You don't understand how that can be a usability issue?
Of course it's a usability issue, but Windows is worse, especially when it comes to uninstalling. No one tells Windows users to use Add/Remove, and a good lot of them don't use it. Half the programs put their uninstall script in the Start Menu, sometimes in Add/Remove, sometimes nowhere (you just have to cross your fingers, search and delete). And then, uninstall only works sometimes. Sometimes, when you click 'uninstall' in Add/Remove, you open a window that looks like you're updating, and maybe even hides uninstall in a submenu like "other actions'. Anyone lazy enough to not figure out that there's a package manager in a Linux isn't going to make it through a Windows uninstall in one piece either. Why do you think these proverbial Joe User people buy new machines to surf the internet and check email? Maybe because dropping $300 at Best Buy is easier than figuring out how to clean off the smiley program that eats up all their processor time.
These are problems with human intelligence and behavior patterns. An OS can only do so much, but at least Linux aspires to enforce some kind of good user habits.
being as good as Windows for usability is kind of like being as good as China for civil rights.
Let me clarify. Linux installation is no better than Windows when Linux's PM system fails, that is, when a developer distributes software that doesn't participate or comply with the PM standards. Civil rights and good organization: both require practice and active participation or you'll lose them.
If Linux wants to retain this advantage, they need to adapt package managers to handle all packages from any source the same, including auto-updates even if the software ships on a DVD or is sent via e-mail or is downloaded from the publisher's Web page. There needs to be a way for commercial publishers to host their own downloads, but also let users discover their software via the package manager. There needs to be an official, built in way for developers to handle registration of their software[...]
Like I said, the Linux system is far from perfect. What you're describing is better than Linux, better than Windows, better than both combined. For now, Linux PMs are a good start. If someone offers a.deb and a couple of.rpms, the package manager will handle it, whether by email, DVD, airmail or ground shipping. We're getting to a point where a few systems cover most bases, and then an 'other distros'.bin hopefully covers the rest. I hope distro developers keep hammering away with their PM system, because I really think it will lead to something like you describe. This is one place where Linux is clearly ahead.
You don't think this will change if Linux users finally convinced commercial developers like games developers to target their platform?
It would be nice if it didn't. Crap/ad/nagware is what drove a lot of us to try out Linux, and it's the only thing you really lose when you comply with a package manager system. Registrations and serial validation systems don't change. It's just as futile to try to prevent piracy in Linux as it is in Windows, so there's nothing stopping you from offering a locked version of your software through a package manager (I've seen this done in SUSE). It would also probably be pretty easy to put a registration-code check in at installation time, if that's not already built in somewhere.
I think most Linux users who cared about having a desktop that worked simply and intuitively have already jumped ship for OS X,
We were discussing Windows, but ok. I like OS X, but I'm the one who has to install OS X apps for my non-computer-savvy girlfriend on her iBook. So there you go. No system is simple enough.
On Windows this means you do discovery, acquisition, and updates by hand, the same as every other program. On Linux it means you have a special case where you do all those by hand as well as installation and uninstallation by hand. This means users have to juggle two techniques and remember which applies to which software.
If you forget which technique applies, you try the first. If you were wrong, you try the other (when in doubt, check the package manager first). Windows doesn't make this any easier by 'sticking with one technique,' because all the different vendors have different agendas in mind for you when you install. They set up new tricks, new startup scripts, new registry entries, new 'license managers', which may or may not get wiped clean with the vendor's proscribed uninstallation technique, or and may or may not get fully removed using Windows Add/Remove. This isn't less confusing for anyone, and it's a long way from 'one technique.'
Now, Linux package managers are far from perfect, but they have a better goal and a better execution..deb and.rpm managers handle somewhere between most and the vast majority of the software, and they can uninstall that software cleanly. If those fail, you're back to the old method of installation by hand (drop the.bin file into your ~/bin/ path)---and then it's a simple matter of deleting the file to uninstall. Anything that's more trouble than that is a major exception, but it's the same hassle you would get in the Windows world.
...but the way that Wordpress mashes together PHP and HTML is horrendous. Every time I have to help someone out with their Wordpress installation because they tried to change a subtle detail in their template and ended up breaking the whole thing, I'm wishing I could find and strangle its designers.
