It's usually a safe bet that free software programmers are single and haven't been on a date in years... so call up an escort service in their area and have some hot chicks sent over. They'll definitely appreciate it!
I think you mean "Apparently very few reading skills". But then what do I know? All I can do is spell and use proper grammar.
What I said was that Linux has various distribitions, each with its own policies, friendliness, usability for different people, and stability.
That's not what you said. Maybe that's what you meant to say, but it's not what you actually said. Sounds like you're the one with the reading problem. Try reading your own messages before hitting the "Submit" button.
Thus, it is ignorant and stupid to judge Linux by the newest Mandrake, or Debian, or whatever, because they *DO NOT REPRESENT Linux in its entirety*, and you *CANNOT concluce* that their faults are Linux faults and will be found in all distributions.
I have not formed my judgements about GNU/Linux based on only one distribution. I have used Slackware, Red Hat, Debian, Mandrake, Suse, and many others for several years. Although they do not all suffer from the same specific defects, they all suffer from the same common, general problems due to the basic GNU/Linux architecture and development style. When I cited my difficulty installing Mandrake 8.0, I was citing only the most recent particular example of these general and common problems.
If you think Linux is more complex than it should be, then you don't have a clue.
Really, is that so? Can you back up that statement with facts? I didn't think so. Anyone who thinks that a GNU/Linux system has to be as insanely complex and disorganized as it is just to provide the functionality it can offer is simply too lazy to learn anything about usability or human-machine interfaces. There are numerous specific aspects of any given GNU/Linux distribution that simply wreak from an unnecessary lack of usability, consistency, and simplicity. Want some examples? Just look at the recent corporate analysis of GNOME's usability that was posted on Slashdot and you'll see plenty.
Linux is designed pretty much as simply as ANY system with such functionalities can be designed.
Really? That's amazing. Then apparently Windows 2000 doesn't actually exist, and is a violation of some previously undiscovered universal law of reality. It offers the same overall functionality in a much more usable package--and that is they key reason people use it over any UNIX-like system.
Grasping how Linux works is *MUCH* easier than grasping how, for example, the Windows kernel works
But hey, end users and even IT administrators don't even have to know what a kernal IS in order to get the job done with Windows 2000. The fact that you have to know stuff like what a kernal is and how it works in order to simply configure and use GNU/Linux is just more evidence as to its unnecessary complexity.
If you think it is 'poorly organized', then you are either referring to the file system - or to package layout.
Why do you incorrectly assume that I can't be speaking about more than either of those? While both the filesystem and "package layout" are poorly organized, GNU/Linux systems suffer from numerous other disorganizations. For instance, many applications hard-code filesystem paths into their source, so you actually have to recompile an application from source code if you simply want to install it to a directory of your choice. Another example? There is no distinction between a user's environment variables and system environment variables as there is in NT, so if a user unwittingly blows away a necessary system environment variable with their.bashrc file or whatnot, suddenly certain applications don't work and they have no idea why. More examples? Every application stores its configuration files in a different file format, and often times you have to learn a new scripting or programming language just to accomplish something as simple as getting X-Windows to work right with your video adaptor.
Can you say you can easily locate a file in Windows?
Yes--it's called "Search". And if you don't like using search, you know that an application's configuration is always in the registry, its files are generally always under "C:\Program Files\", and your documents are generally always under "My Documents". Pretty easy.
there is a uniform and consistent way to install and manage packages
Really? I'd sure like to see it. But all I've seen is that some things are available only as source, some are available as RPMs, some are newer RPMs that won't install on older versions of Red Hat, some require additional libraries to already be installed on your system that you might have to go track down, some are only available as slackware modules, and sometimes even when you get the source it won't even compile unless you manually hack away on some makefiles. You call that uniform and consistent?
Windows, on the other hand, has packages thrown all over the Internet, without any central repositries or such centralization.
Wow--I guess you've never heard of http://www.winfiles.com, http://www.zdnet.com, http://www.cnet.com, http://www.windowsupdate.com, or any of the other numerous central repositories of Win32 software that are out there. But why should that surprise me--you've obviously chosen to stick your head in a hole, obssess about GNU/Linux, and ignore the rest of the world.
Get a clue.
Another unbiased, fact-based response from an obviously educated and objective Slashdot reader.
there IS NO one Linux policy, way or appearance. There is no constant of Linux usability.
You're simply proving my point:
GNU/Linux lacks the essential factors that most people want and need.
This plague of ignorance about Linux has spread from ZDNet into the Slashdot crowd
Users aren't "ignorant" for wanting simplicity, consistency, or usability; these are natural needs for most people. I agree that publicity about GNU/Linux (and even projects themselves, such as GNOME and KDE) are doing both GNU/Linux and average users a disservice by claiming that the system has suddenly become easier to use or suitable for the masses. Despite new desktop environments, graphical installers, and the increasing number of games being released for the system, it is still insanely complex, poorly organized, inconsistent, and is more like an ongoing project for developers than a usable piece of software.
