Unfortunately it's not just games. It is:
- Terrible (if any) support for webcam / voice chat in messengers.
- Terrible (if any) support for 3G cards. I know the latest versions have improved 3G support, but most notebooks don't run the latest versions.
- A plethora of little but extremely annoying bugs which can be fixed with just a tiny fix in the text configuration files, that no non-adept will ever think of doing.
- Flash / java plugins for firefox that keep bringing the machine to its knees.
In general, I think that a) many features that have been considered a must in the users' world for ages are still unavailable in linux deskrop, and b) the rapid addition of new features to the latest linux distros (mainly ubuntu) have come at a price to quality and stability. I can't see linux gaining many more users from the masses until it addresses these issues.
China has millions, of rich people, by western standards. It even has 345,000 millionaires according to this report. I was in Beijing last summer and the prices at the high-class shops are higher than in New York. You can bet that it's those people who mostly own a PC and an internet connection...
Most foreigners seem to have a beautified picture of Holland, especially on the things you mention (drug use and prostitution). I'm a foreigner myself but I've been to Holland and know several people who live there, and the mainstream idea is that these 'experiments' have failed, and their result is a degeneration of society. This, and the problems with muslim radicalism, has resulted to a great increase of conservative thinking; the recent shut down of most pot shops is just one sign of that. I don't think we should discard an action like the monitoring of every citizen, which otherplace would be reson for major public outcry, just because 'the Dutch are basically nice people and they should know'.
The moderation system is going down the drain if this post is marked as 5 Insightful... what's Insightful about it?? The fact that most spreadsheets are alike? This is true only for a novice or low demands user, at the high demands end the spreadsheet you use makes a MASSIVE difference, and excel is, indeed, one of the best available (if not the best one). For developers it's even better, try comparing the Excel type library as an activeX and the OOo UNO API.
Agree on this. Gaim is a great program that I use exclusively, but its functions are not even close to those offered by windows messengers. The fact that you don't care about vide conference, voice chat, SMS messages, doesn't mean they are not required in a modern IM. Let alone the hideous support for file transfer, unless all your buddies use Jabber.
I don't want to bash gaim, or any other opensource program, and please don't reply with 'why bitch, you fix it'. When discussing functionality and usability we compare existing stuff not potential possibilities.
Unfortunately when some blessed soul adds conference and major protocols file transfer support to Gaim, some idiots will call it bloated and start using talk.
Looking at the BK mess, I believe it's time to reconsider a very common yet very flawed stance taken by several FOSS developers: the idea that venerable legacy software does things the "right" way, and it should never evolve and adapt to the modern programming needs.
We've been tolerating software with crippling capabilities and major usability issues for years, accepting or even praising their limitations as part of the FOSS Way of Things. CVS is a prime example, there are dozens more.
Of course this kind of software has been great, and we are all thankful to the people offering it, but it's time to place it in a museum, with a golden memorial plaque, and move on. The OpenOffice team got it right with their 2.0 version, even if it's still in beta: they evolved some cumbersome legacy applications to something sparkling that's a pleasure to work with (please don't bring up their use of Java issue). We should all benefit from their example.
Debian is not just an OS, it's a distribution containing several applications users can't do without. This, combined with the fact that several opensource projects are still ages behind their proprietary/Windows equivelant in features and functionality, and only recent versions catch up, makes any comparison with Microsoft software quite useless.
Reading your post, I don't think any reasoning will have an effect whatsoever on your way of thinking. However for the shake of the argument I'll remind you that traditionally 'freedom' is restricted by the freedom of others, and all human societies use - vague and loosely defined as they are - boundaries to set it.
Freedom to get a shotgun and start killing people in your school is not an acceptable behavior in any society, and its restriction is not condemnable. If someone chopped your head because he didn't like your posts hardly anyone would call him a freedom fighter.
'Freedom of speech' aparently is not a holy grail; it works in similar ways, with social instinct and laws setting the limits. Where these limits should be set is certainly debatable, but I don't think pushing someone to suicide is anywhere near the gray area.
It's not really my problem anymore, since I stopped using Suse, but old versions provide updates for old packages. I bought SuSE 9.1 Pro, paid my 100 euros, and two weeks after that SuSE 9.2 came out. The SuSE ftp and yast provided support for my old 9.1 (e.g. KDE, thunderbird, firefox) packages, but didn't upgrade them to the latest, 9.2 releases.
Copying from friends is always an option, for every OS, but it defies the entire commercial OS price argument doesn't it:) As for installing via FTP or downloading the ISO (last I checked only Home version was available for ISO download), this is hardly an option when you're on 64k ISDN.
To be honest, the thing I found most annoying about SuSE was the 'technical support' that I specifically paid for by buying my Pro package. After an out of the box installation, firefox kept crashing whenever I was opening it. The tech support reply was alogn the lines that they don't offer support for 3rd party applications, only for their product. Bye bye SuSE.
