No, that's simply how much more difficult it is to render something in PDF format apparently. Acrobat, Foxit, evince, gpdf, even gs, they're each and every one slower at rendering pdf than just about any program rendering the same content in an editable format (not pdf/ps/etc...). I'm not talking about load speed of the program, just the time it takes to render a page after it's already loaded.
So skip both.doc and PDF and use html. It's not like it's an unsupported format on many platforms. Hell, it's pretty much standard on everything but toasters nowadays. It's also an assload easier to read than PDFs because you can be assumed to already have your minimum font size set to something you can read.
a) Not well or accurately, it's not. You're assuming whoever created the PDF knew how to do it in a non-fubar way and that is most definitely not the norm from what I've seen.
b) I don't really care which reader we're talking about. PDF renders a damned sight slower than non-ajax html and approaches infinity in how much slower it renders than plain text.
c) Right, but is anything actually gained by making them read-only? If so, is it enough to justify all the down-sides?
d) Why? Again, what exactly is gained by refusing the end user the option to adjust the formatting so that it suits them rather than you?
eBooks and manuals in particular should never be formatting locked. What reason could anyone possibly have for forcing a user to side-scroll to see the entire page if they just wanted a larger font? There simply is no up side to PDF vs user modifiable documents unless printing is involved.
b+d) Errr... I use evince. It's more or less comparable to Foxit performance on Windows.
a+c) Kind of my point. Stop inflicting PDF on us in situations where it detracts from rather than adds to a pleasant use experience.
a) No, they're in fact pretty much the worst option for ease of conversion and predictable output. That you believe otherwise simply means you've not tried to convert enough truly fucked up ones.
b) Linux and evince. Still abysmally slow compared to nearly any other doc type.
c) "Distribution documents," meaning DRM via being a PITA to edit? Even compared to closed POSes like MS documents, PDFs suck to edit.
d) Yeah, d was a weak argument that I wouldn't have even bothered mentioning if it hadn't been timely.
I'd agree if a) PDFs were easily convertible to other formats, b) they rendered at something a bit snappier than "as slow as they possibly can and still have anyone read them," c) were easily editable, d) weren't the current favorite attack vector for malware writers.
Seriously though, there's no valid reason that manuals must be displayed exactly as they would in printed form. All I need is the information. Put it in a.txt file if there aren't any images or complex formatting required, or put it in HTML if there are. Fuck a bunch of pretty and uniform, I want useful.
There's very little about python that I wouldn't call fucktarded given the opportunity. But that it has its own library distribution system that's at odds with OS based package management systems pretty much negates any point you were trying to make with it.
Yes. And no, even Gentoo has DH issues. Situations with two packages where one requires Blah >= X and the other requires Blah <= X-1 are not unique to other distros. It's exacerbated by coders who break backwards compatibility in non-major version updates.
True. Most people would spend 0-1 hours screwing with it and give up. It's only us bloody minded masochists who refuse to give up that actually suffer through DH until the problem is resolved.
It's really more of a problem when one or two packages on a non-bleeding edge system need to be bleeding edge for some specific reason but actually updating those packages would cause backwards compatibility breakage of some other essential something.
Trust me, it's far from gone even on arch/gentoo/slackware.
I can't tell if that should have been +1 Funny or -1 Fucktarded. I have a suspicion that it's the latter but it is 3am and I'm starting to nod a bit, so I'll leave it to someone else to decide.
Wait, doesn't source code actually require at least a tiny bit of thought? I thought we were trying to be like Windows now. I mean they're still lightyears ahead of us up in Redmond. They have tons of software that installs without the user even having to be aware while even the package manager distros of Linux still require the user to actually authorize it to get the latest and greatest botnet software installed on their box. ( The preceding was a joke. rm ~/.ass/stick before flaming )
No, solving dependency hell is far worse today. Building from source back in tarball only days you had problems if version W of library X was not installed. Building from source today you have that along with issues if your distro of choice does not have version W of library X in the repository along with actually having version W of library X that you built from source installed but your package manager refusing to install things dependent on it because it refuses to acknowledge anything's existence outside its list of installed packages.
You also have issues like cpan which is currentish vs your distro's package manager which is usually anything but.
If it weren't for checkinstall I'd seriously consider LFS over package management in situations where I was constantly having to build things from git/cpan/etc... And I'd probably have a huge dent in my desk from where I constantly banged my head instead of the only moderately sized one I have now.
If you have an array of 30 reasons for going to war (@reasons), all with non-false values, doing a print $reasons[3] does not make @reasons evaluate false. It doesn't even make $reasons[3] evaluate false. Not even if $reasons[24] == 'oil'. Massive logic fail for you, go debug.
