That's the problem: You can customize it to look like Mac OS X. Mac OS X is Mac OS X without even trying. The main thing about Mac OS X is that it has more than just a pretty face (though it certainly has that:-). There's a standard toolkit for applications to access the functionality of the Operating System. There's very little set up, the user doesn't have to even touch a text configuration file or a tar command. And there are subtle things that make the basic Macintosh configuration just.... work. Apple was able to concentrate on making a full toolkit because they didn't have to bend over backwards to work with X11. The Linux desktop has some wonderful features, but I have yet to have everything working together smoothly.
The major problem with X11 is standards. Or rather, lack thereof. X11 started as a research project with no toolkit and no definition of other necessary standards. There have been a host of toolkits built on top of X11; GTK, QT, Motif, Athena, and many others. The more popular ones are reasonably well built and robust, but they will continue having interoperability problems. Copy-and-paste doesn't work consistently, the look and feel of applications varies vastly (compare XPDF to KOffice to Firefox), and there is absolutely no specter of a standard on sound.
When all of these factors come together, they can create a user experience that is almost as painful as flying by commercial jetliner on December 23. But just as I would brave holiday traffic to get to family, I'm willing to work on Linux because
I just bought a brand-new Pentium M (Dothan) laptop a few weeks ago, and then this new uber processor comes out. Well, that's the computer industry for you...
Ah, I see. Let me try to put it a different way. Linux and the applications build on top of Linux certainly have some great features not available on Windows. However, it also has flaws that can be ignored when the work is light, but become a major annoyance when used over a long, hard work day. Just like Windows. That horribly boring job isn't going to suddenly get better just because you switch over Linux.
Even styles that have a lot of hope flavour and little bitterness (pilsner urquell?) don't seem very popular in North american.
That sounds a bit like the United States' taste for cheeses: bland. Most cheeses in the United States have virtually no flavor. Flavorful cheeses just aren't as common and easy to get in the US. I remember travelling to France. Now the restaurants in France have a selection of the greatest cheeses I've ever seen. The cheese smells like dirty gym socks and tastes like a bite of heaven. Apparently the people of the US just can't appreciate a good cheese.
The geekosphere works just like most other communities. There are things that are cool or trendy in it. For the high school fashion crowd, buying a trendy set of shoes would be "cool". For computer geeks, having an installation of Firefox with a ton of custom-made extensions would be "cool". Cool is just a matter of perspective.
Girls aren't in technical fields because the educational interests in the US have been to neuter the school curriculum to make females feel more important. Instead of getting girls interested in science, it just means that Home Economics is worth more credit than AP Physics. This is important because girls suck at math and logic, but we need them to graduate for some reason.
My Computer Science professor is a woman. Enough said.
I don't think PNG is necessarily "better" than JPEG. They're just for different purposes. JPEG is for lossy images, PNG is for lossless. Different requirements, different file formats.
I just accidently sent an.odt file to a friend instead of a Microsoft Word document. His reaction was "What the heck is an odt file?" Hardly "Oh. Cool."
The type of mutation scientists are worried about would spread easily human-to-human. If the virus spreads fast enough, it doesn't matter if the victims are healthy in the morning and dead by night. As long as the virus is spreading, people will die. This virus would be airborn. Just think of that getting into an airport. Thousands of potential carriers going to hundreds of destinations that have thousands more potential carriers. Yeah. That's what the scientists are worried about.
It sounds like this is a *research* project. That doesn't mean that everything is perfect and optimized yet, but only that new ideas are being tested out. Stability comes far later.
Cold fusion, not hot fusion. Hot fusion happens inside of the sun at about 10 million degrees (K). Cold fusion involves starting fusion at a lower temperature. That doesn't necessarily mean cold as in human cold. It can mean cold as in really really hot as opposed to really really really really really really hot.
I've got to agree with you on the "simple tools" part. For years, I've wanted both a simple note pad/scratch pad and a simple todo list. No worrying about filling out the whole form, saving the files, or what color the "pad" is. Everyone wants to attach as many bells and whistles to their software as possible. Finally, someone just got it right.
I'm quite sure the FBI doesn't want to be flooded with hundreds of calls, even ones showing their appreciation. They only have limited capacity for accepting calls, and there are more important things that they need to hear. Things like information leading to catching criminals, saving kidnapped people, and other important jobs.