I remember seeing them using a slogan like "code is poetry". Maybe this is what they meant.
l33tn355. If iTunes had a verbose startup screen no one here would be complaining.
Verbose or not, iTunes takes way too long to start up. It's a little annoying to wait through three minutes of HD thrashing to update and sync a three-minute podcast episode.
There are 'l33t' solutions, like gtkpod, gpodder and floola that try to bring back the quick drag-and-drop functionality without requiring a great big library sync every time.
Also, it really doesn't seem necessary to make the iPod file system so opaque. For all Apple's touted simplicity on the surface, what's with the underlying maze of randomly-named and randomly-placed folders and and media files? How does that make anything easier?
gtkpod, amaroK, non-iTunes software et al (anything I use in linux, unfortuntately) still hose my 80 GB (g5.5 or 6?) ipod's library. They cause it to drop most of my playlists, including podcasts and videos.
Some ipod versions keep you stuck with Windows and iTunes if you want all the features. It's a headache for the time being.
I think you're right about the concept; package and repository management could improve. But I'll have to see Linspire's functionality claims take place before I believe that they can do that improvement. At this point, they're just adding another star to the package management and repository constellation, and I doubt theirs will be the final answer.
I'm wary of Linspire because they were once Lindows, and their concept of 'easy' seems to have grown out of their concept of copying Windows. Their niche is to be the distro that's best at fooling people into thinking they're using Windows, which I think is totally off the mark for what a distro should be, even for a Linux beginner.
All that one-click, everything-is-easy-even-for-you-Grandpa marketing (which seems to have tailed off over the early part of this decade) is what drove me away from Windows, so I'm less enthusiastic when I see Linspire carry that torch in the Linux world.
But if it actually does work better than anything else, I'll use it.
Apparently, it markets itself without relying on users or grassroots popularity.
apt-get requires you to know the commands, or use synaptic to manage your packages with a two-or-three click system. CNR guarantees fewer clicks that anyone else!
Ok, this does seem a little superfluous. In the "How is this different?" section, most of their bullet points are either silly or not actual differences. It's not really one click, you've got click it open, right? And you group programs together in 'aisles' to install them all at once. That seems awfully familiar.
There are a couple of features that could be interesting (user polls maybe), but they don't seem worthy of starting a whole new package management protocol. Linspire's goal seems to be to bring Linux to mainstream users. I'm not sure if another package system will help or hinder that cause.
When and where did you hear that? In my experience, Mathematica is only for symbolic exercises and abstraction. MATLAB is designed for actual data and numeric simulations, and is just about unbeatable for that purpose. I doubt this has changed since I stopped using Mathematica about 1.5 years ago (but I'll listen for a few seconds if someone wants to tell me it has).
In addition, on the subject of Office, I've done some spreadsheet (excel and others) import/export in both MATLAB and Mathematica, and MATLAB's interface makes it much better suited for the task. Mathematica's UI is designed to feel like writing in a notebook, doing math homework, while MATLAB is more like, well, working with data on a computer. If you're looking to process huge datasets, Mathematica is in the wrong section of the store.
Actually, this looks like it might be the perfect solution to the problem that TV-out, S-video, et. al. were inadequately addressing.
I have a 2.5 year-old notebook that is pretty much my entire media center. If I want to watch something with decent resolution, I pretty much have to watch it on my notebook's 15.4" screen. Fine for me watching something on my own, but it's a little frustrating if I want to show a video at someone's house and they've got a brand new gigantic HDTV sitting next to my little LCD. If there happens to be an S-video cable sitting around (probably not), I still need to hunt down an 1/8" to stereo RCA to route the sound out, and the picture quality is still terrible. I looked into alternatives, but there's pretty much no reasonable way to get good video from my laptop onto a nicer screen--VGA to HDMI? VGA to component? I've been told I'd be pretty lucky to get it to work at all (maybe I fell for Dell kiosk fud, but that's part of the same frustration).
But 802.11g should be easy enough. Let this box worry about video processing and video compatibility. And sound. All my computer has to do is send data, and it's great at doing that. The device's concept seems so obvious, but apparently no one has bothered to try making it until now.
whoa! I go to RTFA and come back to an avalanche of fanboy one-liners, flamebaits and accusations, all perfectly illustrating the author's point.
