I'm far from a command-line nazi, but I don't understand what it is about typing a few words that makes that method an 'automatic fail'? I think it's the fact that if anyone can click around in the GUI, find "Add/Remove Programs", and be able to start installing stuff relatively easily. You'll never find someone who is new to computers who can sit down at a terminal and figure out on their own that "apt-get" or "aptitude" is the program to use to install or remove stuff (substitute "emerge", "yast", etc. as appropriate). Furthermore, with the CLI, you have to know parameters. It's not just "apt-get package name" it's "apt-get install package name". You also have to know the name of the package. Sure, Apt will let you search for a package, but you can't do "apt-get search keyword", you have to use apt-cache. Of course, if you know the commands apt-get and apt-cache, you can read all about them from either "man apt-get" or "apt-get --help". Man isn't obvious for someone unless they're told about it (but a Help menu in a GUI is), and most of the time just typing a command without any of the required parameters will cause the help file to come up... But often, man pages and help screens are long and not formatted in a way that's easy for a new user to understand.
I use the CLI a lot, but when it comes to installing packages, I usually go for Synaptic, because I can search for a package (or for a type of app), and see a clear list of what's available. I can easily see what packages are installed, which are not yet installed, which ones have been partially removed, which ones were installed but not from synaptic, etc.
It's great to have the CLI, you can do a lot with it. But instructions for a new user shouldn't require the CLI. When someone is a little more comfortable with the system and realizes that Linux isn't going to kill them, if they really want to get to know it better, that's the moment I would introduce them to the CLI.
...the point being made in the email is that there is no mechanism to explain what to do to a casual user. What exactly is Windows trying to do to a casual user? Sometimes it feels like it's really trying to screw them up!
I don't think we should neglect to point out, also, that the Add/Remove Programs dialog in Windows can't really be used to Add programs... (well, it does give you a button to push if you're installing from a CD or a Floppy... as if anyone is installing programs from floppies). It certainly isn't a repository of programs for Windows that can be downloaded and installed quickly and easily, and it doesn't help you to install programs you've already downloaded. So calling it Add/Remove Programs is kind of a usability problem on its own.
I'm pretty sure that very, very few people have ever used Add/Remove Programs in Windows to add a program, since the people who would need that kind of assistance would have Autorun turned on anyway, so the install program would launch when they put the CD in, long before the Add/Remove Programs dialog finishes loading.
Hence, Add/Remove Programs in Windows is really just Remove Programs. And considering that 3rd party tools (e.g., Revo Uninstaller, etc.) do a better job of actually completely removing programs, it really doesn't even do that very well.
Nowadays, distros like this will use one DVD image instead of a bunch of CD images.
If you'd actually go to the download page, you'd see that there are options for
1) a single live CD, for either KDE or Gnome,
2) a DVD, or
3) a network install
I tried the beta a few weeks ago, and while I realize that a beta is a beta, and therefore subject to bugs, I have a hard time understanding why my no-frills Logitech USB mouse, which works with every other distribution of Linux or version of Windows that I've used in the past 5 years, would not work with the Open Suse beta.
That, and the network manager kept prompting me for my WEP key repeatedly, even when I had the hard switch for my wireless turned off.
And I couldn't stand the graphical package manager.
And I think the "slab" menu is a pain in the butt.
I don't think the default graphical package management tool is anywhere near as easy to use or as convenient as Synaptic. Every time I wanted to install a new package, it seemed to insist on updating the repo information (well, maybe only once a day, not necessarily every time), whether I wanted to or not... so I'd have to wait for quite a while before I could actually look through the packages. Then I didn't see a way to queue up a number of packages to install all at once. It seemed to want to install one at a time.
Command line yast might be all right for adding packages, I used it a little when I tried the Open Suse 11 beta, but I didn't do anything very complicated with it.
Why should there be a difference? Analog Betamax was top of the line technology back then (better quality than VHS), and being able to record television was a revolutionary step in the TV experience.
