"Linux" (who?) hasn't spent billions on advertising, unless I'm missing something in between all the "I'm a PC" and "Think Different" commercials.
Like it or not, that's what makes the difference to the masses: product placement and brand recognition, not technical superiority. And people generally don't buy Macs because they "work when they should". The majority of Mac users are just as clueless as the majority of Windows users. They might believe the hype that a Mac "just works" but anyone with a clue will tell you it has just as many problems as any other OS.
And finally, a huge percentage of Mac users bought the Mac because they think it's pretty. The OS and technical merits had nothing to do with their decision.
So Linux has very little name recognition, isn't advertised, and the average person has no idea what it is -- yet it's doing okay and gaining numbers every year. Meanwhile, Apple spends billions per year on advertising to the masses about how awesome Macs are -- and they, too, are doing "okay". Kind of sad.
By the way, Macintosh came out in 1984. Apple has had twenty four years to pimp their commercial product. Linux wasn't even around until 91 or so, and desktop penetration wasn't even a goal until maybe a few years ago. Trying to compare the two is absurd, but if you really want to, it makes Apple look pretty pathetic.
I have a fair amount of arachnophobia. If I were on the station and a spider turned up missing I'd take a page from Sigourney Weaver's book -- don a space suit and blow the airlock to suck the hideous beast into space.
Despite all the safeguards supposedly in place, if a cop really wants to, he can find a reason to arrest you. Most understand it'd be pointless, and they have better things to do. But the point is, an arrest in and of itself means nothing. Making it stick in court is something else entirely.
And now, empowered with the excuse of "the behavior machine thinger said he was acting suspicious!" the cop doesn't even need to look that hard for a reason. The machine beeps or whatever it does, he slaps the cuffs on you. "Just doin' my job," he might say -- and he's probably right.
But if the charges are dropped or you aren't convicted, is the TSA going to announce that? "We arrested over a thousand people but only a hundred of them were actually up to no good."
Even coming close to defending Microsoft leaves a bitter taste in my mouth, but I still don't get it. The laptops to which I refer are nothing special -- Core 2 Duo 1.6ghz processors, fairly standard these days. Gig of memory. That's more than enough to run Vista (though, try running some applications on top of that, with that limited memory, and you're in for a world of hurt). The big factor seems to be the video card, but I've personally witnessed several dozen of these machines with 915 chips running Aero fine -- with all the asinine bells and whistles. So, where's the loss to HP here? On what were they spending all this extra money to be "Vista Capable"? Was HP originally planning on going with an even worse video chip? How much lower could they possibly go these days?
All that being said, I have essentially the same laptop -- an nx7400 -- which runs Ubuntu with compiz just beautifully, almost never taxes the available RAM, starts applications quickly, never crashes unless I'm deliberately screwing with stuff I shouldn't be touching, doesn't need a seperate "recovery CD" for basic drivers, and is immune to all the retarded little shitware and trojans I am forever helping the salesteam remove from their machines. Maybe someone at HP should wake up.
Microsoft is accused of deceiving consumers who bought PCs in 2006 labeled "Vista Capable," but which could only run a basic version of the operating system.
Most of the laptops used by the sales team at my company are HP 6710 series, purchased between late 2006 and mid 2007. They all have the Vista sticker on them. Some of them have Intel 915 video, and some have.. some other Intel chip, I forget which, but they all run Aero okay on Vista Business. (They also came with one gig of memory which just isn't enough, but that's neither here nor there.) So, I'm confused -- what, exactly, is the problem here?
And if they have five suspects, and two of them have D70s while the other three have something else, they've narrowed their investigation.
Of course, a bright chap would rent/borrow/steal a camera to do whatever criminal underworld photography he was doing, instead of using one the cops are likely to find in his home or car, but whatever.
In the episode one where Kirk and Spock went to the planet of gangsters, Kirk was mystified by cars, and had a tough time figuring out how to drive one. Now we see him handling a Corvette like Mario Andretti.
I suppose that can be overlooked; I'm still pretty excited about it. I really don't know how I feel about the car thing, though.
That's crap, man. You're basically saying "The government set up rules, including local jurisdiction. They were unable to catch criminals effectively this way. They therefore cheated the rules, and won. Hooray."
Look, if the notion of local jurisdictions bothers you so much, fight to have it changed. I think the entire concept of little penny-ante dictatorships -- sorry, I mean "counties" or "townships" or what-have-you -- is asinine in the extreme. I firmly believe they benefit no one, and lead to silly situations like the one you're describing.
However, that is the system in place. If the local government and cops can't handle that, that's their problem. They're the ones who set it up, and for better or worse they're the ones who think regional control is better than centralized control. Then they're whining that the system isn't beneficial enough to them, so instead of saying it isn't working, they move some signs around to trick people?
Screw that from here til Tuesday. Either you want local jurisdiction or you don't -- but if you want everything controlled locally, and people take advantage of it the total lack of organization, too bad for you. You don't get to have it both ways. Local control or not. Moving signs around means you've admitted the system doesn't work.
I wonder how the smartasses who moved the signs would feel if I put up a bunch of "No Trespassing" signs marking my property, but cleverly moved them all twenty meters back from my real property line. Then when some dweeb walks on my property, having no signs marking it as such, I claim he's a trespasser and shoot him. Suddenly it's not so kosher, eh guys?
I'm not convinced that picture is supposed to be the bridge. I haven't seen anything that confirms that -- just the pictures and random fan commentary/assumptions. My first thought was that it was a training simulator or something; aren't these guys supposed to be in the Academy in this film?
