I've never understood this complaint. At least to me, Zoom is *better* than text size changes as it preserves the layout of the page, and I would guess thats why IE et al added the Zoom feature. Secondly, at least in Opera, you could just set a minimum text size in the options, and then you'd never need to change text size anyway because it would always be whatever you defined a readable size or larger...
In what way is just changing text size helpful vs the zoom functionality?
Regarding compatibility, why is it "you are only allowed to install our version of program X" instead of "I see you have installed program X, I'll make myself compatible with it"? Why is it "you are only allowed to run our software X and software Y" instead of "I see you have both software X and Y, I'll make them interoperate better"?
Are you talking about the distro maintainer here or the software vendor? For the app maker, they'll often say (at least in Windows world, where we PAY for them) - sorry, just use another computer for this app. We can't / won't make it work with this other app. I can't see what exactly the interest would be to deal with tricky compatibility issues for OSS devs as they're not even getting paid.
On the other hand, the distro maintainers *want* everything to work with as much software as possible, but the only way to guarantee that is to test the software together. It's like Apple, you can't run OSX (legitamately) on random hardware because they haven't certified it. Same here, stuff in the repository is certified to work with that app. You certainly could use software from other sources, but then no one has done compatibility testing. And there's no way to have tested every possible piece of software out there, or every version, which is why they say to use the version in the repository.
I think you'll find that if you let that Windows application of yours run as it was intended (ie. with enough space on c:, with full administrator privileges, etc.), it will just work. You don't need to rely on some Microsoft repository administrator to make that choice for you.
I think you're missing my point. I have lots to do. I would love for someone else to certify that these apps are going to work together in my environment. Microsoft would be great if they did that. And nowhere did I ever get a notice on the box before deploying to a user that iClicker wouldn't work if Funk Proxy was installed. I'm not aware of most software stating it needs Admin to run before you try it. Finally, why shouldn't an app work in a normal secured environment? I'm unable to change my environment for one app. So the app vendor has wasted my time, and I've probably wasted theirs. But if there was an official distro that met my needs (and in LinuxLand, there is because there's a lot of choices) then there's someone who is doing this integration work. And that's a good thing, especially for people with more important things to do than find out that "Works with Windows" doesn't mean "Works with my Windows Environment".
That doesn't even make sense. Think about the holy Windows Land... I have apps that are approved for Windows per the App maker, but don't work. Why? They require admin to run. They want to write to C:\ rather than a user area. They won't install if you don't have space on C, even if you have 500GB free on D (usual sort of setup for imaging users)... They hit a policy setting that causes them to fail... They conflict with another program (Like Funk Proxy remote control software and iClicker)...
Now, if the software was all OSS and bundled by a distribution, the distro maintainers would make sure that the software would work with the distro and settings or whatever before putting them in the repository (or at least that's the idea).
See, all the software above *runs* on Windows, but *doesn't* necessarily run on the current workplace or home *Windows Environment*, just like a bunch of software might run on Linux, but won't run on a particular distro.
It sounds like you could do those things with userscripts. Those sorts of customizations are why I've kept using proxomitron myself, but it does finally sound like I may be able to migrate off of it.
It is quite interesting that people who use other browsers are constantly amazed by the number of tabs I have open all the time. That is probably one of the big reasons I keep using Opera, I'm just used to having one continual session of tabs open... And I usually have at least 40 open at any given time. I don't doubt that the other browsers could have that many tabs open, but in Firefox anyway, there just doesn't seem to be any way to handle that many tabs (no window menu or windows panel for instance)...
Oh, IDK. Opera finally is copying the spellcheck as you type. They've copied the close button on the tab, they've copied the keyboard shortcuts (ctrl-t) They're adding in HTML compose in the e-mail client. They finally added in a GUI Ad-blocker which back years ago was similar to AdBlock.(before the plus I think). They copied tabs from netcaptor... Tumbnail tabs from Omniweb... They just don't copy everything, or all at once.
You know, I'm generally very anti-jack of all trades, but I've noticed I've also been being won over by some apps, one of which is Opera, and the other is Comodo's Internet Security.
