I personally would be happier if more money was spent on the radio, especially Radio 4, which is pretty much a unique phenomenon in the world, as far as I can tell. I'd much rather listen to a well researched Woman's Hour than watch another bloody episode of Eastenders.
OK, I use SuSE Linux, so the experience I have with Linux does not compare with someone installing, say, Slack, but SuSE is well packaged, comes with good documentation, and is aimed squarely at the professional user, so it fits the bill for this discussion.
1. Really Easy Installation(TM) (In order for Joe Average to actually set up Linux, we need to make Linux just as easy to install as, say, a software package from the store.)
It actually cannot get any easier than YaST2. It's significantly easier than installing a Windows box, significantly quicker, and with very few exceptions, ALL your hardware will be working on first boot, without installing anything from vendor CDs, UNLIKE Windows.
2. Really Easy Internet Configuration (Make getting connected to the Internet just as easy as on Mac OS X)
OK, it's pretty bloody easy. You can set up a dialup connection using exclusively GUI now, and SuSE even comes with a relatively up-to-date list of ISPs (something Windows with its 3 year release cycle just can't accomplish).
3. Really Easy Software Installation (Even though we all love apt-get, Portage, and ports/packages [FreeBSD], Joe Average will still not be happy if he had to type in pkg_add -r firefox to install Firefox. Provide a graphical tool that does this for him. Plus, I said apt-get/Portage/ports for a reason. They resolve dependencies.)
I want gnucash, I put a DVD in the drive, fire up yast, check the box next to Gnucash and its installed and working without a reboot. Same applies for Firefox, Evolution, OpenOffice, Gaim, etc etc etc. Even for software not packaged by SuSE (for example Skype) it's a case of downloading the RPM, and opening it with Konqueror. Again, how much more simple do you want?
4. Really Easy Desktops (GNOME and KDE have accomplished this, minus copy/paste. Keep it up!)
Well, I personally have no problem with copy/paste. It's just a matter of getting used to mark-means-copy, middle-click-means-paste.
5. Really Good Applications (Keep it up, OpenOffice, Firefox, Gnumeric, Abiword, etc.)
I think you answered your own point here. May I also add Kopete, Gaim, Skype, Unreal Tournament 2004, Gnucash, GTKPod, Amarok, K3B...
6. Really Good Documentation (Any time a user needs help, he/she should be able to have very thorough, very good, documentation at his/her disposal).
Yes, this is a big problem, but most of the very poorly documented apps are still in beta. Linux in the desktop space is young, and a lot of the apps are also young. Mature projects (eg. OpenOffice/Star Office, the GIMP) and projects with weight behind them (eg Evolution) tend to be very well documented.
7. Really Good Legacy Support (There are still lots of people using their old 100-500MHz computers running Windows 95/98, with only about 64MB RAM. Even though I don't think KDE or GNOME will ever run on these computers, there needs to be some usable desktops and programs for this segment of the market. Perhaps XFCE will fill this niche.)
Legacy support is where Linux really thrives. My wife's laptop is a PII-366 with a comically small amount of RAM (it may be 16mb, not sure) and it's running SuSE 9.1 without a fuss. Slowly, but it works AOK. She can do a hell of a lot more than she would have been able to with the OS it shipped with (Win98 Crappy Edition) or with a current windows OS (XP on a PII? Ouch). My firewall box is an AMD K6 166. It's running SuSE 9.2. Okay, so Apache::Gallery might struggle a bit, but for the core tasks (DNS, NAT routing, file serving etc) it's quite efficient.
Yes, absolutely, but what people often don't realise that it's a much better financial decision to take the money and spend it on a knowledgeable consultancy/development team that can actually fix these problems, than spending it on a monkey in a call centre who'll add your ticket to their system, shove it to the bottom of the queue and ignore it for three years.
I suppose it's the standard thing of needing to pay a Corporation so that there's someone to blame when it all inevitably goes tits up.
