You Linux freaks can foam at the mouth trying to convince anyone that Linux + open office will be widely adopted by corporates.
People that actually work in corporates and support infrastructure, will never let that amateur junk in.
But they have no problem with the professional junk that Microsoft puts out, right?
I use LaTeX for pretty much all my document needs so I don't have a real vested interest in OpenOffice.org vs. MS Office, but it really isn't fair to call OO amateur. It did start life as a commerical product. And is the opposite of commercial really amateur? gcc is not a commercial compiler, but it certainly not amateur and has been used in lots of serious situations.
They also seek the marginalisation of alternatives. (The BSDs) Stallman doesn't want computer users to have anywhere to run.
Where exactly have RMS or the FSF done anything to marginalize the BSDs? RMS' personal webpage used to run on a host that used FreeBSD.
Sure the GNU people tend to prefer GNU (and by extension Linux) and the BSD people tend to prefer BSDs. Seems pretty natural to me. And I can't imagine how that hurts or marginalizes either camp.
I run Kubuntu and as advanced as that is the default UI looks like Windows 2000 did back when it first came out. Its 2007 now. I honestly feel like I'm stepping back in time whenever I use that machine.
I sort of liked Windows 2000. It was the first time Windows really seemed to work and it looked fine to me. I only used XP for a little while before going GNU/Linux full time, but I can certainly think of worse OS to be compared to than Win 2K.
Of course I see complaints like that on Slashdot all the time, and I'm not sure I believe them. KDE didn't look anything like Win 2K back when I used it (Mandrake 8 or so), so I highly doubt it looks like that now. It is just a nice easy way to knock Free Software to say it looks like Windows and even worse old Windows (which I'm sure I'm not alone in thinking was one of the better things to come out of Microsoft).
I'm very disappointed. When I read the title of your post I was expecting some cool story about the NES game Star Force which is in the rare group of games that I think may actually be impossible. And yet I think if it came out on the Wii's virtual console, I would probably buy it again.
There was an alternative all along: S5. It stores presentations in XHTML+CSS and uses Javascript to advance to the next slide. It's friendly even for browsers that don't support Javascript or CSS---it falls back to plain text rather nicely.
I was really excited when I first learned out S5. I did my thesis proposal using it. But I have to say that after that experience, it really wasn't worth it for me. I had to use latex2html for equations which was fine. But to get figures in it to look properly required enough tweaking that the result works poorly on computers with a different screen resolution than I started with. Maybe I could have handled the CSS more carefully and got something more portable, but that would have been even more of a pain than what I did. And I had a directory full of files. Not to mention how poorly embedding animations works.
Now I use LaTeX Beamer and could not be happier. Maybe S5 would be great for talks that have few or no figures or equations and just bullet points, but that is not enough to help me. With Beamer I get a single pdf with everything and it looks the same regardless of what computer/OS I show it on. All done using nothing more than the free software I normally use.
It's too bad since I really think S5 is a cool idea.
I also use dyndns.com for domains (after switching from network solutions). I've used their free dynamic dns service for years and was thrilled when I saw I could use them to register domains. They are a lot cheaper than network solutions and while they aren't the very cheapest, I think of the (very small amount) of extra price as giving a little back for their really great free services. Very rare that there is an internet service that I have nothing but good things to say about.
Migration to BSD (OpenSolaris is GPL so not an option due to the same risk).
I think your making a mistake blaming the GPL there. It seems (to me) that the problem you are worried about is that the GNU parts are controlled by the Free Software Fondation, an organization with philosophical goals (which I agree with for the most part, but you certainly do not have to). Since even when under the GPL, Solaris is in no way controlled by the Free Software Fondation, I don't think it makes sense to lump Solaris in there.
Now if you object to any organization controlling your OS, then I agree Solaris is a bad choice. But Windows is even worse. If that is your opinion, then BSDs would seem to be the only viable choice.
PDF is fine for what is was designed for: creating print documents. But I hate pdf when reading it on the screen as it won't fit my window width: either you have to scroll back and forth every line or the characters are too small to read. Is there any app that can 'uncompile' a pdf and fit it on a screen width ? Might be a great app for reading docs on a laptop/pda/cell phone.
pdftotxt
pdftohtml
or
pdftk
The last one is more to let you edit a pdf, but they are all really useful when dealing with pdf file.