The conclusion seems to be that anyone who's set up a modern Linux distro (Mandrake in particular) on supported hardware would find nothing too new in XP
You can't assume that hardware is going to be supported. Every attempt I've made to install any version of Mandrake (or other Linux distros, such as Red Hat) on my apparently non-supported hardware (plug-in PCI Maxtor ATA/100 IDE controller card) has resulted in a system that locks up inexplicably while trying to boot the kernal. On the other hand, every attempt I've made to install any version of Windows on any non-supported hardware has always resulted in a successful boot and an entirely usable system -- minus sound support, minus UltraDMA support, or minus high-resolution video modes, mind you, but still entirely working and usable. When a given GNU/Linux distro can't exactly identify your monitor to feed XFree86 the correct refresh rates, it usually ends up using some defaults that are so non-standard it causes your monitor to display a rolling, flickering, totally unviewable picture -- whereas I've never seen this happen on any Windows system because Windows just defaults to the VGA 60 Hz 16 color 640x480 standard refresh rates, which work on any (S)VGA monitor. Imagine that--handling failure gracefully!
In general, GNU/Linux distributions, drivers, and applications don't handle error or failure cases well at all. Why? Because those developers only care about making the success cases work well. Screw the poor user who can't happen to get everything perfectly right on the first try--it's their own fault for being ignorant, after all, and they should just have to keep doing the entire process all over again until they get it right. God forbid any developer should spend any time, effort, or skill making things easy to use for non-experts.
Talkback data shows that recent 0.9.2 branch builds are more stable than Netscape 4.78 and we expect even better results for 0.9.3. Now is the time to try Mozilla again if you've been waiting for stability to improve." Translation: Mozilla is better than ever.
Translation: Mozilla still sucks compared to Internet Explorer, just slightly less than it did before.
Why are we comparing to Netscape 4.78? Netscape sucks! It crashes, it's slow, it doesn't support standards properly, and the user interface is clumbsy at best. This isn't news until Mozilla knocks the socks off IE 5.5 or IE 6.0.
A new sound that could revolutionise mobile telephones and safety alarms because it is less intrusive yet easy to pinpoint is being ordered worldwide after being developed by a British scientist. Anyone got some URLs for samples?
People don't like paying (more) for something that was previously available free (or at a lower cost). People naturally feel cheated. If the pricing difference is extreme enough, people will not only not like paying but they will actually stop paying (and will get their hands on the goods any alternative way they can).
Examples?
Hatred for the record industry hit its peak among consumers just after MP3s and Napster hit the scene. When these technologies showed people how bad the price gouging and distribution control really is in the industry, many people stopped purchasing music altogether.
People in California feel entitled to cheap energy prices because it's how things have been--up until the crisis. Realistically, the only way out of their disaster is for everyone to pay more, but everyone accuses the power companies of cheating them if rates rise even a cent. Many people have simply started conserving power because they refuse to pay any more at the "gouging" rates than they have to. (It's sad how extreme a situation must become before people will finally exercise some conservational sense).
This is the same thing as if I were to create a portable video game system and call it the "GamePlayer":
Oh no, it contains the word "Game", and Nintendo makes something called "GameBoy" so it must be "confusingly similar" and an infringement of some kind! After all, most consumers are so slug-like they can't possibly differentiate between two products that don't run the same games, look similar, or come from different manufacturers!
It's not as if "game" is some common word in the dictionary or some common slang that everyone uses! I guess I should somehow name my portable game system something completely unrelated, such as "ButtWiper", since that can't possibly be confused with "GameBoy".
WTF? Do these people representing Adobe have any ethics at all? How can they possibly sleep at night?
I'd be fine with this if they only did it on pages that included a tag that said the author of the page approved the feature.
There are two important aspects of SmartTags that the Slashdot community appears to be missing:
They can be entirely turned off via IE's options.
They are visibly different from normal links, so it's easy to see which links are the SmartTags.
If you had done your research by reading this Microsoft Knowledge Base article before jumping to panicked conclusions, then you'd realize your arguments are baseless--as in all your base belong to us.
The light reflected from an LCD screen (including the GBA's) comes back to you as linearly polarized light. Thus, if you have a linear polarized filter over an LCD screen, and you rotate the filter, you can either achieve total opacity or total transmission depending upon the angle.
You can test this out yourself using a pair of polarized sunglasses and the GameBoy screen--if you rotate the lens over the screen you can watch it become opaque at a certain angle.
Using a polarized filter won't be a problem for two reasons: (1) I plan on using a circular polarized filter, which doesn't suffer from this problem; and (2) if you were to use a linear polarized filter, all you would have to do is mount it at the right angle of rotation in relation to the screen.
By the way, I'm very curious to know if anyone out there has tried removing the clear plastic protective film that is mounted on the surface of the GBA (about 1/4" in front of the screen) to see how that reduces or eliminates glare. If you're worried about permanently altering your GBA, you could instead just find a way to take the unit apart and then try powering it up without the front half of the case attached to see what it looks like.
I strongly suspect that if you peel or cut off that plastic film, you'll reduce glare significantly. The only trick then is to find a better substitute material to protect the screen.
If you check out this Edmund Scientific 17 x 19.5" Gray Light Polarizer, it appears to be a thin polarized plastic film you could cut to the right size and use as a substitute. I'm thinking of calling them to verify that the "Gray Light Polarizer" is what I think it is, since the product description is a little vague and there is no photo.
There are two major problems to overcome when trying to light the GBA screen:
1) The plastic film over the screen is highly reflective, causing lots of glare.
2) The light source must be placed within a certain range of angles in front of the screen to achieve a reasonable level of reflection off the screen itself.
External lights (such as the Nyko WormLight) solve the second problem nicely, but they only amplify the first problem.
