OMG... I thought the V-Chip was a South Park joke...
You americans are crazy, you know that???:-)
Nice example, I hope the economy of scale works out, as I'm not really looking forward to paying $50 extra for a TV which I will not be using to watch broadcasts anyway (I'm experimenting with not having a TV right now, as evidenced by the increased amount of Slashdot posts:-)
Interesting. Here, most have Windows and Linux both, or just Windows.
Games run better or are Windows-only, and we work in a Windows shop so work is also Windows-centric too.
But many are using Firefox, so it's not that we prefer to pay for something we can have for free, it's just that switching to Linux isn't "free" (at least until the support for many of the things we Windows users take for granted is there).
Well, I live in the Third World, and there are plenty of studies that show that poor people actually have more children, because they usually can then live off their children.
I'm referring to the home desktop, not the corporate desktop.
While the article refers to the Corporate desktop.
[flamebait]Also, I do not agree with your claim of KDE being useable . I still find it wanting, and will not use it unless I don't have a choice[/flamebait].
Just my personal opinion, nothing against KDE or Linux (seriously:-)
I'm definitely partial to outlawing boxing (as well as bullfights, which are outlawed in my country)
OTOH, maybe if people do need to get fighting out of their system, maybe a "sport" with rules like boxing is better than what this guy ahref=http://slashdot.org/~QuantumGhttp://slashdot.org/~QuantumG> is proposing
I do realize that there is a big percentage of the population that does not approve of your government's actions, and I do not want to generalize.
In fact, I've always admired the US a lot, and that is why I'm so angry at the things they are doing, and I would very much like to visit it.
But it's no longer easy for Uruguayan citizens to visit your country, even relatively well-known ones such as my father, even harder for the rest of us. During the Clinton administration, Uruguay was one of the few countries that was granted visa-free entry to the US, but the current administration revoked that because of (somewhat justified) fear of inmigration and counterfeiting (Uruguayan passports became very sought after by the rest of South American countries, and lots of fellow countrymen emigrated to the US, most of them educated young men).
Thanks for your offer, and if you ever come to Uruguay let me know, and I extend the same invitation to you:-)
Call me a n00b if you want (because I probably am), but I want something that doesn't require a PhD to run, no matter how powerful it is or how much better it supposedly is.
I appreciate Microsoft's effort at making Wizards and somewhat user-friendly stuff, although they do f*k up sometimes.
Of course, I'm not talking about huge enterprises that can afford to have 12 different guys to run their infrastructure.
What's wrong with a national ID card? It's obviously better than the system the US is using now (a mix of Social Security and Driver's licenses).
I don't mind tracking that much, what I do mind is the active (and useless) harassement they do while doing so. I've been to the EU, specifically Spain, where they are very suspicious of Latin Americans because they tend to stay, and I only had to answer a series of quite reasonable questions.
On the other hand, the US encourages fingerprint taking, stupid searches (so my shoe has some bomb in it, but my 10kg of electronics equipment doesn't???) and paranoid attitudes as I described in another post.
First of all, an apology. I didn't mean to come trough that way (and I had to look up what jingoistic meant:-).
That said, my statement is not entirely biased, as you undoubtedly don't know, and I will try to prove (mod me offtopic for this:P ):
Uruguay has an iliteracy rate of 2%, while the US has a slightly higher 3%
Life expectancy is similar, with the US being slightly higher at about 76 years to Uruguay's 74
Slightly higher schooling expectancy for US citizens, at an average 16 years to Uruguay's 15 (both well above average, trailing only the nordic countries and Australia)
The Economist, which can be said to be biased, ranked the US at 13th for quality of life, with Uruguay at 43rd, behind Argentina and Chile, in 2005. However, it is believed in South America that Uruguay actually has the best quality of life, as seen in the World Institute for Development Economics Research (maybe less biased than the Economist), which places both the US and Uruguay in the top 20 countries (the US at 2nd, Uruguay at 18th). Other sources state that Montevideo has a similar quality of life than New York
It's no wonder the US government will be tightening security at the expense of their citizen's confort.
It's been said that if you allow the government to do something (in this case thighten security, but it can be taxes, etc.) on others, sooner or later, it will be applied to you.
Let's see if US citizens like being treated like criminals as other visitors are ("Officer, I forgot my passport. Isn't my ID enough?" - "No, stay in detention. You will be interrogated shortly").
Me, I never visited the US, but an United Arways flight gave me a taste of how it can be like (probing my shoes?? and people can go aboard with 10 kg of electronics that can be disassembled into anything you want - that's just false security).