The point was that while non-desktop platforms may compliment desktop platforms or even replace them if your needs are extremely modest, they are fundamentally incapable of being complete desktop replacements.
I think we're just arguing semantics at this point. What you're calling regulating capitalism, I'm calling keeping it from being perverted.
Buying laws and lawmakers, creating artificial monopolies, allowing natural monopolies to stand, engaging in protectionism, government bailouts, those aren't capitalism. Basically, anything that hinders the ability of competition to drive down prices and drive up quality goes directly against the primary tenets of capitalism.
Healthcare services (not drugs), for instance, are currently a natural monopoly and steps do need to be taken to fix that. The President's law, however, does nothing to dissolve that natural monopoly. Instead it forces the entire nation to buy insurance whether they want it or not. It's effectively a tax being paid to private corporations rather than to the government and that is deeply fucked up.
Drugs are another matter. They're an artificial monopoly created by the government; very anti-capitalism but easy to remedy. Simply disallow drug and drug related patents.
There's always somewhere else to work, but it's always like the place you were, or will be bought by them. There's not much that's truly "off the grid" that is still viable territory for human beings in large numbers.
Extremely false. Half of all employees in the nation are employed by small businesses. Small businesses create ~65% of all new jobs. Only two percent of small businesses are even franchise operations. citation
I won't disagree much on intellectual property except to say that small businesses get a whopping 13 times more patents than corporations and patent tanks put together. Personally, I think the IP laws of nearly every sort need a complete reboot. Throw them all out and start over with an eye for encouraging competition rather than inhibiting it. Software, business method, and drug patents in particular need to DIAF.
I think what a lot of people who're all "boo capitalism" don't get is what we currently have is only vaguely capitalistic anymore. For lack of an actual word, I'd call it corruptionism.
I'm just tired of the completely psychotic behavior of the FLOSSies here, that think they can suddenly get Joe Average to WANT to use Bash and learn strings of CLI commands
Yeah, for some reason *NIX fanbois can't get it through their head that roughly half of the population are of below average intelligence(<100) and will absolutely never be geeks. Much like Mac fanbois can't understand that some people don't like Steve telling them what they can and can't do with something they paid for.
Honestly, I think any OS the user has to install in the first place is pretty well doomed to nichedom on the desktop. Therein lies the possibility that their hardware might require configuring at all. Assuming for the sake of argument that the OEM installed and configured the system beforehand though, I think most users could get around fine on Ubuntu 10.4+. It's not like they really use much outside the web browser, instant messenger, and whatever mindless games came pre-installed. They probably still wouldn't see a compelling reason for switching but I don't think they'd do much screaming in fear either.
Please feel free to not switch. For every person that uses Windows on their desktop, that's one less person I might conceivably have to provide unpaid tech support for. Not because Windows is more stable and secure but because I gave up supporting it about a year after I quit using it.
Obsolete? Yeah, maybe when smartphones start coming with a 19" screen. Maybe when net/notebooks get a keyboard that's not like typing on chicklets and add a side-tray for a mouse. Maybe when I can upgrade most of the parts in either rather than having to buy a new one.
Desktops may not be the only option anymore but they're a hell of a long way from obsolete.
More or less true, if a bit on the cranky side. Me, I don't want to compete. I'd much prefer Average Joe stay the hell away from Linux. Mostly because I don't want Windows-think infecting overall Linux design decisions. If they want to fork and do things their windowy way, fine by me but don't screw around with stuff the proper geek distros depend on without forking.
Also because I can now say that I haven't used Windows for two versions and have no idea how to fix your computer. Yes, I know I probably still could but it's a damned fine excuse that I won't have if they move to Linux.
The long and short of it is, I'm quite content for them to stay off in their Windows/Ubuntu/OSX user-friendly world and I'll stay in my slackware/gentoo/arch admin-friendly world. It's why I quit trying to introduce most people to Linux a long time ago.
You're not required to do anything for them. Work somewhere else or start your own business. If you have no marketable skills to speak of and can't get a better job, that would be entirely your fault, not theirs.
And that wasn't shallow demonization. It was quite deeply heartfelt. I genuinely believe those of a socialist fiscal bent are extremely evil and greedy.
Most of the ills those of a socialist fiscal bent assign to capitalism should rightly be attributed to governmental corruption and the straying from capitalism into protectionism and the creation of artificial monopolies. Properly attributed, I'll agree with you on quite a number of your complaints.
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No, that's simply how much more difficult it is to render something in PDF format apparently. Acrobat, Foxit, evince, gpdf, even gs, they're each and every one slower at rendering pdf than just about any program rendering the same content in an editable format (not pdf/ps/etc...). I'm not talking about load speed of the program, just the time it takes to render a page after it's already loaded.