Now that our televisions and our cable/satellite service and our movie rentals have all evolved to high-definition, you say that we're expected to move backwards and accept the hands of the media companies to control what we can timeshift and when?
There's nothing revolutionary about HD-PVRs. It's just a basic step up from non-HD PVRs from the customer's point of view. Getting the new flavor of something we've always had. I understand that it messes up the companies strategies of getting customers to pay for VOD, buying DVD/Blu-Ray movies, etc., but I think it's their ethical responsibility to find new revenue streams that don't hurt paying customers, rather than create/buy legislation that imposes artificial restrictions against rights customers have always enjoyed.
I guess a lot of people here must spend more time looking at serious stuff that they're really interested in on wikipedia than I do. I think wikipedia is great for getting a high-level understanding of a new technical subject. If I want to find out more, I can follow any applicable reference links. Of course the text of the articles have to taken with a grain of salt, and I know that just because a reference is cited doesn't mean the reference is any good, bot at least there's some basic information to get started.
But where I really think wikipedia is great is for pop culture references... Things that don't have a lot of hard-to-understand scientific details, and that are more common knowledge to more people. Things, as you mentioned, like music, movies, TV, etc.
I think wikipedia has really been great for TV shows, especially those with a die-hard, internet-savvy fan base. A single TV series can hundreds of articles on episodes, characters, locations, themes, symbolism, etc., and you could spend all day learning more than you ever wanted to know about a single show.
Since the new iPhone is pretty clearly subsidized, dropping the contract would require return of the iPhone. Would you (could you?) have to return the phone, or would they make you pay an early termination fee if you dropped your contract?
I think it's a reality that any SUV owner that doesn't really need to be driving an SUV has brought on themselves. Sure some people should drive them. Sometimes it's for business use. Some people need them for the types of conditions they drive in. But a lot of people drive SUV's just because that's what's *awesome*. Those people have contributed towards increased demand for gasoline, and have polluted the environment. Now the pendulum is swinging back, and SUV owners have to pay the consequences for their bad decisions.
So it may be a reality, but you (and many others) brought it on yourself. If you're one of those people that really does have a good reason for driving an SUV, then I'm going to assume it's still worth it for you. Otherwise, please quietly accept the consequences of your decisions.
Of course, you might just be able to buy it without contract at a huge "premium" like you can with any other phone and save yourself the trouble of doing that in the first place...
I doubt it. I believe that in Steve's presentation yesterday, he said that the maximum price anywhere in the world would be $199... meaning that they aren't going to allow any unlocked iPhones. Not to mention, everywhere (that I'm aware of) that Apple is selling iPhones, they're doing it with exclusive agreements with one carrier in each market.
Given the fact that this one is called "Snow Leopard" and not Lynx or Meercat or tabby or any other type of cat more distant from Leopard, I would guess that Snow Leopard is not intended to be a major upgrade from Leopard, and I think it's actually somewhat of a confession that they want to make Leopard much better before they move on from it.
Hopefully they'll have a separate "upgrade from Leopard" SKU that they either won't charge for, or that will be a much smaller price than the usual price.
Well, it looks like he didn't have any announcements about prices on iPods, and according to the Apple Store, they're still all the same. But the iPhone was always described as "The best iPod [Apple] has ever made," among other things...
And now, for $199, you can buy an 8GB 3G iPhone, which is a pretty sweet iPod plus a phone, internet connectivity, 3rd party apps, or you can buy an 8GB nano, which is just an iPod with a tiny screen and a wheel. I understand that this new iPhone price may be subsidized by the carriers, and that it probably locks a customer into the 2 year contract even more than they were with the old iPhone, but still, there's something about seeing these prices on the website that just doesn't sit right. Not to mention that the 8GB iPhone is now $100 less expensive than the 8GB iPod Touch, which has less hardware built into it... (by the way, does the Touch get GPS, too?).