Why? Well, I used to keep mIRC on my PC for IRC needs, but three things happened: 1) I don't think I've used any power features in mIRC in years, ever since I stopped using it for filesharing. 2) I feel bad pirating something when I can do what I want with something legitamately free. 3) Why run an entire other program for my IRC when I just need to hop on some support chats? Why keep another app updated etc...
Oh, and I've come to like the way Opera's IRC chat looks vs mIRC. So I never had a need to go looking elsewhere for IRC goodness.
For RSS - I still don't really understand it, but for the 4 feeds I've found useful (one being Opera's own desktop blog), I don't see the need for another app either. It'd be like one of those third party bookmark apps, fine, more powerful, but . . . why?
Really, for the above, it's the same as why I don't run a separate FTP client for downloads, but use Opera's built in downloader.
Now, e-mail, and widgets, I never really got into with Opera. I tried a while ago, but they never clicked, and no LDAP lookup broke it for me at work anyway.
User Scripting and Ad Blocking look like they might be my forced migration path away from Proxomitron, unless I can ever get myself happy with privoxy.
The only thing I disagree with is: they all do the same thing, and roughly just as well.
I really disagree with this, and here's why. Depending on what you're looking for, Opera often doesn't run that webapp as well as Firefox or IE. On the other hand, for researching / working with LOTS of webpages for days on end, I just cannot get IE or Firefox to work as well as Opera.
Now, if you mean "display google.com" as doing the same thing, then, yes they do. But I constantly get tripped up by lack of mouse guestures in Firefox, or the tab behavior in Firefox. I can't speak to IE after 6, but IE6 is practically unusable for me for lack of browser functionality. And it's slow.
So if I'm doing research on the web, the different browsers don't do the same thing. I have also heard that Firefox has Firebug, Opera has DragonFly and IE has f**k all for page debugging. I AM SURE those are NOT the same. So you really have to limit what you have your browser doing to say they do the same thing. But it is going to be personal methods of working as to which fits the user better.
I hear this a bunch, but the problem I ran into in the trial right off was that lots of programs inherit the IE proxy setting now, including perhaps Firefox (or is this an option in v3? I'm not entirely sure but I remember something like this)... So if you've got an app that is otherwise fine, but its update checker, or its web functionality or something else stops working... Some of these don't have an option not to use the IE settings, or actually use the embedded IE (not sure what happens for say, Office 2003 help)...
So now you get to a) replace a bunch of apps and hope you can find ones that don't do this b) try and potentially analyze the apps sites they want to access and whitelist (and the whitelist seems a bit cludgey too to me) c) do something else?
We've ended up using Firefox 3 and trying to inform most users to use that. The issues we've had is that there isn't a (known to me anyway) way to centrally administer it. So if I need to set a new proxy setting, or need to change users home pages, it's not exactly something I can push out. And it's a bunch more work that IE to manage updates, so we just changed write access and let it update itself, hoping doing so breaks as few things as possible (like when 3 came out, and our timecard system didn't work in it, but had worked fine in FF2...).
Granted, I haven't done more thna read TFA and these comments, but Wave seems more likely to be a potential successor to Wikis to me than a replacement for e-mail.
As far as I know, yes, but you still need some sort of display system on another computer. The only thing I don't know how to do (or even if you can do it, as ESXi is really a server sort of thing) would be to convince a guest to use a video card in the PC. Really, the VI client lets you pass through USB devices and your keyboard and mouse, but only from another PC running Windows. You could of course also use remote desktop and or logmein to the VM, but again, it doesn't provide any local console access to the VMs.
But are "regular people" actually hooking their PCs up to their TVs? I mean, aside from myself and technophile friends, I don't know many people who even have their PC(s) in their living rooms, they're in their den's or PC Room or bedroom etc... Also, most PCs don't really have the 10' interface that a TV has. Well, I guess MythTV and XP MediaCenter, but they're not most PCs that I've seen, and they might as well be a simpler, smaller, cheaper and less electricity sucking specialized box as a full PC to *just* do that interface.
