I think part of what you are experiencing is the natural progression from the apparent total freedom a child experiences to the much more restrictive life of an adult. All teens go through this. Its part of what drives teens to break away from the home and live an independent adult life.
You may respond "what restrictive adult life" but its true. We adults may appear more free than you (and in many respects we are), but we are burdened with self-imposed restrictions, societally imposed restrictions, burdens of responsibility etc that can strongly curtail that apparent freedom we have.
I recall that I was frustrated by visions of adults having the "Freedom" to drink, drive (not necessarily together), and all sorts of other fun stuff that I couldn't do. But, you know what, now that I'm an adult, I realise that those are largely the only freedoms we have that are worth anything. Free speech be damned, give me a beer and a woman!
I don't know why this is flamebait. I don't keep a lot of my mail and for no other reason than I can't stand the clutter (I know email is not actual clutter, but it is mental clutter). It is perfectly reasonable to delete older email AND it is perfectly legal (so far as I know) to delete older email unless you have reason to suspect that it will be evidence in a criminal case. Of course, there is no better reason to delete it than that, but still.
. So - the real question - is increased demand for corn, for ethanol production, really a problem? Wow, man, that's a complicated question isn't it? On the one hand, since its essentially impossible to produce corn at a profit today, raising the demand, and therefore the price, of corn would be good as it could eliminate some of the subsidies going to corn farmers. But, that's not likely to stick around for long because the big agribusinesses want cheap corn -- the cheaper the corn is, the more sense it makes to fractionate corn into everything we eat. Then again, higher corn prices might stick and result in the cow-factory thing declining in favor of more sustainable methods. Of course, increased demand/higher prices will result in greater corn production and a restabilisation of the price, but at what cost? mono-culture corn production is an oil-soaked business: everything from tilling, transportation and processing to the fertilizers and *cides. It is extremely energy intensive. I think food production and delivery accounts for something like 1/5th of our energy consumption and corn production is a significant portion of that. This increased corn production will require more energy... if we transition to corn based energy production, well, its not pretty.
I don't have enough background in this subject to comment intelligently beyond what I've already said. Its a hugely complicated economic and social problem. But, on the face of it, if we can get reasonably clean energy from corn and as a result of market forces maybe clean up other parts of our food production system, that's probably a good thing. Provided we make smart choices.
I encourage reading that book though (I'm almost done with it myself). It follows food production through three different paths: modern agribusiness (everything(!) is corn), grass fed farming, and hunting/gathering. very interesting. And I think he does an okay job of keeping it balanced in recognition of the problems of feeding so many people can't be handled by some of the less damaging methods yet not liking the current system..02
I'm not sure how that would work, exactly. Corn turns into germs? Either way, point is, demand for beef is (x). You need (y) cattle with (z) growth rate to fill that demand. Corn gets them there, grass doesn't.
The cow's rumen is not set up to digest corn. Introducing mass quantities of corn into the rumen causes the rumen to acidify (normally it is neutral). This causes several problems including massive ulceration. Essentially a feed lot cow is sick and dying the whole time it is there as it is being fattened. The other issue with the acidified rumen is that it means a cow's stomach is now chemically similar to a human stomach (strongly acid). Now you have an environment for E. Coli in the cow, which previously did not exist. This is why E. Coli in beef has become a problem. THe natural barrier to E. Coli infection transmission from cattle to humans has been removed by feeding the corn to the cow.
A properly managed intensive grazing system produces healthier cattle and, if properly rotated with other livestock (range chickens for example) can be significantly more productive, in terms of calories produced, per acre than modern corn farming. It is also less energy intensive. I think it takes something like 10 calories of energy to produce 1 calorie of food energy through corn farming. MIG (managed intensive grazing) can do it on less without pesticides, herbicides etc.
See the book "Omnivore's Dilemma" for what appears to be a fairly balanced treatmwent of this subject.
sorry, seriously OT, but I love your sig. However, be sure you mount read-only before you fsck. The long term damage is catastrophic. Trust me on this, I've got the results of three read-write fsck's running around my house right now...
