In the actual pilot, there was no nibbler, no laws of physics really either, since that toy thing rolled back and knocked him into the pod. The nibbler episode with the brain spawn took advantage of the fact that since thats what you saw happen, you never saw the feet of the chair, so they could change what happened simply by showing nibbler there, and end up changing what you thought you saw in the first episode.
Stability. Not every linux installation is on some geeks desk, some applications and installations require absolute stability, or as close as you can get, that means nothing but bug fixes. 2.6 might be called the stable branch, but its relatively untested compared to 2.4. Other then that, give me one good reason to move my 486 to 2.6.
A maintainer of a Open Source or Free Software project is under NO OBLIGATION to fix anything, or even to guarantee that it works at all. It says so right in the standard disclaimer, its provided in the hopes that its useful, nothing more. If it doesn't work, the only person you can rely upon to fix it is yourself, and it is nothing but whining to expect someone else to ix it for you, so yes, they can just sit down and shut up if all they're going to do is whine and cry it doesn't work. For the record, good bug reports aren't whining, but even then you can't expect it to be fixed immediately.
The reason I mention the religious blindness is that it works both ways. The article uses it in rejection of all things closed and proprietary, but that implies the reverse, all things open and free are the only way. With this mind set, users of FOSS feel that it is their right to DEMAND that all software is free and the maintainers are REQUIRED to give all the same support to their little pet project as if it they when out and paid for it. Yes a linux user may feel smug in getting something to work right, and so they should, you should take pride in your accomplishments, and yes at the end of the day, the only thing that is important is if you learned something.
To paraphrase you, nothing pisses me off more then someone so damned blinded by their own beliefs that its their right to have FOSS given to them with all the work done for them, that they see a platform as a religion ("...I believe in (Linux)...") that exists to quelsh all that they are told is evil ("displace Microsoft"), refuse to realize that they have actually no right to expect anything from anyone, even if they released their work for anyone to use.
I think you'll find that most people do not follow the same religion as you do, that being putting your faith in the almighty RMS, and really do release software in the hopes that its useful, but with no warranty at all, and yes, they program for themselves. This is why Linux was released in the first place, remember Linux is 'just an engineer' not a blind disciple of RMS. If you really want a platform that was created for your religious beliefs, ie a platform I believe in (Linux) and refuse to allow it to mature into something that could displace Microsoft you should be using the GNU/HURD, but then again, you'd have to sit down and actually work out the problems yourself, I don't think the people working on it take to kindly to "OMG IT WONT READ OVER 2GB MAKE IT WORK", and they'll probably tell you to sit down, shut up and do it yourself, its not like you paid for it.
I would say the RAID system has more business being near the SATA/ATA controller then the firewall does.
You have the chipset being the bus's traffic cop and directing everything, and on top of that, its going to analyze, though probably very simply, and scrub every packet that crosses it. It just strikes me as something that the chipset shouldn't be doing, if you really feel the need for a firewall on chip, throw it on a special NIC. On top of it, how do you update it when every problem is found? Flash the bios? I don't know about you, but I don't want to be doing that all that often. I think that putting the firewall in the chipset was a bad idea.
Does everything have to have a practical use? Couldn't those who participated just wanted the challenge, to see if they could do it? Does everything you do have a practical use?
The GIMP, not Gimp, is an acronym, GNU Image Manipulation Program, it does not mean that it has a limp or is in some way Lame (Lame Ain't an MP3 Encoder). PostgreSQL is so named because it is an outgrowth of the Postgres DBMS from Berkeley many years ago, was altered to use standard SQL and so they combined the two to name the resultant product.
Often 'commercial' products have bland names whereas personal projects are able to be named with whatever the original developer(s) wished, often in line with their separate personalities resulting in colourfull names. Don't put so much stock in a name, its not all that important.
There's always at least one person who has it all solved if only distos didn't give you any choice. There are several, even the most recent SuSE beta made defaults for everything.
The biggest complaint about them? There's no choice, they don't know what apps I use, it's too hard to configure.