Not to mention the last time my father went there... in spite of being a prominent member of an international law association on his way to a congress he was harassed by the inmigration officers just from coming from a "Third World" country (and Uruguay is a lot better educated than the US, and better in many regards, we're just poorer). It made little difference to them that my father had gone there lots of times before, and could have stayed if he wanted to...
HELLO? Some people don't have the same traditions as you do, and don't even know what April's Fool day is.
Me, I almost fell of my chair when I looked at Slashdot's front page (the MSSQL on Linux got me:-). Fortunately I remembered a past prank my sister in the US made a few years ago and realized it's your April's Fools Day.
I haven't tried it yet, but I'd rather have a Security Wizard than nothing at all.
It may amaze you, but there are people administering servers that are not fully qualified (me, I'm not as qualified as I should be), for whom having a Security Wizard may be a big boon.
I think the author is not suggesting that ALL applications be supplanted by the Google terminal-server/citrix-like thingy.
If you look at big corporations, some deploy thin clients which work similarly to what the article suggests (the company I work for has deployed many of those) for administrative uses, and other light workloads.
But programmers, graphics editors, powergamers and such will still want a powerful home computer.
But GMail has temporarily replaced (for me) the need for USB drives and stuff (with the GMail Drive), and I wouldn't mind using whatever apps Google creates while on holidays, in cyber-cafés, etc.
If you were the Japanese government, would you want to know that the US were getting referential treatment?
If you were a customer from any other country, would you want to know this?
I hope they have fun explaining this to their "Gold" partners not from the US, not to mention governments and such.
If they go down the road of having 1st class and 2nd class customers, they're going to find out the hard way that people don't like being 2nd class customers (unless their marketing is VERY GOOD and it doesn't seem so).
If only I could remember where I read about a study on people and their perceptions (or how to make 2nd class feel like 1st class)...
I was wondering on the point, and I think you might be right.
I remember the PCChips 748 motherboard was a big hit here in spite of being really bad because it had both socket 370 and Slot1.
System builders loved it - mostly because it was cheap, but also because they could use their remaining Slot 1 processors and sell Socket 370 processors as well.
The only kind of software you can build without studying users is the sort for which you are the typical user. But this is just the kind that tends to be open source: operating systems, programming languages, editors, and so on.
I guess most of you already knew that - I'm quite certain that many people get involved in an Open Source project because they need whatever that project is doing.
Maybe there are a few that are in it to learn, or coding for coding's sake
I just wish there was someone that had a similar view to mine on Desktop Usability, Compatibility and all that which would make me actually use linux (as opposed to boot it once in a while to tinker as a hobby, and then it's back to Windows for work and fun)
Similarly, if I'm having an issue with my monitor in Linux, the solution is likely as simple as editing the '/etc/X11/XF86Config-4' file. With Windows, I'd likely have to download new drivers from the manufacturer
I disagree with your opinion.
I'd definitely rather try to solve things through the Windows interface than trying to solve whatever is on the XF86Config-4 file (and how should I know that it's the Config-4 file? XF86 I can guess stands for XFree).
And you DON'T need to download new drivers, maybe in Windows 98, but I've found the Windows XP default driver works for even the most esoteric pieces of hardware I had lying around (who would have thought that WinXP can run with a 128 Kb ISA video card:-)
Of course, that is a problem of training, but I have Suse 8.2 (the professional package with all 5 CD's and 2 DVD's, manuals and all) with KDE and I can't figure out some stuff even with the manual. Besides, having been raised by Windows, I keep trying to find those Wizards or GUIs for all those Config files, and I have the Yast configuration console (quite good but not up to par with Windows) and the KDE console, and whatnot, and they are NOT intuitive to use IMO.
I did get Apache to run, but I'm happy to know that someone is developing a GUI for Samba which has stumped me.
Slashdot Mirror
OMG... I thought the V-Chip was a South Park joke...
:-)
:-)
You americans are crazy, you know that???
Nice example, I hope the economy of scale works out, as I'm not really looking forward to paying $50 extra for a TV which I will not be using to watch broadcasts anyway (I'm experimenting with not having a TV right now, as evidenced by the increased amount of Slashdot posts
Interesting. Here, most have Windows and Linux both, or just Windows.
Games run better or are Windows-only, and we work in a Windows shop so work is also Windows-centric too.
But many are using Firefox, so it's not that we prefer to pay for something we can have for free, it's just that switching to Linux isn't "free" (at least until the support for many of the things we Windows users take for granted is there).
Well, I live in the Third World, and there are plenty of studies that show that poor people actually have more children, because they usually can then live off their children.
t m (In spanish, there must be an English version somewhere)
http://www.unfpa.org/swp/2002/espanol/ch7/page4.h
C'mon, you must have read about it somewhere :-)
Maybe not require, but accept a document written in the de facto standard office suite?
