"can you stream WMV and RM, from your web browser flawlessly?"
So your criticism of linux is that it:
[*] doesn't play a proprietry media format from Microsoft that would require a license, per-user costs, and non-disclosure agreement, even if it were possible for companies other than microsoft to develop for the format.
[*] doesn't play a proprietry video format from RealNetworks, whose $100000/yr business depends on having a video format that nobody but them can play
"so you have working flash in mozilla right?"
Howabout if I create a new file-format at home and don't tell you what it is? Can I critisize your operating system for not supporting it? No? So how do you expect Mozilla to display Flash?
You'd get better response by talking about SVG, which is like Flash but more useful.
And yes, X does your shadows, transparency and vector scaling. Have a look at some of the freedesktop.org screenshots sometime, or the latest version of GNOME.
"do you have video/voice conferencing in gaim?"
I understand that some of the best videoconferencing systems and voice-chat systems available were developed for linux. Perhaps someone who's used them more than I can comment.
"and photoshop without mac-on-linux?"
Uh, so now it's linux's fault that Adobe have decided not to develop their graphics product on Linux? How exactly does that work? Microsoft office wan't designed to work on Linux either -- is that the fault of Linux?
I've used GIMP, and I've used photoshop. GIMP is better, it's more powerful, and it's easier to use. Admittedly I was using an old version of photoshop, but when software costs that much money, people tend to keep the older pre-activation copies around.
Linux runs Windows programs too, so it doesn't look like the free software people are failing to help those who develop software for Linux. In fact, it sounds more like companies who develop Photoshop, RealPlayer, Flash, WMP, etc. are deliberately trying to prevent you, their customers, from using it on your operating system of choice. Yet you come complaining to Linux?
Take it up with your software vendor if their software is preventing you from doing the things you want. If you want to use Photoshop on linux, you need to talk to Adobe about it, and not to slashdot.
"I think that the problem is that to have strong, consistent leadership and a single design focus, which is difficult when the you have a very large body of contributors who contribute voluntarily, sporadically and whom come and go frequently."
Yet the vast majority of free software projects are being developed by one or two people. So maybe it isn't "too many cooks", maybe it is just lack of help for those small teams who want to make things more usable.
Putting together a GUI program in GNOME is hard enough to do at all, let alone giving attention-to-detail. There are plenty of popular tools (gFTP being the obvious example) which look about as good as my attempts at GTK programming, and you can almost see that they've been developed by someone typing widgets into a text editor, rather than by someone moving controls around on screen.
As to the projects where there are a lot of people, they're either development tools (kernel, apache, etc.) developed by a company (mozilla, openoffice), or already quite usable.
The Iranians made "very serious inquiries about investing in the development of the X-jet technology," Mr Simpson said on his website, aardvark.co.nz.
"I have since had emails from Pakistan, Lebanon, China and other countries, all of which sought to obtain details of the X-jet project and some of which have involved seemingly genuine offers of not insignificant payment for such information."
The Virtual Richard M. Stallman program will analyze the set of currently-installed packages on a Debian GNU/Linux system, and report all of the packages from the non-free tree which are currently installed.
Future versions of vrms will include an option to also display text from the public writings of RMS and others that explain why use of each of the installed non-free packages might cause moral issues for some in the Free Software community. This functionality is not yet included.
The vrms program will analyze the set of currently-installed packages on a Debian GNU/Linux system, and report all of the packages from the non-free tree which are currently installed.
Future versions of vrms will include an option to also display text from the public writings of RMS and others that explain why use of each of the installed non-free packages might cause moral issues for some in the Free Software community. This functionality is not yet included.
"That would suck. No one would be able to find you on any search engine query for all the results."
FBI agent: "We've got the Echelon data on Mr Cumming, sir. Results 1-10 of 413,770,400 are on your screen now. They're mostly emails mentioning his name"
"The feature that keeps me using KDE instead of GNOME is ALT-Click. In KDE, if you ALT-Rt.click on a window, you can resize by moving the mouse."
With WindowMaker, you get all those features (alt-drag moves a window, alt-right-drag resizes it), plus you get to reduce your boot-up time by 10 seconds compared to KDE.
Oh yeah, and I'll second whoever suggested Rox as the perfect file-manager.
