Seriously, I understand it's come far in sheer user counts for being trendy, but if you want to talk about browsers ripping off features then I find it curious he failed to mention Opera.
Because everything that people tote about Firefox--albeit in features that you have to plugin yourself--was being done by Opera first and for years before Firefox came along. Mouse gestures, intelligent pop up blocking system integrated into the browser, you name it and those of us had it while using Opera before Firefox was even a buzzword.
And after all these years, Opera continues to reign superior over Firefox in every area that counts: customization, speed, compatibility, portability, innovating new features with subsequent releases. The only thing that makes it difficult is when you hit a site that denies access, only because you're not using either IE or Firefox...despite Opera being more compatible with web standards and the like. Ponder that.
Firefox wasn't the solution to any of the web's problems, it's part of the problem. It's an imitator just the same as IE, and dominating the market despite providing an inferior experience. The only boast to be made is that it's better than IE, and that isn't saying a whole lot.
It's clear that _only_ expensive class action lawsuits and/or government intervention will break the stranglehold Apple enjoys on everything they brand.
Didn't boot howso? I've yet to hear of such problems post installation even after all these years, and they actually improved the installation with Vista so I have a hard time believing that. Hell, installing a fresh XP is pretty much a ritual of mine every few several months.
Don't get me wrong, I used Vista for several months and it's absolutely broken. I'm also of the mindset that MS knows damn well they released a broken product just to get it out on some sort of deadline. Although we pretty much knew that was going to happen from the betas, right? And it seems we're supposed to wait out all the bugs until they can get a service pack out--I just said 'f- it' one day and formatted+reinstalled XP.
But if your experience with Ubuntu has been much better than this, then you must have gotten a magically superior distro over mine or your system and devices just agrees with it better. Vista sure doesn't fail to boot just because I have an external harddrive plugged in at the time.
The way Linux divides the system among directories should be increasingly familiar today than several years ago for the fact that Microsoft has adopted more of this behavior for Windows with each new release. Now days you have \Documents and Settings, \My Documents, and of course \Program Files and \Windows. My point is just that I'm not unfamiliar with things like the command line, modifying files by hand, concerning myself with some of the finer points of how the system operates, etc. So I figure that if trying to get a popular Linux distro up and running is testing my patience when I could just say "f- it" and stick solely with Windows, then I don't even want to think what the 'average' computer user will make of it.
I agree that it's usable on some face value just for the fact that you can launch an email client through an icon, and Linux has some great stuff going for it in that department like the package manager where you can catalog browse new software. Windows doesn't have anything like that, and if they did the selection would probably be highly suspect and packed with commercial products from related parties to where you wouldn't want to use it anyway. Of course, your hardware has to work first and that's been the biggest problem for me with Linux. It feels like a crapshoot sometimes whether a device will work, or these weird problems like Ubuntu mounting drives as read-only by default then having to go through a bunch of steps just to correct it. All of it seems to act as a barrier to Linux adoption to where I haven't managed to stick with one past a couple weeks, after all these years of trying Red Hat, Mandrake, etc or novelty distros like "Linux for Windows".
Sounds like my experience, except for running applications since my desktop is XP.
But yeah, I was happy that Ubuntu could network with my XP desktop and access the files (at least through Nautilus). I store all my music/movies/etc on there so it's pretty important to me. It's annoying that XP doesn't appear to do the same, but that's Microsoft for you. Perhaps there's a third party app to enable that functionality the way Ext2 Volume Manager lets you mount the Linux filesystem in Windows. I haven't checked because I've barely elected to use Ubuntu for anything.
I'm glad to know it's not just me who can't access files using the likes of Totem if they're stored on another computer, so thanks for confirming this! It's hard to believe I'm the first person to attempt this, so who knows. I haven't tried it in the current version so for all I know that package was already updated. After my problems with installation and setup, I've nearly just formatted that drive and given up so I'll have to see if my patience holds.
