No, there are FOSS alternatives that approach Visio functionality
This is the key. They *approach* functionality, but don't *exceed* it. What's the point of a tool if it half-asses it? Just because it's free?
I personally think the biggest Achilles Heel wtih OSS (on top of the crummy user interfaces that seem to be everywhere) is the mindset that *almost* doing it as well as the commercial closed counterparts is good enough, because hey! it's free! We end up with a ton of software that mostly does the same job, if you fidget with it just right, but it's "ok because it's free and open". Firefox got it right - they offer a BETTER product than their competition. Most everything else just feels like it's perpetually playing catch-up.
And the bulk of the comments here *support* it?!? Just because "the rest of the world is doing it" doesn't make it right, and doesn't make it OK that the companies have long oversold "unlimited" Internet access, are getting burned by it, but refuse to invest any more into new infrastructure to compete.
This is nothing short of a Bad Thing. Bandwidth use is not going away...if anything it is going to increase. Those "average" users that only browse and do email today, that everyone wants to be subsidized by the "heavy" users doing their bittorrent and porn and linux distros? Those average users are going to start downloading HD movies from iTunes and Xbox 360 and PS3. They're going to be playing online multiplayer games and wanting to videochat in HD.
How is innovation supposed to happen if you start creating tiered access points? Do you honestly think higher tiered prices are going to go back into building infrastructure that is better able to handle the load? This is merely a ploy to penalize those using their available resources that they pay for. And as time goes on, EVERYONE will be needing those resources, and they'll be back in the same boat, except everyone will be paying that much more.
The answer is to invest in more and better infrastructure, not try to limit your existing users to try and get them to not use your product!
So is the point that if Big Brother is watching, give him a show? The life/lemons/lemonade story is nice, but hardly does anything about the fact you are being recorded by so many entities.
They're not public, but I'd bet that almost every custom business app wallowing in offices all over the place would very well qualify for "Most Annoying Software Out There".
most Windows users really don't know how to use Windows anymore than they know how to use Linux -- What they do know is how to use certain GUI frontends to certain apps
So where's the push to get more of these GUI frontends to certain apps on Linux? There seems to be some work in that end, and Ubuntu seems like it's pushing towards making things easier to use for the layperson.
I use both OS's, and in my experience while I've used cmd in Windows a lot, it's usually for diagnosis purposes, where I can spit out a bunch of information that isn't available in a built in GUI. I rarely think I've ever had to use cmd to *configure* something. Whereas on Linux, there are some frontends to some commands, but I still end up having to manually go in, and add a line here or comment something out there in a text file just to change some setting.
I think the real point is, yes, a CLI no matter what the OS can be very powerful. It should definitely be available. But to *really* use it, you need to *know* what commands to use. Arguing to use man or search the Internet doesn't help. man can be unbearably confusing sometimes, or sometimes it just lists options but doesn't really explain what they do. Of course, man doesn't help if you don't know what the command is to do what you want to do in the first place! And searching for what the command is you want to use if you don't know what it is can be tedious, too.
But anyone can reasonably look for a System or Preferences menu, hopefully drill down to the area of what they're looking for, and toggle options or whatnot. Why is there such pushback to making things easier?
Heh, my biggest complaint with the Awesomebar was that it automatically searches your bookmarks and history....some of my, uhh...less than upstanding sites would show up when I started to type something else that may have similar letters:-) Not good when showing someone an unrelated site and they're watching you type.
Not so much a complaint as a reason to move all of *that* browsing to Opera. Now it's self contained, and indeed, the AwesomeBar IS awesome.
No kidding - that made me scratch my head, too. I've been running Beta5 since it came out on both Windows, and recently on a new Ubuntu 8.04 installation. Both have been rock solid. It feels faster, seems just as if not more stable than the older versions, and even most of my addons work either natively or via Nightly Tester Tools. I'm still waiting on a few to get updated, but all in all it's being used in production use for me without problem! I haven't touched FF2 in forever...
Does anyone besides me find this utterly ridiculous?
No, not really. It's a feature that I personally don't think I'd care much about, but this sounds exactly like how the gaim/Pidgin developers are. My past experience has been that the people who develop gaim/Pidgin have always seemed to have a disdain for users other than themselves. They've been quick to dismiss any sort of criticism or suggestions for improvements to make the product better. Instead, they poopoo all of that behind the "we make this for ourselves and don't care if anyone else uses it" mantra.
Why does it take so long for the BIOS to come up after powering on? I counted ~14 seconds....I've NEVER seen a PC take that long to get from hitting the power button to just *showing* the BIOS. Wow....something funny going on??
Are apps like Firefox even installed with Ubuntu Server? That's Server, not Desktop. Every Ubuntu Server install I've done I've assumed it just has the bare essentials...then I go and install what packages I need to do whatever it is I'm doing. I assumed the client apps (Firefox in this case) only applied to the Desktop version. People aren't installing the Desktop version and using it as a long term server, are they?