I might agree that there are a lot of people who want to watch some shows or DVDs on their PC with their 19-24" monitor, but I still think that is a pretty small market vs those who want to see them in their home theater setup...
Tivo I'll buy, but most people I know don't actually have a Tivo, they just have whatever DVR comes with cable or satallite TV. So some generic NMT style standard is probably needed for the branded boxes to do, and then you are trying to convince the cable companies etc to support that in their boxes.
First, I'd also like it to work without a full computer. I'm currently trying to transition away from a PC driving my TV to a NMT: http://www.popcornhour.com/onlinestore/
Secondly, I think there is the market for non locked content. DVD - you can pretty much play it on anything that says DVD on it, and many things that don't. iTunes doesn't cut it, but I recently tried Amazon's mp3 service, and that's what I like in UI and interface. It didn't care I'm using Opera. It didn't care I'm going to play it via Winamp and on my Creative Zen Vision from several years ago. And I could use my credit card already in there without needing to use some obscure payment system or join yet another service. That's nice.
I could see show subscriptions at reasonable prices however for no ads in your TV shows...
And I would love to see a BIOS based OS that provided a virtual box type program where you ran your main OS (or multiple OSs) in a virtual PC.
Ever heard of VMWare ESXi? The only problem with it is it doesn't seem to provide any local UI, but add that on via some sort of passthrough VM to the existing video out and you're there. You can add it to existing PCs via a USB drive or install on the HD, and Dell etc sell Servers with it integrated.
I'd just install and use a python shell which seems roughly equivlent (or you could use PERL if you like that)... At least on XP I have to install powershell, so it's no more work to install IPython for Linux...
Lenovo has an option for T61s with ATI graphics cards... Well, they did, now it's the T500, and interestingly enough, the T500 has both! You can in the BIOS choose which card you want to use on boot... I guess with Vista and the magic driver, you can switch live in the OS to save power...
But then, neither is Windows... When I upgraded to XP from 98SE years ago, my DVD playback card stopped working. It worked fine in 98SE... nada in XP, no drivers, and ATI disavowed all knowledge that it even existed when I called tech support... Same with my Timex Datalink watch - talked to 98SE just fine for years, XP nothing, software doesn't even install.
What about the people going to Vista last year or so? Bunch of hardware stopped working that worked fine in XP, so did some software...
It just happens. New OS release, but no new drivers from the manufacturer, and no driver from the OS vendor... Maybe it hasn't happened to you with Windows, but it has happened to many users.
Have you ever actually used a decent imaging solution? Acronis Universal Restore makes sysprep pretty much obsolete in my experiance (though I do script newsid to reset the PC name and auto join our domain)...
Yes, oddly enough Dell isn't actually "Cheap" in the "real" workstations. You can get the T3400 still (or could last time I looked) for $700 or so, but that's really just a powerful desktop... In what you consider workstation specs, you save money, and get more expandibility with Lenovo... And, at least IME, much better customer service and tech support. And the Lenovo Workstations (D20s) can use up to ~64GB RAM, and have a bunch of slots so if you don't want to max it out, you can add more lower capicity chips than the Dells.
I don't know about canon bringing this up, but in some of the books that was also basically how he did it. Remember, the test (as in the books and STII) really isn't one that there is a subtle "edge" you could get. It was programmed to just keep upping the number of ships or failures until you lost, or fail you for letting the Kobayashi Maru be destroyed if you avoided the "trap".
So there were 2 options in the original "test", you ignored the plea and failed, or responded and were destroyed. Anything else would be seen (and known) as cheating as outside the parameters of the simulation, so why make it "subtle"? It would just be a lot more pointless programming work for the cheater.
I used to use Hamachi for VPN access (and I assume they can use the VPN to connect to other players - it was used in the past to let LAN only games work over the internet)...
I had to stop when they a) Never updated for Linux or MAC OSX, and b) started charging monthly for use other than personal use. I now have a ZeroShell instance and it's all free and works well on all platforms.
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I've never understood this complaint. At least to me, Zoom is *better* than text size changes as it preserves the layout of the page, and I would guess thats why IE et al added the Zoom feature. Secondly, at least in Opera, you could just set a minimum text size in the options, and then you'd never need to change text size anyway because it would always be whatever you defined a readable size or larger...
