... and Hotmail/Y!/Lycos don't seem to understand that it is not just about the space. I have about 1800 e-mails in my Gmail account right now that take up about 160Mb of space and if it weren't for Gmail's great search capabilities, multiple labels per e-mail message and automatic filtering/sorting I would be a lot of trouble every time I went looking for an e-mail. Instead it is quite easy to locate pretty much anything.
Anyways, if you don't have Gmail yet I suggest you read my poorly articulated collection of thoughts on the matter. I try to emphasize some of the great things (besides 1Gb storage that I don't even mention) about Gmail that make it better than other webmails.
Linux readiness for the desktop is very relative, IMHO. It very much depends on which type of user we are talking about:
Total Novice: Like my mom (who actually used to operate a punch card computer for the NAVY), who only uses computers to look for a couple recipies and may be check e-mail can very easily use Linux... provided it is setup for her by a knowlegble person with all shortcuts right there.
Novice: People who only recently bought a computer and are just getting used to how Windows works. These users could easily use Xandros. All they need is easy setup with basic applications right there and good support when required.
Power Users (as MS calls them): This is a type of user who has been with Windows since 3.11 days and only knows how to "work" Windows and Windows only. This type of user does more advanced tasks him/herself and doing similar things on Linux is both very different and often much more complicated.
Science/Edu: Most scientific/edu users could easily use Linux and never look back. They have no ties to regular Windows applications and anything they write in house to scientific reseach can be easily ported to Linux.
Corporate/Business: Perhaps, the most difficult group to deal with. This is the area where MS is strongest with MS Office (especially Excel and Access), MS Echange etc. Also a lot of software used in coporate world is built in house (for security and narrow specification purposes) and porting it to Linux may be diffiult or very expesive. The compnay I work for uses a lot of in house software + Excel/Access... I don't see how we could use Linux on the desktop. Our server is NT4 and I have been working to switch it to Linux, but with little success.
Desktop Publishing/Design/Photo: In this area Linux is years behind! A lot of people mention Gimp whenever this comes up. Gimp (aka Photoshop replacement) is only a very small part of the deal. It is much better then it used to be, but is still lacking. Professional grade applications such as Quark/InDesign, good color management, argg Linux handling of fonts are still missing.
Considering the number of comments mentioning MS Office's inability to save PDFs, it should be mentioned that only Windows version is crippled in this manner. MS Office v.X for Mac can save PDF files just fine. Just go File / Print and a the bottom of the print dialogue you'll see "Save as PDF". I love that feature as I always e-mail my documents in Word and PDF formats.
While OO is a great piece of software it has many problems. Its word processer is generally on par with MS Word, but it's equivalent of MS Excel is not something to rave about.
That never seemed to stop Microsoft (just picking on them) and a few other companies from patenting the most random things.
There may be a lot of prior art in using an obligatory the simpsons quote, but not for "use of a close approximation to what was said on a said show on TV in a/. discussion".
'Beat up' may be an exageration, but used is used and new is new. VT G5 towers are clearly used... very well used if you wish. So I doubt that they are better then new (as in from a shop) G5 towers.
Yes, they sat in rack in a temperature controlled room with good ventilation and very little dust (as opposed to something sitting under your desk). Its not processor wear and tear I am concerned with, but other components specifically HD and power supplies... HDs vary in reliability and Apple is know to have 'issues' with power supplies (from personal experience too).
VT must be convering their G5 Xserve purchase, if not making small profit on the whole thing.
Chances are they purchased the original G5s at a nice discount (and a cost to Mac users who ended up waiting much longer for their G5s). Their are selling them for $2799 now, without a modem. VT G5s have 1GB of RAM, but the machines must be pretty beat up considering their were a part of a Super Computer that was up 24/7 crunching numbers etc. Massive wear and tear that can not be compared to regular refubs from the Apple store (computers that were used by "normal" people on a day to day basis). Keep in mind that Apple had VT G5 equivalents in their refub section a few weeks ago for $2400.
Also, it appears these machines are promoted as a "part of history", hardly so considering that there is no way to tell that they were a part of VT cluster.
Is there a warranty on these machines? Do people have to buy Apple Care themselves? Considering what these machines went through in the past 6 months these are valid questions people need to ask.
