that the unpolished stage is frustrating and may be a weakness of OSS. There are plenty of strengths that make up for it for me.
Your closing statement really sums up my whole discomfort with your post: "I think I've just about given up on "free" software, except maybe Firefox. I want to buy a product that someone is willing to stake their business reputation and livelihood on." I want software that is written by people who write software because they love well written software that does what they want- not just because they crave my money. Firefox works well because it was written by people who wanted a browser that worked well- not because they were necessarily trying to fill a market niche and profit by it. Afterall- being willing to stake your reputation on it has not often stopped commercial entities from releasing poor software.
My advice to you is not just to use OSS. I don't really care if you use it or not. I would suggest simply that you keep an open mind. This time next year DVD ripping (or whatever isn't polished right now) will work flawlessly, and more often than not, much better than closed source alternatives.
where nearly all audio is lossy compressed and/or has less than 16kHz or so of frequency response
Funny you should say that. I'm not an audiophile by any means but I've found that close to 100% of the audio I hear during the day is not only lossless but has perfect fidelity and a frequency range well beyond what my ears can detect.
It is, of course, unfortunate that the majority of that audio is the sound of my computer fan next to me. I need my own personal orchestra. I wonder if my coworkers would mind.
What you are describing as a weapon of mass destruction is called... a microwave. That is old technology. I'm sure that it was feasible to make a weapon out of microwaves someone would have done it decades ago.
The "new" part of this device is just that it applies less energy at the right frequency to cause pain but not damage. If this weapon were tuned to the frequency of water it would still only barely penetrate the target. The worst it would do is damage their skin and that only if they stood there for a while. If they wanted a giant microwave oven then could cook something as thick as a crowd of humans from a mile away I suspect it would have to be the size of a shopping mall. Of course I'm not an expert on microwaves.
- being at a library without their library card (guy got tasered _repeatedly_ after he had already accepted to leave) This sounds like it is referring to the UCLA student tasing that made its rounds on YouTube.
The guy didn't just fail to produce ID and agree to leave. After failing to produce ID he was asked to leave and refused. The campus police were called and the "student" became belligerent and then violent. In my mind not only were the police completely justified but the student should have been charged with resisting arrest, inciting a revolt, etc.
I agree with the point that the grandparent is making about non-lethal force. I agree that it could become a problem in theory but it is hard to consider an argument rational when based on stories that are so outrageously twisted as this one has been.
Just to clarify- I am not accusing the grandparent of twisting the story. It was already well twisted on the internet when it happened.
Because, it turns out, humans are pretty smart when we put our minds to things.
In the examples you cited the people who have exposure to those systems are motivated to see them succeed. I imagine the space shuttle would be easy to break if malicious individuals had access to it.
If ALL of the users of voting machines were motivated to see them succeed- what we have would work wonderfully. Unfortunately finding solutions that other people can't break when they are trying hard is not so easy.
Of course there is the other issue that the company making those voting machines has a reputation for being greedy and sloppy. That might have something to do with it.
I have no idea if it will avoid any audio sync issues but it works perfectly for me.
I don't know if you care but for the sake of posterity- I actually do a two pass encoding. It takes twice as long but it results in smaller, higher quality files:
Thanks for the link. That clears things up nicely.
While not exactly 'new here', I try to turn a blind eye to inflammatory contributions by the editors. I like Slashdot a lot and still hope that some day it will grow up and stop trying to make everything sound like a scandal just to get page hits.
Incidentally, in this case, the bad wording is actually from the article.
What I would like to know is what the guy actually said. The article starts by saying that half the BUGS were fixed and then starts talking about half of the vulnerabilities and then uses the two words interchangeably.
Did the guy say half the bugs or half the vulnerabilities? Half the vulnerabilities seems bad to me. Half the known bugs is not bad at all- in fact I would consider that somewhere around par for software development.
Ignore the rude responses- they are not indicative of the entire slashdot community although I agree that it has the tendency to reinforce certain stereotypes.
The troll mod probably happened because your original post has a few characteristics common to posts by people who are just trying to start a fight. The VI comment in particular is an often fought argument. Additionally your complaints seemed to be caused by a lack of experience. Which was your point of course but it wasn't obvious in the post.
By the way- welcome to Linux! I agree it has a steep learning curve when you have to do system administration tasks. It doesn't for ordinary usage. My wife, a novice computer user compared to most Slashdot readers, uses it for wordprocessing, movie editing, music, email, and browsing with no problems (or explanations from me) at all.
If you will be using VI for a while I would highly recommend going through the tutorial with the vimtutor program. You might also try this "quick" reference: http://tnerual.eriogerg.free.fr/vim.html While multiple tabs don't work well for a terminal application, VI's syntax highlighting is second to none and it is very feature rich. I use it on windows now as well because I can't stand how slow my coding is with VC's default editor.
