Making a Clinton-era joke is like wearing bell bottoms, a tie-dyed T-shirt AND an afro. No one can tell whether you're trying to be funny, or agree on what's really funny.
You have all your definitions in order, but the above is only partially correct. There are no elements in the story to qualify it as a tragedy. There are lots of words synonymous with "horrible", such as
I think the biodegradable plastic bags sound like the better choice and much more preferable then a 20 cent tax per bag (although it might end up costing more then 20 cents per bag, at least its actually doing something rather then just punishing people)
Your recommendation appears based on the notion that not using plastic bags is punishing someone. I don't see how alternative approaches can ever be considered punishment, given that convenience of any type involves a trade-off, and the negative connotations of the term are more appropriate for bumperstickers and negative campaign ads than for reasoned discussion.
By offering plastic bags, the tradeoff is mostly the wasteful use of resources vs. the customer being able to carry home their purchases. With plastic rings for 6-packs of aluminum cans, the tradeoff includes an even more wasteful use of resources, threats to the marine environment, and the collective cost borne by the rest of society vs. marketing effectiveness (6-packs on sale!) on the part of the retailer, and easy-to-carry benefits on the part of the consumer.
My own opinion is that anything that encourages environmental responsibility and awareness of the true costs involved by all parties is A Good Thing. If that requires a minor incovenience or a similarly minor change of habit and routine on the part of everyone involved, so be it. If it involves a surcharge, then the surcharge will remind people that they have to take into account what the realities are when they make their purchasing decisions and force them responsible for their actions. At the moment, we don't see $20 Environmentally Destructive Surcharge sticker on computer motherboards, but if it comes to that, I'm sure we'd all benefit from it.
You can, of course, seek or encourage compromise solutions. However, the plastic bag problem is relatively simple to fix, so I don't see any need to pursue half-hearted or partially-effective schemes at the periphery when something more fundamental needs addressing. Namely, resources of all types have their limits, we're too wasteful as a society, we're only too happy to remain ignorant of the consequences, and everything has a cost that someone, somewhere pays.
The irony here is that instead of taking the opportunity to use the plastic bag issue as a symbolic Step in the Right Direction and moving on with what we've learned, we're busy arguing over whether consumers are being punished.
The offramps indicate that it's Shell, but it may have changed hands since the roads were named.
I think you're thinking of Shell Road, which is one of the "major" exits when you're travelling north on the way to Ojai. I say "major" because the area, like all areas where there's oil drilling, is essentially a no man's land.
I'm going by memory here, but I believe the first oil well in California was drilled in in the same vicinity (Sulphur Mountain) in the mid to late 1800s by a railroad magnate by the name of Stanford. Over the years, just about everybody tried to get in on the action, but today, it's Unocal that operates most of the wells in Ventura County, though the complete list would include Shell, Mobil, Texaco and Chevron.
In anticipation of a thousand Slashdotters nodding approvingly, I'll point out that the head of the White House IT Dept. testified (during the recent missing emails scandal) that Notes is obsolete software, and then went on to explain the problems they were having with Exchange, and why those problems couldn't be fixed. The senators, reassured the White House was using state of the art technology, nodded approvingly.
No doubt that approach remains dominant, but it's too simplistic. The article seems to conclude that Microsoft is after hearts and minds, developers, specifically, but anyone else within earshot would help just the same.
That would make the latest developments more akin to Walmart's "our valued associates" commercials, oil companies touting "green" initiatives, US car makers promising economic turnarounds with concept cars, or, if you're so inclined, presidential political political strategies that ranged from compassionate conservatism, to "restoring honor", to the latest "I'm Different (honest!)" by McCain.
USENET is dead in internet protocol terms. Usage has shrunk to such a small size and there are so many better alternatives, that its numbers will continue to decline to near oblivion.
Dunno where you got those ideas, but a cursory Google search will reveal several terrabytes of new data flows into usenet each and every day. And it's increasing, not decreasing.