Many Environments is a good thing, apperently KDE doesn't work for you, personally I like it, but because you have the choice you can find something that does work for you. Try that on Windows, or a Mac if it doesn't work the way you work. Yes there are 3rd party shells for Windows, but they have several problems, Search just doesn't work in BB4Win unless you call it in the right way, I had to edit LiteStep's menu to see all programs, yada yada yada, but I like them better then what came with XP so I went through the work. Its much easier to have an environment that works for me under X becase of the many window managers and desktop enviornments, as opposed to you working for the envionment when you have no choice.
So I just can't see how There Can Be Only One is in anyway going to improve Linux usability.
Re:Cost of switching distributions?
on
Red Hat Recap
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· Score: 4, Interesting
What they're complaining about is writing to specifics, and then for some reason expecting those specifics to be in every other distro.
For instance, lets say I write something to run on Debian specifically. This app requires a init script as the system boots, so it is hard coded into the app to write the script to/etc/init.d and links in the/etc/rc#.d directories. I then go ahead say that this is written for "Linux" and distribute it. One of my clients runs Slackware, where the SysV style init scripts are in/etc/rc.d/init.d so my hard coded app that was written for "Linux" now only works on Debain because I wrote for a Debain specific setup.
The reaction should be, write it in a more neutral way, not whine that I wrote for a specific feature that surprise, surprise, doesn't exist on another distro.
What made me laugh about this is that its no different then any other OS, I write something for Windows its not going to work straight across on Solaris, or write for *BSD and it wont run on OS X.
You have to provide this valid information when you register a business, and take out insurance, apply for credit, the list goes on, and to varying levels its all public to those who want to look. Owning a domain is no different, and is closer to owning a business then it is credit information. The only way to really be anonymous is to have no part in the world around you.
With faith in Apple I do feel (hope) that they made more changes then simply cvs FreeBSD's source tree and slap it on NeXT. Mainly my point is that OS X is not simply FreeBSD with a pretty face as some contend.
Well technically they bought a company and took the NeXT step;) Sorry I couldn't resist. Seriously though, OS X is a NeXT derivative with some *BSD to either fill in gaps or choose the best implementation.
This is what makes me laugh the most when I see these calls that linux must be a MS desktop killer, there's just too much choice there must be defaults so the stupid users can just work, don't ask questions at every turn, and yet, when a distribution comes along that makes these choices for the user, clueless or not, its always the first thing complained about, and complained about the loudest, and someone says its just being like MS.
First, this is a beta, there's bugs don't worry about it so much. Second you have the choice of whatever but because its a beta, you have to work for it a little, so don't complain about it so much. Thirdly, make up your damn mind, should a desktop distro have defaults? If it should stop whining when it does. If not, then maybe users should be actually educated as to how to use the magical box sitting on their desk and people should stop complaining about how hard it is and whine that there isn't candy coated GUI with a paper clip to hold their hands through a wizard.
I do however believe that there shouldn't be pop-ups and ads on the support pages.
Well if thats how you want to look at it. However here Knoppix is a great thing, a godsend at times. It has been able to rescue systems and information I don't know often from systems that otherwise would have been simply dead or would have taken much longer to fix.
If you want to think of it as simply a toy thats all it will be to you, but don't discount it as a real tool just because it can run entirely from a cd.
I never said you did;) that was there more as I felt that it needed to be added to what I said.
While were having fun with the dictionary though, one definition of an analogy is: A form of logical inference or an instance of it, based on the assumption that if two things are known to be alike in some respects, then they must be alike in other respects. Therefore using your tuna example, He smelled like a tuna, therefore he must be a tuna. Isn't english fun, and yes I know its a logical fallacy.
Simply being capitalist does not preclude being open and sharing to solve common problems, it just often works out that way when the capitalist becomes short sighted and greedy. If being capitalist was exclusive of being helpful to the community or industry in which they compete, companies would not fund research in public institutions, and they would aggressively fight all published standards, and before you say Microsoft, they do not fight all open standards.