I'm still expecting either price cuts or big storage increases on the Flash-based iPods. In any case, if I were in the market for a new iPod, I'd wait a little longer before I buy.
My question is how does that affect the price of the other iPods, especially the Nano and the Touch... I guess that will probably be answered in the next couple of minutes... Hopefully, anyway. Maybe it just means larger Nanos at the same price point, and reduced prices on the Touches.
I know people are excited about it and all, but I would think that we'd wait at least until Steve is done talking about the 3G iPhone on the stage before posting this on Slashdot... Digg is for posting announcements before they're even done announcing them. I'm pretty sure there's still some features that haven't been covered yet...
I know it's not the same as how it used to be, but now (as of at least 2.4.2) you can set a minimum number of lines for the text box. If you go over that number of lines, the box grows.
Don't forget that carriers in a lot of countries around the world have just barely made agreements with Apple in the last few weeks. There will probably be a pretty good size increase in sales coming up, with or without the 3G version. Or maybe those agreements are all pending the 3G iPhone... In either case, I think the rest of the year will see a pretty good increase in the rate at which iPhones are being sold.
***The above comment was brought to you by IRiver. Remember, the next time you get sick of ads, get an IRiver. IRiver will make your life better than you ever though it could be. IRiver is guaranteed to reduce the amount of marketing you take in. IRiver should not be used by people with liver or kidney problems. IRiver should not be used while driving, until you have used it long enough to know how IRiver will affect you. Use IRiver responsibly.
People buy desktops for connecting to backend office infrastructure Some (meaning relatively few) people buy desktops for that. Probably many of the people you work with. I know how to connect to my office's Exchange server and VPN, but I don't do it from my home desktop (occasionally with my laptop from work, but I rarely even do that). Most home users, however, buy desktops for sending e-mails, browsing YouTube, MySpace/Facebook and the blogs of friends and families, playing games, and for their kids to do their homework on. Most people out there don't know about Exchange, VPN's, Citrix or Remote Desktop. They don't need to know about it. They just need their Internets.
The qttray.exe stuff is incredibly annoying, especially since no matter what you do to disable it, the next time there's a QT update, or an iTunes update, or probably even if there's a Safari update (although I don't have Safari installed, so I don't know for sure), there it is again, back in the system tray.
But the other thing that annoys me to no end about QuickTime is if you open QT directly (from the start menu or from a desktop shortcut, as opposed to opening it by clicking on a file associated with it), it opens a QT window with all kinds of links to QT content, which is so hideously laid out and busy that it's painful to look at. Then when you go to File -> Open to actually open a media file, it opens it in a new window, leaving the hideous one still open and hideous. Why? Why? Why?
Slashdot Mirror
I use the CLI a lot, but when it comes to installing packages, I usually go for Synaptic, because I can search for a package (or for a type of app), and see a clear list of what's available. I can easily see what packages are installed, which are not yet installed, which ones have been partially removed, which ones were installed but not from synaptic, etc.
It's great to have the CLI, you can do a lot with it. But instructions for a new user shouldn't require the CLI. When someone is a little more comfortable with the system and realizes that Linux isn't going to kill them, if they really want to get to know it better, that's the moment I would introduce them to the CLI.
...the point being made in the email is that there is no mechanism to explain what to do to a casual user. What exactly is Windows trying to do to a casual user? Sometimes it feels like it's really trying to screw them up!I don't think we should neglect to point out, also, that the Add/Remove Programs dialog in Windows can't really be used to Add programs... (well, it does give you a button to push if you're installing from a CD or a Floppy... as if anyone is installing programs from floppies). It certainly isn't a repository of programs for Windows that can be downloaded and installed quickly and easily, and it doesn't help you to install programs you've already downloaded. So calling it Add/Remove Programs is kind of a usability problem on its own.