First, there's dozens of music groups and probably as many if not more movie groups, and even more warez groups. You think the BSA or MPAA or are somehow less aggressive or effective than the RIAA? Second, while it's true that ISPs dropped free usenet access for their customers, there is no evidence that they did so for any reason other than what was announced, or the blatantly obvious "they can save money". And third, the major usenet providers who do still provide paid usenet access were not strong-armed by one or more state attorneys general to drop large swaths of usenet, but specific groups "associated" in some manner with porn.
So, yes at this point in time, it is all about the child porn hysteria.
That's not to say that efforts may be made in the future to get whoever is still providing usenet access to drop all the music, movie, warez, or whatever else groups, but there's no evidence that's the case, and there's no evidence that the existing crop of usenet providers would do so without putting up a real fight, a fight where popular opinion is on their side and defending the indefensible is no longer part of equation.
I eventually had to migrate my partially-finished FreeBSD disk to VMWare and finish my work there.
Regrettably, the virtualisation options/choices for FreeBSD range between poor to none at all, the niftiness of such features as jails, Linux emulation, etc. notwithstanding.
Out of curiousity, what OS did you use on the VMWare host machine?
I try not to talk loudly around it, and make sure it's emotional needs are met.
But what about YOUR needs?
Seems to me that if you're willing to go that far, then it should be happy to go with you everywhere you go. Hallway conversations and performance reviews would be a good start.
I didn't know we were at war with the country Critical Thinking. Are we winning?
If the surge fails, but the byproduct of the effort includes or coincides with fixing the shortage of textbooks, school supplies and clean bathrooms for the grade school and high school kids, and along the way the parents get involved, demanding their kids to be accountable (like learning what's expected of them), we can say "The surge worked!"
And you would be right. Was the summary that obvious?
Well, the article does discuss both the test-taking aspect in addition to other concerns, and what the legislation actually says isn't made clear, other than a a description of it that reads "an institution that offers an online program must prove that an enrolled student is the same person who does the work."
Without knowing how "work" is defined, my guess is that the intent of the legislation is reasonable. That's not to say the technologies or workarounds being put into effect are.
I imagine that if this is mostly about test taking, then video cameras are hardly onerous. If every computer sold today came with a camera, and video confering was a routine affair, I imagine all on-line educating would be handled that way, as it's little different than being there in person. Granted, being able to "attend" remotely while just wearing your underwear won't be possible, but that doesn't strike me as a significant disadvantage. Or desirable.
I started a blog three months ago on Blogger and two days after my blog was created, Blogger's spam detecting software marked my benign text only blog as a "spam blog" and locked me out for a week...
By chance, were you blogging about Nigerian genealogies, luxury watches, or herbal supplements?
Because our hands are the most precise tools that we have, and they are well built for the task.
And language is the most expressive form of communication we humans have.
So why is it, then, that most people not only prefer but also insist that moving a pointer to a comfortably large area on screen to perform a click or double-click is the optimal way to perform any and all tasks?
Me, I consider the use of a mouse the equivalent of poking something with a stick and then grunting. Good for an occasional effect, sometimes useful, but most appropriate for the lazy, subliterate, ignorant or otherwise unskilled, but best avoided. If that sounds absurd or too reminiscent of a "get off my lawn" mentality, then I'd suggest considering trying to boot and then use a computer for any length of time without a keyboard attached. For added fun, note the date on the Ubuntu tutorial page that came up as one the first results in a search for one of my own can't live without applications.
I expect we'll be replacing the keyboard as an input device is about the same time we come up with a replacement for language. Which is probably not ever. Until then, what happens with the mouse, although interesting, isn't that important.
As for kiosks, etc., or the advancements as seen in the Apple iPhone, I see that as more analogous to replacing physical buttons on a special-purpose machine with virtual ones, rather than a bold advancement in interface design. It's possible that many want or look forward to a day when a computer behaves like an ATM or a TiVo, but until then, the best method of interacting with our multi-purpose computers remains the lowly keyboard.
eye tracking requires you to look all over the place instead of straight into the monitor and punishes you for looking somewhere without wanting to point there
Bah.
