Okay, now... What's currently the biggest threat? Apple, Linux/FOSS or Real? Maybe all together - OpenRealQuicktime.org or something like that?
This could be this season's upcoming Slashdot troll: "X is the biggest threat to Microsoft." And when everyone and their grandmother will get modded down as Redundant for using it, I will smile and say: "Well, I made fun of it before it was big."
(I think it would be great to require a semester of media literacy in high school, where students learn all the classic propaganda techniques and how to spot them...)
In Germany, that's what Politics and History classes are for. Saying "you are bad because your parents were bad because their parents killed thirty million people" repeatedly while shoving information material about the NSDAP down the students' throats is a pretty good way to create people who distrust politicians, themselves and everyone else.
One of the things everyone here who isn't extremely dense learns in school is that people, once there are enough of them and they are sufficiently happy and/or indoctrinated, are like sheep. Oh, and that it's easy to gain majority support for a violent regime by giving the people food and work when both are rare.
The Federal Republic of Germany - mass-producing cynics since 1948. We would be proud about it, but we outlawed national pride, so meh.
I made the mistake of looking at the Ubuntu website for information about KDE. Enabled the Universe repos. Installed KDE. Absolutely zero integration, zero usability without enabling root... Whatever Kubuntu is, they should replace the default KDE packages with it, as with them the entire sudo-instead-of-su thing (IMO the main selling point of Ubuntu) doesn't work.
This is pretty much SuSE 10. They never released a 9.3 Just a 9.2
You're right, they never did. They are about to. I have a flyer from the CeBIT where you can preorder it - so I guess that either there will be a version 9.3 or Novell likes to say "sorry guys, but we decided to drop 9.3 in favor of another product".
By the way. Joe Barr reported yesterday that SuSE 9.3 Professional will also include Beagle. Not that you can't download Beagle anyway.
The SUSE (remember that Novell has renamed the distro for no apparent reason) 9.3 flyers distributed at the CeBIT say so, as well. There's a list of new features, among them Linux 2.6.11, KDE 3.4, GNOME 2.10, XEN, Beagle, iPod support, "perfected" bluetooth support, PostgreSQL 8.0... and a strategy game called "Invasion". The last time I've seen a game presented as a great new feature was in that scary Windows ad with Steve Ballmer that's floating around the 'Net...
By the way, according to the dude at the Novell booth, they're going to turn SUSE into a cutting edge distro - when I asked if they wanted to compete with Fedora, he answered that Fedora should first try to catch up. Maybe SUSE will become interesting to those users who like to always have the newest stuff. OTOH Fedora feels a lot cleaner then SuSE 9.0 did - less distro-specificness.
True. I hate it when I'm looking for a file only to find that the computer's distro has the file in a different place, under a different name or even entirely missing. Or, even worse, when a distro decides that/etc/profile is a bad place to store the global setting for $PATH.
One thing I like about Linux is that system tweaking is made a lot easier, as the configuration files usually have to be stored in a sensible location and designed to be human-readable. It's usually easy to find out where a particular value or option is. That makes the fact that these places vary from distro to distro even more annoying. The fact that one of the things that make Linux more comfortable than Windows for me is kind of... broken.
Especially Ubuntu does this a lot - one of the main reasons I didn't like Warty when I tried it out.
It's even better if you have a collection of things.
For example, a collection of MP3s could be sorted by putting them into a few big folders and symlinking them to other folders with names like "Jazz", "Sad stuff", "Press Play On Tape" or "1950 - 1955". However, that method requires you to make sure that every file has its appropriate links, wade through all files if you decide to add a category etc.
Migrating an existing collection of songs to such a setup would be a lot of work, too.
Now imagine that you just take a file, slap the digital equivalent of a Post-It note with the word "Chill" scrwaled onto it onto it and put it somewhere. Later, when you're in the mood for some Chill music, you just search for everything that matches "Chill" - and poof, the file pops up. Without you having to go through folders, deciding whether or not each file suits your current mood. You need some Blues songs without lyrics? If you have assigned the right metadata to your songs you just search for "Blues" and "no lyrics" and get all relevant files.
I think that metadata-based searching could be great for maintaining collections of files.
Take your preferred apps. Put them into a separate menu. Put that menu directly onto your Kicker/whatever the Google taskbar is called. Bing! you have just made all the GUI programs you use on a regular basis easily accessible.
Other programs will take a bit longer to find, but as they usually are in some sensible place (ie the GIMP is under "Graphics", not "System Tools") and the menus are usually alphabetized, it's not hard to find a particular app.
