Oxen, as you suggested, has been in the English language for centuries. "Boxen" is a slang word created by geeks at a time when "boxes" was (and sill is) the accepted plural of box. Oxen is in my dictionaries, "boxen" only seems to appear in techie dictionaries. To me "boxen" isn't an acceptable word. I hate it. If you like it knock yourself out and use it.
It may be a German word but when used in that context in an English sentence it's an English slang expression.
IIRC VAX admins used to use VAXen as a plural in the same way that the plural of ox is oxen in English. UNIX people followed that so it has nothing to do with the German word as far as I can tell.
Don't try to make me out to be a xenophobe just because I don't like a particular slang word. There's nothing wrong with defending your native language anyway, the French do it all the time in relation to the number of English words creeping into everyday French.
In your world maybe. I find that abortion of a word pretentious, overly geeky and sad. And yes, I know it's creeping into dictionaries (mainly techie ones) but that doesn't make it right or mean that anyone has to use it.
I don't know about elsewhere but here in the UK most new Windows PCs ship with a restore CD set rather than a Windows CD. Booting this CD allows the user to easily reformat their HDD and and installs an image that puts the machine back to the condition that the machine arrived in. I've only used one of these things once (and made £70 for doing so) but it couldn't be easier.
Maybe it's because I'm tight but wasting money on a new PC because of malware is just pure madness. IMHO people should be made to take a security course before being allowed to buy a Windows PC to save them wasting money.
I also use a Palm IIIxe. It's an excellent device. The only way I'll ever replace it is if it dies. It does everything I need. I have a GameBoy Advance for mobile gaming and a Philips personal CD player that supports MP3s on CD-RW discs for mobile music so what else would I want a PDA to do?
I also have a Psion Revo but prefer the Palm for everyday use. The Revo comes in useful on longer trips where I might need a simple word processor or spreadsheet though.
You should see the buses we have where I live (UK). The seats have tall backs and are close together. I'm 5'9" and there's little leg room so God knows how 6'+ people cope. Unless you sit in one of 4 seats right at the front (which you're required to give up if an elderly or disabled person wants it) or one of 5 seats near the back you have the tall back of the seat in front of you to contend with. There are horizontal handles on those seat backs. These two things mean you can't get the screen open enough to get it into a good position where it's easy to read. Go over a bump and the back of the screen hits the handle more often than not which is something I don't want to happen. I haven't even mentioned how small the actual seats are. If someone's sitting next to you typing soon becomes painful. A PDA is much, much easier to use on our local buses. If I'm careful I can even use my Palm while I walk about. I couldn't do that with a laptop.
It depends on what you want to know. In my opinion if you've found pieces you like you don't really need to know much else. For me it's all about the music, whether I enjoy it and how it makes me feel.
Any extra info you need about a composer or piece as a "beginner" is usually pretty easy to find on Wikipedia and via Google.
Quite a few actually. I live in rural England. It's lovely here. There's lots of unspoilt countryside and a slower pace of life compared to large towns and cities. A lot of older people like to move here because they think it's a better place to bring up their kids.
The downside is the lack of good, well paid jobs which means a large number of people live here but work in a city. The nearest city is a 30 mile round trip. The next nearest is 50, then 60, then 80 and London is 140 miles round trip a least to the City (most people catch the train to London though but that's expensive too and some small towns don't have stations meaning that there can be as much as a 20 mile round trip just to catch a train. There are only six stations serving the whole of the south of the county and only two of those are large, well served stations). Essentially this whole area is a collection of dormitory towns and villages.
As you can see, the UK may be small but that doesn't mean we don't have to travel large distances to get to work.
Sorry but I think you missed the point. The parent to my post was talking about Linux and I was replying specifically to that. I don't use Windows (much anyway) and so can't comment on it. Sorry if it wasn't clear.
I think you've missed the point. Let's look at this from a family point of view (although this applies just as much to business usage but I think a family example is more simple) where Dad is the admin and is the only one who knows root's password and little Johnny is just a user.
