IMHO, this is where the DOJ should have slapped M$. Make them make their.doc format open. It is the defacto standard and is proprietary. This is ridiculous. This would stimulate competition and M$ would actually have to compete with someone.
It would be so nice in a perfect world if users just used rtf or something a little more compatible, but that's not gonna happen any time soon. I think this is the single biggest threat to moving people off windows...they can't read their files.
This shit is rampant up here in Canada. The state takes control of the kids. We have schools that tell the kids that the parents can't do anything to discipline the kids or they go to jail. Then when the little "darlings" become 18, they get busted, but instead of punishment to fit the crime,(after all they're just kids) they get a little slap on the wrist. We have a horrible law up here called the Young Offenders Act. They literally get away with murder.
We've had a few very well publicized cases here. Social Services is the devil. A certain group believed in using a strap (remember those oldtimers?) for discipline. SS came and took the kids away for a while and there was unbelievable screaming and fighting BY THE KIDS to stay with their parents. All of this thankfully caught on TV. Couple weeks or so the parents got their kids back and if they were smart they'd get out of this evil country.
Get Orwells gov't out of our homes and let us raise our kids ourselves like we've done for thousands of years. Damn liberals don't know my kids or what they need./rant
Revelation 13:16 He causes all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hand or on their foreheads, 17and that no one may buy or sell except one who has the mark or[6] the name of the beast, or the number of his name.
18Here is wisdom. Let him who has understanding calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man: His number is 666.
The whole patent system is a joke. With a good lawyer, you can patent anything. Then a big company comes along, changes 10% of your idea, they get a different patent and there's nothing you can do.
I think it was originally a nice idea, now it's just stupid.. especially software patents.
my 2 cents
I ran an ati aiw 8 meg on a second system (p200) for a couple years. Used it to watch hockey games when wifey wouldn't let me near the 27";-) I had the second monitor beside my main one. Only reason that I didn't put the card right in my system was that the tv wouldn't work on the second display. I even ran it on win 95 but didn't try capturing. Was a great tv though.
I think this "convergence crap" is going to go the way of "Push" Remember that latest and greatest fad for dialup users? Lame.
IMHO all I want from convergence is the abilty to use our NON DRM media on our stereo and tv's. That's all I care about. Can I someday, download a divx movies (for about $2 would be nice) and watch the damn thing on my tv. I don't want to go to the video store... twice... I don't even want to go there once. List the movies, show me preview perhaps, and let me download the damn thing without drm. I'm probably only gonna watch it once anyway. This RIAA shit has got to stop. Hopefully soon.
Just take the spammers out in the middle of the street downtown and shoot them.
Oh wait this is Canada, they'll probably give him a freakin medal or something. This shit has to stop. Unfortunately, we have 100 millions brain dead windows users out there who click on everything thinking that their computer works like a tv....AHHHH. 5 years it'll only be us geeks left. Everyone else will have screwed up their puters so bad, and the rest of us will be tired of fixing them (big grin)
Funny, people around here thought he was a dope dealer. Buyin all kinds of houses and cars and shit and it didn't look like anybody worked. Maybe the fine should be bigger?
I agree, where is this speed? What is the main issue? KDE?
For fun, I put an old corel distro on a p2 and it was nice and quick. I remember at the time though that it just dragged down my old amd k62-400.
Speed. I personally don't care about all the fancy graphics. I want it to work and be quick. That's why I run win98 on an AMD 2400+. It's FAST. I can load photoshop 6 in 5 seconds. I hate waiting.
There has to be something out there for window managers that's reasonable and fast.
k, I haven't had alot of luck with this. In version one, we had the deb sources right in the Xandros networks and I could install anything i wanted. The best example is Koffice. It installed no problem on version one. By version 2, nothing would install properly. I'm not impressed. I would rather have a plain debian system. Xandros is trying a lot of tricks and Microsoft type lock in to achieve basically the same as ms... domination. Not impressed at all anymore.
There's more bad news. They are turning into the Microsoft of Linux.
Try installing anything from debian. Try kpackage. Used to work. Now in version two it pretty much breaks everything. You can only get software from Xandros Networks.