On the other hand, being open does not mean sharing everything. There are portions of RHEL that can not be freely and openly exchanged, and until recently YAST was also closed.
It is often short sighted to group things together into groups based on extremely simple criteria just because you like one side and not the other. Your analogy, while appropriate in some regards, boils down to people that do things I like are like farmers and those that don't are just savage animals.
Unless the Average Joe is running an entire corporation without any IT staff, either full time, on contract or otherwise, I don't see how his lack of knowledge would be a problem. These points would be covered as a contract is negotiated, presumably with IBM in this case.
This thread dates from 1989 and contains the phrase "Imminent death of net predicted" at least 6 times, with the first one appearing not long after the creation of Usenet. "Imminent death of net predicted" had a long and possible proud run.
Last time (only time) I bought a printer, it had a huge big poster thing that said, Step 1..., Step 2..., Step 3.., until you were done. You had to read it.
Now this aunt probably isn't going to know how to install a printer just by watching prompts, because a) she has to do something to start the prompts, and b) she has to physically plug stuff in, which no GUI can do. How did she know how to do it? She read a manual. Amazing huh. No matter what, they have no choice on if they read a manual, only when the read it, before they make a mistake, or after.
As far as benefiting their users, who are CUPS users, who do they create software for? Take a look at their FAQ, which starts out:
CUPS provides a portable printing layer for UNIX(R)-based operating systems. It has been developed by Easy Software Products to promote a standard printing solution for all UNIX vendors and users. CUPS provides the System V and Berkeley command-line interfaces.
Before someone decided Linux was a MS killer and had to be candy coated for every tom, dick and harry, ie Linux *had* to be on the desktop *as* Windows, Unix users and vendors implied knowlegeble users. In short, cups as it is was not made for people who refuse to read manuals. Now like any good Unix app anyone can slap a GUI on the front, but not every app has to change to fit what people think Linux should be or 'has' to be. If ESR really found it so hard to install, let him write a better one.
I really am not trying to be eletist, I do not believe that Linux is supposed to be only in the hands of a chosen few. I say the same thing to people on a Mac and Windows, "Learn how to use your computer." For some reason, a Computer is supposed to be the only advanced tool that a user is supposed to remain ignorant about and never have a manual for.
If Linux *has* to be on the desktop, then Apple already beat them to the punch. OS X is everything they say Linux has to be. It has a clean and element UI, its easy to use, it has a well hidden Unix component, and if I remember correctly, it even uses Cups for printing. I don't recall Steve whining about Cups being too hard for the average Mac user, but they did craft a very easy UI on to Cups, that once you read the manual and learned how, and when in the case of USB, to plug your printer in would as for various things that it needed to know. So, is it Cups fault that ESR cant install a printer, or did he just choose a distro that was too advanced for him?
And as a side note, most people here who say that Linux must be easy and simple, will drop it and move to *BSD because Linux "Sold out."
Now I really didn't realize how long this got, and now I'm ranting. So in conclusion, no matter what people claim to the contrary, a tool is only as good as the people who use it. If they've learned how to, it will benefit them, if they refuse to learn, its going to come back and bite them in the ass, and its no ones fault but their own.
It also hides the fact that this whole rant started because he couldn't figure out how to install a printer. Setting up a printer in Linux was one of the first things I did after I figured out how to install it, and surprise surprise all i had to do to get it working was, wait for it, READ THE MANUAL. And yes, i was a beginner, I had never used or seen Linux or Unix before, all my experience was in Windows and Mac's, though yes I was a Windwos Admin.
ESR's little rant here is he doesn't think he should have to read to set something up. I'm glad he's not a mechanic, or a rocket scientist or does anything important for that matter, because if he's that scared of reading a manual and thinking about what he's doing, god help us all if he did something other then complain.
A UI that should be so easy you don't need to know what your doing gave us Windows. Not even the Mac, because while that really is simple to use, anything that actually requires you to know what your doing is hidden away where people who read the manual know where it is. There are MCSE's that can't install windows or understand what promoting and demoting a domain controller is, because all they have to do is point a click with out thinking.,br> Ignorance is bliss until you screw everything up, and you will screw it all up.