"A company that decides to treat half their employees below average is a company that is doomed to fail"
A company that has half their employees below average is a company that is doomed to fail. When you hear the guys in a good company talking about hiring, they're talking about whether they can get the top 2% of people, or whether they have to make-do with the top 5%.
"So I went with XP. One disc and everything worked."
You do realise that Latitude notebook was specifically designed for WindowsXP, by component manufacturers who've never, ever tested a single product of theirs with a linux system, put together by Dell, who don't test their systems with Linux, don't offer it as an option when you buy the notebook, and are doing everything they can to pretend it doesn't exist.
It might sound like a linux problem, but really, things like this need to go to Dell. "Why doesn't your crappy laptop run my programs properly" on their support line after you've bought it, or "I'm not buying anything until it's certified by Linux Hardware" before you buy it.
Linux is good, but it's better on systems that haven't gone out of their way to become incompatible with it.
If you want to see what the gnome desktop looks like, and open up a few applications, then yes.
But it can be nicer to install properly as dual-boot (or on a second computer), and slowly get used to doing things in a gnu environment. If you have a bootable CD, it feels very temporary, but if you're in an installed partition, there's more incentive to configure things how you like them (they'll be saved on disk), do some proper web-browsing or typing without worrying that you might not want to use this CD tomorrow, and if you ever find something you don't know how to do, it's just as fast to get into your legacy operating system using dual-boot as it is with a CD.
Of course, you can use a USB keyring, an iPod, or a floppy disk to save your settings with bootable gnu, but it does feel more natural when you know the OS is "actually there"
"How likely is it we'll get "visual editors" for complex systems"
Does the Lego Mindstorms "program editor" count?
* Take bright yellow "for...next" piece, and place on page
* Attach it to end of program
* Attach bright red "toggle variable x" pievce, and attach it to the middle of the for loop
I can only assume the lego people have 8000x4000 pixel screens or something...
Re:Done right, CSS can help multi-platform use.
on
CSS for the LDP?
·
· Score: 1
"One would wonder why I cant just click on my Firefox stylesheet button and make the change from there."
You can specify alternate stylesheets that people can select from the "view","use-style" menu on all good web-browsers. Problem is, it only seems to change the page you're looking at -- go to another page on the site and you get the default again.
You can send a cookie containing the stylesheet required, and modify the styles.php (CSS document-type) depending on what that cookie is. It would be nice if you could make the choice of alternate stylesheets somewhat permanent, but it sounds like a complex piece of code, when anyone who wants a lot of styles can do the cookie trick anyway.
"As a previous poster stated, any vehicles that we launch into orbit need to attain a speed of 11.18 km/s, which is about mach 36, for escape velocity"
Ignoring the escape-velocity bit, 11.18 km/s in space isn't mach-anything, because sound doesn't travel at any speed there.
"support: OOo documentation is still behind the curve, but community support is already significantly better than MSOs and accelerating"
I'll second this, saying: anyone who's read the users@openoffice.org support forum for a day or two will see a level of support that's unheard of for any other office suite. Every question asked* will get a well thought-out, timely, accurate, and useful answer, and it's so easily accessible that it just doesn't compare to phoning up a call center.
The references to support forums in other languages whenever someone writes in russian or chinese indicates that foreign-language support is likely to be just as good also.
"look how many links to www.openoffice.org are in that article -- it's crazy, especially when considering what this program is called (ie a website in itself!)"
"Word doesn't produce pdf files because thats not really a word processor format, its a cross-platform display format. They are making it a.pdf format so that the majority of their target audience can read it."
If they'd used OpenOffice, they could have used their word-processor to create the PDF, saving time and effort compared to using Microsoft Office and having a standalone program on an Apple computer to create PDF files.
"Could it be that these two parties have 'chosen' values which actually do manage to accurately represent the values of a majority of the people in this country?"
Slashdot Mirror
"Well, if you want to be technical, we're not compromising OUR rights."
No, just your alliances.
"can you stream WMV and RM, from your web browser flawlessly?"
So your criticism of linux is that it:
[*] doesn't play a proprietry media format from Microsoft that would require a license, per-user costs, and non-disclosure agreement, even if it were possible for companies other than microsoft to develop for the format.
[*] doesn't play a proprietry video format from RealNetworks, whose $100000/yr business depends on having a video format that nobody but them can play
"so you have working flash in mozilla right?"
