Worse even than choosing to live without their PC, some even turn to MSPaint.
That's what I did. In fact, I got so used to MS Paint that when I switched to Linux that was the app I missed the most. However I finally discovered KolourPaint and now I'm happy.
My point is some companies HAVE to pirate software to do business.
No they don't. There's open source tools out there to do anything a small company needs. It may not do what they want, but it will do what they need, and if that's all they can afford then that's all they get.
That's the difference between Free software and Open-source software, isn't it? That'd be perfectly okay if it were Free.
Actually it's the opposite. I can take open source software like OpenOffice and rebrand it as my own, even sell it, and it would be perfectly legal for people to "pirate" it. However, when it comes to free but not open software, like Zone Alarm's free firewall, I'm not even allowed to mirror it on my website without their permission, let alone rebrand and sell it.
The reason it was marked as troll is because it's just posted repeatedly in every discussion about Linux. Hence your sibling post laughing that the trolls haven't yet fixed the typo.
As far as the merits of the troll, some of the newer distros have made great strides in user-friendlyness (Ubuntu, Mepis, and Linspire to name a few) that the troll completely ignores. In Linspire, for example, installing programs is as easy as going to the Linspire CNR website (there's a link on your desktop) and clicking "install" on webpage when you find a program you want. Unlike Windows, you don't have to find the install file, click on it, and then next-next-next-finish, it automatically downloads and installs itself, you just wait and it appears in your Launch (Start) menu. In many ways some Linux distros are already easier than Windows, and they're just going to get easier.
However, Linux's greatest weakness (and it's greatest strength, but for different reasons) is that it's so diverse. If you choose the right distro a newbie can easily figure out how to do basic things like email, internet, installing the odd puzzle game with only minimal instructions, but if you choose the wrong distro, the newbie will just wind up crying. I personally love the diversity (there's something for everyone) but how is a newbie to figure out which distro is right for him or her? I think that's the biggest problem when it comes to Linux user-friendlyness.
"What would Google show?" is a question you need to ask yourself when applying for a job.
Googling my name shows a 5th grader who made a garden, some actress who was in a musical with Frank Astaire, there's a font with my name (yay!), and a shitload of genealogy reports of people not related to me.
I've never actually gotten any decent results when googling a random non-famous person I've met, so I'm not sure why HR directors would waste their time bothering.
But please accept that any hardware install requiring thirty four posts to a forum thread to get working is, in fact, a bitch.
I wasn't saying it's not, I was just wondering what it all took. I wasn't trying to be mean or minimize what you went through, I just wanted to know because I've never had a problem with it so I didn't know what problems you could have with it.
I mean, if you're DVD drive didn;t work in XP Home, I doubt you'd be all too happy if MS told you "thats just a fault with the home distro, try pro instead".
Well, at least with Linux it's not a case of "give us more money and we'll fix things that should have been fixed in the first place". But bugs do happen, and if you want an example from the Windows side, Outlook 2003 has a bug where it randomly starts duplicating messages. Either outgoing, and it will send literally thousands of the same message, or incoming, where it will duplicate every message it receives a couple dozen times. This is possibly more annoying than your CD issue. MS did fix it for Office 2003 service pack 2, but for all the people who had the problem before sp2, well, sucked for them.
Besides, if someone tells me linux has superb hardware support, I don't want to hear ten minutes later "except that distro".
I'm sorry; I should be saying Mepis and Ubuntu have excellent hardware support, because I haven't tested every distro.
Now thats a new one on me. I've never heard of this before, might google it later (nothing to do at work atm).
If it helps your search, I just noticed that my DVD+R package has a card that says "ATTENTION 2.4X DVD+RX/+R Drive Owners FIRMWARE UPGRADE FOR NEW 4X WRITE SPEED DVD+R DISCS". I don't feel like copying the rest of it, but it explains firmwre upgrades, and has a website (http://www.dvdrwservices.com/), thought the website is now hyped up about DVD+R Double Layer and has appearently forgotten about the write speeds issue.
Just one thing I'm curious about though. If the problem is with the firmware, why would changing OS make any difference? I mean it's the same firmware.
Damned if I know.
