A little technical correction here. A low pass filter does not defeat Macrovision. If anything, you'll end up filtering out the color information in the signal. Macrovision fools with the vertical blanking interval of the television signal. This is a part of the signal that is in between two frames, instructing the electron beam to go back to the top of the screen after scanning the previous frame. If you could scroll your television picture, you'd see the Macrovision junk at the top and bottom of the frames in the form of flashing white spots. The white spots flash on and off to mess around with the automatic gain correction circuit in most VCRs and other recording devices.
Note that Macrovision is technically a violation of the NTSC video standard. Just like most DRM, Macrovision is only possible because devices (gasp!) assume their input will be well-behaved and adhering to standards.
It's Friday night. Go out to a bar and listen to some real music, please. There are far more talented people than Britney playing for peanuts just down the road from you.
Nielsen Media Research asks a bunch of people to write down everything they watched for a week, and a small minority of those get a box that actually keeps track of their down-to-the-minute TV watching behavior. Nielsen takes these results, extrapolates them to the population at large, then gives a little tallied sheet to all the TV stations showing how many more people watch their competitors. Or at least, that's how it always seems to me.
I ordered the Battlestar Galactica Miniseries DVDs on the 30th. Predicated arrival date with free shipping, the 8th-10th. Actual arrival date, tomorrow. The free shipping is an awesome deal.
I wholeheartedly agree, but it's a matter of simple economics. Actors are a fairly common commodity. They get paid cheap for the most part because if they want more money, somebody else who is just as good will do it for cheaper. However, on the "star" level, you only have, for example, one Jennifer Aniston. She can demand a million per episode of Friends because you simply can't replace her, she's the only person who can fill the role of Rachel. Acting talent can be found literally everywhere, you're basically paying the million bucks for Jennifer Aniston's face. And, erm, other attributes.
Never mind that the producer, director, screenwriters, camera people, and editor are the actual people responsible for making her irreplacable in the first place, that's just how things go. If anything, the behind the scenes people should get the big bucks. Ever see those blooper reels where the actors keep flubbing lines and have to do a billion takes? Notice how they never have to redo a take because the camera guy screwed up.
I think having such a detailed memory would slow down the recollection of individual memories. Think trying to query a large database versus a small database. Your brain would have more things to search through before it got to the one memory it's looking for.
Even if your typing speed stays the same, the amount of distance your fingers travel is statistically less, reducing the risk of repetitive stress injuries.
Well, I had no problem speed-reading it like I speed read anything else, which is probably what I should have said. Now what I have problems with is dealing with "internet speak," where people don't bother to even attempt to punctuate, capitalize or even type complete words. When I see someone type like that I ignore it completely. I figure if they didn't feel it was important enough to write properly, it's not important enough for me to read.
The fact is that CBS did not intend to violate broadcast decency standards. It was the responsibility of Justin, Janet, and the costumer to make sure that their performance lived up to the standards, because that was what they were hired to do as *professional* performers. Why fine CBS, who had no part in it beyond hiring MTV to put on a half-time show? They had no say in the content of the show. You might as well fine the cameraman who was on the air at the time.
Are you stupid because you can't run a production switcher or direct a news broadcast? I don't expect you to be able to operate broadcast video equipment in order to watch television. And it's not expected that a camera operator be able to engineer a production setup, or that the video engineer be able to anchor. Different people are good at different things, but that doesn't make them stupid. It is completely irrational to expect me to have in-depth knowledge of computers in order to simply use one, just like you wouldn't expect someone to be able to rebuild an engine in order to drive a car. You've probably been doing computers a very long time, and stuff like this is basic to you now, but it's not basic to everybody else! I can follow a football through the air from a hundred yards away with a camera, it's basic for me. But that doesn't mean you're stupid if you can't do it.
In terms of sheer efficiency and usability, it is better to take a couple seconds to click a couple buttons than spend a minute or more editing text files. Note that I have never anywhere said to get rid of the text files, I have merely asked for a GUI frontend that uses the text files to store the final configuration. You can still copy 'n' paste configurations, you can still use CVS to store changes, it just allows me to make simple configuration changes quickly and easily. More complex configuration changes may require dipping into the text file, but for things I do every day, I would rather have a simple and efficient way to do them.