Saddam hadn't exactly been making a lot of progress on the nukes. All of the evidence cited by President Bush was, quite simply, wrong. There was "evidence" about Saddam trying to get yellow cake (uranium ore) from Nigeria (at least I think it was Nigeria). Completely unfounded; only a small fraction of the experts gave that report any credit. Then there was the one about Saddam getting metal tubes suitable for uranium enrichment. It really was too bad that the tubes were absolutely, completely unsuitable for uranium enrichment. The walls were too thick, the anti-weathering coating on the tubes would make some obvious problems for uranium enrichment. Of course, George Tenet conveniently forgot to tell Bush that all but one CIA expert on the matter thought the idea was total BS. So no, nukes weren't a reason. It was just the hawks rationalize.
Mexican Train is a domino game, not board game. If easy-to-learn games are OK with you, it's a very fun game. The basic idea is that there is something like a card in the middle of the game, with people building "trains" of dominoes out from there. It's apparently popular with the RV crowd, but I (an non-RVer) have loved playing. Check it out!
That's what I've been saying ever since I started learning about the GNU/Linux OS a couple of years ago. KDE vs. GNOME vs. everything else & QT vs GTK vs everything else not only results in wasted effort duplicating features, but is very confusing for users. I always have a difficult time explaining to people why there are two large projects for the same goal. Just try explaining to my computer-illiterate mother that X just displays the crap, so people have to make toolkits to save their sanity. But it seems that the OSS community as a whole is too afraid to make a painful shift involving thousands of lines of code becoming invalid. It seems I'll be explaining to many more people the causes of the family feuds of the free software community.
Slashdot Mirror
That's the problem: You can customize it to look like Mac OS X. Mac OS X is Mac OS X without even trying. The main thing about Mac OS X is that it has more than just a pretty face (though it certainly has that :-). There's a standard toolkit for applications to access the functionality of the Operating System. There's very little set up, the user doesn't have to even touch a text configuration file or a tar command. And there are subtle things that make the basic Macintosh configuration just.... work. Apple was able to concentrate on making a full toolkit because they didn't have to bend over backwards to work with X11. The Linux desktop has some wonderful features, but I have yet to have everything working together smoothly.
The major problem with X11 is standards. Or rather, lack thereof. X11 started as a research project with no toolkit and no definition of other necessary standards. There have been a host of toolkits built on top of X11; GTK, QT, Motif, Athena, and many others. The more popular ones are reasonably well built and robust, but they will continue having interoperability problems. Copy-and-paste doesn't work consistently, the look and feel of applications varies vastly (compare XPDF to KOffice to Firefox), and there is absolutely no specter of a standard on sound.
When all of these factors come together, they can create a user experience that is almost as painful as flying by commercial jetliner on December 23. But just as I would brave holiday traffic to get to family, I'm willing to work on Linux because
This guy elaborates nicely on the subject: http://www.tgr.com/weblog/archives/000271.html
I just bought a brand-new Pentium M (Dothan) laptop a few weeks ago, and then this new uber processor comes out. Well, that's the computer industry for you...
Ah, I see. Let me try to put it a different way. Linux and the applications build on top of Linux certainly have some great features not available on Windows. However, it also has flaws that can be ignored when the work is light, but become a major annoyance when used over a long, hard work day. Just like Windows. That horribly boring job isn't going to suddenly get better just because you switch over Linux.
I remember seeing a toaster that deserves a "Celeron Inside" sticker.
Even styles that have a lot of hope flavour and little bitterness (pilsner urquell?) don't seem very popular in North american.
That sounds a bit like the United States' taste for cheeses: bland. Most cheeses in the United States have virtually no flavor. Flavorful cheeses just aren't as common and easy to get in the US. I remember travelling to France. Now the restaurants in France have a selection of the greatest cheeses I've ever seen. The cheese smells like dirty gym socks and tastes like a bite of heaven. Apparently the people of the US just can't appreciate a good cheese.
The geekosphere works just like most other communities. There are things that are cool or trendy in it. For the high school fashion crowd, buying a trendy set of shoes would be "cool". For computer geeks, having an installation of Firefox with a ton of custom-made extensions would be "cool". Cool is just a matter of perspective.
