Actually, I was making a joke by AGREEING with you! My conservative neighbors (NEIGHBORS, not my representatives) have this thing about people who criticize American democracy. They tell me to love it or leave it, or if I love country X's policies so much I should move there.
Much like, um, you suggested that I should find a democracy to live. That's what conservativism has to do with it. I expect that there are conservatives everywhere, that not all conservatives are assholes, etc. But everyone keeps fucking telling me to move, which is of course to abandon others who might agree.
So, thanks for nothing jackass; actually, less than nothing, since you offered useless advice AND were an ass. Well done.
National Assembly? MP? Dude, what freakish country are you from? Here in 'Murica, we have us Congress, with 435 Representatives in the House and 100 Senators in, um, the Senate---just as Jesus intended.;)
Okay, okay, I'll be serious. Let me give you a feel for politics where I live. My two senators represent 22+ million Texans (that's 11+ million per Senator), and my representative is one of 32 (each representing ~714+K).* A gathering of 285 calm, polite, and rational leftists isn't (if history is going to be our guide here) exactly going to sway a Representative who has to run an expensive campaign every other year (and so is beholden to wealthy benefactors) or a Senator who is beholden to (i) wealthy benefactors and (ii) 20 million conservative Texans.
Maybe you don't believe me about how messed up Texas is, so let me give you a feel. The school finance system here is *so* messed up that a judge ordered the state legislature to fix it. So what did they do? They turned their attention to the ``provocative dancing" of high school cheerleaders: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/3 166954.html
As Kent Brockman aptly noted, ``Democracy just doesn't work." Though I am with Churchill on this one, in that the other forms of government work even worse.
* Obviously, that's the number of Texas, not the number of people on the Texas voter rolls. However, apportionment is based on population, not the number of voters.
This is *totally* a fair question. Yes, I've tried, though perhaps I've not gone all aggro about it. (In my defense, part of this is because I lived in Washington, DC for about a decade, and DC has no real representation in government.) Letters get form letters in response, and Texas is a state where people who share my views are few and far in between; representative government being what it is, one oughtn't to expect to get too far in such cases.
As an aside: my favorite response (though obviously not to my own letter) was a local talk radio host who wrote a letter to one of Texas's senators about FCC censorship (saying he was against it), and she wrote back saying she was worried about the airwaves just like he is---and wanted to make sure that they were censored even more. I laughed, then I cried, and then I drank some Shiner Bock.
Well, one difference is that the PM is in charge of a democracy, whereas the two people in your analogy are economic competitors. One might reasonably be inclined to think that those in charge of a democracy have some duty to listen to their citizens, and one might also wonder just how accessible our ``leaders" are these days. (I live in Texas, and I'm way to the left. Do you think I'm going to get an audience with my insanely conservative senators to explain why they should support net neutrality or abortion rights or drug legalization or gay marriage? Yeah, ``make an appointment"---that's a great idea.)
Of course, RMS is not a citizen of France (though other members of the delegation are), and we can always debate the effectiveness of any particular political action/stunt. But the idea that he was just being rude because he was demanding attention from the elected leaders of a democracy is the kind of notion that ensures that the status quo (and whoever owns it) rules the day.
All ubuntu does is use the network time protocol to sync your system's clock so that it always reports the right time. There are many public ntp servers that you could configure your computer to use instead, or you could turn it off pretty simply.
In contrast, the ``phoning home" talked about in the article involved sending information TO Microsoft about your computer but for their purposes.
I tried reading the bug reports: are these the non-free drivers? I've been running dapper for a few days on my 2001 iBook without this problem, but I'm not running the ATI specific drivers.
The only real problem I ran into was one with tetex; there's a misconfigured file, and so TeX wouldn't do any hyphenation.
I thought using Windows was supposed to be SO much easier (and intuitive!) than using *nix.
You're expecting granny to master all this---including reading an MS-consultant blog---to run her computer effectively? No wonder why she only leaves $5 in the birthday cards.
It seems to me that the solution to all of these problems is LaTeX+{your favorite text editor}:
Keyboard usability: Depends on editor, but emacs and vim are both pretty strong on this one---but most good text editors can handle this.
Typographical weaknesses & Poor support for formal, structured documents: Turning out good looking type and uses a mark-up language that separates formatting from conten is what LaTeX is designed for. (You could go with DocBook here too, I guess.)
