They already do and despite that fact Linux is still their enemy #1.
2) Have a nice standard, easy to use and intuitive GUI
Their GUI is already standard across Windows, but if MS were to create a Linux distribution, there is no way they could possibly preclude the installation of X and the window manager of your choice. So, moving to Linux would be a step backwards in homogeny for them.
3) Using MS means you never have to hear stupid arguments about licenses or asinine definitions of "free"
...and instead means you never get the choice to argue about licenses and must put up with their terms or else, and "free" means free of cost, minus any actual freedom.
4) Plus it will be a cold day in hell before you have Office for Linux anyway...
Heh, is that supposed to make me quake in fear?:)
They can have thier office suite. It won't be long at all before an open office suite matures to the point of useability and starts to really compete with them. Personally, I think Word is the most annoying word processor I've ever used.
It all depends on how you define vaporware. The Jargon File 4.2.3 defines it as " Products announced far in advance of any release (which may or may not actually take place)." I would take that to mean announcing a product but without any type of release. A beta version is still a release in my book, albiet still a work in progress--but clearly it exists and it's being worked on so it's not vapor. Mac OSX would also not be vapor in my definition, since it also clearly exists.
However, you'd be hard pressed to convince me that dpkg, yast, whatever is simpler for INSTALLATION than an RPM based system.
First of all, YaST is RPM-based. Secondly the difficulty, perceived or otherwise, comes from the target audience for Debian; namely, not newbies. Corel Linux was Debian based, and installed easier than any other distro I've seen. It's certainly possible to make Debian easy, but that's not the priority. There are many different types of people who use Linux, and ease of use is not a top priority for all. If you're having trouble installing Debian, use something else. No big deal.
As for maintainance, let's compare them:
RPM: rpm -ivh package.rpm
DEB: dpkg -i package.deb
RPM: rpm -Uvh package.rpm
DEB: apt-get install package
Pretty much the same, although apt-get really does kick ass. It's good to see RPM users can use it now too.
Don't use Netscape 6 as a metric! NS6 was branched from a pretty old version of Mozilla. Go to mozilla.org and download a nightly build before you pass judgement. The Mozilla team has just recently begun the optimization phase, so it should be getting increasingly faster and lighter as time goes on.
That peice of shit toolkit allows Mozilla to be easily ported to any platform. If it were written in GTK, the toolkit would have to be ported, and that would suck and make ports less common. They use their own version of COM for the same reasons.
No so amazing, when you think about how vast the Internet is, and how constantly it changes. In reality, it's actually impossible for the censorware companies to do what they're advertising--so it should come as little surprise that it doesn't work.
The only way to properly rate a website is for a real person to look at it, and there are far too many sites for this to be feasable.
You can't really call nautilus bloatware, for reasons of infrastructure. It uses bonobo to componentize everything, and calls each component when needed. So, when you start up nautilus, you're not actually running all of these things at once. This is pretty much exactly how explorer does it, and no one calls that bloated.
You haven't been following this case very long, have you? They're already making a profit from it. The whole point of DVD encryption is to prevent anyone from playing a movie without their sanctioned hardware, and no one can make the hardware without a license from the DVD/CCA. This is all an elaborate scheme to place themselves in total control of all movies played everywhere. With VHS, anyone can make a player for it and they have. There is a healthy free market in video players. But the DVD player market is a very closed, tightly guarded monopoly and it is undoubtedly making loads of cash for the MPAA. Since CSS, the encryption scheme used with DVDs, was a trade secret (emphasis on the past tense:) open sourcing a legitamate player would be out of the question. The only type of player for a computer that could be legal would have to be closed source. The guys at MoRE reverse engineered the encryption used with DVDs so that an open-source, freely available player could be made. That's why the MPAA is so pissed off, DeCSS in effect can make their comfy monopoly on DVD players worthless because their trade secret was reverse engineered, and trade secrets have no more protection than their secrecy.
The question is, is reverse engineering legal? Of course, anyone here would tell you "hell yes" but the MPAA and many other big companies want to be able to black-box something and lock up anyone who learns how it works. They're arguing that the click-wrap agreement is enough to override law governing RE, but the counter argument is that click-wrap licenses are in fact counter to California law. Contracts of adhesion are against the law in most places as far as I know, but IANAL.
That actually is illegal, but only because DVDs are involved. Basically, because of the DMCA, playing DVDs in any way which is not officially sanctioned by the MPAA is illegal. However, just because it is illegal doesn't mean I wouldn't do it in a second, or that any of you should think twice either. There's nothing wrong with it, that's simply the fair use of a movie you have payed for. If it's an unjust or stupid law, break it as many times as you can or it will never go away.
