Nearly every computer on the planet will play a.wav file. So why are they using anything except the most compatible sound format available? If they're going to sell out they ought to get Real to PAY them for it at least. It's free advertising.
You show up at the test taking place and this system will give you an automated test. It will score it and produce a certification card for your real estate sales license if you pass.
The programmer created a visual basic application for the state of Missouri. They then sold it to the state of Georgia as well. It's a completely different user interface. How does he do it? He codes IF statements all over the application to hide/show the appropriate form controls and business rules. It was completely impossible to edit anything on the form.
From their point of view they pay people to work, and they believe they're spending their time on the phone on personal businees instead. Rather than fire the people who do this they're putting in a new policy.
You should not have used your personal phone for company business. They're not paying for it, and you shouldn't use it for personal business during work hours. Tell them you won't bring your phone any more. If they expect you to be on call tell them they can provide the phone.
> This is why every Linux window-manager has an easy way to get a command line up
Yeah. All the linux boxes I run I just use the command line. They're all server type applications where I don't need a gui so all that isn't even installed on them. Shell scripting makes linux actually useful for me.
> Linux does _everything_ MSWindows does better with the sole exception of running MSWindows programs.
You might be right, but I don't believe it personally.
The first thing that comes to mind is the support for games or multimedia. I had a miserable time trying to get my tv tuner card running. None of the games I tried worked at any where near the performance level the same game on the same hardware provided under windows.
Maybe there are tweaks, or patches, or packages I could have installed to get my box to work better than Windows. If I don't know they're available, which ones to install, or they're not simple to install, then they fail the 'linux is simple' argument being presented. Linux might be better, but it's not simple.
The Beta video recording standard was better than vhs for video quality, and so was laser disk for that matter, but they both ended up not getting widely adopted. Being 'better' won't always win you wide adoption.
The guys behind Lindows (probably several others I'm not aware of too) are trying to fix these issues but they weren't "there" yet last time I checked. I still can't do the things I want to do on linux with the speed and ease I can do them on my windows box. When I can I'll switch, I don't like MS much.
Cool! I'm glad to see all my concerns got addressed. I guess I will probably have to do a lot of research into what I want then build it with Gentoo. I'll try to download mandrake 10, it seemed pretty capable last time I looked at it.
> Well, where should it be mounted, then? What if I want to mount the second partition of may hard drive to/home? Or my USB camera to/camera. How can the system know these things unless I *tell* it? Oh, wait, you're used to Windows where the OS does things *to* you, rather than *for* you.
It should have a default place where devices of each type are mounted just as you said. I think the best way would be to have a system setting where you can change the default behaviour if you don't like it. Then the lazy types like me can use the defaults, and if you don't like the behaviour you can set it to what makes you happy.
> if you want to try out Linux again, you don't need to "waste... money" to do it. It's free. Unlike, say, Windows XP
I know. I tried slackware, redhat, and mandrake. I even paid for the copy of redhat. I built a Gentoo box from kernel sources for my web server. But you missed the point. Why should I spend time installing yet another copy of this week's linux distro when I could be kicking back playing games, enjoying a nice meal, or using my computer for some other enjoyable activity? They're only incrementally different each time anyhow. My time is valuable to me. Time is money as they say. I decided to wait until Linux grew up.
The overall point I was trying to make has been made by other respected experts(?) in computer science. The current user interface we use isn't very good. We carry around silly baggage from the past that needs to be revamped. Linux isn't outdoing windows, it's struggling to keep up from a user interface point of view.
> If I have a hard disk in my machine, I don't expect it to be automatically mounted. The same goes with any other storage device (eg, USB mass storage, floppies, etc). Why should CD's behave differently?
Huh? You have hard disks in your computer that aren't accessable when you boot? If I put a storage device in my computer it's because I want access to it. That's why I put it in. Having it mounted automatically for me is a logical time saver. It's bad design to ask a user to confirm they want the standard expected behaviour.
> How hard did you look? Hell, *when* did you look? As of Mozilla version 1.4.1
It looks like it was added when they changed to the gecko rendering engine with version 0.9.7 or somewhere near there. In any case, it was present in the windows version (at that time) but did not work in the linux version.
>It is present. You appear to have missed it somehow. Perhaps you should look harder next time.
The original discussion was about why Linux isn't simple to use. Here's the perfect example. If a user can't find out how to do something simple easily then doesn't that clearly show it's not simple to use?