It's pretty demeaning to have to run to a forum of peers with every little problem you encounter. In all my years of using Windows (95,98,2K,XP,Vista) I never had to run to somebody else over a problem. Not to mention DOS before that, and you get the idea. If the master plan for Linux--whatever the flavor--is 'well if there's a problem people will just go ask', then you've got serious problems that I doubt I need to begin detailing here.
Not that I don't appreciate the fact that there are people who _would_ freely take the time and effort to assist. But still, I don't see why it should come to this. People everywhere are irresponsibly claiming that this OS is tailored for average users and works at least as well--if not better than--Windows. I call BS on every account.
And yeah, I was booting off the Live cd so I could try to search for a solution online (and like usual, failed so I had to figure it out myself). Of course this doesn't begin to change the fact that I set aside maybe an hour that morning to upgrade the OS to 7.10, then planned to return to XP so I could do work. The fact that it killed grub made accessing Windows impossible until I figured out the solution. That was more than a little irksome, and if I had gone to a forum it probably would have been to curse and bitch (like this but with more cursing) rather than appeal for any actual assistance.
I've tried Knoppix, as well as many Linux distros in the past (some of them purchased). Knoppix was as recent as February, and the big turnoff was that I mostly use an Alienware 7700 laptop and with that distro a number of devices just weren't working.
I was pretty happy with Ubuntu at least working with my laptop's hardware (by contrast a friend of mine tried it with his 64bit modern desktop and reported that Ubuntu just froze on boot). But I'm just tired of everybody lauding these latest distros--like Ubuntu--as the people's OS. I've been using computers since middle school, have programming experience, and am the go-to guy for all Windows problems whenever somebody's system starts screwing up. If I can't even find a comfortable working experience in Linux, then how the hell would I ever recommend it to someone like my dad who has to call me whenever a cable comes loose from the back of his HP desktop?
So yeah, based on my own experience Ubuntu is pretty broken and anybody claiming that it's an alternative for Windows--particularly for the average person--is spouting some prime BS. I managed to sort out the upgrade booting problems after finding the grub directory was now hidden under/boot, and edit menu.lst to fix the drive entries (re-adding XP and updating the Ubuntu entries with the correct information). Keep in mind that the only reason I had to do this was because it got screwed up during an _update_. Somehow I don't consider tasks like that user-friendly, or when the first thing I had to do with it was learn about manipulating xorg.conf just to get my five button trackball working when it functions fine under Windows by default.
I don't think we're talking about the same thing. I'm on my home network (typically just my laptop and desktop connected via an inverted ethernet cable), and while I can browse the files on my XP desktop just fine I can't simply play any mp3s or videos off them. The handful of players I tried through the packager manager all fail to locate them unless I manually copied them over or something along those lines. That's just not the behavior to which I'm accustomed on Windows, where I can connect the two and freely access files on either machine.
Bah, I consider Ubuntu more broken than Vista
on
Vista Vs. Gutsy Gibbon
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· Score: 3, Interesting
...at least Vista _boots_ after installation. I have had nothing but trouble from attempting to run Ubuntu--from difficulty getting the Nvidia drivers for my 6800 working to GRUB mysteriously being screwed up between sessions, to not my system not even booting if I do something as radical as try to boot my system with an external hard drive plugged in. Add all the problems with it not mounting things like said external drive or the secondary internal drive as anything but read-only, and a ton of other issues, and so far I've probably spent more time trying to get the damn thing working than actually using it.
When I did the recent upgrade to 7.10, it didn't even boot after installation. It wiped my XP entry out of menu.lst and botched the rest of the file. No backup file or anything of the sort. If Microsoft released an OS that didn't even boot directly after installation they would never hear the end of it.
I used Vista for several months and had plenty of troubles with it, like Explorer forgetting over half the directory settings it was supposed to retain or never getting it to detect my XP desktop over my home network (Ubuntu on the other hand just plain doesn't work with files over a network, try playing music or videos shared from another computer, so while it technically works who cares?) But at least Vista generally _worked_, Ubuntu must be synonymous with 'broken'.
