"This is what Linux freaks don't get, they run Linux because it's Linux. I run Windows 2000 because it stays out of my way while I do what I actually want to do with my computer."
Linux is much better at staying out of your way then windows 2000. You can't make it work but I can.
"As long as you have every single option and its impact on the system memorized, and you are a perfect typist."
In most configuration files you'll see lines that start with a "#". These are called comments. Virtually every config file in your linux distribution has these comments in it. You should read them sometimes because they contain valuable information about the configuration options.
"A Linux box simply isn't usable with the same degree of transparency of the operating system that you get with Windows and MacOS. The problem is not that the user isn't knowledgeable enough, it's that the operating system isn't doing its job."
Nah, it's the user. It works fine for me. It's OK though. You can't make it work so leave it for us "linux freaks".
Wow here is a post that basically says "linux sux" and it's modded up to 5!!!!.
It's not like this guy has an original complaint either. "I can't make it work without a text editor" crap. As if working a text editor was some kind of a herculean task.
"Without a Macintosh version using Macintosh interface conventions, Open Office will never be able to replace MS Office in the corporate world."
That's just pure bullshit. OO will do just fine in the corporate market without mac support. Mac support never has been and never will be an obstacle. Like you said it's like 1% of the corporate desktops.
"Mac users already seem to have a very nice office apps suite available from Apple: iWork."
First of all iWork does not have a spreadsheet as far as I can see. Secondly so what? There are dozens of office software you can buy. Just buy them and leave the OO guys alone.
"These are all completely unacceptable in a mass market office suite."
I think this is exactly why OO will never be ported to macosx. The developers know that the mac crowd will not accept OO unless it's better then MS office. The windows and linux oo users are more tolerant and flexible in their expectations. They are willing to use something for free even if it does not work as well as something that costs 400 dollars. Mac users would rather pay the 400 dollars then to use anything that would spoil their mac experience.
I think this is a good decision by the OO guys. It would be really hard to support or live up to the expectations of the typical mac user. It would be a thankless job and it would be very painful.
I can't say this without being a huge asshole but i'll try.
If the mac users are really that picky about the UI why don't they pay for the development of a mac version of OO or lobby apple for a real office suite or just say fuck it and buy msoffice?
If not openoffice then maybe koffice or abiword/gnumeric or something.
It just strikes me as being totally arrogant to say "what you gave me for free isn't good enough for me, go back make it so that I am happy and don't expect me to lift a finger or spend a dime either."
Maybe it's time to scratch off the mac as a supported platform for OO.
"Not to flame, but the insinuation of my post was that most of the linux gui toolkits are mimicking windows -- and therefore failing to make true innovations,"
I agree with you. But most is not all. There are lots of interesting gui work going on in the open source world both in linux and other operating systems. There are even higher level stuff like lookinglass.
If you want to do interesting work it's all there. Whether or not it's popular is not that relevant.
Having said all that I do hope projects like e17 get more popular.
It's a matter of degrees. It's maybe a tiny little bit easier if you are black or hispanic but it's pretty much autmatic if your daddy is a prominent politician or if you are a model or actor.
"I said in my other reply to you, the children of the very wealthy and famous are a tiny fraction of the population at Harvard."
I simply don't believe that. First of all I really don't think they keep those kinds of stats due to the embarresment it may cause.
Most of the slots in ivy league schools are taken by legacies, the famous and the wealthy. If you have money or fame you can get in no matter how stupid you are or how bad your grades were. There is immense competition for the few remaining slots so they tend to take the smart people to fill those.
Well shit man if you want innovation look to linux. Thats where all the interesting ideas are being tried. All avalon is going to give you is a more lickable combo box.
Ask anybody who has been to an ivy league school. It's hard to get into because there are so few slots available for non righ, non famous, non legacy students but once you are in it's dead easy to graduate. If you go to some of your classes, do some of your homework, and don't spend all of your time stoned you are pretty much guaranteed to graduate. These schools bend over backwards to make sure they have an extremely high graduation rate.