I like the command prompt.
So do I, I love the scripting possibilities that Bash gives me, so much that I use Cygwin for all of my commandline stuff under Windows, but most people, the people you are trying to sell Linux On The Desktop to, are scared of it. Remember, these are people who need detailed instructions to hook up their keyboard, mouse and monitor. There is no way that anybody like that is ever going to put up with hacking text config files or using Bash to install software.
Great, you're talking about use in a scientific lab environment. I'm talking about putting a computer on my desk in my home and checking my email and playing games. Yeah, they're exactly the same.
I never asked to "dumb down" the configuration. Text files are an excellent, transparent way to store configuration data, far superior to the Windows registry in all respects. But I want a GUI frontend so that I can change my screen resolution or mount a new storage device quickly and painlessly. In Windows I can change my screen resolution in 5 seconds. My USB keychain drive just shows up as a new drive letter when I plug it in. That sort of thing might not be the best for a lab environment, you'd probably say that having to constantly check USB for new devices eats CPU cycles, and you'd be right, but here on my desk I want something that knows what I want and just works.
Let me flip something around. Why should millions of users who don't want to deal with this shit have to put up with it just because a couple of laboratory users want complete control over the system that you wouldn't have to give up anyway? All I'm asking is to simplify the most common features into a GUI which can just edit the same configuration files that you're editing by hand. If I want to run at 1280x1024 instead of 1024x768 I can just move a slider around. If you want to boost the horizontal sync rate of your graphics adaptor, you can do that in the text file. We're both happy! That is true flexibility, being able to scale to the needs of different users.
But then again, I'm just a clueless n00b user who doesn't match up to your godlike computer skills, so I guess my opinion doesn't count. Never mind that there are more of me than there are of you. Never mind that it should be possible for both of us to get exactly what we want out of the system. Never mind that Linux will never become a desktop OS if it doesn't attract users like me. Your little lab setting is a representative of all computer use, so Linux shouldn't change a bit.
Then the way Windows does things in this case is probably not the best way to do it. Maybe for advanced administration tasks a text file is the way to go, who knows. But I still shouldn't have to edit a text file to add a new hard drive or change my screen resolution, I'm talking simple day-to-day things here.
Based on my experience, changes made to a GUI can be applied to the system without restarting, unlike most config file situations. The options are more organized and explained much better without my having to go into a man page. GUIs save me time and headaches, allowing me to spend my valuable time doing what I want to do rather than what my computer is making me do.
I'm not asking for a Windows-style dialog box. Look at WHM and cPanel, which I consider excellent ways of organizing the configuration of Apache.
I'm stupid because I want to get things done rather than waste my time? Insulting people isn't going to sway them to your cause. I'll ignore it, though, because I realize technical people aren't always the most socially adept. And hey, I'm not the most technically adept, either, but I'm still better than the people who are using their CD-ROM drive trays as cupholders and who can't grasp the difference between left-click and right-click. That's who is going to be using Linux if it becomes a widespread desktop operating system. Scary, huh?
Linux is much better at staying out of your way then windows 2000. You can't make it work but I can.
I'm just going by my experience, where I had to be familiar with all the refresh rates my monitor could handle of in order to use every screen resolution it was capable of. It's not all that difficult, if you have your monitor documentation on hand, but it begs the question, why should I have to deal with that? Why can't the system gracefully auto-detect it or use reasonable defaults? It's possible. Windows does it.
And note I never said I couldn't make it work. Wine, yes, that never worked for me, but as for the rest I eventually got a nice stable system that I could install or compile software on and use. But it's more work for the same result I can get from Windows with literally zero configuration. I don't even have to know what a command prompt is, though I realize its usefulness and use Cygwin to get a bash shell under Windows.
[Talking down to clueness n00b about comments]
But the comments are nowhere near a thorough documentation of all the configuration possibilities. For example, the Xorg.conf said nothing about how to get my multi-head setup going. It took the help of the guy who introduced me to Linux to get it working, and even then neither of us could figure out how to get the PCI card higher than 1024x768, when it is capable of up to 1280x1024. And of course, a bad config file could keep X from starting up at all, something which would never happen with a well-designed GUI configuration applet.