I don't know how fast this will happen, but it was only a few years ago that Canon D30 and early Kodak D-SLRs were upwards of $3000... now you can get a D-Rebel/D70 (albeit missing some feaures that D30 had, but with a better focusing etc.) for less then $1000 (in the US at least). Consumer digital cameras dropped in price even faster.
It should not matter if your D-SLR is going to be 30MP using 8Gb CF cards etc. The point is that technology is moving along while slashdotters and photographers (worse then a slashdotter in some cases) are bitching about merits of a particular techonogy (especially when initial price is high).
This great news. People should keep in mind that 1Gb cards used to cost this much, just a few years ago... now you can get 1Gb cards for $200 bucks or less. Considering that new cameras can output huge files, extra storage is very welcome. 8Gb is a lot of JPEGS, but only about 1000 RAW files... which is not a lot if you are a pro and shooting an event. My only complaint is probably with the write speeds... these cards need to get faster.
If all you use MS Office for is to type up a simple document/spreadsheet and then print/e-mail it... then you can easily use any word processor/spreadsheet applications with a minimum of features. Hell, a glorified Notepad.exe with a spellchecker is more then enough for a lot of people.
Did you know that a lot of people bought MS Word (in the old days) because WordPad didn't have a spellchecker! Sad, but true.
Anyways, MS Office is an important obstacle to switching to Linix for a lot of companies. I don't see the company, I work for, switching anytime soon.
We use a groupware/e-mail/fax client at work (Message Manager 2000) that integrates closely with MS Office. While MM2000 is the most unintuitive, fugly PoS software package I have ever used... but it works and no alternative on Linux and only much more expesive alternatives on Windows are available.
We also use a few applications that are written around MS Access. They may suck, but they work and since most of them are targeted towards a nieche it will be hard to replace/find alteratives for any of them.
I don't see myself switching either. On a regular basis I have to edit large contracts that go through several negotiation stages and a lot of the changes just can not be seen by reading the damn thing (50+ pages of 7pt print)... this is where MS Word's tracking of changes (doc CVS basically) is superb.
Speaking of spy/malware. Yesterday, I was cleaning up computers in the office with Adaware and came across 188 instances of spy/malware on one of my co-workers computers. Thats the record. Not bad, cosidering the user of that computer has an IQ level equivalent of a bucket.
My comments are coming from my experience a few weeks back when I decided to buy an iSight so that I can video chat with my gf and a few other friends that have video cams. I do a little research before any purchase and I learned that in the current conditions I will only be able to chat with one or two people from my buddy lists, because they have OS X (mind you one of them would have to buy iChat AV or Panther to do so, I have Panther myself). I would not be able to chat with my gf and my family because they are on Windows boxes and there is no cross platform solution worth bothering with. Perhaps, I over exagerrated saying that video conferencing doesn't exist, its does but for a very limited number of people and there is lack of choice. Official AOL and MSN clinets don't work, quality of Yahoo messenger is not much of an upgrade over text chat considering the investment involved and there are a couple of programs that can connect with Windows machines using NetMetting are in alpha stages and don't work (in my experience) 90% of the time.
Despite being an Apple fan/user I have to agree the you. Perhaps, the fact that it was an iPod makes it special to some degree, but they used it as a firewire hard drive... gid deal. They would have probably been better of using a proper firewire HD (those FireLite HDs are just as small).
Cinema displays? Great, but CRTs are still better when it comes to refresh rates, color accuracy etc. Not to mention the price. Regardless, it didn't have anything to do with the iPod story in the first place.
Lastly, the iSight reference and the part about video conferencing is utter bull shit. Video conferencing on a Mac means iChat AV (which is not free either), which also means that you can only chat with people on iChat AV... hence only fellow Mac users... and thats pretty useless (considering that 90% of people use various flavours of Windows OS). Further more, there isn't a cross-platform solution for video conferencing between Mac/PC (Yahoo Messenger works, but frame rates and quality suck), MSN sucks and does not allow to video chat with a Mac MSN messenger user (although its a snap to set up a Windows 2 Windows video session). iSight is a great little camera (good lens + firewire), but there is no basis to hype video conferencing on Macs, because currently it just does not exist and having iSights would have made no fucking difference.
One does not need Jabber to message with other networks, but Jabber needs add-on gateways to make itself usefull in the broader sense.
Trust them? For casual uses the available encryption services are more then sufficient, for anything more private... I am not so sure. I also use Trillian at work and Fire (which can access Jabber, but I never even tried because of a lack of anyone to talk to... that is also Jabber's main problem, nobody is using it) at home. SSL is a very nice feature.
