To see Linus and Linux Conf. Oh well. So I picked the wrong weeks to be in Oz. Nah...I had a great holiday, first time in Oz, wonderful country. Plus, I got to ask my Aussie gf to marry me. Whee!
Sometimes it's being unique, sometimes friendly, sometimes convenient...
In college, we used it to ask someone to bring us a beer...our apartment was long and narrow and it was easier when the stereo was on than shouting or getting up...after all, college is for laziness.
Now, at work, I use it all the time via Vivster to communicate with my fellow programmers...yes, they're in the same office without walls or cubes to separate us, but when you're deep into code, an IM is much less intrusive than a spoken word...you can queue an IM until a bit later whereas spoken information flips an interrupt in your brain immediately.
Sometimes an IM can get a conversation started between my fiancee and I that would have been difficult to start in person, just due to the sensitivity of it. Sometimes written word can be more explicit than spoken.
Because the house I live in is rented and I have limited resources, I came up with a rack that works for now. Base of 2x4 lumber with uprights of 2x8 lumber. You just screw right into the wood anywhere you want to hold your stuff. You get the flexibility of not having to screw in a particular place, and it's stable enough to hold most anything you might want.
Once I buy a house, I hope to get a real setup going, but this works for now and cost me next to nothing. I did provide the rack with its own 20A circuit from the board, which helps a lot since when a breaker throws it doesn't necessarily take down the rack as well.
Probably. At the moment, until something like that gets put up there, the best I can think of is a general introduction. I've considered a nice pic or something, too, but I like fast-loading, myself.:) I'll think of something. It's a work in progress, of course.
I'd be curious to know what exactly you found useful about the plug-and-socket Halloween costume?
You know, that's a very, very good point you have made and I certainly appreciate it. I'm glad that you could see beyond the original sentence and on to the content, of which I have always intended to serve more than just myself and friends.
Thanks! Time to do some revisions on my content.:)
First of all, I think mouse gestures are wanky and stupid. Gamers, maybe, find them easy because they're used to gesturing crap with their mice. Mine sits and lights up my table more than anything else.
People constantly forget that in order to reach the largest audience possible for your site, you have to make it compatible with the largest audience out there. Far too many sites, attempting to be universally-accessible, have opted to include features that older browsers don't render correctly, can't disable, or generally make it impossible to navigate.
PEOPLE -- If I can't get to your site or can't read it properly using whatever I'm using, I won't be back.
My patience for tricked-out websites that require 99 different plugins to view is zero. My patience for websites that don't render nicely in Lynx or Links is higher, but still not absolute Side Note: I'd like to wring OSDN's neck for making FM and other sites damned near impossible to navigate in text because of their damned OSDN menus. My personal site is built in POH (Plain Old HTML) because it is most universal...I don't care who you are or what you run, you can see it.
First, JavaScript works on a Russian roulette basis...most of the time you'll get an empty chamber, sometimes it'll blow you up. The consistency in implementation leaves something to be desired, especially with more complicated scripts. Secondly, JS is a limiting technology -- if your browser doesn't do it or doesn't do it the way it was meant to do, it'll limit your audience.
If you're ok with the idea of having people not come to your site, fine. There's a lot of sites out there that wouldn't make sense to dumb them down too much (high media sites, etc. come to mind). But if you want a universal audience -- K.I.S.S. Even the trailers section of Apple's website renders nicely under Links, regardless of the fact that they don't have a text-only Quicktime plugin.:)
Win9x: For most of our hardware, nothing else makes sense. Our budget (small biz -- 20 employees) doesn't let us upgrade that often. Personally, I run Windows only when I absolutely have to, and I certainly am NOT going to run it on the latest hardware. Hence, Win9x.
Client/Server: You know what? It's not dead, especially for smaller installs. Sure, IBM and other greats can't justify having an app that has to be installed on every darn workstation or has to have heavier clients (I dislike 'fat', it implies bloat.) We don't cater to 300 workstations, we cater to 4 or 5. C/S is still the way for us and will be for ages.
Tape Backup: Because you'll never convince the PHB that hard drives are just as reliable. Mind you, when the boss buys Maxtor POS drives, what do you expect?