"We paid all this money to these people and it's all gone horribly wrong to the tune of billions of dollars! Who do I sue?" "Er, a Free-Thinking Collective of Software Enthusiasts, sir" "... Jeff, you're fired"
We all know about the illusion of culpability (look at Microsoft) but people still need to be able to blame someone else.
... it's understandable, it's 2005 now, B5 is OLD. So much has come after it. In a world that contains Farscape and Firefly, B5 does look childish, dated and a bit hackneyed. However, you have to remember that when this first came out it really was groundbreaking sci-fi. Most of what came after owes it a big debt.
So, you probably won't get it now. It's too late. If you'd watched it in 1994, you'd get it.
The students at the school I went to quickly worked out that At Ease could be circumvented simply by pressing the "Interrupt" key that Mac Classics had handily available on the side of the case. The teacher wrote in to MacUser and the solution they suggested was to "detach the keys":).
At least they had got a tad more of a clue than when I was there. I got banned from the computer room for locking a file (ie opening the properties box and clicking "locked"). They had to march me into the computer room and make me show them how to unlock it. It didn't help that my friend had recently renamed the hard drive to "This is shit" because all the games had been taken off.
Oh, and I can't count how many times the head of computing used to have to go round renaming "Pubic Folder"... fun times.
I "discovered" Skype, discovered that it was Linux friendly, and tested it sufficiently to find that it was quite adequate to meet my minimal requirements. So, I asked our technical guru to install it in the office where all the machines also use linux and have a look. I work from home, and since we spend a lot of time on the phone I figured we had the potential to save some money.
He muttered that he'd get around to it sometime, so next time I was in the office I installed it myself, and using the USB VOIP handset he had bought about a year ago for this precise purpose we had a little testing session and found it very useable (we also found out that with our wireless lan my laptop could become the most expensive portable phone ever).
So, next day, at home, I go to call him up and find his skype username offline. I mail him and ask him to log back on, to which he replies that he's not going to, he's experimenting with a SIP based solution, and since that's the protocol Skype must use anyway (no amount of arguement to the contrary got through) he could set up an improved solution.
We experimented for a week with an asterix server and KPhone. It sucked. He bought winmodems to get us external phone access on the system, faffed about for a while, and guess what, many months on, we're still using the phone network and running up the bills.
Now, I'm not arguing that an open source self-managed SIP solution is not the superior option, it almost certainly is. But Skype JUST WORKS.
Oh, yeah, does anyone know the correct pronounciation of Skype? It reads in my head as SKIPE, but a friend of mine insists it's correctly pronounced SKIPPY.
"That martians with big elbows are going to take over Kent" "It's true, Scully, there's all these files. there's hundreds of files, you've got to see these files" and by the end of the episode there's martians with big elbows everywhere. Scully's beating them off with a tennis racket... "I believe you, I believe you, Scully... Mulder" "Do you know who you are?"'
</obligatory Izzard quote>
Probably not even that. He was probably just amused that he could see his laser pointer spot on the plane. But he's probably regretting it now... I know I'm probably being dim here, but one assumes that the plane is in the air when this is happening and that the protagonist is on the ground. I seem to recall from my brief encounters with aeroplanes that the cockpit was situated at the front of the plane, on the top. How was the laser pointer even getting near the pilot's eyes?
What blog menace? Seriously, if you don't want to see any blogs, then don't. There's an entire internet out there. Or do you just like having something to complain about?
I didn't "just start with a negative view of Microsoft". Many of the posters here, myself included, work in IT and have developed out negative view of Microsoft over many long years of service packs, software patches, virus outbreaks, crashes and downtime.
It is *our* view and we cherish it. Doesn't it ever surprise you that there aren't nearly as many opponents of Open Source? Wonder why that is... ?
While iFolder is proprietary Novell Pay-thru-the-nose server based software for sharing files between work and home (and anywhere else) they have open sourced a version of this (found here) which would count as P2P software with a perfectly legitimate use, and corporately backed as well.
