It comes down to not giving a shit about things years in the future in order to satisfy immediate needs or desires.
Well... not exactly. In 1971 (or in 1981 for that matter), computers didn't have a lot of memory. Writing code with 2-digit years could save what was then a lot of memory, and I'd bet that most of the programmers figured that their software would either be obsolete or re-written by the time 2000 came around. For the most part, they were right.
The Y2K bug was a real problem.
Most of the problem code got fixed (particularly for critical systems) during the years leading up to 2000, so that's why it seems like nothing happened.
I personally had Y2K problems with reports that were generated by a couple of old Foxpro programs that were being used at my company. We had migrated to new software because we new about the Y2K problems with the old software. Sure enough, as of the morning of Jan 1, 2000, we could no longer print historical data out if the old system because it thought the date was 1900. I worked around the issue by rebuilding the reports in Crystal Reports which had a pivot year function.
And you know what? There is no legitimate excuse for being unemployed for 2 years in the U.S. You can always find a job. You might not get to work in IT, or any thing else you find rewarding, but the jobs are out there.
For instance, in my working life, aside from IT work, I have:
Bagged groceries. Worked in a yarn mill. Worked in a carpet mill. Delivered pizzas. Driven a tractor-trailer. Driven a garbage truck (including picking up the garbage from the back of the truck).
I didn't consider any of those jobs particularly rewarding, but they got the bills paid, and I would do them again if I had to.
Sorry, but I don't have much sympathy for folks who lie around unemployed because they are unwilling to take a job that is "below them".
Most pre recorded cassettes were Type I, but later on, some were Type II.
You can usually tell the difference by looking at the tape... the Type I is rust colored, and the Type II looks almost black.
The problem with the pre-recorded cassettes were that the quality of the tapes themselves were generally horrible. I had several tapes which were so bad that the oxide would come off and pile up on the head while the tape was playing, rendering the deck unusable until the heads were cleaned. I remember Columbia as being the worst for this.
After this happened to me several times, I gave up on cassettes and only purchased LP's and CD's. I would then rip the LP's or CD's to high-quality cassettes for use in the car.
My wife still has a large collection of tapes from years ago. She still get's annoyed at me because I won't let her play them on our tape deck.
It's funny how it's the little things which will make someone choose on thing over another.
I used Gnome until 2.0 came out. The dumbing down of the interface was primarily what drove me to KDE -- specifically the removal of the "always on top" feature for windows.
I have several apps (such as television viewers... tvtime, xawtv, etc) which I like to keep on top. They removed this feature from Gnome 2 when they switched to Metacity as the default WM. I've seen several newsgroup posts where people have pleaded for this feature, but the Gnome developers are of the opinion that it should be the individual apps' responsibility to provide an "on top" feature.
While sort of I agree with them in principle, it is simply not practical to go to each developer of various different apps and expect them to include this feature when the functionality can easily be provided by the window manager.
I had become so accustomed this seemingly minor feature that it became a major show stopper for me when they removed it from Gnome.
Yep. Love that site... especially the Evan Doorbell recordings!
It's amazing how organic and cool the old analog phone network used to sound. The digital network is very boring now. I was a kid in the 70's when the network was still analog, and I wasn't a phreak in the true sense. But I do remember playing around with the phone a bit just to hear the sound of the switching equipment, etc.
An interesting thing... My grandparents lived in a small town in Virginia (until my grandfather died in 2000). They were on a mechanical step-by-step exchange (GTE) until 1998. It wasn't even capable of providing touch-tone! I remember when it was switched over to ESS because I was visiting one day and picked up their phone to make a call and heard the modern ESS dialtone instead of the "beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeh" dialtone they used to have. That was the last mechanical exchange I ever dialed out through. I don't think any exist in the anymore, at least not in the US.
I didn't mean to say that I thought the Shuttle was a completely bad idea. If there had been enough funding available, we could have easily had both a shuttle, and Moon/Mars missions. If the Shuttle was a USAF initiative, then perhaps it should have been under it's own USAF budget, rather than NASA's. The Air Force blows a lot of tax dollars every day on technologies that never see the light of day.
I think what happened was that NASA really screwed itself because it sold Congress on the premise that the Shuttle would be many times cheaper than expendible heavy launch vehicles, when it turned out to be much more expensive due to the fact that it requires so much pampering just to get it ready to fly again.
No not entirely. I just think that we should focus on space during economic booms and by private industry.