Honestly, without any animosity, how much of what you described as problems are actually just part of the learning curve? What things actually require memorization or are more difficult to do?
I use Kubuntu and Windows at work and Kubuntu only at home. I use the command line daily because it's the fastest way to get things done. I can't think of anything I do that has to be done at the command line though. There's always a gui tool it just takes longer - usually just as long as it takes using the GUI in windows.
The only thing I can think of that I had to use the command line for on my work machine was to install a driver for an obsolete webcam. This task can't even be compared to the windows experience as there exists no driver at all for Windows XP for this old webcam.
As to VI being horrible. That is a very strongly worded statement. I will respond with my own strongly worded, vague, subjective opinion: Someone who is only moderately proficient in VI (or emacs for that matter) can edit text considerably faster than an advanced user in most other editors. Surely you must agree that the learning curve will be worth it to some people. If not then you can use one of the many other gui text editors available such as kate on kde or gedit in gnome. I don't see how the existence of VI can be used as an argument against Ubuntu.
I agree with your statement that there are older distributions that make me want to cry. I would encourage you to use your Linux machine with a little more open mind and recognize that most of your pain is the natural result of learning a different system. Many people think the pain is worth it. At least don't dismiss it for reasons as trivial as those you listed above.
Linux may be a helicopter to windows' bicycle but when you finally learn it you don't have to pedal anymore.
Why should an entity be able to maintain rights to a work forever?
If they can't then the work can potential enhance the creativity of society as a whole both by giving creative people more material to build from as well as by removing minefields in their path.
If they can what do we get? One disproportionately wealthy person or corporation. This, in my opinion, is not just worthless but actually detrimental to society and creativity.
I volunteer at an elementary school teaching 10 year olds how to program using Lego Mindstorms. I agree that it has limitations that can be frustrating for adults. The NXT is very much better in that regard.
My kids never hit those limitations. I can teach logic, decision making, and most importantly the ability to divide a complex task into its primitive components.
They can, by the end of the school year, write programs that can respond to their environment such as to make a car navigate a maze. By our standards the programs are not complicated but I think for a 10 year old it is fantastic.
Using the graphical language lets me teach them how to think through a program and then represent it correctly. I think if I tried the same thing with any text based language we would quickly get bogged down in syntax and I would fail to teach them how to think like programmers.
Slashdot Mirror
I am very envious of your situation. I like public transportation for the very reasons you expressed.
How many cities in the US have public transportation that is as convenient as what you described? I would guess that only a handful do. Only the really huge metropolitan areas. My city, a suburb of 100,000 in a metropolitan area of 1.5 million, has no public transportation whatsoever.
As others have said- tolling people off of the roads is only a good idea if they have some other alternative- otherwise I think it is just unethical.
I really only use the telephone to talk to my wife or non-R&D people who aren't on IM - otherwise it is too distracting.
When I am on the phone I can't really do anything that requires thought. On the other hand I can respond to an IM while I read email, check the build status, etc.
IMing does not require as immediate or as attentive responses.
Exactly, people are using email because that is all they have.
I work in a fairly large group and we have several methods of communication:
IM- for talking to one person right now.
Email- for messages- Or conversations of a very temporary nature- like "where should we go for lunch"
PHPBB- for almost all question/answer type communication. This is extremely helpful because the experienced architects and build team can give advice or answer questions just once.
Wiki- For internal documentation and build instructions.
Since we setup the wiki and BB our email traffic has been drastically reduced. The only emails to the entire group that I see anymore are to welcome new people and announce donuts.
You do remember that last year was 8 days ago right?
I stopped buying media new to make sure none of my money goes towards supporting the problem.
I buy music from Jonathan Coulton (and conceivably other independent artists if I ever found any others that I like). The old stuff- like Simon and Garfunkel or Jim Croce I buy used. The artists don't get any of that but Jim's dead anyway.
Something about your comment is troubling me. I think you are letting your frustrating experience influence your opinion of open source software to an unfair degree. Don't take my comments to be hostile. Your frustration is a very real thing and I don't judge you for giving up on OSS because of it.
I suggest that your experience with "free" DVD ripping/re-encoding software should change your mind only about the state of "open source DVD ripping software right now". My experience with DVD ripping is similar to yours except that I eventually found the package that worked the way I want it to. I had to try a lot of different applications before I found the one that worked for me. It was a pain. I wouldn't have bothered if I didn't do everything else in linux. However- this does not imply that OSS is infeasible but that DVD ripping is in an unpolished state.
When I first started using Linux (some time ago) sound card drivers were in the same state. Getting your sound card to work correctly was difficult and time consuming.
Two years ago wireless cards were like that.