Re: Photon gathering (and x-rays, RF, IR, etc.)
on
Interstellar Ark
·
· Score: 2, Funny
Why ever turn such a system off?
That will be answered by our returning descendents when all they find is one big telescope floating in the space that used to be our solar system.
Couldn't all of the music sharing be a distributed backup? Of course one would expect that to confirm the backup that some of the files would have to be tested (aka played) for verification of backup.
I've discussed this on here before. A simple agreement between two parties takes care of it. I have the right to keep backups of my music in case my originals are damaged. So do you. In order to properly secure these backups we both need offsite storage. I will loan you X gigs of offsite storage in exchange for X gigs of storage at your location. We also agree that from time to time we will each verify the integrity of these backups (by listening to them as that is the only *true* way of confirming that they are any good, well, okay, md5sums but still...). Further, I submit that in order for me to fully ensure the security of your backups, I will include them in another offsite backup storage location, that I am also obtaining by fair trade of similarly sized offsite storage for that provider.
You store my music and my friends' music and we'll store your's and your friends'. Simple, legit.
I love it. the link to "tsunami wave" in the caption of that photo is a nice clip of a a guy surfing a serious wave on google video. Who says rocket scientists aren't cool! Way to go NASA!!
well I did ride a 1991 Suz. Bandit 400, bright red, V&H pipe etc, but now ride a '93 Bandit 400 with a yosh pipe and full jet kit. But in between bikes, I moved to Spokane, so I'll be seeing you in my dreams;) My Colesville adventures were 1995-99.
I agree completely, it was a dangerous maneuver. I definitely would not recommend it to anyone at anytime. Having said that, at the time, I had the experience, and skills. I was confident. And the bike could definitely handle it. I had no fear of the bike failing. helps that it was clear and dry too. Basically, it was an ideal situation to teach the guy a lesson and I took the opportunity. Don't try this at home kids!
I did similar to that riding my motorcycle on Colesville Rd out of downtown Silver Spring MD. If you've been there, you know. Its a crappy, reversible lane 35mph hell with traffic lights and everything. So I get out of the downtown core and kick it up to about 40mph when I realise this beemer is RIGHT ON MY ASS. Mind you, there are at least 3 lanes outbound and I'm well ahead of the bulk of the traffic -- he's got plenty of room but is still riding so close I could almost reach back and touch him. So I kick it up to almost 50 and he's still there right behind me. We're cresting a hill and I know the light timing, its going to be red. So just as we come over the hill, I drag the back brake a touch -- just enough to turn on the brake light -- while I ease off the throttle. I'm watching in my mirror as he fades back, adjusts to my slow rate of braking and then closes right back on my ass again. Then I nailed him with a full handful of front brake dragging it from 45 mph to about 20 in nothing flat. Then I release the brake and gas it enough to keep him from rear-ending me. I will never forget watching him light up all four tires and fish tail it into the curb. I calmly pulled up to the light and snickered as he pulled it off the curb and back into traffic, but hung back from me a good 200 feet from then on. Oh what joy!
doesn't scale well beyond small groups of relatively like-minded individuals
I have long thought most human endeavours don't scale well beyond small groups of like-minded individuals. HIstory seems rife with examples of systems that work well when populations are small but degrade as populations grow. A classic example is our own democracy. On every level, from local to national, things were initial done by small groups building concensus. That falls apart when your representaive is one voice for tens or hundreds of thousands instead of a few hundred to few thousand. Tribal societies work because you're dealing with a pretty small number of people who pretty much HAVE to live with each other and thus are driven to reach consensus. The result is that the small societies function pretty well. IANA[socialogist|political scientist|other-appropriately-skilled-individual].
how apropos as I'm just working on using ntbackup as a means to move my physical xp install into a qemu image. Why that? well, i can't find my stupid original install disks for qb2001 and my qb2004 is an upgrade that borks because it can't find qb2001. argh. and yes I've tried many different iterations of copying stuff from one place to another, etc. so, ntbackup will let you do a "system state" backup that you can use, supposedly, to update my qemu xp instance to the same state as my physical install... hopefully, after many many hours of boring grinding, it will work.