Anyone using "focus follows mouse" with or without "auto raise" solved that problem long ago. We're just waiting for everyone else to catch up.;-)
At any rate, the problem, if there is one, could easily be mitigated with some form of "a wink and a nod" facial recognition input. The trade-off to the traditional "stare blankly while manipulating a plastic rodent" will be cubicle workers everywhere staring with increased intensity while exhibiting the symptoms of Tourette's Syndrome.
I used that kind of drafting table in school, this was just before CAD came in. I recall it being quite comfortable, offering a good arm rest and an expansive working area. I worked on drawings that were about as big as the current 30" monitor.
It's also worth pointing that the sloped tabletop approach is used by a wide variety of artists (think illustrators, cartoonists, calligraphers) in addition to those doing architectural or engineering work, not to mention any or all of the related sub-fields (landscape designers, etc.). And then, you've got schoolroom desks of yesteryear, lecterns, music stands and so on. all of which are based on a similar principle. The best way to sum up working on a sloped desk for anyone who hasn't seen or used one is "natural and comfortable as hell".
It could be the search for a new human/device interface will cause us to revisit why it is we insist on using flat work surface at all (aside from the temporary storage of crap as an aid in making us us look busy).
Nobody is afflicted with any of that nasty personal responsibility for anything they unless it manages to run afowl of those last few vestiges of silly old sensibilites...
I remember when I was a kid, I was given a small "chick" by a friend who was forced to give it away. My mum, being the sensible type (at least so I thought) let me keep it, like she let me keep most things I brought home as pets. The chick quickly grew to be a rooster and just as quickly I discovered roosters make lousy pets.
We kept the thing in the backyard with a long length of clothesline tied to one of its legs. We lived in the middle of a medium-sized city, so we had to keep it constrained (not that constraining it helped with early morning crowing which woke up most of the neighbourhood). Once or twice a week, the rooster (we didn't give him a name) would manage to get loose and go do whatever it is roosters like to do. In his case, he like to walk up and down the sidewalk in front of our our house chasing strangers who happened to pass by. Can't tell you how many people who knocked on our door and yelled and screamed at my mum because they were "attacked" while on their way to the bus stop.
To make a long story short, the poor guy didn't last out the year. Not because of anything the neighbours or local constabulatory did, but because my mum decided to make chicken for dinner. I was a kid, so I cried and cried, but eventually came out of my bedroom and sat down at the table in front of the biggest, most golden chicken I've ever seen. Some years later it dawned on me that the corn porridge which we kids refused to eat in the morning (typically called "polenta" when sold in restaurants) but was fed to the rooster, was the reason why it looked and tasted so good.
The methods this prosecutor used is a method any lawyer can use.
And that would include David Boise, Ted Olsen and Barack Obama?
For everyone else who learned what a lawyer is and does from watching television, I'll add that the field of law is, to use a non-Latin non-legal expression, Really Big. Those practising tax, real estate, probate, or working in banking or mergers and acquisitions, for example, may never see the inside of a courtroom. The average medium-to-large law firm, to say nothing of in-house departments of countless corporations, may not have a single criminal attorney on staff. Or any interest in using Facebook.
BTW, it's not that I couldn't geek-out enough to do things with Linux. Hell, I've got 15+ years of experience with Unix. It's that I don't have to.
I don't doubt your sincerity, but I can't fathom what the above means. For me, starting from scratch has always required three steps:
1. Buy supported hardware.
2. Copy over config files.
3. There is no Step 3.
If the first step is onerous, and twenty minutes of research (about the same amount of time a typical consumer will stand in an store aisle examining colourful shrink-wrapped boxes) for 3+ years of usage is a bad bargain, the source of your problems can be found in a mirror.
If by "geek-out" you mean "configure", then that's taken care of in Step 2 (minus a few quick edits here or there). If you're up against something Really New (rare), a quick look at the manpage or the docs should be a no-brainer and require little or no time.
For most people, the hurdle is knowledge, and the effort required to master that knowledge. Granted, something like Windows does allow (encourage) you to remaining clueless, but I don't remember when being lazy or ignorant became a virtue, or a valid excuse. If you already have the requisite knowledge, then everything that proceeds from it (including the ability to troubleshoot bad hardware) should be as easy as it is effortless.