1U (1.75-in. high) servers: What in hades do I need a blade for? We add services once, maybe twice a year. We have all of 10 things in the rack...maybe. 1Us are still important for us.
Color inkjet printers: How often do I print code in color? Reports in color? ANYTHING in color? Rare enough to not justify the laserjet price, that's how not often.
Ethernet hubs: Intelligent blah, blah, blah VOIP blah, blah, blah. Anyone else tired of this? When my fly gets voice command, folks. That's when I'll care.
PBXs: Just bought one a few years ago. Have no interest in spending money on something that isn't broken and won't be for years.
PDAs: This is a case of Last Mile Land out here. I don't even HAVE a cell phone because I can't get a signal -- no towers near enough. A PDA would be nice, but Xmas presents just don't come that large usually.
Serial/parallel ports: Nothing quite as reliable or easily configured as talking to a simple, straightforward port that doesn't give you any guff.
The rest of the predictions are expected and agreed upon. These are just ones I don't see migrating from anytime soon, and I'm sure lots of other people could make similar lists. Does that mean we're against progress? Hell no. It just means that we'd prefer if those vendors kept their "Convert Now!" pressure down until we damned well are ready to convert and not before. Some pressure is good...keeps us all looking at the new possibilities. But I don't need some jackass breathing down my neck about technologies (VOIP) that will make no sense in our corporation for ages to come yet. I also don't need vendors dropping support for "legacy" systems just because they came out with WhizBang Product 2.0.
Around 1999 I had for a few years been experimenting with Linux but hadn't really ever made the switch for more than a week or two, due to lacking real desktop usability. I discovered Slackware and KDE almost in the same heartbeat and converted....and stuck, finally. KDE was the power behind keeping me on Linux and off Windows. Now I have a great desktop that I use every day for hours on end and love every minute of it.
Good job, KDE, and keep going. Gnome? Don't you boys give up, either, because it gives KDE motivation to keep churning out quality. However, you should buy them a beer or two because they've done some fine work for the *nix world, no matter which side of the fence you like to sit on.
Point taken, but what amazes me about the RIAA is that they automatically assume that if people can't get music via free downloads from the Internet, they'll automatically start buying CDs again from a store.
"Oh, man. It's too dangerous to download music, guess I'll just go back to dropping $18.95 a CD full of crap and that one song I like."
Hate to break it to you, RIAA, but that's NOT how it works. Sue music downloaders (whether customers or not) and what's my reaction? I'm not buying your shit...EVER. Whether or not I choose to still download illegally is my business, but you've sure as hell made me think twice about buying a CD and supporting an industry who enjoys threatening, bullying, and sticking to a marketing scheme that is clearly broken.
I switched from Microsoft to Linux for a reason. I'm switching from RIAA to non-RIAA for similar.
The trailer...oh, the sweet, beautiful trailer....damn you! My lust for fine filmage of Tolkien only increaseth.
You know how I know this movie is going to kick ass? (And not just kick one ass, kick collective ass.) PJ is still refilming scenes in NZ. Yes, still.
For those of you who don't find this amazing, how many months does it take after a movie is in the can for it to come out? Quite a few. PJ is certainly pushing the limits on New Line's production crew to get this one out in time...but he'll do it. The man has earned my trust by delivering time and time again.
I know this will be good because PJ himself said he will reshoot, and reshoot, and reshoot fucking AGAIN until he gets it right. You have to love a director with that much dedication to the film he is releasing, no matter what your view on his interpretation is.
Hrm....lots of stuff here, not sure where to start, so I'll poke in some thoughts:
To be more clear, my original rant was not necessarily directed to the developers of Epiphany or even Gnome in particular. It was more of a rant against the community as a whole, which includes developers and non-developers.
There is a large push that I've seen recently to get Linux accepted on the desktop in corporate environments. I, for one, am certainly in favor of it. I develop software, but for a Windows-based company, because it pays right now to do so...our clients are all Windows-based. I would *love* to see Linux on the corporate desktop for the very qualities it possesses of stability, etc. I would much rather develop and get paid for creating software under Linux instead of Windows.