Re:what about a QuickBooks replacement?
on
GnuCash 2.0.0 Released
·
· Score: 3, Informative
1.) Import my existing Quickbooks data from the last 2-3 years.
hopeless. That's the only reason I maintain my stupid winxp dualboot setup -- for access to 4 years of business transactions that are forever locked up in quickbooks. bleh.
fair enough. my experience is with quickbooks which, at the time i left, looked like it was heading for annual upgrades required to continue using payroll services that I was already paying for. and quickbooks upgrades (at the time) were not $40.
Re:what about a QuickBooks replacement?
on
GnuCash 2.0.0 Released
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
just my limited experience here...
depending on what you're doing, gnucash IS a good replacement for quickbooks. It handles a/p. a/r and a reasonable slew of business reports. It does NOT do payroll, which may be a killer for a lot of people, but in my experience, quickbooks payroll wasn't all that. Once you've built a decent spreadsheet for doing payroll, you can format it into a.qif type format and import into gnucash just fine. then you have control over your payroll... my biggest reasons for switching from quickbooks: 1. tired of forced upgrades when the software already did more than I wanted and 2. (the real killer) if you don't use their subscription payroll system, then the payroll calculations will be WRONG. I had some local payroll taxes implemented in my quickbooks. When I got tired of paying them for tax tables that I could get for free from the govt, I let that subscription lapse and guess what happened... the payroll deductions calculated by those taxes I had setup were suddenly wrong. Hours of research later, i determined that without the subscription, it dropped a couple points of precision on the other, custom numbers it was computing. WTF! so screw intuit. IMHO.
Personal and small business accounting in Linux will be easier and better after today's release of GnuCash 2.0.0. This milestone release of the free, open source accounting program includes generational advances over the last version. GnuCash 2.0.0 is based on state-of-the-art gtk2 GUI technology. Developers worked hard to integrate the Gnome Human Interface Guidelines (HIG) for a consistent behaviour and look-and-feel for the whole Desktop. Major changes in the milestone release include;
* OFX DirectConnect which can directly retrieve and import account
statements over the Internet.
* A "Hide account" feature to keep a better overview of your current
accounts tabbed window functionality.
* The ability to create budgets within GnuCash using your account data.
* Support for Accounting Periods.
* The data file format has been improved with respect to
international characters. Data files with international characters
can be transferred to other countries flawlessly.
* GnuCash Help and Guide are now fully integrated with the GNOME
Help system (Yelp). The GnuCash development team said these new features and changes will make GnuCash easier than ever for newcomers. GnuCash is the leading free, open source accounting program and the leap to gtk2 will enable users to be able to enjoy cutting edge functionality with the freedom of not being locked into proprietory file formats.
*Playing With Others* As with other leading Linux software that is designed to replace proprietory programs, GnuCash is a functional replacement for expensive accounting programs. Like OpenOffice.org and The Gimp, GnuCash is also programmed to communicate and interact with as many existing programs, institutions and people as possible. The GnuCash development team has continued to improve file import filters, which allow users to import work from old programs like Microsoft Money and Quicken. GnuCash can load QIF and QFX files, which are used by both of those programs. Developers have also continued to incorporate support for online banking into the program. GnuCash 2.0.0 supports OFX DirectConnect which can directly retrieve and import account statements over the Internet. The milestone release is available in 29 languages, including English, French, German, Spanish, Norwegian, so people from around the world will have no difficulty operating the program
*Off on the Right Foot* Users of the GnuCash 2.0.0 will notice a few changes when they start the program. Improvements have been made on startup speed, scheduled transactions, currency support and currency quote retrievals. After they enter the program, users will find a double-ledger account system, exhaustive report options and account hierarchy tools. Also at their disposal is a full system of tutorials and documentation.