This thread is just a pissing competition of lame jokes.
I always say when urine a veritable shower of golden opportunities, and you have it in you, there snow better place to write your own name. Or is that a punishable offense?
Uh, you miss the point. Entirely. It isn't a plea for text-based reading or gateway software. It was a comment that had nothing to do with text-based reading (or gateway software). It is pointing out (and laughing, in a sad, hollow way) that they are finally moving toward having in a web forum the kind of functionality that late 80's news reader software had.
Sigh.
My point was that that given the innability to provide 80s functionality, it just might be behoove those caught up with the excitement and rapid progress of the New and Improved to revisit the original Old and Outdated which provided that functionality in the first place.
The possible merits of the above may escape you, of course, but that's not to say they don't exist. The happy users of Gmane would most definitely disagree with you, as would the minions taking advantage of Microsoft's own support forums.
As for the latter, I doubt Microsoft's gateway setup was implemented as a response to what you perceive as a "plea" for text-based reading. In fact, it's rebranded and sold as a bonus for their Technet, etc. subscribers. Go figure. Someone making money using something from the 80s that doesn't require Web 2.0, or playing music in a cover band at weddings.
Slashdot Mirror
Not that that's necessarily a bad thing, amiright? ...
Dunno. Are you attracted to powerful shoulders, an over-developed torso, flat chest, and short (Russian style) muscular legs?
If you are, you might be interested in the stocking clerk that works at my local grocery store. His name is Billy.
OK, I laughed, but you should be embarrassed.
Making a Clinton-era joke is like wearing bell bottoms, a tie-dyed T-shirt AND an afro. No one can tell whether you're trying to be funny, or agree on what's really funny.
[It] is a tragedy and a crime.
You have all your definitions in order, but the above is only partially correct. There are no elements in the story to qualify it as a tragedy. There are lots of words synonymous with "horrible", such as
abhorrent, abominable, appalling, atrocious, awful, cruel, despicable, detestable, dire, dreadful, excruciating, execrable, fearful, formidable, ghastly, grewsome, grim, grisly, gruesome, harrowing, heinous, hideous, horrendous, horrid, horrific, loathsome, mean, nasty, nefarious, obnoxious, repulsive, revolting, shocking, terrible, ugly, unbearable, ungodly, unpleasant, unspeakable, vile
but "tragic" is not one of them.
I think the biodegradable plastic bags sound like the better choice and much more preferable then a 20 cent tax per bag (although it might end up costing more then 20 cents per bag, at least its actually doing something rather then just punishing people)
Your recommendation appears based on the notion that not using plastic bags is punishing someone. I don't see how alternative approaches can ever be considered punishment, given that convenience of any type involves a trade-off, and the negative connotations of the term are more appropriate for bumperstickers and negative campaign ads than for reasoned discussion.
By offering plastic bags, the tradeoff is mostly the wasteful use of resources vs. the customer being able to carry home their purchases. With plastic rings for 6-packs of aluminum cans, the tradeoff includes an even more wasteful use of resources, threats to the marine environment, and the collective cost borne by the rest of society vs. marketing effectiveness (6-packs on sale!) on the part of the retailer, and easy-to-carry benefits on the part of the consumer.
My own opinion is that anything that encourages environmental responsibility and awareness of the true costs involved by all parties is A Good Thing. If that requires a minor incovenience or a similarly minor change of habit and routine on the part of everyone involved, so be it. If it involves a surcharge, then the surcharge will remind people that they have to take into account what the realities are when they make their purchasing decisions and force them responsible for their actions. At the moment, we don't see $20 Environmentally Destructive Surcharge sticker on computer motherboards, but if it comes to that, I'm sure we'd all benefit from it.
You can, of course, seek or encourage compromise solutions. However, the plastic bag problem is relatively simple to fix, so I don't see any need to pursue half-hearted or partially-effective schemes at the periphery when something more fundamental needs addressing. Namely, resources of all types have their limits, we're too wasteful as a society, we're only too happy to remain ignorant of the consequences, and everything has a cost that someone, somewhere pays.