I can name any number of apps that are free-as-in-speech and yet have the UI thing down. Going down my start menu, I see... Azureus, Filezilla, GAIM, Keepass, the entire Mozilla lineup, OpenOffice.Org, Putty, ScummVM, and The Ur-Quan Masters... All of which I use on a regular basis to get things done, or in the case of the last two, have some fun. The volunteer nature of open-source hasn't kept these programs from becoming strong, useful applications, and in the case of Mozilla, from being used by millions.
It's not that using a text editor to edit configurations is difficult, it's just unneccessary. A proper GUI frontend for the configuration would make things much faster and allow me to get on to what I actually want to do, instead of fiddling with my OS. Because the job of the OS is just to be something that programs run on top of. If I'm having to pay more attention to the OS than the programs that run on top of it, then the OS isn't doing its job.
Most distros allow you to edit settings through a GUI.
Yes, but the GUI is horribly incomplete, leaving out far too many of the advanced options for it to be any real good at all for a power user. A power user could edit the config file manually, but that takes more time than a well-designed GUI, and may involve a couple trips to the man page that would be avoided with good use of tooltips. And if you customize the config file, the GUI won't read any settings it doesn't handle, so using the GUI after you manually edit the config will destroy your custom settings.
Because after all, what Linux really needs is for you, the master and director of all computing, to give it a shot...
I am the end user. I am the master and director of all computing, because I'm the person who is actually using it to get work done. An operating system is not an end to itself, it's what runs in the background and doesn't get in my way while I'm trying to run stuff on it. If I'm spending all of my time getting the operating system working, then that operating system is not doing its job. This is what Linux freaks don't get, they run Linux because it's Linux. I run Windows 2000 because it stays out of my way while I do what I actually want to do with my computer.
Text files are a superior configuration method
As long as you have every single option and its impact on the system memorized, and you are a perfect typist. I have no problem with using a text file to actually store the configuration, and in fact I much prefer it to Windows' godawful convoluted registry, but editing them by hand is a pain unless you are extremely familiar with the system. And you know what? I don't have time to become obsessively familiar with every aspect of the system, that's the programmer's job, I'm too busy getting things done instead of dealing with my OS. You shouldn't have to keep referencing the man page or beat your head against the desk for half an hour because you transposed something. And you can stick all of the less commonly-used options under an "advanced options" tab.
You're more than willing to complain about Linux, but not at all willing to learn it.
I'm perfectly willing to learn a new UI, a new directory structure, and everything else one would expect to be different in a new system, because it is a new system after all. If I use a Mac, I don't complain about the widgets being in different places and saved documents going in a different folder and stuff like that. But the difference is, I turn on a Mac and I can forget about it, except for maybe being more used to some Windows UI conventions. A Linux box simply isn't usable with the same degree of transparency of the operating system that you get with Windows and MacOS. The problem is not that the user isn't knowledgeable enough, it's that the operating system isn't doing its job.
Great, HL1 and Doom 2. Those are *so* equivalent to HL2 and Doom 3. I mean, it's just another number up.
Besides, maybe they work for some people, but for me, Wine won't run anything more complicated than Notepad. It might work better if I put some time into configuring it, but that's going back to "Linux is free if your time is worth nothing," and my time (and sanity) is worth far too much to me to be spending all of it trying to get all of the disparate components that make up a Linux distribution to acknowledge each others' existence.
Believe me, I've given Linux its fair shot several times. It all boils down to how the system shifts far too much of the effort onto the user. It is the *programmer's* job to make the system usable by the user, *not* the user's! I shouldn't have to touch a text editor. If I have to configure anything, which I shouldn't, there should be a graphical tool for it, and it should allow me to configure *all* of the available options, not just the common ones.
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...Except many live theatre productions feature a good deal of technology developed and operated by undercredited people as well.