*Getting GnuCash* GnuCash 2.0.0 can be downloaded from gnucash.org. It is available as source code. To install GnuCash, users will need Gnome 2, guile, slib and g-wrap.
*http://www.gnucash.org *
*http://download.sourceforge.net/gnucash *
*About the Program* GnuCash is a free, open source accounting program released under the GNU General Public License (GPL) and available for GNU/Linux, *BSD, Solaris and Mac OSX. It is collaboratively developed by 10 people from over 5 countries.
Programming on GnuCash began in 1997, and its first stable release was in 1998.
istm that one of the xscreensaver randomly-selected-images does this. very disconcerting even though I've not had windows on my dekstop in a couple years.
I went through the same thing with quickbooks. They started sunsetting support for payroll on older versions (this consists mostly of downloading tax tables, big deal, that part is easy) so I upgraded from QB2001 to QB2004. THe improvements? none. the added cruft? huge. then they announced they were sunsetting payroll support for that version too... that was what pushed me into linux and gnucash permanently. Its been a bit of a rocky road, but the support from the devs is great and they've been busting theirs asses on the new 2.0 rewrite. I'm currently using 1.9.8 (deb unstable) and its great.
Now if only I could figure out how to get my old data out of quickbooks. What? yup, no qif export of transactions. Unbelievable. So now I am stuck maintaining a winxp boot somewhere forever. argh.
These things always seem to fail, or not live up to their promise. Why? Because as the technology comes down in price to the point where it is affordable, then the technology is too dated to really impress anymore. By the time this thing (assuming it gets built) gets down to $500 the state of the art will have marched past it just enough that no one will want it. Same thing with PDA's and PDA/phones etc. They never quite do what we need/want because by the time that tech gets into those devices, our bigger devices are on to something new. The only things I think that will make any of these devices TRULY successful, to the point where they have a REAL impact on people lives/work is when reliable speech recognition makes it into these devices. That frees the user from burdensome or downright stupid methods of entering data, also, the processing required for reasonable speech rec. by default assumes more than enough processing power to handle everyday tasks that the user would expect from these devices. IANA[A:Z], just a guy who's tried a couple different pda's and decided their too much work to be truly useful.
Slashdot Mirror
I think part of what you are experiencing is the natural progression from the apparent total freedom a child experiences to the much more restrictive life of an adult. All teens go through this. Its part of what drives teens to break away from the home and live an independent adult life.
You may respond "what restrictive adult life" but its true. We adults may appear more free than you (and in many respects we are), but we are burdened with self-imposed restrictions, societally imposed restrictions, burdens of responsibility etc that can strongly curtail that apparent freedom we have.
I recall that I was frustrated by visions of adults having the "Freedom" to drink, drive (not necessarily together), and all sorts of other fun stuff that I couldn't do. But, you know what, now that I'm an adult, I realise that those are largely the only freedoms we have that are worth anything. Free speech be damned, give me a beer and a woman!
I don't know why this is flamebait. I don't keep a lot of my mail and for no other reason than I can't stand the clutter (I know email is not actual clutter, but it is mental clutter). It is perfectly reasonable to delete older email AND it is perfectly legal (so far as I know) to delete older email unless you have reason to suspect that it will be evidence in a criminal case. Of course, there is no better reason to delete it than that, but still.
there.
I don't have enough background in this subject to comment intelligently beyond what I've already said. Its a hugely complicated economic and social problem. But, on the face of it, if we can get reasonably clean energy from corn and as a result of market forces maybe clean up other parts of our food production system, that's probably a good thing. Provided we make smart choices.
I encourage reading that book though (I'm almost done with it myself). It follows food production through three different paths: modern agribusiness (everything(!) is corn), grass fed farming, and hunting/gathering. very interesting. And I think he does an okay job of keeping it balanced in recognition of the problems of feeding so many people can't be handled by some of the less damaging methods yet not liking the current system.
I'm not sure how that would work, exactly. Corn turns into germs? Either way, point is, demand for beef is (x). You need (y) cattle with (z) growth rate to fill that demand. Corn gets them there, grass doesn't.