The Bazaar is fun, but it can be exhausting after a little while. If you want to come away from it with anything worthwhile, you need to be pretty clever, or have some insider information. Otherwise, it's a lot of noise and junk and hobbyists selling kitsch. There are some great deals, but you have to know how to operate and where to look. Everyone is working for themselves; some things make sense, and some are just crazy. See the above replies to this article to see what I mean (check for lower scores).
I think when the author refers to cathedrals, it also has to do with the end result. There's management, and it's mostly separate from the chaos of a bazaar or the all-directions-at-once FOSS universe. Good management gets you a cathedral as a result. Bad management gets you a Spanish Inquisition. FOSS has accomplished a lot, but there are some real masterpieces of software in the closed-source world, the 'cathedral' world, that I haven't seen FOSS get anywhere near.
For the sake of discussion, here are the two titles that keep Windows on my HD: Native Instruments Traktor and Ableton Live--they're pro DJ programs for music production and live performance. If anyone can show me a FOSS project that really competes, please tell me about it. I've looked, but most of what I can find is more of a proof-of-concept than anything I would trust performing at a club. The projects are so specific that someone apparently needs to round people up, interview them, and pay a select few of them to write and maintain the software. The hobbyist/genius inventor thing is interesting, and I don't mean to say that I'm not really impressed with what people have managed to create on their own, but the resulting software just isn't going to work for me when I actually have to cue up a timecode record and match beats.
But then, for everyday stuff, FOSS is totally the way to go. When I do general computing--web surfing, programming, chatting, frozen bubble--open-source programmers have run circles around the 'cathedral' folks. So maybe they just need to get around to my niche market someday (I'll admit it first: I'm not smart enough to do it myself). Only problem is I can't wait that long. For now, and I'm glad there was some management good enough to make it, FOSS or not.
McFarland says FOSS and management/leadership aren't mutually exclusive. He says 'hybrids of both styles will provide better frameworks to deal with large projects'. There, that doesn't cramp your style too much, does it?
I know there are a lot of sincere libertarians on this site, and I sympathize with the libertarian idea (breifly, get the government off our backs). But this is what always gets me. If we just deregulate, it leaves a power vacuum, and we're left with these other entities governing us instead. Private, unelected oligarchs get to be in charge, and no one 'gets them off your back' if they decide that getting on your back is going be more profitable.
VNRs seem to be a symptom of this. There's no law, that I know of (or that I could find cited in either article), forcing stations to disclose a 3rd-party PR puff-piece. In the same department, what is there to discourage corporate conflicts of interest in general between the larger corporations and their news companies (i.e. between selling ads and promoting journalism)? Really, I'm asking, is there anything?
On the other hand, we do have the internet. I doubt incidents like 'macaca' would get any traction without this big, unregulated, free-for-all of journalism. So let's pretend the market stays totally 'unregulated' for the next 10 years, and AT&T manages to dominate the entire ISP market in, say North Carolina. And they decide that all forum posts, sites, videos and emails critical of Sen. Dole (who happens to be in a close re-election race) violate their Terms Of Service, so they get second-tier delivery, or dropped entirely from their routers and servers. Effectively, it's the pre-internet information landscape all over again, but without those pesky equal-time regulations. Still no government regulation of the internet, but would you feel freer? What, besides faith in (free market == personal freedom) makes you think this wouldn't happen?
You mean East German Stasi (Staatssicherheitsdienst). The SS were the Schutzstaffel in Nazi Germany. So SS would still be nazi comparison, and has nothing politically to do with East Germany.
Here's why this is such a silly conversation. Young people can figure this stuff out. If it takes a little tweaking to sync an iPod in linux, we will bother. We grew up on computers, and some of us think the command line is kind of fun. No, not all of us are computer-literate enough to make a completely painless transition to linux, but not all of us are anything. But the ones switching to linux--we're motivated by different things than "I just want my mysterious computer to work so I don't have to think about it LOL!"