Start-up times are very long: Text editors are quick to start (even Emacs! ), and running TeX/LaTex on long documents doesn't take but a few seconds---my 300+ page dissertation compiles quickly even on my 5 year old iBook.
Poor support for complex page layouts & Mail merge support is very poor: I've not tried either of these w/LaTeX, but shouldn't one pawn complex page layouts onto desktop publishing applications? (I'm not asking rhetorically; I am curious. I don't make documents with very complicated pages, but if I were my natural inclination would be DTP rather than word processing. Though, in fairness, since I learned TeX I don't entirely remember why people use word processors anymore.)
Agreed; this analogy is utterly awful! Not only is there this unhealthy response to prostitutes (someone needs to get some therapy. ..), the *ENTIRE* analogy doesn't work:
A prostitute is someone who gives what they otherwise wouldn't (sex) in exchange for cash. Theo gives his software away for free, to anyone, to use as they wish.
Now maybe you (GP) think the Free Software isn't a sound business strategy, and maybe you think Theo's a jackass---and heck, maybe you think he's getting what he deserved because he didn't demand that corporations leave their cash on the nightstand ahead of time [THAT'S how you make a prostitution reference!] but holy crap son could you find a way to say that without invoking repellant examples that contradict your point completely.
There might be a bunch of reasons for this, none of which you might find persuasive---but at least I hope you find them to be kinder responses:
1. People writing software may really not be concerned with ``ease of new user use." Some people are concerned with such things, others aren't; after all, that's the difference in philosophy between vi and GUI-based, WIMP text editors. This is also why some distros try very hard to provide integrated tools that allow new users to install stuff without having to use the CLI---to allow people who otherwise do not have the skills to track down dependencies and the like install with a simple point-n-click interface.
2. This might indicate that there's an organizational or philosophical difference between (some) people who write software (individual programs) and those who put together distributions. As long as there is a division of labor, a software developer might be inclined to say ``well, if you want something easier, tell your distro to include it in their repostitories." If Free Software is about scratching the itch of the programmer, it seems that individual projects will focus more on getting the coding done with a 95% install solution rather than spend time getting that 5% solved (or for that matter scratching the itches of others, which, if the simile holds, are less pressing than one's own itch after all).
3. Nothing makes you more 1337 than watching the configure & compiling messages scroll across your screen---sure, you don't know what they mean, but your friends using windows are just lamers compared to uber-1337 watching compiling. (I keed, I keed)
My problems OSX have less to do with stereotypes and with my own experience over the years---on my own laptop years ago and on the computers of others in the intervening years. I always found myself wrestling with Apple's sense of workflow, having to kludge together 3rd party software, scripting, and the like.
What I had in mind was something more than being able to find a keyboard equivalent for commands:
I'm a linux noob, but i'm not clear why you'd WANT to boot Linux in this case, other than maybe if you are a multi-OS admin.
Well, a few reasons come to mind (since they would be mine):
1. You like Apple hardware but you do not use proprietary software.
2. You don't work the way OS X wants you to. For example, if you prefer using the mouse as little as possible or you just don't like the general design of the interface.
Thanks for the insightful comment, but I have some corrections:
1. What makes me a stud is that I'm a porn star with a HUGE penis.
2. I use BSD at work, thank you very much, but I like the ease of install of Ubuntu on my laptop. (What makes me a stud isn't my computer skills, but my aforementioned huge penis.)
3. I used to use the Gnome interface with Ubuntu, but stopped because I didn't like WIMP interfaces.
4. I do not use the command line for everything (with such a large penis, I sometimes need to take my hand off the keyboard), and I'm using firefox for this post.
Really, there's no reason for you to have been such a jackass, with the exception of the fact that you're not a command line stud and you've got a small penis.
For what it is worth: `FWIW' means ``for what it is worth", and indicates ``here's my 2 cents, no need to be a fucking jackass about them you fucking dickwad"
FWIW: Ubuntu runs fine on my 5 year old iBook (G3, 500mhz, 384 megs ram). . . . Maybe Apple was right about the megahertz myth.
Of course at this point I don't use GNOME (or any other WIMP window manager) because it/they just get in the way. But that's another post for another day.
(As an aside, you do know that xfce is available through the universe repository, correct?)
Slashdot Mirror
I guess the FOSS overlords at Slashdot ARE learning a thing or two from Microsoft afterall . . . .