I'm thinking of trying various anti-glare filters (like the ones sold for computer monitors, or other simple polarized filters) over the GBA's screen in combination with a home-built external light (one that uses multiple white LEDs behind a translucent plastic film to help diffuse the light to lower the bright glare spot). I believe this will be the best solution.
Any attempts to light the GBA from inside the unit (with LEDs mounted inside the unit to the side of the screen, etc) will fail because they won't achieve the necessary angle for adequte reflection, and because there simply isn't enough room inside the unit to add lighting around the perimeter of the screen.
Fuck you, AC. If you have something to say, don't hide behind an AC to say it. Be a man. And if there's a distinction between "CML2" and the "adventure front end", then the story on the SlashDot front page should have explained that difference, since it only would have taken a few words. Otherwise, SlashDot is guilty of spreading misinformation (as usual).
Once again we see the commercial software world making excellent, quick progress (WindowsXP and OfficeXP) while the Free Software and Open-Source Software development communities waste their time bitching at each other and getting nothing concrete done. Centralized control is a GOOD thing, not a bad one, when it comes to ACTUALLY GETTING SOMETHING DONE. The sooner the free/open-source software communities learn this fact, the better.
I totally understand and agree with the lack of forethought that originally went into Windows DLL versioning. The assumption that newer versions of a DLL will always provide precisely identical support (including bugs apps rely upon or work around in odd ways) to older versions doesn't hold true in non-COM DLLs.
Now, thanks to COM's way of handling interfaces and versioning, DLLs that simply implement COM components don't suffer from this problem. It's one of the reasons COM was invented. Every new version of a COM DLL contains the exact same code that was in the old version, plus new code to support the new interfaces. Think you have a bug in the old interface, and you just want to change the implementation and keep the interface the same? Then tough, you need to add a new interface on top of the new implementation and give it a new GUID so that the old stuff stays untouched and 100% compatible.
Of course, even the COM method isn't a perfect solution, because you can still introduce bugs in the DLL housing code that fuck over the old component. The way Linux deals with versioning--by keeping around the old library files and using symlinks / versioning maps to locate the right one needed for a given app--is a 100% solution. Unforunately, it's a bitch to set up because no central installer routines do it for you. You're expected to set up all that crud yourself, and most users simply aren't that smart. Most people just want to write a Word document, and don't even know what a "library" or "binary" file is.
I'm not uber-familiar with RPM, but Darwin can do some very cool things besides just keeping record of library versioning and installed registry keys. Suppose you install the latest MS Office (which uses Darwin); it doesn't install all the files. Instead, Darwin keeps record of files and registry entries that *would* be required if you wanted to use a certain feature or application, and the first time you try to actually use it, THAT's when it prompts you for the CD to copy the files and install the needed stuff. In that way it's somewhat space-efficient, only installing what you need. Another thing it can do is detect corrupted binaries or registry bits and offer automatically to reinstall them with fresh ones from the installation point. I don't think RPM supports either of those features.
I understand that many application authors out there will choose to go with other installer technology, thus bypassing the centralized methods provided by Darwin. Microsoft can't force everyone to use their stuff--but what they can (and do) try to do is make it so appealing to use their stuff that people naturally gravitate toward it until it becomes the standard. That's what happened with DOS, Windows, and Office, after all. So I suspect that a few years down the road we'll see the majority of non-trivial-sized Windows applications utilizing Darwin. Darwin simply makes too much sense to choose to not use it.
...because all companies care about is revenue and profits. If they can't move enough product for the Linux OS, then it doesn't make financial sense for them to make or sell such a product.
Quit bitching about it. If you want more companies to support your beloved OS, then do something concrete about it, such as making Linux much easier to install and use, so that more people will use it.
The introduction of MSI (Microsoft Installer, aka Darwin) eliminates DLL hell on Windows with applications that use it. It is a system-level, centralized installer, and as long as applications use that to install themselves, then the system can keep proper records on installed components and their versions.
Before MSI, every application had to use its own installer, and each installer might or might not be so smart about checking for versioning / existance of DLLs before forcibly overwriting newer versions with older versions of the same library or blowing away a more recent registry key.
In Linux, you don't run into as many installation nightmares because you don't HAVE installers to take care of installing shared libs for you--you're expected to be smart enough to install those yourself along with the app, and you're expected to handle versioning of libs appropriately via symlinks and so forth. But Linux, like Windows before MSI, lacks any centralized database of versioning information, so if you're not a dilligent & careful system admin type, you can get into the same scenario due to human error.
GNU/Linux desperately needs some central, standard repositories of data and methods of acting upon them within the system, accessible to all applications, and application authors should be motivated to go through those central repositories/methods rather than bypass them and write their own ways. GNU/Linux is currently just as disorganized as the old MS-DOS era, when every application author wrote their own video and sound driver code from scratch only for certain supported hardware, or relied on such libraries as VESA for some lame level of standardized support. Those MS-DOS apps each had their own config files, sometimes in human readable form, sometimes in binary form, sometimes in script form, just as linux apps today all have to dump differently formatted config files into/etc. Linux needs the same concept of standardization and centralization that Windows brought to the MS-DOS PC with mechanisms such as DirectX and the registry.
In response to the concerns raised in this article (http://www.zdnet.com/intweek/stories/columns/0,41 64,2772297,00.html), please read the following e-mail thread. Thanks.