What year is this, 1998? Trying to block right clicking as a means of 'protection'? That puts you on par with Geocities members pre-2000, and about one minor step above using js to spoof the status bar or hide the address bar. I suppose next they'll be petitioning the ISPs for surveillance to see who's been viewing their page source, claiming it as violation of 'trade secrets'.
I spent a good amount of time on the phone with Microsoft maybe the day before yesterday, trying to raise some issues with the Intellipoint software.
First there was the thorough questioning regarding my identity and product (Microsoft optical trackball, I have purchased over a dozen the past several years because I will use no other input device and therefore require backups should my current devices-in-use ever fail) and tried to mention this fact in passing so they would know I've been a loyal customer who's sent a good amount of money their way.
Finally when I got to speak to somebody about the issue, it was clear he was powerless to do anything other than treat it as if it were a personal issue.
I informed him that the outdated version 4.1 of the Intellipoint drivers I possessed on my disc worked for gaming universally in my experiences, but with every version since including the current 6.2 there are problems with many games if they don't natively support five button input devices. Attempting to use Intellipoint to assign keystrokes to the buttons for game functions _does not work_. With XP I was fine installing my old drivers, but with Vista they have forced the upgrade which breaks numerous games old and new (the recently released Penumbra Overture demo being one example).
I could even provide them with a workaround I'd found: if you alt+tab out of the game then back in, the buttons will begin working. The problem--as I attempted to explain to him--was that no Windows PC game developer will support alt+tab. In every readme I've ever browsed, it explicitly says alt+tab is not supported, and for good reason: many games become unstable and therefore this workaround does not help me but perhaps it could help the developers address the issue for future versions. Intellipoint still works with Windows applications like Paintshop Pro, afterall.
I had already searched the support site and found no solutions, so I knew that attempting to solve it at the moment was futile and attempted to point this out. Still, he wanted time to look into it and would call me back an hour or two later. It's worth pointing out that the support representative was kind and sincerely wanted to help, he just didn't seem to grasp everything I was explaining nor understand the implications of what I was calling about.
To illustrate this, he suggested things like reinstalling the software (been there, done that. Done it on numerous clean installations as well); reciting the steps to assign the keystrokes to buttons (kindly reminded him that this the issue in the first place); informing me that my particular pointing device was no longer in production (yes but the issue appears to be with the general Intellipoint, not my specific trackball because it's just one of the recognized devices Intellipoint incorporates). Again I tried to explain that all I was looking for was some avenue that I might raise this to their attention so _just maybe_ it can be addressed when they look to release their next version. It's worth noting that over on the Adobe support forums it has been recently discovered that a conflict exists between Photoshop CS3 and Intellipoint specifically, causing Photoshop to crash, therefore I get the feeling that a new version is not long away. But despite this one nice guy who genuinely wanted to do his job, no such avenue exists and this issue was essentially falling on Microsoft's deaf ears.
So in my personal case on record it's noted as an unresolved issue which doesn't relate to anybody apart from myself and does not solve anything in having it examined and perhaps even remedied. So even when you have a reproducible issue and try to give them complete information on it, I don't believe it's often possible to get that information to the right people so it can be addressed.
At the very least does Firefox allow you to drag your tabs in order to rearrange them? I know Opera permits it and that's basically my solution for organized tab browsing.
feature (or should that be tacked-on?) All I see are things either that I don't want or need, or that Opera already does and has been doing for the years I've used it, reinforcing my realization that I just don't need steak #2 when I've been enjoying steak #1 for some time. The only thing that still bothers me about Opera are _other people_--sites that refuse to work with Opera but almost certainly would if they didn't block you upfront for not using IE or Firefox.
http://www.trektoday.com/news/180105_02.shtml
That was linked in the previous Slashdot article, Star Trek: Enterprise' Cancelled? and instead of the 'Startrek cast to be fired in March' article it has the producers rebuttal that Enterprise being cancelled is just a rumor.
Personally, I'll take their word for it over some anonymous guy on the internet anyday.
I'm assuming next we'll be guilty of aiding/abetting if we notice but fail to report a person with a recording device.
Also: Deputizing the public didn't work for GW Bush and Operation TIPS, and it hasn't become any better of an idea since.