Coolness. There's no escaping it!
Girls aren't in technical fields because the educational interests in the US have been to neuter the school curriculum to make females feel more important. Instead of getting girls interested in science, it just means that Home Economics is worth more credit than AP Physics. This is important because girls suck at math and logic, but we need them to graduate for some reason.
My Computer Science professor is a woman. Enough said.
I don't think PNG is necessarily "better" than JPEG. They're just for different purposes. JPEG is for lossy images, PNG is for lossless. Different requirements, different file formats.
I just accidently sent an .odt file to a friend instead of a Microsoft Word document. His reaction was "What the heck is an odt file?" Hardly "Oh. Cool."
The type of mutation scientists are worried about would spread easily human-to-human. If the virus spreads fast enough, it doesn't matter if the victims are healthy in the morning and dead by night. As long as the virus is spreading, people will die. This virus would be airborn. Just think of that getting into an airport. Thousands of potential carriers going to hundreds of destinations that have thousands more potential carriers. Yeah. That's what the scientists are worried about.
Or small companies with no ethics.
It sounds like this is a *research* project. That doesn't mean that everything is perfect and optimized yet, but only that new ideas are being tested out. Stability comes far later.
explination
frak
It looks like your not so hot on the English usage yourself. :P
P.S. Just kidding, I've seen worse. Fast typing leads nasty spelling.
I'm not completely sure on the numbers there, web searches involving forums are only so reliable. :)
Cold fusion, not hot fusion. Hot fusion happens inside of the sun at about 10 million degrees (K). Cold fusion involves starting fusion at a lower temperature. That doesn't necessarily mean cold as in human cold. It can mean cold as in really really hot as opposed to really really really really really really hot.
I've got to agree with you on the "simple tools" part. For years, I've wanted both a simple note pad/scratch pad and a simple todo list. No worrying about filling out the whole form, saving the files, or what color the "pad" is. Everyone wants to attach as many bells and whistles to their software as possible. Finally, someone just got it right.
The interviewer asked the question, and the anti-SCO zealots ask for the asking of the question.
...there was a grammar error in the article on Horcurxes. Fixed.
I'm quite sure the FBI doesn't want to be flooded with hundreds of calls, even ones showing their appreciation. They only have limited capacity for accepting calls, and there are more important things that they need to hear. Things like information leading to catching criminals, saving kidnapped people, and other important jobs.
Help them by not calling.
Just a guess: Maybe because Reiser is so closely tied to the hardware...
Saddam hadn't exactly been making a lot of progress on the nukes. All of the evidence cited by President Bush was, quite simply, wrong. There was "evidence" about Saddam trying to get yellow cake (uranium ore) from Nigeria (at least I think it was Nigeria). Completely unfounded; only a small fraction of the experts gave that report any credit. Then there was the one about Saddam getting metal tubes suitable for uranium enrichment. It really was too bad that the tubes were absolutely, completely unsuitable for uranium enrichment. The walls were too thick, the anti-weathering coating on the tubes would make some obvious problems for uranium enrichment. Of course, George Tenet conveniently forgot to tell Bush that all but one CIA expert on the matter thought the idea was total BS. So no, nukes weren't a reason. It was just the hawks rationalize.
Mexican Train is a domino game, not board game. If easy-to-learn games are OK with you, it's a very fun game. The basic idea is that there is something like a card in the middle of the game, with people building "trains" of dominoes out from there. It's apparently popular with the RV crowd, but I (an non-RVer) have loved playing. Check it out!
And Microsoft Frontpage (expensive add-on, of course). Shudder.
That's what I've been saying ever since I started learning about the GNU/Linux OS a couple of years ago. KDE vs. GNOME vs. everything else & QT vs GTK vs everything else not only results in wasted effort duplicating features, but is very confusing for users. I always have a difficult time explaining to people why there are two large projects for the same goal. Just try explaining to my computer-illiterate mother that X just displays the crap, so people have to make toolkits to save their sanity. But it seems that the OSS community as a whole is too afraid to make a painful shift involving thousands of lines of code becoming invalid. It seems I'll be explaining to many more people the causes of the family feuds of the free software community.
You forgot the part about "Wait for between 10 minutes and 3 days"