> Well, on this Fedora box that I have in front of me, if I open the panel menu at the bottom of the screen and select "System Settings", I'm presented a menu with options to configure pretty much everything a naive user would need to configure. Is this not easy enough for you?
Everything to do with changing the user interface layout and behaviour depends on if you're using Gnome, KDE, or something else.
> Umm... if a catastrophic power failure occurs with a non-journalled filesystem, the OS has no way of telling if, prior to the failure, there was blocks that were only partially written to disk. As such, on such filesystems, an fsck is necessary (well, assuming you want to be safe).
So why did the systems I tried all insist on doing an fsck? I'm guessing they didn't use a journaling filesystem. Why didn't they install a journaling filesystem by default if it's better?
> Nonetheless, if you use a modern OS you can make use of a journalled filesystem (in Linux, ext3 (default on most modern distros), XFS, JFS, ReiserFS), in which case an fsck isn't necessary at all. Ever. But, of course, you didn't look into that, either, did you?
Nope, not lately. As I already said, I use the computer to get work done. Evaluating new operating system features is not an end in itself for me. Having to waste time and money on such things is an annoyance at best.
If Linux is to replace Windows it has to do what windows does better than Windows, and simply enough that idiots like me can figure out how to use it. You won't need to convince people, they'll see the wisdom in changing themselves.
> This is just plain wrong. With KDE and GNOME, you can just double click on the CD-ROM icon and, AFAIK, it mounts the drive automatically. And I'm pretty sure Fedora does CD-ROM automounting out of the box without any user intervention whatsoever.
I shouldn't have to double click on an icon. I should just insert the disk. Monitoring the disk inserted event the hardware provides shouldn't be that tough. Perhaps they figured it out in 'Fedora'.
> Funny. I just did a ctrl-+ and a ctrl-- in Firefox, and the font increased and then decreased in size. In terms of font quality, any modern distro supports TrueType fonts, and it's fairly easy to acquire a decent set of TrueType fonts (assuming your distro doesn't install them automatically).
Last time I checked Mozilla didn't do that. Isn't firefox beta software still? It may have been added since I last checked. The question seems to me to be why is a useful feature like that not present when it's been in the windows version of the same software for more than a year?
> it really depends on how you define "a mess".
All the system admin tasks in one place. In some sort of consistant organization.
>Ooookay. I will guarantee you, you've *never* used an OS that *doesn't* cache writes to disk. Linux does it. So does Windows. Frankly, I don't even know where you get this one from.
I walk up to a computer. It's not doing anything. I pull the cord out of the wall. Linux fsck's when it restarts. Windows does a chkdisk. If I wasn't doing anything at the time why is this necessary? What wasn't written to the disk when the last application quit running? I should be able to turn the box on, reload the OS into RAM and go.
I can't agree with that. I'd love to use linux but I have to agree with another poster that windows is easier to use. I actually use my computer for things besides building new kernels and tweaking the desktop settings;)
My specific complaints are:
You have to mount and uncount cd's. That's awful.
The font support in X is awful. I can't resize the text of web pages in Linux Mozilla. I've got poor eyesight and I sometimes really need that.
The system administration is even more of a mess than windows in most of the linux systems I've tried (gentoo, redhat, slackware, mandrake).
My other big beef isn't present only on Linux though. Having writes to the hard disk cached and possibly lost when power fails is bad bad bad! I won't buy a vcr that forgets all the settings when the power fails.
Fear usually wins when most people choose. The choices are: trusting their own judgement, that might or might not be right, or being afraid to change because it might be wrong and it will cost you big time.
SCO is going to do a lot to promote linux by spotlighting companies that use it. My boss will never again be able to say "no serious company trusts kiddie software like Linux for anything critical"
They repeat claims with no explanation of those claims. The claims are made by people with no mention of the credentials of the speaker(s). Why should I believe these unsubstantiated claims by people who might have no more informed opinion than the dog catcher?
I've asked past employers for this in the past. They flatly refused to even consider modifying their agreement. Unless you're someone who has something they can't get elsewhere they will probably consider getting someone else. Someone who "isn't so much trouble".
I'd be happy to just get one that would drive me to work! Although, in some of the traffic I recall a hellbore or some infinite repeaters would be a fun addition;)
1. You're leaving an industry that pays well, and is guaranteed to expand as American average ages increase. You're going to an industry that's been hit hard by the recession and where wages are dropping because of international competition. Is this financially wise?