So you have to be root to install software. Do you want Johnny to be able to install any software he likes without Dad knowing?
So you have to be root to change system wide settings. Do you really want Johnny to be able to play with settings that can affect Dad, Mum and Johnny's sister Katie?
Running as a user also means that Johnny can't delete Katie's important schoolwork or Dad's important work files in a moment of mischief. This doesn't even cover external threats from the net or other possible sources of problems.
It might be a PITA if you're the only user of the machine but it's essential for companies and incredibly useful for families to prevent user-related problems. In an ideal world where all users can be trusted not to do things that could break a system or change or delete files they shouldn't touch and where there are no remote threats you might have a point but that world doesn't exist.
Which means a big(ger) battery. 3510i I had lasted 5 to 7 days on 3-5 minutes a day probably (I'm not a chatter).
I still use my 3510i. I bought it because of the battery life. I didn't want the colour screen. I don't want to play Java games. I don't want mobile Internet via GPRS (not at the prices Vodafone charge me for non-Vodafone Live! services anyway). I don't want polyphonic ringtones. Even the 3510i has too many features for me. I would still be using my old 3310 if it still worked.
To reinstall it's put the restore CD in the drive and boot.
That's a non-point. There's no reason why the OEM can't provide a Linux restore CD.
Normally that will load up the correct 3rd party drivers as the PC manufacturer has put those into the restore process.
If you've upgraded any of that hardware the restored OS won't work properly.
Windows seems to rely on a certain amount of "magic" meaning you can't just copy a Windows installation from one partition to another, alter the bootloader and boot the new install so a restore CD has to be an image of the original install.
You can do this with Linux so a restore CD doesn't have to be an image but can be a sort of "automated install" instead. There's no reason why it can't detect and set up any hardware that's changed because most hardware (excepting ATI and NVidia graphics cards) is supported by the kernel rather by a set of third party drivers and can be loaded as needed by the kernel. If something does go wrong a call to tech support can get a Linux install working again.
By using at least / and/home partitions the restore can be performed without damaging people's data. Windows may well be able to do this but OEMs tend to create one massive partition. Linux installs tend to use at least three partitions (/,/home and swap).
I haven't thought all this through but at first thought Linux would seem to lend itself to pre-installing and reinstalling via restore CDs better than Windows does.
But what's your role in the company? If you're in the IT dept. then it's your job to have at least a working knowledge of any systems you plan to role out and support it in house. Otherwise you have to convice the IT dept. that they should acquire this knowledge and support it in house. A good Linux admin should need third party support in the same way that a good Windows admin shouldn't.
You can get support for Linux from third parties if you really want it. Red Hat, for example, offer support for their enterprise offerings.
Let me just add, why would a company be "institituting a large scale database project" on site without employing a competent admin for the DB system they plan to use anyway?
Back in the real world, there are families living in my area who have to save up to buy one of the second-hand, Win98 running, Pentium or P2 systems advertised in the newsagents downstairs for £100 a pop (this includes monitor and usually a printer). If they're lucky they'll get Works or Office with it but none of the current cards suggests they will. Now tell me £95 is a small fraction of the cost of the system.
The first trap you fell into was focusing on installation problems with Linux but made no mention of actually installing XP, only using it. Could your 80yo Grandmother install XP? If she could then fair play to her. Most of the Windows users I know have some problem or other (usually confusion over partitioning the HDD).
The second trap you fell into was ignoring the original point: people can have problems learning their second OS because they're stuck in the mindset of their first OS. You demonstrated this point when you said:
On the other hand, I need to get over to some Linux forum to find out how to install the sonypi drivers, since double clicking an.rpm doesn't do anything. For some reason, I expected it to behave like a.exe.
You expected an RPM file to behave in a certain way based on your experiences with Windows. It could be argued that someone who has only ever used Linux would have to go to a Windows forum to install a Windows app because they can't find the package manager. That might sound ridiculous to you but it's no more ridiculous than expecting an RPM to behave in the same way as a Windows.exe.