As the other replies say, the TomTom runs Linux. But I can tell you that my experience with a Magellan Roadmate GPS and Windows CE, and that has just about all the stability I remember from my long distant days of Windows 98.
To be honest, you only really need a calculator until you leave high school. Getting anything fancier than a TI-89 is a waste of money. In college, a simple scientific calculator will suffice for lower division classes. If you go into engineering you will be doing serious math by hand and serious calculations by computer (MATLAB or FORTRAN).
I'm going to have to disagree there somewhat. I had to get a TI-82 in high school and I used it all the way through college for math and physics courses. Sure I had to use computers for the more complex stuff (Mathematic was my tool of choice at the time), but any time people did homework, the table always had a bunch of TI-8* calculators.
I even used mine for the first two years of grad school while I still took classes. Of course now that I just do research the calculator is long since gone, but that TI-82 got more than a decade of use (which is not bad for $100 or so).
I do however agree that you don't need anything fancier than a TI-89 or whatever the current iteration of that family is.
Funny thing about IFORT is that while in simple tests it always outperforms g77 (I've since switched to gfortran, but haven't tested it too well yet), for complex things (a few thousand lines of FORTRAN 77 using mpi), it is very unpredictable. I have lots of cases where g77 outperforms ifort in real world cases (as real world as astronomy gets anyway) and cases where ifort wins. It just seems to me that either ifort is not the best compiler, or optimizing for x86 is funnier business than it seems (or there is some other variable I'm missing which is always possible).
Does this affect Preview on OS X too? After all, pratically all OS X users will use Preview to view PDF files (since Preview comes with OS X, and OS X itself has a PDF renderer built-in, at least from what I've read/understood).
I don't think this would affect Preview on OS X or xpdf since neither of them handle all the javascript that Acrobat Reader 6 and above can handle. I haven't used Preview much, so I could be wrong, but since I tend to use pdfs for slides for talks, and I embed movies using javascript (pdfanim and LaTeX), I have experimented with javascript abilities in the various viewers. I also just skimmed the linked page, so I could be totally wrong in everything I said. But I don't think so.
There comes a point where working on open-source software can no longer be a hobby done in spare time. I would think that lots of open-source coders reach this point. Then either you find a company to pay you (e.g., Redhat), or you stop doing it. Software is getting more and more complex requiring more lines of code and more development. Unless one is rich and is doing it for a hobby, people need to get paid for their 8+ hours of work a day. Can complex software really be done in your spare time?
Software may be getting more complex, but I'm really not sure programing is. Say I want to write some code to read through all my email and do something to it. It wouldn't be very easy in assembly. FORTRAN would be a nightmare. C would be doable, but probably not much fun. In Perl or Python, maybe 5 minutes of coding. How about writing a GUI for something. I don't really want to know anything about X, do I? But wxwidgets, pygtk, java, just to name a few things would let me do something in almost no time. Hell, there was a time that just getting a decent compiler on your home machine was either expensive or involved. Now any decent OS comes with gcc. To me, it seems like thanks to an increased body of tools and libraries, programing is getting easier, not harder. That just lets people take on bigger and harder projects.
NTFS is one of the few worthwhile things that's ever come out of Redmond. I wish more people would spend a bit learning from it without throwing it away simply because it's MS bloat.
I think the negative opinion some people (including me) have of NTFS come not directly because it is from MS, but come from the incompatibility with everything else. I can't (reliably) read/write to it from a Mac, Linux, or Sun. That leaves only people totally in the MS camp able to use it. It may have some nice technical features, but I can't ever see them, so it is a little hard to be impressed or care about them too much.
Ask questions about it. They usually show very quickly if you understand the code. Then there are four possibilities:
1. The code isn't yours and you don't understand it. Bad. You're out.
2. The code is yours and you don't understand it. Also bad. Also out.
This is grossly unfair to Perl programmers. You don't really expect us to understand every regex we wrote months (or days) ago, do you?