I once heard an interview with a model on howard stern. He asked the model "what is in the center of the solar system". The model did not know. He asked the model if she went to collage and she said yes. He asked her where and she said "harvard".
So. Why do people go to harvard knowing full well the education you get there is no better (if not worse) then anyplace else? Because of the conncections that's why. If you go to harvard and yale you are going to be rubbing elbows with the sons and daughters of the ruling class. The rich, the politicians, the hollywood class etc. After you graduate all these connections will be priceless.
Used to be corporations would hire the ivy league knowing full well that the person you hired would use his/her connections to land deals and to get favorable treatment from the govt. Well that's no longer useful because the govt is for sale to anybody who wants to spend a few hundred thousands of dolars anyway.
BTW if you can get a hold of it the transcripts of kenneth Lay's congressional testimony are priceless. There is a similar incident to models where he is being asked questions by the congress lackey and he keeps saying he does not know the simplest of accounting procedures. He is asked where he went to school and what degree he got and he answers "I have an MBA from harvard business school". The entire audience erupts in laughter.
99% of windows users won't give a flying fuck how their IE or outlook renders. They use their computers for email, web and maybe an occational word document.
99% of business users won't give a flying fuck about avalon because they spend their days inside outlook, excel and access.
99% of sysadmins won't give a flying fuck because they only log into servers once is a great while.
100% of linux users won't give a shit.
100% of Mac users won't give a shit.
So the only people who care will be 1% of the windows users who are geeks.
Like most business books this book suffers from unneeded verboseness. The ideas are simple and could fit in a book quarter the size and yet he keeps constantly repeating himself hoping to fill more pages.
Honestly you can reduce this book to someting like 10 pages.
BTW for most people the problem is not organizing things it actually doing them. When faced with your daily mountain of mindless, repetitive, do nothing, corporate bullshit work it's hard to get yourself motivated to anything. Instead you could organize all that work get a feeling of accomplishment.
Of course he knows. He is not an idiot. He is laying down the groundwork to get open source developers thrown in jail or worse. When the time comes nobody will complain about communists being thrown in jail just like today when nobody complains about the terrorists being thrown in jail without juries, trials, charges, or lawyers.
He knows perfectly well what he is doing. He is laying the groundwork, he is taking over the converstation, he is redefining the terms of the argument.
From now on you are a communist and he is a capitalist hero. When the cops break down your door and confiscate your equipment the press will report that "a possible communist was arrested today".
If we let him he will own this argument. From now on you are all communists in the eyes of the average american. The proper thing to do here is take back the language. From now on you must always refer to any MS employee as a fascist. You must refer to any open source developer as a saint. You have no choice. you have to win this war of words.
You guys just don't get. Bill Gates doesn't care about the facts. He is talking to the average americna who not only doesn't know the facts but also doesn't give a shit.
He is calling you a communist because he knows how the average american will react to that. To the average american communist means evil and harmful. If your neighbor was a communist you would move or burn his house down. If your kid is hanging around with communists you ground him.
To the average american communists belong in jail or ought to be kicked out of the country.
That's what he is doing here. In a very real and literal sense he is laying the groundwork for setting up the arrests of open source developers. It all starts by calling them communists.
Slashdot Mirror
"I am the end user."
No you are AN end user. A rather stupid one too.
"This is what Linux freaks don't get, they run Linux because it's Linux. I run Windows 2000 because it stays out of my way while I do what I actually want to do with my computer."
Linux is much better at staying out of your way then windows 2000. You can't make it work but I can.
"As long as you have every single option and its impact on the system memorized, and you are a perfect typist."
In most configuration files you'll see lines that start with a "#". These are called comments. Virtually every config file in your linux distribution has these comments in it. You should read them sometimes because they contain valuable information about the configuration options.
"A Linux box simply isn't usable with the same degree of transparency of the operating system that you get with Windows and MacOS. The problem is not that the user isn't knowledgeable enough, it's that the operating system isn't doing its job."
Nah, it's the user. It works fine for me. It's OK though. You can't make it work so leave it for us "linux freaks".