Oh. My. God. I surrender. I'll have to use that example in my political philosophy class next year. . . .
Actually, I was making a joke by AGREEING with you! My conservative neighbors (NEIGHBORS, not my representatives) have this thing about people who criticize American democracy. They tell me to love it or leave it, or if I love country X's policies so much I should move there.
Much like, um, you suggested that I should find a democracy to live. That's what conservativism has to do with it. I expect that there are conservatives everywhere, that not all conservatives are assholes, etc. But everyone keeps fucking telling me to move, which is of course to abandon others who might agree.
So, thanks for nothing jackass; actually, less than nothing, since you offered useless advice AND were an ass. Well done.
Funny, my conservative neighbors keep telling me the same thing!
Okay, okay, I'll be serious. Let me give you a feel for politics where I live. My two senators represent 22+ million Texans (that's 11+ million per Senator), and my representative is one of 32 (each representing ~714+K).* A gathering of 285 calm, polite, and rational leftists isn't (if history is going to be our guide here) exactly going to sway a Representative who has to run an expensive campaign every other year (and so is beholden to wealthy benefactors) or a Senator who is beholden to (i) wealthy benefactors and (ii) 20 million conservative Texans.
Maybe you don't believe me about how messed up Texas is, so let me give you a feel. The school finance system here is *so* messed up that a judge ordered the state legislature to fix it. So what did they do? They turned their attention to the ``provocative dancing" of high school cheerleaders: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/3 166954.html
As Kent Brockman aptly noted, ``Democracy just doesn't work." Though I am with Churchill on this one, in that the other forms of government work even worse.
* Obviously, that's the number of Texas, not the number of people on the Texas voter rolls. However, apportionment is based on population, not the number of voters.
This is *totally* a fair question. Yes, I've tried, though perhaps I've not gone all aggro about it. (In my defense, part of this is because I lived in Washington, DC for about a decade, and DC has no real representation in government.) Letters get form letters in response, and Texas is a state where people who share my views are few and far in between; representative government being what it is, one oughtn't to expect to get too far in such cases.
As an aside: my favorite response (though obviously not to my own letter) was a local talk radio host who wrote a letter to one of Texas's senators about FCC censorship (saying he was against it), and she wrote back saying she was worried about the airwaves just like he is---and wanted to make sure that they were censored even more. I laughed, then I cried, and then I drank some Shiner Bock.
Well, one difference is that the PM is in charge of a democracy, whereas the two people in your analogy are economic competitors. One might reasonably be inclined to think that those in charge of a democracy have some duty to listen to their citizens, and one might also wonder just how accessible our ``leaders" are these days. (I live in Texas, and I'm way to the left. Do you think I'm going to get an audience with my insanely conservative senators to explain why they should support net neutrality or abortion rights or drug legalization or gay marriage? Yeah, ``make an appointment"---that's a great idea.)
Of course, RMS is not a citizen of France (though other members of the delegation are), and we can always debate the effectiveness of any particular political action/stunt. But the idea that he was just being rude because he was demanding attention from the elected leaders of a democracy is the kind of notion that ensures that the status quo (and whoever owns it) rules the day.
In contrast, the ``phoning home" talked about in the article involved sending information TO Microsoft about your computer but for their purposes.
Syncing the system clock is not ``phoning home". . . .
I tried reading the bug reports: are these the non-free drivers? I've been running dapper for a few days on my 2001 iBook without this problem, but I'm not running the ATI specific drivers.
The only real problem I ran into was one with tetex; there's a misconfigured file, and so TeX wouldn't do any hyphenation.
I was thinking ``skateboards as mass transit"
I thought using Windows was supposed to be SO much easier (and intuitive!) than using *nix.
You're expecting granny to master all this---including reading an MS-consultant blog---to run her computer effectively? No wonder why she only leaves $5 in the birthday cards.
It seems to me that the solution to all of these problems is LaTeX+{your favorite text editor}:
Keyboard usability: Depends on editor, but emacs and vim are both pretty strong on this one---but most good text editors can handle this.
Typographical weaknesses & Poor support for formal, structured documents: Turning out good looking type and uses a mark-up language that separates formatting from conten is what LaTeX is designed for. (You could go with DocBook here too, I guess.)
Start-up times are very long: Text editors are quick to start (even Emacs! ), and running TeX/LaTex on long documents doesn't take but a few seconds---my 300+ page dissertation compiles quickly even on my 5 year old iBook.