So skip both .doc and PDF and use html. It's not like it's an unsupported format on many platforms. Hell, it's pretty much standard on everything but toasters nowadays. It's also an assload easier to read than PDFs because you can be assumed to already have your minimum font size set to something you can read.
a) Not well or accurately, it's not. You're assuming whoever created the PDF knew how to do it in a non-fubar way and that is most definitely not the norm from what I've seen.
b) I don't really care which reader we're talking about. PDF renders a damned sight slower than non-ajax html and approaches infinity in how much slower it renders than plain text.
c) Right, but is anything actually gained by making them read-only? If so, is it enough to justify all the down-sides?
d) Why? Again, what exactly is gained by refusing the end user the option to adjust the formatting so that it suits them rather than you?
eBooks and manuals in particular should never be formatting locked. What reason could anyone possibly have for forcing a user to side-scroll to see the entire page if they just wanted a larger font? There simply is no up side to PDF vs user modifiable documents unless printing is involved.
b+d) Errr... I use evince. It's more or less comparable to Foxit performance on Windows.
a+c) Kind of my point. Stop inflicting PDF on us in situations where it detracts from rather than adds to a pleasant use experience.
a) No, they're in fact pretty much the worst option for ease of conversion and predictable output. That you believe otherwise simply means you've not tried to convert enough truly fucked up ones.
b) Linux and evince. Still abysmally slow compared to nearly any other doc type.
c) "Distribution documents," meaning DRM via being a PITA to edit? Even compared to closed POSes like MS documents, PDFs suck to edit.
d) Yeah, d was a weak argument that I wouldn't have even bothered mentioning if it hadn't been timely.
I'd agree if a) PDFs were easily convertible to other formats, b) they rendered at something a bit snappier than "as slow as they possibly can and still have anyone read them," c) were easily editable, d) weren't the current favorite attack vector for malware writers.
Seriously though, there's no valid reason that manuals must be displayed exactly as they would in printed form. All I need is the information. Put it in a .txt file if there aren't any images or complex formatting required, or put it in HTML if there are. Fuck a bunch of pretty and uniform, I want useful.
There's very little about python that I wouldn't call fucktarded given the opportunity. But that it has its own library distribution system that's at odds with OS based package management systems pretty much negates any point you were trying to make with it.
Yes. And no, even Gentoo has DH issues. Situations with two packages where one requires Blah >= X and the other requires Blah <= X-1 are not unique to other distros. It's exacerbated by coders who break backwards compatibility in non-major version updates.
True. Most people would spend 0-1 hours screwing with it and give up. It's only us bloody minded masochists who refuse to give up that actually suffer through DH until the problem is resolved.
Absolutely. I don't run into DH more than a few times a year nowadays but my point is that when I do it's more of a PITA to resolve.
It's really more of a problem when one or two packages on a non-bleeding edge system need to be bleeding edge for some specific reason but actually updating those packages would cause backwards compatibility breakage of some other essential something.
Trust me, it's far from gone even on arch/gentoo/slackware.
I can't tell if that should have been +1 Funny or -1 Fucktarded. I have a suspicion that it's the latter but it is 3am and I'm starting to nod a bit, so I'll leave it to someone else to decide.
Wait, doesn't source code actually require at least a tiny bit of thought? I thought we were trying to be like Windows now. I mean they're still lightyears ahead of us up in Redmond. They have tons of software that installs without the user even having to be aware while even the package manager distros of Linux still require the user to actually authorize it to get the latest and greatest botnet software installed on their box. ( The preceding was a joke. rm ~/.ass/stick before flaming )
No, solving dependency hell is far worse today. Building from source back in tarball only days you had problems if version W of library X was not installed. Building from source today you have that along with issues if your distro of choice does not have version W of library X in the repository along with actually having version W of library X that you built from source installed but your package manager refusing to install things dependent on it because it refuses to acknowledge anything's existence outside its list of installed packages.
You also have issues like cpan which is currentish vs your distro's package manager which is usually anything but.
If it weren't for checkinstall I'd seriously consider LFS over package management in situations where I was constantly having to build things from git/cpan/etc... And I'd probably have a huge dent in my desk from where I constantly banged my head instead of the only moderately sized one I have now.
Well of course. Nobody looks for honesty in an attorney.
Mine was obvious hyperbole, yours is unsubstantiated claims. anonymous cowerd needs citation, badly.
Sigh, OK, let me explain in geek.