I'm pretty sure that very, very few people have ever used Add/Remove Programs in Windows to add a program, since the people who would need that kind of assistance would have Autorun turned on anyway, so the install program would launch when they put the CD in, long before the Add/Remove Programs dialog finishes loading.
Hence, Add/Remove Programs in Windows is really just Remove Programs. And considering that 3rd party tools (e.g., Revo Uninstaller, etc.) do a better job of actually completely removing programs, it really doesn't even do that very well.
Nowadays, distros like this will use one DVD image instead of a bunch of CD images. If you'd actually go to the download page, you'd see that there are options for
1) a single live CD, for either KDE or Gnome,
2) a DVD, or
3) a network install
I tried the beta a few weeks ago, and while I realize that a beta is a beta, and therefore subject to bugs, I have a hard time understanding why my no-frills Logitech USB mouse, which works with every other distribution of Linux or version of Windows that I've used in the past 5 years, would not work with the Open Suse beta.
That, and the network manager kept prompting me for my WEP key repeatedly, even when I had the hard switch for my wireless turned off.
And I couldn't stand the graphical package manager.
And I think the "slab" menu is a pain in the butt.
I don't think the default graphical package management tool is anywhere near as easy to use or as convenient as Synaptic. Every time I wanted to install a new package, it seemed to insist on updating the repo information (well, maybe only once a day, not necessarily every time), whether I wanted to or not... so I'd have to wait for quite a while before I could actually look through the packages. Then I didn't see a way to queue up a number of packages to install all at once. It seemed to want to install one at a time.
Command line yast might be all right for adding packages, I used it a little when I tried the Open Suse 11 beta, but I didn't do anything very complicated with it.
I would like to think that... but so far, the "empoying" typo has been fixed, but the price has not...
Why should there be a difference? Analog Betamax was top of the line technology back then (better quality than VHS), and being able to record television was a revolutionary step in the TV experience.
Now that our televisions and our cable/satellite service and our movie rentals have all evolved to high-definition, you say that we're expected to move backwards and accept the hands of the media companies to control what we can timeshift and when?
There's nothing revolutionary about HD-PVRs. It's just a basic step up from non-HD PVRs from the customer's point of view. Getting the new flavor of something we've always had. I understand that it messes up the companies strategies of getting customers to pay for VOD, buying DVD/Blu-Ray movies, etc., but I think it's their ethical responsibility to find new revenue streams that don't hurt paying customers, rather than create/buy legislation that imposes artificial restrictions against rights customers have always enjoyed.
I guess a lot of people here must spend more time looking at serious stuff that they're really interested in on wikipedia than I do. I think wikipedia is great for getting a high-level understanding of a new technical subject. If I want to find out more, I can follow any applicable reference links. Of course the text of the articles have to taken with a grain of salt, and I know that just because a reference is cited doesn't mean the reference is any good, bot at least there's some basic information to get started.
But where I really think wikipedia is great is for pop culture references... Things that don't have a lot of hard-to-understand scientific details, and that are more common knowledge to more people. Things, as you mentioned, like music, movies, TV, etc.
I think wikipedia has really been great for TV shows, especially those with a die-hard, internet-savvy fan base. A single TV series can hundreds of articles on episodes, characters, locations, themes, symbolism, etc., and you could spend all day learning more than you ever wanted to know about a single show.
I think it's a reality that any SUV owner that doesn't really need to be driving an SUV has brought on themselves. Sure some people should drive them. Sometimes it's for business use. Some people need them for the types of conditions they drive in. But a lot of people drive SUV's just because that's what's *awesome*. Those people have contributed towards increased demand for gasoline, and have polluted the environment. Now the pendulum is swinging back, and SUV owners have to pay the consequences for their bad decisions.
So it may be a reality, but you (and many others) brought it on yourself. If you're one of those people that really does have a good reason for driving an SUV, then I'm going to assume it's still worth it for you. Otherwise, please quietly accept the consequences of your decisions.