Howabout if I create a new file-format at home and don't tell you what it is? Can I critisize your operating system for not supporting it? No? So how do you expect Mozilla to display Flash?
You'd get better response by talking about SVG, which is like Flash but more useful.
And yes, X does your shadows, transparency and vector scaling. Have a look at some of the freedesktop.org screenshots sometime, or the latest version of GNOME.
"do you have video/voice conferencing in gaim?"
I understand that some of the best videoconferencing systems and voice-chat systems available were developed for linux. Perhaps someone who's used them more than I can comment.
"and photoshop without mac-on-linux?"
Uh, so now it's linux's fault that Adobe have decided not to develop their graphics product on Linux? How exactly does that work? Microsoft office wan't designed to work on Linux either -- is that the fault of Linux?
I've used GIMP, and I've used photoshop. GIMP is better, it's more powerful, and it's easier to use. Admittedly I was using an old version of photoshop, but when software costs that much money, people tend to keep the older pre-activation copies around.
Linux runs Windows programs too, so it doesn't look like the free software people are failing to help those who develop software for Linux. In fact, it sounds more like companies who develop Photoshop, RealPlayer, Flash, WMP, etc. are deliberately trying to prevent you, their customers, from using it on your operating system of choice. Yet you come complaining to Linux?
Take it up with your software vendor if their software is preventing you from doing the things you want. If you want to use Photoshop on linux, you need to talk to Adobe about it, and not to slashdot.
"I think that the problem is that to have strong, consistent leadership and a single design focus, which is difficult when the you have a very large body of contributors who contribute voluntarily, sporadically and whom come and go frequently."
Yet the vast majority of free software projects are being developed by one or two people. So maybe it isn't "too many cooks", maybe it is just lack of help for those small teams who want to make things more usable.
Putting together a GUI program in GNOME is hard enough to do at all, let alone giving attention-to-detail. There are plenty of popular tools (gFTP being the obvious example) which look about as good as my attempts at GTK programming, and you can almost see that they've been developed by someone typing widgets into a text editor, rather than by someone moving controls around on screen.
As to the projects where there are a lot of people, they're either development tools (kernel, apache, etc.) developed by a company (mozilla, openoffice), or already quite usable.
DIY cruise missile attracts defence offers
The Iranians made "very serious inquiries about investing in the development of the X-jet technology," Mr Simpson said on his website, aardvark.co.nz.
"I have since had emails from Pakistan, Lebanon, China and other countries, all of which sought to obtain details of the X-jet project and some of which have involved seemingly genuine offers of not insignificant payment for such information."
The Virtual Richard M. Stallman program will analyze the set of currently-installed packages on a Debian GNU/Linux system, and report all of the packages from the non-free tree which are currently installed.
Future versions of vrms will include an option to also display text from the public writings of RMS and others that explain why use of each of the installed non-free packages might cause moral issues for some in the Free Software community. This functionality is not yet included.
The vrms program will analyze the set of currently-installed packages on a Debian GNU/Linux system, and report all of the packages from the non-free tree which are currently installed.
Future versions of vrms will include an option to also display text from the public writings of RMS and others that explain why use of each of the installed non-free packages might cause moral issues for some in the Free Software community. This functionality is not yet included.
"That would suck. No one would be able to find you on any search engine query for all the results."
FBI agent: "We've got the Echelon data on Mr Cumming, sir. Results 1-10 of 413,770,400 are on your screen now. They're mostly emails mentioning his name"
You can get around this problem by making your coffee with dehydrated water, apparently...
Heard about the Scotsman who drowned in a vat of whiskey?
Had to get out twice for a piss.
"one of the tricks mentioned to find the phone number of a snarfed device is to initiate a call to your own phone"
So why not do it when they're in a meeting, and just start listening? Voila, one infinity bug in a mobile phone.
Make their phone dial a call-box if you like.
"The feature that keeps me using KDE instead of GNOME is ALT-Click. In KDE, if you ALT-Rt.click on a window, you can resize by moving the mouse."
With WindowMaker, you get all those features (alt-drag moves a window, alt-right-drag resizes it), plus you get to reduce your boot-up time by 10 seconds compared to KDE.
Oh yeah, and I'll second whoever suggested Rox as the perfect file-manager.
