Allow me to shamelessly plug my own station (in my sig) if you're into that type of music.
That said, my friend brought my station up on his iPhone. Seems to me that'd be a way to do it -- stream it on a phone and plug that into your head unit's aux jack.
They didn't have people with those skills back then, either. Kennedy gave his moonshot speech in 62, and America had almost zero spaceflight experience. Eight years later the Eagle landed on the moon.
We could build something much better today with modern technology and the forty years of experience we now have -- if we bothered funding it.
Thousands of experts would have assured you that pholgiston and the ether existed. The consensus view in medicine has been wrong lots of times:
How true. We should therefore continue taking millions of tons of carbon-based fuel and setting it on fire. There's no way anything bad will possibly happen from that. Right?
Whether or not that's actually contributing to climate change, maybe it'd be a good idea to stop doing that for a bunch of other reasons -- like less pollution, cleaner air, cheaper energy, and not being dependant on foreign, often hostile, powers. If cleaning up our act stops climate change too, bonus. But acting like that one aspect of the situation is the only thing that matters is single-minded and short-sighted. There are in fact many other reasons to stop using carbon-based fuels as our energy supply.
By the way, a bit of a riddle for you. Venus receives only 25% of the sunlight that Mercury receives. Yet Venus is much hotter than Mercury. Can you tell the class why this is?
Why is it "maths"? If you want to really get accurate, the word is "mathematics". But since you're willing to truncate it, why are you obsessing over the S at the end and insisting that must stay?
So what do you do when you install Ubuntu and find that it doesn't recognize one or more pieces of hardware that worked with your Windows install?
I deal with it. I was careful to state that I would have "few if any" problems, not that "this will work 100% of the time". I don't expect anything to work all the time without a hitch.
However, I took detailed notes about installing Ubuntu versus Windows. Read them here if you care.
Never in my six-plus years of using Linux (Debian and Ubuntu) have I "hand picked" the hardware. I use whatever the hell I have around or whatever got issued to me by my employer. That's it, that's all she wrote, no exceptions.
In every case, Windows installs have been an endless cycle of hunting down drivers and rebooting and updating and finding more drivers and installing each one by one and more rebooting. In each case, Ubuntu has installed without any major issues. The biggest problem I've ever faced was Broadcom wireless cards which stopped being a problem after 6.06.
Ubuntu, and Linux in general, is not perfect, so stop acting like I ever said it was. But the driver problems it has at this point are so few and far between as to be beneath mention. Windows, on the other hand, will completely fail, guaranteed, unless you have the drivers handy on a disc or an extra computer with which you can go hunt them down and put them on a CD or USB key. It's pathetic.
The Brother printers we have at work? I was able to plug them into my Ubuntu laptop, and connect to it over the network. Both times, it just worked. In Windows I had to hunt down drivers and spend fun time with "Add Printers" and screwing around with ports or TCP settings for it to even see the printer, nevermind operate.
I bought an M-audio midi controller. I plug it into my Ubuntu machine and it works right away. In Windows I had to break out the driver CD, which didn't work, then hunt down drivers online, and half an hour later I got it to work.
I could go on and on. Examples exist on both sides of the fence. But don't act like Windows is some paragon of compatibility. Windows itself is compatible with nothing, because Microsoft depends on the vendors to provide all the drivers and if you don't have them, well, screw you.
I know that I can install Ubuntu on any random hardware -- any random hardware -- and most of it, maybe all if it, will work. I also know that if I install Windows on any machine, it will not work without an additional five hours of finding drivers and installing them one by one and cleaning up the party favors they leave behind.
And one more thing. In Ubuntu, those drivers and modules will update, along with every other aspect of my system, in one fell swoop. In Windows, every single vendor has their own little updater and I have to tend to each of them one at a time. That's assuming they even have an updater -- sometimes I just have to remember to check the vendor website and see if there are any updates available.
In conclusion:
So what do you do when you install Ubuntu and find that it doesn't recognize one or more pieces of hardware that worked with your Windows install?
I don't know, smartass. What do you do when you install Windows and nothing whatsoever works that worked with your Ubuntu install?