With IT you've got a point, but someone fresh out of high school who knows enough not to drool on himself can snag a helpdesk job. There's an "in". It's horrible, maddening work, but it's experience, a resume-builder, and like any other entry-level job it shows future employers that you put the time in, got the job done, learned a thing or two. If you're good at it you may get promoted -- if not, update your resume and move on to the next thing, hopefully a slightly better one now that you have some work experience.
Frankly, whether you went to college or not, that sort of entry-level crap work is about the best you're gonna get anyway. Like anyone else in any industry you have to put in the time on the lowest rung of the ladder, prove yourself, and then you can move up.
Do this for two or three years, while working on your own stuff. Maybe contribute to some F/OSS projects, get your name out there on verifiable work. You'll soon have a fairly decent resume and portfolio to show anyone when it comes time to apply for more serious work.
As an employer looking for IT professionals, I would generally rather see someone with a few years' of real-world experience with a track record of moving up, and with a decent portfolio of things he's put together, than some new grad with no experience but a BS in computer science. The new grad has proven nothing, and is qualified to start at helpdesk and work his way up.:)
For all that they are missing 99% of the desktop market primarily because noone has matured the desktop Linux OS to anywhere near the point where Windows is,
I'd be happy to give my mother an Ubuntu CD and know that she could install it and use it with a minimum of hand-holding. I would never, in a million years, give her an XP or Vista disc with the same confidence. Windows may have drivers available to it because everyone wants to support Windows, but it also hardly ever loads them. Trawling around on manufacturer's websites to download executables and running them one by one isn't mature.
An OS where the expected model of software installation is to google around and try to find something useful that isn't trialware, crippled in features, and won't install malware -- this is not mature. Where the standards of installation are "If the user clicks OK, let the installer defecate all over the system, using the developer's own little ideas about where things should go. Allow anything to install any number of startup services and system tray helpers and other horseshit little party favors." This is not mature.
An OS that has zero central oversight, and instead relies on third-parties to do everything, from installations to updates to uninstallations to drivers to codecs to hardware detection, is not mature.
An OS where you spend 50% of your time closing idiotic balloon notifications about how HP WLAN assistant needs to update, McAffee needs to update, Quicktime needs to update, iTunes needs to update, would you like to make a backup DVD?, would you like to clean your desktop icons?, would you like to click here to uninstall hardware?, would you like Windows to adjust your screen resolution?, Your computer might be at risk!, No antivirus detected!, Click here to enable Windows Firewall!, Click here for the Language Bar!, click here to show unused icons!... this is not mature.
And that's just the user experience. I won't get into the stuff under the hood, because I understand that's not what counts for a "desktop" to most people.
No. Windows is not a mature OS and never has been. It's dominant because it's what comes with computers and people are trained to accept all of the above nonsense as "normal". No other OS or DE I can think of has anything close to that level of constant, unending, low-level badgering, nagging, and annoyance. No other OS I can think of lets any executable vomit all over the place because it has zero standards about where things should go. No other OS I can think of assumes the user is a complete droolbucket builds the entire UI around the assumption that droolbuckets need constant information about things they don't care about or understand -- instead of handling it quietly behind the scenes and shutting up.
I've gotten dozens of people to try Ubuntu. Most loved it. Some were annoyed by this piece of hardware or that bit of software not being compatible. That's fine. But every single one of them agreed that the desktop is cleaner, easier to use, and less annoying than Windows. One commented, after using it for about 40 minutes, something to the effect of "I just realised I haven't had to shut off any popups this whole time," meaning the stupid little nagging updaters and what-have-you.
I realise the above paragraph is anecdotal, but the rest isn't. Hardly anyone I know likes using Windows -- they tolerate it because they don't know there's anything else, and they are conditioned to think Windows' annoyances are just part of day to day life. The ones that do like Windows' desktop experience are the more advanced users who know how to turn all that BS off. But if you have to go through systematically disabling crap that makes the desktop experience practically unusable, that is not the sign of desktop maturity.
Every windows release has come with a fairly current and comprehensive driver list.
Every XP install I've done -- every single one, without exception, hyperbole, or exaggeration -- has failed to install critical hardware drivers. This isn't like complaining that Ubuntu didn't install your stupid Bluetooth dongle driver. XP will fail to install ethernet, wireless, video, sound, and frequently a few "unknown device" drivers. A cherry XP install gives you a useless environment at 800x600.
You either have to have some sort of recovery CD, which hardly anyone keeps around, or a second computer to go tromping through seven different manufacturer's websites, downloading driver executable installers, and install them one by one. Then go back and clean up all the horseshit little system tray "helpers", "assistants", start menu entries, and other party favors they leave behind.
I've yet to have an Ubuntu install that didn't get me online immediately so I could resolve any other issues. It works right from the live CD, even. With the exception of a weird ATI card I had a while back, the correct video driver is always there, and the screen resolution is correct 95% of the time. Sound has always worked, wireless always works (if you have a Broadcom chip, you have to click "Enable Restricted Drivers, oh no!). And, again, there's the live CD option so you can find out how well stuff works before installing it. You can't do that with XP, but I guess that's okay, since you can be assured that XP won't detect or install the drivers anyway, so no need to verify that beforehand..
This happens in Vista too, in my experience, but I've done only a handful of Vista installs. I have done dozens and dozens of XP installs, though, on all kinds of hardware, and the above scenario is the same every. Single. Time.
When an OS can't at least load some basic ethernet driver to get you going, that's just pathetic. Windows may have the drivers available but it never installs them, and no human has ever gotten drivers on the other end of the "Would you like Windows to check online for drivers?" process.
