On a song from Information Society's album Don't Be Afraid (I think it was Seek300), there is backwards talking near the end of the song. I recorded it onto my computer and reversed it, and it said, "Obey your parents. Do your homework. Winners don't do drugs."
It's still poor software design, and depressing that no one admits it. I think you're referring to the fact that a broken bootloader makes it hard to boot as "poor software design." I'll let you think about that a little while.
Unfortunately, you didn't follow the suggestions that could have helped. You also assumed that you knew the solution to the problem, which is pretty much never the case, especially when you're troubleshooting an installation of an operating system you don't have much experience with.
You absolutely don't need proprietary software to install GNU/Linux. You, quite unfortunately, didn't download the desktop CD. I'm not sure why, but that had a pretty big effect. If you had downloaded the desktop CD, you could have booted a working system and examined what was going on. Since you didn't have one, and refused to try to burn one on another computer, it was suggested that you find your Windows disk so that you could repair your computer to boot Windows.
I admitted, right from the get-"go", that this was my fault. Did you read the "It's my fault, really. I never should have..." bit? That wasn't sarcasm. I don't suspect it was, but it was pretty chode-tastic. The end of that sentence was basically "trusted all you fucking assholes." I wonder why they didn't really want to help you?
No, because only administrative users are given sudo access. For others, I believe, it will spit the error about trying to do something not allowed and that the system administrator will be notified.
And entering a user password is the normal behavior for sudo, isn't it? I remember setting it up manually a while ago; that's what it's supposed to do.
1) Pretty much any program a basic user would want is in repositories. OpenOffice, audio/video players, mail clients, groupware, photo management, etc.
2) Ubuntu (don't know about other distros, haven't used them extensively) has an Add/Remove Programs menu entry. It looks pretty much like Synaptic, but it lists categories of applications, then has specific information on what an application does. The user can then install it, and it will pop up on the menu under the same category. I don't use it because I know what I'm going with apt-get or aptitude, but my brother (not a computer dude, just wants it to do) seems to do fine with it.
3) I agree. Every distro with a package manager has standard locations where files go. E.g. in Debian derivatives, system config files go in/etc, user config files go in ~/.foo/, programs go in/usr/bin, blah blah, I don't know all of it. Point is, there could be a list of "Categories of Files" associated with programs, and then each distro could supply environment variables or something associating filesystem locations with categories.
I think the biggest problem is that each distribution uses a different set of versions of packages and they are all made to be interoperable, but I suppose someone supplying a binary meant to work cross-distro could list flexible dependencies.
I love Wikipedia vandalism though, where else can you find out that "William Howard Taft Was the Best President Ever and in No Way a Dick?" as I did last weekend?
What this typically means is that they are write-only code. The NDA will prevent things like properly labelling constants and helpful comments, so you end up with code full of magic constants and seemingly random operations. It's basically impossible for anyone to maintain without the NDA'd documentation, so you are pretty much screwed if you want to port it to another OS or maintain it when the original author gets bored or dies.
If the code is legally write-only, then it isn't Free, just open source, and I doubt many community members will tolerate this advertized program creating non-Free drivers.
If it's just poorly/not documented, then it might conceivably possible that devoted community members would document it. They've done things more seemingly time-consumingly useless. (Meaning that many would perceive the work to be too time-consuming to be worth it, not that it would be actually useless.)
Your story is the exact reason that's the dumbest appliance I've ever heard of. But where did the guy go for 20 minutes? It would have started sparking almost immediately.
I can't believe someone with enough technical responsibility to replace someone else's computer would use those keys so seldom that he wouldn't care if they were rearranged. It's bad enough that my laptop isn't big enough to have them, but if they were all there and I had to look at them, I would flip out.
Yeah, Firefox doesn't behave very well, and the programmers there are to blame completely. In Firefox for Debian GNU/Linux (soon to be Iceweasel) they've edited the code to prevent it from looking for updates outside of the APT system.
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On a song from Information Society's album Don't Be Afraid (I think it was Seek300), there is backwards talking near the end of the song. I recorded it onto my computer and reversed it, and it said, "Obey your parents. Do your homework. Winners don't do drugs."
I hope alpha software isn't in the repositories...
Shut up.
You can't edit the bootloader from a non-bootable system. You needed a live CD.