Is it really so much to ask that people learn how to use the tool they choose to use properly? Is it so much to ask that people know how to read?
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In the actual pilot, there was no nibbler, no laws of physics really either, since that toy thing rolled back and knocked him into the pod. The nibbler episode with the brain spawn took advantage of the fact that since thats what you saw happen, you never saw the feet of the chair, so they could change what happened simply by showing nibbler there, and end up changing what you thought you saw in the first episode.
Futurama - Painstakenly drawn before a live studio audience
Stability. Not every linux installation is on some geeks desk, some applications and installations require absolute stability, or as close as you can get, that means nothing but bug fixes. 2.6 might be called the stable branch, but its relatively untested compared to 2.4. Other then that, give me one good reason to move my 486 to 2.6.
Did you read the part of "Religious Blindness?"
A maintainer of a Open Source or Free Software project is under NO OBLIGATION to fix anything, or even to guarantee that it works at all. It says so right in the standard disclaimer, its provided in the hopes that its useful, nothing more. If it doesn't work, the only person you can rely upon to fix it is yourself, and it is nothing but whining to expect someone else to ix it for you, so yes, they can just sit down and shut up if all they're going to do is whine and cry it doesn't work. For the record, good bug reports aren't whining, but even then you can't expect it to be fixed immediately.
The reason I mention the religious blindness is that it works both ways. The article uses it in rejection of all things closed and proprietary, but that implies the reverse, all things open and free are the only way. With this mind set, users of FOSS feel that it is their right to DEMAND that all software is free and the maintainers are REQUIRED to give all the same support to their little pet project as if it they when out and paid for it. Yes a linux user may feel smug in getting something to work right, and so they should, you should take pride in your accomplishments, and yes at the end of the day, the only thing that is important is if you learned something.
To paraphrase you, nothing pisses me off more then someone so damned blinded by their own beliefs that its their right to have FOSS given to them with all the work done for them, that they see a platform as a religion ("...I believe in (Linux)...") that exists to quelsh all that they are told is evil ("displace Microsoft"), refuse to realize that they have actually no right to expect anything from anyone, even if they released their work for anyone to use.
I think you'll find that most people do not follow the same religion as you do, that being putting your faith in the almighty RMS, and really do release software in the hopes that its useful, but with no warranty at all, and yes, they program for themselves. This is why Linux was released in the first place, remember Linux is 'just an engineer' not a blind disciple of RMS. If you really want a platform that was created for your religious beliefs, ie a platform I believe in (Linux) and refuse to allow it to mature into something that could displace Microsoft you should be using the GNU/HURD, but then again, you'd have to sit down and actually work out the problems yourself, I don't think the people working on it take to kindly to "OMG IT WONT READ OVER 2GB MAKE IT WORK", and they'll probably tell you to sit down, shut up and do it yourself, its not like you paid for it.
You mean something like this?
I would say the RAID system has more business being near the SATA/ATA controller then the firewall does.
You have the chipset being the bus's traffic cop and directing everything, and on top of that, its going to analyze, though probably very simply, and scrub every packet that crosses it. It just strikes me as something that the chipset shouldn't be doing, if you really feel the need for a firewall on chip, throw it on a special NIC. On top of it, how do you update it when every problem is found? Flash the bios? I don't know about you, but I don't want to be doing that all that often. I think that putting the firewall in the chipset was a bad idea.
Does everything have to have a practical use? Couldn't those who participated just wanted the challenge, to see if they could do it? Does everything you do have a practical use?
The GIMP, not Gimp, is an acronym, GNU Image Manipulation Program, it does not mean that it has a limp or is in some way Lame (Lame Ain't an MP3 Encoder). PostgreSQL is so named because it is an outgrowth of the Postgres DBMS from Berkeley many years ago, was altered to use standard SQL and so they combined the two to name the resultant product.