After reading your post, I saw the light. People who offer suicide trips are humane benefactors! Just like those kind guys offering to end your sexual problems or give you some of their Nigerian gold!
Now seriously, if people don't feel appreciated, suicide is hardly the way to solve your problem. Too many people suicide for apparently trivial reasons: their bf/gf ditched them, they failed a school exam etc. The underlying causes are often complicated, but still, all of them happen to other people too, and they find the strength to overcome them. No doctor can change that is an aphorism proven wrong by the facts.
Euthanasia is another matter entirely, therefore the different approach by both the law and the social perception.
Before posting any more 'funny' jokes, try reading the article first: The law is about those inciting or promoting suicide, not those committing it. It also sounds perfectly sensible to me, why should any psycho be free to push desperate people kill themselves in the name of free speech? Depression needs careful approach and support, not some idiot advising you to suicide.
Apparently this bill is addressed to people who make big money by regularly selling products on ebay, not casual traders... This 'license' is like an indirect income tax, since (as far as I know) the government doesn't check the money you make on ebay and similar services.
Regardless of whether I agree or not with the taxation itself, I can definitely see the state having a point here.
All these are fine for IT theory textbooks, but in practice it never gets further than that. The main reason is that there are far more programmers than designers, and the usual programming approach is let's begin and see how it turns out.
Apart from this, large (and i'm talking about large ) projects can easily get out of hand regardless of design, since a few people (well usually one, but often more) must have the entire picture, and if they go you're basically neck deep...
My parents use banks, credit cards and computers, but they have no idea whatsoever about IP addresses, DNS etc. Any phising scheme would work on them, not because they are stupid, but because they have no notion of proper networking behavior. The same applies to the vast majority of users, and it's only natural. As newcomers to the online world, their perception of it is severely crippled, and it will take them some time to get familiar enough to nullify such attempts.
Well the current situation definitely doesn't improve Kashmirite's perception of India, feeding such thoughts. It is just possible that an India-backed independence would be the only way to ameliorate bad feelings. Of course I understand it's never that simple, but laying all the blame on one side isn't the way to go.
If only Suse didn't have this really annoying habit of changing versions every few months, then quickly reducing and eventually dropping updates support from older versions... It sucks paying 100 euros for an OS that lasts for 6 months.
I believe the main reason for this is lack of developers-oriented documentation. Even for simple extensions, one has to search around the web and hack through existing modules to see how things work; things get harder when you try to work with the actual code, which comes with a whole bunch of its own graphics toolkit, scripting etc. Sure some people may know the entire code by heart, but these things need extensive, robust documentation if more independent developers are to get involved.
Personally I have reduced my use of Google in favor of Yahoo. Although Google still brings better results to simple requests, Yahoo performs much better in complicated, multiword queries, when I don't know what exactly I'm looking for. Furthermore, Google lately returns more and more non-english pages, without an option to cut them off (as far as I know), with the first english link found in the 2nd or 3rd page.
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Unfortunately it's not just games. It is: - Terrible (if any) support for webcam / voice chat in messengers. - Terrible (if any) support for 3G cards. I know the latest versions have improved 3G support, but most notebooks don't run the latest versions. - A plethora of little but extremely annoying bugs which can be fixed with just a tiny fix in the text configuration files, that no non-adept will ever think of doing. - Flash / java plugins for firefox that keep bringing the machine to its knees. In general, I think that a) many features that have been considered a must in the users' world for ages are still unavailable in linux deskrop, and b) the rapid addition of new features to the latest linux distros (mainly ubuntu) have come at a price to quality and stability. I can't see linux gaining many more users from the masses until it addresses these issues.
China has millions, of rich people, by western standards. It even has 345,000 millionaires according to this report. I was in Beijing last summer and the prices at the high-class shops are higher than in New York. You can bet that it's those people who mostly own a PC and an internet connection...
Most foreigners seem to have a beautified picture of Holland, especially on the things you mention (drug use and prostitution). I'm a foreigner myself but I've been to Holland and know several people who live there, and the mainstream idea is that these 'experiments' have failed, and their result is a degeneration of society. This, and the problems with muslim radicalism, has resulted to a great increase of conservative thinking; the recent shut down of most pot shops is just one sign of that. I don't think we should discard an action like the monitoring of every citizen, which otherplace would be reson for major public outcry, just because 'the Dutch are basically nice people and they should know'.
The moderation system is going down the drain if this post is marked as 5 Insightful... what's Insightful about it?? The fact that most spreadsheets are alike? This is true only for a novice or low demands user, at the high demands end the spreadsheet you use makes a MASSIVE difference, and excel is, indeed, one of the best available (if not the best one). For developers it's even better, try comparing the Excel type library as an activeX and the OOo UNO API.
In Greece, technical news sites publicized this as 'the 3rd security fix for Firefox lately, compared to only 2 for Internet Explorer'.
Man you are performing a service to humanity, or at least a member of it... we will make you a statue.
