its about dumb fucking developers who are dumber than a bag of hammers who in turn think YOU are the problem for not liking less, ineffective, and unintuitive interfaces
The hatred for all things new in the FLOSS community never ceases to surprise me. When they change Facebook, all my nontech friends all winge for days about it.
You'd think it'd be different around here, but it's not.
I can't speak to how well Gnome 3 works on typical large-screen multi-monitor setup, but my home laptop with a 14" screen, it works exactly the way I've always wished Gnome would. It's well put together, well designed and while there aren't a lot of native config tools for it yet (3.2 aside--haven't tried it), I'm sure that's all in the works (and if it's not, people/distros will create them).
the idea of Mint's polish on top of Gnome 3 sounds just about perfect to me--exactly the desktop I'd like to use.
I can't disagree with your overall point--in fact, I think you sum it up nicely with:
There's nothing there of "commercial quality", by your standards, but it's standard kit that would keep millions of people happy on their personal machines and millions of small businesses running just fine.
In fact, I don't know that I've ever made a pivot chart at home, and didn't even know what they were still I started working in business (ugh).
In the business world, though, I've needed a lot of the obscure bells and whistles that MS Office has, the same way a professional graphic designer couldn't get by with GIMP without a lot of heartache.
The problem I see is that people tout programs like LibreOffice and GIMP as complete replacements for the outlandishly expensive proprietary versions without understanding that, while more than adequate for the average user, power users regularly find them inadequate, which in turn making us in the FLOSS community look ridiculous, like we don't understand our audience.
Until LibreOffice develops strong pivot chart support in their spreadsheet product and better mail merge support in their word processor, it's still only an ugly toy, not a true replacement for what you'd really use a spreadsheet for.
LibreOffice is to MS Office as GIMP is to Photoshop. Which is to say, "a great replacement for the casual user, but 100% inadequate in vital ways to someone who uses the software to get work done.
Which is a dang shame because I'd love to dump anything with M$'s or Adobe's name on it.
The problem I run into is that my primary venues for listening to music and podcasts (both of which I enjoy very much) are not particularly conducive to doing so: either in the office, where I have to keep the music low or in the car, where tire/road noise eats 50% of the sound.
With that in mind 128 kbps IS perfectly acceptable--even with flac, I CAN'T turn it up loud enough to hear ANYTHING distinctly, so there's no sense in wasting disk space on quality I'll never hear.
I don't enjoy my musical predicament nor think it's a good way to "listen" to music, but it's where I'm at right now and I'm guessing it's not particularly uncommon.
Agreed. I find the spinning cube particularly useful, if only because it provides some immediate, positive reinforcement for using multiple desktops. I'm getting to the point now where I remember to use them all the time, but as a new Linux user, I often forgot about them. Till I started using the cube and found out how much fun it was to spin the dang thing.
I think that it's possible for a book composed entirely of excerpts to be an excellent, creative, and original work. The key question for me is whether the author stole someone's novel and changed some bits, or genuinely pasted together pieces from a body of work in order to create something new.
Having not read the book, and seen no real analysis of its content, I can't comment on whether this was achieved, but if it was I don't think it flies in the face of copyright (especially as applied to literature).
This hits the nail on the head. Excellent sampling takes a bit of an old work, and while referencing it, creates something new out of it. Does this book create something new? or does it simply parrot the old? Is the 'sampling' (or plagarism) a purposefully act, and is it done for a justifiable literary reason? What does referencing, or perhaps more accurately, replaying Strobo (or whatever the original work was) mean within the new work?
The answer to those questions determines whether she's a dirty, lazy plagarist or a Girl Talk-esque genius. Without reading the book, I'd have a lot of troubles making that judgement call.
(All that said, I think not immediately giving credit where credit is due up front is ridiculous and unethical no matter what she's doing. Whether or not it is (or rather should be) illegal is different story.)
Well said. I do think that Episode I feels substantially different (note how shiny the ship is vs. the decroded Mellinuium Falcon), but those are pretty purposeful thematic choices (even if they're not as cool).
The best way to address this lack of perspective is from a quote from Episode IV that threatens to ruin the movie with its overwhelming lameness almost as much as Jar-Jar did Episode I:
The last (and first) time I got a fake cashier's check I called the police both locally and in the town where I was supposed to send the money. Their response was that they couldn't do anything because until I cashed the check (for which I was liable), no crime had been committed.
Long story short, there's no way to catch potential fraud without the victim risking going to jail as well.
I think a more accurate description would have been "the tablet that as far as 90% of the population is concerned is only a rumor of something will end up being more expensive than I can afford anyways, so they really haven't bothered to care."
live in a big town where's it's seriously impractical to get to the library
not enjoy the library atmosphere
Our library is between my house and my office, so dropping by to pick something up/drop something off is no big deal. Previously, it was in walking distance of the office, so I could hit it during lunch, so getting there is never a hassle.