I spent several frustrating hours battling with a thermaltake server case that my colleague had thought it would be a good idea to supply to a customer. I hope I never have to deal with one of these again. Some of the various problems I encountered:
The drives are fitted using special sliding runners so that you can just click and slide the drives out. Great idea, unfortunately for the four bays the case had they only saw fit to supply two sets of runners
The aforementioned runners didn't fit on the DLT drive I was trying to fit. I had to get my leatherman out and hack away two of the nubs on each side that are meant to fit into the screw holes
the screwless PCI card holders are fiddly and wont close on certain cards with unusual profiles, for exaple the Adaptec LVD SCSI card that I needed to fit
the power switch actually popped out of its holder and fell into the case. I had to scrape several layers of skin off reaching round the side of the case to get it back in. If I didn't have fairly small hands I would have been SOL
the entire frontage of the case has a nasty habit of coming off completely
oh yeah, and dare I forget, all the multitudinous fans and sensor equipment in the case took up most of the available power connectors from the PSU. There wasn't enough spare to power two devices, let alone four.
Maybe the case I experienced was just unnecessarily stupid but I certainly hope never to encounter a thermaltake case again.
Used to live in India, where they take a cavalier attitude to wiring of any kind, so everyone gets their fair share of shocks, but none as funny as the time I rang my friend one afternoon, and got an engaged tone. So, I thought nothing of it and rode round there. When I got there he confronted me at the door...
"Did you phone me a few minutes ago?" "... yeah, why?" "I was rewiring my phone! You just gave me a massive shock!"... haven't been able to stop laughing at that mental image for years since... I especially loved that I got an engaged tone!
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I personally would be happier if more money was spent on the radio, especially Radio 4, which is pretty much a unique phenomenon in the world, as far as I can tell. I'd much rather listen to a well researched Woman's Hour than watch another bloody episode of Eastenders.
OK, I use SuSE Linux, so the experience I have with Linux does not compare with someone installing, say, Slack, but SuSE is well packaged, comes with good documentation, and is aimed squarely at the professional user, so it fits the bill for this discussion.
...
1. Really Easy Installation(TM) (In order for Joe Average to actually set up Linux, we need to make Linux just as easy to install as, say, a software package from the store.)
It actually cannot get any easier than YaST2. It's significantly easier than installing a Windows box, significantly quicker, and with very few exceptions, ALL your hardware will be working on first boot, without installing anything from vendor CDs, UNLIKE Windows.
2. Really Easy Internet Configuration (Make getting connected to the Internet just as easy as on Mac OS X)
OK, it's pretty bloody easy. You can set up a dialup connection using exclusively GUI now, and SuSE even comes with a relatively up-to-date list of ISPs (something Windows with its 3 year release cycle just can't accomplish).
3. Really Easy Software Installation (Even though we all love apt-get, Portage, and ports/packages [FreeBSD], Joe Average will still not be happy if he had to type in pkg_add -r firefox to install Firefox. Provide a graphical tool that does this for him. Plus, I said apt-get/Portage/ports for a reason. They resolve dependencies.)
I want gnucash, I put a DVD in the drive, fire up yast, check the box next to Gnucash and its installed and working without a reboot. Same applies for Firefox, Evolution, OpenOffice, Gaim, etc etc etc. Even for software not packaged by SuSE (for example Skype) it's a case of downloading the RPM, and opening it with Konqueror. Again, how much more simple do you want?
4. Really Easy Desktops (GNOME and KDE have accomplished this, minus copy/paste. Keep it up!)
Well, I personally have no problem with copy/paste. It's just a matter of getting used to mark-means-copy, middle-click-means-paste.
5. Really Good Applications (Keep it up, OpenOffice, Firefox, Gnumeric, Abiword, etc.)
I think you answered your own point here. May I also add Kopete, Gaim, Skype, Unreal Tournament 2004, Gnucash, GTKPod, Amarok, K3B
6. Really Good Documentation (Any time a user needs help, he/she should be able to have very thorough, very good, documentation at his/her disposal).