I doubt it. I believe that in Steve's presentation yesterday, he said that the maximum price anywhere in the world would be $199... meaning that they aren't going to allow any unlocked iPhones. Not to mention, everywhere (that I'm aware of) that Apple is selling iPhones, they're doing it with exclusive agreements with one carrier in each market.
Given the fact that this one is called "Snow Leopard" and not Lynx or Meercat or tabby or any other type of cat more distant from Leopard, I would guess that Snow Leopard is not intended to be a major upgrade from Leopard, and I think it's actually somewhat of a confession that they want to make Leopard much better before they move on from it.
Hopefully they'll have a separate "upgrade from Leopard" SKU that they either won't charge for, or that will be a much smaller price than the usual price.
Well, it looks like he didn't have any announcements about prices on iPods, and according to the Apple Store, they're still all the same. But the iPhone was always described as "The best iPod [Apple] has ever made," among other things...
And now, for $199, you can buy an 8GB 3G iPhone, which is a pretty sweet iPod plus a phone, internet connectivity, 3rd party apps, or you can buy an 8GB nano, which is just an iPod with a tiny screen and a wheel. I understand that this new iPhone price may be subsidized by the carriers, and that it probably locks a customer into the 2 year contract even more than they were with the old iPhone, but still, there's something about seeing these prices on the website that just doesn't sit right. Not to mention that the 8GB iPhone is now $100 less expensive than the 8GB iPod Touch, which has less hardware built into it... (by the way, does the Touch get GPS, too?).
I'm still expecting either price cuts or big storage increases on the Flash-based iPods. In any case, if I were in the market for a new iPod, I'd wait a little longer before I buy.
My question is how does that affect the price of the other iPods, especially the Nano and the Touch... I guess that will probably be answered in the next couple of minutes... Hopefully, anyway. Maybe it just means larger Nanos at the same price point, and reduced prices on the Touches.
I know people are excited about it and all, but I would think that we'd wait at least until Steve is done talking about the 3G iPhone on the stage before posting this on Slashdot... Digg is for posting announcements before they're even done announcing them. I'm pretty sure there's still some features that haven't been covered yet...
I know it's not the same as how it used to be, but now (as of at least 2.4.2) you can set a minimum number of lines for the text box. If you go over that number of lines, the box grows.
Don't forget that carriers in a lot of countries around the world have just barely made agreements with Apple in the last few weeks. There will probably be a pretty good size increase in sales coming up, with or without the 3G version. Or maybe those agreements are all pending the 3G iPhone... In either case, I think the rest of the year will see a pretty good increase in the rate at which iPhones are being sold.
Wow, according to the article you linked to, the frogs actually break their own bones to pop the claws out.
These frogs really are badass.
But he only stole it a little bit, a whole bunch of times...
But what does that look like? How would you describe it to someone who hasn't ever seen the color before?
You didn't describe it, you just pointed it out.
***The above comment was brought to you by IRiver. Remember, the next time you get sick of ads, get an IRiver. IRiver will make your life better than you ever though it could be. IRiver is guaranteed to reduce the amount of marketing you take in. IRiver should not be used by people with liver or kidney problems. IRiver should not be used while driving, until you have used it long enough to know how IRiver will affect you. Use IRiver responsibly.
Does it come with Zealous Autoconfig?
The qttray.exe stuff is incredibly annoying, especially since no matter what you do to disable it, the next time there's a QT update, or an iTunes update, or probably even if there's a Safari update (although I don't have Safari installed, so I don't know for sure), there it is again, back in the system tray.
But the other thing that annoys me to no end about QuickTime is if you open QT directly (from the start menu or from a desktop shortcut, as opposed to opening it by clicking on a file associated with it), it opens a QT window with all kinds of links to QT content, which is so hideously laid out and busy that it's painful to look at. Then when you go to File -> Open to actually open a media file, it opens it in a new window, leaving the hideous one still open and hideous. Why? Why? Why?
Long live VLC!