Biggest problem with Linux usability is a lack of applications to use with it.
WAAAAIT! Hold off on that flame-thrower!
I'm talking serious productivity applications.
There is no Linux equivalent to MSWord. Yes, yes, yes: I *know* there is StarOffice and others. But they aren't MSWord.
There is no Linux equivalent to AccPac. Yes, yes, yes: I *know* there are other accounting packages. But AccPac is the defacto standard.
There is no Linux equivalent to Photoshop. Yes, yes, yes: I *know* there's Gimp. But it's not Photoshop.
WAIT! Hold off on that flame-thrower!
I know it's unreasonable to expect Linux apps to be identical in functionality -- and misfunctionality! -- and appearance to the big-time, deeply-entrenched "standards."
But that's not the point. The point is: the problem with Linux usability is that its lacks applications that are direct clones of the standards.
That's unreasonable, illogical, stupid, and every other abusive word you can toss at the idea...
...but it's the truth. The PHBs see it that way, and countless users who've spent years learning the ins and outs of the standard apps see it that way.
It takes years of invested time and experience to become at all proficient at any comprehensive productivity application. No one wants to throw that investment away, just to move to Linux.
And that is, I think, at the very core of it all, a usability problem. If it isn't exactly like the original, it is less usable for many folk.
So you're saying you don't have a toilet in your house?
They can run the cable right *into* your house. Drill a small hole in the outflow pipe, pull out the end of the fiber, and putty-seal it. From there, the fiber can be run through the walls. Under carpet and behind baseboards, if necessary.
The real challenge is two-fold: they can't run a dedicated fiber to every home without clogging the sewer line (a bundle for a neighbourhood would be too big); and it's a harsh environment for any would-be fiber splitters, which would obviate the bundle problem.
(Just struck me that you may have been thinking "storm sewers." If they are using storm sewers, then they are substantially hosed.
Me, too! I want to reward those people who are pleasing me. It's fair play, and it encourages them to please me more.
What's really needed, then, is for one of the pissed-off, but wealthy, artists to get his/her shit together and fund the development of the Internet media distribution centre. Elton John, with his $218 million bucks, and who just made a strong public statement about the recording industry, is my candidate investor angel #1.
The system is dead frigging simple: all that is required is a massive server farm, and an easy-to-use front-end interface.
Backend: the highest-quality audio files that can be had. 24-bit, 96kHz would be ideal.
Middle: encoders for MP3, Ogg, Minidisc, etc.
Front: registration, account balance, download, search, make payment.
Account must contain a minimum $50, no interest paid. We'll fund the operation of this business mainly through interest income. Starting balance is $100.
Registration allows you to download music in the format you desire. It will be encoded on-the-fly. This will allow us to upgrade the storage format as technology allows, and allows us to provide the format you need. Most popular formats/files will, naturally, be cached.
Each download automatically xfers money from your account to the artists' accounts. Artists are paid starting when their account value is $1000 or more. An average 10% of the weekly take (averaged over six weeks) will be held in reserve, to provide us with interest income. (ie. if an artist sells an average $10000 in a week, $1000 is kept in the reserve; they get the remaining $9000.)
You can also pay artists directly, without downloading; this lets you "make up" for all the pirate music you own.:-)
The database will contain only artist-owned material. Artists will need to obtain ownership of their recordings. We're going to cut RIAA completely out of the loop.
Distribution of artists' income to their band members, songwriters, managers, etc., is entirely the burden of the artists. However, it wouldn't be difficult to extend our business manager to allow these folk to register themselves, and to automatically distribute the monies appropriately. For this, we would charge a minimal fee: it's a value-added service that would help fund the overall operations.
Our executives and employees would make REASONABLE salaries, perhaps on a PROFIT-SHARING basis! No one is going to get $500K per year just because they're a CEO. We'll keep the money going to the people who deserve it: the artists! Damn, let's do it right for once.
This isn't going to cost more than a few million to set up completely. For Elton, it'd be frigging pocket change.
The only real challenge in all this is that artists currently don't own the music that's already out there. We won't have any songs available for download!
Overcoming this challenge shouldn't be too difficult, though: Elton can open a dozen recording studios and help artists get out of the RIAA deathtrap. He can charge reasonably for studio use and production, but the artists must retain ownership of their work.