Because of my own mindset I had a panic attack two days before my Mac was delivered because I realised I didn't have the first idea how to install and uninstall software with OS X and had already downloaded several freeware apps that I wanted to use. I could only think that there would be an equivalent to setup.exe or a package manager but until I researched it it was a little daunting. That would make a seasoned Mac user laugh in the same way that seasoned Linux users would find it odd that Windows and Mac users might have problems with a concept as logical (to us) as a package manager.
The parent is probably posted as flamebait but I have some points to make so I'll put them here.
Assuming a fairly recent Linux distro (say from 2004 or even 2003) and the same hardware then you're comparing an OS that's over 6 years old and designed to run on the common hardware of the day with a far more recent OS. To make it a fair comparison you'd have to compare Win98 with a distro from '98.
This is a trap that a lot of posters are falling into. Even comparing WinXP with recent Linux distro releases is wrong. WinXP is designed to run on the hardware that was around in 2001. Linux moves far more quickly than Windows and software like KDE has had quite a few versions since WinXP was released. To make a fair comparison you have to compare WinXP with a distro from late 2001.
If you think comparing a recent Linux distro with WinXP (or even Win98) is fair then maybe you should compare the boot times of Win95 and Win98 with WinXP too because by extension that should also be a fair comparison.
I know I'm repeating stuff that's already been said but I feel strongly about this.
The BBC article was the first one I read earlier today. My first thought was if 3% of rippers can still rip DVDs then they'll still be available from dubious sources, everyone will switch to the 3% of rippers that work and the other 97% will adapt.
If these new protected discs work in "nearly all" players and mine is one of the ones that it doesn't work in then I'm being penalised by being forced to buy a new player even though I've never bought a "pirate" DVD or downloaded a rip.
Couple all this with the probability that the consumer will end up footing the bill for this new protection and buying DVDs could get a whole lot more expensive. I wouldn't be surprised if the amount of "piracy" went up.
On the subject of refunds, if this comes to pass and I find a DVD won't work in my player I'll fight tooth and nail to get my money back on principle.
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Oxen, as you suggested, has been in the English language for centuries. "Boxen" is a slang word created by geeks at a time when "boxes" was (and sill is) the accepted plural of box. Oxen is in my dictionaries, "boxen" only seems to appear in techie dictionaries. To me "boxen" isn't an acceptable word. I hate it. If you like it knock yourself out and use it.
It may be a German word but when used in that context in an English sentence it's an English slang expression.
IIRC VAX admins used to use VAXen as a plural in the same way that the plural of ox is oxen in English. UNIX people followed that so it has nothing to do with the German word as far as I can tell.
Don't try to make me out to be a xenophobe just because I don't like a particular slang word. There's nothing wrong with defending your native language anyway, the French do it all the time in relation to the number of English words creeping into everyday French.
Do you not have restore CDs where you live?
I don't know about elsewhere but here in the UK most new Windows PCs ship with a restore CD set rather than a Windows CD. Booting this CD allows the user to easily reformat their HDD and and installs an image that puts the machine back to the condition that the machine arrived in. I've only used one of these things once (and made £70 for doing so) but it couldn't be easier.
Maybe it's because I'm tight but wasting money on a new PC because of malware is just pure madness. IMHO people should be made to take a security course before being allowed to buy a Windows PC to save them wasting money.
I also use a Palm IIIxe. It's an excellent device. The only way I'll ever replace it is if it dies. It does everything I need. I have a GameBoy Advance for mobile gaming and a Philips personal CD player that supports MP3s on CD-RW discs for mobile music so what else would I want a PDA to do?
I also have a Psion Revo but prefer the Palm for everyday use. The Revo comes in useful on longer trips where I might need a simple word processor or spreadsheet though.