My tally of unsurported hardware in windows is nil.
My tally is Windows 1, Linux 0. Though I'm begininning to think I'm abnormally lucky.
Please do understand that I am NOT bashing Linux. It's my desktop OS of choice. I just think that there are places where it still hasn't caught up with Windows, and hardware support is the single largest one, mainly due to the attitudes of vendors.
I'm glad you like Linux, too. I think because I haven't had any problems with Linux and hardware, I assumed the problems weren't there. I'll try to be better about that in the future and realize that most people don't accidently buy all Linux compatible hardware like I appearently did.
It was a bitch in as much as I have never used NDISWrapper before (the rest of my network is wired) and it took me 2 nights of playing around with it to get the wireless up and running.
Wow. What did you do? It took me all of two minutes the first time I used ndiswrapper. Seriously, it was two or three lines of commands that I copied and pasted, and I was done. Did you get instructions for the wrong distro or something?
Most new music CDs (or at least, most of the ones I buy) now include some form of data content. When you put them in a Windows machine they auto play, and load a playback program. So, they have a data track on them.... (out of curiosity, do you buy many CDs, and if so, which artists?).
Ah, ok. I don't buy RIAA music, only indie, so none of my music cds have data tracks.
No, the annoying bit is when I want to get the CD out. It will not eject, either through hardware or software eject buttons.
Ah, so why didn't you just say that you have problems unmounting. Also, that's not a Linux problem, that's a bug in your distro or your music player.
So for me, Window's universal support outweighs Linux's OOTB compatibility. Of course thats just a personal opinion. You don't mind research. I don't mind backing up drivers.
Actually, I haven't done any research, all my hardware was bought back when I was a Windows user (because I'm poor and rarely buy hardware). So either I'm extremely lucky, or Linux is pretty damn broad in its support.
In fact, I've had better hardware support with Linux. Here's an anecdote to chip away in your faith in Windows' universalness. A while ago (back when I was using Windows) my DVD burner stopped burning. I researched it, and as I understand is at some point DVD-R technology changed and most most manufacturers made firmware upgrades to follow this change. The manufacturer of my burner however, did not. So my burner would no longer work with any new DVD-Rs made, sucks to be me. I thought I'ld have to pony up the money for a new burner, when, lo and behold, I tried it one day in Linux and it works perfectly.
I also find that driver disks tend to disappear when you need them the most. I'ld much rather have a system that will most likely configure everything on install than hope I can find some disk and obscure files on the internet to make everything work. I'ld be happy never to install Windows again, however, it's looking like I will have to at work, and I'm dreading it after being spoiled by easy Linux installs.
Hmmm....with Linux it took me HOURS to get that working and that's with ndiswrapper too(the first time anyway....).
I don't mean to be mean, but what did you have to do that took hours? I found instructions online (for the wrong distro, no less) and it was only two or three lines of commands and it was working.
Ndiswrapper is NOT something we should even concentrate on if you want a better experience then Windows. Kernel drivers are what is needed and we also need the driver itself to be responsible for ANY encryption without having wpa_supplicant.
More hardware that works right out of the box (why do we say this when Linux doesn't usually come out of boxes?) is always great.
I think it's already been pointed out that Krakow is on crack also. His experiences with Vista is NO different then MY experiences with XP. Period.
Yeah, that's one of the reasons I stopped using Windows.
I recently installed Linux on a laptop (fedora 5) and the wireless was a complete bitch to set up, and the DVD drive plays up whenever I put a music CD with a data track in it. I certainly didn't have nearly the problems when I installed XP.
How was wireless a bitch? I wouldn't even call ndiswrapper a bitch, and that's the worst I've heard wireless taking. What problems did you have?
What do you mean when say that the music cd has a data track? Doesn't that make it a data cd, not a music cd?
When you say that the DVD drive plays up, what do you mean? Do you mean it starts up your DVD player and plays your music? That's an easy option to stop. Do you mean that it starts up a media player when you put in a data cd?
You're spot on in comparing the benefits, Linux w/ its ootb support, Windows with its universal compatability. I, personally, would rather be a little careful in my hardware purchases rather than go through the headache of finding drivers when I reinstall or upgrade. Hell, I haven't been careful, yet I haven't had any problems with my hardware and Linux. I think Linux's hardware support is broad enough that its ootb support outways Windows' universal support.