They also took out the ability to join a domain between versions 1 & 2. I was all for this O/S.. now I'm jaded. The biz version which has this magically re-included is considerably more money.
Their new xDMS server is confusing all the beta testers. We mistakenly thought that it would also function as a workgroup server. Tons of problems and not much really goin on in the forums. I haven't seen anybody get it working properly yet. I gave up after 3 days. I see from the interview that they also want to sell a workgroup server.. ahh I see, sell another O/S and license. Unreal. There's no good reason why the deployment and workgroup couldn't be the same machine. Most updates are done at night anyway.
Xandros showed great promise, but I think they're getting greedy now.
I have an amd 2200+ with a 40 gig hdd and an old ISIS 8 track sound card. I've played around with it for a while now and have never heard even a peep of system noise?
How, pray tell, is a 5db fan going to be recorded over 100db drums using overhead mics?
How is the signal getting on the drive if the music is being plugged directly into the studio machine?
I think this is a neat toy and I'll probably try one, but the noise issue is a non-starter.
I have an accountant who hates computers. I hate accounting. Good trade off. He does my books and I help him whenever. To him the value of having an on-call geek is priceless.
Then there's this music store. I got a brand new set of pearl drums for some computers and services. I love that deal!
Great. Glad somebody can make some money. I'm in canada and everybody's too cheap here now. I like the premium for software issues thing, since that's about all there is to do anymore.
I'm just tired of the users. Man, you know how dumb some people can be.. I've personally spent about 30 minutes on the phone with one of my customers (who I do web stuff for) trying to explain how to save an internet shortcut to his desktop. I also spent 15 minutes explaining to his wife how to save a graphic from their website. Windows IMHO has just made everybody dumb.
I gotta do somethin else;-)
Thank you windows.. This is all I do now. Remove Virii and spyware.. I'm not long for this puter gig.
Used to be able to make a few bucks on puters, then help out my users. Now I just bang my head against the wall.
Last year was all kazaa.. hehe as in Kazaa.. your machine is now toast! Now it's ridiculous. No money in the gig, tons of headaches, stooooopid users... not much fun anymore.
Tip for anybody wanting to get into this: Find the nearest wall and bang head here for about an hour.... same result.. maybe less headaches
Guys,
First a disclaimer, I sell Xandros so I'm biased.
It simply works. Users have windows. They aren't willing to learn a new desktop. Gnome would scare the crap outta most of my customers. 4 or 5 clicks and anybody can install this and it works and acts the same as windows... without the blue screens that is.
It has lots of proprietary stuff in there like the file manager. When was the last time you installed mandrake or RedHat and your windows lan was detected and accessable right away.. no configuring samba.
If the hardware is on the supported list, there is no extra work needed to get anything going. I've tried just about every other distro and have had varying degrees of success... but NONE have worked right outta the box like this one. My opinion is if you are capable and want free, there are lots of distos out there for you to play with. This is for the home user that can't reinstall windows... and there are millions of them;-) I charge $40 canadian for reinstalls and they can buy the basic Xandros for $55 canadian and do it themselves.
I don't like the fact that I can't just install any package without breaking something. All updates must be done from the Xandros Networks. It does work well and they will add apps if they are requested. This removes all dependency issues for the end user as well.
It is a very polished distro, and I am impressed with it. Now if we could only get Simply Accounting ported over I'd be laughing.
I sell computers. My business has dropped 80% this year from last year.(Yes I'm exploring other options). Most of my customers have pII's to surf the web or write letters.
Everybody has 3 or 4 machines already and a game box. We simply don't need a 6 ghz processor. We certainly don't need another bloated M$ product to surf the web. We (I believe) will soundly reject this upcoming drm and new word/excel format. This cycle needs to stop, and will.
These companies make this stuff because that's what they do. The ultimate proof will be when the consumers actually buy this stuff or not. There have been many "great ideas" that the unwashed masses have already rejected. Anybody remember "PUSH"?