Poor support for complex page layouts & Mail merge support is very poor: I've not tried either of these w/LaTeX, but shouldn't one pawn complex page layouts onto desktop publishing applications? (I'm not asking rhetorically; I am curious. I don't make documents with very complicated pages, but if I were my natural inclination would be DTP rather than word processing. Though, in fairness, since I learned TeX I don't entirely remember why people use word processors anymore.)
How does Debian have the drivers already? You using Etch?
1. How many buttons?
2. Is it USB Compatible?
3. Are there Linux drivers for it?
Why don't they just type it out in ALL CAPS? (After all, doesn't yelling your language to foreigners work?):
HEY, THIS IS RADIOACTIVE!
Agreed; this analogy is utterly awful! Not only is there this unhealthy response to prostitutes (someone needs to get some therapy. . .), the *ENTIRE* analogy doesn't work:
A prostitute is someone who gives what they otherwise wouldn't (sex) in exchange for cash. Theo gives his software away for free, to anyone, to use as they wish.
Now maybe you (GP) think the Free Software isn't a sound business strategy, and maybe you think Theo's a jackass---and heck, maybe you think he's getting what he deserved because he didn't demand that corporations leave their cash on the nightstand ahead of time [THAT'S how you make a prostitution reference!] but holy crap son could you find a way to say that without invoking repellant examples that contradict your point completely.
There might be a bunch of reasons for this, none of which you might find persuasive---but at least I hope you find them to be kinder responses:
1. People writing software may really not be concerned with ``ease of new user use." Some people are concerned with such things, others aren't; after all, that's the difference in philosophy between vi and GUI-based, WIMP text editors. This is also why some distros try very hard to provide integrated tools that allow new users to install stuff without having to use the CLI---to allow people who otherwise do not have the skills to track down dependencies and the like install with a simple point-n-click interface.
2. This might indicate that there's an organizational or philosophical difference between (some) people who write software (individual programs) and those who put together distributions. As long as there is a division of labor, a software developer might be inclined to say ``well, if you want something easier, tell your distro to include it in their repostitories." If Free Software is about scratching the itch of the programmer, it seems that individual projects will focus more on getting the coding done with a 95% install solution rather than spend time getting that 5% solved (or for that matter scratching the itches of others, which, if the simile holds, are less pressing than one's own itch after all).
3. Nothing makes you more 1337 than watching the configure & compiling messages scroll across your screen---sure, you don't know what they mean, but your friends using windows are just lamers compared to uber-1337 watching compiling. (I keed, I keed)
What I had in mind was something more than being able to find a keyboard equivalent for commands:
1. Ratpoison
2. Ion
3. larswm
4. WMII
But you're definitely right that Apple has addressed the keyboarding issue; I should have been more precise here.
1. You like Apple hardware but you do not use proprietary software.
2. You don't work the way OS X wants you to. For example, if you prefer using the mouse as little as possible or you just don't like the general design of the interface.
Here's the approved guilds:
1) OMG PONIES!!!111!
2) Fans of Mayo on WonderBread Sammiches
3) The Ned Flanders Association of People Who Enjoy Non-threatening Fun
4) Hail Training Wheels!
Thanks for the insightful comment, but I have some corrections:
1. What makes me a stud is that I'm a porn star with a HUGE penis.
2. I use BSD at work, thank you very much, but I like the ease of install of Ubuntu on my laptop. (What makes me a stud isn't my computer skills, but my aforementioned huge penis.)
3. I used to use the Gnome interface with Ubuntu, but stopped because I didn't like WIMP interfaces.
4. I do not use the command line for everything (with such a large penis, I sometimes need to take my hand off the keyboard), and I'm using firefox for this post.
Really, there's no reason for you to have been such a jackass, with the exception of the fact that you're not a command line stud and you've got a small penis.
For what it is worth: `FWIW' means ``for what it is worth", and indicates ``here's my 2 cents, no need to be a fucking jackass about them you fucking dickwad"
FWIW: Ubuntu runs fine on my 5 year old iBook (G3, 500mhz, 384 megs ram). . . . Maybe Apple was right about the megahertz myth.
Of course at this point I don't use GNOME (or any other WIMP window manager) because it/they just get in the way. But that's another post for another day.
(As an aside, you do know that xfce is available through the universe repository, correct?)