2. Do you understand what your new potential career is all about? "Be careful what you ask for, you might get it." Programming is about careful attention to intricate and arcane details. If you do your job well then everything just works and it's completely hidden. The ability to do it right is almost never under your control. If you do it badly then you're "that jackass who can't even write a simple program", even though it's NOT simple. You're giving up a job where you're respected for one where you're an interchangable cog that's blamed for management's failures?
3. If you have enough money to do it without becoming just another hack programmer and to develop new products yourself it can be great. If not, stay where you are!
Linux and wine isn't a bad idea but I'd probably have trouble selling it to the staff there. They've got a tool that works for them and they might be a little resistant to me ripping their system up. If it was redone as a web page it's got better potential to find homes for the critters and won't impact their systems. It would also be a good way to help out more than one shelter at a time.
The shelter is called "Wayside Waifs" and it's located in Kansas City. They're a not for profit private animal shelter. I'm sure they'd be happy to get some donations.
The resume angle occurred to me when I did it. It ended up not being being used. The animal shelter has such a miserable budget their computers were obsolete. A LOT obsolete. I wrote something that would work on any windows compatible box, but I hadn't counted on windows 3.1 and DOS on a 386!;)
I really should resurrect that project via the web. Then I just have to get someone to host the thing as a tax writeoff.
Excellent point! I've personally been doing exactly that. The last time I was unemployed I was creating and selling 3d object on turbosquid.com and putting together an adoption system for the local animal shelter. None of which would pay the rent though:( I should think bigger and more commercial if I'm going to make it as an entrepenuer.
Slashdot Mirror
MP3 is compressed. It's almost as ubiquitous as wav
Nearly every computer on the planet will play a .wav file. So why are they using anything except
the most compatible sound format available?
If they're going to sell out they ought to get
Real to PAY them for it at least. It's free
advertising.
You show up at the test taking place and this
system will give you an automated test. It will
score it and produce a certification card for
your real estate sales license if you pass.
The programmer created a visual basic application
for the state of Missouri. They then sold it to
the state of Georgia as well. It's
a completely different user interface. How
does he do it? He codes IF statements all over
the application to hide/show the appropriate
form controls and business rules. It was
completely impossible to edit anything on the
form.
If you ask any group of human beings if they
would rate themselves as 'very happy' none of
them will respond with very high percentages.
This is a troll or a study by someone
who's not got a clue yet.
From their point of view they pay people to work,
and they believe they're spending their time on the
phone on personal businees instead. Rather than fire
the people who do this they're putting in a new
policy.
You should not have used your personal
phone for company business. They're not paying
for it, and you shouldn't use it for
personal business during work hours.
Tell them you won't bring your phone any more.
If they expect you to be on call tell them
they can provide the phone.
When I take a 'picture' (a screenshot of the
virtual world) in the MMORPG that I play
in who 'owns' the picture? Can I use it for
commercial purposes?
> This is why every Linux window-manager has an easy way to get a command line up
Yeah. All the linux boxes I run I just use the
command line. They're all server type applications
where I don't need a gui so all that isn't even
installed on them. Shell scripting makes linux
actually useful for me.
> Linux does _everything_ MSWindows does better with the sole exception of running MSWindows programs.
You might be right, but I don't believe it
personally.
The first thing that comes to
mind is the support for games or multimedia.
I had a miserable time trying to get my tv
tuner card running. None of the games I tried
worked at any where near the performance level
the same game on the same hardware provided
under windows.
Maybe there are tweaks, or patches, or
packages I could have installed to get my
box to work better than Windows. If I don't
know they're available, which ones to install,
or they're not simple to install, then they fail
the 'linux is simple' argument being presented.
Linux might be better, but it's not simple.
The Beta video recording standard was better than
vhs for video quality, and so was laser disk for
that matter, but they both ended up not getting
widely adopted. Being 'better' won't always win
you wide adoption.
The guys behind Lindows (probably several
others I'm not aware of too) are trying to fix
these issues but they weren't "there" yet last
time I checked. I still can't do the things
I want to do on linux with the speed and ease I
can do them on my windows box. When I can I'll
switch, I don't like MS much.
Take care
Cool! I'm glad to see all my concerns got
addressed. I guess I will probably have to do
a lot of research into what I want then build
it with Gentoo. I'll try to download mandrake
10, it seemed pretty capable last time I looked
at it.