Sir, if we focused on space exploration only during economic booms we would have to stop and restart every 8 to 10 years!
I think we need to ask ourselves if we want a human spaceflight program, or not. Because to me human space exploration means just that -- exploration. Earth is not a fair place to live. There are always going to be poor people and not so poor people (I've been both). A few years back when I was scrounging change from my seat cushions so I could have enough money to buy a hamburger, never did I think "I would have more money if there wasn't a space program". But if we are not interested in exploring further into space, then I think we should just scrap the whole human spaceflight program altogether, because without goals, we are just pissing away more tax money on ISS and Shuttle flights to nowhere.
Call it politically motivated (all polititians are politically motivated), but Bush did something that no other president has done in a long time, which was set goals for NASA.
Whether the goals are achieved will depend on Congress and future presidents, as well as the mood of the people. But I guarantee you that even if they scrapped the whole human space program, there will still be hungry people all over the world.
As far as private industry goes, there is not a single private company out there that is going to send a man to Mars, or anywhere else other than maybe some tourist trips to LEO. It's just not going to happen. There's no immediate profit motive.
Remember that Columbus, Magellan, and Lewis/Clark were government funded as well.
They are still on a decades-long timeline. Here's hoping that The Mars Society can speed that up.
Well, the problem is that something as bold as a human Mars mission does take decades to prepare for.
That wouldn't be such a big deal if we had started seriously working toward that goal while the Apollo missions were still going on, but now we are 30 some odd years late at getting started.
Instead, we invested nearly everything into the Shuttle, which IMO has been a major diversion, as well as a money pit. The Shuttle is an amazing machine, but it still boils down to basically being a high-tech glider which can withstand re-entry (sometimes!). I'm not totally convinced that the Shuttle technology has been a total waste, but I know that the money could have been better spent trying to develop simpler, effective systems to get us out of LEO, rather than keep us in it. The Apollo missions should have been the first steps to a Mars mission, but we withdrew and went down the Shuttle path, and all we have to show for it after 30 years is a partially built ISS and a couple of major disasters.
We can do better than that. But we are basically back to 1972 again, and it's going to take a while for a Mars mission to materialize. America has a problem with long term investments. People don't see immediate payoffs, so they withdraw the funding.
I just want to see humans reach another planet in my lifetime.
Back in the 80's my high school A/V department had a bunch of Elcaset tapes lying around, but no one could tell me where they came from, and I never was able to find the machine that they belonged to. I imagine that the sound quality of those things must have been excellent.
Another piece of equipment they had lying around was a 1960's-vintage Sony portable reel-to-reel video tape recorder. Now that was fun to play with!
"sodipodi, gimp, synaptic, kroupware, kpdf, peacock" are not words that mean anything to most people.
OK, so are you saying that words like excel, winamp, outlook, acrobat, and visio are really meaningful?
I personally think Linux has been ready for the desktop for about two years now.
But...
At my medium-sized company, our IT department is always understaffed. Our titles mean little and we end up wearing many hats. My official title is Database Admin (MS SQL Server), but since I'm a former field support tech, I end up helping our techs troubleshoot problems they can't (won't?) resolve. We run Windows 2000 and XP on all of our desktops (except mine, of course). Our techs are pretty much MS only, because they have never bothered to learn Linux. Same for my boss, the Director.
I've been pushing Linux since we were a two-man show (the Director and me!). My boss has always been interested in Linux, but he can't seem to gather the courage to leave his Windows comfort zone.
Our field support techs just think I'm a crazy zealot for pushing Linux, and I think they actually see Linux as a threat to their existance, since they are not willing to put in the time to learn it. I think they waste a ridiculous amount of time rebuilding rotted Windows installs, running MS update-reboot-reboot, removing spyware/malware, cleaning viruses, etc, etc.
When I try to explain to them that Linux would make their life easier, they just look at me like I'm nuts.
We have actually managed to get some Linux in the door on our backend servers, running www, DNS, and mail, but because I'm the only Linux guy, support of those servers generally falls on me. Our Network Admin has some BSD experience from his former ISP job, so he helps out some in this area, but I still end up doing a lot of it. Fortunately the Linux servers are very reliable, and don't require huge amounts of attention.
I'd love see all of our desktop installs replaced with Linux, but at the same time, in our current situation, I am the only one who would know anything about supporting them. I have enough on my plate already, and I can't really encourage Linux on the desktop without help.