Yes, this is a big problem, but most of the very poorly documented apps are still in beta. Linux in the desktop space is young, and a lot of the apps are also young. Mature projects (eg. OpenOffice/Star Office, the GIMP) and projects with weight behind them (eg Evolution) tend to be very well documented.
7. Really Good Legacy Support (There are still lots of people using their old 100-500MHz computers running Windows 95/98, with only about 64MB RAM. Even though I don't think KDE or GNOME will ever run on these computers, there needs to be some usable desktops and programs for this segment of the market. Perhaps XFCE will fill this niche.)
Legacy support is where Linux really thrives. My wife's laptop is a PII-366 with a comically small amount of RAM (it may be 16mb, not sure) and it's running SuSE 9.1 without a fuss. Slowly, but it works AOK. She can do a hell of a lot more than she would have been able to with the OS it shipped with (Win98 Crappy Edition) or with a current windows OS (XP on a PII? Ouch). My firewall box is an AMD K6 166. It's running SuSE 9.2. Okay, so Apache::Gallery might struggle a bit, but for the core tasks (DNS, NAT routing, file serving etc) it's quite efficient.
Linux IS ready for the desktop.
Yes, absolutely, but what people often don't realise that it's a much better financial decision to take the money and spend it on a knowledgeable consultancy/development team that can actually fix these problems, than spending it on a monkey in a call centre who'll add your ticket to their system, shove it to the bottom of the queue and ignore it for three years.
I suppose it's the standard thing of needing to pay a Corporation so that there's someone to blame when it all inevitably goes tits up.
"We paid all this money to these people and it's all gone horribly wrong to the tune of billions of dollars! Who do I sue?"
"Er, a Free-Thinking Collective of Software Enthusiasts, sir"
"... Jeff, you're fired"
We all know about the illusion of culpability (look at Microsoft) but people still need to be able to blame someone else.
... also due this year
... it's understandable, it's 2005 now, B5 is OLD. So much has come after it. In a world that contains Farscape and Firefly, B5 does look childish, dated and a bit hackneyed. However, you have to remember that when this first came out it really was groundbreaking sci-fi. Most of what came after owes it a big debt.
So, you probably won't get it now. It's too late. If you'd watched it in 1994, you'd get it.
What? What did I do ...
... (goes back to sleep)
Oh
Some intrepid explorer has travelled to the US and has posted a pretty thorough (and glowing) review of the aforementioned device.
n y_psp/
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/02/01/review_so
You think that was bad? Try these:
What did the fish say when it swam into a wall?
Dam!
and
Two fish in a tank. One turns to the other and says, "... can you drive this thing?"
Thank you, thank you, I'm here all week.
... there's something fishy going on here ...
The students at the school I went to quickly worked out that At Ease could be circumvented simply by pressing the "Interrupt" key that Mac Classics had handily available on the side of the case. The teacher wrote in to MacUser and the solution they suggested was to "detach the keys" :).
... fun times.
At least they had got a tad more of a clue than when I was there. I got banned from the computer room for locking a file (ie opening the properties box and clicking "locked"). They had to march me into the computer room and make me show them how to unlock it. It didn't help that my friend had recently renamed the hard drive to "This is shit" because all the games had been taken off.
Oh, and I can't count how many times the head of computing used to have to go round renaming "Pubic Folder"
"Where are the fucking smart tv producers and network directors, they all quit?"
They're running CSI, Law & Order SVU, Cold Case and 24.
I "discovered" Skype, discovered that it was Linux friendly, and tested it sufficiently to find that it was quite adequate to meet my minimal requirements. So, I asked our technical guru to install it in the office where all the machines also use linux and have a look. I work from home, and since we spend a lot of time on the phone I figured we had the potential to save some money.
He muttered that he'd get around to it sometime, so next time I was in the office I installed it myself, and using the USB VOIP handset he had bought about a year ago for this precise purpose we had a little testing session and found it very useable (we also found out that with our wireless lan my laptop could become the most expensive portable phone ever).