I grew up in a small town with a tiny library. But even then, I enjoyed the feeling of being IN a library. I'm not convinced I'd pay money to avoid that feeling.
I'm pretty sure they can be. I know they can be licensed (the Droid family is under the Apache license, iirc). Regardless, I know you can't legally distribute fonts unless they're under some sort of share-alike style license (Free Software licenses, CC license, etc). That's why there's such a big stink about this @font-face thing in html5 (or the new css or whatever it is).
Gotta agree with Consolas--all programming issues aside, lowercase "g" is gorgeous.
If only Consolas wasn't a M$ product. Or to put it the way I really think, if only Consolas was open source...Since it's not, I use Liberation Mono on a big screen and Droid Sans Mono at home.
Agreed. Unfortunately, I have quibbles with the rest of the browsers as well.
Opera != FOSS
Chrome and Epiphany's customization and extension selection suck
IE. enough said
Safari = Mac
Midori, Kahaekahakehshaz and Konqueror are all unusably buggy (or were last time I checked)
If Opera would open up their code, I'd dump Firefox like a bag of rocks.
Oh, the only other thing FF is great for is web development: Firebug is irreplaceable (although I haven't yet used Opera's DragonFly). For every day browsing, though, I run a FF profile without Firebug--it drags Google Aps (reader and gmail) down too much, so I'm sure I could get by just using it when I'm coding.
The sheer number of book available is mindblowingly gigantic. The number of people making a living by WRITING this material is abysmally small. Example: a friend of mine just wrote the Illinois book in a series on good tent camping in Illinois. He'll be lucky to break even on the endeavor. Which isn't to say he didn't enjoy the process and isn't glad he did it, just that a lack of monetary reward wouldn't change his mind one way or another about writing the Indiana version (ok, granted, somebody's going to have to reimburse for Indiana due to the stupid Hoosier entry tax on state parks).
In any case, the parent is correct--we can only hope that piracy undercuts the razor thin margins that are shoring up the book industry. We don't need more of that crap. I feel as bad for the publishing execs (the only people making money on the crap production) losing their jobs as I about the RIAA execs. Let's get our signs out for the protest: "No bail out for the leaders of the Crap Production Industry."
Thin crispy crust can really only be cut in triangles
Not true--here in central Illinois, we often cut our thin crust pizza in a grid. This is proven to be a superior method of slicing pizza (citation needed), but only works on moderately crispy, thin crust pizza that doesn't need a handle like deep dish does.
Buying a nook is not buying a 3G wireless data connection to the internet. It's buying a 3G wireless data connection to buy B&N ebooks. Hack the hardware all you want, but if you use that hardware to get a service you haven't paid for, that's just like stealing TV.
Mod parent up. When somebody changes my mind with two sentences, they deserve to be heard.
Note that he's NOT saying, "it's like stealing A television", he's saying it's like stealing cable from your neighbor. It may or may not be stealing, but I have a hard time figuring out how it'd be unethical.
All said, I think the question is whether or not the contract says you're only going to B&N.com or whatever.
just out of curiosity, how much coffee are you getting out of that bush? I've thought about raising my own coffee, but somebody told me the yields make it pretty much impractical. Are you getting enough coffee to make it worthwhile?
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Agreed, whole-heartedly. That's why I'm pretty excited about the whole Mint thing--we might just get a Gnome Shell/Ubuntu combo that doesn't suck.
You're right. It was my bias showing.
You'd think it'd be different around here, but it's not.
I can't speak to how well Gnome 3 works on typical large-screen multi-monitor setup, but my home laptop with a 14" screen, it works exactly the way I've always wished Gnome would. It's well put together, well designed and while there aren't a lot of native config tools for it yet (3.2 aside--haven't tried it), I'm sure that's all in the works (and if it's not, people/distros will create them).
the idea of Mint's polish on top of Gnome 3 sounds just about perfect to me--exactly the desktop I'd like to use.
In fact, I don't know that I've ever made a pivot chart at home, and didn't even know what they were still I started working in business (ugh).
In the business world, though, I've needed a lot of the obscure bells and whistles that MS Office has, the same way a professional graphic designer couldn't get by with GIMP without a lot of heartache.
The problem I see is that people tout programs like LibreOffice and GIMP as complete replacements for the outlandishly expensive proprietary versions without understanding that, while more than adequate for the average user, power users regularly find them inadequate, which in turn making us in the FLOSS community look ridiculous, like we don't understand our audience.
LibreOffice is to MS Office as GIMP is to Photoshop. Which is to say, "a great replacement for the casual user, but 100% inadequate in vital ways to someone who uses the software to get work done.