Jabber has a chance, I suppose. We have already whitnessed how easily users can switch IM clinets (ICQ being the primary example), but right now the outlook is grim IMHO.
Although standartization of the IM format is a good thing this is a little too late.
Jabber didn't make it and won't make it for a long time, if ever. There are still problems and lack of voice and video chat (they are not even a part of the standard). Voice/Video can be handled by numerous other standards... but the problem is that there are too many of them and neither is OSS. It may have a niche in small/medium private chat networks. Its price is right, but it lacks a lot of conveniences other IM protocols have to offer.
The most important factor is that IM standard/service only matter (in the larger picture) if enough people use it. I don't have a single friend or aquantance who use Jabber, most use either MSN, AIM/ICQ or Yahoo. AIM/ICQ, perhaps, has the best chance of becoming a "standard"... although I hate both. MSN... is MSN... enough said. Yahoo is the most balanced IMHO.
Bisides the/. crowd?
People who should read are not going to and will go on clicking clickmeiamavirus.exe for 100th fucking time? Remember, mydoom requires user intervention to launch.
"Given these circumstances, and after consulting industry colleagues and developers, Microsoft, for now, will not be releasing an update to Internet Explorer," it said, adding that Microsoft also would not release a planned update to its latest Windows operating system known as Windows XP Service Pack 2.
While the Eolas patent is wrong, this whole thing is playing nicely into Microsoft's hands.
Personally, I find the whole article rather amusing with a nice feel of cluelessness after the first two paragraphs.
Why is everybody so upset by this? The fact that Microsoft is evil, does not mean they are wrong going after Lindows.
Lindows tries to emulate MS Windows' look, functionality and even the name. What's worse is that it is not doing any of those things very well either.
I don't see why Lindows is even out there. What purpose does it serve? Are they trying to confuse people to switch to Linux? I can see how something like that could happen to some Joe-Sixpack who goes to a store sees Lindows OS v.XX on the shelves and thinks it the new version of XP. Also, I can see why someone would want to emulate Windows API to run applications... makes sense considering that a lot of software is not available for Linux. But the look and the name just don't make sense. If the GUI is the user's problem, he/she should not be using Linix anyways. Jesus, if you are too stupid to figure out which one is the "close window" button in KDE because you are so used to Windows... you are too dumb, don't reproduce, pick up smoking and drinking and use MS Windows for the rest of your natural life.
Slashdot Mirror
... and Hotmail/Y!/Lycos don't seem to understand that it is not just about the space. I have about 1800 e-mails in my Gmail account right now that take up about 160Mb of space and if it weren't for Gmail's great search capabilities, multiple labels per e-mail message and automatic filtering/sorting I would be a lot of trouble every time I went looking for an e-mail. Instead it is quite easy to locate pretty much anything. Anyways, if you don't have Gmail yet I suggest you read my poorly articulated collection of thoughts on the matter. I try to emphasize some of the great things (besides 1Gb storage that I don't even mention) about Gmail that make it better than other webmails.
Linux readiness for the desktop is very relative, IMHO. It very much depends on which type of user we are talking about:
... provided it is setup for her by a knowlegble person with all shortcuts right there.
... I don't see how we could use Linux on the desktop. Our server is NT4 and I have been working to switch it to Linux, but with little success.
Total Novice: Like my mom (who actually used to operate a punch card computer for the NAVY), who only uses computers to look for a couple recipies and may be check e-mail can very easily use Linux
Novice: People who only recently bought a computer and are just getting used to how Windows works. These users could easily use Xandros. All they need is easy setup with basic applications right there and good support when required.
Power Users (as MS calls them): This is a type of user who has been with Windows since 3.11 days and only knows how to "work" Windows and Windows only. This type of user does more advanced tasks him/herself and doing similar things on Linux is both very different and often much more complicated.
Science/Edu: Most scientific/edu users could easily use Linux and never look back. They have no ties to regular Windows applications and anything they write in house to scientific reseach can be easily ported to Linux.