Oooh, crossplatform spyware! Then when my friends brag me about their latest spyware, I could just be like "Look! I already have it!" No one would ever need Windows again!
Maybe he should install Linux instead. I'm sure the Audio drivers and WiFi drivers will work perfectly out of the box. So because they don't, Linux blows! That's some faulty logic if I ever heard it.
I recently installed Linux on a laptop (Mepis 6, coincidently also in beta) and the sound works fine and the wireless was trivial to set up. I certainly didn't have nearly the problems that he had with Windows.
With Windows you just don't need to worry if it is compatible or not. It always works. That's the advantage of Windows
You notice how I said that it wasn't that hard to get the non-compatible card working? Also, that's the only hardware I've ever had that didn't work immediately with Linux. With Windows it takes an hour or so of driver hunting to get everything set up, and if you can't find the driver for something then it'll never work.
My installation of the Ubuntu Beta went absolutely perfectly, with not a smidgeon of the problems this guy had installing the Windows Beta. I guess that's the advantage of Linux.
I'm not saying search engines are bad, they're great! However, if a user is wasteing their time if they have to go to the search engine (by clicking the home icon, or opening a new browser, or whatever), type something, then click search (instead of even clicking "I'm feeling lucky" or something) and clicking on the first thing instead of just typing the thing into the address bar in the first place. Also, not knowing about the address bar prevents them from being about to learning about websites offline and being able to go later. If I want you to visit my website and you don't understand the address how do I tell you how to get there? There's so much that users can't do or could only do much slower without the address bar that it's really imperative that the users learn how to use the address bar. That isn't the browser's problem, that's a user problem.
Ever try to get wireless working on Linux? Probably not by your statement. Wireless support is THE WORST on Linux. It will be better soon, but it still ain't there yet.
When was the last time you tried to get wireless working on Linux? I have wireless cards that aren't Linux-compatible, yet even using ndiswrapper it wasn't that hard to get them working. If I had been smart enough to buy Linux compatible cards then I wouldn't have even had to do that; wireless would have been working right after install.
So, what exactly isn't there for Linux wireless support?
That's not to say that users are always right. They're often very, very wrong. But if somebody is using a piece of software in a way that's natural to them and you see that as a problem, the issue is more likely that the software simply isn't tackling the right set of problems.
If the user is only using bookmarks, then they're stuck only going to websites they've bookmarked before. If they only know how to use google and not the address bar, then instead of typing mail.yahoo.com and getting to their email they type "yahoo mail" into google (or possibly just "mail" or "email") and then have to look through the options and hopefully click the correct one. The address bar is much faster, and firefox's is even very forgiving of not typing correct URLs - "yahoo mail", for instance, goes directly to yahoo mail.
The problem isn't the browser here, the problem here is users not knowing the browser. If my car went really slowly because I would put it in 1st instead of Drive, then the problem would be me, not that cars need to have a faster 1st gear. Simularly, the problem here is that the parents need to learn to use the address bar, not that someone needs to program them single-use bookmarks or something.
Fiddling is how people move from computer idiots to geeks. You can't take a class in everything possible to learn about a computer, and you'll be much more comfortable with computers if you can figure things out on your own.
Also, in my experience in IT support, the fiddlers are the ones who don't call me, because they think they can figure it out on their own, which is perfectly fine by me. It's much better than the woman at work who decided that windows update was a virus because it was downloading and installing to her computer all by itself, so she pulled out her laptop battery to stop it. Yeah, I'll take a fiddler any day over her.
I just wonder, with geeks complaining about it changing so radically, how will normal users be able to deal with it? The other day the receptionist at my job was wondering how to check her yahoo mail at work. She had a yahoo toolbar, but appearently had never thought to try the "mail" icon. So many non-geek users are just used to going through their routine of what they know and have no idea what to do beyond that. How are they going to deal with a completely changed interface?
I guess you've never used a spreadsheet, know what it's used for, or understand that it's far more flexible and easier to put together than a custom app with SQL.