Yes, its default printing system blows. However, if you happen to have an HP or EPSON printer, go to www.cups.org and download the Common UNIX Printing System. Unbelievably frickin awesome, and installation is seamless. Administration is as simple as browsing to localhost:631.
He said their monopoly would collapse, not the company. That simply means that finally there will be a choice and not just Windows. Direct competition could only strengthen both platforms.
I've always said, if my mom cant use it, it's not ready for mainstream
My mom has considerable trouble using Windows. It's not nearly as user friendly as you think it is.
Why does everyone assume that if it works for them, it must work for everyone? Simply because you have not had a problem means little. Windows is very finicky for any number of reasons, and there's no way to predict it.
but linux will never become the standard, because it's too hard to use.
History has already proven you wrong. This is exactly the same thing that was said of the Internet. And let's not forget that Windows is hardly easy to use either--it is simply different. The difficulty of learning Linux is in unlearning Windows.
It's based on 30 year old technology
Linux's technology is nine years old. It is based on a thirty year old concept, but that is not the same. We still use the concept of the wheel, is that outdated? It's better to find a good set of rules that work well and stick with them than to change them every couple of years like M$ does.
I have to suspect that something is wrong with your Windows 2000 system
I agree with you, but that doesn't necessarily discount his argument. The plug and play bios in my machine has kindof gone out, and it has all but crippled Windows. It puts everything on IRQ 9, and there's nothing I can do--manually configuring hardware is impossible under Windows. I've ended up making multiple hardware profiles so I can use all my hardware. Linux, however, has been completely unnaffected on the same machine. Hardware configures itself perfectly. That leads me to believe that Windows' fault tolerance sucks, which is a point against, faulty hardware or not.
You are correct, at least for now. But what I think ESR was getting at was that this will change, and very soon.
Now, I think he was being way to optimistic with the 6 month estimate, I'd say more like a year. In a years time, I'm very confident Linux will be a kickass desktop platform; not replacing Windows, but a serious competitor. I don't believe that people want Microsoft because they think it's better, they want it because they don't know about anything else. When you buy a new computer, it has Windows on it. Period. Anyone who uses another OS is seen as a weirdo; I speak from experience, because I held this exact same attitude before I have Linux a second glance.
I don't think the market will just throw itself at Linux before it's ready, Linux will have to mature to the point of being an attractive alternative to Windows, and that will take a little more time yet. Not nearly as long as you might think, though, Nautilus and Evolution are set to make their debut sometime in January if I remember correctly. Compare Nautilus to Windows Explorer--no competition, Nautilus wins hands down as a far better and cooler file manager. (Assuming, of course, that the Eazel crew gets it stable enough). Evolution is a closer call, but a very nice email program nonetheless. And just think of what other cool stuff will be available a year from now! I think Linux will gain popularity on the cheap Internet computers and quickly work its way up as more and more people become familiar with it.
No, Anime is simply the way Japanese refer to animation in general
...qualifying it as a medium. Here's dictionary.com's definition: "A specific kind of artistic technique or means of expression as determined by the materials used or the creative methods involved: the medium of lithography." This, I believe, describes Anime to a T.
it's how the English word animation is rendered in Katakana.
Shorthand, perhaps. "Animation" expressed in katakana is actually "animéshon" (writing katakana characters in romaji is awkward:) But you are right in your main point, that Anime is simply their word for animation. Here in America, however, it refers specifically to Japanese animation.
I do not like MacOS because it has no command prompt, which I feel is as necessary as a floppy drive (sorry, iMac users)
This is something I find really ironic, since it has traditionally been MacOS that was GUI-only, and Windows always had some sort of command-line. Now, as of Windows ME and MacOS X, Windows will rely totally on a GUI and MacOS will have a far superior command-line thanks to its UNIX heritage.
Re:RIAA/MPAA: 1 - Freedom 0
on
Scour is Dead
·
· Score: 1
Again, this makes the wrongheaded assumtion that all filesharing going on is illegal. Maybe we people should start punishing the act of piracy, rather than tools that could possibly be used for it.
That's an aweful amount of work for such as easy process. Just do this:
go to the ftp, and find the Netscape6 directory for your platform. Find the xpi/ directory and download all the crap in there. Then, all you have to do is open up the files in the borwser and they will install themselves. That's all there is to it, theres an AIM component as well as a java package and many more. The directory for my browser would be:/pub/netscape6/english/6.0/unix/linux22/xpi, but of course, YMMV depending on platform.