-----Original Message-----
From: Keith Kelly [keithkel@microsoft.com]
Sent: Tuesday, June 12, 2001 10:35 AM
To: Steve Ballmer; Money Developers
Subject: RE: SmartTags: An Extremely Bad Idea
Thanks for your time SteveB, but I should have done my homework first:
(Information found by searching http://www.microsoft.com "smart tags" as used in IE6)
- When you see a word or phrase underlined with a purple dotted line, you can
place your mouse pointer over that word or phrase, and then a list of links to
more information about the item is displayed.
- To turn on smart tags for the operating systems in the preceding list, click
Internet Options on the Tools menu, click the Advanced tab, and then click to
select the Enable smart tags check box.
So you can turn the feature off, and the links are visibly different, but the press (and concerned users) are unaware of the facts. We need to combat this confusion.
-----Original Message-----
From: Steve Ballmer
Sent: Thursday, June 14, 2001 9:40 AM
To: Keith Kelly; Money Developers
Subject: RE: SmartTags: An Extremely Bad Idea
Customers can pick their own smart tags !!! thanks for the input
-----Original Message-----
From: Keith Kelly [mailto:syrinx2000@hotmail.com]
Sent: Tuesday, June 12, 2001 10:33 PM
To: Money Developers; Steve Ballmer
Subject: SmartTags: An Extremely Bad Idea
The appearance of impartiality is just as important as actually being
impartial. Apparently someone within Microsoft doesn't understand that
principle.
SmartTags may not be used to impose political bias upon unsuspecting users,
but they definitely remove any appearance of Microsoft's impartiality: http://www.zdnet.com/intweek/stories/columns/0,416 4,2772297,00.html
My personal belief: to be successful, give customers what they want to have,
not what you want them to have.
This has got to be the most inefficient encryption scheme I've ever seen. It turns a single character of input into several words and/or sentences of SPAM output. You really think I want to turn my two-paragraph e-mails into a 4 MB file before sending it over dial-up?
I dearly hope that Google finds a revenue model that allows it to keep running the way it has been: it plays a key role in levelling the playing field and helping smaller independent sites attract visitors.
Yeah, there's a revenue model that would work: it's called charging a membership fee to be able to use the site, in order to cover costs. Businesses that give the primary bulk of their work/costs away at no charge to consumers simply have no future. Advertising in any form is not even close to covering costs of production--why do you think that for newspapers with any reasonable quality and variety of content you have to PAY for a subscription? Only things like GreenSheet are given away for free--because they are almost entirely composed of advertisements.
Companies aren't responsible for the negative societal trends Katz explores in his article. Rather, we, the citizens, are to blame.
All companies have one simple goal: to make money. The way they do this is by selling goods or services to the largest audience of consumers while incurring the smallest amount of production cost. This means companies will always do what the majority of consumers (or citizens) want. In this way, a single company can be considered to behave as a direct-democratic response to the votes (purchases) of its consumers.
Someone claimed in an earlier thread here that companies are more concerned with pleasing investors than pleasing consumers. While this may be true of certain companies in the short term, those companies never survive. You have to make profits, not just gather investment funding, to survive in the marketplace--just look what happened to the dot-coms. As a result, the majority of companies MUST respond very directly to consumer desires.
Katz complains about our increasingly obese nation, and places some blame on McDonalds. Is McDonalds at fault here for overweight kids? Absolutely not! The kids and the kids' parents are the ones at fault--after all, they are the one who voted "yea" to McD's with their dollars. McD's has simply provided something that an overwhelming majority of consumers want: something that tastes good, regardless of its health value. Holding them responsible for obese kids is just as ludicrous a notion as holding a gun manufacturer responsible for murders.
Think about this: the USA would actually be LESS DEMOCRATIC if the vocal, concerned minority of people were to enact laws preventing McDonalds from selling unhealthful foods, or preventing Microsoft from selling Windows. No matter how much more "right" you think you are than the uninformed majority of people in this country, the entire idea of democracy (or representative repulics, which is what the USA actually is) is majority rule. If you don't like that, go move to a different country.
Linux users bitch about Microsoft's products' uniformaity and the companies domination of the marketplace, but the fact is that it only ended up this way because it's the way the majority of consumers want it. They voted with their dollars, and Linux users voted by withholding their dollars, and guess who the majority was in the end? Not the Linux gurus, obviously. That doesn't make the Linux gurus "wrong" or Microsoft "right"--it just reflect what the majority has chosen.
It's important to differentiate between ethics and democracy. True democracy is often highly unethical, if only because the majority of people do NOT live up to a strict code of ethics and do NOT keep themselves well informed on the issues.
Another point Katz bitches about is low-income, monotonous jobs. He blames companies for this end result, when in fact he should be blaming the work force. Companies pay the minimum that people will accept. If most people would outright refuse to accept such cruddy working conditions and low pay, then the companies would start paying more and making the jobs suck less. But there are plenty of people willing to vote "yea" to this situation by accepting such a job. These people may bitch and complain about how bad their job is, but they obviously are happy to have the job because they took it. It's all a matter of sticking by your principles instead of just mouthing off about it.
It sounds like what Katz wants is a utopian world in which he and the minority of citizens who agree with him get to dictate over the much larger disagreeing majority of the population. That sounds much more like "1984" than the picture of the technological future that Katz is trying to paint for us.