Ubuntu fits on a single CD and gets all my hardware going, on first install, almost every single time. Fully accelerated video at the correct resolution, audio, wireless, ethernet, everything. I've plugged random printers into various Ubuntu machines and had them come up and work without issue. In addition to all of this, it comes with practically everything an average user would need to get their day-to-day stuff done -- a full-fledged office suite, image editor, email, IM client, a useful browser, a useful media player, CD burner, CD ripper, and so on. Oh, and the base install is like three gigs.
Windows requires an entire DVD and clocks in at somelike like nine gigs for a base install. For all of that bloat, it comes with absolutely nothing except the useless Internet Explorer and the equally useless Windows Media Player. And with all that bloat it STILL doesn't have any drivers -- you have to have a seperate disc for that. What the hell?
Installing Windows is a ridiculous game -- install the OS, then hunt down drivers online (if you can even get online) and install them one by one, manually. Or use the OEM driver disc and spend hours removing all the crapware and party favors it leaves behind.
No, for years now I have been MUCH more confident in installing Ubuntu and knowing that I will have few, if any, hardware or driver problems. I dread every Windows install I have to do. Windows is great at turning your machine into a paperweight without some serious investment of time and effort.
I would never apply for a job that wanted to know that much about me. It's simply none of their business. I'm sure many others feel the same way.
Then I guess the application wasn't for you or people like you. You realise there are plenty of others who would take such a job, including all the intrustions, for the power or prestige or simply as a damn impressive thing they could put on their resumes?
I do agree it is somewhat ironic that they are asking for a "cybersecurity" position, since people with knowledge in the world of information security tend to be pretty zealous about not revealing too much about themselves online.
Nevertheless, there will always be qualified people who feel their online presence is no big deal, and would love such a job. And I should point out that those all sound like things that would be perfectly normal to investigate for anyone trying to get a job so high up in the executive branch. Hell, even much lower-ranking clearance requires all kinds of invasive background checks.
Why put up with that bullshit, particularly when you can make more money in the private sector and not have to worry (as much) about politics or being someone's scapegoat?
Again: power, prestige, networking, and credentials. You could hum away working your way up the corporate ladder doing infosec, and probably do quite well, but being able to say that you were in charge of IT security for the federal government might be quite appealing to some.
Re:I could do it in half the time
on
Hand Written Clock
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· Score: 0, Redundant
But he's not doing this for efficiency. It's supposed to art, and maybe he felt it wouldn't be complete without each hand position actually being drawn individually. That said, I have no idea if he took a shortcut like you suggested. Just saying, artists think quite differently from engineers sometimes.
I've never understood why this is even an issue. Okay, from a purely scientific standpoint it would be interesting to know whether or not humans are having an effect on the climate. But as a practical matter I don't see why anyone has a problem with cleaning up our act. The basic goal is "Hey guys, maybe we'd all be better off if we found better ways of producing energy than by burning stuff and letting the smoke into the atmosphere."
The only arguments I've heard from the (usually conservative) anti-global-warming crowd are absurd. They fall into two main points as far as I can tell -- one is "It's anti-capitalist" and the other is "Government has no business telling private companies what to do."
In fact this is perfectly illustrated by the above post, who says
Naturally, someone that hates big business and "the man" may also psychologically have a reason to believe in AGW
How is that "natural"? How does that even remotely follow?
"It's anti-capitalist" is just ridiculous. As an example, say we want to reduce emissions and stop using coal, so let's use nuclear. Where do they think the nuclear plants are going to come from? Someone is going to have to build, staff, and maintain those, and sell the resulting energy at profit. There are thousands of potential jobs just from the construction alone.
Someone has to design, manufacture, install, and maintain the smokestack scrubbers. Someone has to design, manufacture, and upkeep new and more efficient engines. Or solar panels, or hydroelectric power stations, or whatever. All creating jobs, all being done at profit.
There's a whole green industry waiting in the wings to do these things. How on earth is it anti-capitalist, anti-business, or anti-"The Man" to see a need for better and more efficient service, and provide that need at profit?!
"Government has no business telling private companies what to do." I don't get this one either. Private industry would never regulate itself in consideration of anything but its bottom line. There's a reason we're not all still working 14 hour days and dealing with child labor -- and it's not because corporations voluntarily relaxed those standards. Why does anyone think it's a good idea for companies to crap all over everything, dump any pollutants they want anywhere they like? But the second someone suggests that maybe that's not good, out comes Fox News and their ilk to blame government for ruining everyone's fun.