Slashdot Mirror
Seriously, I understand it's come far in sheer user counts for being trendy, but if you want to talk about browsers ripping off features then I find it curious he failed to mention Opera.
Because everything that people tote about Firefox--albeit in features that you have to plugin yourself--was being done by Opera first and for years before Firefox came along. Mouse gestures, intelligent pop up blocking system integrated into the browser, you name it and those of us had it while using Opera before Firefox was even a buzzword.
And after all these years, Opera continues to reign superior over Firefox in every area that counts: customization, speed, compatibility, portability, innovating new features with subsequent releases. The only thing that makes it difficult is when you hit a site that denies access, only because you're not using either IE or Firefox...despite Opera being more compatible with web standards and the like. Ponder that. Firefox wasn't the solution to any of the web's problems, it's part of the problem. It's an imitator just the same as IE, and dominating the market despite providing an inferior experience. The only boast to be made is that it's better than IE, and that isn't saying a whole lot.
It's clear that _only_ expensive class action lawsuits and/or government intervention will break the stranglehold Apple enjoys on everything they brand.
Didn't boot howso? I've yet to hear of such problems post installation even after all these years, and they actually improved the installation with Vista so I have a hard time believing that. Hell, installing a fresh XP is pretty much a ritual of mine every few several months. Don't get me wrong, I used Vista for several months and it's absolutely broken. I'm also of the mindset that MS knows damn well they released a broken product just to get it out on some sort of deadline. Although we pretty much knew that was going to happen from the betas, right? And it seems we're supposed to wait out all the bugs until they can get a service pack out--I just said 'f- it' one day and formatted+reinstalled XP. But if your experience with Ubuntu has been much better than this, then you must have gotten a magically superior distro over mine or your system and devices just agrees with it better. Vista sure doesn't fail to boot just because I have an external harddrive plugged in at the time.
The way Linux divides the system among directories should be increasingly familiar today than several years ago for the fact that Microsoft has adopted more of this behavior for Windows with each new release. Now days you have \Documents and Settings, \My Documents, and of course \Program Files and \Windows. My point is just that I'm not unfamiliar with things like the command line, modifying files by hand, concerning myself with some of the finer points of how the system operates, etc. So I figure that if trying to get a popular Linux distro up and running is testing my patience when I could just say "f- it" and stick solely with Windows, then I don't even want to think what the 'average' computer user will make of it.
I agree that it's usable on some face value just for the fact that you can launch an email client through an icon, and Linux has some great stuff going for it in that department like the package manager where you can catalog browse new software. Windows doesn't have anything like that, and if they did the selection would probably be highly suspect and packed with commercial products from related parties to where you wouldn't want to use it anyway. Of course, your hardware has to work first and that's been the biggest problem for me with Linux. It feels like a crapshoot sometimes whether a device will work, or these weird problems like Ubuntu mounting drives as read-only by default then having to go through a bunch of steps just to correct it. All of it seems to act as a barrier to Linux adoption to where I haven't managed to stick with one past a couple weeks, after all these years of trying Red Hat, Mandrake, etc or novelty distros like "Linux for Windows".
Sounds like my experience, except for running applications since my desktop is XP.
But yeah, I was happy that Ubuntu could network with my XP desktop and access the files (at least through Nautilus). I store all my music/movies/etc on there so it's pretty important to me. It's annoying that XP doesn't appear to do the same, but that's Microsoft for you. Perhaps there's a third party app to enable that functionality the way Ext2 Volume Manager lets you mount the Linux filesystem in Windows. I haven't checked because I've barely elected to use Ubuntu for anything.
I'm glad to know it's not just me who can't access files using the likes of Totem if they're stored on another computer, so thanks for confirming this! It's hard to believe I'm the first person to attempt this, so who knows. I haven't tried it in the current version so for all I know that package was already updated. After my problems with installation and setup, I've nearly just formatted that drive and given up so I'll have to see if my patience holds.