In what way is just changing text size helpful vs the zoom functionality?
Regarding compatibility, why is it "you are only allowed to install our version of program X" instead of "I see you have installed program X, I'll make myself compatible with it"? Why is it "you are only allowed to run our software X and software Y" instead of "I see you have both software X and Y, I'll make them interoperate better"?
Are you talking about the distro maintainer here or the software vendor? For the app maker, they'll often say (at least in Windows world, where we PAY for them) - sorry, just use another computer for this app. We can't / won't make it work with this other app. I can't see what exactly the interest would be to deal with tricky compatibility issues for OSS devs as they're not even getting paid.
On the other hand, the distro maintainers *want* everything to work with as much software as possible, but the only way to guarantee that is to test the software together. It's like Apple, you can't run OSX (legitamately) on random hardware because they haven't certified it. Same here, stuff in the repository is certified to work with that app. You certainly could use software from other sources, but then no one has done compatibility testing. And there's no way to have tested every possible piece of software out there, or every version, which is why they say to use the version in the repository.
I think you'll find that if you let that Windows application of yours run as it was intended (ie. with enough space on c:, with full administrator privileges, etc.), it will just work. You don't need to rely on some Microsoft repository administrator to make that choice for you.
I think you're missing my point. I have lots to do. I would love for someone else to certify that these apps are going to work together in my environment. Microsoft would be great if they did that. And nowhere did I ever get a notice on the box before deploying to a user that iClicker wouldn't work if Funk Proxy was installed. I'm not aware of most software stating it needs Admin to run before you try it. Finally, why shouldn't an app work in a normal secured environment? I'm unable to change my environment for one app. So the app vendor has wasted my time, and I've probably wasted theirs. But if there was an official distro that met my needs (and in LinuxLand, there is because there's a lot of choices) then there's someone who is doing this integration work. And that's a good thing, especially for people with more important things to do than find out that "Works with Windows" doesn't mean "Works with my Windows Environment".
That doesn't even make sense. Think about the holy Windows Land... I have apps that are approved for Windows per the App maker, but don't work. Why?
They require admin to run.
They want to write to C:\ rather than a user area.
They won't install if you don't have space on C, even if you have 500GB free on D (usual sort of setup for imaging users)...
They hit a policy setting that causes them to fail...
They conflict with another program (Like Funk Proxy remote control software and iClicker)...
Now, if the software was all OSS and bundled by a distribution, the distro maintainers would make sure that the software would work with the distro and settings or whatever before putting them in the repository (or at least that's the idea).
See, all the software above *runs* on Windows, but *doesn't* necessarily run on the current workplace or home *Windows Environment*, just like a bunch of software might run on Linux, but won't run on a particular distro.
Actually, I don't think anyone has claimed that Widgets are like Extensions. That said, I do believe there were UserJS that is like NoScript.
It sounds like you could do those things with userscripts. Those sorts of customizations are why I've kept using proxomitron myself, but it does finally sound like I may be able to migrate off of it.
Well, that and you don't have to pay extra for it (yet).
It is quite interesting that people who use other browsers are constantly amazed by the number of tabs I have open all the time. That is probably one of the big reasons I keep using Opera, I'm just used to having one continual session of tabs open... And I usually have at least 40 open at any given time. I don't doubt that the other browsers could have that many tabs open, but in Firefox anyway, there just doesn't seem to be any way to handle that many tabs (no window menu or windows panel for instance)...
Oh, IDK. Opera finally is copying the spellcheck as you type. They've copied the close button on the tab, they've copied the keyboard shortcuts (ctrl-t) They're adding in HTML compose in the e-mail client. They finally added in a GUI Ad-blocker which back years ago was similar to AdBlock.(before the plus I think). They copied tabs from netcaptor... Tumbnail tabs from Omniweb... They just don't copy everything, or all at once.
You know, I'm generally very anti-jack of all trades, but I've noticed I've also been being won over by some apps, one of which is Opera, and the other is Comodo's Internet Security.
