I just temporarily changed to Kubuntu until Sarge, KDE3.4, XOrg et al is out. I don't really think it'll take too long but I'll be patiently waiting. I like my technology.
I disagree. It's all about money - the Liberals run the country like a company. I was talking about this in another post I did refuting someone talking about support et al being expensive in Linux. The point is with any software the main costs are support, yet the main difference here is with Microsoft software the money goes directly to America, while with OSS the support costs are directly reinvested into Australia's economy.
This is a government. Support, user training and ID training is, effectively, free in this case. It's not with companies, but with a government you have to delicately balance imports and exports, and spending millions on software *AND* support is just stupid when you can get it without having to import anything (local employment for support is just reinvested into the economy). The Howard government is particularly good at this which is why they're staying in power. Add to the fact that local support pays Australian taxes, American support and software don't.
ironically I got +5 funny for the last comment I posted (I think it was the last, perhaps second last). Perhaps it was all the anti-astroturfing comments that popped up above.
You're seem to be portreying Microsoft as the victim here, but how else can it be construed other then buying off bloggers to hype Longhorn? They are buying off bloggers to hype Longhorn, that's the entire point of this excersise.
One of the better ideas passed through Groklaw, however I think that it wouldn't work on Slashdot since a single Slashdot paragraph would have more errors than an entire 10 000 word essay from PJ.
Got to say that I loved Jennifer Government. It wasn't deep in its character development but its setting was just scary in a way. It'll most definitely make a cool movie (I wonder if they'll have to change the company names from real companies? Will Nike be pissed with a movie talking about them murdering little children?)
heh I hate those abbreviated state names. They're good for postage nothing else. On a chat forum with I was talking with some Englishmen and a bit of a variety of Europeans, and some guy came in. We asked him were he was from and he said "WA". Someone asked "Where's that?" and about four people (including me, I was the only Australian who said it though) said "oh it's Western Australia".
The guy actually had the hide to call us idiots for his ignorance when he actually meant "Washington". Of course with that I assume he meant the state not the city.
I don't go around saying I'm from "NSW" and noone else should say their abbreviated state names either.
Why? People do it with American and British cities all the time and it's not considered poor manners. Also, this is a story that will only actually matter to anyone who lives in Adelaide or is going to Adelaide in the near future, so if this is the case it is likely that they would at least know which country Adelaide is in.
Personally I don't mind at all if they say just the city name if it's in the biggest four or five cities of a major country. I do however mind if there is several cities of the same name, it is a small or obscure city, or they are using abbreviations that noone outside the area knows. (American states anyone?)
a question: Is it only the CBD? From what I remember, the adelaide CBD isn't very big at all, only ten or twenty blocks big, and is a bit isolated from the rest of the city.
I don't think it could be construed as anything but a violation of the DMCA. The government distributed all the information in an unclassified document.
no that's a bit of bullshit for most of the slashdot reading population. The correct statement you should have said was "It's illegal for me to knowingly do knowingly download classified docs".
We, in Australia, don't have a law that says "you can't knowingly download American labelled classified documents", so I've quite eagerly clicked and read random bits of the document that I don't understand.
plus with a normal product you'll have only one or two patents attached. For even a small piece of software or even a website it can have hundreds of patents attached to it. Writing legal software is the equivalent of running over a minefield blindfolded (uh not that you could see the mines anyway but the analogy sounds better with the blindfolded part)
no that doesn't count because it's slang (whereas "cracker" in computer terms, though derived from slang, is now a technical definition). Though if we're taking the oldest definition you'd say a cracker is someone who cracks.
I think it's very ironic (using that word even though noone is sure what it means) that I have the exact same argument against Windows.
I find the KDE menu extremely well organised. The options I see are:
Games: Holds games
Graphics: Holds graphics display and manipulation programs
Internet: Holds programs to do with connecting to, browsing and downloading from the internet
Multimedia: Holds video players, music players, CD burners and music creation programs
Office: Holds word processors etc (equivalents to MS Office)
System: Holds system admin programs
Utilities: Everything else
I've italicised Cd Burners and Utilities because I don't think that they belong where they belong, but otherwise I think it's very logical.