Microsoft also backtracked this year on their intention to end support for win98. Guess they checked and found that 28% of the web was still using win98... probably with no intention to upgrade. Our dollars will decide where the computer industry goes. There is no new Internet to drive sales so I can't really see it getting stronger. BTW, here in Canada, an AMD 2400+ with most goodies is about $475 American.
Slashdot Mirror
Staples XP Pro Full $499. canadian
It would be so nice in a perfect world if users just used rtf or something a little more compatible, but that's not gonna happen any time soon. I think this is the single biggest threat to moving people off windows...they can't read their files.
hehehe apparently, cheap ones ;-)
It's out of control and between spam and spyware it's driving people off the internet.
I saw an ad about a spam firewall, I want it stopped before it gets to my inbox.. not just labelled spam and sent to the trash.
I'm sick to death of this. Try having your own email on your domain for 5 years and see how much spam you can get!!
I'm seriously tempted to run my own mail server and block everything I can to stem the tide.
Didn't the russians do this in Chernobyl? Apparently the chinese version worked.
Everything is on one page:
We've had a few very well publicized cases here. Social Services is the devil. A certain group believed in using a strap (remember those oldtimers?) for discipline. SS came and took the kids away for a while and there was unbelievable screaming and fighting BY THE KIDS to stay with their parents. All of this thankfully caught on TV. Couple weeks or so the parents got their kids back and if they were smart they'd get out of this evil country.
Get Orwells gov't out of our homes and let us raise our kids ourselves like we've done for thousands of years. Damn liberals don't know my kids or what they need. /rant
Welcome to the end times.
The whole patent system is a joke. With a good lawyer, you can patent anything. Then a big company comes along, changes 10% of your idea, they get a different patent and there's nothing you can do. I think it was originally a nice idea, now it's just stupid.. especially software patents. my 2 cents
I stand corrected. I view em as the same thing I guess cause I use Netscape.. since version 3 or so..
Here, Here!!! Good reply. I.E. Sucks and is responsible for 95% of the web's virii.
I ran an ati aiw 8 meg on a second system (p200) for a couple years. Used it to watch hockey games when wifey wouldn't let me near the 27" ;-) I had the second monitor beside my main one. Only reason that I didn't put the card right in my system was that the tv wouldn't work on the second display. I even ran it on win 95 but didn't try capturing. Was a great tv though.
IMHO all I want from convergence is the abilty to use our NON DRM media on our stereo and tv's. That's all I care about. Can I someday, download a divx movies (for about $2 would be nice) and watch the damn thing on my tv. I don't want to go to the video store... twice... I don't even want to go there once. List the movies, show me preview perhaps, and let me download the damn thing without drm. I'm probably only gonna watch it once anyway. This RIAA shit has got to stop. Hopefully soon.
Just take the spammers out in the middle of the street downtown and shoot them. Oh wait this is Canada, they'll probably give him a freakin medal or something. This shit has to stop. Unfortunately, we have 100 millions brain dead windows users out there who click on everything thinking that their computer works like a tv....AHHHH. 5 years it'll only be us geeks left. Everyone else will have screwed up their puters so bad, and the rest of us will be tired of fixing them (big grin)
Funny, people around here thought he was a dope dealer. Buyin all kinds of houses and cars and shit and it didn't look like anybody worked. Maybe the fine should be bigger?
For fun, I put an old corel distro on a p2 and it was nice and quick. I remember at the time though that it just dragged down my old amd k62-400.
Speed. I personally don't care about all the fancy graphics. I want it to work and be quick. That's why I run win98 on an AMD 2400+. It's FAST. I can load photoshop 6 in 5 seconds. I hate waiting.
There has to be something out there for window managers that's reasonable and fast.
k, I haven't had alot of luck with this. In version one, we had the deb sources right in the Xandros networks and I could install anything i wanted. The best example is Koffice. It installed no problem on version one. By version 2, nothing would install properly. I'm not impressed. I would rather have a plain debian system. Xandros is trying a lot of tricks and Microsoft type lock in to achieve basically the same as ms... domination. Not impressed at all anymore.