Why? Well, I used to keep mIRC on my PC for IRC needs, but three things happened:
1) I don't think I've used any power features in mIRC in years, ever since I stopped using it for filesharing.
2) I feel bad pirating something when I can do what I want with something legitamately free.
3) Why run an entire other program for my IRC when I just need to hop on some support chats? Why keep another app updated etc...
Oh, and I've come to like the way Opera's IRC chat looks vs mIRC. So I never had a need to go looking elsewhere for IRC goodness.
For RSS - I still don't really understand it, but for the 4 feeds I've found useful (one being Opera's own desktop blog), I don't see the need for another app either. It'd be like one of those third party bookmark apps, fine, more powerful, but . . . why?
Really, for the above, it's the same as why I don't run a separate FTP client for downloads, but use Opera's built in downloader.
Now, e-mail, and widgets, I never really got into with Opera. I tried a while ago, but they never clicked, and no LDAP lookup broke it for me at work anyway.
User Scripting and Ad Blocking look like they might be my forced migration path away from Proxomitron, unless I can ever get myself happy with privoxy.
The only thing I disagree with is:
they all do the same thing, and roughly just as well.
I really disagree with this, and here's why. Depending on what you're looking for, Opera often doesn't run that webapp as well as Firefox or IE. On the other hand, for researching / working with LOTS of webpages for days on end, I just cannot get IE or Firefox to work as well as Opera.
Now, if you mean "display google.com" as doing the same thing, then, yes they do. But I constantly get tripped up by lack of mouse guestures in Firefox, or the tab behavior in Firefox. I can't speak to IE after 6, but IE6 is practically unusable for me for lack of browser functionality. And it's slow.
So if I'm doing research on the web, the different browsers don't do the same thing. I have also heard that Firefox has Firebug, Opera has DragonFly and IE has f**k all for page debugging. I AM SURE those are NOT the same. So you really have to limit what you have your browser doing to say they do the same thing. But it is going to be personal methods of working as to which fits the user better.
Is DragonFly anywhere near close?
I hear this a bunch, but the problem I ran into in the trial right off was that lots of programs inherit the IE proxy setting now, including perhaps Firefox (or is this an option in v3? I'm not entirely sure but I remember something like this)... So if you've got an app that is otherwise fine, but its update checker, or its web functionality or something else stops working... Some of these don't have an option not to use the IE settings, or actually use the embedded IE (not sure what happens for say, Office 2003 help)...
So now you get to
a) replace a bunch of apps and hope you can find ones that don't do this
b) try and potentially analyze the apps sites they want to access and whitelist (and the whitelist seems a bit cludgey too to me)
c) do something else?
We've ended up using Firefox 3 and trying to inform most users to use that. The issues we've had is that there isn't a (known to me anyway) way to centrally administer it. So if I need to set a new proxy setting, or need to change users home pages, it's not exactly something I can push out. And it's a bunch more work that IE to manage updates, so we just changed write access and let it update itself, hoping doing so breaks as few things as possible (like when 3 came out, and our timecard system didn't work in it, but had worked fine in FF2...).
Granted, I haven't done more thna read TFA and these comments, but Wave seems more likely to be a potential successor to Wikis to me than a replacement for e-mail.
Did you read about the NMT? It *is* a Linux box that doesn't record TV with a 10' interface...
As far as I know, yes, but you still need some sort of display system on another computer. The only thing I don't know how to do (or even if you can do it, as ESXi is really a server sort of thing) would be to convince a guest to use a video card in the PC. Really, the VI client lets you pass through USB devices and your keyboard and mouse, but only from another PC running Windows. You could of course also use remote desktop and or logmein to the VM, but again, it doesn't provide any local console access to the VMs.
But are "regular people" actually hooking their PCs up to their TVs? I mean, aside from myself and technophile friends, I don't know many people who even have their PC(s) in their living rooms, they're in their den's or PC Room or bedroom etc... Also, most PCs don't really have the 10' interface that a TV has. Well, I guess MythTV and XP MediaCenter, but they're not most PCs that I've seen, and they might as well be a simpler, smaller, cheaper and less electricity sucking specialized box as a full PC to *just* do that interface.