A little technical correction here. A low pass filter does not defeat Macrovision. If anything, you'll end up filtering out the color information in the signal. Macrovision fools with the vertical blanking interval of the television signal. This is a part of the signal that is in between two frames, instructing the electron beam to go back to the top of the screen after scanning the previous frame. If you could scroll your television picture, you'd see the Macrovision junk at the top and bottom of the frames in the form of flashing white spots. The white spots flash on and off to mess around with the automatic gain correction circuit in most VCRs and other recording devices.
Note that Macrovision is technically a violation of the NTSC video standard. Just like most DRM, Macrovision is only possible because devices (gasp!) assume their input will be well-behaved and adhering to standards.
It's Friday night. Go out to a bar and listen to some real music, please. There are far more talented people than Britney playing for peanuts just down the road from you.
What sponsor image? Oh wait, I've got adblock on...
Nielsen Media Research asks a bunch of people to write down everything they watched for a week, and a small minority of those get a box that actually keeps track of their down-to-the-minute TV watching behavior. Nielsen takes these results, extrapolates them to the population at large, then gives a little tallied sheet to all the TV stations showing how many more people watch their competitors. Or at least, that's how it always seems to me.
Nielsen's exact methods are detailed at their web site.
I ordered the Battlestar Galactica Miniseries DVDs on the 30th. Predicated arrival date with free shipping, the 8th-10th. Actual arrival date, tomorrow. The free shipping is an awesome deal.
I wholeheartedly agree, but it's a matter of simple economics. Actors are a fairly common commodity. They get paid cheap for the most part because if they want more money, somebody else who is just as good will do it for cheaper. However, on the "star" level, you only have, for example, one Jennifer Aniston. She can demand a million per episode of Friends because you simply can't replace her, she's the only person who can fill the role of Rachel. Acting talent can be found literally everywhere, you're basically paying the million bucks for Jennifer Aniston's face. And, erm, other attributes.
Never mind that the producer, director, screenwriters, camera people, and editor are the actual people responsible for making her irreplacable in the first place, that's just how things go. If anything, the behind the scenes people should get the big bucks. Ever see those blooper reels where the actors keep flubbing lines and have to do a billion takes? Notice how they never have to redo a take because the camera guy screwed up.
I believe the entire cast of Friends was getting a mil per episode as well in their last season.
I think having such a detailed memory would slow down the recollection of individual memories. Think trying to query a large database versus a small database. Your brain would have more things to search through before it got to the one memory it's looking for.
Even if your typing speed stays the same, the amount of distance your fingers travel is statistically less, reducing the risk of repetitive stress injuries.
Well, I had no problem speed-reading it like I speed read anything else, which is probably what I should have said. Now what I have problems with is dealing with "internet speak," where people don't bother to even attempt to punctuate, capitalize or even type complete words. When I see someone type like that I ignore it completely. I figure if they didn't feel it was important enough to write properly, it's not important enough for me to read.
Actually, I had no problem reading your last sentence. Maybe I'm just weird.
I'm pretty sure that it's actually "We apologize for the inconvenience."
God I feel like a geek right now.
The fact is that CBS did not intend to violate broadcast decency standards. It was the responsibility of Justin, Janet, and the costumer to make sure that their performance lived up to the standards, because that was what they were hired to do as *professional* performers. Why fine CBS, who had no part in it beyond hiring MTV to put on a half-time show? They had no say in the content of the show. You might as well fine the cameraman who was on the air at the time.
Are you stupid because you can't run a production switcher or direct a news broadcast? I don't expect you to be able to operate broadcast video equipment in order to watch television. And it's not expected that a camera operator be able to engineer a production setup, or that the video engineer be able to anchor. Different people are good at different things, but that doesn't make them stupid. It is completely irrational to expect me to have in-depth knowledge of computers in order to simply use one, just like you wouldn't expect someone to be able to rebuild an engine in order to drive a car. You've probably been doing computers a very long time, and stuff like this is basic to you now, but it's not basic to everybody else! I can follow a football through the air from a hundred yards away with a camera, it's basic for me. But that doesn't mean you're stupid if you can't do it.