I'm young(ish), and I got my iPod to work on amarok. I download my podcasts through amarok and sync it up daily. No, it's not as easy as Windows or Mac, but amarok does default to syncing without deleting tracks that aren't on the hard drive. Amarok can 'rip' tracks off my iPod and add them to my HD's library. And amarok is free (not shareware or nagware or crackware like all of the Windows/Mac rippers I've been able to find). It was worth the two extra minutes of setup, and I can't imagine that the setup process would beguile any relatively computer-literate person, many of which happen to be: young iPod owners.
I started using linux six months ago. There are a couple things that keep a windows kernel in my boot menu at home (ok, just age of empires and Traktor DJ studio), but ipod compatibility is not one of them. Grandma (or her young, equally non-technical equivalent, whoever that is) doesn't need to be able to install and sync ipods to every single OS candidate on the market. The market comprises more than just Grandma.
This is a weird and unsatisfying article. There are two paragraphs or so stating that the employer essentially 'broke in' to this guy's facebook profile. It doesn't mention how (did facebook allow them in? Do they keep crackers on staff? Did they serve a subpoena?), and it doesn't mention what they felt they needed to bring up and address at the interview. The rest of the story is just the boilerplate myspace/facebook/social-networking introduction and privacy discussion/lecture (which shouldn't even apply if the site was designated private). So maybe it's a hoax--another product of the paranoia bred by the parade of spying programs coming to light in the U.S.
But, assuming it's real, this seems pretty sloppy. The PATRIOT act was supposed to be used to prevent terrorism right? Of course, it's a little bit tough to picture the connection between one internship applicant's social networking profile and the prevention of terrorism. If the guy was anything anywhere near being a terrorist threat, they wouldn't have hired him (raided his house maybe, but not hired), so the 'questionable' material had to be harmless. And if they had suspected him enough to say, "this guy might be a terrorist, but we can only know for sure if we check his facebook site," well, they're not really very effective in anti-terrorism then, are they?
And then, assuming all this is true, it means they were comfortable enough with this breach to bring it up casually? It means they're breaching privacy a lot, and they suck at it.
The advantage of this, especially in the U.S., is that it is so much easier to manipulate local news. Most network local stations have distilled their newscasts down to 1. Weather, 2. Sports, 3. What you should be scared of, and 3a. What local shame is deserved, 3b. Missing or potentially missing children.
Now in national media, the RIAA vs. Everyone Else fight is probably a draw; or at least they're not seeing a lot of potential in pushing their agenda on the national stage. However, it's so much easier to be the only source for a shoestring local news station and make sure that they report your story from exactly your spin angle. Ask Karen Ryan about that.
RIAA can make sure that their local raids, local lawsuits etc. are reported in category 3a along the lines of "The dangers of filesharing in the tri-county area" or "Is your neighbor a dangerous media pirate?" And they'll show some poor hapless dropout sputtering to defend himself. He'll get one soundbite that makes him sound like a rube or thug. The local RIAA rep, (polished, well-dressed and trained), will politely yet sternly rattle off some talking points (probably trying to sound like a DA), and the report will wrap up with a conclusion that justice has been served. Think the EFF will be able to keep up in that realm? I doubt anyone could develop the rapid response needed to get a rebuttal into local news cycles, nationally distributed.
We love to complain about the terrible quality of the major nationwide news networks, but the local stuff is just horrific. It's diabolically clever for them to use it to their advantage.
Here at University of Goettingen, the majority of public terminals use KDE and SuSE, probably for the same reasons mentioned in the article. I didn't notice this until I visited my girlfriend at the library and noticed the computer, last seen running WinNT, was using linux. She's not at all into computers. She complains about me tinkering with SuSE on my laptop all the time. At the library we had an exchange something like this:
"Did you notice you've been using linux all this time?"
"no."
"Well, that's KDE running on SuSE. When did they switch?"
"I don't know. They switched what now? Who's Katie?"
I asked her colleagues in the English department if they knew when the switch took place. No one noticed it. SD loves to have debates about whether *nix is ready to replace windows for the everyday user. Ok, so maybe joe schmo or the proverbial English-major girlfriend (or boyfriend) wouldn't be able to install Ubuntu or SuSE, but if it's there, they can use it. There's a lot of money to be saved on public terminals for general use.