If you're using Excel, chances are the first thing you think of when you hear "database" is not "make a custom app with SQL".
I use Access and Excel everyday at work, and I couldn't imagine working with the huge tables we have in Access in just Excel. The data is just too much to comprehend all at once, but with Access you can chop down the data with queries and other tools to see exactly what you want (and then export that to Excel, to show everyone else). While you can do some of the same things in Excel, it's much faster and simplier just to do it in Access.
People who don't use Excel in real-life situations love to parrot these brainless "if you need that many rows get a DB" responses.
Maybe you don't use a DB in real-life situations and so you don't know how powerful it can be?
Every white person in the US should ask themselves: When we are a minority in our own country, will our new rulers treat us with the same goodwill as we treated them?
Goodwill? GOODWILL? What in the history of race relations can count as "goodwill" from whites to nonwhites? I think we (whites) should be hoping that nonwhites turn out to have a lot more goodwill and forgiveness than we've ever shown.
"In New England, the literacy rate was over 50 percent during the first half of the 17th century, and it rose to 70 percent by 1710. By the time of the American Revolution, it was around 90 percent. This is seen by some as a side effect of the Puritan belief in the importance of Bible reading. "
Did they count women and non-whites in these literacy statistics?
Not every Linux user needs to become a Unix guru to use Linux. For me, reading a bit in the Ubuntu wiki took care of what I needed to use Linux on a daily basis. For my less tech-savv friend all it took was a Mepis cd. It was a live/install combo, and I told her to mess around with it until I had the chance to install it for her. By the time I had the chance, she already had it installed and she was happily using OpenOffice/Firefox/Gaim (which is all she ever used Windows for). I taught her how to change themes and how to install programs, and now she has more puzzle games then she'll ever need and even stupid desktop pets.
Really, I fail to see how every Linux user needs to read complex sysadmin books and learn everything about the command line.
Slashdot Mirror
Worse even than choosing to live without their PC, some even turn to MSPaint.
That's what I did. In fact, I got so used to MS Paint that when I switched to Linux that was the app I missed the most. However I finally discovered KolourPaint and now I'm happy.
My point is some companies HAVE to pirate software to do business.
No they don't. There's open source tools out there to do anything a small company needs. It may not do what they want, but it will do what they need, and if that's all they can afford then that's all they get.
That's the difference between Free software and Open-source software, isn't it? That'd be perfectly okay if it were Free.
Actually it's the opposite. I can take open source software like OpenOffice and rebrand it as my own, even sell it, and it would be perfectly legal for people to "pirate" it. However, when it comes to free but not open software, like Zone Alarm's free firewall, I'm not even allowed to mirror it on my website without their permission, let alone rebrand and sell it.
The reason it was marked as troll is because it's just posted repeatedly in every discussion about Linux. Hence your sibling post laughing that the trolls haven't yet fixed the typo.
As far as the merits of the troll, some of the newer distros have made great strides in user-friendlyness (Ubuntu, Mepis, and Linspire to name a few) that the troll completely ignores. In Linspire, for example, installing programs is as easy as going to the Linspire CNR website (there's a link on your desktop) and clicking "install" on webpage when you find a program you want. Unlike Windows, you don't have to find the install file, click on it, and then next-next-next-finish, it automatically downloads and installs itself, you just wait and it appears in your Launch (Start) menu. In many ways some Linux distros are already easier than Windows, and they're just going to get easier.
However, Linux's greatest weakness (and it's greatest strength, but for different reasons) is that it's so diverse. If you choose the right distro a newbie can easily figure out how to do basic things like email, internet, installing the odd puzzle game with only minimal instructions, but if you choose the wrong distro, the newbie will just wind up crying. I personally love the diversity (there's something for everyone) but how is a newbie to figure out which distro is right for him or her? I think that's the biggest problem when it comes to Linux user-friendlyness.
Maybe not knowing what the fuck it's doing is a good reason not to want it on your system?
"What would Google show?" is a question you need to ask yourself when applying for a job.
Googling my name shows a 5th grader who made a garden, some actress who was in a musical with Frank Astaire, there's a font with my name (yay!), and a shitload of genealogy reports of people not related to me.
