yet we have a number of window covering products available to help us preserve our privacy
We have these things over here, too. We also have temperatures that often reach or surpass 40 degrees centigrade, in the shade, during our long summers. People who live in ground floor appartments, which are cheaper, quite often cannot afford air conditioning, so the best thing they can do to avoid being cooked alive in their own homes is to open every single window wide open, to create a draft. Keeping the curtains, blinds, etc., drawn is out of the question. While it is expected that, this way, a passer-by might catch a glimpse of the interior of your appartment, climbing on a stool to peek through every single window in every single street is asking for trouble. If you also want to take pictures and post them over the internet, then you're really asking for it!
It is just the right height to peek through the windows of ground floor apartments, of which there are quite a few in Greek cities. So, yes, it is a big mast!
"a lot" is still NOWHERE close to the amount of systems, say, XP, can work with straight outta the box.
You're right. During the last six years, I've never seen a PC on which Windows XP installed out of the box without requiring the installation of additional drivers. Usually, you'll need to install chipset, network, audio, display, and, if you need a software RAID, RAID drivers. These drivers are usually preloaded on laptops, but if you install XP from a vanilla installation CD, you'll need to install them manually, just like on desktop PCs.
So, according to my anecdotal evidence, Linux's "a lot", is indeed nowhere near XP's "none", but in quite the opposite sense!
There are many times I've felt the same way, but every time I tried to play a roguelike game using a graphical front-end, I found that it detracted from the game:
3D front-ends, or tiled-front-ends with tiles larger than the size of a letter, exchange the ability to always see the entire map with the ability to see fancy graphics. However, being able to see the entire map, all the time, is an essential part of the game, as you always need to know where the unexplored parts of the dungeon are, and what is the way back to the parts of the dungeon that you have already explored.
With text graphics, the first time you hit, say, a "K", you see a message that you hit a kobold, and from then on, you know that "K" stands for kobold. On the other hand, seeing a graphic rendition of what the graphics designer thought a kobold looks like, does not immediately (or at all) make me thing of kobolds, especially if the tiles are small, to avoid the previous problem. Again, being able to identify a monster immediately, is another essential part of the game. You don't want to see a message saying that "the cockatrice touches you", to identify the monster that's in the room in which you just entered!
The "unprofessional web hoster", that we use at work here in Greece, offers a full spectrum of services (just about anything you can think of, including personal service--you have a problem, you call them and they fix it while you talk, not some person at a help desk who may or may not forward your request) at a rock bottom price. Their competitors have much higher prices and will charge you for anything beyond the basic web hosting package. You want more than the default few MBytes? That's extra. You want a database or php? That's extra, too. You want to park a domain? You need to buy the domain parking package. You want it now? Sorry, it's going to take 24 hours!
If the cost for all this is that we have to connect to the web site's control panel (which the other providers don't, well, provide), using a self-signed certificate, it's good riddance to those other providers!
They do have a working toolbar, and they released it this weekend!
Note that the new version seems to require firefox 3.0, as it works fine under rc3 on windows, but does not install (and messes up the extensions window if forced to install) under beta5 on fedora 9.
My first job was in just such an environment, and the experience was very enjoyable. Desks were mostly placed in pairs, facing each other, so almost everyone had an officemate, who was just a call away should you need to ask someone a quick question ("say, how do you do x in application y"?). Such pairing was done on a basis of with whom one was collaborating, so having an impromptu meeting was a matter of taking your eyes off that %^$#^% terminal (I'm dating myself here!) and most of the other people in your group were just a swivel of your chair away.
Another advantage of this arrangement was that everyone had access to natural light and the view outside, as window space would not be hoarded by the management. Yes, some times we would gaze outside the windows, but management evaluated us by results produced and not by the amount of wear on our chairs.
For the last umpteen years I've been working in smaller companies whose offices are remodelled houses, so that, part by necessity and part by design, having an officemate is the rule, even though it's not possible to have development pits. I've had both a private and a shared office under this arrangement, and I think that having an officemate is better.
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yet we have a number of window covering products available to help us preserve our privacy
We have these things over here, too. We also have temperatures that often reach or surpass 40 degrees centigrade, in the shade, during our long summers. People who live in ground floor appartments, which are cheaper, quite often cannot afford air conditioning, so the best thing they can do to avoid being cooked alive in their own homes is to open every single window wide open, to create a draft. Keeping the curtains, blinds, etc., drawn is out of the question. While it is expected that, this way, a passer-by might catch a glimpse of the interior of your appartment, climbing on a stool to peek through every single window in every single street is asking for trouble. If you also want to take pictures and post them over the internet, then you're really asking for it!
It is just the right height to peek through the windows of ground floor apartments, of which there are quite a few in Greek cities. So, yes, it is a big mast!
"a lot" is still NOWHERE close to the amount of systems, say, XP, can work with straight outta the box.
You're right. During the last six years, I've never seen a PC on which Windows XP installed out of the box without requiring the installation of additional drivers. Usually, you'll need to install chipset, network, audio, display, and, if you need a software RAID, RAID drivers. These drivers are usually preloaded on laptops, but if you install XP from a vanilla installation CD, you'll need to install them manually, just like on desktop PCs.
So, according to my anecdotal evidence, Linux's "a lot", is indeed nowhere near XP's "none", but in quite the opposite sense!
I have to admit I prefer tilesets over text
There are many times I've felt the same way, but every time I tried to play a roguelike game using a graphical front-end, I found that it detracted from the game:
Here's one way that has been suggested:
http://bztv.typepad.com/newsviews/files/ST2004Reboot.pdf
Can you create some weird perpetual motion machine by buttering half of each side?
To achieve that, you need to attach the piece of buttered toast (buttered side up) to the back of a cat: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buttered_cat_paradox
Also, Bill Gates, to the best of my knowledge, has contributed exactly nothing to any field of science besides his money.
Actually, he has: http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~christos/papers/Bounds%20For%20Sorting%20By%20Prefix%20Reversal.pdf
* Unprofessional webhosters (good riddance)
The "unprofessional web hoster", that we use at work here in Greece, offers a full spectrum of services (just about anything you can think of, including personal service--you have a problem, you call them and they fix it while you talk, not some person at a help desk who may or may not forward your request) at a rock bottom price. Their competitors have much higher prices and will charge you for anything beyond the basic web hosting package. You want more than the default few MBytes? That's extra. You want a database or php? That's extra, too. You want to park a domain? You need to buy the domain parking package. You want it now? Sorry, it's going to take 24 hours!
If the cost for all this is that we have to connect to the web site's control panel (which the other providers don't, well, provide), using a self-signed certificate, it's good riddance to those other providers!
They do have a working toolbar, and they released it this weekend! Note that the new version seems to require firefox 3.0, as it works fine under rc3 on windows, but does not install (and messes up the extensions window if forced to install) under beta5 on fedora 9.
Perhaps they think that Newton's First Law is just another law that they can break.
Another advantage of this arrangement was that everyone had access to natural light and the view outside, as window space would not be hoarded by the management. Yes, some times we would gaze outside the windows, but management evaluated us by results produced and not by the amount of wear on our chairs.
For the last umpteen years I've been working in smaller companies whose offices are remodelled houses, so that, part by necessity and part by design, having an officemate is the rule, even though it's not possible to have development pits. I've had both a private and a shared office under this arrangement, and I think that having an officemate is better.