That being said, it is extremely frustrating to me when I see, from my perspective, development efforts being used to re-create technology that I thought we had figured out pretty well already, such as web browsers, and not working on technology that I think is still fairly spotty (such as sound, printing, intercompatibility, etc. -- YMMV)
That is not to say that the browser cannot be improved. Far from it, I'm sure. I have no doubt that Epiphany is a good chunk of code and works well for those who use it. And if there are people using it, certainly it is not a waste of effort for those people, nor for people like myself who might benefit later from its development (even though Gnome isn't my bag).
My frustration is with the community that chants, "Linux on the desktop!" and then releases projects where a team of very talented people have worked on releasing a piece of software that, while good, seems to me to be a bit of repetition in a lot of ways. I'm all for improvement in every area -- it just seems to me like there are some areas that need more improvement than others, and I'd like to see those given attention first.
But, as always, that is my perspective coming to the community and the masses may not agree. I can only offer my viewpoint on the situation and attempt to rattle some ears. (Although, in hindsight, doing so with a rant with language easily construed to be flamebait probably isn't the best tactic -- oh well. My own flamewar. Whee.)
name the 39 alternatives to Epiphany. I'd be interested.
I was, of course, being facetious for the point. I'll admit I wasn't aware that it was a re-skinning, but the point still remains the same, I think. Spending time getting the interface polished is fine and dandy, but when there are other base things to take care of first, this seems like something that could wait till later. But, developers will be developers, and if this is what turns your bubble...ok by me. It just seems the wrong priority, that's all.
Honestly, does the user care if there are five different Mozilla derivatives, each for a different desktop environment, when they have the one they want installed? It won't confuse anyone, and it will provide choice to those who might want it.
My point, which perhaps was lost in my rant (yes, I'll admit it was a flameable rant), is that I see the development of yet another web browser to "integrate" with a user-experience as the frosting on a cake that isn't even baked yet.
The Linux desktop is far from putting the final touches on it. There are a lot of very basic areas (printing, sound, etc -- as mentioned before) that don't even work to any *acceptable* level, and yet developers are spending time working on polishing the user-interface to an application that has long since been taken out of the oven.
It's not that I deny a good user experience probably needs a browser that is integrated and works well. (Microsoft taught us this...don't deny it.) All I'm saying is that it appears to me that the community is trying to determine what the color of the walls will be before the foundation is even built. It's all in the wrong order.
But, as one poster mentioned, the face that there isn't any marketing department behind this rather makes the priorities skewed. Developers will develop what *they* will use the most and leave the rest to stagnate until otherwise motivated.
You *have* to be kidding me. My jaw has permanently cemented itself to the floor...another fucking browser????
I'm sorry, but this is part of the force that is killing desktop acceptance in the open-source community. Everyone, their dog, and their 2-bit Saturday whore thinks they need to develop another web browser to share with the community. Suddenly we now have, what, 40ish browsers to choose from?
I mean, I have great faith that there are just *shitloads* of developers out there that just have bleeding gums of excitement thinking about developing on yet another browser, but really....isn't enough enough?
Personally, I think Gnome has dick-envy over KDE's Konq, but that's no good reason to go out and develop another application to suck up the resources of the community in useless flogging of a concept already cemented.
Folks: I. think. we. have. the. web. browser. figured. out. Unlike the myriad of good web browsers, don't you think there are other places to spend your time contributing to the community, such as printing, sound, interoperability, and a million other more worthy things? Anyone got a spare lens, because we need a little focus around here.
Man, I remember some of the lock-ins I used to participate in...youth group, high school, clubs, etc....they were always a time for extreme mayhem performed by sleep-deprived youth high on every type of sugar imaginable. You always went with a sense that if you didn't outright get laid, you'd at least be able to cop a feel during the 3:30am game of Twister.
A Microsoft office lock-in sounds kinda ok, but I'll bet Windows engineers aren't nearly as flexible as Linux engineers.
There's lots of comments about how ESR "isn't speaking for me!" and shouldn't be lowering himself to the level of SCO's attacks. Frankly, I was refreshed and glad he said what he wrote for a couple of reasons.