If you have an array of 30 reasons for going to war (@reasons), all with non-false values, doing a print $reasons[3] does not make @reasons evaluate false. It doesn't even make $reasons[3] evaluate false. Not even if $reasons[24] == 'oil'. Massive logic fail for you, go debug.
3) We're in for a really sweet episode of Mythbusters soon.
Doh! That's what I get for posting at 2am.
The point was that while non-desktop platforms may compliment desktop platforms or even replace them if your needs are extremely modest, they are fundamentally incapable of being complete desktop replacements.
I think we're just arguing semantics at this point. What you're calling regulating capitalism, I'm calling keeping it from being perverted.
Buying laws and lawmakers, creating artificial monopolies, allowing natural monopolies to stand, engaging in protectionism, government bailouts, those aren't capitalism. Basically, anything that hinders the ability of competition to drive down prices and drive up quality goes directly against the primary tenets of capitalism.
Healthcare services (not drugs), for instance, are currently a natural monopoly and steps do need to be taken to fix that. The President's law, however, does nothing to dissolve that natural monopoly. Instead it forces the entire nation to buy insurance whether they want it or not. It's effectively a tax being paid to private corporations rather than to the government and that is deeply fucked up.
Drugs are another matter. They're an artificial monopoly created by the government; very anti-capitalism but easy to remedy. Simply disallow drug and drug related patents.
There's always somewhere else to work, but it's always like the place you were, or will be bought by them. There's not much that's truly "off the grid" that is still viable territory for human beings in large numbers.
Extremely false. Half of all employees in the nation are employed by small businesses. Small businesses create ~65% of all new jobs. Only two percent of small businesses are even franchise operations. citation
I won't disagree much on intellectual property except to say that small businesses get a whopping 13 times more patents than corporations and patent tanks put together. Personally, I think the IP laws of nearly every sort need a complete reboot. Throw them all out and start over with an eye for encouraging competition rather than inhibiting it. Software, business method, and drug patents in particular need to DIAF.
I think what a lot of people who're all "boo capitalism" don't get is what we currently have is only vaguely capitalistic anymore. For lack of an actual word, I'd call it corruptionism.
I'm just tired of the completely psychotic behavior of the FLOSSies here, that think they can suddenly get Joe Average to WANT to use Bash and learn strings of CLI commands
Yeah, for some reason *NIX fanbois can't get it through their head that roughly half of the population are of below average intelligence(<100) and will absolutely never be geeks. Much like Mac fanbois can't understand that some people don't like Steve telling them what they can and can't do with something they paid for.
Honestly, I think any OS the user has to install in the first place is pretty well doomed to nichedom on the desktop. Therein lies the possibility that their hardware might require configuring at all. Assuming for the sake of argument that the OEM installed and configured the system beforehand though, I think most users could get around fine on Ubuntu 10.4+. It's not like they really use much outside the web browser, instant messenger, and whatever mindless games came pre-installed. They probably still wouldn't see a compelling reason for switching but I don't think they'd do much screaming in fear either.
Please feel free to not switch. For every person that uses Windows on their desktop, that's one less person I might conceivably have to provide unpaid tech support for. Not because Windows is more stable and secure but because I gave up supporting it about a year after I quit using it.
Obsolete? Yeah, maybe when smartphones start coming with a 19" screen. Maybe when net/notebooks get a keyboard that's not like typing on chicklets and add a side-tray for a mouse. Maybe when I can upgrade most of the parts in either rather than having to buy a new one.
Desktops may not be the only option anymore but they're a hell of a long way from obsolete.
More or less true, if a bit on the cranky side. Me, I don't want to compete. I'd much prefer Average Joe stay the hell away from Linux. Mostly because I don't want Windows-think infecting overall Linux design decisions. If they want to fork and do things their windowy way, fine by me but don't screw around with stuff the proper geek distros depend on without forking.
Also because I can now say that I haven't used Windows for two versions and have no idea how to fix your computer. Yes, I know I probably still could but it's a damned fine excuse that I won't have if they move to Linux.
The long and short of it is, I'm quite content for them to stay off in their Windows/Ubuntu/OSX user-friendly world and I'll stay in my slackware/gentoo/arch admin-friendly world. It's why I quit trying to introduce most people to Linux a long time ago.
You're not required to do anything for them. Work somewhere else or start your own business. If you have no marketable skills to speak of and can't get a better job, that would be entirely your fault, not theirs.
And that wasn't shallow demonization. It was quite deeply heartfelt. I genuinely believe those of a socialist fiscal bent are extremely evil and greedy.
Most of the ills those of a socialist fiscal bent assign to capitalism should rightly be attributed to governmental corruption and the straying from capitalism into protectionism and the creation of artificial monopolies. Properly attributed, I'll agree with you on quite a number of your complaints.