The irony here is that instead of taking the opportunity to use the plastic bag issue as a symbolic Step in the Right Direction and moving on with what we've learned, we're busy arguing over whether consumers are being punished.
Won't someone please think of the consumers! ;-)
The offramps indicate that it's Shell, but it may have changed hands since the roads were named.
I think you're thinking of Shell Road, which is one of the "major" exits when you're travelling north on the way to Ojai. I say "major" because the area, like all areas where there's oil drilling, is essentially a no man's land.
I'm going by memory here, but I believe the first oil well in California was drilled in in the same vicinity (Sulphur Mountain) in the mid to late 1800s by a railroad magnate by the name of Stanford. Over the years, just about everybody tried to get in on the action, but today, it's Unocal that operates most of the wells in Ventura County, though the complete list would include Shell, Mobil, Texaco and Chevron.
... but can I get one without Lotus Notes too?
In anticipation of a thousand Slashdotters nodding approvingly, I'll point out that the head of the White House IT Dept. testified (during the recent missing emails scandal) that Notes is obsolete software, and then went on to explain the problems they were having with Exchange, and why those problems couldn't be fixed. The senators, reassured the White House was using state of the art technology, nodded approvingly.
Embrace, Extend....
No doubt that approach remains dominant, but it's too simplistic. The article seems to conclude that Microsoft is after hearts and minds, developers, specifically, but anyone else within earshot would help just the same.
That would make the latest developments more akin to Walmart's "our valued associates" commercials, oil companies touting "green" initiatives, US car makers promising economic turnarounds with concept cars, or, if you're so inclined, presidential political political strategies that ranged from compassionate conservatism, to "restoring honor", to the latest "I'm Different (honest!)" by McCain.
USENET is dead in internet protocol terms. Usage has shrunk to such a small size and there are so many better alternatives, that its numbers will continue to decline to near oblivion.
Dunno where you got those ideas, but a cursory Google search will reveal several terrabytes of new data flows into usenet each and every day. And it's increasing, not decreasing.
it was about alt.binaries.mp3s
Sorry, but that statement as written is bogus.
First, there's dozens of music groups and probably as many if not more movie groups, and even more warez groups. You think the BSA or MPAA or are somehow less aggressive or effective than the RIAA? Second, while it's true that ISPs dropped free usenet access for their customers, there is no evidence that they did so for any reason other than what was announced, or the blatantly obvious "they can save money". And third, the major usenet providers who do still provide paid usenet access were not strong-armed by one or more state attorneys general to drop large swaths of usenet, but specific groups "associated" in some manner with porn.
So, yes at this point in time, it is all about the child porn hysteria.
That's not to say that efforts may be made in the future to get whoever is still providing usenet access to drop all the music, movie, warez, or whatever else groups, but there's no evidence that's the case, and there's no evidence that the existing crop of usenet providers would do so without putting up a real fight, a fight where popular opinion is on their side and defending the indefensible is no longer part of equation.
So, he's kinda like the Colin Powell in George Bush's administration?
I was thinking more along the lines of a Scott "I'm sorry but they lied to me, too!" McLennan.
Thanks for elaborating.
I eventually had to migrate my partially-finished FreeBSD disk to VMWare and finish my work there.
Regrettably, the virtualisation options/choices for FreeBSD range between poor to none at all, the niftiness of such features as jails, Linux emulation, etc. notwithstanding.
Out of curiousity, what OS did you use on the VMWare host machine?
I try not to talk loudly around it, and make sure it's emotional needs are met.
But what about YOUR needs?
Seems to me that if you're willing to go that far, then it should be happy to go with you everywhere you go. Hallway conversations and performance reviews would be a good start.
I didn't know we were at war with the country Critical Thinking. Are we winning?
If the surge fails, but the byproduct of the effort includes or coincides with fixing the shortage of textbooks, school supplies and clean bathrooms for the grade school and high school kids, and along the way the parents get involved, demanding their kids to be accountable (like learning what's expected of them), we can say "The surge worked!"