Neither of these are supplemented with facts, but is all speculative. Frogs and salamanders are dying, so we must be causing it.
Fine, but consider -- amphibians as a class have been around a very long time. Unless you count a few fishlike creatures that were able to gasp at open air for a few minutes at a time, amphibians were essentially the first land-dwelling animals on this planet. They're ancient, and as a class they have survived dozens upon dozens of climate changes, from one extreme to another, throughout history. It's safe to say that they're good at adapting to normal, gradual climate changes, and even fairly rapid ones such as that which likely killed the dinosaurs.
So, when large numbers of them start dying in an extremely short period of time, don't you think that might be cause for concern? Even if you don't care about them -- which is shortsighted enough -- events like that are a barometer for other things going on in the environment. These things will sooner or later affect us too; for all our hubris and technology, we are not immune. We're in the same biosphere as the amphibians and every other creature. Massive amounts of them up and dying isn't normal. It isn't something to shrug off as "survival of the fittest".
Except that Windows makes it all too easy for a user to stuff up the OS with all that malware and whatever else. In Linux, the expected means of getting new applications is to grab them from a vetted and vouched repository, which has been examined by people who have the time to examine this stuff. It tells you precisely what it's going to install, and the centralised repository system means that this has been looked over and examined.
Contrast that with the expected means to get new stuff in Windows: either shell out huge amounts of money for the software, which most users won't do, or download and install something from some website which may have zero accountability. The installer in question will defecate all over the place because there are no standards about where things should go in Windows. At best, it'll probably install some inane systray helpers and registry entries alongside; at worst it'll install malware without telling you.
Of course, that assumes you're lucky enough to find an application that does what you want without being a BS 30-day trial, or is crippled to only have a few of the features available with the "full" version, or that doesn't nag you every hour, or make you register with who-knows-what and send god-only-knows information to who-knows-where. But that's all beside the point.
The point is, even someone well-versed in this stuff can't always tell what's safe to do in Windows. I figured installing Chrome would be a safe move, but then I noticed it installed some idiotic Google Updater thing, which is a major bitch to get rid of, and something a less seasoned user would never have noticed. There was no indication that would happen, and it could just as easily have been something far more nefarious.
You can blame the users for being careless, but as the well-documented example above shows, even being careful isn't always enough with Windows, and Microsoft shares a large measure of responsibility for making it not only easy, but practically de rigueur to get crapware just by going through day-to-day operations.
My Vista machine is pretty stable too, but it took a Herculean effort to turn off all the ridiculous little party favors, and every time I install something I have to go back through and clean up the mess. Your average user has neither the time nor expertise to do this, and most of them aren't even aware that it can or should be done. Modern Linux distros avoid these problems entirely.
No, an OS that becames a complete disaster of third-party updaters and registry entries and nag screens and other bloated cruft, just as a result of installing normal applications, is not mature.
Yes, it's true that I can use ndiswrapper, but then why doesn't the OS offer to set that up for you during installation when it sees there's no driver for your wireless card?
Good question. Why doesn't Windows? Every time I install XP, ethernet and wireless drivers totally fail to install. I have to either have a recover CD or go tromp around in various manufacturer's websites to find the installers -- which means I have to have a second computer. Oh, and I have to look up the specs to find out who made this ethernet card or that wireless adapter, cause Device Manager sure as hell ain't gonna tell me.
Ubuntu at least gives you the option of the live CD so you can see if things are going to work or not. The most trouble I've had with drivers has been with Broadcom wireless chipsets, and that required ndiswrapper -- but not since at least 7.04, when all I had to do was click "Enable Restricted Drivers" and presto, I'm online. Try that with Windows.
Windows never "offers" to set up anything so I don't know what you're complaining about. The "found new hardware.. search online? Searching online.." process is a total joke. No human has ever had drivers come out of the other end of that process.
I think it sucks that you haven't had great experiences with Ubuntu on laptops. All my installs have been on laptops -- I'm using one now -- and have gone off without a hitch. I admit I haven't tried the sleep or suspend thing because frankly it's of no use to me and I don't care, which isn't the case for everyone, but in any event I can't comment about it. What I can say is that hardware detection and driver installation is, without a doubt, lightyears ahead of Windows, which will fail to install drivers every time -- and they're always critical drivers,like ethernet, wireless, video, and sound. Listening to someone (not you specifically) gripe that their fingerprint reader didn't install automatically under Linux is ridiculous. And it's compounded in ridiculousness by the fact that you get to try it before you install it so there are no surprises. Windows has never had that, and I suspect it never will.
If you sudo something on a Linux machine, it can install itself everywhere, add useless startup options in the init system, add stupid services and in general screw up a machine just as badly as on Windows.
True, it *can*, but that's not really the normal way of installing stuff in Linux, now is it? In Windows, it's expected that you'll go to some random website and download some random installer, or use a CD with god-knows-what on it, at which point it stuffs up your system, and leaves behind all kinds of horseshit little party favors, because there's no real standards, no accountability, and every software writer has their own little way of doing things and their own ideas about where stuff should go.
"Dont install crap" is good advice for us all but half the time even a veteran like me can't tell what's "crap". I thought installing Chrome from Google on my Vista box would be pretty safe and then I noticed I have a stupid Google Update Notifier or something running all the time. I wasn't told that would get installed -- it just happened, and a less seasoned user would never have noticed. How is a Windows user supposed to know what's "crap" and what isn't? There's no authority or vouching for anything!
In Linux you have a centrally managed and approved apt or rpm repository (on every major distro anyway). Installing something from there means it's been tested and vouched by people who have the knowledge and time to ensure it's not going to totally break stuff. There are agreed-upon standards about where binaries and libraries should go and this is followed very well.
