Voting whether Finland should or shouldn't join EU was another of those semidemocratic BS processes. If the majority had voted NO, then simply increase propaganda in mass media and do another vote in 6 months. Simple. And no (easy) way to reverse the process.
EU is bullshit. Europe consists of nations that are very self-aware and proud, and often bad relations with other European nations. I mean who wants to be allied with Poland, France or Italy?
If it's not networked, if it has no service packs installed, If it has no anti-virus, anti-spyware, anti-whatever installed - then yes it's faster than your typical gnomebloatware linuz desktop.
In real environment that kind of winblows platform would be nearly unusable.
It was the best in some areas - not as resource-hungry as XP, booted slower but who cares, boot time is a non-issue nowadays since no-one has to reboot all the time....
Now usenet is mostly dead except for some very specialized newsgroups, and use of SMTP for non-commercial or work-related purposes is too awkward thanks to the sheer volumes of crap.
Spammers killed news and mail for me, I never hid my email address and never will, that's THE POINT of being reachable via email. Thank god most IRC networks still are fine and SMS costs money per message.
Chroot the browser. No overhead.
Or use SElinux. Config trouble.
Or get a mac to surf the web for now.
Run browser in virtual machine if all else fails.
Security, in this area, is a CHOICE. You typically lose some convenience and flexibility in exchange.
FYI: I like oowriter better than Word, I like Excel slightly better than oocalc, and I like ooimpress better than Powerpoint.
The problems that have arisen from OpenOffice use where I work (we only get MS Office licenses if special needs require it - otherwise it's all OO now) are these:
-OO is heavy. It takes a modern puter to run it, and start up times on Windows machines are ridiculous. Dunno why.. but on my old 1GHz Linux box OO + document opens in under a second while on a 3GHz win PC it takes about 30s. Talking of 2.0 beta, 1.1 loads faster on windoze.
-Some ppl accidentally send OpenOffice format files to contacts outside (forget to export as PDF)
-Some Powerpoint presentations have fonts, layout, effects or all of them fuxxored
-Macro problems in spreadsheets
"Warnings are there for a reason" yes, but the typical Windows eXPerience consists of:
-Waiting
-Rebooting
-CLICKING "YES" or "OK" ON STUPID REQUESTERS THAT SERVE NO PURPOSE WHATSOEVER.
When using windows, one very quickly develops a habit of clicking OK or YES everytime some stupid fucker pops up just to get rid of it and continue trying to use the friggin puter.
God damn I hate those stupid alerts, reminders and other forms of user harrassment. Focus stealing, mega-annoying friggin useless requesters - the Windows way! I was happily typing the last page of this 20page document when the fucker decided it's a good time to pop up stupid shit asking whether I'd like to reboot now (OF COURSE NOT! WHO WANTS TO REBOOT THEIR PUTER? YOU TURN IT ON, YOU TURN IT OFF; REBOOTS ARE SILLY BULLSHIT) - and the requester stole focus, and had [YES] as default. I hit enter at end of line and VOILA! The Windows way! I'd pay for the privilege of stabbing the fucker who invented those requesters to death - with a SPONGE, so it would take longer.
M$ should replace all those fucking "Do you want to reboot now"-requesters to "We know you don't want to reboot now but you're gonna have to anyway! Now bend over [OK]".
It's better to silently fuck up than to let the user decide whether to fuck up now or whether to show another fucked up requester 1 minute from now asking the very same thing.
This message must have broken some F-word record but fuck, I hate windows.
I moved 9 months ago. I haven't even hooked my... C64, Vic, C128, Amigas, ST, VHS or DVD player yet. X-Box does it all and does it good.
When some friends come by, we play a game of Winter Games on X-Box. When I get a new DVD, I watch it on the X-Box - no matter what region the friggin disk is. When I dload something off the net in whatever format that has been used in the last 10 years, it's more often than not viewable on the X-Box.
X-Box games are a bonus - I bought X-Box to be the home entertainment center - and in that role, it rewlzors.
Unless X-Box 360 can be modded and used in this way it has absolutely no value to me. Unless PS3 can be modded and used in this way it's useless too.
My gaming box has worked admirably under Win2K Pro for almost three years now. No antivirus, no antispycrap, no antianything. No problems either.
I feel exactly as the parent poster: People are brainwashed into thinking that viruses, spyware and crashes are something usual in computer environment, and every PC magazine out there fanfares in EVERY SINGLE "computer security"-related article that people should "keep their anti-virus software up to date."