All we need is someone to be The Decider.
Thallium accumulates in your testicles. I remember hearing stories about labs handling thallium where only women were allowed.
Well, the article does explicitly state that "The material does all the work."
And you would be right. Was the summary that obvious?
Well, the article does discuss both the test-taking aspect in addition to other concerns, and what the legislation actually says isn't made clear, other than a a description of it that reads "an institution that offers an online program must prove that an enrolled student is the same person who does the work."
Without knowing how "work" is defined, my guess is that the intent of the legislation is reasonable. That's not to say the technologies or workarounds being put into effect are.
I imagine that if this is mostly about test taking, then video cameras are hardly onerous. If every computer sold today came with a camera, and video confering was a routine affair, I imagine all on-line educating would be handled that way, as it's little different than being there in person. Granted, being able to "attend" remotely while just wearing your underwear won't be possible, but that doesn't strike me as a significant disadvantage. Or desirable.
I started a blog three months ago on Blogger and two days after my blog was created, Blogger's spam detecting software marked my benign text only blog as a "spam blog" and locked me out for a week ...
By chance, were you blogging about Nigerian genealogies, luxury watches, or herbal supplements?
Because our hands are the most precise tools that we have, and they are well built for the task.
And language is the most expressive form of communication we humans have.
So why is it, then, that most people not only prefer but also insist that moving a pointer to a comfortably large area on screen to perform a click or double-click is the optimal way to perform any and all tasks?
Me, I consider the use of a mouse the equivalent of poking something with a stick and then grunting. Good for an occasional effect, sometimes useful, but most appropriate for the lazy, subliterate, ignorant or otherwise unskilled, but best avoided. If that sounds absurd or too reminiscent of a "get off my lawn" mentality, then I'd suggest considering trying to boot and then use a computer for any length of time without a keyboard attached. For added fun, note the date on the Ubuntu tutorial page that came up as one the first results in a search for one of my own can't live without applications.
I expect we'll be replacing the keyboard as an input device is about the same time we come up with a replacement for language. Which is probably not ever. Until then, what happens with the mouse, although interesting, isn't that important.
As for kiosks, etc., or the advancements as seen in the Apple iPhone, I see that as more analogous to replacing physical buttons on a special-purpose machine with virtual ones, rather than a bold advancement in interface design. It's possible that many want or look forward to a day when a computer behaves like an ATM or a TiVo, but until then, the best method of interacting with our multi-purpose computers remains the lowly keyboard.
eye tracking requires you to look all over the place instead of straight into the monitor and punishes you for looking somewhere without wanting to point there
Bah.
Anyone using "focus follows mouse" with or without "auto raise" solved that problem long ago. We're just waiting for everyone else to catch up. ;-)
At any rate, the problem, if there is one, could easily be mitigated with some form of "a wink and a nod" facial recognition input. The trade-off to the traditional "stare blankly while manipulating a plastic rodent" will be cubicle workers everywhere staring with increased intensity while exhibiting the symptoms of Tourette's Syndrome.
I used that kind of drafting table in school, this was just before CAD came in. I recall it being quite comfortable, offering a good arm rest and an expansive working area. I worked on drawings that were about as big as the current 30" monitor.
It's also worth pointing that the sloped tabletop approach is used by a wide variety of artists (think illustrators, cartoonists, calligraphers) in addition to those doing architectural or engineering work, not to mention any or all of the related sub-fields (landscape designers, etc.). And then, you've got schoolroom desks of yesteryear, lecterns, music stands and so on. all of which are based on a similar principle. The best way to sum up working on a sloped desk for anyone who hasn't seen or used one is "natural and comfortable as hell".
It could be the search for a new human/device interface will cause us to revisit why it is we insist on using flat work surface at all (aside from the temporary storage of crap as an aid in making us us look busy).
Nobody is afflicted with any of that nasty personal responsibility for anything they unless it manages to run afowl of those last few vestiges of silly old sensibilites ...