Slashdot Mirror
It's usually a safe bet that free software programmers are single and haven't been on a date in years... so call up an escort service in their area and have some hot chicks sent over. They'll definitely appreciate it!
Appearantly you have very little reading skills.
I think you mean "Apparently very few reading skills". But then what do I know? All I can do is spell and use proper grammar.
What I said was that Linux has various distribitions, each with its own policies, friendliness, usability for different people, and stability.
That's not what you said. Maybe that's what you meant to say, but it's not what you actually said. Sounds like you're the one with the reading problem. Try reading your own messages before hitting the "Submit" button.
Thus, it is ignorant and stupid to judge Linux by the newest Mandrake, or Debian, or whatever, because they *DO NOT REPRESENT Linux in its entirety*, and you *CANNOT concluce* that their faults are Linux faults and will be found in all distributions.
I have not formed my judgements about GNU/Linux based on only one distribution. I have used Slackware, Red Hat, Debian, Mandrake, Suse, and many others for several years. Although they do not all suffer from the same specific defects, they all suffer from the same common, general problems due to the basic GNU/Linux architecture and development style. When I cited my difficulty installing Mandrake 8.0, I was citing only the most recent particular example of these general and common problems.
If you think Linux is more complex than it should be, then you don't have a clue.
Really, is that so? Can you back up that statement with facts? I didn't think so. Anyone who thinks that a GNU/Linux system has to be as insanely complex and disorganized as it is just to provide the functionality it can offer is simply too lazy to learn anything about usability or human-machine interfaces. There are numerous specific aspects of any given GNU/Linux distribution that simply wreak from an unnecessary lack of usability, consistency, and simplicity. Want some examples? Just look at the recent corporate analysis of GNOME's usability that was posted on Slashdot and you'll see plenty.
Linux is designed pretty much as simply as ANY system with such functionalities can be designed.
Really? That's amazing. Then apparently Windows 2000 doesn't actually exist, and is a violation of some previously undiscovered universal law of reality. It offers the same overall functionality in a much more usable package--and that is they key reason people use it over any UNIX-like system.
Grasping how Linux works is *MUCH* easier than grasping how, for example, the Windows kernel works
But hey, end users and even IT administrators don't even have to know what a kernal IS in order to get the job done with Windows 2000. The fact that you have to know stuff like what a kernal is and how it works in order to simply configure and use GNU/Linux is just more evidence as to its unnecessary complexity.
If you think it is 'poorly organized', then you are either referring to the file system - or to package layout.
Why do you incorrectly assume that I can't be speaking about more than either of those? While both the filesystem and "package layout" are poorly organized, GNU/Linux systems suffer from numerous other disorganizations. For instance, many applications hard-code filesystem paths into their source, so you actually have to recompile an application from source code if you simply want to install it to a directory of your choice. Another example? There is no distinction between a user's environment variables and system environment variables as there is in NT, so if a user unwittingly blows away a necessary system environment variable with their .bashrc file or whatnot, suddenly certain applications don't work and they have no idea why. More examples? Every application stores its configuration files in a different file format, and often times you have to learn a new scripting or programming language just to accomplish something as simple as getting X-Windows to work right with your video adaptor.
Can you say you can easily locate a file in Windows?
Yes--it's called "Search". And if you don't like using search, you know that an application's configuration is always in the registry, its files are generally always under "C:\Program Files\", and your documents are generally always under "My Documents". Pretty easy.
there is a uniform and consistent way to install and manage packages
Really? I'd sure like to see it. But all I've seen is that some things are available only as source, some are available as RPMs, some are newer RPMs that won't install on older versions of Red Hat, some require additional libraries to already be installed on your system that you might have to go track down, some are only available as slackware modules, and sometimes even when you get the source it won't even compile unless you manually hack away on some makefiles. You call that uniform and consistent?
Windows, on the other hand, has packages thrown all over the Internet, without any central repositries or such centralization.
Wow--I guess you've never heard of http://www.winfiles.com, http://www.zdnet.com, http://www.cnet.com, http://www.windowsupdate.com, or any of the other numerous central repositories of Win32 software that are out there. But why should that surprise me--you've obviously chosen to stick your head in a hole, obssess about GNU/Linux, and ignore the rest of the world.
Get a clue.
Another unbiased, fact-based response from an obviously educated and objective Slashdot reader.
there IS NO one Linux policy, way or appearance. There is no constant of Linux usability.
You're simply proving my point: GNU/Linux lacks the essential factors that most people want and need.
This plague of ignorance about Linux has spread from ZDNet into the Slashdot crowd
Users aren't "ignorant" for wanting simplicity, consistency, or usability; these are natural needs for most people. I agree that publicity about GNU/Linux (and even projects themselves, such as GNOME and KDE) are doing both GNU/Linux and average users a disservice by claiming that the system has suddenly become easier to use or suitable for the masses. Despite new desktop environments, graphical installers, and the increasing number of games being released for the system, it is still insanely complex, poorly organized, inconsistent, and is more like an ongoing project for developers than a usable piece of software.