Thanks
> Well, where should it be mounted, then? What if I want to mount the second partition of may hard drive to /home? Or my USB camera to /camera. How can the system know these things unless I *tell* it? Oh, wait, you're used to Windows where the OS does things *to* you, rather than *for* you.
... money" to do it. It's free. Unlike, say, Windows XP
It should have a default place where devices of
each type are mounted just as you said. I think
the best way would be to have a system setting
where you can change the default behaviour if you
don't like it. Then the lazy types like me can
use the defaults, and if you don't like the
behaviour you can set it to what makes you happy.
> if you want to try out Linux again, you don't need to "waste
I know. I tried slackware, redhat, and mandrake.
I even paid for the copy of redhat. I built
a Gentoo box from kernel sources for my web
server. But you missed the point.
Why should I spend time installing
yet another copy of this week's linux distro
when I could be kicking back playing games,
enjoying a nice meal, or using my computer
for some other enjoyable activity? They're
only incrementally different each time anyhow.
My time is valuable to me. Time is money as they
say. I decided to wait until Linux grew up.
The overall point I was trying to make has
been made by other respected experts(?) in
computer science. The current user interface
we use isn't very good. We carry around silly
baggage from the past that needs to be revamped.
Linux isn't outdoing windows, it's
struggling to keep up from a user interface
point of view.
Just my outdated two cents.
> If I have a hard disk in my machine, I don't expect it to be automatically mounted. The same goes with any other storage device (eg, USB mass storage, floppies, etc). Why should CD's behave differently?
Huh? You have hard disks in your computer that
aren't accessable when you boot? If I put a
storage device in my computer it's because I
want access to it. That's why I put it in.
Having it mounted automatically
for me is a logical time saver. It's bad
design to ask a user to confirm they want
the standard expected behaviour.
> How hard did you look? Hell, *when* did you look? As of Mozilla version 1.4.1
It looks like it was added when they changed
to the gecko rendering engine with version 0.9.7
or somewhere near there. In any case, it was
present in the windows version (at that time)
but did not work in the linux version.
>It is present. You appear to have missed it somehow. Perhaps you should look harder next time.
The original discussion was about why Linux isn't
simple to use. Here's the perfect example. If
a user can't find out how to do something simple
easily then doesn't that clearly show it's not
simple to use?
> Well, on this Fedora box that I have in front of me, if I open the panel menu at the bottom of the screen and select "System Settings", I'm presented a menu with options to configure pretty much everything a naive user would need to configure. Is this not easy enough for you?
Everything to do with changing the user interface
layout and behaviour depends on if you're using
Gnome, KDE, or something else.
> Umm... if a catastrophic power failure occurs with a non-journalled filesystem, the OS has no way of telling if, prior to the failure, there was blocks that were only partially written to disk. As such, on such filesystems, an fsck is necessary (well, assuming you want to be safe).
So why did the systems I tried all insist on
doing an fsck? I'm guessing they didn't use
a journaling filesystem. Why didn't they install a
journaling filesystem by default if it's better?
> Nonetheless, if you use a modern OS you can make use of a journalled filesystem (in Linux, ext3 (default on most modern distros), XFS, JFS, ReiserFS), in which case an fsck isn't necessary at all. Ever. But, of course, you didn't look into that, either, did you?
Nope, not lately. As I already said, I use
the computer to get work done. Evaluating new
operating system features is not an end in itself
for me. Having to waste time and money
on such things is an annoyance at best.
If Linux is to replace Windows it has
to do what windows does better than
Windows, and simply enough that idiots like
me can figure out how to use it. You won't
need to convince people, they'll see the
wisdom in changing themselves.
What's wrong with wanting a computer that works
quickly, easily, and boots up in 15 seconds?
What's up with the 'tude dude? Your mom yell
at you for having a messy room?
> This is just plain wrong. With KDE and GNOME, you can just double click on the CD-ROM icon and, AFAIK, it mounts the drive automatically. And I'm pretty sure Fedora does CD-ROM automounting out of the box without any user intervention whatsoever.
I shouldn't have to double click on an icon.
I should just insert the disk. Monitoring
the disk inserted event the hardware provides
shouldn't be that tough. Perhaps they figured it
out in 'Fedora'.
> Funny. I just did a ctrl-+ and a ctrl-- in Firefox, and the font increased and then decreased in size. In terms of font quality, any modern distro supports TrueType fonts, and it's fairly easy to acquire a decent set of TrueType fonts (assuming your distro doesn't install them automatically).
Last time I checked Mozilla didn't do that.