Which is a dang shame because I'd love to dump anything with M$'s or Adobe's name on it.
With that in mind 128 kbps IS perfectly acceptable--even with flac, I CAN'T turn it up loud enough to hear ANYTHING distinctly, so there's no sense in wasting disk space on quality I'll never hear.
I don't enjoy my musical predicament nor think it's a good way to "listen" to music, but it's where I'm at right now and I'm guessing it's not particularly uncommon.
Mod second paragraph up +1 hysterical.
From what I hear, it'll run Duke Nukem Forever.
Webkit is faster than Firefox but Konqueror still crashes 2 out of 5 times when encountering streaming (Flash) video.
obligatory, snarky xkcd response
Fun + cube = greater productivity.
This hits the nail on the head. Excellent sampling takes a bit of an old work, and while referencing it, creates something new out of it. Does this book create something new? or does it simply parrot the old? Is the 'sampling' (or plagarism) a purposefully act, and is it done for a justifiable literary reason? What does referencing, or perhaps more accurately, replaying Strobo (or whatever the original work was) mean within the new work?
The answer to those questions determines whether she's a dirty, lazy plagarist or a Girl Talk-esque genius. Without reading the book, I'd have a lot of troubles making that judgement call.
(All that said, I think not immediately giving credit where credit is due up front is ridiculous and unethical no matter what she's doing. Whether or not it is (or rather should be) illegal is different story.)
The best way to address this lack of perspective is from a quote from Episode IV that threatens to ruin the movie with its overwhelming lameness almost as much as Jar-Jar did Episode I:
Don't forget to feign incredulity.
And from TFA:
Reader be ware.
Ha. I like that--I'll start asking for that. Although I'm always nervous about sending them my actual real mailing (home) address.
Long story short, there's no way to catch potential fraud without the victim risking going to jail as well.
Ridiculous.
I think a more accurate description would have been "the tablet that as far as 90% of the population is concerned is only a rumor of something will end up being more expensive than I can afford anyways, so they really haven't bothered to care."
Our library is between my house and my office, so dropping by to pick something up/drop something off is no big deal. Previously, it was in walking distance of the office, so I could hit it during lunch, so getting there is never a hassle.
I grew up in a small town with a tiny library. But even then, I enjoyed the feeling of being IN a library. I'm not convinced I'd pay money to avoid that feeling.
I'm pretty sure they can be. I know they can be licensed (the Droid family is under the Apache license, iirc). Regardless, I know you can't legally distribute fonts unless they're under some sort of share-alike style license (Free Software licenses, CC license, etc). That's why there's such a big stink about this @font-face thing in html5 (or the new css or whatever it is).
If only Consolas wasn't a M$ product. Or to put it the way I really think, if only Consolas was open source...Since it's not, I use Liberation Mono on a big screen and Droid Sans Mono at home.
If Opera would open up their code, I'd dump Firefox like a bag of rocks.
Oh, the only other thing FF is great for is web development: Firebug is irreplaceable (although I haven't yet used Opera's DragonFly). For every day browsing, though, I run a FF profile without Firebug--it drags Google Aps (reader and gmail) down too much, so I'm sure I could get by just using it when I'm coding.
The sheer number of book available is mindblowingly gigantic. The number of people making a living by WRITING this material is abysmally small. Example: a friend of mine just wrote the Illinois book in a series on good tent camping in Illinois. He'll be lucky to break even on the endeavor. Which isn't to say he didn't enjoy the process and isn't glad he did it, just that a lack of monetary reward wouldn't change his mind one way or another about writing the Indiana version (ok, granted, somebody's going to have to reimburse for Indiana due to the stupid Hoosier entry tax on state parks).
In any case, the parent is correct--we can only hope that piracy undercuts the razor thin margins that are shoring up the book industry. We don't need more of that crap. I feel as bad for the publishing execs (the only people making money on the crap production) losing their jobs as I about the RIAA execs. Let's get our signs out for the protest: "No bail out for the leaders of the Crap Production Industry."
Not true--here in central Illinois, we often cut our thin crust pizza in a grid. This is proven to be a superior method of slicing pizza (citation needed), but only works on moderately crispy, thin crust pizza that doesn't need a handle like deep dish does.
Mod parent up. When somebody changes my mind with two sentences, they deserve to be heard.
Note that he's NOT saying, "it's like stealing A television", he's saying it's like stealing cable from your neighbor. It may or may not be stealing, but I have a hard time figuring out how it'd be unethical.
All said, I think the question is whether or not the contract says you're only going to B&N.com or whatever.
just out of curiosity, how much coffee are you getting out of that bush? I've thought about raising my own coffee, but somebody told me the yields make it pretty much impractical. Are you getting enough coffee to make it worthwhile?