Would it really be that burdensome to ATI to publish some specs so that other people can write drivers?
Also since they have drivers for mac os X how much harder would it be to write linux drivers?
Wow here is a post that basically says "linux sux" and it's modded up to 5!!!!.
It's not like this guy has an original complaint either. "I can't make it work without a text editor" crap. As if working a text editor was some kind of a herculean task.
I didn't say it was a bad thing. I simply pointed out that it's an option.
Just pay for something and call it a day.
" So the OO guys should be beyond criticism? Jesus-- get over yourselves..."
If you don't like it get your money back.
"Not only do Mac users have to put up with the shit that is OO.o, but they (we) are completely within their rights to voice complaints about OO.o."
You don't have to put up with it. Nobod is forcing you to use it. If you don't like it use something else.
"Without a Macintosh version using Macintosh interface conventions, Open Office will never be able to replace MS Office in the corporate world."
That's just pure bullshit. OO will do just fine in the corporate market without mac support. Mac support never has been and never will be an obstacle. Like you said it's like 1% of the corporate desktops.
"Mac users already seem to have a very nice office apps suite available from Apple: iWork."
First of all iWork does not have a spreadsheet as far as I can see. Secondly so what? There are dozens of office software you can buy. Just buy them and leave the OO guys alone.
"I was really looking forward to an Aqua port of OO.o."
So what are you going to do then? Now that insulting the OO guys and berating their work didn't result in a native build of OO what's left?
Will the mac userbase start an open source office project? Will they try and port OO themselves? Will they try and port koffice or something.
Honestly will the mac user community do anything about this or will they simply pay for msoffice and call it a day?
"These are all completely unacceptable in a mass market office suite."
I think this is exactly why OO will never be ported to macosx. The developers know that the mac crowd will not accept OO unless it's better then MS office. The windows and linux oo users are more tolerant and flexible in their expectations. They are willing to use something for free even if it does not work as well as something that costs 400 dollars. Mac users would rather pay the 400 dollars then to use anything that would spoil their mac experience.
I think this is a good decision by the OO guys. It would be really hard to support or live up to the expectations of the typical mac user. It would be a thankless job and it would be very painful.
I can't say this without being a huge asshole but i'll try.
If the mac users are really that picky about the UI why don't they pay for the development of a mac version of OO or lobby apple for a real office suite or just say fuck it and buy msoffice?
If not openoffice then maybe koffice or abiword/gnumeric or something.
It just strikes me as being totally arrogant to say "what you gave me for free isn't good enough for me, go back make it so that I am happy and don't expect me to lift a finger or spend a dime either."
Maybe it's time to scratch off the mac as a supported platform for OO.
What's your definition of rich? To me anybody who can send their kids to a 50K a year for prep school is rich.
Maybe you are calling these people "upper middle class" but I call them rich.
"Not to flame, but the insinuation of my post was that most of the linux gui toolkits are mimicking windows -- and therefore failing to make true innovations,"
I agree with you. But most is not all. There are lots of interesting gui work going on in the open source world both in linux and other operating systems. There are even higher level stuff like lookinglass.
If you want to do interesting work it's all there. Whether or not it's popular is not that relevant.
Having said all that I do hope projects like e17 get more popular.
It's a matter of degrees. It's maybe a tiny little bit easier if you are black or hispanic but it's pretty much autmatic if your daddy is a prominent politician or if you are a model or actor.
"I said in my other reply to you, the children of the very wealthy and famous are a tiny fraction of the population at Harvard."
I simply don't believe that. First of all I really don't think they keep those kinds of stats due to the embarresment it may cause.
If you get in. Your chances of getting in are much higher is you are famous, rich or legacy.
Most of the slots in ivy league schools are taken by legacies, the famous and the wealthy. If you have money or fame you can get in no matter how stupid you are or how bad your grades were. There is immense competition for the few remaining slots so they tend to take the smart people to fill those.
Well shit man if you want innovation look to linux. Thats where all the interesting ideas are being tried. All avalon is going to give you is a more lickable combo box.