The conclusion seems to be that anyone who's set up a modern Linux distro (Mandrake in particular) on supported hardware would find nothing too new in XP
You can't assume that hardware is going to be supported. Every attempt I've made to install any version of Mandrake (or other Linux distros, such as Red Hat) on my apparently non-supported hardware (plug-in PCI Maxtor ATA/100 IDE controller card) has resulted in a system that locks up inexplicably while trying to boot the kernal. On the other hand, every attempt I've made to install any version of Windows on any non-supported hardware has always resulted in a successful boot and an entirely usable system -- minus sound support, minus UltraDMA support, or minus high-resolution video modes, mind you, but still entirely working and usable. When a given GNU/Linux distro can't exactly identify your monitor to feed XFree86 the correct refresh rates, it usually ends up using some defaults that are so non-standard it causes your monitor to display a rolling, flickering, totally unviewable picture -- whereas I've never seen this happen on any Windows system because Windows just defaults to the VGA 60 Hz 16 color 640x480 standard refresh rates, which work on any (S)VGA monitor. Imagine that--handling failure gracefully!
In general, GNU/Linux distributions, drivers, and applications don't handle error or failure cases well at all. Why? Because those developers only care about making the success cases work well. Screw the poor user who can't happen to get everything perfectly right on the first try--it's their own fault for being ignorant, after all, and they should just have to keep doing the entire process all over again until they get it right. God forbid any developer should spend any time, effort, or skill making things easy to use for non-experts.
Talkback data shows that recent 0.9.2 branch builds are more stable than Netscape 4.78 and we expect even better results for 0.9.3. Now is the time to try Mozilla again if you've been waiting for stability to improve." Translation: Mozilla is better than ever.
Translation: Mozilla still sucks compared to Internet Explorer, just slightly less than it did before.
Why are we comparing to Netscape 4.78? Netscape sucks! It crashes, it's slow, it doesn't support standards properly, and the user interface is clumbsy at best. This isn't news until Mozilla knocks the socks off IE 5.5 or IE 6.0.
A new sound that could revolutionise mobile telephones and safety alarms because it is less intrusive yet easy to pinpoint is being ordered worldwide after being developed by a British scientist. Anyone got some URLs for samples?
Yeah-- http://www.chewbacca.com
NEWS FLASH! Pentium Pitching Machine denied nomination to Hall of Fame after emery board found in power supply!
The Pitching Machine denied comment, but said it planned to retire to a life of embittered interviews with Bob Costas and lousy commercial promotions.
People don't like paying (more) for something that was previously available free (or at a lower cost). People naturally feel cheated. If the pricing difference is extreme enough, people will not only not like paying but they will actually stop paying (and will get their hands on the goods any alternative way they can).
Examples?
This is the same thing as if I were to create a portable video game system and call it the "GamePlayer":
Oh no, it contains the word "Game", and Nintendo makes something called "GameBoy" so it must be "confusingly similar" and an infringement of some kind! After all, most consumers are so slug-like they can't possibly differentiate between two products that don't run the same games, look similar, or come from different manufacturers!
It's not as if "game" is some common word in the dictionary or some common slang that everyone uses! I guess I should somehow name my portable game system something completely unrelated, such as "ButtWiper", since that can't possibly be confused with "GameBoy".
WTF? Do these people representing Adobe have any ethics at all? How can they possibly sleep at night?
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Lameness filter encountered. Post aborted.
Reason: One character. Hmmm. Gee, might this be a troll?
Um, no. It's a message that doesn't need a body, you fuckhead.
I'd be fine with this if they only did it on pages that included a tag that said the author of the page approved the feature.
There are two important aspects of SmartTags that the Slashdot community appears to be missing:
If you had done your research by reading this Microsoft Knowledge Base article before jumping to panicked conclusions, then you'd realize your arguments are baseless--as in all your base belong to us.
The light reflected from an LCD screen (including the GBA's) comes back to you as linearly polarized light. Thus, if you have a linear polarized filter over an LCD screen, and you rotate the filter, you can either achieve total opacity or total transmission depending upon the angle.
You can test this out yourself using a pair of polarized sunglasses and the GameBoy screen--if you rotate the lens over the screen you can watch it become opaque at a certain angle.
Using a polarized filter won't be a problem for two reasons: (1) I plan on using a circular polarized filter, which doesn't suffer from this problem; and (2) if you were to use a linear polarized filter, all you would have to do is mount it at the right angle of rotation in relation to the screen.
I've also found some white LEDs you can purchase online from Radio Shack for experimentation with your own external lighting devices:
3mm Ultra-Bright White LED
5mm Ulrta-Bright White LED
5mm High-Intensity White LED
5mm White LED
By the way, I'm very curious to know if anyone out there has tried removing the clear plastic protective film that is mounted on the surface of the GBA (about 1/4" in front of the screen) to see how that reduces or eliminates glare. If you're worried about permanently altering your GBA, you could instead just find a way to take the unit apart and then try powering it up without the front half of the case attached to see what it looks like.
I strongly suspect that if you peel or cut off that plastic film, you'll reduce glare significantly. The only trick then is to find a better substitute material to protect the screen.
If you check out this Edmund Scientific 17 x 19.5" Gray Light Polarizer, it appears to be a thin polarized plastic film you could cut to the right size and use as a substitute. I'm thinking of calling them to verify that the "Gray Light Polarizer" is what I think it is, since the product description is a little vague and there is no photo.
There are two major problems to overcome when trying to light the GBA screen:
1) The plastic film over the screen is highly reflective, causing lots of glare.
2) The light source must be placed within a certain range of angles in front of the screen to achieve a reasonable level of reflection off the screen itself.
External lights (such as the Nyko WormLight) solve the second problem nicely, but they only amplify the first problem.