One, it said what I've been thinking for ages -- you're screwing with the wrong community on this one. Some of you are going, "What? What community?" Maybe it's just me, but there is a large number of people, using open source, who basically have the same mindset about such things. No, we don't always agree, but that's our strength, not our weakness. Flexibility is more profitable than agreement. ESR's commentary is just playing back what a lot of us, maybe not all of us, but most of us have thought about SCO one time or another.
That being said, another reason is because in order to mobilize a community of anyone, you have to have inspiring people to "wake up" the masses and get them thinking in terms of defense, retaliation, protection. ESR's letter maybe be frank, bold, perhaps even cocky, but it gets the point across -- we're getting tired of this shit. Time to do something about it. Perhaps this won't mobilize anything and y'all will just stay reclined in your chairs sipping another Bawlz. But if it gets you on your feet asking what you can do to further the open source movement and defense, well...then the job is done.
You might not fully agree with ESR and you might think he's a pompous prick, even. But I think his point still rings true -- SCO is being a real dumbass and they're getting way annoying. Time that they put up or shut up, and if they don't, the community (for whatever that means) needs to start taking the stage to defend what we think is worth defending.
Lots of comments here mostly ranging from the "you're an idiot" to "get a pro". No need to restate the obvious, so I'll just add my personal notes:
First, if you can, get a pro instead. That being said, there's a lot of good you can usually do without a pro's help. Playing with mains is not the thing to do if you're an armchair electrician like myself. Those sorts of things I usually leave to them. You can, however, do work on the non-mains wiring without seriously endangering yourself. I managed to wire my entire house to the box after the mains were properly installed and am quite living to talk about it.
Here's the problem with mains: They're either a) not breakered if you're past the mains breaker, or b) the mains breaker is too high to stop anything from frying you where you stand. One thing you definately want to avoid besides touching the mains is cutting them. If you cut it on the service side of the mains breakers, oftentimes they're not breakered back down the line. The line back to the transformer will glow very pretty red and probably catch on fire, depending on whether or not the transformer blows up right away or later. It can be impressive, I don't recommend it.
Work with one hand in the box when attaching wires to/from the breakers themselves. One hand behind the back will keep a path from going across your heart. Avoid standing in kiddie pools while working on the box. Strip the wires only right before you are going to hook them into the breakers, that way you don't accidentally make contact early. Shut off everything you can before playing in the box. If you can't shut off the mains, have a person near you to whack you away with a board or call 911. If you can shut of the mains, you're reasonably protected, just use a voltmeter to make sure.
Common sense prevails here. If it makes you shaky and nervous to get in the box, get a pro. Otherwise, watch yourself and keep your head on, and you can do some of the work without harm.
I really don't know what the problem is, it's not as if printing was all that much rocket science, but I have yet to find something that works, even 90% of the time, for a printing solution.
What in the hell do Linux users use for printing, a 9-pin dot matrix hooked to a serial port? I swear, the hours of my life spent trying to configure printers to work would have been better spent on anything else.
CUPS - nice idea, poor implementation. For once I thought I had found a solution that would work, and work well, for a long time. Wrong. It worked for awhile, then something got farked somewhere in some obscure place and now the thing won't work, and damned if I can figure out why.
LPD and Ghostscript - Look, if I wanted to use something obscure, I'd be running MVS, ok? Using these tools is like configuring Sendmail with a typewriter.
I don't print much, but when I do, I want it, and I want it now, and looking good. It can't be too much to ask, but so far, it is.
Located in the Science Museum of Minnesota, it features quack medical devices throughout the decades that have been marketed to fools and skeptics alike. A neat collection. You'd be amazed what people would ingest or put their bodies through. (the vaccum-operated breast enlargement machine is interesting, as well as the sticks of radium that people would carry in their pockets).
I still maintain that whoever wrote this MUST have worked in IT.
We the unwilling,
led by the unknowing,
are doing the impossible
for the ungrateful.
We have done so much for so long with so little
We are now qualified to do anything with nothing.
Slashdot Mirror
To see Linus and Linux Conf. Oh well. So I picked the wrong weeks to be in Oz. Nah...I had a great holiday, first time in Oz, wonderful country. Plus, I got to ask my Aussie gf to marry me. Whee!
Just left Australia on Friday the 9th and I was there for 3.5 weeks in Adelaide and Whyalla both! DOH! Missed my chance. :(
Sometimes it's being unique, sometimes friendly, sometimes convenient...