In terms of sheer efficiency and usability, it is better to take a couple seconds to click a couple buttons than spend a minute or more editing text files. Note that I have never anywhere said to get rid of the text files, I have merely asked for a GUI frontend that uses the text files to store the final configuration. You can still copy 'n' paste configurations, you can still use CVS to store changes, it just allows me to make simple configuration changes quickly and easily. More complex configuration changes may require dipping into the text file, but for things I do every day, I would rather have a simple and efficient way to do them.
I like the command prompt.
So do I, I love the scripting possibilities that Bash gives me, so much that I use Cygwin for all of my commandline stuff under Windows, but most people, the people you are trying to sell Linux On The Desktop to, are scared of it. Remember, these are people who need detailed instructions to hook up their keyboard, mouse and monitor. There is no way that anybody like that is ever going to put up with hacking text config files or using Bash to install software.
Great, you're talking about use in a scientific lab environment. I'm talking about putting a computer on my desk in my home and checking my email and playing games. Yeah, they're exactly the same.
I never asked to "dumb down" the configuration. Text files are an excellent, transparent way to store configuration data, far superior to the Windows registry in all respects. But I want a GUI frontend so that I can change my screen resolution or mount a new storage device quickly and painlessly. In Windows I can change my screen resolution in 5 seconds. My USB keychain drive just shows up as a new drive letter when I plug it in. That sort of thing might not be the best for a lab environment, you'd probably say that having to constantly check USB for new devices eats CPU cycles, and you'd be right, but here on my desk I want something that knows what I want and just works.
Let me flip something around. Why should millions of users who don't want to deal with this shit have to put up with it just because a couple of laboratory users want complete control over the system that you wouldn't have to give up anyway? All I'm asking is to simplify the most common features into a GUI which can just edit the same configuration files that you're editing by hand. If I want to run at 1280x1024 instead of 1024x768 I can just move a slider around. If you want to boost the horizontal sync rate of your graphics adaptor, you can do that in the text file. We're both happy! That is true flexibility, being able to scale to the needs of different users.
But then again, I'm just a clueless n00b user who doesn't match up to your godlike computer skills, so I guess my opinion doesn't count. Never mind that there are more of me than there are of you. Never mind that it should be possible for both of us to get exactly what we want out of the system. Never mind that Linux will never become a desktop OS if it doesn't attract users like me. Your little lab setting is a representative of all computer use, so Linux shouldn't change a bit.
Then the way Windows does things in this case is probably not the best way to do it. Maybe for advanced administration tasks a text file is the way to go, who knows. But I still shouldn't have to edit a text file to add a new hard drive or change my screen resolution, I'm talking simple day-to-day things here.
Based on my experience, changes made to a GUI can be applied to the system without restarting, unlike most config file situations. The options are more organized and explained much better without my having to go into a man page. GUIs save me time and headaches, allowing me to spend my valuable time doing what I want to do rather than what my computer is making me do.
I'm not asking for a Windows-style dialog box. Look at WHM and cPanel, which I consider excellent ways of organizing the configuration of Apache.
No you are AN end user. A rather stupid one too.
I'm stupid because I want to get things done rather than waste my time? Insulting people isn't going to sway them to your cause. I'll ignore it, though, because I realize technical people aren't always the most socially adept. And hey, I'm not the most technically adept, either, but I'm still better than the people who are using their CD-ROM drive trays as cupholders and who can't grasp the difference between left-click and right-click. That's who is going to be using Linux if it becomes a widespread desktop operating system. Scary, huh?
Linux is much better at staying out of your way then windows 2000. You can't make it work but I can.
I'm just going by my experience, where I had to be familiar with all the refresh rates my monitor could handle of in order to use every screen resolution it was capable of. It's not all that difficult, if you have your monitor documentation on hand, but it begs the question, why should I have to deal with that? Why can't the system gracefully auto-detect it or use reasonable defaults? It's possible. Windows does it.
And note I never said I couldn't make it work. Wine, yes, that never worked for me, but as for the rest I eventually got a nice stable system that I could install or compile software on and use. But it's more work for the same result I can get from Windows with literally zero configuration. I don't even have to know what a command prompt is, though I realize its usefulness and use Cygwin to get a bash shell under Windows.