Sure, the CLI ist faster. Just type in the name of the app and off you go (if it's in your $PATH, of course). But sometimes it's just nice to move your mouse to the bottom of the screen, click and watch Thunderbird load.
Yes, they bought one copy of Windows and installed it on all of their machines, as is common practice. The other licence is because they lost the first one's CD code.
You never know, they might be picking up our p0rn transmissions already and trying to figure out our mating rituals.
I dread to think what their conclusions would be!
But it would make diplomacy far more interesting.
Re:Freedom, Internet, Tibet, & Chinese Tyranny
on
Contrabandwidth
·
· Score: 1
You know that something's wrong when you see such a post getting modded up as Insightful.
No offense meant, but once more I'm happy because I don't live in that scary, scary coutry...
The freaky thing is that this comes one day after "Mission to Mars" came on local TV. Hmmmm... Perhaps it's a sign that Germany has joined the Deep Space Lie program (you know, the one that tries to make uns believe that there are other planets beside Earth). I better go get my tin foil helmet.
The market is Windows users who are used to use a does-it-all software like Nero to do everything remotely related related to CD-Rs. The same people who consider using Linux until they hear stuff like: "Oh, in order to burn CD you just need cdrdao... And look, there's a nice graphical frontend for it, it depends on cdrdao, dvd+rw-tools, id3lib, flac, xfwm4 and libselinux-devel. Oh, and with your kernel version you have to be root if you actually want to burn something."
I know, it's already been said before, but just being able to say "Well, there's always Nero" when asked about burning CDs on Linux is a Good Thing. For many users Nero is one of Windows' killer apps.
Slashdot Mirror
Okay, now... What's currently the biggest threat? Apple, Linux/FOSS or Real? Maybe all together - OpenRealQuicktime.org or something like that?
This could be this season's upcoming Slashdot troll: "X is the biggest threat to Microsoft." And when everyone and their grandmother will get modded down as Redundant for using it, I will smile and say: "Well, I made fun of it before it was big."
So who knows what really happened?
Doc Brown, duh!
(I think it would be great to require a semester of media literacy in high school, where students learn all the classic propaganda techniques and how to spot them...)
In Germany, that's what Politics and History classes are for. Saying "you are bad because your parents were bad because their parents killed thirty million people" repeatedly while shoving information material about the NSDAP down the students' throats is a pretty good way to create people who distrust politicians, themselves and everyone else.
One of the things everyone here who isn't extremely dense learns in school is that people, once there are enough of them and they are sufficiently happy and/or indoctrinated, are like sheep. Oh, and that it's easy to gain majority support for a violent regime by giving the people food and work when both are rare.
The Federal Republic of Germany - mass-producing cynics since 1948. We would be proud about it, but we outlawed national pride, so meh.
Well, 90% of all men have a below average sized penis. I know it's true, someone told me in a mail.
I made the mistake of looking at the Ubuntu website for information about KDE. Enabled the Universe repos. Installed KDE. Absolutely zero integration, zero usability without enabling root... Whatever Kubuntu is, they should replace the default KDE packages with it, as with them the entire sudo-instead-of-su thing (IMO the main selling point of Ubuntu) doesn't work.
This is pretty much SuSE 10. They never released a 9.3 Just a 9.2
You're right, they never did. They are about to. I have a flyer from the CeBIT where you can preorder it - so I guess that either there will be a version 9.3 or Novell likes to say "sorry guys, but we decided to drop 9.3 in favor of another product".
Microsoft does not stand a chance!!
Netcraft confirms it.
By the way. Joe Barr reported yesterday that SuSE 9.3 Professional will also include Beagle. Not that you can't download Beagle anyway.
The SUSE (remember that Novell has renamed the distro for no apparent reason) 9.3 flyers distributed at the CeBIT say so, as well. There's a list of new features, among them Linux 2.6.11, KDE 3.4, GNOME 2.10, XEN, Beagle, iPod support, "perfected" bluetooth support, PostgreSQL 8.0... and a strategy game called "Invasion". The last time I've seen a game presented as a great new feature was in that scary Windows ad with Steve Ballmer that's floating around the 'Net...
By the way, according to the dude at the Novell booth, they're going to turn SUSE into a cutting edge distro - when I asked if they wanted to compete with Fedora, he answered that Fedora should first try to catch up. Maybe SUSE will become interesting to those users who like to always have the newest stuff. OTOH Fedora feels a lot cleaner then SuSE 9.0 did - less distro-specificness.