I should think that within a year, enough well-known artists will have recorded new material that we'd be able to actually launch this.
Come to think of it, this would probably make the ultimate open-source project. If enough people kicked in code, hardware, ideas, business management, etc., it'd probably be launchable without Elton's money!
You've made an interesting point. Other manufacturers are held liable for end-user incompetence: why isn't Microsoft?
Ever wonder why your hair-dryer has a warning that you shouldn't use it in the shower? It's very likely because some evolutionary dead-end once actually did use it in the shower, and a lawsuit came of it.
Hell, it even happens in Canada: some dumbshit teenager pulled a Coke machine onto himself, and his parents are trying to sue Coke for his abuse of the property!
Obviously, it's quite acceptable to find companies liable for the carelessness, incompetence, stupidity, or maliciousness of their products' users.
I fail to see why Microsoft isn't held accountable.
Please provide dummy-compatible instructions for adding this to one's personal copy of Outlook Express, such that it's a permanent and automatically executed whenever one starts Outlook Express. Thanks!
But it's a crisp ninety minutes long! That's so much better than those gawdawful long movies that approach two hours in length. Katz and I see eye-to-eye on this one: the shorter the movie, the better it is! A *real* director should be able to tell his story in fifteen minutes or less.
For instance, they could use a Markhov chain algorithm to parse their ever-increasing collection of sample spam, and use that to determine the "spamness" of email.
Score 4: Flamebait? Keee-rist, there are a some dumbshit moderators out there. Mickey states *FACTS*, man, and moreso, facts that ought to SCARE THE HELL OUT OF YOU. Yet it's "flamebait," because you voted Bush.
The USA is rapidly becoming a third-world police state that's run by crooks who stand to profit immensely by turning its citizenry into sheep and pouring money into its military-industrial complex.
That isn't a flamebait statement: it's a fucking WAKE UP CALL. You might be able to write off one voice crying out this message as being the voice of a lunatic, but when so many voices are shouting it, there's bound to be a reason to pay attention.
Shake your head, sheep, and become aware of the problems your country is facing. If you don't gettaclue fast, you're going to find yourself living like the Chinese do: squished under the thumb of a corrupt government.
I don't subscribe to cable, so I'm certainly not a trustworthy authority on the issue. Another post mentioned that the Canadian courts had bitchslapped the cablecos, so maybe it's all just cableco hype at this point, with no action behind their threats.
Re: scaling -- you mean, like Opera? It scales the size of the page elements by using Ctrl+Scrollwheel. Makes it easy to read pages when sitting back a few feet, or when dealing with moronic web authors who put everything in teeny-tiny (or great big) type.
Re: alpha is cool -- I agree. But the next step is to also make it possible to "click through" the transparent window. I'd seriously *love* to have some mostly transparent things on my desktop, floating at the top... but they'd interfere with my other application controls. NFG if they block the button bar!
Re: alpha is cool -- I'm testing an application that is making use of transparency for dialogs and suchlike. That way, they don't block you from seeing what they're overtop, which extends the usable screen realstate. An excellent example is in spellchecking: all too often, the spellchecker dialog hides the misspelled word! Make that dialog mostly xparent, and it is no longer quite so much a problem.
You ever notice the number of SUVs with Sierra Club stickers on them? Ever gone to a trailhead and noticed how many nice, new, shiney SUVs have those stickers?
The only domain worth having would be www.fuck.us!!
Unfortunately, it won't be put to any good use. Some waste of sperm will toss up a porno clusterfuck page, with unending pop-up windows when you try to close it. I'd rather see it used for something amusing.
Frankly, that's the kind of think I dream of, because at this point, I'm quite convinced that the only way to wake up the *IDIOTS* out there is to destroy what's valuable to them.
I received my third virus email in a week from one particularly clueless git today. The dumbass keeps opening attachments willy-nilly. Well, I hope the next one screws his boot sector. He needs a clue-by-four upside the head.
If every dumb asshole out there was to lose their system, they'd *have* to learn to be more careful, wouldn't they? Or am I still giving them far too much credit?
If marketing were necessary, then how is it that I've discovered The Groove Collective, the US David Wilcox, the Canadian David Wilcox, David Grisman, Clifton Chenier, Buckwheat Zydeco, India Arie, ATB, Alex de Grassi, and a dozen other cool artists that I'd never heard of before, and find that I really enjoy?