As for the wifi manager, I don't see what the problem with that is. They put it in Internet where all of the other programs to do with the internet are. The reason why it's a program as opposed to in the preferences is because it is a program. The preferences module in Control Centre lets you change settings. KWifiManager is just a user submitted program.
we are talking consumer here, with the inference of it being "mum and dad". In my personal case, my mum doesn't actually have an external firewire hard drive.
Unfortunately for your argument in my personal case I do have a firewire hard drive. Plug it into my linux box and an icon comes up for the hard drive. Whether you've just stuffed up your linux installation or you're using an enterprise distro such as Debian, that's your fault. Looking at your argument you might just not know what you're talking about ("manually run mkfs" - do you want to format it as FAT32? You don't need to), so you should most definitely be using something like Mandrake, Xandros, Linspire or Ubuntu (the last one being the distro I use on my desktop computer at the moment).
What's with the thing saying "not formatted as FAT32" anyway? Linux can support all hard drive formats I know of except write support for NTFS. That is politics on Microsoft's part, not fault on Linux's. Windows XP however can only support a total of one hard drive format that is not FAT32.
Also its nice to be able to define your own hotkeys
Oh you've just touched on one of my favourite features of KDE. I map all my most used programs to hotkeys - when I press ctrl-shift-F it opens Firefox. When I press ctrl-shift-T it opens thunderbird. When I press ctrl-shift-H it opens my home directory. When I press ctrl-shift-U it opens UT2004. I have similar mappings for Doom 3, Frag Ops, Air Buccaneers as well. I love it.
As a developer it's useful as well, for example when I'm working on a program I usually map ctrl-shift-C to compile it, something I miss when I'm not using Visual C++ [6,\.net] in Windows XP.
Well I wouldn't say debian, slackware or gentoo (or even fedora) linux is consumer enough, but I would say that Mandrake, Xandros, Linspire and Ubuntu are (though admittedly I haven't used Xandros or Linspire, they are just from reports I have heard).
*shrug* They're easier to use than Windows XP at least. But if it passes that test then you could easily say that linux is as stable and secure and probably as satisfying. Don't bother though, those words are as relative as speed. I like both macs and linux.
(wow that post was pretty much an uncertain waste of typing power)
firstly, I'm not sure I'd call the interface horrible. In my opinion KDE is the one with the fantastic interface, and Windows with the crap interface. Kicker is like a super-windows-start-bar and konqueror is easier to use and more powerful than Windows Explorer. It is also fully themable, whereas unless you buy Windows Blinds Windows XP is not (don't talk to me about the default theming packages, they suck to say the least). Especially mentioning some extensions, like the konqueror Quick Filter are brilliant to say the least and bring it miles ahead of Windows Explorer.
And standardisation? Free Desktop is doing that. Most important things are standardised already, and by the time KDE 4 is released I don't see that being a problem.
My I ask where you get those figures? Noone really knows what percentage market share any operating system has.
*shrug* You just struck a pet peeve of mine - I don't like it when people give factless figures like that. I am biased however - between KDE 4 and Longhorn I'm backing KDE 4. All KDE need is hype methinks, and they may get that.
The US is the longest running continuous government in the modern world.
where did you get that idea? It's not even close to the longest running continuous government. The monarchies of Britain and Denmark have been running for several times the length of America's democrasy, or do you just count the modern world as having started with America's war of independance?
Slashdot Mirror
I just temporarily changed to Kubuntu until Sarge, KDE3.4, XOrg et al is out. I don't really think it'll take too long but I'll be patiently waiting. I like my technology.
Newcastle is the 8th largest city with approx 300 000 people or probably much more, around 400 000 - the latest census was four years ago.