Finally, I don't see how anyone can argue that we can continue to take billions of tons of carbon-based fuel, set it on fire, release whatever combustion byproducts into the atmosphere.. and absolutely nothing bad will happen. So, again, even if it's not having any actual effect on the global temperature, wouldn't we all be better off not breathing that crap?
I think one problem with using rockets to slow your descent, at least near the ground, is that you risk serious damage to the very ground you want the robot to study.
As I recall, Earth's atmosphere didn't have much oxygen either until it was altered by early life which metabolised carbon dioxide and produced oxygen as a result, same way plants and many microbes still do.
I believe this varies state to state. In most states, you are not required to carry identification, and you're not required to hand over your ID just because a cop asks. There are obvious exceptions -- if you're driving you need to have your license and so forth. But if you're just sitting around waiting for a bus or whatever, a cop may ask for your ID, but that doesn't mean you have to give it to him -- in most states.
Check your state laws or ask your local ACLU chapter to be sure what the deal is. Don't give away your rights, or assume you have rights on your side, without checking.
Most people realise that if a web-type service is offered to you free then it is obvious the company involved is using your data for profit.
Most people have no idea because they're clueless about how technology works. If you really pressed them, they'd probably work that out on their own, but on the whole, most people never give it even a passing thought.
What's the point of having them maximised? In most applications that just produces tons of useless dead space. Right now, my browser covers about half of the total screen real-estate, but behind it I can see IRC, IM windows, and watch something compile in another terminal. If anything happens in any of those windows I'll know about it immediately.
I don't need to view any of these things side-by-side and to do so would just be absurd, since I don't need them in my face all the time. Instead I can just glance around and see if anything's happening.
Why would I want IRC or Pidgin windows maximised? Why would I want a terminal running a music player maximised? Why would I want a word processor maximised -- so I can have extra large grey dead areas around the area where I'm typing?
I actually cannot think of any situation where maximising a window makes any sense.
My problem is when my way of doing things is destroyed for no good reason. The Firefox "Awesomebar" is a decent example. Some people seem to like it and they should be able to use it. I, however, LOATHE that thing, but there is no way to just go back to the old (sane) behavior, even with various plugins and config trickery.
I agree. Windows is much easier. To fix a problem you just need to open regedit and find HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINES\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\, find a key like AUOptions, and change the value from 0x86244 to (obviously) 0x73352.
Hilarious. But in fairness I should point out that in modern desktop distros, you basically put the CD in and drag whatever files you want to it, then click "Write to CD". In Gnome, it's actually MUCH easier than in Windows, where you often need third party applications to do it. Hell, in Vista and 7, I can't burn at all -- if I put a CD in, a window comes up asking me to "format" the CD (what?). I have two options -- format it so only Vista or 7 can read it (not what I want), or a normal CD that can be read by anything...but that option is inexplicably grayed out.
What? Windows is mainstream and the documentation for that sucks too. Where is the easy-to-use documentation on how to do basic things in Windows? I've never seen any aside from maybe the "Windows for Dummies" stuff, but that's not really documentation. The Windows "help"? Please, those things make manpages look clear and straightforward.
Most people don't really need documentation, especially not in these days of desktop-friendly distros. In Windows people just click icons and menus. Well, that's how it works in, say, Ubuntu as well. A user doesn't need a terminal any more than they need the cmd shell in Windows. Not much documentation is required for point-and-click and users don't really have to learn anything they don't already know.
When it comes to applications, documentation is different, but that's not a Linux problem, and perhaps not even a distro problem.
Okay, I agree we're getting long-winded so let's wrap this up.
Your theories for why people use windows do not adequately explain the number of home and small business users that buy retail copies, nor the number of users at large companies which have IT departments large enough to do whatever they like and make the users live with it.
I have explained it several times. People buy things that seem familiar, due to lack of caring, lack of knowledge, and fear of the unknown. The guy that buys Windows 7 to replace XP is doing so because he's finally decided he needs "an upgrade", but he wants to stick with Windows because that's what he knows. He's not buying Windows based on its technical merits, features, or because the price is appealing. That's assuming he's aware of the other options out there, which most people are not.
Same deal with IT departments. In most corporations IT is not all-powerful. In fact it's the opposite -- they have to cater to the whims of the users and management, both of whom want Windows, again, because they think they already know Windows, and additionally because they don't want to have to "retrain" their employees (a vague and silly statement but one oft-used).