10 years from now Windows PC's will emit random electrical shocks via keyboard or finglonger or whatever interface we use then. And the users have to lease antishock software. Gzus christ, I just don't get it - it's as if people voluntarily used torture devices on themselves and regularly paid the manufacturer more money in hope the pain went away, or at least lessened.
Windows machines have little to do on networks anyway. Unpatched winboxen even less. Cut them off until they get a clue - as simple as that. Or make it a policy that everyone has a Mac (or clue).
You're forgetting mobile devices
on
Opera 8 Released
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· Score: 1
Mobile firefox is still at least six months away. Opera on the other hand works very well on series 60 phones. I believe the browser I'm typing this on is Opera-based as well (using nokia 9300).
The PC Opera may fade, remember, its original claim to fame was SPEED on older hardware. Mobile Opera is way too mature for any competitor to surpass anytime soon.
Really. They were really weak. Bad sound, bad manufacture quality, and in Windows era, really bad drivers.
If you waited in line for SB16 you were a mindless sheep. Gravis Ultrasound was about a hundred times better card, and less prone to pick up humm from mobo/power supply/hard drives.
Until very recently, MD was a great format and Sony's MD players were great devices.
Minidisc players are small enough, have great battery life, have for zillions of years offered better-than-128kbps-mp3-sound, and usually double as a recorder.
Why I got one was because of the format itself: MDs cost next to nothing. Couple of years back, mp3 players were a joke. Qualitywise and capacitywisy.
The only pain with MD players is in making and carrying the MDs. Takes time and space. Usually one converts the favorites into MD's and tugs a couple in pocket - but they're BIG by todays standards. Much easier to keep to collection on puter, then quickly copy some shit on either some portable POS, or keep some stuff on an iPod.
The arguments about bad headphones are null and void. Get good headphones.
Hell, the new Nokia 9300 Communicator with good headphones has better mp3 sound output than a creative MuVo:-D Get a big mem card and off you go, no extra ipods bulging in pocket.
I'm 32. I've been staring at CRT since I was 13. 50Hz, 60Hz, now whopping 85Hz. Good low-latency 21" LCD is on the shopping list, but they're too expensive right now.
I've stared at these flickering pieces of S all my adult life.
First at evenings (basic school)
Then during highed ed etc (most of day, all night).
Now at work and at free time (most of day, weekends).
Yes, at the moment, I don't have a life... But my eyesight is good looking near, and looking far only the right eye is somewhat fuxxored. Nothing to warrant glasses, or cause headache.
Maybe humans just are genetically programmed to have bad vision and the fact we get more flawed vision today is because today we measure more and measure more accurately. Maybe humans have ALWAYS had crappy vision that deteriorates fast, it's just not have been documented because it was deemed normal.
It's not like fuzzy vision makes life impossible... not everyone is a fighter jock.
I use Windows only for gaming, but found out that while XP boots faster than 2000Pro, it's MUCH MUCH MUCH slower given the same amount of RAM. The XP's teletubby user interface is much more sluggish than 2000Pro's.
I don't have dual processor or dual core or hyperthreading, just plain P4 2GHz with 1GB RAM, dunno whether 2000Pro utilizes HT or dual cores and such.
You can test XP's mem usage easily with VMware... run 2000Pro and XP Home/Pro with say 384M virtual machine... 2kPro is faster with 256M than XP with 384M.
OO Writer is better than Word. It handles images and footers better. PDF export is, as you say, excellent feature. We also have the open source PDF creator installed, but it creates bigger files with worse output than OO.
Impress is good, but it sucks at importing Powerpoint presentations. The only thing that correctly shows Powerpoint presentations is Powerpoint, or the M$ free viewer. The free viewer thankfully works perfectly even under Wine, so even Linux desktops can show those.
OO Calc is another thing... most Excel files have macros or some such. Excel can't be beat, even with its limitations.. people who have to constantly modify excel format files have M$ Office license also.
But, slowly, M$ office suite can be replaced. It's a good suite IMO except for Word, which I hate, but using it encourages lock-in to Win32 platform and one vendor and proprietary formats.
When OO 2.0 comes out it will most certainly tilt the balance somewhat..
All those who are on the verge of converting now in 1.1.x OO era... take a look at 2.0 beta.
I wholeheartedly agree to parent poster.