Recently, after the MS-Blaster fiasco, I started a pilot project with one of our users running a Linux desktop, with our Director's blessing. Our company is actually in a better position for migration than many, because we run our mission critical Windows-only apps on Citrix metaframe servers. It has proved to be favorable, but going forward with complete rollout means a) Forcing our techs to learn Linux (unlikely), or b) Firing our techs and hiring Linux techs (not going to happen).
At this point all I can hope for is to push for a requirement that all future techs that we hire have Linux experience. At the rate we are growing, it will probably take 10 years before we have enough Linux expertise in-house to support a company-wide Linux rollout, so Linus is probably right on the money.
Sir, whatever you or I may think of Microsoft, it is never time for legislation when it comes to Internet content.
If you want to let the government(s) get through the door to this kind of stuff, then your asking for a heap of trouble.
Microsoft doesn't want Google because they perceive them as a threat. They want Google because Google has what they see as the most important thing in the world - the front door to the Internet.
Microsoft knows that it while it may be impossible buy the protocols and standards that run the Internet, they can conceivably buy the de facto "gatekeeper".
Thing is, Google as is so popular, partly because of it's level of integrity as a company, not the other way around. It would be so easy for them to abuse this position if only for a while. Given Microsoft's track record, I think they would find the opportunities to abuse Google's position irresistable, which of course, would probably destroy Google's position as leader in fairly short order anyway.
And why do I only say that some people probably complained. Because if they did, no one remembers it now.
People did complain, and I do remember.
I grew up in a rural mountainous area, where we had three TV channels: two VHF, and one UHF. Despite the fact that the UHF channel was from the city closest to us (each station was in a different city), it was the one with the horrible picture. Why? Because UHF is at such a higher frequency, the signal is pretty much line-of-sight, so it's much more easily blocked by mountains, buildings, trees, and whatever else is in the way. Also many of the earlier TV antennas were not tuned for UHF. I remember this particular station selling UHF antennas directly just so people would have a chance of picking them up. Any station with the misfortune of receiving a frequency allocation in the UHF band has several strikes against them before they air their first program.
On the other hand the VHF channels (especially channels 2-4) are capable of being viewed over extremely long distances (hundreds of miles) courtesy of a phenomenon called "sporadic E skip". I've seen it myself back in my rabbit ear days. Pretty cool.
I use the remote display capabilities of X all of the time. If anything, instead of removing that feature, I wish they would work on making the X protocol use less bandwidth, so it can be used painlessly over a slow link (such as my 128k upstream DSL connection).
I've always liked Mapblast and its Line Drive directions.
Mapblast was recently acquired by Microsoft and renamed "MSN Maps and Directions", but it's still a good service. The Line Drive directions simply show you the turns with cross-streets, and mileages between each waypoint, without anything else cluttering up the map.
The radio is free for the listening, and online file trading is the new radio.
That's a silly comparison.
Listening to the radio is a passive activity. Online file trading (copying) isn't. Yes the music played on the radio is free, but it's just a promotion/teaser. With radio, you can't listen to a particular song ANY TIME YOU WANT TO. They want you hear the song, like it, and then go BUY the CD!
Trying to understand Linux as a "Windows substitute" is a doomed prospect.
Both Windows and Linux are OS's that will run on my computer. So are BSD, Solaris, etc.
One will always be a substitute for the another. Yes they are designed differently, but there are only so many things you are going be able to do with a given amount of computing power, regardless of operating system is running underneath.
I think that most people who go to the trouble of making a switch from Windows to Linux, are expecting to have to do things somewhat differently; it's just that they get annoyed when something that used to be a trivial task in Windows becomes a monumental task in Linux.
To me, most of these annoyances don't involve day-to-day use, but involve getting the box configured into a usable state in the first place.
These annoyances are getting resolved one at a time in Linux. First it was installing Linux itself. That has been for the most part taken care of (with most distros). Next was installing software. Pretty much taken care of as well as long as the software has been packaged, and nothing is better than apt-get IMHO.
But there are still little lingering problems.
Like multimedia on the web, for example. Linux distros in general are ridiculously clunky a dealing with this. Either the file, stream, whatever requires a plug-in that isn't (easily) installed, a mime type that hasn't been configured yet, or a player that you don't have. Every one knows that mplayer is the one player capable of playing almost everything right now, including Windows Media streams, yet most distro makers out of pride, prejudice or whatever refuse to make it the default player for media files. I say the player that just works wins. If I want to use something else let me change the default. Mozilla plugger is a kluge that sort of fixes some of this stuff for the web, but it doesn't always work, and other browsers like Opera and Konqueror rely on Mozilla plugger instead of writing their own plug-in handler, so now you have a kluge for a kluge as a sort-of solution to the problem.