Excel is actually usable for science-related graph/figure generation
I know I'm getting into this discussion late, bet ewww, a spreedsheet for scientific graph and figure generation.
I though the technical and math or computer oriented used sm, gnuplot, PGPLOT (yay FORTRAN plotting), IDL, DS9, or any other odd unix plotting program and the rest used user friendly but less functional things like Matlab. Spreedsheets are for financial and things like that.
the recordings that are an expense to Metallica and their primary means of income.
...
Their concerts are amazing value for money; high energy and extremely well produced. Metallica treat their fans very well. In return they ask that you don't rip them off
First of all, most bands make most of their money from concerts, T-shits, and stuff. Metallica may be an exception, but I sort of doubt it.
Lots (not most) of the mp3s on Napster were live songs and that didn't stop Metallica's problem with Napster. And, most of the people I know who got into Metallica in the late 80s and early 90s did it by tapping albums friends had. That sold a lot of albums for them, so lots of people felt betrayed that Metallica, a band that got where they were through word of mouth (which at the time included tape trading) would go after people for the modern version of that.
As for concerts, I only saw them once, around when Load came out (so after their music started to suck really bad) and it was one of the worst, most overpriced shows I've ever seen. A band that cared about the fans would never let security abuse kids for moshing.
The only sad thing is that Metallica actually made some good musics a long time ago and had to tarnish their memory so badly for many of us.
So he spins this fairly tale about how all the small web sites (which don't run on Sun hardware) will simply cease to exist leaving only the mega sites (which do buy Sun hardware). Let me know how that works out for you.
I pretty much agree with you except that most of the big sites he mentions don't use Sun hardware either. Google is pretty well know for using cheap hardware. Microsoft isn't exactly known for running on Sun stuff. So it isn't even clear things look good for Sun even if this idea comes to pass.
Sort of too bad though since I've spent enough time on Ultra 10s to have a certain fondness for Sun hardware.
Didn't the Atari 2600 joystick have only 1 button? And Steve Jobs did work for Atari. So as long as Asteroids and Pacman are good enough for you, it should be fine.
I agree with you on what you mean by a killer app.
Excel however may be that important for you (and reasonably sized class of users), but most home users will probably never use it. I'll take your word for it that Excel stands above the alternative since I'm neither a Windows user, nor a spreadsheet user. I'm just not convinced that it matters to home users.
People do pick hardware for Windows (although I can't imagine why), so I'll give you that one as a killer app.
The only thing that Google has that's CLOSE to a killer app is Search.
What about gmail? I notice more and more of the email I get (both from technical people and non-technical people) is from gmail. Seems to be far more desirable than any other type of email right now. I don't use it, but that is because pine users tend to be a bit resistant to change, but that is another story.
Wrong. PDF can embed audio/video just fine. The only problem is that you cannot view these on Linux. If you want to embed audio or video with pdflatex, look at the movie15 package.
Actually, with Acrobat Reader 7 on gnu/linux, embedded movies (at least the ones I've made with the pdfanim LaTeX package) work perfectly. It isn't perfect since it doesn't work with xpdf, but it still seems to be the most cross-platform movie in a presentation I've ever seen.
This is rediculous. The only way to get a "good credit history" is to go in debt and then pay for it regularly. Those of us who are responsible and have next to no credit score, well maybe they just aren't interested in us.
That is not true (or properly spelled).
Having and using a credit card (which is a pretty reasonable way to build up a credit history) is not the same as going into debt. If you pay a card off completely every month, you haven't gone into debt at all to them (and if you have a good card with no fee, it will have cost you nothing more than using cash would have), but you have ensured that you have a credit history.
Sure some people misuse credit cards, but I still don't see why some people are so opposed to them.
Slashdot Mirror
I use LaTeX for pretty much all my document needs so I don't have a real vested interest in OpenOffice.org vs. MS Office, but it really isn't fair to call OO amateur. It did start life as a commerical product. And is the opposite of commercial really amateur? gcc is not a commercial compiler, but it certainly not amateur and has been used in lots of serious situations.