I've never actually gotten any decent results when googling a random non-famous person I've met, so I'm not sure why HR directors would waste their time bothering.
But please accept that any hardware install requiring thirty four posts to a forum thread to get working is, in fact, a bitch.
I wasn't saying it's not, I was just wondering what it all took. I wasn't trying to be mean or minimize what you went through, I just wanted to know because I've never had a problem with it so I didn't know what problems you could have with it.
I mean, if you're DVD drive didn;t work in XP Home, I doubt you'd be all too happy if MS told you "thats just a fault with the home distro, try pro instead".
Well, at least with Linux it's not a case of "give us more money and we'll fix things that should have been fixed in the first place". But bugs do happen, and if you want an example from the Windows side, Outlook 2003 has a bug where it randomly starts duplicating messages. Either outgoing, and it will send literally thousands of the same message, or incoming, where it will duplicate every message it receives a couple dozen times. This is possibly more annoying than your CD issue. MS did fix it for Office 2003 service pack 2, but for all the people who had the problem before sp2, well, sucked for them.
Besides, if someone tells me linux has superb hardware support, I don't want to hear ten minutes later "except that distro".
I'm sorry; I should be saying Mepis and Ubuntu have excellent hardware support, because I haven't tested every distro.
Now thats a new one on me. I've never heard of this before, might google it later (nothing to do at work atm).
If it helps your search, I just noticed that my DVD+R package has a card that says "ATTENTION 2.4X DVD+RX/+R Drive Owners FIRMWARE UPGRADE FOR NEW 4X WRITE SPEED DVD+R DISCS". I don't feel like copying the rest of it, but it explains firmwre upgrades, and has a website (http://www.dvdrwservices.com/), thought the website is now hyped up about DVD+R Double Layer and has appearently forgotten about the write speeds issue.
Just one thing I'm curious about though. If the problem is with the firmware, why would changing OS make any difference? I mean it's the same firmware.
Damned if I know.
My tally of unsurported hardware in windows is nil.
My tally is Windows 1, Linux 0. Though I'm begininning to think I'm abnormally lucky.
Please do understand that I am NOT bashing Linux. It's my desktop OS of choice. I just think that there are places where it still hasn't caught up with Windows, and hardware support is the single largest one, mainly due to the attitudes of vendors.
I'm glad you like Linux, too. I think because I haven't had any problems with Linux and hardware, I assumed the problems weren't there. I'll try to be better about that in the future and realize that most people don't accidently buy all Linux compatible hardware like I appearently did.
It was a bitch in as much as I have never used NDISWrapper before (the rest of my network is wired) and it took me 2 nights of playing around with it to get the wireless up and running.
... (out of curiosity, do you buy many CDs, and if so, which artists?).
Wow. What did you do? It took me all of two minutes the first time I used ndiswrapper. Seriously, it was two or three lines of commands that I copied and pasted, and I was done. Did you get instructions for the wrong distro or something?
Most new music CDs (or at least, most of the ones I buy) now include some form of data content. When you put them in a Windows machine they auto play, and load a playback program. So, they have a data track on them.
Ah, ok. I don't buy RIAA music, only indie, so none of my music cds have data tracks.
No, the annoying bit is when I want to get the CD out. It will not eject, either through hardware or software eject buttons.
Ah, so why didn't you just say that you have problems unmounting. Also, that's not a Linux problem, that's a bug in your distro or your music player.
So for me, Window's universal support outweighs Linux's OOTB compatibility. Of course thats just a personal opinion. You don't mind research. I don't mind backing up drivers.
Actually, I haven't done any research, all my hardware was bought back when I was a Windows user (because I'm poor and rarely buy hardware). So either I'm extremely lucky, or Linux is pretty damn broad in its support.
In fact, I've had better hardware support with Linux. Here's an anecdote to chip away in your faith in Windows' universalness. A while ago (back when I was using Windows) my DVD burner stopped burning. I researched it, and as I understand is at some point DVD-R technology changed and most most manufacturers made firmware upgrades to follow this change. The manufacturer of my burner however, did not. So my burner would no longer work with any new DVD-Rs made, sucks to be me. I thought I'ld have to pony up the money for a new burner, when, lo and behold, I tried it one day in Linux and it works perfectly.