I know this stuff sounds superficial, but what do most people do when they first fire up a computer at home? They browse the web, just like they would if they were using Windows!
Thing is, I've used Linux since about 1994. I've watched it grow from an almost unusable state to something that is seriously challenging Windows for the hearts and minds of computer users. I think much of this is due to KDE, which emulates the best features of Windows, while adding quite a few innovations of it's own. (Sure wish there was fish:// in Explorer). But I still get very annoyed by the amount of time I have to spend configuring minor things just to get a Linux box usable everytime I set one up.
It is also nice to be able to sit the thing in my lap and sit in the same room as my wife and hold down a conversation instead of being relegating to one room while I aimlessly surf.
I sometimes use my laptop (which actually belongs to my company) for the same reasons, but I have to tell you, when it comes to comfort, nothing beats my desktop. I prefer my big 21" monitor, full size keyboard, and speakers that actually sound good. I can work all day/night at my desktop, but I can only tolerate a couple of hours at a time sitting on the couch with my laptop squinting at the tiny screen, while shifting positions trying to remain comfortable.
The thing that really pisses me off are the people at my office who bitch and moan about how much they need a laptop instead of a desktop. I actually believe they see the laptop as sort of a status symbol for some reason, but when they get one, most of them rarely if ever take it off their port replicator! They just want to be seen with a laptop on their desk. It irritates me because we can purchase two really nice desktop systems (which are more powerful and upgradable) for the price of one of those laptops.
I don't understand why people have such a hard time understanding why serving up copywrited material to others is ok, legally, ethically, or morally.
Referring to this activity as sharing, trading, or swapping music is not correct! It is simply MAKING COPIES!
Sharing something is giving up a part of something of value to you to someone else for their benefit, and if you do that, you give up some of your benefits. Trading or swapping something means giving something of value to someone else while receiving something of value from them in return.
P2P networks do not work this way. When you offer your music on a P2P network, you are sharing nothing, because when someone else downloads the file, you've lost nothing. You still have the original file plus any files you've downloaded. All of this has the effect of devaluing the original material.
Look at it this way... if I make copies of my money and give it to you, am I sharing some of my money with you? Nope. But what I did do is effectively reduce the value of the money I still have, as well as the money that others have. That is why copying money is illegal. If everyone could make perfect copies of money and give it away, the original money wouldn't be worth much would it?
This is why I don't understand why everyone is making such a stink about what the RIAA is doing. They are simply trying to prevent the value of their members products from being reduced to zero by people giving away copies.
When the RIAA went after the operators of the P2P networks they were doing the wrong thing, because P2P has legitimate uses. So do copiers, fax machines, file servers, search engines, etc.
Going after "sharers" is exactly the correct thing to do, because these are the people that are reducing the value of their products.
Now, I'm not trying to be holier-than-thou here. Have I done this? Yep. But a while back I started to think about how much hard-earned money I had spent on records and CD's, and how much value I placed on it, and the fact that copies of it being widely available on the Internet were making it virtually worthless. So I stopped.
The RIAA is a cartel. IMHO, their member record labels are engaged in price fixing, and using their monopoly market position to prevent non-RIAA labels and artists from gaining exposure. They want to maximize profits for their member labels by paying the artists the absolute minimum. And yes, they have their heads soundly up their ass. All of this doesn't matter. Giving away copies of copyrighted material is illegal. They are selling a product and you are expected to pay for it. OPEC is also a cartel which exists for many of the same reasons as the RIAA. But I still have to pay for my gas.
The bad news is if these leads to a shortwave resurgence Clear Channel will buy up all the shortwave stations so they can broadcast crap music to the ends of the Earth.
Well I don't know if that would be any worse what we have now. Except for the VOA, and WWV time signals, just about the only SW stations broadcasting from the US right now are a bunch of evangelist Christian stations.
Doesn't present a very well-balanced view of America.
At least a bunch of Clear Channel owned music stations would give people in other parts of the world some insight on the crappy radio we have to listen to every day!
Who "sponsors" major PBS programming? Most of the time, it's Fortune 50 companies like ADM that the general public has never heard of, but the upscale demographic PBS caters to have.