"but maybe they should be downgraded to a weekly SCO summary."
Or put groklaw on the navigation bar
What, no elvish?
"A company that decides to treat half their employees below average is a company that is doomed to fail"
A company that has half their employees below average is a company that is doomed to fail. When you hear the guys in a good company talking about hiring, they're talking about whether they can get the top 2% of people, or whether they have to make-do with the top 5%.
"If the Titanic was loaded with lawyers, it wouldn't have been a disaster."
Unless they were EFF lawyers
"So I went with XP. One disc and everything worked."
You do realise that Latitude notebook was specifically designed for WindowsXP, by component manufacturers who've never, ever tested a single product of theirs with a linux system, put together by Dell, who don't test their systems with Linux, don't offer it as an option when you buy the notebook, and are doing everything they can to pretend it doesn't exist.
It might sound like a linux problem, but really, things like this need to go to Dell. "Why doesn't your crappy laptop run my programs properly" on their support line after you've bought it, or "I'm not buying anything until it's certified by Linux Hardware" before you buy it.
Linux is good, but it's better on systems that haven't gone out of their way to become incompatible with it.
"Isn't it better to try a live-CD first?"
If you want to see what the gnome desktop looks like, and open up a few applications, then yes.
But it can be nicer to install properly as dual-boot (or on a second computer), and slowly get used to doing things in a gnu environment. If you have a bootable CD, it feels very temporary, but if you're in an installed partition, there's more incentive to configure things how you like them (they'll be saved on disk), do some proper web-browsing or typing without worrying that you might not want to use this CD tomorrow, and if you ever find something you don't know how to do, it's just as fast to get into your legacy operating system using dual-boot as it is with a CD.
Of course, you can use a USB keyring, an iPod, or a floppy disk to save your settings with bootable gnu, but it does feel more natural when you know the OS is "actually there"
"How likely is it we'll get "visual editors" for complex systems"
Does the Lego Mindstorms "program editor" count?
* Take bright yellow "for...next" piece, and place on page
* Attach it to end of program
* Attach bright red "toggle variable x" pievce, and attach it to the middle of the for loop
I can only assume the lego people have 8000x4000 pixel screens or something...
"One would wonder why I cant just click on my Firefox stylesheet button and make the change from there."
You can specify alternate stylesheets that people can select from the "view","use-style" menu on all good web-browsers. Problem is, it only seems to change the page you're looking at -- go to another page on the site and you get the default again.
You can send a cookie containing the stylesheet required, and modify the styles.php (CSS document-type) depending on what that cookie is. It would be nice if you could make the choice of alternate stylesheets somewhat permanent, but it sounds like a complex piece of code, when anyone who wants a lot of styles can do the cookie trick anyway.
"OK. So how do I choose Canada?"
"Polar regions"
"As a previous poster stated, any vehicles that we launch into orbit need to attain a speed of 11.18 km/s, which is about mach 36, for escape velocity"
Ignoring the escape-velocity bit, 11.18 km/s in space isn't mach-anything, because sound doesn't travel at any speed there.
" support: OOo documentation is still behind the curve, but community support is already significantly better than MSOs and accelerating"
I'll second this, saying: anyone who's read the users@openoffice.org support forum for a day or two will see a level of support that's unheard of for any other office suite. Every question asked* will get a well thought-out, timely, accurate, and useful answer, and it's so easily accessible that it just doesn't compare to phoning up a call center.
* ok, there's occasionally something we'd call "ask stupid question, get stupid answer"
The references to support forums in other languages whenever someone writes in russian or chinese indicates that foreign-language support is likely to be just as good also.
"look how many links to www.openoffice.org are in that article -- it's crazy, especially when considering what this program is called (ie a website in itself!)"
Of course, this doesn't always go according to plan...
"Word doesn't produce pdf files because thats not really a word processor format, its a cross-platform display format. They are making it a .pdf format so that the majority of their target audience can read it."
If they'd used OpenOffice, they could have used their word-processor to create the PDF, saving time and effort compared to using Microsoft Office and having a standalone program on an Apple computer to create PDF files.
"Could it be that these two parties have 'chosen' values which actually do manage to accurately represent the values of a majority of the people in this country?"
;-)
290 million people with only two opinions?
Are there no Irishmen there?