If you're dissatisfied with NS6's performance, delete it and download Mozilla--no matter what, Mozilla will always be much farther ahead in developement than NS. I'm running a nightly build of Mozilla right now, and I'm really impressed with it. In fact, I don't even use NS4.7 anymore. My RAM is a little on the light side, so it's a little sluggish when I'm doing lots of other things, but it is a good browser.
I was a little annoyed when I heard Netscape was gonna branch Mozilla for their commerical release because then everyone would be calling it Netscape when it's actually Mozilla, but that's trivial compared to the real downside here. Since Netscape will be an old version of Mozilla, a lot of the things that people'll be bitching about won't be an issue under Mozilla. Any problem they have will be at least a little bit better under Moz. *sigh*, another thing to educate the masses about...
I though Event Horizon was horrible... it had a really cool premise and good atmosphere, but three-quarters into it it just got completely gross and incoherent.
It still boggles my mind when people call Mozilla ugly (especially M18) when IE is based on flat, grey buttons. Lets just say its a matter of taste and leave it at that; and besides, its completely themeable so if you don't like the default theme, go download one that you do like.
Slashdot Mirror
They already do and despite that fact Linux is still their enemy #1.
2) Have a nice standard, easy to use and intuitive GUI
Their GUI is already standard across Windows, but if MS were to create a Linux distribution, there is no way they could possibly preclude the installation of X and the window manager of your choice. So, moving to Linux would be a step backwards in homogeny for them.
3) Using MS means you never have to hear stupid arguments about licenses or asinine definitions of "free"
4) Plus it will be a cold day in hell before you have Office for Linux anyway...
Heh, is that supposed to make me quake in fear? :)
They can have thier office suite. It won't be long at all before an open office suite matures to the point of useability and starts to really compete with them. Personally, I think Word is the most annoying word processor I've ever used.
It all depends on how you define vaporware. The Jargon File 4.2.3 defines it as " Products announced far in advance of any release (which may or may not actually take place)." I would take that to mean announcing a product but without any type of release. A beta version is still a release in my book, albiet still a work in progress--but clearly it exists and it's being worked on so it's not vapor. Mac OSX would also not be vapor in my definition, since it also clearly exists.
First of all, YaST is RPM-based. Secondly the difficulty, perceived or otherwise, comes from the target audience for Debian; namely, not newbies. Corel Linux was Debian based, and installed easier than any other distro I've seen. It's certainly possible to make Debian easy, but that's not the priority. There are many different types of people who use Linux, and ease of use is not a top priority for all. If you're having trouble installing Debian, use something else. No big deal.
As for maintainance, let's compare them:
RPM: rpm -ivh package.rpm
DEB: dpkg -i package.deb
RPM: rpm -Uvh package.rpm
DEB: apt-get install package
Pretty much the same, although apt-get really does kick ass. It's good to see RPM users can use it now too.
Don't use Netscape 6 as a metric! NS6 was branched from a pretty old version of Mozilla. Go to mozilla.org and download a nightly build before you pass judgement. The Mozilla team has just recently begun the optimization phase, so it should be getting increasingly faster and lighter as time goes on.
That peice of shit toolkit allows Mozilla to be easily ported to any platform. If it were written in GTK, the toolkit would have to be ported, and that would suck and make ports less common. They use their own version of COM for the same reasons.
No so amazing, when you think about how vast the Internet is, and how constantly it changes. In reality, it's actually impossible for the censorware companies to do what they're advertising--so it should come as little surprise that it doesn't work. The only way to properly rate a website is for a real person to look at it, and there are far too many sites for this to be feasable.
You can't really call nautilus bloatware, for reasons of infrastructure. It uses bonobo to componentize everything, and calls each component when needed. So, when you start up nautilus, you're not actually running all of these things at once. This is pretty much exactly how explorer does it, and no one calls that bloated.
The question is, is reverse engineering legal? Of course, anyone here would tell you "hell yes" but the MPAA and many other big companies want to be able to black-box something and lock up anyone who learns how it works. They're arguing that the click-wrap agreement is enough to override law governing RE, but the counter argument is that click-wrap licenses are in fact counter to California law. Contracts of adhesion are against the law in most places as far as I know, but IANAL.
Got that? :)
That actually is illegal, but only because DVDs are involved. Basically, because of the DMCA, playing DVDs in any way which is not officially sanctioned by the MPAA is illegal. However, just because it is illegal doesn't mean I wouldn't do it in a second, or that any of you should think twice either. There's nothing wrong with it, that's simply the fair use of a movie you have payed for. If it's an unjust or stupid law, break it as many times as you can or it will never go away.