Bear in mind that there is a reason that companies like ADM and the big oil companies underwrite NPR and PBS programming. These companies are the ones that are often attacked by the liberals for being environmental threats. They know the audience is predominately liberal, and by underwriting NPR and PBS programming, they hope they can sway their opinions.
They want people to think "Wow, ADM made this wonderful program possible? They must not be such bad guys after all!"
Slashdot Mirror
It comes down to not giving a shit about things years in the future in order to satisfy immediate needs or desires.
Well... not exactly. In 1971 (or in 1981 for that matter), computers didn't have a lot of memory. Writing code with 2-digit years could save what was then a lot of memory, and I'd bet that most of the programmers figured that their software would either be obsolete or re-written by the time 2000 came around. For the most part, they were right.
The Y2K bug was a real problem.
Most of the problem code got fixed (particularly for critical systems) during the years leading up to 2000, so that's why it seems like nothing happened.
I personally had Y2K problems with reports that were generated by a couple of old Foxpro programs that were being used at my company. We had migrated to new software because we new about the Y2K problems with the old software. Sure enough, as of the morning of Jan 1, 2000, we could no longer print historical data out if the old system because it thought the date was 1900. I worked around the issue by rebuilding the reports in Crystal Reports which had a pivot year function.
And you know what? There is no legitimate excuse for being unemployed for 2 years in the U.S. You can always find a job. You might not get to work in IT, or any thing else you find rewarding, but the jobs are out there.
For instance, in my working life, aside from IT work, I have:
Bagged groceries.
Worked in a yarn mill.
Worked in a carpet mill.
Delivered pizzas.
Driven a tractor-trailer.
Driven a garbage truck (including picking up the garbage from the back of the truck).
I didn't consider any of those jobs particularly rewarding, but they got the bills paid, and I would do them again if I had to.
Sorry, but I don't have much sympathy for folks who lie around unemployed because they are unwilling to take a job that is "below them".
Most pre recorded cassettes were Type I, but later on, some were Type II.
You can usually tell the difference by looking at the tape... the Type I is rust colored, and the Type II looks almost black.
The problem with the pre-recorded cassettes were that the quality of the tapes themselves were generally horrible. I had several tapes which were so bad that the oxide would come off and pile up on the head while the tape was playing, rendering the deck unusable until the heads were cleaned. I remember Columbia as being the worst for this.
After this happened to me several times, I gave up on cassettes and only purchased LP's and CD's. I would then rip the LP's or CD's to high-quality cassettes for use in the car.
My wife still has a large collection of tapes from years ago. She still get's annoyed at me because I won't let her play them on our tape deck.
It's funny how it's the little things which will make someone choose on thing over another.
I used Gnome until 2.0 came out. The dumbing down of the interface was primarily what drove me to KDE -- specifically the removal of the "always on top" feature for windows.
I have several apps (such as television viewers... tvtime, xawtv, etc) which I like to keep on top. They removed this feature from Gnome 2 when they switched to Metacity as the default WM. I've seen several newsgroup posts where people have pleaded for this feature, but the Gnome developers are of the opinion that it should be the individual apps' responsibility to provide an "on top" feature.
While sort of I agree with them in principle, it is simply not practical to go to each developer of various different apps and expect them to include this feature when the functionality can easily be provided by the window manager.
I had become so accustomed this seemingly minor feature that it became a major show stopper for me when they removed it from Gnome.
The Bell System also offered the Ericofon. They were made by Northern Electric under license from Ericsson. More info here.
Yep. Love that site... especially the Evan Doorbell recordings!
It's amazing how organic and cool the old analog phone network used to sound. The digital network is very boring now. I was a kid in the 70's when the network was still analog, and I wasn't a phreak in the true sense. But I do remember playing around with the phone a bit just to hear the sound of the switching equipment, etc.
An interesting thing... My grandparents lived in a small town in Virginia (until my grandfather died in 2000). They were on a mechanical step-by-step exchange (GTE) until 1998. It wasn't even capable of providing touch-tone! I remember when it was switched over to ESS because I was visiting one day and picked up their phone to make a call and heard the modern ESS dialtone instead of the "beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeh" dialtone they used to have. That was the last mechanical exchange I ever dialed out through. I don't think any exist in the anymore, at least not in the US.
I think what happened was that NASA really screwed itself because it sold Congress on the premise that the Shuttle would be many times cheaper than expendible heavy launch vehicles, when it turned out to be much more expensive due to the fact that it requires so much pampering just to get it ready to fly again.