In college, we used it to ask someone to bring us a beer...our apartment was long and narrow and it was easier when the stereo was on than shouting or getting up...after all, college is for laziness.
Now, at work, I use it all the time via Vivster to communicate with my fellow programmers...yes, they're in the same office without walls or cubes to separate us, but when you're deep into code, an IM is much less intrusive than a spoken word...you can queue an IM until a bit later whereas spoken information flips an interrupt in your brain immediately.
Sometimes an IM can get a conversation started between my fiancee and I that would have been difficult to start in person, just due to the sensitivity of it. Sometimes written word can be more explicit than spoken.
The right tool for the right context, I say.
Because the house I live in is rented and I have limited resources, I came up with a rack that works for now. Base of 2x4 lumber with uprights of 2x8 lumber. You just screw right into the wood anywhere you want to hold your stuff. You get the flexibility of not having to screw in a particular place, and it's stable enough to hold most anything you might want.
Once I buy a house, I hope to get a real setup going, but this works for now and cost me next to nothing. I did provide the rack with its own 20A circuit from the board, which helps a lot since when a breaker throws it doesn't necessarily take down the rack as well.
Probably. At the moment, until something like that gets put up there, the best I can think of is a general introduction. I've considered a nice pic or something, too, but I like fast-loading, myself. :) I'll think of something. It's a work in progress, of course.
I'd be curious to know what exactly you found useful about the plug-and-socket Halloween costume?
You know, that's a very, very good point you have made and I certainly appreciate it. I'm glad that you could see beyond the original sentence and on to the content, of which I have always intended to serve more than just myself and friends.
:)
Thanks! Time to do some revisions on my content.
First of all, I think mouse gestures are wanky and stupid. Gamers, maybe, find them easy because they're used to gesturing crap with their mice. Mine sits and lights up my table more than anything else.
:)
People constantly forget that in order to reach the largest audience possible for your site, you have to make it compatible with the largest audience out there. Far too many sites, attempting to be universally-accessible, have opted to include features that older browsers don't render correctly, can't disable, or generally make it impossible to navigate.
PEOPLE -- If I can't get to your site or can't read it properly using whatever I'm using, I won't be back.
My patience for tricked-out websites that require 99 different plugins to view is zero. My patience for websites that don't render nicely in Lynx or Links is higher, but still not absolute Side Note: I'd like to wring OSDN's neck for making FM and other sites damned near impossible to navigate in text because of their damned OSDN menus. My personal site is built in POH (Plain Old HTML) because it is most universal...I don't care who you are or what you run, you can see it.
First, JavaScript works on a Russian roulette basis...most of the time you'll get an empty chamber, sometimes it'll blow you up. The consistency in implementation leaves something to be desired, especially with more complicated scripts. Secondly, JS is a limiting technology -- if your browser doesn't do it or doesn't do it the way it was meant to do, it'll limit your audience.
If you're ok with the idea of having people not come to your site, fine. There's a lot of sites out there that wouldn't make sense to dumb them down too much (high media sites, etc. come to mind). But if you want a universal audience -- K.I.S.S. Even the trailers section of Apple's website renders nicely under Links, regardless of the fact that they don't have a text-only Quicktime plugin.
- Win9x: For most of our hardware, nothing else makes sense. Our budget (small biz -- 20 employees) doesn't let us upgrade that often. Personally, I run Windows only when I absolutely have to, and I certainly am NOT going to run it on the latest hardware. Hence, Win9x.
- Client/Server: You know what? It's not dead, especially for smaller installs. Sure, IBM and other greats can't justify having an app that has to be installed on every darn workstation or has to have heavier clients (I dislike 'fat', it implies bloat.) We don't cater to 300 workstations, we cater to 4 or 5. C/S is still the way for us and will be for ages.
- Tape Backup: Because you'll never convince the PHB that hard drives are just as reliable. Mind you, when the boss buys Maxtor POS drives, what do you expect?
- 1U (1.75-in. high) servers: What in hades do I need a blade for? We add services once, maybe twice a year. We have all of 10 things in the rack...maybe. 1Us are still important for us.