Sure the GNU people tend to prefer GNU (and by extension Linux) and the BSD people tend to prefer BSDs. Seems pretty natural to me. And I can't imagine how that hurts or marginalizes either camp.
Of course I see complaints like that on Slashdot all the time, and I'm not sure I believe them. KDE didn't look anything like Win 2K back when I used it (Mandrake 8 or so), so I highly doubt it looks like that now. It is just a nice easy way to knock Free Software to say it looks like Windows and even worse old Windows (which I'm sure I'm not alone in thinking was one of the better things to come out of Microsoft).
I'm very disappointed. When I read the title of your post I was expecting some cool story about the NES game Star Force which is in the rare group of games that I think may actually be impossible. And yet I think if it came out on the Wii's virtual console, I would probably buy it again.
Now I use LaTeX Beamer and could not be happier. Maybe S5 would be great for talks that have few or no figures or equations and just bullet points, but that is not enough to help me. With Beamer I get a single pdf with everything and it looks the same regardless of what computer/OS I show it on. All done using nothing more than the free software I normally use.
It's too bad since I really think S5 is a cool idea.
I also use dyndns.com for domains (after switching from network solutions). I've used their free dynamic dns service for years and was thrilled when I saw I could use them to register domains. They are a lot cheaper than network solutions and while they aren't the very cheapest, I think of the (very small amount) of extra price as giving a little back for their really great free services. Very rare that there is an internet service that I have nothing but good things to say about.
Now if you object to any organization controlling your OS, then I agree Solaris is a bad choice. But Windows is even worse. If that is your opinion, then BSDs would seem to be the only viable choice.
% which wc
%
Looks like a sensible place to me. Maybe that's just because I tend to use LaTeX for all my writing.
pdftohtml
or
pdftk
The last one is more to let you edit a pdf, but they are all really useful when dealing with pdf file.
As the other replies say, the TomTom runs Linux. But I can tell you that my experience with a Magellan Roadmate GPS and Windows CE, and that has just about all the stability I remember from my long distant days of Windows 98.
I even used mine for the first two years of grad school while I still took classes. Of course now that I just do research the calculator is long since gone, but that TI-82 got more than a decade of use (which is not bad for $100 or so).
I do however agree that you don't need anything fancier than a TI-89 or whatever the current iteration of that family is.
I though the technical and math or computer oriented used sm, gnuplot, PGPLOT (yay FORTRAN plotting), IDL, DS9, or any other odd unix plotting program and the rest used user friendly but less functional things like Matlab. Spreedsheets are for financial and things like that.
Lots (not most) of the mp3s on Napster were live songs and that didn't stop Metallica's problem with Napster. And, most of the people I know who got into Metallica in the late 80s and early 90s did it by tapping albums friends had. That sold a lot of albums for them, so lots of people felt betrayed that Metallica, a band that got where they were through word of mouth (which at the time included tape trading) would go after people for the modern version of that.
As for concerts, I only saw them once, around when Load came out (so after their music started to suck really bad) and it was one of the worst, most overpriced shows I've ever seen. A band that cared about the fans would never let security abuse kids for moshing.
The only sad thing is that Metallica actually made some good musics a long time ago and had to tarnish their memory so badly for many of us.
Sort of too bad though since I've spent enough time on Ultra 10s to have a certain fondness for Sun hardware.
Didn't the Atari 2600 joystick have only 1 button? And Steve Jobs did work for Atari. So as long as Asteroids and Pacman are good enough for you, it should be fine.
I agree with you on what you mean by a killer app. Excel however may be that important for you (and reasonably sized class of users), but most home users will probably never use it. I'll take your word for it that Excel stands above the alternative since I'm neither a Windows user, nor a spreadsheet user. I'm just not convinced that it matters to home users.
People do pick hardware for Windows (although I can't imagine why), so I'll give you that one as a killer app.
Having and using a credit card (which is a pretty reasonable way to build up a credit history) is not the same as going into debt. If you pay a card off completely every month, you haven't gone into debt at all to them (and if you have a good card with no fee, it will have cost you nothing more than using cash would have), but you have ensured that you have a credit history.
Sure some people misuse credit cards, but I still don't see why some people are so opposed to them.