The majority of people are clueless when it comes to computers. Yet you think they have the knowledge and the will to examine alternatives and conclude that Windows is the best choice for them. Where did you get the idea that people are knowledgable about computers? Where did you get the idea that people, at large, make rational purchasing decisions about anything?
It's an important point because your original claim was that the price of windows is unjustified because nobody has ever thought about the fact that they're even buying it.
And I stand by that. Most people buy a computer. It happens to have Windows installed on it. They didn't "buy Windows" and don't even think about it.
Yes, as you pointed out, some people buy Windows. Of the hundreds of millions of Windows desktops out there, a very tiny percentage of people then buy additional boxed retail copies of Windows later, usually as an "upgrade" to what they already have, but I believe most of those are doing so because of perceived familiarity, not because they've really looked at other options.
I think your original point that set me off was that you claimed that other systems don't do certain things that, as you put it, Windows "nails", and that's why the world at large hasn't switched to something else. My reply was that Windows doesn't "nail" much, and in fact people by and large are pretty upset with the way Windows works, which is why they're always bitching and griping about their computers. But they don't switch due to the reasons I've discussed above -- fear, apathy, and lack of knowledge of alternatives.
What a dumb law. If the guy in front of you is going the speed limit, then from a strictly letter-of-the-law viewpoint, why do you need to be able to pass him? So you can get in front of him and continue going the speed limit? If he's going slower than the speed limit (far more of a hazard than speeding, by the way), then just by going the speed limit you'd overtake him. What's the point of building in an exception like that?
The real reason cops don't pull you over for going slightly above the limit is because no judge would take that charge seriously and the cop would look foolish. Plus, the cop doesn't want to waste time writing you a ticket for going 7mph over. He'd rather wait for some dope going 20 over.
Plus, it's safer to have drivers keep their eyes on the road and let the speed fluctuate a bit than to have everyone's eyes glued to the dashboard to obsess over the exact position of the speedometer needle.
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Allow me to shamelessly plug my own station (in my sig) if you're into that type of music.
That said, my friend brought my station up on his iPhone. Seems to me that'd be a way to do it -- stream it on a phone and plug that into your head unit's aux jack.
Possibly you could get it to move from the ablation caused by the laser. Still, that sounds like quite a crackpot scheme.
They didn't have people with those skills back then, either. Kennedy gave his moonshot speech in 62, and America had almost zero spaceflight experience. Eight years later the Eagle landed on the moon.
We could build something much better today with modern technology and the forty years of experience we now have -- if we bothered funding it.
Thousands of experts would have assured you that pholgiston and the ether existed. The consensus view in medicine has been wrong lots of times:
How true. We should therefore continue taking millions of tons of carbon-based fuel and setting it on fire. There's no way anything bad will possibly happen from that. Right?
Whether or not that's actually contributing to climate change, maybe it'd be a good idea to stop doing that for a bunch of other reasons -- like less pollution, cleaner air, cheaper energy, and not being dependant on foreign, often hostile, powers. If cleaning up our act stops climate change too, bonus. But acting like that one aspect of the situation is the only thing that matters is single-minded and short-sighted. There are in fact many other reasons to stop using carbon-based fuels as our energy supply.
By the way, a bit of a riddle for you. Venus receives only 25% of the sunlight that Mercury receives. Yet Venus is much hotter than Mercury. Can you tell the class why this is?
Why is it "maths"? If you want to really get accurate, the word is "mathematics". But since you're willing to truncate it, why are you obsessing over the S at the end and insisting that must stay?
"Math" is just as valid a truncation as "maths".
So what do you do when you install Ubuntu and find that it doesn't recognize one or more pieces of hardware that worked with your Windows install?
I deal with it. I was careful to state that I would have "few if any" problems, not that "this will work 100% of the time". I don't expect anything to work all the time without a hitch.
However, I took detailed notes about installing Ubuntu versus Windows. Read them here if you care.
Never in my six-plus years of using Linux (Debian and Ubuntu) have I "hand picked" the hardware. I use whatever the hell I have around or whatever got issued to me by my employer. That's it, that's all she wrote, no exceptions.