Fuck RIAA.
All I need is access to well-titled MP3s, a community that can provide "other listeners also liked...", and a way to toss some cash directly to the artists I like.
It'd be nice, though, if one of those well-to-do hate-the-RIAA artists would help bankroll a site to accomplish this.
Afghanistan used to be quite modern, as far as freedoms and technology went. Women were in universities and holding civil service jobs; televisions and computers were used; things were pretty cool, given the tribal political system they had.
I don't think "culture shock" is something to worry about. They had culture, the Taliban killed it, the Taliban is gone, the previous levels of culture (and more) will come back.
Footnote: I didn't see anything I'd call "orange" or "green" in the way of tails. They were just... meteor coloured. I'm wondering if maybe this colouration thing is a subtle effect...?
North Okanagan, BC. Superbly clear skies as well, and viewing from near the peak of the local ski mountain, well away from town lights.
At the peak, we saw perhaps a half-dozen to ten bright meteors per minute, with superlative hanging trails. Some of the best cut an arc that covered well over a third of the sky. Others were so extremely bright, it was like looking into the highbeams of a car.
A half-hour to either side of the peak we were still seeing an excellent meteor every minute or so, with bursts of meteors every once in a while.
All in all, this was well worth the effort to view. I took along my three favourite kids, aged 6, 9, and 11. They were wowed by it all; I suspect this may have been the first time they've witnessed a reasonably good dark sky (tho' it didn't compare at all to what I've seen when out backpacking, when there's at least 200km between me and the nearest streetlight).
Now I just hope that I'll manage to fall asleep. Otherwise, I'm gonna be a walking zombie tomorrow. Er, I mean, today. Gah.
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Biggest problem with Linux usability is a lack of applications to use with it.
WAAAAIT! Hold off on that flame-thrower!
I'm talking serious productivity applications.
There is no Linux equivalent to MSWord. Yes, yes, yes: I *know* there is StarOffice and others. But they aren't MSWord.
There is no Linux equivalent to AccPac. Yes, yes, yes: I *know* there are other accounting packages. But AccPac is the defacto standard.
There is no Linux equivalent to Photoshop. Yes, yes, yes: I *know* there's Gimp. But it's not Photoshop.
WAIT! Hold off on that flame-thrower!
I know it's unreasonable to expect Linux apps to be identical in functionality -- and misfunctionality! -- and appearance to the big-time, deeply-entrenched "standards."
But that's not the point. The point is: the problem with Linux usability is that its lacks applications that are direct clones of the standards.
That's unreasonable, illogical, stupid, and every other abusive word you can toss at the idea...
...but it's the truth. The PHBs see it that way, and countless users who've spent years learning the ins and outs of the standard apps see it that way.
It takes years of invested time and experience to become at all proficient at any comprehensive productivity application. No one wants to throw that investment away, just to move to Linux.
And that is, I think, at the very core of it all, a usability problem. If it isn't exactly like the original, it is less usable for many folk.
And now you can flame. Ouch.
So you're saying you don't have a toilet in your house?
They can run the cable right *into* your house. Drill a small hole in the outflow pipe, pull out the end of the fiber, and putty-seal it. From there, the fiber can be run through the walls. Under carpet and behind baseboards, if necessary.
The real challenge is two-fold: they can't run a dedicated fiber to every home without clogging the sewer line (a bundle for a neighbourhood would be too big); and it's a harsh environment for any would-be fiber splitters, which would obviate the bundle problem.
(Just struck me that you may have been thinking "storm sewers." If they are using storm sewers, then they are substantially hosed.
"I want the artists to be paid!"
:-)
Me, too! I want to reward those people who are pleasing me. It's fair play, and it encourages them to please me more.
What's really needed, then, is for one of the pissed-off, but wealthy, artists to get his/her shit together and fund the development of the Internet media distribution centre. Elton John, with his $218 million bucks, and who just made a strong public statement about the recording industry, is my candidate investor angel #1.
The system is dead frigging simple: all that is required is a massive server farm, and an easy-to-use front-end interface.
Backend: the highest-quality audio files that can be had. 24-bit, 96kHz would be ideal.
Middle: encoders for MP3, Ogg, Minidisc, etc.
Front: registration, account balance, download, search, make payment.