Isn't firefox beta software still? It may
have been added since I last checked. The
question seems to me to be why is a
useful feature like that not present
when it's been in the windows version of
the same software for more than a year?
> it really depends on how you define "a mess".
All the system admin tasks in one place.
In some sort of consistant organization.
>Ooookay. I will guarantee you, you've *never* used an OS that *doesn't* cache writes to disk. Linux does it. So does Windows. Frankly, I don't even know where you get this one from.
I walk up to a computer. It's not doing anything.
I pull the cord out of the wall. Linux fsck's
when it restarts. Windows does a chkdisk. If I
wasn't doing anything at the time why is this
necessary? What wasn't written to the disk when
the last application quit running? I should be
able to turn the box on, reload the OS into RAM
and go.
I can't agree with that. I'd love to use linux ;)
but I have to agree with another poster that
windows is easier to use. I actually use my
computer for things besides building new
kernels and tweaking the desktop settings
My specific complaints are:
You have to mount and uncount cd's. That's awful.
The font support in X is awful. I can't resize
the text of web pages in Linux Mozilla. I've
got poor eyesight and I sometimes really need
that.
The system administration is even more of a mess
than windows in most of the linux systems I've
tried (gentoo, redhat, slackware, mandrake).
My other big beef isn't present only on Linux
though. Having writes to the hard disk cached
and possibly lost when power fails is bad
bad bad! I won't buy a vcr that forgets all
the settings when the power fails.
I've been thinking that for a while now ;)
Fear usually wins when most people choose. The
choices are: trusting their own judgement, that
might or might not be right, or being afraid to
change because it might be wrong and it will cost
you big time.
SCO is going to do a lot to promote linux by
spotlighting companies that use it. My boss will
never again be able to say "no serious company
trusts kiddie software like Linux for anything
critical"
They repeat claims with no explanation of
those claims. The claims are made
by people with no mention of the credentials
of the speaker(s). Why should I believe these
unsubstantiated claims by people who might
have no more informed opinion than the
dog catcher?
I've asked past employers for this in the past.
They flatly refused to even consider modifying
their agreement. Unless you're someone who has
something they can't get elsewhere they will
probably consider getting someone else. Someone
who "isn't so much trouble".
I'd be happy to just get one that would drive me ;)
to work! Although, in some of the traffic I recall
a hellbore or some infinite repeaters would be
a fun addition
YOU! OUT OF THE GENE POOL! BOOOM!!!!
COOL! :)
Some thoughts that occur to me immediately:
1. You're leaving an industry that pays well, and
is guaranteed to expand as American average ages
increase. You're going to an industry that's been
hit hard by the recession and where wages are
dropping because of international competition.
Is this financially wise?
2. Do you understand what your new potential
career is all about? "Be careful what you ask for, you might get it." Programming is about
careful attention to intricate and arcane
details. If you do your job well then everything
just works and it's completely hidden. The ability
to do it right is almost never under your control.
If you do it badly then you're "that jackass who
can't even write a simple program", even though
it's NOT simple. You're giving up a job where
you're respected for one where you're an
interchangable cog that's blamed for management's
failures?
3. If you have enough money to do it without
becoming just another hack programmer and to
develop new products yourself it can be great.
If not, stay where you are!
Linux and wine isn't a bad idea but I'd probably
have trouble selling it to the staff there. They've
got a tool that works for them and they might be
a little resistant to me ripping their system
up. If it was redone as a web page it's got better
potential to find homes for the critters and won't
impact their systems. It would also be a good way
to help out more than one shelter at a time.
The shelter is called "Wayside Waifs" and it's
located in Kansas City. They're a not for profit
private animal shelter. I'm sure they'd be happy
to get some donations.
The resume angle occurred to me when I did it. ;)
It ended up not being being used. The animal
shelter has such a miserable budget their computers
were obsolete. A LOT obsolete. I wrote something
that would work on any windows compatible box,
but I hadn't counted on windows 3.1 and DOS on
a 386!
I really should resurrect that project via the
web. Then I just have to get someone to host the
thing as a tax writeoff.
Excellent point! I've personally been doing exactly :(
that. The last time I was unemployed I was creating
and selling 3d object on turbosquid.com and putting
together an adoption system for the local animal
shelter. None of which would pay the rent though
I should think bigger and more commercial if I'm
going to make it as an entrepenuer.
uh...
To be blunt, because my rent is due RIGHT NOW and I
don't have the cash to pay it?