The cow's rumen is not set up to digest corn. Introducing mass quantities of corn into the rumen causes the rumen to acidify (normally it is neutral). This causes several problems including massive ulceration. Essentially a feed lot cow is sick and dying the whole time it is there as it is being fattened. The other issue with the acidified rumen is that it means a cow's stomach is now chemically similar to a human stomach (strongly acid). Now you have an environment for E. Coli in the cow, which previously did not exist. This is why E. Coli in beef has become a problem. THe natural barrier to E. Coli infection transmission from cattle to humans has been removed by feeding the corn to the cow.
A properly managed intensive grazing system produces healthier cattle and, if properly rotated with other livestock (range chickens for example) can be significantly more productive, in terms of calories produced, per acre than modern corn farming. It is also less energy intensive. I think it takes something like 10 calories of energy to produce 1 calorie of food energy through corn farming. MIG (managed intensive grazing) can do it on less without pesticides, herbicides etc.
See the book "Omnivore's Dilemma" for what appears to be a fairly balanced treatmwent of this subject.
HAY is for HORSES.
I believe you meant "HEY!..."
moron.
sorry, seriously OT, but I love your sig. However, be sure you mount read-only before you fsck. The long term damage is catastrophic. Trust me on this, I've got the results of three read-write fsck's running around my house right now...
Why ever turn such a system off?
That will be answered by our returning descendents when all they find is one big telescope floating in the space that used to be our solar system.
Couldn't all of the music sharing be a distributed backup? Of course one would expect that to confirm the backup that some of the files would have to be tested (aka played) for verification of backup.
I've discussed this on here before. A simple agreement between two parties takes care of it. I have the right to keep backups of my music in case my originals are damaged. So do you. In order to properly secure these backups we both need offsite storage. I will loan you X gigs of offsite storage in exchange for X gigs of storage at your location. We also agree that from time to time we will each verify the integrity of these backups (by listening to them as that is the only *true* way of confirming that they are any good, well, okay, md5sums but still...). Further, I submit that in order for me to fully ensure the security of your backups, I will include them in another offsite backup storage location, that I am also obtaining by fair trade of similarly sized offsite storage for that provider.
You store my music and my friends' music and we'll store your's and your friends'. Simple, legit.
I'd love some attorney to comment on this.
^X^S^X^C
I love it. the link to "tsunami wave" in the caption of that photo is a nice clip of a a guy surfing a serious wave on google video. Who says rocket scientists aren't cool! Way to go NASA!!
well I did ride a 1991 Suz. Bandit 400, bright red, V&H pipe etc, but now ride a '93 Bandit 400 with a yosh pipe and full jet kit. But in between bikes, I moved to Spokane, so I'll be seeing you in my dreams ;) My Colesville adventures were 1995-99.
I agree completely, it was a dangerous maneuver. I definitely would not recommend it to anyone at anytime. Having said that, at the time, I had the experience, and skills. I was confident. And the bike could definitely handle it. I had no fear of the bike failing. helps that it was clear and dry too. Basically, it was an ideal situation to teach the guy a lesson and I took the opportunity. Don't try this at home kids!
anyway, rubber side down!
I did similar to that riding my motorcycle on Colesville Rd out of downtown Silver Spring MD. If you've been there, you know. Its a crappy, reversible lane 35mph hell with traffic lights and everything. So I get out of the downtown core and kick it up to about 40mph when I realise this beemer is RIGHT ON MY ASS. Mind you, there are at least 3 lanes outbound and I'm well ahead of the bulk of the traffic -- he's got plenty of room but is still riding so close I could almost reach back and touch him. So I kick it up to almost 50 and he's still there right behind me. We're cresting a hill and I know the light timing, its going to be red. So just as we come over the hill, I drag the back brake a touch -- just enough to turn on the brake light -- while I ease off the throttle. I'm watching in my mirror as he fades back, adjusts to my slow rate of braking and then closes right back on my ass again. Then I nailed him with a full handful of front brake dragging it from 45 mph to about 20 in nothing flat. Then I release the brake and gas it enough to keep him from rear-ending me. I will never forget watching him light up all four tires and fish tail it into the curb. I calmly pulled up to the light and snickered as he pulled it off the curb and back into traffic, but hung back from me a good 200 feet from then on. Oh what joy!
(BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ! Neeeeeeeuuuuuooooooorrrrrrrrrrraaaaaa!)
best. sound. effect. ever.
seriously. that is exactly the sound I make in my head when flying around!
Marge we need more chocolate vanilla and strawberry ice cream, we're all out of chocolate.
or something like that.
doesn't scale well beyond small groups of relatively like-minded individuals
.
I have long thought most human endeavours don't scale well beyond small groups of like-minded individuals. HIstory seems rife with examples of systems that work well when populations are small but degrade as populations grow. A classic example is our own democracy. On every level, from local to national, things were initial done by small groups building concensus. That falls apart when your representaive is one voice for tens or hundreds of thousands instead of a few hundred to few thousand. Tribal societies work because you're dealing with a pretty small number of people who pretty much HAVE to live with each other and thus are driven to reach consensus. The result is that the small societies function pretty well. IANA[socialogist|political scientist|other-appropriately-skilled-individual]
umm... the CS dept created it. no test subjects.
how apropos as I'm just working on using ntbackup as a means to move my physical xp install into a qemu image. Why that? well, i can't find my stupid original install disks for qb2001 and my qb2004 is an upgrade that borks because it can't find qb2001. argh. and yes I've tried many different iterations of copying stuff from one place to another, etc. so, ntbackup will let you do a "system state" backup that you can use, supposedly, to update my qemu xp instance to the same state as my physical install... hopefully, after many many hours of boring grinding, it will work.
0 9/physcial-to-virtual/
http://macrolinz.com/macrolinz/index.php/2006/01/
is where I got the idea.
1.) Import my existing Quickbooks data from the last 2-3 years.
hopeless. That's the only reason I maintain my stupid winxp dualboot setup -- for access to 4 years of business transactions that are forever locked up in quickbooks. bleh.
fair enough. my experience is with quickbooks which, at the time i left, looked like it was heading for annual upgrades required to continue using payroll services that I was already paying for. and quickbooks upgrades (at the time) were not $40.
just my limited experience here...
.qif type format and import into gnucash just fine. then you have control over your payroll... my biggest reasons for switching from quickbooks: 1. tired of forced upgrades when the software already did more than I wanted and 2. (the real killer) if you don't use their subscription payroll system, then the payroll calculations will be WRONG. I had some local payroll taxes implemented in my quickbooks. When I got tired of paying them for tax tables that I could get for free from the govt, I let that subscription lapse and guess what happened... the payroll deductions calculated by those taxes I had setup were suddenly wrong. Hours of research later, i determined that without the subscription, it dropped a couple points of precision on the other, custom numbers it was computing. WTF! so screw intuit. IMHO.
depending on what you're doing, gnucash IS a good replacement for quickbooks. It handles a/p. a/r and a reasonable slew of business reports. It does NOT do payroll, which may be a killer for a lot of people, but in my experience, quickbooks payroll wasn't all that. Once you've built a decent spreadsheet for doing payroll, you can format it into a
from gnucash-users list:
Accounting in Linux Leaps Forward
*/GnuCash 2.0.0 milestone released to public/*
Personal and small business accounting in Linux will be easier and
better after today's release of GnuCash 2.0.0.
This milestone release of the free, open source accounting program
includes generational advances over the last version. GnuCash 2.0.0 is
based on state-of-the-art gtk2 GUI technology. Developers worked hard to
integrate the Gnome Human Interface Guidelines (HIG) for a consistent
behaviour and look-and-feel for the whole Desktop.
Major changes in the milestone release include;
* OFX DirectConnect which can directly retrieve and import account
statements over the Internet.
* A "Hide account" feature to keep a better overview of your current
accounts tabbed window functionality.
* The ability to create budgets within GnuCash using your account data.