You should see the buses we have where I live (UK). The seats have tall backs and are close together. I'm 5'9" and there's little leg room so God knows how 6'+ people cope. Unless you sit in one of 4 seats right at the front (which you're required to give up if an elderly or disabled person wants it) or one of 5 seats near the back you have the tall back of the seat in front of you to contend with. There are horizontal handles on those seat backs. These two things mean you can't get the screen open enough to get it into a good position where it's easy to read. Go over a bump and the back of the screen hits the handle more often than not which is something I don't want to happen. I haven't even mentioned how small the actual seats are. If someone's sitting next to you typing soon becomes painful. A PDA is much, much easier to use on our local buses. If I'm careful I can even use my Palm while I walk about. I couldn't do that with a laptop.
It depends on what you want to know. In my opinion if you've found pieces you like you don't really need to know much else. For me it's all about the music, whether I enjoy it and how it makes me feel.
Any extra info you need about a composer or piece as a "beginner" is usually pretty easy to find on Wikipedia and via Google.
I do it by finding "enlightened" companies that let me work at home most days and chasing the one good job that comes up every year.
Quite a few actually. I live in rural England. It's lovely here. There's lots of unspoilt countryside and a slower pace of life compared to large towns and cities. A lot of older people like to move here because they think it's a better place to bring up their kids.
The downside is the lack of good, well paid jobs which means a large number of people live here but work in a city. The nearest city is a 30 mile round trip. The next nearest is 50, then 60, then 80 and London is 140 miles round trip a least to the City (most people catch the train to London though but that's expensive too and some small towns don't have stations meaning that there can be as much as a 20 mile round trip just to catch a train. There are only six stations serving the whole of the south of the county and only two of those are large, well served stations). Essentially this whole area is a collection of dormitory towns and villages.
As you can see, the UK may be small but that doesn't mean we don't have to travel large distances to get to work.
Sorry but I think you missed the point. The parent to my post was talking about Linux and I was replying specifically to that. I don't use Windows (much anyway) and so can't comment on it. Sorry if it wasn't clear.
I think you've missed the point. Let's look at this from a family point of view (although this applies just as much to business usage but I think a family example is more simple) where Dad is the admin and is the only one who knows root's password and little Johnny is just a user.
So you have to be root to install software. Do you want Johnny to be able to install any software he likes without Dad knowing?
So you have to be root to change system wide settings. Do you really want Johnny to be able to play with settings that can affect Dad, Mum and Johnny's sister Katie?
Running as a user also means that Johnny can't delete Katie's important schoolwork or Dad's important work files in a moment of mischief. This doesn't even cover external threats from the net or other possible sources of problems.
It might be a PITA if you're the only user of the machine but it's essential for companies and incredibly useful for families to prevent user-related problems. In an ideal world where all users can be trusted not to do things that could break a system or change or delete files they shouldn't touch and where there are no remote threats you might have a point but that world doesn't exist.
I still use my 3510i. I bought it because of the battery life. I didn't want the colour screen. I don't want to play Java games. I don't want mobile Internet via GPRS (not at the prices Vodafone charge me for non-Vodafone Live! services anyway). I don't want polyphonic ringtones. Even the 3510i has too many features for me. I would still be using my old 3310 if it still worked.
That's a non-point. There's no reason why the OEM can't provide a Linux restore CD.
If you've upgraded any of that hardware the restored OS won't work properly.
Windows seems to rely on a certain amount of "magic" meaning you can't just copy a Windows installation from one partition to another, alter the bootloader and boot the new install so a restore CD has to be an image of the original install.
You can do this with Linux so a restore CD doesn't have to be an image but can be a sort of "automated install" instead. There's no reason why it can't detect and set up any hardware that's changed because most hardware (excepting ATI and NVidia graphics cards) is supported by the kernel rather by a set of third party drivers and can be loaded as needed by the kernel. If something does go wrong a call to tech support can get a Linux install working again.
By using at least / and /home partitions the restore can be performed without damaging people's data. Windows may well be able to do this but OEMs tend to create one massive partition. Linux installs tend to use at least three partitions (/, /home and swap).