True. I hate it when I'm looking for a file only to find that the computer's distro has the file in a different place, under a different name or even entirely missing. Or, even worse, when a distro decides that /etc/profile is a bad place to store the global setting for $PATH.
One thing I like about Linux is that system tweaking is made a lot easier, as the configuration files usually have to be stored in a sensible location and designed to be human-readable. It's usually easy to find out where a particular value or option is. That makes the fact that these places vary from distro to distro even more annoying. The fact that one of the things that make Linux more comfortable than Windows for me is kind of... broken.
Especially Ubuntu does this a lot - one of the main reasons I didn't like Warty when I tried it out.
It's even better if you have a collection of things.
For example, a collection of MP3s could be sorted by putting them into a few big folders and symlinking them to other folders with names like "Jazz", "Sad stuff", "Press Play On Tape" or "1950 - 1955". However, that method requires you to make sure that every file has its appropriate links, wade through all files if you decide to add a category etc.
Migrating an existing collection of songs to such a setup would be a lot of work, too.
Now imagine that you just take a file, slap the digital equivalent of a Post-It note with the word "Chill" scrwaled onto it onto it and put it somewhere. Later, when you're in the mood for some Chill music, you just search for everything that matches "Chill" - and poof, the file pops up. Without you having to go through folders, deciding whether or not each file suits your current mood. You need some Blues songs without lyrics? If you have assigned the right metadata to your songs you just search for "Blues" and "no lyrics" and get all relevant files.
I think that metadata-based searching could be great for maintaining collections of files.
Why stop at 10 why not release at 100 or 1000. While your at it tack on a "turbo" or "advanced" moniker.
Not to forget the little sticker saying: "Now with 30% less fat!"
Take your preferred apps. Put them into a separate menu. Put that menu directly onto your Kicker/whatever the Google taskbar is called. Bing! you have just made all the GUI programs you use on a regular basis easily accessible.
Other programs will take a bit longer to find, but as they usually are in some sensible place (ie the GIMP is under "Graphics", not "System Tools") and the menus are usually alphabetized, it's not hard to find a particular app.
Sure, the CLI ist faster. Just type in the name of the app and off you go (if it's in your $PATH, of course). But sometimes it's just nice to move your mouse to the bottom of the screen, click and watch Thunderbird load.
Yes, they bought one copy of Windows and installed it on all of their machines, as is common practice. The other licence is because they lost the first one's CD code.
Bose, anyone?
No, I prefer Bang & Olufsen. But thanks for the offer.
You never know, they might be picking up our p0rn transmissions already and trying to figure out our mating rituals. I dread to think what their conclusions would be!
But it would make diplomacy far more interesting.
You know that something's wrong when you see such a post getting modded up as Insightful.
No offense meant, but once more I'm happy because I don't live in that scary, scary coutry...
Is that shudder because of the "doing acid" part or the "trying to get IE to work properly" part?
If you were a web designer you wouldn't have asked.
So, how long until someone replaces the search results for microsoft.com with redirects to distrowatch.org?
Got any cool wooden or goat case mods you want to share?
I just hope no one misreaeds that and posts his goatse case mod.
Hmm, I hear that Blue Gene is for rent...
However, you also might trash the one piece of information that will help you win a five billion dollar case in a few years.
Just wait until I have pumped several hundred yottatons of helium into the sun and then tell me again that it's not gonna be a supernova.
The freaky thing is that this comes one day after "Mission to Mars" came on local TV. Hmmmm... Perhaps it's a sign that Germany has joined the Deep Space Lie program (you know, the one that tries to make uns believe that there are other planets beside Earth). I better go get my tin foil helmet.
Next they'll reiterate there's no giant face sculpture on Mars. :(
Actually, there is no giant face sculpture. They pulled it down to make place for a mall.
The market is Windows users who are used to use a does-it-all software like Nero to do everything remotely related related to CD-Rs. The same people who consider using Linux until they hear stuff like: "Oh, in order to burn CD you just need cdrdao... And look, there's a nice graphical frontend for it, it depends on cdrdao, dvd+rw-tools, id3lib, flac, xfwm4 and libselinux-devel. Oh, and with your kernel version you have to be root if you actually want to burn something."
I know, it's already been said before, but just being able to say "Well, there's always Nero" when asked about burning CDs on Linux is a Good Thing. For many users Nero is one of Windows' killer apps.