Considering that your opinion is vastly influenced by your web search results, they already do this.
I'm using my amstrad 6128, it's perfectly functional too.
I don't want to bash gaim, or any other opensource program, and please don't reply with 'why bitch, you fix it'. When discussing functionality and usability we compare existing stuff not potential possibilities.
Unfortunately when some blessed soul adds conference and major protocols file transfer support to Gaim, some idiots will call it bloated and start using talk.
Who says I didn't?
"Why is it still widely used" indeed... Why are Windows used by 96% of users? Why do so many illogical things happen?
We've been tolerating software with crippling capabilities and major usability issues for years, accepting or even praising their limitations as part of the FOSS Way of Things. CVS is a prime example, there are dozens more.
Of course this kind of software has been great, and we are all thankful to the people offering it, but it's time to place it in a museum, with a golden memorial plaque, and move on. The OpenOffice team got it right with their 2.0 version, even if it's still in beta: they evolved some cumbersome legacy applications to something sparkling that's a pleasure to work with (please don't bring up their use of Java issue). We should all benefit from their example.
Actually what has been proven is that no program can prove any program correct. Giving the program itself as input is part of the proof.
Debian is not just an OS, it's a distribution containing several applications users can't do without. This, combined with the fact that several opensource projects are still ages behind their proprietary/Windows equivelant in features and functionality, and only recent versions catch up, makes any comparison with Microsoft software quite useless.
Freedom to get a shotgun and start killing people in your school is not an acceptable behavior in any society, and its restriction is not condemnable. If someone chopped your head because he didn't like your posts hardly anyone would call him a freedom fighter.
'Freedom of speech' aparently is not a holy grail; it works in similar ways, with social instinct and laws setting the limits. Where these limits should be set is certainly debatable, but I don't think pushing someone to suicide is anywhere near the gray area.
Copying from friends is always an option, for every OS, but it defies the entire commercial OS price argument doesn't it :) As for installing via FTP or downloading the ISO (last I checked only Home version was available for ISO download), this is hardly an option when you're on 64k ISDN.
To be honest, the thing I found most annoying about SuSE was the 'technical support' that I specifically paid for by buying my Pro package. After an out of the box installation, firefox kept crashing whenever I was opening it. The tech support reply was alogn the lines that they don't offer support for 3rd party applications, only for their product. Bye bye SuSE.
Now seriously, if people don't feel appreciated, suicide is hardly the way to solve your problem. Too many people suicide for apparently trivial reasons: their bf/gf ditched them, they failed a school exam etc. The underlying causes are often complicated, but still, all of them happen to other people too, and they find the strength to overcome them. No doctor can change that is an aphorism proven wrong by the facts.
Euthanasia is another matter entirely, therefore the different approach by both the law and the social perception.
Before posting any more 'funny' jokes, try reading the article first: The law is about those inciting or promoting suicide, not those committing it. It also sounds perfectly sensible to me, why should any psycho be free to push desperate people kill themselves in the name of free speech? Depression needs careful approach and support, not some idiot advising you to suicide.
Regardless of whether I agree or not with the taxation itself, I can definitely see the state having a point here.
All these are fine for IT theory textbooks, but in practice it never gets further than that. The main reason is that there are far more programmers than designers, and the usual programming approach is let's begin and see how it turns out.
Apart from this, large (and i'm talking about large ) projects can easily get out of hand regardless of design, since a few people (well usually one, but often more) must have the entire picture, and if they go you're basically neck deep...
My parents use banks, credit cards and computers, but they have no idea whatsoever about IP addresses, DNS etc. Any phising scheme would work on them, not because they are stupid, but because they have no notion of proper networking behavior. The same applies to the vast majority of users, and it's only natural. As newcomers to the online world, their perception of it is severely crippled, and it will take them some time to get familiar enough to nullify such attempts.
Well the current situation definitely doesn't improve Kashmirite's perception of India, feeding such thoughts. It is just possible that an India-backed independence would be the only way to ameliorate bad feelings.
Of course I understand it's never that simple, but laying all the blame on one side isn't the way to go.
If only Suse didn't have this really annoying habit of changing versions every few months, then quickly reducing and eventually dropping updates support from older versions... It sucks paying 100 euros for an OS that lasts for 6 months.
So true...
I believe the main reason for this is lack of developers-oriented documentation. Even for simple extensions, one has to search around the web and hack through existing modules to see how things work; things get harder when you try to work with the actual code, which comes with a whole bunch of its own graphics toolkit, scripting etc. Sure some people may know the entire code by heart, but these things need extensive, robust documentation if more independent developers are to get involved.
Personally I have reduced my use of Google in favor of Yahoo. Although Google still brings better results to simple requests, Yahoo performs much better in complicated, multiword queries, when I don't know what exactly I'm looking for. Furthermore, Google lately returns more and more non-english pages, without an option to cut them off (as far as I know), with the first english link found in the 2nd or 3rd page.