It'd most definitely have quite a few linux admins, especially attending the uni of Newcastle.
source
I disagree. It's all about money - the Liberals run the country like a company. I was talking about this in another post I did refuting someone talking about support et al being expensive in Linux. The point is with any software the main costs are support, yet the main difference here is with Microsoft software the money goes directly to America, while with OSS the support costs are directly reinvested into Australia's economy.
This is a government. Support, user training and ID training is, effectively, free in this case. It's not with companies, but with a government you have to delicately balance imports and exports, and spending millions on software *AND* support is just stupid when you can get it without having to import anything (local employment for support is just reinvested into the economy). The Howard government is particularly good at this which is why they're staying in power. Add to the fact that local support pays Australian taxes, American support and software don't.
ironically I got +5 funny for the last comment I posted (I think it was the last, perhaps second last). Perhaps it was all the anti-astroturfing comments that popped up above.
I am, however, no anti-MS zealot.
You're seem to be portreying Microsoft as the victim here, but how else can it be construed other then buying off bloggers to hype Longhorn? They are buying off bloggers to hype Longhorn, that's the entire point of this excersise.
she didn't actually change her point of view, but she just clarified a statement as she thought the Register writer misinterpreted it.
One of the better ideas passed through Groklaw, however I think that it wouldn't work on Slashdot since a single Slashdot paragraph would have more errors than an entire 10 000 word essay from PJ.
Got to say that I loved Jennifer Government. It wasn't deep in its character development but its setting was just scary in a way. It'll most definitely make a cool movie (I wonder if they'll have to change the company names from real companies? Will Nike be pissed with a movie talking about them murdering little children?)
heh I hate those abbreviated state names. They're good for postage nothing else. On a chat forum with I was talking with some Englishmen and a bit of a variety of Europeans, and some guy came in. We asked him were he was from and he said "WA". Someone asked "Where's that?" and about four people (including me, I was the only Australian who said it though) said "oh it's Western Australia".
The guy actually had the hide to call us idiots for his ignorance when he actually meant "Washington". Of course with that I assume he meant the state not the city.
I don't go around saying I'm from "NSW" and noone else should say their abbreviated state names either.
Why? People do it with American and British cities all the time and it's not considered poor manners. Also, this is a story that will only actually matter to anyone who lives in Adelaide or is going to Adelaide in the near future, so if this is the case it is likely that they would at least know which country Adelaide is in.
Personally I don't mind at all if they say just the city name if it's in the biggest four or five cities of a major country. I do however mind if there is several cities of the same name, it is a small or obscure city, or they are using abbreviations that noone outside the area knows. (American states anyone?)
a question: Is it only the CBD? From what I remember, the adelaide CBD isn't very big at all, only ten or twenty blocks big, and is a bit isolated from the rest of the city.
I don't think it could be construed as anything but a violation of the DMCA. The government distributed all the information in an unclassified document.
Plus if you're Italian it's most definitely not illegal for you. The US doesn't rule everywhere.
no that's a bit of bullshit for most of the slashdot reading population. The correct statement you should have said was "It's illegal for me to knowingly do knowingly download classified docs".
We, in Australia, don't have a law that says "you can't knowingly download American labelled classified documents", so I've quite eagerly clicked and read random bits of the document that I don't understand.
plus with a normal product you'll have only one or two patents attached. For even a small piece of software or even a website it can have hundreds of patents attached to it. Writing legal software is the equivalent of running over a minefield blindfolded (uh not that you could see the mines anyway but the analogy sounds better with the blindfolded part)
no that doesn't count because it's slang (whereas "cracker" in computer terms, though derived from slang, is now a technical definition). Though if we're taking the oldest definition you'd say a cracker is someone who cracks.
I think it's very ironic (using that word even though noone is sure what it means) that I have the exact same argument against Windows.