The point is that the expected Linux method is coordinated and standardized. The expected Windows method is total chaos.
Oh, and in Linux, you're also not slowed down by having seventeen patch programs always running and checking for updates and installing new stuff. Again, it's centralized, happens all at once, and only when you say so. It doesn't even get in your face about OMG TIME TO UPDATE -- it quietly puts an icon in the Gnome notification area and you can deal with it when you want to.
Fine, you had to wait a long time. I get it, and that sucks. What sucks more is not being able to get that treatment at all because you can't afford it and don't have health insurance.
Half your problem seems to be the fact that you chose to live out in the boonies, far away from any medical centers. Your revelation that medical care is easier to access in large cities isn't earth-shattering.
The simple fact of the matter is in a socialist health care system you are at the mercy of the government in terms of your overall health care.
Yes, it's clearly better to be at the mercy of a private corporation which has a financial motive to deny your claims to keep more profits for their shareholders.
Whether you know it or not, you provided a very decent argument in favor of a nationalized healthcare system. It should be available for those who can't afford any other access to medical care. It may not be the quickest but it's there when you need it. And if you have money and want to get privately funded insurance, you're at liberty to do that, too -- just as you did. What's the problem?
I think it's Vista's fault when the OS allows any application to vomit all over the place without regard for anything, and has no standards as to how things work, as long as the brainless user clicks "Allow" like Pavlov's dogs. Yes, it would help a lot if the users weren't installing all kinds of crap, but an OS should not fall over because stuff got installed and the OS allowed it to screw the registry and add useless startup options and stupid services and so forth.. The entire application install process is fundamentally flawed and has been since Win95 at least (never used Win 3.11 so can't comment on that), and Microsoft has done absolutely nothing to fix it in all that time. Every other major OS I can think of avoids these problems one way or another.
My Vista machine at home is quite stable, but then, I know how to turn off all the horseshit, and I'm fanatic about keeping it clean, not allowing things to install wherever they damn please, not allowing them to load on boot, not allowing useless services to run, and so forth. Without Herculean efforts and micromanaging everything like this, Vista very quickly allows itself to become almost completely nonfunctional.
No, my mom is going to call whatever store from which she bought the computer; I don't do Vista.
Fine, whatever, but the point was she's going to call someone because she has no idea how to handle it herself, right? By the way, "your mom" is, y'know, a metaphor for any average user who doesn't know anything about computers and doesn't care -- they just want to surf the web, check email, write a letter, etc.
So saying "Well in Linux you have to blah blah, the average user can't do that," might be true in some cases, but it's not like the average user is more adept at handling Windows problems either. And I will still argue that cases where the user encounters a major problem are far less frequent in Ubuntu than XP or Vista.
But you seem to imply that it's bad to update often, and that Linux distros, specifically Ubuntu, doesn't. Ubuntu not only updates often, it upgrades every 6 months.
No no, you misunderstood, or I wasn't clear. Yes, Ubuntu pops up a little thinger that says updates are available -- fine, well and dandy. So does XP and Vista. Also fine and dandy.
The difference is that's all Ubuntu will do to bother you, and it'll update not only the OS but the applications thanks to repos. And it'll do this all in one go.
XP and Vista have no repositories or standard way of doing things, so every application you have has its own little updater, all running in the systray, all of which are constantly jumping up and down, throwing balloons or windows in your face about how they need to update this and connect to that and sync with the other. Show me someone who hasn't experienced this and I'll show you someone who spent three hours turning off all that crap.
And of course, Windows just loves to make you reboot after these updates. Ubuntu will remind you that you have to reboot after a kernel update, but you can dismiss it and it will not bother you again. Windows will nag you about it every ten minutes, literally, and if you don't answer it, it will reboot itself. I can't tell you how many times I've gone to my computer in the morning to find it rebooted overnight due to some stupid update. Thanks guys! There go all my downloads or rendering or number-crunching or whatever else I may have been doing! But at least Windows Movie Maker is updated...!
Have you ever tried to enable internet connection sharing? Not that easy.
In Linux? Honestly, no. It's not something I've ever needed to do. But are you implying that Joe Everyuser is doing this? Most people dont' even know what ICS is or why they'd ever want it. They plug into the router or connect to the wireless and away they go.
By the way, almost all of my installs have been on laptops as well. I use Vista on my desktop for gaming, and Ubuntu or Debian on all my other machines, which are laptops. I have honestly never tried the sleep/suspend stuff because I personally don't care, so I can't comment on that, but everything else has always worked flawlessly, out of the box, with the Broadcom exception I mentioned before.
To come full circle, my point is that on the whole Linux has been much, much easier for me and basically everyone I've gotten to use it. For occasional driver issues, I'm not going to pretend they dont' exist, but considering that every single XP install I've ever done has failed to load drivers for critical hardware, pointing the finger at Linux and saying XP is easier is silly.
At my workplace, the salespeople have to reboot their Vista laptops like three times a day. This is partially due to their habit of loading it with all kinds of crap that grinds the poor thing to a halt, but it's also partially Vista's fault. In the real world, with real users, rebooting is just another accepted and expected thing to do.
I'm seriously considering giving them all 8.04 and saying "this is the new version of Windows." They'll never know the difference.
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"Linux" (who?) hasn't spent billions on advertising, unless I'm missing something in between all the "I'm a PC" and "Think Different" commercials.
Like it or not, that's what makes the difference to the masses: product placement and brand recognition, not technical superiority. And people generally don't buy Macs because they "work when they should". The majority of Mac users are just as clueless as the majority of Windows users. They might believe the hype that a Mac "just works" but anyone with a clue will tell you it has just as many problems as any other OS.