And I too have suffered because of Word compatibility.. my father was a devout WordPerfect user.
I'm referring to the home desktop, not the corporate desktop.
:-)
While the article refers to the Corporate desktop.
[flamebait]Also, I do not agree with your claim of KDE being useable . I still find it wanting, and will not use it unless I don't have a choice[/flamebait].
Just my personal opinion, nothing against KDE or Linux (seriously
I'm definitely partial to outlawing boxing (as well as bullfights, which are outlawed in my country)
t .org/~QuantumG> is proposing
OTOH, maybe if people do need to get fighting out of their system, maybe a "sport" with rules like boxing is better than what this guy ahref=http://slashdot.org/~QuantumGhttp://slashdo
It still beats nothing (and I do use Babelfish from time to time. Had to look up Eliza and found it funny :-)
Well, at least it might get you a space in National Geographic (no, they do not disprove evolution):
1 /feature1/http://magma.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/ 0411/feature1/>
ahref=http://magma.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/041
I do realize that there is a big percentage of the population that does not approve of your government's actions, and I do not want to generalize.
:-)
In fact, I've always admired the US a lot, and that is why I'm so angry at the things they are doing, and I would very much like to visit it.
But it's no longer easy for Uruguayan citizens to visit your country, even relatively well-known ones such as my father, even harder for the rest of us. During the Clinton administration, Uruguay was one of the few countries that was granted visa-free entry to the US, but the current administration revoked that because of (somewhat justified) fear of inmigration and counterfeiting (Uruguayan passports became very sought after by the rest of South American countries, and lots of fellow countrymen emigrated to the US, most of them educated young men).
Thanks for your offer, and if you ever come to Uruguay let me know, and I extend the same invitation to you
Call me a n00b if you want (because I probably am), but I want something that doesn't require a PhD to run, no matter how powerful it is or how much better it supposedly is.
I appreciate Microsoft's effort at making Wizards and somewhat user-friendly stuff, although they do f*k up sometimes.
Of course, I'm not talking about huge enterprises that can afford to have 12 different guys to run their infrastructure.
What's wrong with a national ID card? It's obviously better than the system the US is using now (a mix of Social Security and Driver's licenses).
I don't mind tracking that much, what I do mind is the active (and useless) harassement they do while doing so. I've been to the EU, specifically Spain, where they are very suspicious of Latin Americans because they tend to stay, and I only had to answer a series of quite reasonable questions.
On the other hand, the US encourages fingerprint taking, stupid searches (so my shoe has some bomb in it, but my 10kg of electronics equipment doesn't???) and paranoid attitudes as I described in another post.
Not really.
You can return to Uruguay with our Identity Card (Cédula de Identidad), which is provided to every citizen when he or she is born.
We do need passwords to travel to countries which require it (all except for neighbours Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay).
First of all, an apology. I didn't mean to come trough that way (and I had to look up what jingoistic meant :-).
:P ):
o cind r national/displayStory.cfm?story_id=3372495&d=2005
0 3-2/conference%202003-2-papers/papers-pdf/Rahman%2 0Tauhidur%20250403.pdf
That said, my statement is not entirely biased, as you undoubtedly don't know, and I will try to prove (mod me offtopic for this
Uruguay has an iliteracy rate of 2%, while the US has a slightly higher 3%
Life expectancy is similar, with the US being slightly higher at about 76 years to Uruguay's 74
Slightly higher schooling expectancy for US citizens, at an average 16 years to Uruguay's 15 (both well above average, trailing only the nordic countries and Australia)
The Economist, which can be said to be biased, ranked the US at 13th for quality of life, with Uruguay at 43rd, behind Argentina and Chile, in 2005. However, it is believed in South America that Uruguay actually has the best quality of life, as seen in the World Institute for Development Economics Research (maybe less biased than the Economist), which places both the US and Uruguay in the top 20 countries (the US at 2nd, Uruguay at 18th).
Other sources state that Montevideo has a similar quality of life than New York
Sources:UN's statistics page http://unstats.un.org/unsd/demographic/products/s
The Economisthttp://www.economist.com/theworldin/inte
FinFactshttp://www.finfacts.com/
http://www.wider.unu.edu/conference/conference-20
It's no wonder the US government will be tightening security at the expense of their citizen's confort.
It's been said that if you allow the government to do something (in this case thighten security, but it can be taxes, etc.) on others, sooner or later, it will be applied to you.
Let's see if US citizens like being treated like criminals as other visitors are ("Officer, I forgot my passport. Isn't my ID enough?" - "No, stay in detention. You will be interrogated shortly").