* Support for Accounting Periods.
* The data file format has been improved with respect to
international characters. Data files with international characters
can be transferred to other countries flawlessly.
* GnuCash Help and Guide are now fully integrated with the GNOME
Help system (Yelp).
The GnuCash development team said these new features and changes will
make GnuCash easier than ever for newcomers.
GnuCash is the leading free, open source accounting program and the leap
to gtk2 will enable users to be able to enjoy cutting edge functionality
with the freedom of not being locked into proprietory file formats.
*Playing With Others*
As with other leading Linux software that is designed to replace
proprietory programs, GnuCash is a functional replacement for expensive
accounting programs. Like OpenOffice.org and The Gimp, GnuCash is also
programmed to communicate and interact with as many existing programs,
institutions and people as possible.
The GnuCash development team has continued to improve file import
filters, which allow users to import work from old programs like
Microsoft Money and Quicken. GnuCash can load QIF and QFX files, which
are used by both of those programs.
Developers have also continued to incorporate support for online banking
into the program. GnuCash 2.0.0 supports OFX DirectConnect which can
directly retrieve and import account statements over the Internet.
The milestone release is available in 29 languages, including English,
French, German, Spanish, Norwegian, so people from around the world will
have no difficulty operating the program
*Off on the Right Foot*
Users of the GnuCash 2.0.0 will notice a few changes when they start the
program. Improvements have been made on startup speed, scheduled
transactions, currency support and currency quote retrievals.
After they enter the program, users will find a double-ledger account
system, exhaustive report options and account hierarchy tools. Also at
their disposal is a full system of tutorials and documentation.
*Getting GnuCash*
GnuCash 2.0.0 can be downloaded from gnucash.org. It is available as
source code.
To install GnuCash, users will need Gnome 2, guile, slib and g-wrap.
*http://www.gnucash.org *
*http://download.sourceforge.net/gnucash
*
*About the Program*
GnuCash is a free, open source accounting program released under the GNU
General Public License (GPL) and available for GNU/Linux, *BSD, Solaris
and Mac OSX. It is collaboratively developed by 10 people from over 5
countries.
Programming on GnuCash began in 1997, and its first stable release was
in 1998.
You can calculate all of the money you saved compared to buying Quicken!
which, with rapid sunsetting, subscription features and more, is not an insignificant amount.
istm that one of the xscreensaver randomly-selected-images does this. very disconcerting even though I've not had windows on my dekstop in a couple years.
I went through the same thing with quickbooks. They started sunsetting support for payroll on older versions (this consists mostly of downloading tax tables, big deal, that part is easy) so I upgraded from QB2001 to QB2004. THe improvements? none. the added cruft? huge. then they announced they were sunsetting payroll support for that version too... that was what pushed me into linux and gnucash permanently. Its been a bit of a rocky road, but the support from the devs is great and they've been busting theirs asses on the new 2.0 rewrite. I'm currently using 1.9.8 (deb unstable) and its great.
Now if only I could figure out how to get my old data out of quickbooks. What? yup, no qif export of transactions. Unbelievable. So now I am stuck maintaining a winxp boot somewhere forever. argh.
Anyway, GNUCash r0x0rs!
These things always seem to fail, or not live up to their promise. Why? Because as the technology comes down in price to the point where it is affordable, then the technology is too dated to really impress anymore. By the time this thing (assuming it gets built) gets down to $500 the state of the art will have marched past it just enough that no one will want it. Same thing with PDA's and PDA/phones etc. They never quite do what we need/want because by the time that tech gets into those devices, our bigger devices are on to something new. The only things I think that will make any of these devices TRULY successful, to the point where they have a REAL impact on people lives/work is when reliable speech recognition makes it into these devices. That frees the user from burdensome or downright stupid methods of entering data, also, the processing required for reasonable speech rec. by default assumes more than enough processing power to handle everyday tasks that the user would expect from these devices. IANA[A:Z], just a guy who's tried a couple different pda's and decided their too much work to be truly useful.