- Color inkjet printers: How often do I print code in color? Reports in color? ANYTHING in color? Rare enough to not justify the laserjet price, that's how not often.
- Ethernet hubs: Intelligent blah, blah, blah VOIP blah, blah, blah. Anyone else tired of this? When my fly gets voice command, folks. That's when I'll care.
- PBXs: Just bought one a few years ago. Have no interest in spending money on something that isn't broken and won't be for years.
- PDAs: This is a case of Last Mile Land out here. I don't even HAVE a cell phone because I can't get a signal -- no towers near enough. A PDA would be nice, but Xmas presents just don't come that large usually.
- Serial/parallel ports: Nothing quite as reliable or easily configured as talking to a simple, straightforward port that doesn't give you any guff.
The rest of the predictions are expected and agreed upon. These are just ones I don't see migrating from anytime soon, and I'm sure lots of other people could make similar lists. Does that mean we're against progress? Hell no. It just means that we'd prefer if those vendors kept their "Convert Now!" pressure down until we damned well are ready to convert and not before. Some pressure is good...keeps us all looking at the new possibilities. But I don't need some jackass breathing down my neck about technologies (VOIP) that will make no sense in our corporation for ages to come yet. I also don't need vendors dropping support for "legacy" systems just because they came out with WhizBang Product 2.0.Around 1999 I had for a few years been experimenting with Linux but hadn't really ever made the switch for more than a week or two, due to lacking real desktop usability. I discovered Slackware and KDE almost in the same heartbeat and converted....and stuck, finally. KDE was the power behind keeping me on Linux and off Windows. Now I have a great desktop that I use every day for hours on end and love every minute of it.
Good job, KDE, and keep going. Gnome? Don't you boys give up, either, because it gives KDE motivation to keep churning out quality. However, you should buy them a beer or two because they've done some fine work for the *nix world, no matter which side of the fence you like to sit on.
Dying?? It can't die yet! I haven't gotten mine yet. ARGHHHH! I hate it when tech dies before I get a slice.
Found on a side of the stones:
If you can read this, you're too close.
Point taken, but what amazes me about the RIAA is that they automatically assume that if people can't get music via free downloads from the Internet, they'll automatically start buying CDs again from a store.
"Oh, man. It's too dangerous to download music, guess I'll just go back to dropping $18.95 a CD full of crap and that one song I like."
Hate to break it to you, RIAA, but that's NOT how it works. Sue music downloaders (whether customers or not) and what's my reaction? I'm not buying your shit...EVER. Whether or not I choose to still download illegally is my business, but you've sure as hell made me think twice about buying a CD and supporting an industry who enjoys threatening, bullying, and sticking to a marketing scheme that is clearly broken.
I switched from Microsoft to Linux for a reason. I'm switching from RIAA to non-RIAA for similar.
The trailer...oh, the sweet, beautiful trailer....damn you! My lust for fine filmage of Tolkien only increaseth.
You know how I know this movie is going to kick ass? (And not just kick one ass, kick collective ass.) PJ is still refilming scenes in NZ. Yes, still.
For those of you who don't find this amazing, how many months does it take after a movie is in the can for it to come out? Quite a few. PJ is certainly pushing the limits on New Line's production crew to get this one out in time...but he'll do it. The man has earned my trust by delivering time and time again.
I know this will be good because PJ himself said he will reshoot, and reshoot, and reshoot fucking AGAIN until he gets it right. You have to love a director with that much dedication to the film he is releasing, no matter what your view on his interpretation is.
Trailers....bittersweet torment.
Hrm....lots of stuff here, not sure where to start, so I'll poke in some thoughts:
To be more clear, my original rant was not necessarily directed to the developers of Epiphany or even Gnome in particular. It was more of a rant against the community as a whole, which includes developers and non-developers.
There is a large push that I've seen recently to get Linux accepted on the desktop in corporate environments. I, for one, am certainly in favor of it. I develop software, but for a Windows-based company, because it pays right now to do so...our clients are all Windows-based. I would *love* to see Linux on the corporate desktop for the very qualities it possesses of stability, etc. I would much rather develop and get paid for creating software under Linux instead of Windows.