And finally, a huge percentage of Mac users bought the Mac because they think it's pretty. The OS and technical merits had nothing to do with their decision.
So Linux has very little name recognition, isn't advertised, and the average person has no idea what it is -- yet it's doing okay and gaining numbers every year. Meanwhile, Apple spends billions per year on advertising to the masses about how awesome Macs are -- and they, too, are doing "okay". Kind of sad.
By the way, Macintosh came out in 1984. Apple has had twenty four years to pimp their commercial product. Linux wasn't even around until 91 or so, and desktop penetration wasn't even a goal until maybe a few years ago. Trying to compare the two is absurd, but if you really want to, it makes Apple look pretty pathetic.
I have a fair amount of arachnophobia. If I were on the station and a spider turned up missing I'd take a page from Sigourney Weaver's book -- don a space suit and blow the airlock to suck the hideous beast into space.
Oh, that's just what we need. Commercials of Jerry Seinfeld chatting with Linus Torvalds and Richard Stallman about the merits of shoes.
Despite all the safeguards supposedly in place, if a cop really wants to, he can find a reason to arrest you. Most understand it'd be pointless, and they have better things to do. But the point is, an arrest in and of itself means nothing. Making it stick in court is something else entirely.
And now, empowered with the excuse of "the behavior machine thinger said he was acting suspicious!" the cop doesn't even need to look that hard for a reason. The machine beeps or whatever it does, he slaps the cuffs on you. "Just doin' my job," he might say -- and he's probably right.
But if the charges are dropped or you aren't convicted, is the TSA going to announce that? "We arrested over a thousand people but only a hundred of them were actually up to no good."
Ah, okay, now that makes sense. Now I dont' have the cognitive dissonance of almost having defended Microsoft.
The second one is that the soul is integrated into the brain over all its area, so having a brain means having "half a soul".
Break a hologram in two, and each piece contains the full, original holographic image, at half the resolution.
Worth mentioning.
Even coming close to defending Microsoft leaves a bitter taste in my mouth, but I still don't get it. The laptops to which I refer are nothing special -- Core 2 Duo 1.6ghz processors, fairly standard these days. Gig of memory. That's more than enough to run Vista (though, try running some applications on top of that, with that limited memory, and you're in for a world of hurt). The big factor seems to be the video card, but I've personally witnessed several dozen of these machines with 915 chips running Aero fine -- with all the asinine bells and whistles. So, where's the loss to HP here? On what were they spending all this extra money to be "Vista Capable"? Was HP originally planning on going with an even worse video chip? How much lower could they possibly go these days?
All that being said, I have essentially the same laptop -- an nx7400 -- which runs Ubuntu with compiz just beautifully, almost never taxes the available RAM, starts applications quickly, never crashes unless I'm deliberately screwing with stuff I shouldn't be touching, doesn't need a seperate "recovery CD" for basic drivers, and is immune to all the retarded little shitware and trojans I am forever helping the salesteam remove from their machines. Maybe someone at HP should wake up.
Most of the laptops used by the sales team at my company are HP 6710 series, purchased between late 2006 and mid 2007. They all have the Vista sticker on them. Some of them have Intel 915 video, and some have.. some other Intel chip, I forget which, but they all run Aero okay on Vista Business. (They also came with one gig of memory which just isn't enough, but that's neither here nor there.) So, I'm confused -- what, exactly, is the problem here?
And if they have five suspects, and two of them have D70s while the other three have something else, they've narrowed their investigation.
Of course, a bright chap would rent/borrow/steal a camera to do whatever criminal underworld photography he was doing, instead of using one the cops are likely to find in his home or car, but whatever.
In the episode one where Kirk and Spock went to the planet of gangsters, Kirk was mystified by cars, and had a tough time figuring out how to drive one. Now we see him handling a Corvette like Mario Andretti.
I suppose that can be overlooked; I'm still pretty excited about it. I really don't know how I feel about the car thing, though.
That's crap, man. You're basically saying "The government set up rules, including local jurisdiction. They were unable to catch criminals effectively this way. They therefore cheated the rules, and won. Hooray."
Look, if the notion of local jurisdictions bothers you so much, fight to have it changed. I think the entire concept of little penny-ante dictatorships -- sorry, I mean "counties" or "townships" or what-have-you -- is asinine in the extreme. I firmly believe they benefit no one, and lead to silly situations like the one you're describing.
However, that is the system in place. If the local government and cops can't handle that, that's their problem. They're the ones who set it up, and for better or worse they're the ones who think regional control is better than centralized control. Then they're whining that the system isn't beneficial enough to them, so instead of saying it isn't working, they move some signs around to trick people?
Screw that from here til Tuesday. Either you want local jurisdiction or you don't -- but if you want everything controlled locally, and people take advantage of it the total lack of organization, too bad for you. You don't get to have it both ways. Local control or not. Moving signs around means you've admitted the system doesn't work.
I wonder how the smartasses who moved the signs would feel if I put up a bunch of "No Trespassing" signs marking my property, but cleverly moved them all twenty meters back from my real property line. Then when some dweeb walks on my property, having no signs marking it as such, I claim he's a trespasser and shoot him. Suddenly it's not so kosher, eh guys?
And why have a Korean play a Japanese character (Sulu)? WTF? I guess they are depending on the old cracker saying "what's the difference?"
Seriously! They just didn't learn from their mistake in the series of casting an American to play a Russian character. When will the madness end?