I recommend Mac Mini to everyone who just wants to "surf, play some games, write some stuff, store digital photos..."
There's no silver bullet, but Mac Mini is close - cheap, very nice to use, and UNIXoid at its core.
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Voting whether Finland should or shouldn't join EU was another of those semidemocratic BS processes. If the majority had voted NO, then simply increase propaganda in mass media and do another vote in 6 months. Simple. And no (easy) way to reverse the process.
EU is bullshit. Europe consists of nations that are very self-aware and proud, and often bad relations with other European nations. I mean who wants to be allied with Poland, France or Italy?
It would be funny if it wasn't so tragic.
In real environment that kind of winblows platform would be nearly unusable.
A program running with user privileges must be able to read the shortcut, and the admin passwd is in there as plaintext.
Runas is a pain in the ass since it's nowhere as near being usable AND secure than unix sudo, which requires misconfiguration to be insecure.
Every time tor is mentioned on Slashdot, the networks gains speed thanks to a surge in runnin server numbers.
Oh.
Used to use email as main form of communication.
Now usenet is mostly dead except for some very specialized newsgroups, and use of SMTP for non-commercial or work-related purposes is too awkward thanks to the sheer volumes of crap.
Spammers killed news and mail for me, I never hid my email address and never will, that's THE POINT of being reachable via email. Thank god most IRC networks still are fine and SMS costs money per message.
Bittorrent already works through the tor network and such. Mostly limited nowadays since it was hogging all the bandwidth tho.
Or use SElinux. Config trouble.
Or get a mac to surf the web for now.
Run browser in virtual machine if all else fails.
Security, in this area, is a CHOICE. You typically lose some convenience and flexibility in exchange.
The problems that have arisen from OpenOffice use where I work (we only get MS Office licenses if special needs require it - otherwise it's all OO now) are these:
-OO is heavy. It takes a modern puter to run it, and start up times on Windows machines are ridiculous. Dunno why.. but on my old 1GHz Linux box OO + document opens in under a second while on a 3GHz win PC it takes about 30s. Talking of 2.0 beta, 1.1 loads faster on windoze.
-Some ppl accidentally send OpenOffice format files to contacts outside (forget to export as PDF)
-Some Powerpoint presentations have fonts, layout, effects or all of them fuxxored
-Macro problems in spreadsheets
That's about it.
-Waiting
-Rebooting
-CLICKING "YES" or "OK" ON STUPID REQUESTERS THAT SERVE NO PURPOSE WHATSOEVER.
When using windows, one very quickly develops a habit of clicking OK or YES everytime some stupid fucker pops up just to get rid of it and continue trying to use the friggin puter.
God damn I hate those stupid alerts, reminders and other forms of user harrassment. Focus stealing, mega-annoying friggin useless requesters - the Windows way! I was happily typing the last page of this 20page document when the fucker decided it's a good time to pop up stupid shit asking whether I'd like to reboot now (OF COURSE NOT! WHO WANTS TO REBOOT THEIR PUTER? YOU TURN IT ON, YOU TURN IT OFF; REBOOTS ARE SILLY BULLSHIT) - and the requester stole focus, and had [YES] as default. I hit enter at end of line and VOILA! The Windows way! I'd pay for the privilege of stabbing the fucker who invented those requesters to death - with a SPONGE, so it would take longer.
M$ should replace all those fucking "Do you want to reboot now"-requesters to "We know you don't want to reboot now but you're gonna have to anyway! Now bend over [OK]".
It's better to silently fuck up than to let the user decide whether to fuck up now or whether to show another fucked up requester 1 minute from now asking the very same thing.
This message must have broken some F-word record but fuck, I hate windows.
When some friends come by, we play a game of Winter Games on X-Box. When I get a new DVD, I watch it on the X-Box - no matter what region the friggin disk is. When I dload something off the net in whatever format that has been used in the last 10 years, it's more often than not viewable on the X-Box.
X-Box games are a bonus - I bought X-Box to be the home entertainment center - and in that role, it rewlzors.
Unless X-Box 360 can be modded and used in this way it has absolutely no value to me. Unless PS3 can be modded and used in this way it's useless too.
PS. the script detection crap sucks.
Windows only, but works very well.
http://www.naturalpoint.com/trackir/
I feel exactly as the parent poster: People are brainwashed into thinking that viruses, spyware and crashes are something usual in computer environment, and every PC magazine out there fanfares in EVERY SINGLE "computer security"-related article that people should "keep their anti-virus software up to date."