Now my sound card and wireless cards work without a hitch. I could go on about tasks, such as yours, that were difficult to accomplish at one point and are now trivial- I don't have time right now. I hope you'll take my word for it for the sake of argument.
My point is that it was always possible to get what I wanted to do done- it just started out somewhat difficult and then became polished later. In my experience OSS lags somewhat in the polishing stages but leads brilliantly in the functional stages.
Right now DVD ripping may be unpolished. There isn't an accepted, default, dvd ripping package. There are a lot of packages that do half-way jobs of it but it is time consuming to sift through them to figure out which one is right. This will fix itself. In a year the "right" packages will be installed by default on Ubuntu and no one will know that it was ever difficult.
I agree with you that the unpolished stage is frustrating and may be a weakness of OSS. There are plenty of strengths that make up for it for me.
Your closing statement really sums up my whole discomfort with your post:
"I think I've just about given up on "free" software, except maybe Firefox. I want to buy a product that someone is willing to stake their business reputation and livelihood on."
I want software that is written by people who write software because they love well written software that does what they want- not just because they crave my money. Firefox works well because it was written by people who wanted a browser that worked well- not because they were necessarily trying to fill a market niche and profit by it. Afterall- being willing to stake your reputation on it has not often stopped commercial entities from releasing poor software.
My advice to you is not just to use OSS. I don't really care if you use it or not. I would suggest simply that you keep an open mind. This time next year DVD ripping (or whatever isn't polished right now) will work flawlessly, and more often than not, much better than closed source alternatives.
http://www.jonathancoulton.com/songdetails/Code%20Monkey
How about time traveling alien dinosaur slave hunters? http://imdb.com/title/tt0113135/ The most painful MST3K ever.
Funny you should say that. I'm not an audiophile by any means but I've found that close to 100% of the audio I hear during the day is not only lossless but has perfect fidelity and a frequency range well beyond what my ears can detect.
It is, of course, unfortunate that the majority of that audio is the sound of my computer fan next to me. I need my own personal orchestra. I wonder if my coworkers would mind.
What you are describing as a weapon of mass destruction is called... a microwave. That is old technology. I'm sure that it was feasible to make a weapon out of microwaves someone would have done it decades ago.
The "new" part of this device is just that it applies less energy at the right frequency to cause pain but not damage. If this weapon were tuned to the frequency of water it would still only barely penetrate the target. The worst it would do is damage their skin and that only if they stood there for a while. If they wanted a giant microwave oven then could cook something as thick as a crowd of humans from a mile away I suspect it would have to be the size of a shopping mall. Of course I'm not an expert on microwaves.
The guy didn't just fail to produce ID and agree to leave. After failing to produce ID he was asked to leave and refused. The campus police were called and the "student" became belligerent and then violent. In my mind not only were the police completely justified but the student should have been charged with resisting arrest, inciting a revolt, etc.
I agree with the point that the grandparent is making about non-lethal force. I agree that it could become a problem in theory but it is hard to consider an argument rational when based on stories that are so outrageously twisted as this one has been.
Just to clarify- I am not accusing the grandparent of twisting the story. It was already well twisted on the internet when it happened.
What'd ya expect fairies to do?
Because, it turns out, humans are pretty smart when we put our minds to things.
In the examples you cited the people who have exposure to those systems are motivated to see them succeed. I imagine the space shuttle would be easy to break if malicious individuals had access to it.
If ALL of the users of voting machines were motivated to see them succeed- what we have would work wonderfully. Unfortunately finding solutions that other people can't break when they are trying hard is not so easy.
Of course there is the other issue that the company making those voting machines has a reputation for being greedy and sloppy. That might have something to do with it.
Well- It is in Lindon, Utah.
Probably not that many coffee machines.
It is.
/dev/null -aid 128 -oac copy -ovc lavc -vf scale -xy 640 -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4:vhq:vqmin=2:vqmax=31:vbitrate=1300:vp ass=1p ass=2
I have no idea if it will avoid any audio sync issues but it works perfectly for me.
I don't know if you care but for the sake of posterity- I actually do a two pass encoding. It takes twice as long but it results in smaller, higher quality files:
mencoder dvd://$title -o
mencoder dvd://$title -o '$movie.avi' -aid 128 -oac mp3lame -lameopts q=5:vbr=2:abr=160:aq=5:ratio=50:mode=0:vol=0 -ovc lavc -vf scale -xy 640 -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4:vhq:vqmin=2:vqmax=31:vbitrate=1300:v
Don't use OSS if you get frustrated easily.
I gave up on GUI DVD rippers.
I use:
mencoder dvd://1 -o 'movie.avi' -aid 128 -oac mp3lame -lameopts q=5:vbr=2:abr=160:aq=5:ratio=50:mode=0:vol=0 -ovc lavc -vf scale -xy 640 -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4:vhq:vqmin=2:vqmax=31:vbitrate=1300
And it cost me only 15 minutes of time (to learn how to use mencoder).