As someone who grew up farming as well as an avid fan of cooked meats of all kinds....the stunts PETA pulls pisses me off to no end. I'd love to go toe-to-toe with each of every one of those hippie nutjobs...
FFS, I can grab a gallon of gas, jump on a skateboard, and push the thing however thousands of miles I want. My "car" will have infinite MPGs!
All if this hippie wanging is pointless and useless until you get something that's actually practical and available for mass purchase that people will actually *want* to buy.
Cross-application drag and drop works even? My experience is in Windows, but I'm pretty sure I still can't drag an image from a webpage into a new Gmail email and have it actually embed the image into the email. I don't know if it converts to a link to the image or what. In my experience dragging and dropping media into other apps usually only works well for desktop apps. Dragging media into chat might work....I can't say I've tried it in a long time in Pidgin, but I want to say it would automatically upload an image from my desktop into the chat. Again, I don't know how it works now with trying to drag online media to an app....
So Network Solutions sucks, and I'm sensing some hate for GoDaddy, too. I've always used namecheap.com (don't even remember how I got referred to them) but have never had a problem. Prices seemed decent, the interface seemed alright for the handful of times I needed to use it, and I've never had a problem renewing or anything. I've always gotten reminder emails starting a couple months before expiration.
Just a follow up reply. Yes, I have a dog, and I still don't buy the excuses. Ehhhh, maybe it's because the wife is a vet and we're more cautious/overprotective of the dog or something.....but even with a fenced in yard we're pretty much monitoring her while she's out there. Dog digs under the fence? Bury the fence. I'd bet 90% of the troubles dogs can get into can be prevented by owners paying attention to whats going on. Just my $.02:-P
Just another thought relating to using it for pets....
I'm all for gadgets and whatnot, but getting a text message saying your dog is more than 20ft away from the house isn't going to do much if he runs into the road and gets hit. There's just not enough time to react. Owners *really* need to monitor their pets, and ideally have them on a leash or enclosed in some area when their outside to keep them safe.
Obviously "decades of global scientific research" can be extrapolated to predict not only millions of years of history, but millions of years in the future, too. How is a cold week in March any different than 100 years of weeks in the timeline of the Earth's history?
So which ISPs are doing this? What can we do to protect our selves? It sounds like it's "enabled" by a cookie placed there by your ISP or NebuAd? Would Adblock and/or PeerGuardian be enough? Implementing blocking at the home router level? What can home users actually do?
It'd be nice at least to know who's actually participating in this so we could know who to avoid.
Advocates of deep-packet inspection see it as a boon for all involved. Advertisers can better target their pitches. Consumers will see more relevant ads. Service providers who hand over consumer data can share in advertising revenues. And Web sites can make more money from online advertising, a $20 billion industry that is growing rapidly.
So the consumers' benefit is better targeted ads? Woohoo? Sounds like the only ones who are winning are the corps and that's it.
Slashdot Mirror
This is the key. They *approach* functionality, but don't *exceed* it. What's the point of a tool if it half-asses it? Just because it's free?
I personally think the biggest Achilles Heel wtih OSS (on top of the crummy user interfaces that seem to be everywhere) is the mindset that *almost* doing it as well as the commercial closed counterparts is good enough, because hey! it's free! We end up with a ton of software that mostly does the same job, if you fidget with it just right, but it's "ok because it's free and open". Firefox got it right - they offer a BETTER product than their competition. Most everything else just feels like it's perpetually playing catch-up.
And the bulk of the comments here *support* it?!? Just because "the rest of the world is doing it" doesn't make it right, and doesn't make it OK that the companies have long oversold "unlimited" Internet access, are getting burned by it, but refuse to invest any more into new infrastructure to compete.
This is nothing short of a Bad Thing. Bandwidth use is not going away...if anything it is going to increase. Those "average" users that only browse and do email today, that everyone wants to be subsidized by the "heavy" users doing their bittorrent and porn and linux distros? Those average users are going to start downloading HD movies from iTunes and Xbox 360 and PS3. They're going to be playing online multiplayer games and wanting to videochat in HD.
How is innovation supposed to happen if you start creating tiered access points? Do you honestly think higher tiered prices are going to go back into building infrastructure that is better able to handle the load? This is merely a ploy to penalize those using their available resources that they pay for. And as time goes on, EVERYONE will be needing those resources, and they'll be back in the same boat, except everyone will be paying that much more.
The answer is to invest in more and better infrastructure, not try to limit your existing users to try and get them to not use your product!
So is the point that if Big Brother is watching, give him a show? The life/lemons/lemonade story is nice, but hardly does anything about the fact you are being recorded by so many entities.
Like Quicktime! Or Windows Media!
They're not public, but I'd bet that almost every custom business app wallowing in offices all over the place would very well qualify for "Most Annoying Software Out There".
I use both OS's, and in my experience while I've used cmd in Windows a lot, it's usually for diagnosis purposes, where I can spit out a bunch of information that isn't available in a built in GUI. I rarely think I've ever had to use cmd to *configure* something. Whereas on Linux, there are some frontends to some commands, but I still end up having to manually go in, and add a line here or comment something out there in a text file just to change some setting.