10 years from now Windows PC's will emit random electrical shocks via keyboard or finglonger or whatever interface we use then. And the users have to lease antishock software. Gzus christ, I just don't get it - it's as if people voluntarily used torture devices on themselves and regularly paid the manufacturer more money in hope the pain went away, or at least lessened.
Sounds like a great idea!
Windows with all network code removed.
Windows XP NN?
Windows machines have little to do on networks anyway. Unpatched winboxen even less. Cut them off until they get a clue - as simple as that. Or make it a policy that everyone has a Mac (or clue).
The PC Opera may fade, remember, its original claim to fame was SPEED on older hardware. Mobile Opera is way too mature for any competitor to surpass anytime soon.
Really. They were really weak. Bad sound, bad manufacture quality, and in Windows era, really bad drivers.
If you waited in line for SB16 you were a mindless sheep. Gravis Ultrasound was about a hundred times better card, and less prone to pick up humm from mobo/power supply/hard drives.
Minidisc players are small enough, have great battery life, have for zillions of years offered better-than-128kbps-mp3-sound, and usually double as a recorder.
Why I got one was because of the format itself: MDs cost next to nothing. Couple of years back, mp3 players were a joke. Qualitywise and capacitywisy.
The only pain with MD players is in making and carrying the MDs. Takes time and space. Usually one converts the favorites into MD's and tugs a couple in pocket - but they're BIG by todays standards. Much easier to keep to collection on puter, then quickly copy some shit on either some portable POS, or keep some stuff on an iPod.
The arguments about bad headphones are null and void. Get good headphones.
Hell, the new Nokia 9300 Communicator with good headphones has better mp3 sound output than a creative MuVo :-D Get a big mem card and off you go, no extra ipods bulging in pocket.
I've stared at these flickering pieces of S all my adult life.
First at evenings (basic school)
Then during highed ed etc (most of day, all night).
Now at work and at free time (most of day, weekends).
Yes, at the moment, I don't have a life... But my eyesight is good looking near, and looking far only the right eye is somewhat fuxxored. Nothing to warrant glasses, or cause headache.
Maybe humans just are genetically programmed to have bad vision and the fact we get more flawed vision today is because today we measure more and measure more accurately. Maybe humans have ALWAYS had crappy vision that deteriorates fast, it's just not have been documented because it was deemed normal.
It's not like fuzzy vision makes life impossible... not everyone is a fighter jock.
I don't have dual processor or dual core or hyperthreading, just plain P4 2GHz with 1GB RAM, dunno whether 2000Pro utilizes HT or dual cores and such.
You can test XP's mem usage easily with VMware... run 2000Pro and XP Home/Pro with say 384M virtual machine... 2kPro is faster with 256M than XP with 384M.
OO Writer is better than Word. It handles images and footers better. PDF export is, as you say, excellent feature. We also have the open source PDF creator installed, but it creates bigger files with worse output than OO.
Impress is good, but it sucks at importing Powerpoint presentations. The only thing that correctly shows Powerpoint presentations is Powerpoint, or the M$ free viewer. The free viewer thankfully works perfectly even under Wine, so even Linux desktops can show those.
OO Calc is another thing... most Excel files have macros or some such. Excel can't be beat, even with its limitations.. people who have to constantly modify excel format files have M$ Office license also.
But, slowly, M$ office suite can be replaced. It's a good suite IMO except for Word, which I hate, but using it encourages lock-in to Win32 platform and one vendor and proprietary formats.
When OO 2.0 comes out it will most certainly tilt the balance somewhat.. All those who are on the verge of converting now in 1.1.x OO era... take a look at 2.0 beta.
Because it's easy to use lynx, w3m or some such in scripts, to get some page and produce a no-nonsense, easily parseable ASCII representation of it.
Also, in server environment, we don't usually install X at all, but still every now and then need to access some page from text console.
Once again. IE does not have javascript. Nor ECMAscript. It uses jscript.
I wholeheartedly agree to parent poster. I recommend Mac Mini to everyone who just wants to "surf, play some games, write some stuff, store digital photos..." There's no silver bullet, but Mac Mini is close - cheap, very nice to use, and UNIXoid at its core.
Then either get her a Mac, tell her the machine is broken for good or keep fixing Bill's shit until she croaks. It will not end otherwise you know.