Sir, if we focused on space exploration only during economic booms we would have to stop and restart every 8 to 10 years!
I think we need to ask ourselves if we want a human spaceflight program, or not. Because to me human space exploration means just that -- exploration. Earth is not a fair place to live. There are always going to be poor people and not so poor people (I've been both). A few years back when I was scrounging change from my seat cushions so I could have enough money to buy a hamburger, never did I think "I would have more money if there wasn't a space program". But if we are not interested in exploring further into space, then I think we should just scrap the whole human spaceflight program altogether, because without goals, we are just pissing away more tax money on ISS and Shuttle flights to nowhere.
Call it politically motivated (all polititians are politically motivated), but Bush did something that no other president has done in a long time, which was set goals for NASA.
Whether the goals are achieved will depend on Congress and future presidents, as well as the mood of the people. But I guarantee you that even if they scrapped the whole human space program, there will still be hungry people all over the world.
As far as private industry goes, there is not a single private company out there that is going to send a man to Mars, or anywhere else other than maybe some tourist trips to LEO. It's just not going to happen. There's no immediate profit motive.
Remember that Columbus, Magellan, and Lewis/Clark were government funded as well.
Well, the problem is that something as bold as a human Mars mission does take decades to prepare for.
That wouldn't be such a big deal if we had started seriously working toward that goal while the Apollo missions were still going on, but now we are 30 some odd years late at getting started.
Instead, we invested nearly everything into the Shuttle, which IMO has been a major diversion, as well as a money pit. The Shuttle is an amazing machine, but it still boils down to basically being a high-tech glider which can withstand re-entry (sometimes!). I'm not totally convinced that the Shuttle technology has been a total waste, but I know that the money could have been better spent trying to develop simpler, effective systems to get us out of LEO, rather than keep us in it. The Apollo missions should have been the first steps to a Mars mission, but we withdrew and went down the Shuttle path, and all we have to show for it after 30 years is a partially built ISS and a couple of major disasters.
We can do better than that. But we are basically back to 1972 again, and it's going to take a while for a Mars mission to materialize. America has a problem with long term investments. People don't see immediate payoffs, so they withdraw the funding.
I just want to see humans reach another planet in my lifetime.
Another piece of equipment they had lying around was a 1960's-vintage Sony portable reel-to-reel video tape recorder. Now that was fun to play with!
I hear ya, but umm... you need to tell that to all of the millions of folks who still have their MSIE start page set to MSN.
"sodipodi, gimp, synaptic, kroupware, kpdf, peacock" are not words that mean anything to most people. OK, so are you saying that words like excel, winamp, outlook, acrobat, and visio are really meaningful?
But...
At my medium-sized company, our IT department is always understaffed. Our titles mean little and we end up wearing many hats. My official title is Database Admin (MS SQL Server), but since I'm a former field support tech, I end up helping our techs troubleshoot problems they can't (won't?) resolve. We run Windows 2000 and XP on all of our desktops (except mine, of course). Our techs are pretty much MS only, because they have never bothered to learn Linux. Same for my boss, the Director.
I've been pushing Linux since we were a two-man show (the Director and me!). My boss has always been interested in Linux, but he can't seem to gather the courage to leave his Windows comfort zone.
Our field support techs just think I'm a crazy zealot for pushing Linux, and I think they actually see Linux as a threat to their existance, since they are not willing to put in the time to learn it. I think they waste a ridiculous amount of time rebuilding rotted Windows installs, running MS update-reboot-reboot, removing spyware/malware, cleaning viruses, etc, etc.
When I try to explain to them that Linux would make their life easier, they just look at me like I'm nuts.
We have actually managed to get some Linux in the door on our backend servers, running www, DNS, and mail, but because I'm the only Linux guy, support of those servers generally falls on me. Our Network Admin has some BSD experience from his former ISP job, so he helps out some in this area, but I still end up doing a lot of it. Fortunately the Linux servers are very reliable, and don't require huge amounts of attention.
I'd love see all of our desktop installs replaced with Linux, but at the same time, in our current situation, I am the only one who would know anything about supporting them. I have enough on my plate already, and I can't really encourage Linux on the desktop without help.
Recently, after the MS-Blaster fiasco, I started a pilot project with one of our users running a Linux desktop, with our Director's blessing. Our company is actually in a better position for migration than many, because we run our mission critical Windows-only apps on Citrix metaframe servers. It has proved to be favorable, but going forward with complete rollout means a) Forcing our techs to learn Linux (unlikely), or b) Firing our techs and hiring Linux techs (not going to happen).