I think the real point is, yes, a CLI no matter what the OS can be very powerful. It should definitely be available. But to *really* use it, you need to *know* what commands to use. Arguing to use man or search the Internet doesn't help. man can be unbearably confusing sometimes, or sometimes it just lists options but doesn't really explain what they do. Of course, man doesn't help if you don't know what the command is to do what you want to do in the first place! And searching for what the command is you want to use if you don't know what it is can be tedious, too.
But anyone can reasonably look for a System or Preferences menu, hopefully drill down to the area of what they're looking for, and toggle options or whatnot. Why is there such pushback to making things easier?
Heh, my biggest complaint with the Awesomebar was that it automatically searches your bookmarks and history....some of my, uhh...less than upstanding sites would show up when I started to type something else that may have similar letters :-) Not good when showing someone an unrelated site and they're watching you type.
Not so much a complaint as a reason to move all of *that* browsing to Opera. Now it's self contained, and indeed, the AwesomeBar IS awesome.
No kidding - that made me scratch my head, too. I've been running Beta5 since it came out on both Windows, and recently on a new Ubuntu 8.04 installation. Both have been rock solid. It feels faster, seems just as if not more stable than the older versions, and even most of my addons work either natively or via Nightly Tester Tools. I'm still waiting on a few to get updated, but all in all it's being used in production use for me without problem! I haven't touched FF2 in forever...
Why does it take so long for the BIOS to come up after powering on? I counted ~14 seconds....I've NEVER seen a PC take that long to get from hitting the power button to just *showing* the BIOS. Wow....something funny going on??
I caught that, too. I would have assumed she would try iTunes, or even end up at Amazon's music store.
Are apps like Firefox even installed with Ubuntu Server? That's Server, not Desktop. Every Ubuntu Server install I've done I've assumed it just has the bare essentials...then I go and install what packages I need to do whatever it is I'm doing. I assumed the client apps (Firefox in this case) only applied to the Desktop version. People aren't installing the Desktop version and using it as a long term server, are they?
Unless you have a link somewhere to the actual text file, will Google actually crawl and index it?
Tasty, tasty murder.
As someone who grew up farming as well as an avid fan of cooked meats of all kinds....the stunts PETA pulls pisses me off to no end. I'd love to go toe-to-toe with each of every one of those hippie nutjobs...
FFS, I can grab a gallon of gas, jump on a skateboard, and push the thing however thousands of miles I want. My "car" will have infinite MPGs!
All if this hippie wanging is pointless and useless until you get something that's actually practical and available for mass purchase that people will actually *want* to buy.
What's the theme/window manager being used in the screenshots? Is that a "dock"-like interface for Linux?
Cross-application drag and drop works even? My experience is in Windows, but I'm pretty sure I still can't drag an image from a webpage into a new Gmail email and have it actually embed the image into the email. I don't know if it converts to a link to the image or what. In my experience dragging and dropping media into other apps usually only works well for desktop apps. Dragging media into chat might work....I can't say I've tried it in a long time in Pidgin, but I want to say it would automatically upload an image from my desktop into the chat. Again, I don't know how it works now with trying to drag online media to an app....
So Network Solutions sucks, and I'm sensing some hate for GoDaddy, too. I've always used namecheap.com (don't even remember how I got referred to them) but have never had a problem. Prices seemed decent, the interface seemed alright for the handful of times I needed to use it, and I've never had a problem renewing or anything. I've always gotten reminder emails starting a couple months before expiration.
Is there something I'm missing?
Just a follow up reply. Yes, I have a dog, and I still don't buy the excuses. Ehhhh, maybe it's because the wife is a vet and we're more cautious/overprotective of the dog or something.....but even with a fenced in yard we're pretty much monitoring her while she's out there. Dog digs under the fence? Bury the fence. I'd bet 90% of the troubles dogs can get into can be prevented by owners paying attention to whats going on. Just my $.02 :-P
Just another thought relating to using it for pets....
I'm all for gadgets and whatnot, but getting a text message saying your dog is more than 20ft away from the house isn't going to do much if he runs into the road and gets hit. There's just not enough time to react. Owners *really* need to monitor their pets, and ideally have them on a leash or enclosed in some area when their outside to keep them safe.
So will there be asterisks next to various papers, publications, and/or Nobel prizes?
*This achievement was reached with the help of illegal performance enhancing drugs.
Obviously "decades of global scientific research" can be extrapolated to predict not only millions of years of history, but millions of years in the future, too. How is a cold week in March any different than 100 years of weeks in the timeline of the Earth's history?
Are they as expansive as the US government, or mom n' pop (relatively speaking) establishments?
So which ISPs are doing this? What can we do to protect our selves? It sounds like it's "enabled" by a cookie placed there by your ISP or NebuAd? Would Adblock and/or PeerGuardian be enough? Implementing blocking at the home router level? What can home users actually do?
It'd be nice at least to know who's actually participating in this so we could know who to avoid.