Try installing anything from debian. Try kpackage. Used to work. Now in version two it pretty much breaks everything. You can only get software from Xandros Networks.
They also took out the ability to join a domain between versions 1 & 2. I was all for this O/S.. now I'm jaded. The biz version which has this magically re-included is considerably more money. Their new xDMS server is confusing all the beta testers. We mistakenly thought that it would also function as a workgroup server. Tons of problems and not much really goin on in the forums. I haven't seen anybody get it working properly yet. I gave up after 3 days. I see from the interview that they also want to sell a workgroup server.. ahh I see, sell another O/S and license. Unreal. There's no good reason why the deployment and workgroup couldn't be the same machine. Most updates are done at night anyway.
Xandros showed great promise, but I think they're getting greedy now.
How, pray tell, is a 5db fan going to be recorded over 100db drums using overhead mics?
How is the signal getting on the drive if the music is being plugged directly into the studio machine?
I think this is a neat toy and I'll probably try one, but the noise issue is a non-starter.
Then there's this music store. I got a brand new set of pearl drums for some computers and services. I love that deal!
Is it me or they just trying to really dumb down computers?
I have 100 gigs on my server and I can find shit I put in there 5 years ago in about 2 minutes or less. I guess some people just aren't organized ;-)
Is this next? http://ergopod.ca/images/googlekeys1.jpg
This image was on fark but I can't find it now. See how long before my server gets /.'d
Great. Glad somebody can make some money. I'm in canada and everybody's too cheap here now. I like the premium for software issues thing, since that's about all there is to do anymore. I'm just tired of the users. Man, you know how dumb some people can be.. I've personally spent about 30 minutes on the phone with one of my customers (who I do web stuff for) trying to explain how to save an internet shortcut to his desktop. I also spent 15 minutes explaining to his wife how to save a graphic from their website. Windows IMHO has just made everybody dumb. I gotta do somethin else ;-)
Used to be able to make a few bucks on puters, then help out my users. Now I just bang my head against the wall.
Last year was all kazaa.. hehe as in Kazaa.. your machine is now toast! Now it's ridiculous. No money in the gig, tons of headaches, stooooopid users... not much fun anymore.
Tip for anybody wanting to get into this: Find the nearest wall and bang head here for about an hour.... same result.. maybe less headaches
It simply works. Users have windows. They aren't willing to learn a new desktop. Gnome would scare the crap outta most of my customers. 4 or 5 clicks and anybody can install this and it works and acts the same as windows... without the blue screens that is.
It has lots of proprietary stuff in there like the file manager. When was the last time you installed mandrake or RedHat and your windows lan was detected and accessable right away.. no configuring samba.
If the hardware is on the supported list, there is no extra work needed to get anything going. I've tried just about every other distro and have had varying degrees of success... but NONE have worked right outta the box like this one. My opinion is if you are capable and want free, there are lots of distos out there for you to play with. This is for the home user that can't reinstall windows... and there are millions of them ;-) I charge $40 canadian for reinstalls and they can buy the basic Xandros for $55 canadian and do it themselves.
I don't like the fact that I can't just install any package without breaking something. All updates must be done from the Xandros Networks. It does work well and they will add apps if they are requested. This removes all dependency issues for the end user as well.
It is a very polished distro, and I am impressed with it. Now if we could only get Simply Accounting ported over I'd be laughing.
Everybody has 3 or 4 machines already and a game box. We simply don't need a 6 ghz processor. We certainly don't need another bloated M$ product to surf the web. We (I believe) will soundly reject this upcoming drm and new word/excel format. This cycle needs to stop, and will.
These companies make this stuff because that's what they do. The ultimate proof will be when the consumers actually buy this stuff or not. There have been many "great ideas" that the unwashed masses have already rejected. Anybody remember "PUSH"?
Microsoft also backtracked this year on their intention to end support for win98. Guess they checked and found that 28% of the web was still using win98... probably with no intention to upgrade. Our dollars will decide where the computer industry goes. There is no new Internet to drive sales so I can't really see it getting stronger. BTW, here in Canada, an AMD 2400+ with most goodies is about $475 American.