I'm not convinced that picture is supposed to be the bridge. I haven't seen anything that confirms that -- just the pictures and random fan commentary/assumptions. My first thought was that it was a training simulator or something; aren't these guys supposed to be in the Academy in this film?
With IT you've got a point, but someone fresh out of high school who knows enough not to drool on himself can snag a helpdesk job. There's an "in". It's horrible, maddening work, but it's experience, a resume-builder, and like any other entry-level job it shows future employers that you put the time in, got the job done, learned a thing or two. If you're good at it you may get promoted -- if not, update your resume and move on to the next thing, hopefully a slightly better one now that you have some work experience.
:)
Frankly, whether you went to college or not, that sort of entry-level crap work is about the best you're gonna get anyway. Like anyone else in any industry you have to put in the time on the lowest rung of the ladder, prove yourself, and then you can move up.
Do this for two or three years, while working on your own stuff. Maybe contribute to some F/OSS projects, get your name out there on verifiable work. You'll soon have a fairly decent resume and portfolio to show anyone when it comes time to apply for more serious work.
As an employer looking for IT professionals, I would generally rather see someone with a few years' of real-world experience with a track record of moving up, and with a decent portfolio of things he's put together, than some new grad with no experience but a BS in computer science. The new grad has proven nothing, and is qualified to start at helpdesk and work his way up.
For all that they are missing 99% of the desktop market primarily because noone has matured the desktop Linux OS to anywhere near the point where Windows is,
I'd be happy to give my mother an Ubuntu CD and know that she could install it and use it with a minimum of hand-holding. I would never, in a million years, give her an XP or Vista disc with the same confidence. Windows may have drivers available to it because everyone wants to support Windows, but it also hardly ever loads them. Trawling around on manufacturer's websites to download executables and running them one by one isn't mature.
An OS where the expected model of software installation is to google around and try to find something useful that isn't trialware, crippled in features, and won't install malware -- this is not mature. Where the standards of installation are "If the user clicks OK, let the installer defecate all over the system, using the developer's own little ideas about where things should go. Allow anything to install any number of startup services and system tray helpers and other horseshit little party favors." This is not mature.
An OS that has zero central oversight, and instead relies on third-parties to do everything, from installations to updates to uninstallations to drivers to codecs to hardware detection, is not mature.
An OS where you spend 50% of your time closing idiotic balloon notifications about how HP WLAN assistant needs to update, McAffee needs to update, Quicktime needs to update, iTunes needs to update, would you like to make a backup DVD?, would you like to clean your desktop icons?, would you like to click here to uninstall hardware?, would you like Windows to adjust your screen resolution?, Your computer might be at risk!, No antivirus detected!, Click here to enable Windows Firewall!, Click here for the Language Bar!, click here to show unused icons!... this is not mature.
And that's just the user experience. I won't get into the stuff under the hood, because I understand that's not what counts for a "desktop" to most people.
No. Windows is not a mature OS and never has been. It's dominant because it's what comes with computers and people are trained to accept all of the above nonsense as "normal". No other OS or DE I can think of has anything close to that level of constant, unending, low-level badgering, nagging, and annoyance. No other OS I can think of lets any executable vomit all over the place because it has zero standards about where things should go. No other OS I can think of assumes the user is a complete droolbucket builds the entire UI around the assumption that droolbuckets need constant information about things they don't care about or understand -- instead of handling it quietly behind the scenes and shutting up.
I've gotten dozens of people to try Ubuntu. Most loved it. Some were annoyed by this piece of hardware or that bit of software not being compatible. That's fine. But every single one of them agreed that the desktop is cleaner, easier to use, and less annoying than Windows. One commented, after using it for about 40 minutes, something to the effect of "I just realised I haven't had to shut off any popups this whole time," meaning the stupid little nagging updaters and what-have-you.
I realise the above paragraph is anecdotal, but the rest isn't. Hardly anyone I know likes using Windows -- they tolerate it because they don't know there's anything else, and they are conditioned to think Windows' annoyances are just part of day to day life. The ones that do like Windows' desktop experience are the more advanced users who know how to turn all that BS off. But if you have to go through systematically disabling crap that makes the desktop experience practically unusable, that is not the sign of desktop maturity.
Every windows release has come with a fairly current and comprehensive driver list.
Every XP install I've done -- every single one, without exception, hyperbole, or exaggeration -- has failed to install critical hardware drivers. This isn't like complaining that Ubuntu didn't install your stupid Bluetooth dongle driver. XP will fail to install ethernet, wireless, video, sound, and frequently a few "unknown device" drivers. A cherry XP install gives you a useless environment at 800x600.
You either have to have some sort of recovery CD, which hardly anyone keeps around, or a second computer to go tromping through seven different manufacturer's websites, downloading driver executable installers, and install them one by one. Then go back and clean up all the horseshit little system tray "helpers", "assistants", start menu entries, and other party favors they leave behind.
I've yet to have an Ubuntu install that didn't get me online immediately so I could resolve any other issues. It works right from the live CD, even. With the exception of a weird ATI card I had a while back, the correct video driver is always there, and the screen resolution is correct 95% of the time. Sound has always worked, wireless always works (if you have a Broadcom chip, you have to click "Enable Restricted Drivers, oh no!). And, again, there's the live CD option so you can find out how well stuff works before installing it. You can't do that with XP, but I guess that's okay, since you can be assured that XP won't detect or install the drivers anyway, so no need to verify that beforehand..
This happens in Vista too, in my experience, but I've done only a handful of Vista installs. I have done dozens and dozens of XP installs, though, on all kinds of hardware, and the above scenario is the same every. Single. Time.