At this point all I can hope for is to push for a requirement that all future techs that we hire have Linux experience. At the rate we are growing, it will probably take 10 years before we have enough Linux expertise in-house to support a company-wide Linux rollout, so Linus is probably right on the money.
Sir, whatever you or I may think of Microsoft, it is never time for legislation when it comes to Internet content.
If you want to let the government(s) get through the door to this kind of stuff, then your asking for a heap of trouble.
Microsoft doesn't want Google because they perceive them as a threat. They want Google because Google has what they see as the most important thing in the world - the front door to the Internet.
Microsoft knows that it while it may be impossible buy the protocols and standards that run the Internet, they can conceivably buy the de facto "gatekeeper".
Thing is, Google as is so popular, partly because of it's level of integrity as a company, not the other way around. It would be so easy for them to abuse this position if only for a while. Given Microsoft's track record, I think they would find the opportunities to abuse Google's position irresistable, which of course, would probably destroy Google's position as leader in fairly short order anyway.
And why do I only say that some people probably complained. Because if they did, no one remembers it now.
People did complain, and I do remember.
I grew up in a rural mountainous area, where we had three TV channels: two VHF, and one UHF. Despite the fact that the UHF channel was from the city closest to us (each station was in a different city), it was the one with the horrible picture. Why? Because UHF is at such a higher frequency, the signal is pretty much line-of-sight, so it's much more easily blocked by mountains, buildings, trees, and whatever else is in the way. Also many of the earlier TV antennas were not tuned for UHF. I remember this particular station selling UHF antennas directly just so people would have a chance of picking them up. Any station with the misfortune of receiving a frequency allocation in the UHF band has several strikes against them before they air their first program.
On the other hand the VHF channels (especially channels 2-4) are capable of being viewed over extremely long distances (hundreds of miles) courtesy of a phenomenon called "sporadic E skip". I've seen it myself back in my rabbit ear days. Pretty cool.
I use the remote display capabilities of X all of the time. If anything, instead of removing that feature, I wish they would work on making the X protocol use less bandwidth, so it can be used painlessly over a slow link (such as my 128k upstream DSL connection).
I've always liked Mapblast and its Line Drive directions.
Mapblast was recently acquired by Microsoft and renamed "MSN Maps and Directions", but it's still a good service. The Line Drive directions simply show you the turns with cross-streets, and mileages between each waypoint, without anything else cluttering up the map.
The radio is free for the listening, and online file trading is the new radio.
That's a silly comparison.
Listening to the radio is a passive activity. Online file trading (copying) isn't. Yes the music played on the radio is free, but it's just a promotion/teaser. With radio, you can't listen to a particular song ANY TIME YOU WANT TO. They want you hear the song, like it, and then go BUY the CD!
Trying to understand Linux as a "Windows substitute" is a doomed prospect.
Both Windows and Linux are OS's that will run on my computer. So are BSD, Solaris, etc.
One will always be a substitute for the another. Yes they are designed differently, but there are only so many things you are going be able to do with a given amount of computing power, regardless of operating system is running underneath.
I think that most people who go to the trouble of making a switch from Windows to Linux, are expecting to have to do things somewhat differently; it's just that they get annoyed when something that used to be a trivial task in Windows becomes a monumental task in Linux.
To me, most of these annoyances don't involve day-to-day use, but involve getting the box configured into a usable state in the first place. These annoyances are getting resolved one at a time in Linux. First it was installing Linux itself. That has been for the most part taken care of (with most distros). Next was installing software. Pretty much taken care of as well as long as the software has been packaged, and nothing is better than apt-get IMHO.
But there are still little lingering problems.
Like multimedia on the web, for example. Linux distros in general are ridiculously clunky a dealing with this. Either the file, stream, whatever requires a plug-in that isn't (easily) installed, a mime type that hasn't been configured yet, or a player that you don't have. Every one knows that mplayer is the one player capable of playing almost everything right now, including Windows Media streams, yet most distro makers out of pride, prejudice or whatever refuse to make it the default player for media files. I say the player that just works wins. If I want to use something else let me change the default. Mozilla plugger is a kluge that sort of fixes some of this stuff for the web, but it doesn't always work, and other browsers like Opera and Konqueror rely on Mozilla plugger instead of writing their own plug-in handler, so now you have a kluge for a kluge as a sort-of solution to the problem.