CCNP?
:)
Sovetskiy Soyuz Izvestnikh Respublikov?
Sovetskiy Soyuz Interesnikh Respublikov?
Sovetskiy Soyuz Internatsionalnikh Respublikov?
I just can't find one that flows off the tongue like the original.
(My apologies for the awful transliteration- I couldn't figure out how to get slashdot to accept Cyrillic characters.)
Good question! While we're at it:
How many years can a mountain exist before it's washed to the sea?
Yes and how many seas must a white dove sail before she sleeps in the sand?
Thanks for the link. That clears things up nicely.
While not exactly 'new here', I try to turn a blind eye to inflammatory contributions by the editors. I like Slashdot a lot and still hope that some day it will grow up and stop trying to make everything sound like a scandal just to get page hits.
Incidentally, in this case, the bad wording is actually from the article.
What I would like to know is what the guy actually said. The article starts by saying that half the BUGS were fixed and then starts talking about half of the vulnerabilities and then uses the two words interchangeably.
Did the guy say half the bugs or half the vulnerabilities? Half the vulnerabilities seems bad to me. Half the known bugs is not bad at all- in fact I would consider that somewhere around par for software development.
Either way I agree it sounds bad.
Ignore the rude responses- they are not indicative of the entire slashdot community although I agree that it has the tendency to reinforce certain stereotypes.
The troll mod probably happened because your original post has a few characteristics common to posts by people who are just trying to start a fight. The VI comment in particular is an often fought argument. Additionally your complaints seemed to be caused by a lack of experience. Which was your point of course but it wasn't obvious in the post.
By the way- welcome to Linux!
I agree it has a steep learning curve when you have to do system administration tasks. It doesn't for ordinary usage. My wife, a novice computer user compared to most Slashdot readers, uses it for wordprocessing, movie editing, music, email, and browsing with no problems (or explanations from me) at all.
If you will be using VI for a while I would highly recommend going through the tutorial with the vimtutor program. You might also try this "quick" reference: http://tnerual.eriogerg.free.fr/vim.html
While multiple tabs don't work well for a terminal application, VI's syntax highlighting is second to none and it is very feature rich. I use it on windows now as well because I can't stand how slow my coding is with VC's default editor.
Stick with it. It grows on you.
Honestly, without any animosity, how much of what you described as problems are actually just part of the learning curve? What things actually require memorization or are more difficult to do?
I use Kubuntu and Windows at work and Kubuntu only at home. I use the command line daily because it's the fastest way to get things done. I can't think of anything I do that has to be done at the command line though. There's always a gui tool it just takes longer - usually just as long as it takes using the GUI in windows.
The only thing I can think of that I had to use the command line for on my work machine was to install a driver for an obsolete webcam. This task can't even be compared to the windows experience as there exists no driver at all for Windows XP for this old webcam.
As to VI being horrible. That is a very strongly worded statement. I will respond with my own strongly worded, vague, subjective opinion: Someone who is only moderately proficient in VI (or emacs for that matter) can edit text considerably faster than an advanced user in most other editors. Surely you must agree that the learning curve will be worth it to some people. If not then you can use one of the many other gui text editors available such as kate on kde or gedit in gnome. I don't see how the existence of VI can be used as an argument against Ubuntu.
I agree with your statement that there are older distributions that make me want to cry. I would encourage you to use your Linux machine with a little more open mind and recognize that most of your pain is the natural result of learning a different system. Many people think the pain is worth it. At least don't dismiss it for reasons as trivial as those you listed above.
Linux may be a helicopter to windows' bicycle but when you finally learn it you don't have to pedal anymore.
It's a beautiful bridge and it's gonna be there.
Why should an entity be able to maintain rights to a work forever?
If they can't then the work can potential enhance the creativity of society as a whole both by giving creative people more material to build from as well as by removing minefields in their path.
If they can what do we get? One disproportionately wealthy person or corporation. This, in my opinion, is not just worthless but actually detrimental to society and creativity.
I volunteer at an elementary school teaching 10 year olds how to program using Lego Mindstorms. I agree that it has limitations that can be frustrating for adults. The NXT is very much better in that regard.
My kids never hit those limitations. I can teach logic, decision making, and most importantly the ability to divide a complex task into its primitive components.
They can, by the end of the school year, write programs that can respond to their environment such as to make a car navigate a maze. By our standards the programs are not complicated but I think for a 10 year old it is fantastic.
Using the graphical language lets me teach them how to think through a program and then represent it correctly. I think if I tried the same thing with any text based language we would quickly get bogged down in syntax and I would fail to teach them how to think like programmers.