I also find that driver disks tend to disappear when you need them the most. I'ld much rather have a system that will most likely configure everything on install than hope I can find some disk and obscure files on the internet to make everything work. I'ld be happy never to install Windows again, however, it's looking like I will have to at work, and I'm dreading it after being spoiled by easy Linux installs.
Hmmm....with Linux it took me HOURS to get that working and that's with ndiswrapper too(the first time anyway....).
I don't mean to be mean, but what did you have to do that took hours? I found instructions online (for the wrong distro, no less) and it was only two or three lines of commands and it was working.
Ndiswrapper is NOT something we should even concentrate on if you want a better experience then Windows. Kernel drivers are what is needed and we also need the driver itself to be responsible for ANY encryption without having wpa_supplicant.
More hardware that works right out of the box (why do we say this when Linux doesn't usually come out of boxes?) is always great.
I think it's already been pointed out that Krakow is on crack also. His experiences with Vista is NO different then MY experiences with XP. Period.
Yeah, that's one of the reasons I stopped using Windows.
I recently installed Linux on a laptop (fedora 5) and the wireless was a complete bitch to set up, and the DVD drive plays up whenever I put a music CD with a data track in it. I certainly didn't have nearly the problems when I installed XP.
How was wireless a bitch? I wouldn't even call ndiswrapper a bitch, and that's the worst I've heard wireless taking. What problems did you have?
What do you mean when say that the music cd has a data track? Doesn't that make it a data cd, not a music cd?
When you say that the DVD drive plays up, what do you mean? Do you mean it starts up your DVD player and plays your music? That's an easy option to stop. Do you mean that it starts up a media player when you put in a data cd?
You're spot on in comparing the benefits, Linux w/ its ootb support, Windows with its universal compatability. I, personally, would rather be a little careful in my hardware purchases rather than go through the headache of finding drivers when I reinstall or upgrade. Hell, I haven't been careful, yet I haven't had any problems with my hardware and Linux. I think Linux's hardware support is broad enough that its ootb support outways Windows' universal support.
Oooh, crossplatform spyware! Then when my friends brag me about their latest spyware, I could just be like "Look! I already have it!" No one would ever need Windows again!
Male pole dancers in wizard costumes. With lightsabers.
:)
That's awesome.
You should make spyware. I might actually run Windows if the spyware was that entertaining.
Maybe he should install Linux instead. I'm sure the Audio drivers and WiFi drivers will work perfectly out of the box. So because they don't, Linux blows! That's some faulty logic if I ever heard it.
I recently installed Linux on a laptop (Mepis 6, coincidently also in beta) and the sound works fine and the wireless was trivial to set up. I certainly didn't have nearly the problems that he had with Windows.
With Windows you just don't need to worry if it is compatible or not. It always works. That's the advantage of Windows
You notice how I said that it wasn't that hard to get the non-compatible card working? Also, that's the only hardware I've ever had that didn't work immediately with Linux. With Windows it takes an hour or so of driver hunting to get everything set up, and if you can't find the driver for something then it'll never work.
My installation of the Ubuntu Beta went absolutely perfectly, with not a smidgeon of the problems this guy had installing the Windows Beta. I guess that's the advantage of Linux.
I'm not saying search engines are bad, they're great! However, if a user is wasteing their time if they have to go to the search engine (by clicking the home icon, or opening a new browser, or whatever), type something, then click search (instead of even clicking "I'm feeling lucky" or something) and clicking on the first thing instead of just typing the thing into the address bar in the first place. Also, not knowing about the address bar prevents them from being about to learning about websites offline and being able to go later. If I want you to visit my website and you don't understand the address how do I tell you how to get there? There's so much that users can't do or could only do much slower without the address bar that it's really imperative that the users learn how to use the address bar. That isn't the browser's problem, that's a user problem.
Ever try to get wireless working on Linux? Probably not by your statement. Wireless support is THE WORST on Linux. It will be better soon, but it still ain't there yet.