I know this stuff sounds superficial, but what do most people do when they first fire up a computer at home? They browse the web, just like they would if they were using Windows!
Thing is, I've used Linux since about 1994. I've watched it grow from an almost unusable state to something that is seriously challenging Windows for the hearts and minds of computer users. I think much of this is due to KDE, which emulates the best features of Windows, while adding quite a few innovations of it's own. (Sure wish there was fish:// in Explorer). But I still get very annoyed by the amount of time I have to spend configuring minor things just to get a Linux box usable everytime I set one up.
It is also nice to be able to sit the thing in my lap and sit in the same room as my wife and hold down a conversation instead of being relegating to one room while I aimlessly surf.
I sometimes use my laptop (which actually belongs to my company) for the same reasons, but I have to tell you, when it comes to comfort, nothing beats my desktop. I prefer my big 21" monitor, full size keyboard, and speakers that actually sound good. I can work all day/night at my desktop, but I can only tolerate a couple of hours at a time sitting on the couch with my laptop squinting at the tiny screen, while shifting positions trying to remain comfortable.
The thing that really pisses me off are the people at my office who bitch and moan about how much they need a laptop instead of a desktop. I actually believe they see the laptop as sort of a status symbol for some reason, but when they get one, most of them rarely if ever take it off their port replicator! They just want to be seen with a laptop on their desk. It irritates me because we can purchase two really nice desktop systems (which are more powerful and upgradable) for the price of one of those laptops.
I don't understand why people have such a hard time understanding why serving up copywrited material to others is ok, legally, ethically, or morally.
Referring to this activity as sharing, trading, or swapping music is not correct! It is simply MAKING COPIES!
Sharing something is giving up a part of something of value to you to someone else for their benefit, and if you do that, you give up some of your benefits. Trading or swapping something means giving something of value to someone else while receiving something of value from them in return. P2P networks do not work this way. When you offer your music on a P2P network, you are sharing nothing, because when someone else downloads the file, you've lost nothing. You still have the original file plus any files you've downloaded. All of this has the effect of devaluing the original material.
Look at it this way... if I make copies of my money and give it to you, am I sharing some of my money with you? Nope. But what I did do is effectively reduce the value of the money I still have, as well as the money that others have. That is why copying money is illegal. If everyone could make perfect copies of money and give it away, the original money wouldn't be worth much would it?
This is why I don't understand why everyone is making such a stink about what the RIAA is doing. They are simply trying to prevent the value of their members products from being reduced to zero by people giving away copies.
When the RIAA went after the operators of the P2P networks they were doing the wrong thing, because P2P has legitimate uses. So do copiers, fax machines, file servers, search engines, etc.
Going after "sharers" is exactly the correct thing to do, because these are the people that are reducing the value of their products.
Now, I'm not trying to be holier-than-thou here. Have I done this? Yep. But a while back I started to think about how much hard-earned money I had spent on records and CD's, and how much value I placed on it, and the fact that copies of it being widely available on the Internet were making it virtually worthless. So I stopped.
The RIAA is a cartel. IMHO, their member record labels are engaged in price fixing, and using their monopoly market position to prevent non-RIAA labels and artists from gaining exposure. They want to maximize profits for their member labels by paying the artists the absolute minimum. And yes, they have their heads soundly up their ass. All of this doesn't matter. Giving away copies of copyrighted material is illegal. They are selling a product and you are expected to pay for it. OPEC is also a cartel which exists for many of the same reasons as the RIAA. But I still have to pay for my gas.
The bad news is if these leads to a shortwave resurgence Clear Channel will buy up all the shortwave stations so they can broadcast crap music to the ends of the Earth.
Well I don't know if that would be any worse what we have now. Except for the VOA, and WWV time signals, just about the only SW stations broadcasting from the US right now are a bunch of evangelist Christian stations.
Doesn't present a very well-balanced view of America.
At least a bunch of Clear Channel owned music stations would give people in other parts of the world some insight on the crappy radio we have to listen to every day!
Who "sponsors" major PBS programming? Most of the time, it's Fortune 50 companies like ADM that the general public has never heard of, but the upscale demographic PBS caters to have.
Bear in mind that there is a reason that companies like ADM and the big oil companies underwrite NPR and PBS programming. These companies are the ones that are often attacked by the liberals for being environmental threats. They know the audience is predominately liberal, and by underwriting NPR and PBS programming, they hope they can sway their opinions.
They want people to think "Wow, ADM made this wonderful program possible? They must not be such bad guys after all!"