You absolutely don't need proprietary software to install GNU/Linux. You, quite unfortunately, didn't download the desktop CD. I'm not sure why, but that had a pretty big effect. If you had downloaded the desktop CD, you could have booted a working system and examined what was going on. Since you didn't have one, and refused to try to burn one on another computer, it was suggested that you find your Windows disk so that you could repair your computer to boot Windows.
I admitted, right from the get-"go", that this was my fault. Did you read the "It's my fault, really. I never should have
No, because only administrative users are given sudo access. For others, I believe, it will spit the error about trying to do something not allowed and that the system administrator will be notified. And entering a user password is the normal behavior for sudo, isn't it? I remember setting it up manually a while ago; that's what it's supposed to do.
1) Pretty much any program a basic user would want is in repositories. OpenOffice, audio/video players, mail clients, groupware, photo management, etc. 2) Ubuntu (don't know about other distros, haven't used them extensively) has an Add/Remove Programs menu entry. It looks pretty much like Synaptic, but it lists categories of applications, then has specific information on what an application does. The user can then install it, and it will pop up on the menu under the same category. I don't use it because I know what I'm going with apt-get or aptitude, but my brother (not a computer dude, just wants it to do) seems to do fine with it. 3) I agree. Every distro with a package manager has standard locations where files go. E.g. in Debian derivatives, system config files go in /etc, user config files go in ~/.foo/, programs go in /usr/bin, blah blah, I don't know all of it. Point is, there could be a list of "Categories of Files" associated with programs, and then each distro could supply environment variables or something associating filesystem locations with categories.
I think the biggest problem is that each distribution uses a different set of versions of packages and they are all made to be interoperable, but I suppose someone supplying a binary meant to work cross-distro could list flexible dependencies.
I love Wikipedia vandalism though, where else can you find out that "William Howard Taft Was the Best President Ever and in No Way a Dick?" as I did last weekend?
If you're a really advanced linux user, you figure out how to write a full line of text without a carriage return.
Yeah, great advertizing for them. "Lycos still exists? Man, good thing I have a gmail account." OR, "Better get a real e-mail account instead."
live thumbnail of what the window is currently showing unlike OS X (not sure about the latest version of OS X)
I've been using OS X since 10.2, and minimized windows have always had live updates, and I'm sure Exposé has since it was introduced.
What this typically means is that they are write-only code. The NDA will prevent things like properly labelling constants and helpful comments, so you end up with code full of magic constants and seemingly random operations. It's basically impossible for anyone to maintain without the NDA'd documentation, so you are pretty much screwed if you want to port it to another OS or maintain it when the original author gets bored or dies.
If the code is legally write-only, then it isn't Free, just open source, and I doubt many community members will tolerate this advertized program creating non-Free drivers.
If it's just poorly/not documented, then it might conceivably possible that devoted community members would document it. They've done things more seemingly time-consumingly useless. (Meaning that many would perceive the work to be too time-consuming to be worth it, not that it would be actually useless.)
PS2 ports work pretty well.
There is no such thing as "intellectual property."
Have you ever wondered why AOL sent so many CDs instead of telling people that the program is on the internet?
No, I can say honestly that I have never wondered that.
"combination microwave/oven"
Your story is the exact reason that's the dumbest appliance I've ever heard of. But where did the guy go for 20 minutes? It would have started sparking almost immediately.
Oh man, that's really funny. What movie is that from? I've never heard anything like that.
And in the UK it's actually £0.79, not £0.99.
Mod parent up funny, Xfce doesn't stand for anything anymore.
Ever heard of Camino?
I can't believe someone with enough technical responsibility to replace someone else's computer would use those keys so seldom that he wouldn't care if they were rearranged. It's bad enough that my laptop isn't big enough to have them, but if they were all there and I had to look at them, I would flip out.
Quoth TFA: "The Weather Channel's (TWC) Heidi Cullen, who hosts the weekly global warming program "The Climate Code," is advocating..."
Heidi is probably not a guy.
Yeah, Firefox doesn't behave very well, and the programmers there are to blame completely. In Firefox for Debian GNU/Linux (soon to be Iceweasel) they've edited the code to prevent it from looking for updates outside of the APT system.
If you're on page 1, just skip straight to page 3.