When was the last time you tried to get wireless working on Linux? I have wireless cards that aren't Linux-compatible, yet even using ndiswrapper it wasn't that hard to get them working. If I had been smart enough to buy Linux compatible cards then I wouldn't have even had to do that; wireless would have been working right after install.
So, what exactly isn't there for Linux wireless support?
That's not to say that users are always right. They're often very, very wrong. But if somebody is using a piece of software in a way that's natural to them and you see that as a problem, the issue is more likely that the software simply isn't tackling the right set of problems.
If the user is only using bookmarks, then they're stuck only going to websites they've bookmarked before. If they only know how to use google and not the address bar, then instead of typing mail.yahoo.com and getting to their email they type "yahoo mail" into google (or possibly just "mail" or "email") and then have to look through the options and hopefully click the correct one. The address bar is much faster, and firefox's is even very forgiving of not typing correct URLs - "yahoo mail", for instance, goes directly to yahoo mail.
The problem isn't the browser here, the problem here is users not knowing the browser. If my car went really slowly because I would put it in 1st instead of Drive, then the problem would be me, not that cars need to have a faster 1st gear. Simularly, the problem here is that the parents need to learn to use the address bar, not that someone needs to program them single-use bookmarks or something.
Fiddling is how people move from computer idiots to geeks. You can't take a class in everything possible to learn about a computer, and you'll be much more comfortable with computers if you can figure things out on your own.
Also, in my experience in IT support, the fiddlers are the ones who don't call me, because they think they can figure it out on their own, which is perfectly fine by me. It's much better than the woman at work who decided that windows update was a virus because it was downloading and installing to her computer all by itself, so she pulled out her laptop battery to stop it. Yeah, I'll take a fiddler any day over her.
I just wonder, with geeks complaining about it changing so radically, how will normal users be able to deal with it? The other day the receptionist at my job was wondering how to check her yahoo mail at work. She had a yahoo toolbar, but appearently had never thought to try the "mail" icon. So many non-geek users are just used to going through their routine of what they know and have no idea what to do beyond that. How are they going to deal with a completely changed interface?
I guess you've never used a spreadsheet, know what it's used for, or understand that it's far more flexible and easier to put together than a custom app with SQL.
If you're using Excel, chances are the first thing you think of when you hear "database" is not "make a custom app with SQL".
I use Access and Excel everyday at work, and I couldn't imagine working with the huge tables we have in Access in just Excel. The data is just too much to comprehend all at once, but with Access you can chop down the data with queries and other tools to see exactly what you want (and then export that to Excel, to show everyone else). While you can do some of the same things in Excel, it's much faster and simplier just to do it in Access.
People who don't use Excel in real-life situations love to parrot these brainless "if you need that many rows get a DB" responses.
Maybe you don't use a DB in real-life situations and so you don't know how powerful it can be?
The public beta 2 is actually availableto the public today.
Well, it was available, until you told slashdot...
Dude, I think you took the analogy a bit to far. I'm not even sure how what you said relates to computers anymore.
Every white person in the US should ask themselves: When we are a minority in our own country, will our new rulers treat us with the same goodwill as we treated them?
Goodwill? GOODWILL? What in the history of race relations can count as "goodwill" from whites to nonwhites? I think we (whites) should be hoping that nonwhites turn out to have a lot more goodwill and forgiveness than we've ever shown.
"In New England, the literacy rate was over 50 percent during the first half of the 17th century, and it rose to 70 percent by 1710. By the time of the American Revolution, it was around 90 percent. This is seen by some as a side effect of the Puritan belief in the importance of Bible reading. "
Did they count women and non-whites in these literacy statistics?
Not every Linux user needs to become a Unix guru to use Linux. For me, reading a bit in the Ubuntu wiki took care of what I needed to use Linux on a daily basis. For my less tech-savv friend all it took was a Mepis cd. It was a live/install combo, and I told her to mess around with it until I had the chance to install it for her. By the time I had the chance, she already had it installed and she was happily using OpenOffice/Firefox/Gaim (which is all she ever used Windows for). I taught her how to change themes and how to install programs, and now she has more puzzle games then she'll ever need and even stupid desktop pets.
Really, I fail to see how every Linux user needs to read complex sysadmin books and learn everything about the command line.