So, next day, at home, I go to call him up and find his skype username offline. I mail him and ask him to log back on, to which he replies that he's not going to, he's experimenting with a SIP based solution, and since that's the protocol Skype must use anyway (no amount of arguement to the contrary got through) he could set up an improved solution.
We experimented for a week with an asterix server and KPhone. It sucked. He bought winmodems to get us external phone access on the system, faffed about for a while, and guess what, many months on, we're still using the phone network and running up the bills.
Now, I'm not arguing that an open source self-managed SIP solution is not the superior option, it almost certainly is. But Skype JUST WORKS.
Oh, yeah, does anyone know the correct pronounciation of Skype? It reads in my head as SKIPE, but a friend of mine insists it's correctly pronounced SKIPPY.
"That martians with big elbows are going to take over Kent" "It's true, Scully, there's all these files. there's hundreds of files, you've got to see these files" and by the end of the episode there's martians with big elbows everywhere. Scully's beating them off with a tennis racket ... "I believe you, I believe you, Scully ... Mulder" "Do you know who you are?"'
</obligatory Izzard quote>
Probably not even that. He was probably just amused that he could see his laser pointer spot on the plane. But he's probably regretting it now ...
I know I'm probably being dim here, but one assumes that the plane is in the air when this is happening and that the protagonist is on the ground. I seem to recall from my brief encounters with aeroplanes that the cockpit was situated at the front of the plane, on the top. How was the laser pointer even getting near the pilot's eyes?
What blog menace? Seriously, if you don't want to see any blogs, then don't. There's an entire internet out there. Or do you just like having something to complain about?
You're welcome :)
"the coming problem in 2038"
Phil Collins is going to release another album?
"Wooo!"
I didn't "just start with a negative view of Microsoft". Many of the posters here, myself included, work in IT and have developed out negative view of Microsoft over many long years of service packs, software patches, virus outbreaks, crashes and downtime.
... ?
It is *our* view and we cherish it. Doesn't it ever surprise you that there aren't nearly as many opponents of Open Source? Wonder why that is
Anyone writing on technological matters in a popular publication should be required to have a modicum of a clue.
Call me old fashioned.
While iFolder is proprietary Novell Pay-thru-the-nose server based software for sharing files between work and home (and anywhere else) they have open sourced a version of this (found here) which would count as P2P software with a perfectly legitimate use, and corporately backed as well.
Really? Cos I presume that it's from the money that Redhat, SUSE and now Novell, Sun and various others charge for licensing fees.
- The drives are fitted using special sliding runners so that you can just click and slide the drives out. Great idea, unfortunately for the four bays the case had they only saw fit to supply two sets of runners
- The aforementioned runners didn't fit on the DLT drive I was trying to fit. I had to get my leatherman out and hack away two of the nubs on each side that are meant to fit into the screw holes
- the screwless PCI card holders are fiddly and wont close on certain cards with unusual profiles, for exaple the Adaptec LVD SCSI card that I needed to fit
- the power switch actually popped out of its holder and fell into the case. I had to scrape several layers of skin off reaching round the side of the case to get it back in. If I didn't have fairly small hands I would have been SOL
- the entire frontage of the case has a nasty habit of coming off completely
- oh yeah, and dare I forget, all the multitudinous fans and sensor equipment in the case took up most of the available power connectors from the PSU. There wasn't enough spare to power two devices, let alone four.
Maybe the case I experienced was just unnecessarily stupid but I certainly hope never to encounter a thermaltake case again.Used to live in India, where they take a cavalier attitude to wiring of any kind, so everyone gets their fair share of shocks, but none as funny as the time I rang my friend one afternoon, and got an engaged tone. So, I thought nothing of it and rode round there. When I got there he confronted me at the door ...
... haven't been able to stop laughing at that mental image for years since ... I especially loved that I got an engaged tone!
"Did you phone me a few minutes ago?"
"... yeah, why?"
"I was rewiring my phone! You just gave me a massive shock!"