Often 'commercial' products have bland names whereas personal projects are able to be named with whatever the original developer(s) wished, often in line with their separate personalities resulting in colourfull names. Don't put so much stock in a name, its not all that important.
Betcha can't install just one.
...canuck masterminds.
What world do you live in man? Canadians still think that meat causes flies and a pile of dirty laundry creates mice.
There's always at least one person who has it all solved if only distos didn't give you any choice. There are several, even the most recent SuSE beta made defaults for everything.
The biggest complaint about them? There's no choice, they don't know what apps I use, it's too hard to configure.
Many Environments is a good thing, apperently KDE doesn't work for you, personally I like it, but because you have the choice you can find something that does work for you. Try that on Windows, or a Mac if it doesn't work the way you work. Yes there are 3rd party shells for Windows, but they have several problems, Search just doesn't work in BB4Win unless you call it in the right way, I had to edit LiteStep's menu to see all programs, yada yada yada, but I like them better then what came with XP so I went through the work. Its much easier to have an environment that works for me under X becase of the many window managers and desktop enviornments, as opposed to you working for the envionment when you have no choice.
So I just can't see how There Can Be Only One is in anyway going to improve Linux usability.
What they're complaining about is writing to specifics, and then for some reason expecting those specifics to be in every other distro.
/etc/init.d and links in the /etc/rc#.d directories. I then go ahead say that this is written for "Linux" and distribute it. One of my clients runs Slackware, where the SysV style init scripts are in /etc/rc.d/init.d so my hard coded app that was written for "Linux" now only works on Debain because I wrote for a Debain specific setup.
For instance, lets say I write something to run on Debian specifically. This app requires a init script as the system boots, so it is hard coded into the app to write the script to
The reaction should be, write it in a more neutral way, not whine that I wrote for a specific feature that surprise, surprise, doesn't exist on another distro.
What made me laugh about this is that its no different then any other OS, I write something for Windows its not going to work straight across on Solaris, or write for *BSD and it wont run on OS X.
You have to provide this valid information when you register a business, and take out insurance, apply for credit, the list goes on, and to varying levels its all public to those who want to look. Owning a domain is no different, and is closer to owning a business then it is credit information. The only way to really be anonymous is to have no part in the world around you.
With faith in Apple I do feel (hope) that they made more changes then simply cvs FreeBSD's source tree and slap it on NeXT. Mainly my point is that OS X is not simply FreeBSD with a pretty face as some contend.
Well technically they bought a company and took the NeXT step ;) Sorry I couldn't resist. Seriously though, OS X is a NeXT derivative with some *BSD to either fill in gaps or choose the best implementation.
This is what makes me laugh the most when I see these calls that linux must be a MS desktop killer, there's just too much choice there must be defaults so the stupid users can just work, don't ask questions at every turn, and yet, when a distribution comes along that makes these choices for the user, clueless or not, its always the first thing complained about, and complained about the loudest, and someone says its just being like MS.
First, this is a beta, there's bugs don't worry about it so much. Second you have the choice of whatever but because its a beta, you have to work for it a little, so don't complain about it so much. Thirdly, make up your damn mind, should a desktop distro have defaults? If it should stop whining when it does. If not, then maybe users should be actually educated as to how to use the magical box sitting on their desk and people should stop complaining about how hard it is and whine that there isn't candy coated GUI with a paper clip to hold their hands through a wizard.
I do however believe that there shouldn't be pop-ups and ads on the support pages.
Well if thats how you want to look at it. However here Knoppix is a great thing, a godsend at times. It has been able to rescue systems and information I don't know often from systems that otherwise would have been simply dead or would have taken much longer to fix.
If you want to think of it as simply a toy thats all it will be to you, but don't discount it as a real tool just because it can run entirely from a cd.
While were having fun with the dictionary though, one definition of an analogy is: A form of logical inference or an instance of it, based on the assumption that if two things are known to be alike in some respects, then they must be alike in other respects. Therefore using your tuna example, He smelled like a tuna, therefore he must be a tuna. Isn't english fun, and yes I know its a logical fallacy.