That being said, it is extremely frustrating to me when I see, from my perspective, development efforts being used to re-create technology that I thought we had figured out pretty well already, such as web browsers, and not working on technology that I think is still fairly spotty (such as sound, printing, intercompatibility, etc. -- YMMV)
That is not to say that the browser cannot be improved. Far from it, I'm sure. I have no doubt that Epiphany is a good chunk of code and works well for those who use it. And if there are people using it, certainly it is not a waste of effort for those people, nor for people like myself who might benefit later from its development (even though Gnome isn't my bag).
My frustration is with the community that chants, "Linux on the desktop!" and then releases projects where a team of very talented people have worked on releasing a piece of software that, while good, seems to me to be a bit of repetition in a lot of ways. I'm all for improvement in every area -- it just seems to me like there are some areas that need more improvement than others, and I'd like to see those given attention first.
But, as always, that is my perspective coming to the community and the masses may not agree. I can only offer my viewpoint on the situation and attempt to rattle some ears. (Although, in hindsight, doing so with a rant with language easily construed to be flamebait probably isn't the best tactic -- oh well. My own flamewar. Whee.)
I'm glad you got my point, even through my rantage. :)
name the 39 alternatives to Epiphany. I'd be interested.
I was, of course, being facetious for the point. I'll admit I wasn't aware that it was a re-skinning, but the point still remains the same, I think. Spending time getting the interface polished is fine and dandy, but when there are other base things to take care of first, this seems like something that could wait till later. But, developers will be developers, and if this is what turns your bubble...ok by me. It just seems the wrong priority, that's all.
Honestly, does the user care if there are five different Mozilla derivatives, each for a different desktop environment, when they have the one they want installed? It won't confuse anyone, and it will provide choice to those who might want it.
My point, which perhaps was lost in my rant (yes, I'll admit it was a flameable rant), is that I see the development of yet another web browser to "integrate" with a user-experience as the frosting on a cake that isn't even baked yet.
The Linux desktop is far from putting the final touches on it. There are a lot of very basic areas (printing, sound, etc -- as mentioned before) that don't even work to any *acceptable* level, and yet developers are spending time working on polishing the user-interface to an application that has long since been taken out of the oven.
It's not that I deny a good user experience probably needs a browser that is integrated and works well. (Microsoft taught us this...don't deny it.) All I'm saying is that it appears to me that the community is trying to determine what the color of the walls will be before the foundation is even built. It's all in the wrong order.
But, as one poster mentioned, the face that there isn't any marketing department behind this rather makes the priorities skewed. Developers will develop what *they* will use the most and leave the rest to stagnate until otherwise motivated.
You *have* to be kidding me. My jaw has permanently cemented itself to the floor...another fucking browser????
I'm sorry, but this is part of the force that is killing desktop acceptance in the open-source community. Everyone, their dog, and their 2-bit Saturday whore thinks they need to develop another web browser to share with the community. Suddenly we now have, what, 40ish browsers to choose from?
I mean, I have great faith that there are just *shitloads* of developers out there that just have bleeding gums of excitement thinking about developing on yet another browser, but really....isn't enough enough?
Personally, I think Gnome has dick-envy over KDE's Konq, but that's no good reason to go out and develop another application to suck up the resources of the community in useless flogging of a concept already cemented.
Folks: I. think. we. have. the. web. browser. figured. out. Unlike the myriad of good web browsers, don't you think there are other places to spend your time contributing to the community, such as printing, sound, interoperability, and a million other more worthy things? Anyone got a spare lens, because we need a little focus around here.
Gotta love joint ventures.
Cool. Does this sound to anyone else like it's going to result in a lot of smoke and a serious case of the munchies?
Man, I remember some of the lock-ins I used to participate in...youth group, high school, clubs, etc....they were always a time for extreme mayhem performed by sleep-deprived youth high on every type of sugar imaginable. You always went with a sense that if you didn't outright get laid, you'd at least be able to cop a feel during the 3:30am game of Twister.
A Microsoft office lock-in sounds kinda ok, but I'll bet Windows engineers aren't nearly as flexible as Linux engineers.