Me, I never visited the US, but an United Arways flight gave me a taste of how it can be like (probing my shoes?? and people can go aboard with 10 kg of electronics that can be disassembled into anything you want - that's just false security).
Not to mention the last time my father went there... in spite of being a prominent member of an international law association on his way to a congress he was harassed by the inmigration officers just from coming from a "Third World" country (and Uruguay is a lot better educated than the US, and better in many regards, we're just poorer).
It made little difference to them that my father had gone there lots of times before, and could have stayed if he wanted to...
HELLO? Some people don't have the same traditions as you do, and don't even know what April's Fool day is.
:-). Fortunately I remembered a past prank my sister in the US made a few years ago and realized it's your April's Fools Day.
Me, I almost fell of my chair when I looked at Slashdot's front page (the MSSQL on Linux got me
Over here, it's on the 28th of December.
I haven't tried it yet, but I'd rather have a Security Wizard than nothing at all.
It may amaze you, but there are people administering servers that are not fully qualified (me, I'm not as qualified as I should be), for whom having a Security Wizard may be a big boon.
I do hope that it allows for later tweaking.
Good to know that it has improved security.
The NY Article linked requires a free registration which I don't care for.
I think the author is not suggesting that ALL applications be supplanted by the Google terminal-server/citrix-like thingy.
If you look at big corporations, some deploy thin clients which work similarly to what the article suggests (the company I work for has deployed many of those) for administrative uses, and other light workloads.
But programmers, graphics editors, powergamers and such will still want a powerful home computer.
But GMail has temporarily replaced (for me) the need for USB drives and stuff (with the GMail Drive), and I wouldn't mind using whatever apps Google creates while on holidays, in cyber-cafés, etc.
I agree. It's the software that's making PCs look slow - see this excellent piece at http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/web/library/ wa-cranky49.html?ca=dgr-lnxw01Cranky to see where your processing power is going (but you knew that already :-)
But my experience using OO differs from yours - it was painfully slow last time I used it, in 2002 I think.
You should have seen the look in my grandmother's face when I made her an account in HOTmail :-)
It seems techies are no good at choosing names (or have a sex fixation?).
If you were the Japanese government, would you want to know that the US were getting referential treatment?
If you were a customer from any other country, would you want to know this?
I hope they have fun explaining this to their "Gold" partners not from the US, not to mention governments and such.
If they go down the road of having 1st class and 2nd class customers, they're going to find out the hard way that people don't like being 2nd class customers (unless their marketing is VERY GOOD and it doesn't seem so).
If only I could remember where I read about a study on people and their perceptions (or how to make 2nd class feel like 1st class)...
I was wondering on the point, and I think you might be right.
I remember the PCChips 748 motherboard was a big hit here in spite of being really bad because it had both socket 370 and Slot1.
System builders loved it - mostly because it was cheap, but also because they could use their remaining Slot 1 processors and sell Socket 370 processors as well.
The only kind of software you can build without studying users is the sort for which you are the typical user. But this is just the kind that tends to be open source: operating systems, programming languages, editors, and so on.
I guess most of you already knew that - I'm quite certain that many people get involved in an Open Source project because they need whatever that project is doing.
Maybe there are a few that are in it to learn, or coding for coding's sake
I just wish there was someone that had a similar view to mine on Desktop Usability, Compatibility and all that which would make me actually use linux (as opposed to boot it once in a while to tinker as a hobby, and then it's back to Windows for work and fun)
Similarly, if I'm having an issue with my monitor in Linux, the solution is likely as simple as editing the '/etc/X11/XF86Config-4' file. With Windows, I'd likely have to download new drivers from the manufacturer
:-)
I disagree with your opinion.
I'd definitely rather try to solve things through the Windows interface than trying to solve whatever is on the XF86Config-4 file (and how should I know that it's the Config-4 file? XF86 I can guess stands for XFree).
And you DON'T need to download new drivers, maybe in Windows 98, but I've found the Windows XP default driver works for even the most esoteric pieces of hardware I had lying around (who would have thought that WinXP can run with a 128 Kb ISA video card
Of course, that is a problem of training, but I have Suse 8.2 (the professional package with all 5 CD's and 2 DVD's, manuals and all) with KDE and I can't figure out some stuff even with the manual. Besides, having been raised by Windows, I keep trying to find those Wizards or GUIs for all those Config files, and I have the Yast configuration console (quite good but not up to par with Windows) and the KDE console, and whatnot, and they are NOT intuitive to use IMO.
I did get Apache to run, but I'm happy to know that someone is developing a GUI for Samba which has stumped me.