Corporate/Business: Perhaps, the most difficult group to deal with. This is the area where MS is strongest with MS Office (especially Excel and Access), MS Echange etc. Also a lot of software used in coporate world is built in house (for security and narrow specification purposes) and porting it to Linux may be diffiult or very expesive. The compnay I work for uses a lot of in house software + Excel/Access
Desktop Publishing/Design/Photo: In this area Linux is years behind! A lot of people mention Gimp whenever this comes up. Gimp (aka Photoshop replacement) is only a very small part of the deal. It is much better then it used to be, but is still lacking. Professional grade applications such as Quark/InDesign, good color management, argg Linux handling of fonts are still missing.
Considering the number of comments mentioning MS Office's inability to save PDFs, it should be mentioned that only Windows version is crippled in this manner. MS Office v.X for Mac can save PDF files just fine. Just go File / Print and a the bottom of the print dialogue you'll see "Save as PDF". I love that feature as I always e-mail my documents in Word and PDF formats. While OO is a great piece of software it has many problems. Its word processer is generally on par with MS Word, but it's equivalent of MS Excel is not something to rave about.
Its only a dupe if was posted on the same day ... the other port is from August 18th, 2003, which is beyond what even the best /. editors can recall.
There may be a lot of prior art in using an obligatory the simpsons quote, but not for "use of a close approximation to what was said on a said show on TV in a /. discussion".
I would rather see The Simpsons, remain The Simpsons then become anything like South Park which is dull IMHO.
Did anyone patent OSQ (Obligatory Simpsons Quote) already? Someone should, there will be a lot more of them on /. once the movie comes out.
Anonymous Coward is worse then a Troll.
Yes, they sat in rack in a temperature controlled room with good ventilation and very little dust (as opposed to something sitting under your desk). Its not processor wear and tear I am concerned with, but other components specifically HD and power supplies ... HDs vary in reliability and Apple is know to have 'issues' with power supplies (from personal experience too).
Yeah, and thanks for calling me a troll, troll.
Chances are they purchased the original G5s at a nice discount (and a cost to Mac users who ended up waiting much longer for their G5s). Their are selling them for $2799 now, without a modem. VT G5s have 1GB of RAM, but the machines must be pretty beat up considering their were a part of a Super Computer that was up 24/7 crunching numbers etc. Massive wear and tear that can not be compared to regular refubs from the Apple store (computers that were used by "normal" people on a day to day basis). Keep in mind that Apple had VT G5 equivalents in their refub section a few weeks ago for $2400.
Also, it appears these machines are promoted as a "part of history", hardly so considering that there is no way to tell that they were a part of VT cluster.
Is there a warranty on these machines? Do people have to buy Apple Care themselves? Considering what these machines went through in the past 6 months these are valid questions people need to ask.
It should not matter if your D-SLR is going to be 30MP using 8Gb CF cards etc. The point is that technology is moving along while slashdotters and photographers (worse then a slashdotter in some cases) are bitching about merits of a particular techonogy (especially when initial price is high).
Goodbye karma ;)
This great news. People should keep in mind that 1Gb cards used to cost this much, just a few years ago ... now you can get 1Gb cards for $200 bucks or less. Considering that new cameras can output huge files, extra storage is very welcome. 8Gb is a lot of JPEGS, but only about 1000 RAW files ... which is not a lot if you are a pro and shooting an event. My only complaint is probably with the write speeds ... these cards need to get faster.
If all you use MS Office for is to type up a simple document/spreadsheet and then print/e-mail it ... then you can easily use any word processor/spreadsheet applications with a minimum of features. Hell, a glorified Notepad.exe with a spellchecker is more then enough for a lot of people. ... but it works and no alternative on Linux and only much more expesive alternatives on Windows are available. ... this is where MS Word's tracking of changes (doc CVS basically) is superb.
Did you know that a lot of people bought MS Word (in the old days) because WordPad didn't have a spellchecker! Sad, but true.
Anyways, MS Office is an important obstacle to switching to Linix for a lot of companies. I don't see the company, I work for, switching anytime soon.
We use a groupware/e-mail/fax client at work (Message Manager 2000) that integrates closely with MS Office. While MM2000 is the most unintuitive, fugly PoS software package I have ever used
We also use a few applications that are written around MS Access. They may suck, but they work and since most of them are targeted towards a nieche it will be hard to replace/find alteratives for any of them.
I don't see myself switching either. On a regular basis I have to edit large contracts that go through several negotiation stages and a lot of the changes just can not be seen by reading the damn thing (50+ pages of 7pt print)
Speaking of spy/malware. Yesterday, I was cleaning up computers in the office with Adaware and came across 188 instances of spy/malware on one of my co-workers computers. Thats the record. Not bad, cosidering the user of that computer has an IQ level equivalent of a bucket.