It's pretty demeaning to have to run to a forum of peers with every little problem you encounter. In all my years of using Windows (95,98,2K,XP,Vista) I never had to run to somebody else over a problem. Not to mention DOS before that, and you get the idea. If the master plan for Linux--whatever the flavor--is 'well if there's a problem people will just go ask', then you've got serious problems that I doubt I need to begin detailing here. Not that I don't appreciate the fact that there are people who _would_ freely take the time and effort to assist. But still, I don't see why it should come to this. People everywhere are irresponsibly claiming that this OS is tailored for average users and works at least as well--if not better than--Windows. I call BS on every account. And yeah, I was booting off the Live cd so I could try to search for a solution online (and like usual, failed so I had to figure it out myself). Of course this doesn't begin to change the fact that I set aside maybe an hour that morning to upgrade the OS to 7.10, then planned to return to XP so I could do work. The fact that it killed grub made accessing Windows impossible until I figured out the solution. That was more than a little irksome, and if I had gone to a forum it probably would have been to curse and bitch (like this but with more cursing) rather than appeal for any actual assistance.
I've tried Knoppix, as well as many Linux distros in the past (some of them purchased). Knoppix was as recent as February, and the big turnoff was that I mostly use an Alienware 7700 laptop and with that distro a number of devices just weren't working.
/boot, and edit menu.lst to fix the drive entries (re-adding XP and updating the Ubuntu entries with the correct information). Keep in mind that the only reason I had to do this was because it got screwed up during an _update_. Somehow I don't consider tasks like that user-friendly, or when the first thing I had to do with it was learn about manipulating xorg.conf just to get my five button trackball working when it functions fine under Windows by default.
I was pretty happy with Ubuntu at least working with my laptop's hardware (by contrast a friend of mine tried it with his 64bit modern desktop and reported that Ubuntu just froze on boot). But I'm just tired of everybody lauding these latest distros--like Ubuntu--as the people's OS. I've been using computers since middle school, have programming experience, and am the go-to guy for all Windows problems whenever somebody's system starts screwing up. If I can't even find a comfortable working experience in Linux, then how the hell would I ever recommend it to someone like my dad who has to call me whenever a cable comes loose from the back of his HP desktop?
So yeah, based on my own experience Ubuntu is pretty broken and anybody claiming that it's an alternative for Windows--particularly for the average person--is spouting some prime BS. I managed to sort out the upgrade booting problems after finding the grub directory was now hidden under
I don't think we're talking about the same thing. I'm on my home network (typically just my laptop and desktop connected via an inverted ethernet cable), and while I can browse the files on my XP desktop just fine I can't simply play any mp3s or videos off them. The handful of players I tried through the packager manager all fail to locate them unless I manually copied them over or something along those lines. That's just not the behavior to which I'm accustomed on Windows, where I can connect the two and freely access files on either machine.
...at least Vista _boots_ after installation. I have had nothing but trouble from attempting to run Ubuntu--from difficulty getting the Nvidia drivers for my 6800 working to GRUB mysteriously being screwed up between sessions, to not my system not even booting if I do something as radical as try to boot my system with an external hard drive plugged in. Add all the problems with it not mounting things like said external drive or the secondary internal drive as anything but read-only, and a ton of other issues, and so far I've probably spent more time trying to get the damn thing working than actually using it. When I did the recent upgrade to 7.10, it didn't even boot after installation. It wiped my XP entry out of menu.lst and botched the rest of the file. No backup file or anything of the sort. If Microsoft released an OS that didn't even boot directly after installation they would never hear the end of it. I used Vista for several months and had plenty of troubles with it, like Explorer forgetting over half the directory settings it was supposed to retain or never getting it to detect my XP desktop over my home network (Ubuntu on the other hand just plain doesn't work with files over a network, try playing music or videos shared from another computer, so while it technically works who cares?) But at least Vista generally _worked_, Ubuntu must be synonymous with 'broken'.
What year is this, 1998? Trying to block right clicking as a means of 'protection'? That puts you on par with Geocities members pre-2000, and about one minor step above using js to spoof the status bar or hide the address bar. I suppose next they'll be petitioning the ISPs for surveillance to see who's been viewing their page source, claiming it as violation of 'trade secrets'.