I remember when I was a kid, I was given a small "chick" by a friend who was forced to give it away. My mum, being the sensible type (at least so I thought) let me keep it, like she let me keep most things I brought home as pets. The chick quickly grew to be a rooster and just as quickly I discovered roosters make lousy pets.
We kept the thing in the backyard with a long length of clothesline tied to one of its legs. We lived in the middle of a medium-sized city, so we had to keep it constrained (not that constraining it helped with early morning crowing which woke up most of the neighbourhood). Once or twice a week, the rooster (we didn't give him a name) would manage to get loose and go do whatever it is roosters like to do. In his case, he like to walk up and down the sidewalk in front of our our house chasing strangers who happened to pass by. Can't tell you how many people who knocked on our door and yelled and screamed at my mum because they were "attacked" while on their way to the bus stop.
To make a long story short, the poor guy didn't last out the year. Not because of anything the neighbours or local constabulatory did, but because my mum decided to make chicken for dinner. I was a kid, so I cried and cried, but eventually came out of my bedroom and sat down at the table in front of the biggest, most golden chicken I've ever seen. Some years later it dawned on me that the corn porridge which we kids refused to eat in the morning (typically called "polenta" when sold in restaurants) but was fed to the rooster, was the reason why it looked and tasted so good.
Is that what you meant by run afowl?
The methods this prosecutor used is a method any lawyer can use.
And that would include David Boise, Ted Olsen and Barack Obama?
For everyone else who learned what a lawyer is and does from watching television, I'll add that the field of law is, to use a non-Latin non-legal expression, Really Big. Those practising tax, real estate, probate, or working in banking or mergers and acquisitions, for example, may never see the inside of a courtroom. The average medium-to-large law firm, to say nothing of in-house departments of countless corporations, may not have a single criminal attorney on staff. Or any interest in using Facebook.
BTW, it's not that I couldn't geek-out enough to do things with Linux. Hell, I've got 15+ years of experience with Unix. It's that I don't have to.
I don't doubt your sincerity, but I can't fathom what the above means. For me, starting from scratch has always required three steps:
1. Buy supported hardware.
2. Copy over config files.
3. There is no Step 3.
If the first step is onerous, and twenty minutes of research (about the same amount of time a typical consumer will stand in an store aisle examining colourful shrink-wrapped boxes) for 3+ years of usage is a bad bargain, the source of your problems can be found in a mirror.
If by "geek-out" you mean "configure", then that's taken care of in Step 2 (minus a few quick edits here or there). If you're up against something Really New (rare), a quick look at the manpage or the docs should be a no-brainer and require little or no time.
For most people, the hurdle is knowledge, and the effort required to master that knowledge. Granted, something like Windows does allow (encourage) you to remaining clueless, but I don't remember when being lazy or ignorant became a virtue, or a valid excuse. If you already have the requisite knowledge, then everything that proceeds from it (including the ability to troubleshoot bad hardware) should be as easy as it is effortless.
This thread is just a pissing competition of lame jokes.
I always say when urine a veritable shower of golden opportunities, and you have it in you, there snow better place to write your own name. Or is that a punishable offense?
Uh, you miss the point. Entirely. It isn't a plea for text-based reading or gateway software. It was a comment that had nothing to do with text-based reading (or gateway software). It is pointing out (and laughing, in a sad, hollow way) that they are finally moving toward having in a web forum the kind of functionality that late 80's news reader software had.
Sigh.
My point was that that given the innability to provide 80s functionality, it just might be behoove those caught up with the excitement and rapid progress of the New and Improved to revisit the original Old and Outdated which provided that functionality in the first place.
The possible merits of the above may escape you, of course, but that's not to say they don't exist. The happy users of Gmane would most definitely disagree with you, as would the minions taking advantage of Microsoft's own support forums.
As for the latter, I doubt Microsoft's gateway setup was implemented as a response to what you perceive as a "plea" for text-based reading. In fact, it's rebranded and sold as a bonus for their Technet, etc. subscribers. Go figure. Someone making money using something from the 80s that doesn't require Web 2.0, or playing music in a cover band at weddings.