I haven't thought all this through but at first thought Linux would seem to lend itself to pre-installing and reinstalling via restore CDs better than Windows does.
But what's your role in the company? If you're in the IT dept. then it's your job to have at least a working knowledge of any systems you plan to role out and support it in house. Otherwise you have to convice the IT dept. that they should acquire this knowledge and support it in house. A good Linux admin should need third party support in the same way that a good Windows admin shouldn't.
You can get support for Linux from third parties if you really want it. Red Hat, for example, offer support for their enterprise offerings.
That's the point I was going to make.
Let me just add, why would a company be "institituting a large scale database project" on site without employing a competent admin for the DB system they plan to use anyway?
Back in the real world, there are families living in my area who have to save up to buy one of the second-hand, Win98 running, Pentium or P2 systems advertised in the newsagents downstairs for £100 a pop (this includes monitor and usually a printer). If they're lucky they'll get Works or Office with it but none of the current cards suggests they will. Now tell me £95 is a small fraction of the cost of the system.
The rest of the world will be able to see this apathy in full swing on May 5th.
The first trap you fell into was focusing on installation problems with Linux but made no mention of actually installing XP, only using it. Could your 80yo Grandmother install XP? If she could then fair play to her. Most of the Windows users I know have some problem or other (usually confusion over partitioning the HDD).
The second trap you fell into was ignoring the original point: people can have problems learning their second OS because they're stuck in the mindset of their first OS. You demonstrated this point when you said:
You expected an RPM file to behave in a certain way based on your experiences with Windows. It could be argued that someone who has only ever used Linux would have to go to a Windows forum to install a Windows app because they can't find the package manager. That might sound ridiculous to you but it's no more ridiculous than expecting an RPM to behave in the same way as a WindowsBecause of my own mindset I had a panic attack two days before my Mac was delivered because I realised I didn't have the first idea how to install and uninstall software with OS X and had already downloaded several freeware apps that I wanted to use. I could only think that there would be an equivalent to setup.exe or a package manager but until I researched it it was a little daunting. That would make a seasoned Mac user laugh in the same way that seasoned Linux users would find it odd that Windows and Mac users might have problems with a concept as logical (to us) as a package manager.
The parent is probably posted as flamebait but I have some points to make so I'll put them here.
Assuming a fairly recent Linux distro (say from 2004 or even 2003) and the same hardware then you're comparing an OS that's over 6 years old and designed to run on the common hardware of the day with a far more recent OS. To make it a fair comparison you'd have to compare Win98 with a distro from '98.
This is a trap that a lot of posters are falling into. Even comparing WinXP with recent Linux distro releases is wrong. WinXP is designed to run on the hardware that was around in 2001. Linux moves far more quickly than Windows and software like KDE has had quite a few versions since WinXP was released. To make a fair comparison you have to compare WinXP with a distro from late 2001.
If you think comparing a recent Linux distro with WinXP (or even Win98) is fair then maybe you should compare the boot times of Win95 and Win98 with WinXP too because by extension that should also be a fair comparison.
Peter Davison has. Granted it took him years but he's had a couple of pretty good series in recent years.
I know I'm repeating stuff that's already been said but I feel strongly about this.
The BBC article was the first one I read earlier today. My first thought was if 3% of rippers can still rip DVDs then they'll still be available from dubious sources, everyone will switch to the 3% of rippers that work and the other 97% will adapt.
If these new protected discs work in "nearly all" players and mine is one of the ones that it doesn't work in then I'm being penalised by being forced to buy a new player even though I've never bought a "pirate" DVD or downloaded a rip.
Couple all this with the probability that the consumer will end up footing the bill for this new protection and buying DVDs could get a whole lot more expensive. I wouldn't be surprised if the amount of "piracy" went up.
On the subject of refunds, if this comes to pass and I find a DVD won't work in my player I'll fight tooth and nail to get my money back on principle.