In every case, Windows installs have been an endless cycle of hunting down drivers and rebooting and updating and finding more drivers and installing each one by one and more rebooting. In each case, Ubuntu has installed without any major issues. The biggest problem I've ever faced was Broadcom wireless cards which stopped being a problem after 6.06.
Ubuntu, and Linux in general, is not perfect, so stop acting like I ever said it was. But the driver problems it has at this point are so few and far between as to be beneath mention. Windows, on the other hand, will completely fail, guaranteed, unless you have the drivers handy on a disc or an extra computer with which you can go hunt them down and put them on a CD or USB key. It's pathetic.
The Brother printers we have at work? I was able to plug them into my Ubuntu laptop, and connect to it over the network. Both times, it just worked. In Windows I had to hunt down drivers and spend fun time with "Add Printers" and screwing around with ports or TCP settings for it to even see the printer, nevermind operate.
I bought an M-audio midi controller. I plug it into my Ubuntu machine and it works right away. In Windows I had to break out the driver CD, which didn't work, then hunt down drivers online, and half an hour later I got it to work.
I could go on and on. Examples exist on both sides of the fence. But don't act like Windows is some paragon of compatibility. Windows itself is compatible with nothing, because Microsoft depends on the vendors to provide all the drivers and if you don't have them, well, screw you.
I know that I can install Ubuntu on any random hardware -- any random hardware -- and most of it, maybe all if it, will work. I also know that if I install Windows on any machine, it will not work without an additional five hours of finding drivers and installing them one by one and cleaning up the party favors they leave behind.
And one more thing. In Ubuntu, those drivers and modules will update, along with every other aspect of my system, in one fell swoop. In Windows, every single vendor has their own little updater and I have to tend to each of them one at a time. That's assuming they even have an updater -- sometimes I just have to remember to check the vendor website and see if there are any updates available.
In conclusion:
So what do you do when you install Ubuntu and find that it doesn't recognize one or more pieces of hardware that worked with your Windows install?
I don't know, smartass. What do you do when you install Windows and nothing whatsoever works that worked with your Ubuntu install?
Hmm?
Ubuntu fits on a single CD and gets all my hardware going, on first install, almost every single time. Fully accelerated video at the correct resolution, audio, wireless, ethernet, everything. I've plugged random printers into various Ubuntu machines and had them come up and work without issue. In addition to all of this, it comes with practically everything an average user would need to get their day-to-day stuff done -- a full-fledged office suite, image editor, email, IM client, a useful browser, a useful media player, CD burner, CD ripper, and so on. Oh, and the base install is like three gigs.
Windows requires an entire DVD and clocks in at somelike like nine gigs for a base install. For all of that bloat, it comes with absolutely nothing except the useless Internet Explorer and the equally useless Windows Media Player. And with all that bloat it STILL doesn't have any drivers -- you have to have a seperate disc for that. What the hell?
Installing Windows is a ridiculous game -- install the OS, then hunt down drivers online (if you can even get online) and install them one by one, manually. Or use the OEM driver disc and spend hours removing all the crapware and party favors it leaves behind.
No, for years now I have been MUCH more confident in installing Ubuntu and knowing that I will have few, if any, hardware or driver problems. I dread every Windows install I have to do. Windows is great at turning your machine into a paperweight without some serious investment of time and effort.
I would never apply for a job that wanted to know that much about me. It's simply none of their business. I'm sure many others feel the same way.
Then I guess the application wasn't for you or people like you. You realise there are plenty of others who would take such a job, including all the intrustions, for the power or prestige or simply as a damn impressive thing they could put on their resumes?
I do agree it is somewhat ironic that they are asking for a "cybersecurity" position, since people with knowledge in the world of information security tend to be pretty zealous about not revealing too much about themselves online.
Nevertheless, there will always be qualified people who feel their online presence is no big deal, and would love such a job. And I should point out that those all sound like things that would be perfectly normal to investigate for anyone trying to get a job so high up in the executive branch. Hell, even much lower-ranking clearance requires all kinds of invasive background checks.
Why put up with that bullshit, particularly when you can make more money in the private sector and not have to worry (as much) about politics or being someone's scapegoat?
Again: power, prestige, networking, and credentials. You could hum away working your way up the corporate ladder doing infosec, and probably do quite well, but being able to say that you were in charge of IT security for the federal government might be quite appealing to some.