We operate a 10-Tesla magnet in our lab. When it's on, all nearby metal needs to be secured and people with pacemakers shouldn't be anywhere near us. I suppose this wouldn't be quite as serious, but a field like that would likely rip your implants right out, or cause you to lose control of your fingers. It's not an 'everyday environment', but I would expect physics labs to be a little more common in the lives of the kind of people who would consider getting magnets implanted in their fingers.
I'm not old enough to remember the old AT&T monopoly days, and that might be the problem with a lot of voting constituents. I do remember what my mom told me about those times. It's hard to imagine that, back then, The Phone Company was basically able to give you the finger and get away with it. What could you do? Pretty much nothing, you might as well be asking the IRS for a sales tax refund. That's how monopolies work.
For the past fifteen years or so (don't know the exact dates, but since the courts broke up the old AT&T), there's been competition in both different service types and different companies offering the same solutions. But they've slowly consolidated, and now the monopolistic entity is back. It's more of a cartel now; and they have no incentive to go out of their way for you. Live in Idaho and don't like that you can't access Google without waiting ten minutes for the page to load? "Sorry. Try Verizon speedsearch!, with the all the info you need on your favorite music, videos, games, and sports-and-news!" It's the same as if you flip on the cable TV and veg. It doesn't matter to them. They make money on both. The difference is now, there are even fewer laws regulating who gets access to communication and information.
We can't imagine that the internet could just be taken away like that. But what's stopping them? We do technically own the pipes, but congress just proved to us that it's really only a meaningless technicality in their opinion. So the telco/cable cartel gets carte-blanche control. The CEO of SBC has even refered to them casually as "[his] pipes." In all but official title, it looks like he's right.
I would hope that, if the bill passes, a retroactive pricing clause would be struck down immediately as an ex-post-facto policy; at least from what I remember from my ninth-grade government class. Of course, the other Latin I learned in class that day was Habeus Corpus, which I guess is pretty much out the window when the executive branch decides they don't want to follow it. Ninth grade was a while ago.
Then again, let's hope we don't have to consider the details of this bill--that it gets borked altogether. It sounds like an industry throw-everything-at-the-wall approach. They're either hoping to get lucky and pass this, or come back with a slightly less ridiculous "sensible compromise" after everyone gets lathered up about the completely brain-dead ridiculous version here.
It's important that you bring up deejay-oriented stuff. Since I have to hop oceans a lot, I've transferred my entire record crate to mp3 and finalscratch/traktor. I downloaded a few tracks from iTunes before I knew any better, but I stopped because:
1.) iTunes quality couldn't compare with my ripped or recorded mp3s. (Try it. Burn iTunes DLs side-by-side with some mp3s from deejay dl-services. Enjoy the muffled midrange from iTunes.)
2.) DRM was left uncracked since v6.0. Having to burn-and-rip was just not worth it; especially considering the additional quality drop. Traktor, like everything else, won't play DRM'd music.
Plus, shopping at iTunes is like trying to shop for spinnable tracks at Best Buy. It's not for djs. I'll pay more for usability.
What does DRM prevent? The only redistribution I do is when I spin out in public and people listen. I wouldn't be able to that do if I followed iTunes' rules. I can't imagine the artists I spin would make their music not to go into DJ record crates.
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Of course it's a usability issue, but Windows is worse, especially when it comes to uninstalling. No one tells Windows users to use Add/Remove, and a good lot of them don't use it. Half the programs put their uninstall script in the Start Menu, sometimes in Add/Remove, sometimes nowhere (you just have to cross your fingers, search and delete). And then, uninstall only works sometimes. Sometimes, when you click 'uninstall' in Add/Remove, you open a window that looks like you're updating, and maybe even hides uninstall in a submenu like "other actions'. Anyone lazy enough to not figure out that there's a package manager in a Linux isn't going to make it through a Windows uninstall in one piece either. Why do you think these proverbial Joe User people buy new machines to surf the internet and check email? Maybe because dropping $300 at Best Buy is easier than figuring out how to clean off the smiley program that eats up all their processor time.
These are problems with human intelligence and behavior patterns. An OS can only do so much, but at least Linux aspires to enforce some kind of good user habits.
being as good as Windows for usability is kind of like being as good as China for civil rights.Let me clarify. Linux installation is no better than Windows when Linux's PM system fails, that is, when a developer distributes software that doesn't participate or comply with the PM standards. Civil rights and good organization: both require practice and active participation or you'll lose them.