When an OS can't at least load some basic ethernet driver to get you going, that's just pathetic. Windows may have the drivers available but it never installs them, and no human has ever gotten drivers on the other end of the "Would you like Windows to check online for drivers?" process.
Neither of these are supplemented with facts, but is all speculative. Frogs and salamanders are dying, so we must be causing it.
Fine, but consider -- amphibians as a class have been around a very long time. Unless you count a few fishlike creatures that were able to gasp at open air for a few minutes at a time, amphibians were essentially the first land-dwelling animals on this planet. They're ancient, and as a class they have survived dozens upon dozens of climate changes, from one extreme to another, throughout history. It's safe to say that they're good at adapting to normal, gradual climate changes, and even fairly rapid ones such as that which likely killed the dinosaurs.
So, when large numbers of them start dying in an extremely short period of time, don't you think that might be cause for concern? Even if you don't care about them -- which is shortsighted enough -- events like that are a barometer for other things going on in the environment. These things will sooner or later affect us too; for all our hubris and technology, we are not immune. We're in the same biosphere as the amphibians and every other creature. Massive amounts of them up and dying isn't normal. It isn't something to shrug off as "survival of the fittest".
Except that Windows makes it all too easy for a user to stuff up the OS with all that malware and whatever else. In Linux, the expected means of getting new applications is to grab them from a vetted and vouched repository, which has been examined by people who have the time to examine this stuff. It tells you precisely what it's going to install, and the centralised repository system means that this has been looked over and examined.
Contrast that with the expected means to get new stuff in Windows: either shell out huge amounts of money for the software, which most users won't do, or download and install something from some website which may have zero accountability. The installer in question will defecate all over the place because there are no standards about where things should go in Windows. At best, it'll probably install some inane systray helpers and registry entries alongside; at worst it'll install malware without telling you.
Of course, that assumes you're lucky enough to find an application that does what you want without being a BS 30-day trial, or is crippled to only have a few of the features available with the "full" version, or that doesn't nag you every hour, or make you register with who-knows-what and send god-only-knows information to who-knows-where. But that's all beside the point.
The point is, even someone well-versed in this stuff can't always tell what's safe to do in Windows. I figured installing Chrome would be a safe move, but then I noticed it installed some idiotic Google Updater thing, which is a major bitch to get rid of, and something a less seasoned user would never have noticed. There was no indication that would happen, and it could just as easily have been something far more nefarious.
You can blame the users for being careless, but as the well-documented example above shows, even being careful isn't always enough with Windows, and Microsoft shares a large measure of responsibility for making it not only easy, but practically de rigueur to get crapware just by going through day-to-day operations.
My Vista machine is pretty stable too, but it took a Herculean effort to turn off all the ridiculous little party favors, and every time I install something I have to go back through and clean up the mess. Your average user has neither the time nor expertise to do this, and most of them aren't even aware that it can or should be done. Modern Linux distros avoid these problems entirely.
No, an OS that becames a complete disaster of third-party updaters and registry entries and nag screens and other bloated cruft, just as a result of installing normal applications, is not mature.
Yes, it's true that I can use ndiswrapper, but then why doesn't the OS offer to set that up for you during installation when it sees there's no driver for your wireless card?
,like ethernet, wireless, video, and sound. Listening to someone (not you specifically) gripe that their fingerprint reader didn't install automatically under Linux is ridiculous. And it's compounded in ridiculousness by the fact that you get to try it before you install it so there are no surprises. Windows has never had that, and I suspect it never will.
Good question. Why doesn't Windows? Every time I install XP, ethernet and wireless drivers totally fail to install. I have to either have a recover CD or go tromp around in various manufacturer's websites to find the installers -- which means I have to have a second computer. Oh, and I have to look up the specs to find out who made this ethernet card or that wireless adapter, cause Device Manager sure as hell ain't gonna tell me.
Ubuntu at least gives you the option of the live CD so you can see if things are going to work or not. The most trouble I've had with drivers has been with Broadcom wireless chipsets, and that required ndiswrapper -- but not since at least 7.04, when all I had to do was click "Enable Restricted Drivers" and presto, I'm online. Try that with Windows.
Windows never "offers" to set up anything so I don't know what you're complaining about. The "found new hardware.. search online? Searching online.." process is a total joke. No human has ever had drivers come out of the other end of that process.
I think it sucks that you haven't had great experiences with Ubuntu on laptops. All my installs have been on laptops -- I'm using one now -- and have gone off without a hitch. I admit I haven't tried the sleep or suspend thing because frankly it's of no use to me and I don't care, which isn't the case for everyone, but in any event I can't comment about it. What I can say is that hardware detection and driver installation is, without a doubt, lightyears ahead of Windows, which will fail to install drivers every time -- and they're always critical drivers
If you sudo something on a Linux machine, it can install itself everywhere, add useless startup options in the init system, add stupid services and in general screw up a machine just as badly as on Windows.
True, it *can*, but that's not really the normal way of installing stuff in Linux, now is it? In Windows, it's expected that you'll go to some random website and download some random installer, or use a CD with god-knows-what on it, at which point it stuffs up your system, and leaves behind all kinds of horseshit little party favors, because there's no real standards, no accountability, and every software writer has their own little way of doing things and their own ideas about where stuff should go.
"Dont install crap" is good advice for us all but half the time even a veteran like me can't tell what's "crap". I thought installing Chrome from Google on my Vista box would be pretty safe and then I noticed I have a stupid Google Update Notifier or something running all the time. I wasn't told that would get installed -- it just happened, and a less seasoned user would never have noticed. How is a Windows user supposed to know what's "crap" and what isn't? There's no authority or vouching for anything!