Simply being capitalist does not preclude being open and sharing to solve common problems, it just often works out that way when the capitalist becomes short sighted and greedy. If being capitalist was exclusive of being helpful to the community or industry in which they compete, companies would not fund research in public institutions, and they would aggressively fight all published standards, and before you say Microsoft, they do not fight all open standards.
On the other hand, being open does not mean sharing everything. There are portions of RHEL that can not be freely and openly exchanged, and until recently YAST was also closed.
It is often short sighted to group things together into groups based on extremely simple criteria just because you like one side and not the other. Your analogy, while appropriate in some regards, boils down to people that do things I like are like farmers and those that don't are just savage animals.
Ya I can't wait to get a clear view of Venus either.
This thread dates from 1989 and contains the phrase "Imminent death of net predicted" at least 6 times, with the first one appearing not long after the creation of Usenet. "Imminent death of net predicted" had a long and possible proud run.
Now this aunt probably isn't going to know how to install a printer just by watching prompts, because a) she has to do something to start the prompts, and b) she has to physically plug stuff in, which no GUI can do. How did she know how to do it? She read a manual. Amazing huh. No matter what, they have no choice on if they read a manual, only when the read it, before they make a mistake, or after.
As far as benefiting their users, who are CUPS users, who do they create software for? Take a look at their FAQ, which starts out: Before someone decided Linux was a MS killer and had to be candy coated for every tom, dick and harry, ie Linux *had* to be on the desktop *as* Windows, Unix users and vendors implied knowlegeble users. In short, cups as it is was not made for people who refuse to read manuals. Now like any good Unix app anyone can slap a GUI on the front, but not every app has to change to fit what people think Linux should be or 'has' to be. If ESR really found it so hard to install, let him write a better one.
I really am not trying to be eletist, I do not believe that Linux is supposed to be only in the hands of a chosen few. I say the same thing to people on a Mac and Windows, "Learn how to use your computer." For some reason, a Computer is supposed to be the only advanced tool that a user is supposed to remain ignorant about and never have a manual for.
If Linux *has* to be on the desktop, then Apple already beat them to the punch. OS X is everything they say Linux has to be. It has a clean and element UI, its easy to use, it has a well hidden Unix component, and if I remember correctly, it even uses Cups for printing. I don't recall Steve whining about Cups being too hard for the average Mac user, but they did craft a very easy UI on to Cups, that once you read the manual and learned how, and when in the case of USB, to plug your printer in would as for various things that it needed to know. So, is it Cups fault that ESR cant install a printer, or did he just choose a distro that was too advanced for him?
And as a side note, most people here who say that Linux must be easy and simple, will drop it and move to *BSD because Linux "Sold out."
Now I really didn't realize how long this got, and now I'm ranting. So in conclusion, no matter what people claim to the contrary, a tool is only as good as the people who use it. If they've learned how to, it will benefit them, if they refuse to learn, its going to come back and bite them in the ass, and its no ones fault but their own.
It also hides the fact that this whole rant started because he couldn't figure out how to install a printer. Setting up a printer in Linux was one of the first things I did after I figured out how to install it, and surprise surprise all i had to do to get it working was, wait for it, READ THE MANUAL. And yes, i was a beginner, I had never used or seen Linux or Unix before, all my experience was in Windows and Mac's, though yes I was a Windwos Admin.
ESR's little rant here is he doesn't think he should have to read to set something up. I'm glad he's not a mechanic, or a rocket scientist or does anything important for that matter, because if he's that scared of reading a manual and thinking about what he's doing, god help us all if he did something other then complain.
A UI that should be so easy you don't need to know what your doing gave us Windows. Not even the Mac, because while that really is simple to use, anything that actually requires you to know what your doing is hidden away where people who read the manual know where it is. There are MCSE's that can't install windows or understand what promoting and demoting a domain controller is, because all they have to do is point a click with out thinking.,br>
Ignorance is bliss until you screw everything up, and you will screw it all up.
Is it really so much to ask that people learn how to use the tool they choose to use properly? Is it so much to ask that people know how to read?