I might agree that there are a lot of people who want to watch some shows or DVDs on their PC with their 19-24" monitor, but I still think that is a pretty small market vs those who want to see them in their home theater setup...
Tivo I'll buy, but most people I know don't actually have a Tivo, they just have whatever DVR comes with cable or satallite TV. So some generic NMT style standard is probably needed for the branded boxes to do, and then you are trying to convince the cable companies etc to support that in their boxes.
First, I'd also like it to work without a full computer. I'm currently trying to transition away from a PC driving my TV to a NMT:
http://www.popcornhour.com/onlinestore/
Secondly, I think there is the market for non locked content. DVD - you can pretty much play it on anything that says DVD on it, and many things that don't. iTunes doesn't cut it, but I recently tried Amazon's mp3 service, and that's what I like in UI and interface. It didn't care I'm using Opera. It didn't care I'm going to play it via Winamp and on my Creative Zen Vision from several years ago. And I could use my credit card already in there without needing to use some obscure payment system or join yet another service. That's nice.
I could see show subscriptions at reasonable prices however for no ads in your TV shows...
And I would love to see a BIOS based OS that provided a virtual box type program where you ran your main OS (or multiple OSs) in a virtual PC.
Ever heard of VMWare ESXi? The only problem with it is it doesn't seem to provide any local UI, but add that on via some sort of passthrough VM to the existing video out and you're there. You can add it to existing PCs via a USB drive or install on the HD, and Dell etc sell Servers with it integrated.
I'd just install and use a python shell which seems roughly equivlent (or you could use PERL if you like that)... At least on XP I have to install powershell, so it's no more work to install IPython for Linux...
Lenovo has an option for T61s with ATI graphics cards... Well, they did, now it's the T500, and interestingly enough, the T500 has both! You can in the BIOS choose which card you want to use on boot... I guess with Vista and the magic driver, you can switch live in the OS to save power...
But then, neither is Windows... When I upgraded to XP from 98SE years ago, my DVD playback card stopped working. It worked fine in 98SE... nada in XP, no drivers, and ATI disavowed all knowledge that it even existed when I called tech support... Same with my Timex Datalink watch - talked to 98SE just fine for years, XP nothing, software doesn't even install.
What about the people going to Vista last year or so? Bunch of hardware stopped working that worked fine in XP, so did some software...
It just happens. New OS release, but no new drivers from the manufacturer, and no driver from the OS vendor... Maybe it hasn't happened to you with Windows, but it has happened to many users.
Have you ever actually used a decent imaging solution? Acronis Universal Restore makes sysprep pretty much obsolete in my experiance (though I do script newsid to reset the PC name and auto join our domain)...
Yes, oddly enough Dell isn't actually "Cheap" in the "real" workstations. You can get the T3400 still (or could last time I looked) for $700 or so, but that's really just a powerful desktop... In what you consider workstation specs, you save money, and get more expandibility with Lenovo... And, at least IME, much better customer service and tech support. And the Lenovo Workstations (D20s) can use up to ~64GB RAM, and have a bunch of slots so if you don't want to max it out, you can add more lower capicity chips than the Dells.
I don't know about canon bringing this up, but in some of the books that was also basically how he did it. Remember, the test (as in the books and STII) really isn't one that there is a subtle "edge" you could get. It was programmed to just keep upping the number of ships or failures until you lost, or fail you for letting the Kobayashi Maru be destroyed if you avoided the "trap".
So there were 2 options in the original "test", you ignored the plea and failed, or responded and were destroyed. Anything else would be seen (and known) as cheating as outside the parameters of the simulation, so why make it "subtle"? It would just be a lot more pointless programming work for the cheater.
I used to use Hamachi for VPN access (and I assume they can use the VPN to connect to other players - it was used in the past to let LAN only games work over the internet)...
I had to stop when they a) Never updated for Linux or MAC OSX, and b) started charging monthly for use other than personal use. I now have a ZeroShell instance and it's all free and works well on all platforms.