[Talking down to clueness n00b about comments]
But the comments are nowhere near a thorough documentation of all the configuration possibilities. For example, the Xorg.conf said nothing about how to get my multi-head setup going. It took the help of the guy who introduced me to Linux to get it working, and even then neither of us could figure out how to get the PCI card higher than 1024x768, when it is capable of up to 1280x1024. And of course, a bad config file could keep X from starting up at all, something which would never happen with a well-designed GUI configuration applet.
I can name any number of apps that are free-as-in-speech and yet have the UI thing down. Going down my start menu, I see... Azureus, Filezilla, GAIM, Keepass, the entire Mozilla lineup, OpenOffice.Org, Putty, ScummVM, and The Ur-Quan Masters... All of which I use on a regular basis to get things done, or in the case of the last two, have some fun. The volunteer nature of open-source hasn't kept these programs from becoming strong, useful applications, and in the case of Mozilla, from being used by millions.
It's not that using a text editor to edit configurations is difficult, it's just unneccessary. A proper GUI frontend for the configuration would make things much faster and allow me to get on to what I actually want to do, instead of fiddling with my OS. Because the job of the OS is just to be something that programs run on top of. If I'm having to pay more attention to the OS than the programs that run on top of it, then the OS isn't doing its job.
Most distros allow you to edit settings through a GUI.
Yes, but the GUI is horribly incomplete, leaving out far too many of the advanced options for it to be any real good at all for a power user. A power user could edit the config file manually, but that takes more time than a well-designed GUI, and may involve a couple trips to the man page that would be avoided with good use of tooltips. And if you customize the config file, the GUI won't read any settings it doesn't handle, so using the GUI after you manually edit the config will destroy your custom settings.
Because after all, what Linux really needs is for you, the master and director of all computing, to give it a shot...
I am the end user. I am the master and director of all computing, because I'm the person who is actually using it to get work done. An operating system is not an end to itself, it's what runs in the background and doesn't get in my way while I'm trying to run stuff on it. If I'm spending all of my time getting the operating system working, then that operating system is not doing its job. This is what Linux freaks don't get, they run Linux because it's Linux. I run Windows 2000 because it stays out of my way while I do what I actually want to do with my computer.
Text files are a superior configuration method
As long as you have every single option and its impact on the system memorized, and you are a perfect typist. I have no problem with using a text file to actually store the configuration, and in fact I much prefer it to Windows' godawful convoluted registry, but editing them by hand is a pain unless you are extremely familiar with the system. And you know what? I don't have time to become obsessively familiar with every aspect of the system, that's the programmer's job, I'm too busy getting things done instead of dealing with my OS. You shouldn't have to keep referencing the man page or beat your head against the desk for half an hour because you transposed something. And you can stick all of the less commonly-used options under an "advanced options" tab.
You're more than willing to complain about Linux, but not at all willing to learn it.
I'm perfectly willing to learn a new UI, a new directory structure, and everything else one would expect to be different in a new system, because it is a new system after all. If I use a Mac, I don't complain about the widgets being in different places and saved documents going in a different folder and stuff like that. But the difference is, I turn on a Mac and I can forget about it, except for maybe being more used to some Windows UI conventions. A Linux box simply isn't usable with the same degree of transparency of the operating system that you get with Windows and MacOS. The problem is not that the user isn't knowledgeable enough, it's that the operating system isn't doing its job.
Great, HL1 and Doom 2. Those are *so* equivalent to HL2 and Doom 3. I mean, it's just another number up.
Besides, maybe they work for some people, but for me, Wine won't run anything more complicated than Notepad. It might work better if I put some time into configuring it, but that's going back to "Linux is free if your time is worth nothing," and my time (and sanity) is worth far too much to me to be spending all of it trying to get all of the disparate components that make up a Linux distribution to acknowledge each others' existence.
Believe me, I've given Linux its fair shot several times. It all boils down to how the system shifts far too much of the effort onto the user. It is the *programmer's* job to make the system usable by the user, *not* the user's! I shouldn't have to touch a text editor. If I have to configure anything, which I shouldn't, there should be a graphical tool for it, and it should allow me to configure *all* of the available options, not just the common ones.
Pictures are another (I have so many they take up tens of gigs as well in JPG format).
Yet another case of pr0n driving technological development.