Ask anybody who has been to an ivy league school. It's hard to get into because there are so few slots available for non righ, non famous, non legacy students but once you are in it's dead easy to graduate. If you go to some of your classes, do some of your homework, and don't spend all of your time stoned you are pretty much guaranteed to graduate. These schools bend over backwards to make sure they have an extremely high graduation rate.
I once heard an interview with a model on howard stern. He asked the model "what is in the center of the solar system". The model did not know. He asked the model if she went to collage and she said yes. He asked her where and she said "harvard".
So. Why do people go to harvard knowing full well the education you get there is no better (if not worse) then anyplace else? Because of the conncections that's why. If you go to harvard and yale you are going to be rubbing elbows with the sons and daughters of the ruling class. The rich, the politicians, the hollywood class etc. After you graduate all these connections will be priceless.
Used to be corporations would hire the ivy league knowing full well that the person you hired would use his/her connections to land deals and to get favorable treatment from the govt. Well that's no longer useful because the govt is for sale to anybody who wants to spend a few hundred thousands of dolars anyway.
BTW if you can get a hold of it the transcripts of kenneth Lay's congressional testimony are priceless. There is a similar incident to models where he is being asked questions by the congress lackey and he keeps saying he does not know the simplest of accounting procedures. He is asked where he went to school and what degree he got and he answers "I have an MBA from harvard business school". The entire audience erupts in laughter.
"I am psyched about Avalon. Here's why:"
I am not psyched about it and here is why.
99% of windows users won't give a flying fuck how their IE or outlook renders. They use their computers for email, web and maybe an occational word document.
99% of business users won't give a flying fuck about avalon because they spend their days inside outlook, excel and access.
99% of sysadmins won't give a flying fuck because they only log into servers once is a great while.
100% of linux users won't give a shit.
100% of Mac users won't give a shit.
So the only people who care will be 1% of the windows users who are geeks.
la di freaking da as they say.
"Maybe you're in the wrong work environment for your skills / aptitude."
Probably but then again I have to put food on the table and it pays well.
I guess that's why they call it work.
No, the slashdot threading system is all fucked up.
Like most business books this book suffers from unneeded verboseness. The ideas are simple and could fit in a book quarter the size and yet he keeps constantly repeating himself hoping to fill more pages.
Honestly you can reduce this book to someting like 10 pages.
BTW for most people the problem is not organizing things it actually doing them. When faced with your daily mountain of mindless, repetitive, do nothing, corporate bullshit work it's hard to get yourself motivated to anything. Instead you could organize all that work get a feeling of accomplishment.
You don't but you can bet your ass that the majority of the country does. Virtually 100% of the red staters definately do.
Of course he knows. He is not an idiot. He is laying down the groundwork to get open source developers thrown in jail or worse. When the time comes nobody will complain about communists being thrown in jail just like today when nobody complains about the terrorists being thrown in jail without juries, trials, charges, or lawyers.
Wake up, you are next.
He knows perfectly well what he is doing. He is laying the groundwork, he is taking over the converstation, he is redefining the terms of the argument.
From now on you are a communist and he is a capitalist hero. When the cops break down your door and confiscate your equipment the press will report that "a possible communist was arrested today".
If we let him he will own this argument. From now on you are all communists in the eyes of the average american. The proper thing to do here is take back the language. From now on you must always refer to any MS employee as a fascist. You must refer to any open source developer as a saint. You have no choice. you have to win this war of words.
You guys just don't get. Bill Gates doesn't care about the facts. He is talking to the average americna who not only doesn't know the facts but also doesn't give a shit.
He is calling you a communist because he knows how the average american will react to that. To the average american communist means evil and harmful. If your neighbor was a communist you would move or burn his house down. If your kid is hanging around with communists you ground him.
To the average american communists belong in jail or ought to be kicked out of the country.
That's what he is doing here. In a very real and literal sense he is laying the groundwork for setting up the arrests of open source developers. It all starts by calling them communists.