Account must contain a minimum $50, no interest paid. We'll fund the operation of this business mainly through interest income. Starting balance is $100.
Registration allows you to download music in the format you desire. It will be encoded on-the-fly. This will allow us to upgrade the storage format as technology allows, and allows us to provide the format you need. Most popular formats/files will, naturally, be cached.
Each download automatically xfers money from your account to the artists' accounts. Artists are paid starting when their account value is $1000 or more. An average 10% of the weekly take (averaged over six weeks) will be held in reserve, to provide us with interest income. (ie. if an artist sells an average $10000 in a week, $1000 is kept in the reserve; they get the remaining $9000.)
You can also pay artists directly, without downloading; this lets you "make up" for all the pirate music you own.
The database will contain only artist-owned material. Artists will need to obtain ownership of their recordings. We're going to cut RIAA completely out of the loop.
Distribution of artists' income to their band members, songwriters, managers, etc., is entirely the burden of the artists. However, it wouldn't be difficult to extend our business manager to allow these folk to register themselves, and to automatically distribute the monies appropriately. For this, we would charge a minimal fee: it's a value-added service that would help fund the overall operations.
Our executives and employees would make REASONABLE salaries, perhaps on a PROFIT-SHARING basis! No one is going to get $500K per year just because they're a CEO. We'll keep the money going to the people who deserve it: the artists! Damn, let's do it right for once.
This isn't going to cost more than a few million to set up completely. For Elton, it'd be frigging pocket change.
The only real challenge in all this is that artists currently don't own the music that's already out there. We won't have any songs available for download!
Overcoming this challenge shouldn't be too difficult, though: Elton can open a dozen recording studios and help artists get out of the RIAA deathtrap. He can charge reasonably for studio use and production, but the artists must retain ownership of their work.
I should think that within a year, enough well-known artists will have recorded new material that we'd be able to actually launch this.
Come to think of it, this would probably make the ultimate open-source project. If enough people kicked in code, hardware, ideas, business management, etc., it'd probably be launchable without Elton's money!
Xyzzy, is Cobranet compliant with Ethernet standards? Please give them a look at Peak Audio/CobraNet homepage.
There's also CobraNet. It sends audio data over Ethernet, at real-time speeds.
Seems to me that Gibson is reinventing the wheel.
You've made an interesting point. Other manufacturers are held liable for end-user incompetence: why isn't Microsoft?
Ever wonder why your hair-dryer has a warning that you shouldn't use it in the shower? It's very likely because some evolutionary dead-end once actually did use it in the shower, and a lawsuit came of it.
Hell, it even happens in Canada: some dumbshit teenager pulled a Coke machine onto himself, and his parents are trying to sue Coke for his abuse of the property!
Obviously, it's quite acceptable to find companies liable for the carelessness, incompetence, stupidity, or maliciousness of their products' users.
I fail to see why Microsoft isn't held accountable.
Please provide dummy-compatible instructions for adding this to one's personal copy of Outlook Express, such that it's a permanent and automatically executed whenever one starts Outlook Express. Thanks!
In particular, the music industry is run by ruthless bastards who's backs are up against the wall. They're prepared to do anything to win.
But it's a crisp ninety minutes long! That's so much better than those gawdawful long movies that approach two hours in length. Katz and I see eye-to-eye on this one: the shorter the movie, the better it is! A *real* director should be able to tell his story in fifteen minutes or less.
For instance, they could use a Markhov chain algorithm to parse their ever-increasing collection of sample spam, and use that to determine the "spamness" of email.
Score 4: Flamebait? Keee-rist, there are a some dumbshit moderators out there. Mickey states *FACTS*, man, and moreso, facts that ought to SCARE THE HELL OUT OF YOU. Yet it's "flamebait," because you voted Bush.
The USA is rapidly becoming a third-world police state that's run by crooks who stand to profit immensely by turning its citizenry into sheep and pouring money into its military-industrial complex.
That isn't a flamebait statement: it's a fucking WAKE UP CALL. You might be able to write off one voice crying out this message as being the voice of a lunatic, but when so many voices are shouting it, there's bound to be a reason to pay attention.
Shake your head, sheep, and become aware of the problems your country is facing. If you don't gettaclue fast, you're going to find yourself living like the Chinese do: squished under the thumb of a corrupt government.