Yes, its default printing system blows. However, if you happen to have an HP or EPSON printer, go to www.cups.org and download the Common UNIX Printing System. Unbelievably frickin awesome, and installation is seamless. Administration is as simple as browsing to localhost:631.
Highlight what you want to copy, middle-click where you want it to go. Gnome and KDE don't have their own clipboard system because X already does.
I've always said, if my mom cant use it, it's not ready for mainstream
My mom has considerable trouble using Windows. It's not nearly as user friendly as you think it is.
Why does everyone assume that if it works for them, it must work for everyone? Simply because you have not had a problem means little. Windows is very finicky for any number of reasons, and there's no way to predict it.
History has already proven you wrong. This is exactly the same thing that was said of the Internet. And let's not forget that Windows is hardly easy to use either--it is simply different. The difficulty of learning Linux is in unlearning Windows.
It's based on 30 year old technology
Linux's technology is nine years old. It is based on a thirty year old concept, but that is not the same. We still use the concept of the wheel, is that outdated? It's better to find a good set of rules that work well and stick with them than to change them every couple of years like M$ does.
Isn?t it? :)
I agree with you, but that doesn't necessarily discount his argument. The plug and play bios in my machine has kindof gone out, and it has all but crippled Windows. It puts everything on IRQ 9, and there's nothing I can do--manually configuring hardware is impossible under Windows. I've ended up making multiple hardware profiles so I can use all my hardware. Linux, however, has been completely unnaffected on the same machine. Hardware configures itself perfectly. That leads me to believe that Windows' fault tolerance sucks, which is a point against, faulty hardware or not.
You must have a awefully pedantic definition of running like crap, because Gnome runs just great on my 64 megs.
At least W2k detects all your memory.
Where did that come from? Linux will address up to 4 gigs, which is more than your desktop box will have for quite some time.
Now, I think he was being way to optimistic with the 6 month estimate, I'd say more like a year. In a years time, I'm very confident Linux will be a kickass desktop platform; not replacing Windows, but a serious competitor. I don't believe that people want Microsoft because they think it's better, they want it because they don't know about anything else. When you buy a new computer, it has Windows on it. Period. Anyone who uses another OS is seen as a weirdo; I speak from experience, because I held this exact same attitude before I have Linux a second glance.
I don't think the market will just throw itself at Linux before it's ready, Linux will have to mature to the point of being an attractive alternative to Windows, and that will take a little more time yet. Not nearly as long as you might think, though, Nautilus and Evolution are set to make their debut sometime in January if I remember correctly. Compare Nautilus to Windows Explorer--no competition, Nautilus wins hands down as a far better and cooler file manager. (Assuming, of course, that the Eazel crew gets it stable enough). Evolution is a closer call, but a very nice email program nonetheless. And just think of what other cool stuff will be available a year from now! I think Linux will gain popularity on the cheap Internet computers and quickly work its way up as more and more people become familiar with it.
it's how the English word animation is rendered in Katakana.
Shorthand, perhaps. "Animation" expressed in katakana is actually "animéshon" (writing katakana characters in romaji is awkward :) But you are right in your main point, that Anime is simply their word for animation. Here in America, however, it refers specifically to Japanese animation.
This is something I find really ironic, since it has traditionally been MacOS that was GUI-only, and Windows always had some sort of command-line. Now, as of Windows ME and MacOS X, Windows will rely totally on a GUI and MacOS will have a far superior command-line thanks to its UNIX heritage.
Again, this makes the wrongheaded assumtion that all filesharing going on is illegal. Maybe we people should start punishing the act of piracy, rather than tools that could possibly be used for it.
go to the ftp, and find the Netscape6 directory for your platform. Find the xpi/ directory and download all the crap in there. Then, all you have to do is open up the files in the borwser and they will install themselves. That's all there is to it, theres an AIM component as well as a java package and many more. The directory for my browser would be: /pub/netscape6/english/6.0/unix/linux22/xpi, but of course, YMMV depending on platform.
I was a little annoyed when I heard Netscape was gonna branch Mozilla for their commerical release because then everyone would be calling it Netscape when it's actually Mozilla, but that's trivial compared to the real downside here. Since Netscape will be an old version of Mozilla, a lot of the things that people'll be bitching about won't be an issue under Mozilla. Any problem they have will be at least a little bit better under Moz. *sigh*, another thing to educate the masses about...
I though Event Horizon was horrible... it had a really cool premise and good atmosphere, but three-quarters into it it just got completely gross and incoherent.
It still boggles my mind when people call Mozilla ugly (especially M18) when IE is based on flat, grey buttons. Lets just say its a matter of taste and leave it at that; and besides, its completely themeable so if you don't like the default theme, go download one that you do like.