I'm thinking of trying various anti-glare filters (like the ones sold for computer monitors, or other simple polarized filters) over the GBA's screen in combination with a home-built external light (one that uses multiple white LEDs behind a translucent plastic film to help diffuse the light to lower the bright glare spot). I believe this will be the best solution.
Any attempts to light the GBA from inside the unit (with LEDs mounted inside the unit to the side of the screen, etc) will fail because they won't achieve the necessary angle for adequte reflection, and because there simply isn't enough room inside the unit to add lighting around the perimeter of the screen.
Fuck you, AC. If you have something to say, don't hide behind an AC to say it. Be a man. And if there's a distinction between "CML2" and the "adventure front end", then the story on the SlashDot front page should have explained that difference, since it only would have taken a few words. Otherwise, SlashDot is guilty of spreading misinformation (as usual).
Once again we see the commercial software world making excellent, quick progress (WindowsXP and OfficeXP) while the Free Software and Open-Source Software development communities waste their time bitching at each other and getting nothing concrete done. Centralized control is a GOOD thing, not a bad one, when it comes to ACTUALLY GETTING SOMETHING DONE. The sooner the free/open-source software communities learn this fact, the better.
I totally understand and agree with the lack of forethought that originally went into Windows DLL versioning. The assumption that newer versions of a DLL will always provide precisely identical support (including bugs apps rely upon or work around in odd ways) to older versions doesn't hold true in non-COM DLLs.
Now, thanks to COM's way of handling interfaces and versioning, DLLs that simply implement COM components don't suffer from this problem. It's one of the reasons COM was invented. Every new version of a COM DLL contains the exact same code that was in the old version, plus new code to support the new interfaces. Think you have a bug in the old interface, and you just want to change the implementation and keep the interface the same? Then tough, you need to add a new interface on top of the new implementation and give it a new GUID so that the old stuff stays untouched and 100% compatible.
Of course, even the COM method isn't a perfect solution, because you can still introduce bugs in the DLL housing code that fuck over the old component. The way Linux deals with versioning--by keeping around the old library files and using symlinks / versioning maps to locate the right one needed for a given app--is a 100% solution. Unforunately, it's a bitch to set up because no central installer routines do it for you. You're expected to set up all that crud yourself, and most users simply aren't that smart. Most people just want to write a Word document, and don't even know what a "library" or "binary" file is.
I'm not uber-familiar with RPM, but Darwin can do some very cool things besides just keeping record of library versioning and installed registry keys. Suppose you install the latest MS Office (which uses Darwin); it doesn't install all the files. Instead, Darwin keeps record of files and registry entries that *would* be required if you wanted to use a certain feature or application, and the first time you try to actually use it, THAT's when it prompts you for the CD to copy the files and install the needed stuff. In that way it's somewhat space-efficient, only installing what you need. Another thing it can do is detect corrupted binaries or registry bits and offer automatically to reinstall them with fresh ones from the installation point. I don't think RPM supports either of those features.
I understand that many application authors out there will choose to go with other installer technology, thus bypassing the centralized methods provided by Darwin. Microsoft can't force everyone to use their stuff--but what they can (and do) try to do is make it so appealing to use their stuff that people naturally gravitate toward it until it becomes the standard. That's what happened with DOS, Windows, and Office, after all. So I suspect that a few years down the road we'll see the majority of non-trivial-sized Windows applications utilizing Darwin. Darwin simply makes too much sense to choose to not use it.
...because all companies care about is revenue and profits. If they can't move enough product for the Linux OS, then it doesn't make financial sense for them to make or sell such a product.
Quit bitching about it. If you want more companies to support your beloved OS, then do something concrete about it, such as making Linux much easier to install and use, so that more people will use it.
The introduction of MSI (Microsoft Installer, aka Darwin) eliminates DLL hell on Windows with applications that use it. It is a system-level, centralized installer, and as long as applications use that to install themselves, then the system can keep proper records on installed components and their versions.
/etc. Linux needs the same concept of standardization and centralization that Windows brought to the MS-DOS PC with mechanisms such as DirectX and the registry.
Before MSI, every application had to use its own installer, and each installer might or might not be so smart about checking for versioning / existance of DLLs before forcibly overwriting newer versions with older versions of the same library or blowing away a more recent registry key.
In Linux, you don't run into as many installation nightmares because you don't HAVE installers to take care of installing shared libs for you--you're expected to be smart enough to install those yourself along with the app, and you're expected to handle versioning of libs appropriately via symlinks and so forth. But Linux, like Windows before MSI, lacks any centralized database of versioning information, so if you're not a dilligent & careful system admin type, you can get into the same scenario due to human error.
GNU/Linux desperately needs some central, standard repositories of data and methods of acting upon them within the system, accessible to all applications, and application authors should be motivated to go through those central repositories/methods rather than bypass them and write their own ways. GNU/Linux is currently just as disorganized as the old MS-DOS era, when every application author wrote their own video and sound driver code from scratch only for certain supported hardware, or relied on such libraries as VESA for some lame level of standardized support. Those MS-DOS apps each had their own config files, sometimes in human readable form, sometimes in binary form, sometimes in script form, just as linux apps today all have to dump differently formatted config files into
In response to the concerns raised in this article (http://www.zdnet.com/intweek/stories/columns/0,41 64,2772297,00.html), please read the following e-mail thread. Thanks.