My comments are coming from my experience a few weeks back when I decided to buy an iSight so that I can video chat with my gf and a few other friends that have video cams. I do a little research before any purchase and I learned that in the current conditions I will only be able to chat with one or two people from my buddy lists, because they have OS X (mind you one of them would have to buy iChat AV or Panther to do so, I have Panther myself). I would not be able to chat with my gf and my family because they are on Windows boxes and there is no cross platform solution worth bothering with. Perhaps, I over exagerrated saying that video conferencing doesn't exist, its does but for a very limited number of people and there is lack of choice. Official AOL and MSN clinets don't work, quality of Yahoo messenger is not much of an upgrade over text chat considering the investment involved and there are a couple of programs that can connect with Windows machines using NetMetting are in alpha stages and don't work (in my experience) 90% of the time.
Despite being an Apple fan/user I have to agree the you. ... gid deal. They would have probably been better of using a proper firewire HD (those FireLite HDs are just as small). ... hence only fellow Mac users ... and thats pretty useless (considering that 90% of people use various flavours of Windows OS). Further more, there isn't a cross-platform solution for video conferencing between Mac/PC (Yahoo Messenger works, but frame rates and quality suck), MSN sucks and does not allow to video chat with a Mac MSN messenger user (although its a snap to set up a Windows 2 Windows video session). iSight is a great little camera (good lens + firewire), but there is no basis to hype video conferencing on Macs, because currently it just does not exist and having iSights would have made no fucking difference.
Perhaps, the fact that it was an iPod makes it special to some degree, but they used it as a firewire hard drive
Cinema displays? Great, but CRTs are still better when it comes to refresh rates, color accuracy etc. Not to mention the price. Regardless, it didn't have anything to do with the iPod story in the first place.
Lastly, the iSight reference and the part about video conferencing is utter bull shit. Video conferencing on a Mac means iChat AV (which is not free either), which also means that you can only chat with people on iChat AV
Trust them? For casual uses the available encryption services are more then sufficient, for anything more private ... I am not so sure. I also use Trillian at work and Fire (which can access Jabber, but I never even tried because of a lack of anyone to talk to ... that is also Jabber's main problem, nobody is using it) at home. SSL is a very nice feature.
Jabber has a chance, I suppose. We have already whitnessed how easily users can switch IM clinets (ICQ being the primary example), but right now the outlook is grim IMHO.
Jabber didn't make it and won't make it for a long time, if ever. There are still problems and lack of voice and video chat (they are not even a part of the standard). Voice/Video can be handled by numerous other standards ... but the problem is that there are too many of them and neither is OSS. It may have a niche in small/medium private chat networks. Its price is right, but it lacks a lot of conveniences other IM protocols have to offer.
The most important factor is that IM standard/service only matter (in the larger picture) if enough people use it. I don't have a single friend or aquantance who use Jabber, most use either MSN, AIM/ICQ or Yahoo. AIM/ICQ, perhaps, has the best chance of becoming a "standard" ... although I hate both. MSN ... is MSN ... enough said. Yahoo is the most balanced IMHO.
Bisides the /. crowd?
People who should read are not going to and will go on clicking clickmeiamavirus.exe for 100th fucking time? Remember, mydoom requires user intervention to launch.
Personally, I find the whole article rather amusing with a nice feel of cluelessness after the first two paragraphs.
Why is everybody so upset by this? The fact that Microsoft is evil, does not mean they are wrong going after Lindows. ... makes sense considering that a lot of software is not available for Linux. But the look and the name just don't make sense. If the GUI is the user's problem, he/she should not be using Linix anyways. Jesus, if you are too stupid to figure out which one is the "close window" button in KDE because you are so used to Windows ... you are too dumb, don't reproduce, pick up smoking and drinking and use MS Windows for the rest of your natural life.
Lindows tries to emulate MS Windows' look, functionality and even the name. What's worse is that it is not doing any of those things very well either.
I don't see why Lindows is even out there. What purpose does it serve? Are they trying to confuse people to switch to Linux? I can see how something like that could happen to some Joe-Sixpack who goes to a store sees Lindows OS v.XX on the shelves and thinks it the new version of XP. Also, I can see why someone would want to emulate Windows API to run applications