I don't subscribe to cable, so I'm certainly not a trustworthy authority on the issue. Another post mentioned that the Canadian courts had bitchslapped the cablecos, so maybe it's all just cableco hype at this point, with no action behind their threats.
Depends where you are... in Canada, the cable co does charge per TV (IOW, per outlet).
Don't think for a moment that these self-same companies wouldn't be happy to sell to the US government...
...and don't think for a moment that the US government doesn't dearly want to use that software!
Re: scaling -- you mean, like Opera? It scales the size of the page elements by using Ctrl+Scrollwheel. Makes it easy to read pages when sitting back a few feet, or when dealing with moronic web authors who put everything in teeny-tiny (or great big) type.
Re: alpha is cool -- I agree. But the next step is to also make it possible to "click through" the transparent window. I'd seriously *love* to have some mostly transparent things on my desktop, floating at the top... but they'd interfere with my other application controls. NFG if they block the button bar!
Re: alpha is cool -- I'm testing an application that is making use of transparency for dialogs and suchlike. That way, they don't block you from seeing what they're overtop, which extends the usable screen realstate. An excellent example is in spellchecking: all too often, the spellchecker dialog hides the misspelled word! Make that dialog mostly xparent, and it is no longer quite so much a problem.
You ever notice the number of SUVs with Sierra Club stickers on them? Ever gone to a trailhead and noticed how many nice, new, shiney SUVs have those stickers?
Sierra Club is an outrageous sham.
The only domain worth having would be www.fuck.us!!
Unfortunately, it won't be put to any good use. Some waste of sperm will toss up a porno clusterfuck page, with unending pop-up windows when you try to close it. I'd rather see it used for something amusing.
Frankly, that's the kind of think I dream of, because at this point, I'm quite convinced that the only way to wake up the *IDIOTS* out there is to destroy what's valuable to them.
I received my third virus email in a week from one particularly clueless git today. The dumbass keeps opening attachments willy-nilly. Well, I hope the next one screws his boot sector. He needs a clue-by-four upside the head.
If every dumb asshole out there was to lose their system, they'd *have* to learn to be more careful, wouldn't they? Or am I still giving them far too much credit?
If marketing were necessary, then how is it that I've discovered The Groove Collective, the US David Wilcox, the Canadian David Wilcox, David Grisman, Clifton Chenier, Buckwheat Zydeco, India Arie, ATB, Alex de Grassi, and a dozen other cool artists that I'd never heard of before, and find that I really enjoy?
Fuck RIAA.
All I need is access to well-titled MP3s, a community that can provide "other listeners also liked...", and a way to toss some cash directly to the artists I like.
It'd be nice, though, if one of those well-to-do hate-the-RIAA artists would help bankroll a site to accomplish this.
IIRC, there was a version of Unix available for the Rainbox, too.
Afghanistan used to be quite modern, as far as freedoms and technology went. Women were in universities and holding civil service jobs; televisions and computers were used; things were pretty cool, given the tribal political system they had.
I don't think "culture shock" is something to worry about. They had culture, the Taliban killed it, the Taliban is gone, the previous levels of culture (and more) will come back.
Hey, friend, buddy, pal, maybe we should exchange CD lists and see what we can do...
You mean, like Lingua::Romana::Perligata, an interface that lets you write Perl programs in Latin?
Footnote: I didn't see anything I'd call "orange" or "green" in the way of tails. They were just... meteor coloured. I'm wondering if maybe this colouration thing is a subtle effect...?
North Okanagan, BC. Superbly clear skies as well, and viewing from near the peak of the local ski mountain, well away from town lights.
At the peak, we saw perhaps a half-dozen to ten bright meteors per minute, with superlative hanging trails. Some of the best cut an arc that covered well over a third of the sky. Others were so extremely bright, it was like looking into the highbeams of a car.
A half-hour to either side of the peak we were still seeing an excellent meteor every minute or so, with bursts of meteors every once in a while.
All in all, this was well worth the effort to view. I took along my three favourite kids, aged 6, 9, and 11. They were wowed by it all; I suspect this may have been the first time they've witnessed a reasonably good dark sky (tho' it didn't compare at all to what I've seen when out backpacking, when there's at least 200km between me and the nearest streetlight).
Now I just hope that I'll manage to fall asleep. Otherwise, I'm gonna be a walking zombie tomorrow. Er, I mean, today. Gah.