6 4,2772297,00.html
-----Original Message-----
From: Keith Kelly [keithkel@microsoft.com]
Sent: Tuesday, June 12, 2001 10:35 AM
To: Steve Ballmer; Money Developers
Subject: RE: SmartTags: An Extremely Bad Idea
Thanks for your time SteveB, but I should have done my homework first:
(Information found by searching http://www.microsoft.com "smart tags" as used in IE6)
- When you see a word or phrase underlined with a purple dotted line, you can
place your mouse pointer over that word or phrase, and then a list of links to
more information about the item is displayed.
- To turn on smart tags for the operating systems in the preceding list, click
Internet Options on the Tools menu, click the Advanced tab, and then click to
select the Enable smart tags check box.
So you can turn the feature off, and the links are visibly different, but the press (and concerned users) are unaware of the facts. We need to combat this confusion.
-----Original Message-----
From: Steve Ballmer
Sent: Thursday, June 14, 2001 9:40 AM
To: Keith Kelly; Money Developers
Subject: RE: SmartTags: An Extremely Bad Idea
Customers can pick their own smart tags !!! thanks for the input
-----Original Message-----
From: Keith Kelly [mailto:syrinx2000@hotmail.com]
Sent: Tuesday, June 12, 2001 10:33 PM
To: Money Developers; Steve Ballmer
Subject: SmartTags: An Extremely Bad Idea
The appearance of impartiality is just as important as actually being
impartial. Apparently someone within Microsoft doesn't understand that
principle.
SmartTags may not be used to impose political bias upon unsuspecting users,
but they definitely remove any appearance of Microsoft's impartiality: http://www.zdnet.com/intweek/stories/columns/0,41
My personal belief: to be successful, give customers what they want to have,
not what you want them to have.
This has got to be the most inefficient encryption scheme I've ever seen. It turns a single character of input into several words and/or sentences of SPAM output. You really think I want to turn my two-paragraph e-mails into a 4 MB file before sending it over dial-up?
I dearly hope that Google finds a revenue model that allows it to keep running the way it has been: it plays a key role in levelling the playing field and helping smaller independent sites attract visitors.
Yeah, there's a revenue model that would work: it's called charging a membership fee to be able to use the site, in order to cover costs. Businesses that give the primary bulk of their work/costs away at no charge to consumers simply have no future. Advertising in any form is not even close to covering costs of production--why do you think that for newspapers with any reasonable quality and variety of content you have to PAY for a subscription? Only things like GreenSheet are given away for free--because they are almost entirely composed of advertisements.
Companies aren't responsible for the negative societal trends Katz explores in his article. Rather, we, the citizens, are to blame.
All companies have one simple goal: to make money. The way they do this is by selling goods or services to the largest audience of consumers while incurring the smallest amount of production cost. This means companies will always do what the majority of consumers (or citizens) want. In this way, a single company can be considered to behave as a direct-democratic response to the votes (purchases) of its consumers.
Someone claimed in an earlier thread here that companies are more concerned with pleasing investors than pleasing consumers. While this may be true of certain companies in the short term, those companies never survive. You have to make profits, not just gather investment funding, to survive in the marketplace--just look what happened to the dot-coms. As a result, the majority of companies MUST respond very directly to consumer desires.
Katz complains about our increasingly obese nation, and places some blame on McDonalds. Is McDonalds at fault here for overweight kids? Absolutely not! The kids and the kids' parents are the ones at fault--after all, they are the one who voted "yea" to McD's with their dollars. McD's has simply provided something that an overwhelming majority of consumers want: something that tastes good, regardless of its health value. Holding them responsible for obese kids is just as ludicrous a notion as holding a gun manufacturer responsible for murders.
Think about this: the USA would actually be LESS DEMOCRATIC if the vocal, concerned minority of people were to enact laws preventing McDonalds from selling unhealthful foods, or preventing Microsoft from selling Windows. No matter how much more "right" you think you are than the uninformed majority of people in this country, the entire idea of democracy (or representative repulics, which is what the USA actually is) is majority rule. If you don't like that, go move to a different country.
Linux users bitch about Microsoft's products' uniformaity and the companies domination of the marketplace, but the fact is that it only ended up this way because it's the way the majority of consumers want it. They voted with their dollars, and Linux users voted by withholding their dollars, and guess who the majority was in the end? Not the Linux gurus, obviously. That doesn't make the Linux gurus "wrong" or Microsoft "right"--it just reflect what the majority has chosen.
It's important to differentiate between ethics and democracy. True democracy is often highly unethical, if only because the majority of people do NOT live up to a strict code of ethics and do NOT keep themselves well informed on the issues.
Another point Katz bitches about is low-income, monotonous jobs. He blames companies for this end result, when in fact he should be blaming the work force. Companies pay the minimum that people will accept. If most people would outright refuse to accept such cruddy working conditions and low pay, then the companies would start paying more and making the jobs suck less. But there are plenty of people willing to vote "yea" to this situation by accepting such a job. These people may bitch and complain about how bad their job is, but they obviously are happy to have the job because they took it. It's all a matter of sticking by your principles instead of just mouthing off about it.
It sounds like what Katz wants is a utopian world in which he and the minority of citizens who agree with him get to dictate over the much larger disagreeing majority of the population. That sounds much more like "1984" than the picture of the technological future that Katz is trying to paint for us.