But he's not doing this for efficiency. It's supposed to art, and maybe he felt it wouldn't be complete without each hand position actually being drawn individually. That said, I have no idea if he took a shortcut like you suggested. Just saying, artists think quite differently from engineers sometimes.
The only arguments I've heard from the (usually conservative) anti-global-warming crowd are absurd. They fall into two main points as far as I can tell -- one is "It's anti-capitalist" and the other is "Government has no business telling private companies what to do."
In fact this is perfectly illustrated by the above post, who says
How is that "natural"? How does that even remotely follow?
"It's anti-capitalist" is just ridiculous. As an example, say we want to reduce emissions and stop using coal, so let's use nuclear. Where do they think the nuclear plants are going to come from? Someone is going to have to build, staff, and maintain those, and sell the resulting energy at profit. There are thousands of potential jobs just from the construction alone.
Someone has to design, manufacture, install, and maintain the smokestack scrubbers. Someone has to design, manufacture, and upkeep new and more efficient engines. Or solar panels, or hydroelectric power stations, or whatever. All creating jobs, all being done at profit.
There's a whole green industry waiting in the wings to do these things. How on earth is it anti-capitalist, anti-business, or anti-"The Man" to see a need for better and more efficient service, and provide that need at profit?!
"Government has no business telling private companies what to do." I don't get this one either. Private industry would never regulate itself in consideration of anything but its bottom line. There's a reason we're not all still working 14 hour days and dealing with child labor -- and it's not because corporations voluntarily relaxed those standards. Why does anyone think it's a good idea for companies to crap all over everything, dump any pollutants they want anywhere they like? But the second someone suggests that maybe that's not good, out comes Fox News and their ilk to blame government for ruining everyone's fun.
Finally, I don't see how anyone can argue that we can continue to take billions of tons of carbon-based fuel, set it on fire, release whatever combustion byproducts into the atmosphere.. and absolutely nothing bad will happen. So, again, even if it's not having any actual effect on the global temperature, wouldn't we all be better off not breathing that crap?
I think one problem with using rockets to slow your descent, at least near the ground, is that you risk serious damage to the very ground you want the robot to study.
As I recall, Earth's atmosphere didn't have much oxygen either until it was altered by early life which metabolised carbon dioxide and produced oxygen as a result, same way plants and many microbes still do.
Huh. You've never worked security at a club, have you. Or even been to one. Drunk idiots will do stupid things.
I believe this varies state to state. In most states, you are not required to carry identification, and you're not required to hand over your ID just because a cop asks. There are obvious exceptions -- if you're driving you need to have your license and so forth. But if you're just sitting around waiting for a bus or whatever, a cop may ask for your ID, but that doesn't mean you have to give it to him -- in most states.
Check your state laws or ask your local ACLU chapter to be sure what the deal is. Don't give away your rights, or assume you have rights on your side, without checking.
Most people realise that if a web-type service is offered to you free then it is obvious the company involved is using your data for profit.
Most people have no idea because they're clueless about how technology works. If you really pressed them, they'd probably work that out on their own, but on the whole, most people never give it even a passing thought.
I wish the court would render an opinion against the retarded trend of inventing hip new names for stuff. "Space shifting"? Seriously?
What godawful prose. This is a great example of why Doctorow should stop writing.
What's the point of having them maximised? In most applications that just produces tons of useless dead space. Right now, my browser covers about half of the total screen real-estate, but behind it I can see IRC, IM windows, and watch something compile in another terminal. If anything happens in any of those windows I'll know about it immediately.
I don't need to view any of these things side-by-side and to do so would just be absurd, since I don't need them in my face all the time. Instead I can just glance around and see if anything's happening.
Why would I want IRC or Pidgin windows maximised? Why would I want a terminal running a music player maximised? Why would I want a word processor maximised -- so I can have extra large grey dead areas around the area where I'm typing?
I actually cannot think of any situation where maximising a window makes any sense.
My problem is when my way of doing things is destroyed for no good reason. The Firefox "Awesomebar" is a decent example. Some people seem to like it and they should be able to use it. I, however, LOATHE that thing, but there is no way to just go back to the old (sane) behavior, even with various plugins and config trickery.
Why can't there be an app which takes midi input and plays sounds (from a sound font file, wav file, etc) when it gets them?