In Linux you have a centrally managed and approved apt or rpm repository (on every major distro anyway). Installing something from there means it's been tested and vouched by people who have the knowledge and time to ensure it's not going to totally break stuff. There are agreed-upon standards about where binaries and libraries should go and this is followed very well.
The point is that the expected Linux method is coordinated and standardized. The expected Windows method is total chaos.
Oh, and in Linux, you're also not slowed down by having seventeen patch programs always running and checking for updates and installing new stuff. Again, it's centralized, happens all at once, and only when you say so. It doesn't even get in your face about OMG TIME TO UPDATE -- it quietly puts an icon in the Gnome notification area and you can deal with it when you want to.
Fine, you had to wait a long time. I get it, and that sucks. What sucks more is not being able to get that treatment at all because you can't afford it and don't have health insurance.
Half your problem seems to be the fact that you chose to live out in the boonies, far away from any medical centers. Your revelation that medical care is easier to access in large cities isn't earth-shattering.
The simple fact of the matter is in a socialist health care system you are at the mercy of the government in terms of your overall health care.
Yes, it's clearly better to be at the mercy of a private corporation which has a financial motive to deny your claims to keep more profits for their shareholders.
Whether you know it or not, you provided a very decent argument in favor of a nationalized healthcare system. It should be available for those who can't afford any other access to medical care. It may not be the quickest but it's there when you need it. And if you have money and want to get privately funded insurance, you're at liberty to do that, too -- just as you did. What's the problem?
I think it's Vista's fault when the OS allows any application to vomit all over the place without regard for anything, and has no standards as to how things work, as long as the brainless user clicks "Allow" like Pavlov's dogs. Yes, it would help a lot if the users weren't installing all kinds of crap, but an OS should not fall over because stuff got installed and the OS allowed it to screw the registry and add useless startup options and stupid services and so forth.. The entire application install process is fundamentally flawed and has been since Win95 at least (never used Win 3.11 so can't comment on that), and Microsoft has done absolutely nothing to fix it in all that time. Every other major OS I can think of avoids these problems one way or another.
My Vista machine at home is quite stable, but then, I know how to turn off all the horseshit, and I'm fanatic about keeping it clean, not allowing things to install wherever they damn please, not allowing them to load on boot, not allowing useless services to run, and so forth. Without Herculean efforts and micromanaging everything like this, Vista very quickly allows itself to become almost completely nonfunctional.
No, my mom is going to call whatever store from which she bought the computer; I don't do Vista.
Fine, whatever, but the point was she's going to call someone because she has no idea how to handle it herself, right? By the way, "your mom" is, y'know, a metaphor for any average user who doesn't know anything about computers and doesn't care -- they just want to surf the web, check email, write a letter, etc.
So saying "Well in Linux you have to blah blah, the average user can't do that," might be true in some cases, but it's not like the average user is more adept at handling Windows problems either. And I will still argue that cases where the user encounters a major problem are far less frequent in Ubuntu than XP or Vista.
But you seem to imply that it's bad to update often, and that Linux distros, specifically Ubuntu, doesn't. Ubuntu not only updates often, it upgrades every 6 months.
No no, you misunderstood, or I wasn't clear. Yes, Ubuntu pops up a little thinger that says updates are available -- fine, well and dandy. So does XP and Vista. Also fine and dandy.
The difference is that's all Ubuntu will do to bother you, and it'll update not only the OS but the applications thanks to repos. And it'll do this all in one go.
XP and Vista have no repositories or standard way of doing things, so every application you have has its own little updater, all running in the systray, all of which are constantly jumping up and down, throwing balloons or windows in your face about how they need to update this and connect to that and sync with the other. Show me someone who hasn't experienced this and I'll show you someone who spent three hours turning off all that crap.
And of course, Windows just loves to make you reboot after these updates. Ubuntu will remind you that you have to reboot after a kernel update, but you can dismiss it and it will not bother you again. Windows will nag you about it every ten minutes, literally, and if you don't answer it, it will reboot itself. I can't tell you how many times I've gone to my computer in the morning to find it rebooted overnight due to some stupid update. Thanks guys! There go all my downloads or rendering or number-crunching or whatever else I may have been doing! But at least Windows Movie Maker is updated...!
Have you ever tried to enable internet connection sharing? Not that easy.
In Linux? Honestly, no. It's not something I've ever needed to do. But are you implying that Joe Everyuser is doing this? Most people dont' even know what ICS is or why they'd ever want it. They plug into the router or connect to the wireless and away they go.
By the way, almost all of my installs have been on laptops as well. I use Vista on my desktop for gaming, and Ubuntu or Debian on all my other machines, which are laptops. I have honestly never tried the sleep/suspend stuff because I personally don't care, so I can't comment on that, but everything else has always worked flawlessly, out of the box, with the Broadcom exception I mentioned before.
To come full circle, my point is that on the whole Linux has been much, much easier for me and basically everyone I've gotten to use it. For occasional driver issues, I'm not going to pretend they dont' exist, but considering that every single XP install I've ever done has failed to load drivers for critical hardware, pointing the finger at Linux and saying XP is easier is silly.
At my workplace, the salespeople have to reboot their Vista laptops like three times a day. This is partially due to their habit of loading it with all kinds of crap that grinds the poor thing to a halt, but it's also partially Vista's fault. In the real world, with real users, rebooting is just another accepted and expected thing to do.
I'm seriously considering giving them all 8.04 and saying "this is the new version of Windows." They'll never know the difference.
A fine argument, sir! You have convinced me with your persuasive series of valid points, and backed it with your name and reputation!