I spent a good amount of time on the phone with Microsoft maybe the day before yesterday, trying to raise some issues with the Intellipoint software. First there was the thorough questioning regarding my identity and product (Microsoft optical trackball, I have purchased over a dozen the past several years because I will use no other input device and therefore require backups should my current devices-in-use ever fail) and tried to mention this fact in passing so they would know I've been a loyal customer who's sent a good amount of money their way. Finally when I got to speak to somebody about the issue, it was clear he was powerless to do anything other than treat it as if it were a personal issue. I informed him that the outdated version 4.1 of the Intellipoint drivers I possessed on my disc worked for gaming universally in my experiences, but with every version since including the current 6.2 there are problems with many games if they don't natively support five button input devices. Attempting to use Intellipoint to assign keystrokes to the buttons for game functions _does not work_. With XP I was fine installing my old drivers, but with Vista they have forced the upgrade which breaks numerous games old and new (the recently released Penumbra Overture demo being one example). I could even provide them with a workaround I'd found: if you alt+tab out of the game then back in, the buttons will begin working. The problem--as I attempted to explain to him--was that no Windows PC game developer will support alt+tab. In every readme I've ever browsed, it explicitly says alt+tab is not supported, and for good reason: many games become unstable and therefore this workaround does not help me but perhaps it could help the developers address the issue for future versions. Intellipoint still works with Windows applications like Paintshop Pro, afterall. I had already searched the support site and found no solutions, so I knew that attempting to solve it at the moment was futile and attempted to point this out. Still, he wanted time to look into it and would call me back an hour or two later. It's worth pointing out that the support representative was kind and sincerely wanted to help, he just didn't seem to grasp everything I was explaining nor understand the implications of what I was calling about. To illustrate this, he suggested things like reinstalling the software (been there, done that. Done it on numerous clean installations as well); reciting the steps to assign the keystrokes to buttons (kindly reminded him that this the issue in the first place); informing me that my particular pointing device was no longer in production (yes but the issue appears to be with the general Intellipoint, not my specific trackball because it's just one of the recognized devices Intellipoint incorporates). Again I tried to explain that all I was looking for was some avenue that I might raise this to their attention so _just maybe_ it can be addressed when they look to release their next version. It's worth noting that over on the Adobe support forums it has been recently discovered that a conflict exists between Photoshop CS3 and Intellipoint specifically, causing Photoshop to crash, therefore I get the feeling that a new version is not long away. But despite this one nice guy who genuinely wanted to do his job, no such avenue exists and this issue was essentially falling on Microsoft's deaf ears. So in my personal case on record it's noted as an unresolved issue which doesn't relate to anybody apart from myself and does not solve anything in having it examined and perhaps even remedied. So even when you have a reproducible issue and try to give them complete information on it, I don't believe it's often possible to get that information to the right people so it can be addressed.
At the very least does Firefox allow you to drag your tabs in order to rearrange them? I know Opera permits it and that's basically my solution for organized tab browsing.
feature (or should that be tacked-on?) All I see are things either that I don't want or need, or that Opera already does and has been doing for the years I've used it, reinforcing my realization that I just don't need steak #2 when I've been enjoying steak #1 for some time. The only thing that still bothers me about Opera are _other people_--sites that refuse to work with Opera but almost certainly would if they didn't block you upfront for not using IE or Firefox.
http://www.trektoday.com/news/180105_02.shtml
That was linked in the previous Slashdot article, Star Trek: Enterprise' Cancelled? and instead of the 'Startrek cast to be fired in March' article it has the producers rebuttal that Enterprise being cancelled is just a rumor. Personally, I'll take their word for it over some anonymous guy on the internet anyday.
Just as long as the RIAA and MPAA weren't.
I'm assuming next we'll be guilty of aiding/abetting if we notice but fail to report a person with a recording device. Also: Deputizing the public didn't work for GW Bush and Operation TIPS, and it hasn't become any better of an idea since.