There's lots of comments about how ESR "isn't speaking for me!" and shouldn't be lowering himself to the level of SCO's attacks. Frankly, I was refreshed and glad he said what he wrote for a couple of reasons.
One, it said what I've been thinking for ages -- you're screwing with the wrong community on this one. Some of you are going, "What? What community?" Maybe it's just me, but there is a large number of people, using open source, who basically have the same mindset about such things. No, we don't always agree, but that's our strength, not our weakness. Flexibility is more profitable than agreement. ESR's commentary is just playing back what a lot of us, maybe not all of us, but most of us have thought about SCO one time or another.
That being said, another reason is because in order to mobilize a community of anyone, you have to have inspiring people to "wake up" the masses and get them thinking in terms of defense, retaliation, protection. ESR's letter maybe be frank, bold, perhaps even cocky, but it gets the point across -- we're getting tired of this shit. Time to do something about it. Perhaps this won't mobilize anything and y'all will just stay reclined in your chairs sipping another Bawlz. But if it gets you on your feet asking what you can do to further the open source movement and defense, well...then the job is done.
You might not fully agree with ESR and you might think he's a pompous prick, even. But I think his point still rings true -- SCO is being a real dumbass and they're getting way annoying. Time that they put up or shut up, and if they don't, the community (for whatever that means) needs to start taking the stage to defend what we think is worth defending.
Lots of comments here mostly ranging from the "you're an idiot" to "get a pro". No need to restate the obvious, so I'll just add my personal notes:
First, if you can, get a pro instead. That being said, there's a lot of good you can usually do without a pro's help. Playing with mains is not the thing to do if you're an armchair electrician like myself. Those sorts of things I usually leave to them. You can, however, do work on the non-mains wiring without seriously endangering yourself. I managed to wire my entire house to the box after the mains were properly installed and am quite living to talk about it.
Here's the problem with mains: They're either a) not breakered if you're past the mains breaker, or b) the mains breaker is too high to stop anything from frying you where you stand. One thing you definately want to avoid besides touching the mains is cutting them. If you cut it on the service side of the mains breakers, oftentimes they're not breakered back down the line. The line back to the transformer will glow very pretty red and probably catch on fire, depending on whether or not the transformer blows up right away or later. It can be impressive, I don't recommend it.
Work with one hand in the box when attaching wires to/from the breakers themselves. One hand behind the back will keep a path from going across your heart. Avoid standing in kiddie pools while working on the box. Strip the wires only right before you are going to hook them into the breakers, that way you don't accidentally make contact early. Shut off everything you can before playing in the box. If you can't shut off the mains, have a person near you to whack you away with a board or call 911. If you can shut of the mains, you're reasonably protected, just use a voltmeter to make sure.
Common sense prevails here. If it makes you shaky and nervous to get in the box, get a pro. Otherwise, watch yourself and keep your head on, and you can do some of the work without harm.
Printing in Linux can bite my shiny metal ass.
I really don't know what the problem is, it's not as if printing was all that much rocket science, but I have yet to find something that works, even 90% of the time, for a printing solution.
What in the hell do Linux users use for printing, a 9-pin dot matrix hooked to a serial port? I swear, the hours of my life spent trying to configure printers to work would have been better spent on anything else.
CUPS - nice idea, poor implementation. For once I thought I had found a solution that would work, and work well, for a long time. Wrong. It worked for awhile, then something got farked somewhere in some obscure place and now the thing won't work, and damned if I can figure out why.
LPD and Ghostscript - Look, if I wanted to use something obscure, I'd be running MVS, ok? Using these tools is like configuring Sendmail with a typewriter.
I don't print much, but when I do, I want it, and I want it now, and looking good. It can't be too much to ask, but so far, it is.
Located in the Science Museum of Minnesota, it features quack medical devices throughout the decades that have been marketed to fools and skeptics alike. A neat collection. You'd be amazed what people would ingest or put their bodies through. (the vaccum-operated breast enlargement machine is interesting, as well as the sticks of radium that people would carry in their pockets).
Link Here. Creator's website is Here
I still maintain that whoever wrote this MUST have worked in IT.
We the unwilling,
led by the unknowing,
are doing the impossible
for the ungrateful.
We have done so much for so long with so little
We are now qualified to do anything with nothing.