I find the KDE menu extremely well organised. The options I see are:
Games: Holds games
Graphics: Holds graphics display and manipulation programs
Internet: Holds programs to do with connecting to, browsing and downloading from the internet
Multimedia: Holds video players, music players, CD burners and music creation programs
Office: Holds word processors etc (equivalents to MS Office)
System: Holds system admin programs
Utilities: Everything else
I've italicised Cd Burners and Utilities because I don't think that they belong where they belong, but otherwise I think it's very logical.
As for the wifi manager, I don't see what the problem with that is. They put it in Internet where all of the other programs to do with the internet are. The reason why it's a program as opposed to in the preferences is because it is a program. The preferences module in Control Centre lets you change settings. KWifiManager is just a user submitted program.
we are talking consumer here, with the inference of it being "mum and dad". In my personal case, my mum doesn't actually have an external firewire hard drive.
Unfortunately for your argument in my personal case I do have a firewire hard drive. Plug it into my linux box and an icon comes up for the hard drive. Whether you've just stuffed up your linux installation or you're using an enterprise distro such as Debian, that's your fault. Looking at your argument you might just not know what you're talking about ("manually run mkfs" - do you want to format it as FAT32? You don't need to), so you should most definitely be using something like Mandrake, Xandros, Linspire or Ubuntu (the last one being the distro I use on my desktop computer at the moment).
What's with the thing saying "not formatted as FAT32" anyway? Linux can support all hard drive formats I know of except write support for NTFS. That is politics on Microsoft's part, not fault on Linux's. Windows XP however can only support a total of one hard drive format that is not FAT32.
Also its nice to be able to define your own hotkeys
Oh you've just touched on one of my favourite features of KDE. I map all my most used programs to hotkeys - when I press ctrl-shift-F it opens Firefox. When I press ctrl-shift-T it opens thunderbird. When I press ctrl-shift-H it opens my home directory. When I press ctrl-shift-U it opens UT2004. I have similar mappings for Doom 3, Frag Ops, Air Buccaneers as well. I love it.
As a developer it's useful as well, for example when I'm working on a program I usually map ctrl-shift-C to compile it, something I miss when I'm not using Visual C++ [6,\.net] in Windows XP.
Well I wouldn't say debian, slackware or gentoo (or even fedora) linux is consumer enough, but I would say that Mandrake, Xandros, Linspire and Ubuntu are (though admittedly I haven't used Xandros or Linspire, they are just from reports I have heard).
*shrug* They're easier to use than Windows XP at least. But if it passes that test then you could easily say that linux is as stable and secure and probably as satisfying. Don't bother though, those words are as relative as speed. I like both macs and linux.
(wow that post was pretty much an uncertain waste of typing power)
firstly, I'm not sure I'd call the interface horrible. In my opinion KDE is the one with the fantastic interface, and Windows with the crap interface. Kicker is like a super-windows-start-bar and konqueror is easier to use and more powerful than Windows Explorer. It is also fully themable, whereas unless you buy Windows Blinds Windows XP is not (don't talk to me about the default theming packages, they suck to say the least). Especially mentioning some extensions, like the konqueror Quick Filter are brilliant to say the least and bring it miles ahead of Windows Explorer.
And standardisation? Free Desktop is doing that. Most important things are standardised already, and by the time KDE 4 is released I don't see that being a problem.
My I ask where you get those figures? Noone really knows what percentage market share any operating system has.
*shrug* You just struck a pet peeve of mine - I don't like it when people give factless figures like that. I am biased however - between KDE 4 and Longhorn I'm backing KDE 4. All KDE need is hype methinks, and they may get that.
The US is the longest running continuous government in the modern world.
where did you get that idea? It's not even close to the longest running continuous government. The monarchies of Britain and Denmark have been running for several times the length of America's democrasy, or do you just count the modern world as having started with America's war of independance?
A complete switch to Firefox/ OpenOffice wouldn't be good either. It just transfers the control from one company to another.
And which company is that? If you're concerned you can grab the source and make your own browser/office suite.