Try lmms? It's come a long way. There's a Windows port available too if you want to try it out. Works with the (very low end) midi controllers I have.
I agree. Windows is much easier. To fix a problem you just need to open regedit and find HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINES\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\, find a key like AUOptions, and change the value from 0x86244 to (obviously) 0x73352.
Ready for the desktop!
Hilarious. But in fairness I should point out that in modern desktop distros, you basically put the CD in and drag whatever files you want to it, then click "Write to CD". In Gnome, it's actually MUCH easier than in Windows, where you often need third party applications to do it. Hell, in Vista and 7, I can't burn at all -- if I put a CD in, a window comes up asking me to "format" the CD (what?). I have two options -- format it so only Vista or 7 can read it (not what I want), or a normal CD that can be read by anything...but that option is inexplicably grayed out.
Where's the documentation for that nonsense?
What? Windows is mainstream and the documentation for that sucks too. Where is the easy-to-use documentation on how to do basic things in Windows? I've never seen any aside from maybe the "Windows for Dummies" stuff, but that's not really documentation. The Windows "help"? Please, those things make manpages look clear and straightforward.
Most people don't really need documentation, especially not in these days of desktop-friendly distros. In Windows people just click icons and menus. Well, that's how it works in, say, Ubuntu as well. A user doesn't need a terminal any more than they need the cmd shell in Windows. Not much documentation is required for point-and-click and users don't really have to learn anything they don't already know.
When it comes to applications, documentation is different, but that's not a Linux problem, and perhaps not even a distro problem.
Okay, I agree we're getting long-winded so let's wrap this up.
Your theories for why people use windows do not adequately explain the number of home and small business users that buy retail copies, nor the number of users at large companies which have IT departments large enough to do whatever they like and make the users live with it.
I have explained it several times. People buy things that seem familiar, due to lack of caring, lack of knowledge, and fear of the unknown. The guy that buys Windows 7 to replace XP is doing so because he's finally decided he needs "an upgrade", but he wants to stick with Windows because that's what he knows. He's not buying Windows based on its technical merits, features, or because the price is appealing. That's assuming he's aware of the other options out there, which most people are not.
Same deal with IT departments. In most corporations IT is not all-powerful. In fact it's the opposite -- they have to cater to the whims of the users and management, both of whom want Windows, again, because they think they already know Windows, and additionally because they don't want to have to "retrain" their employees (a vague and silly statement but one oft-used).
The majority of people are clueless when it comes to computers. Yet you think they have the knowledge and the will to examine alternatives and conclude that Windows is the best choice for them. Where did you get the idea that people are knowledgable about computers? Where did you get the idea that people, at large, make rational purchasing decisions about anything?
It's an important point because your original claim was that the price of windows is unjustified because nobody has ever thought about the fact that they're even buying it.
And I stand by that. Most people buy a computer. It happens to have Windows installed on it. They didn't "buy Windows" and don't even think about it.
Yes, as you pointed out, some people buy Windows. Of the hundreds of millions of Windows desktops out there, a very tiny percentage of people then buy additional boxed retail copies of Windows later, usually as an "upgrade" to what they already have, but I believe most of those are doing so because of perceived familiarity, not because they've really looked at other options.
I think your original point that set me off was that you claimed that other systems don't do certain things that, as you put it, Windows "nails", and that's why the world at large hasn't switched to something else. My reply was that Windows doesn't "nail" much, and in fact people by and large are pretty upset with the way Windows works, which is why they're always bitching and griping about their computers. But they don't switch due to the reasons I've discussed above -- fear, apathy, and lack of knowledge of alternatives.
What a dumb law. If the guy in front of you is going the speed limit, then from a strictly letter-of-the-law viewpoint, why do you need to be able to pass him? So you can get in front of him and continue going the speed limit? If he's going slower than the speed limit (far more of a hazard than speeding, by the way), then just by going the speed limit you'd overtake him. What's the point of building in an exception like that?
The real reason cops don't pull you over for going slightly above the limit is because no judge would take that charge seriously and the cop would look foolish. Plus, the cop doesn't want to waste time writing you a ticket for going 7mph over. He'd rather wait for some dope going 20 over.
Plus, it's safer to have drivers keep their eyes on the road and let the speed fluctuate a bit than to have everyone's eyes glued to the dashboard to obsess over the exact position of the speedometer needle.