If Linux wants to retain this advantage, they need to adapt package managers to handle all packages from any source the same, including auto-updates even if the software ships on a DVD or is sent via e-mail or is downloaded from the publisher's Web page. There needs to be a way for commercial publishers to host their own downloads, but also let users discover their software via the package manager. There needs to be an official, built in way for developers to handle registration of their software[...]Like I said, the Linux system is far from perfect. What you're describing is better than Linux, better than Windows, better than both combined. For now, Linux PMs are a good start. If someone offers a .deb and a couple of .rpms, the package manager will handle it, whether by email, DVD, airmail or ground shipping. We're getting to a point where a few systems cover most bases, and then an 'other distros' .bin hopefully covers the rest. I hope distro developers keep hammering away with their PM system, because I really think it will lead to something like you describe. This is one place where Linux is clearly ahead.
You don't think this will change if Linux users finally convinced commercial developers like games developers to target their platform?It would be nice if it didn't. Crap/ad/nagware is what drove a lot of us to try out Linux, and it's the only thing you really lose when you comply with a package manager system. Registrations and serial validation systems don't change. It's just as futile to try to prevent piracy in Linux as it is in Windows, so there's nothing stopping you from offering a locked version of your software through a package manager (I've seen this done in SUSE). It would also probably be pretty easy to put a registration-code check in at installation time, if that's not already built in somewhere.
I think most Linux users who cared about having a desktop that worked simply and intuitively have already jumped ship for OS X,We were discussing Windows, but ok. I like OS X, but I'm the one who has to install OS X apps for my non-computer-savvy girlfriend on her iBook. So there you go. No system is simple enough.
If you forget which technique applies, you try the first. If you were wrong, you try the other (when in doubt, check the package manager first). Windows doesn't make this any easier by 'sticking with one technique,' because all the different vendors have different agendas in mind for you when you install. They set up new tricks, new startup scripts, new registry entries, new 'license managers', which may or may not get wiped clean with the vendor's proscribed uninstallation technique, or and may or may not get fully removed using Windows Add/Remove. This isn't less confusing for anyone, and it's a long way from 'one technique.'
Now, Linux package managers are far from perfect, but they have a better goal and a better execution. .deb and .rpm managers handle somewhere between most and the vast majority of the software, and they can uninstall that software cleanly. If those fail, you're back to the old method of installation by hand (drop the .bin file into your ~/bin/ path)---and then it's a simple matter of deleting the file to uninstall. Anything that's more trouble than that is a major exception, but it's the same hassle you would get in the Windows world.
...but the way that Wordpress mashes together PHP and HTML is horrendous. Every time I have to help someone out with their Wordpress installation because they tried to change a subtle detail in their template and ended up breaking the whole thing, I'm wishing I could find and strangle its designers.I remember seeing them using a slogan like "code is poetry". Maybe this is what they meant.
Verbose or not, iTunes takes way too long to start up. It's a little annoying to wait through three minutes of HD thrashing to update and sync a three-minute podcast episode.
There are 'l33t' solutions, like gtkpod, gpodder and floola that try to bring back the quick drag-and-drop functionality without requiring a great big library sync every time.
Also, it really doesn't seem necessary to make the iPod file system so opaque. For all Apple's touted simplicity on the surface, what's with the underlying maze of randomly-named and randomly-placed folders and and media files? How does that make anything easier?
gtkpod, amaroK, non-iTunes software et al (anything I use in linux, unfortuntately) still hose my 80 GB (g5.5 or 6?) ipod's library. They cause it to drop most of my playlists, including podcasts and videos.
Some ipod versions keep you stuck with Windows and iTunes if you want all the features. It's a headache for the time being.
itstooobvious?
That never seemed to be a problem before.
Did the 'itsatrap' tag get banned or just go out of style?
I think you're right about the concept; package and repository management could improve. But I'll have to see Linspire's functionality claims take place before I believe that they can do that improvement. At this point, they're just adding another star to the package management and repository constellation, and I doubt theirs will be the final answer.
I'm wary of Linspire because they were once Lindows, and their concept of 'easy' seems to have grown out of their concept of copying Windows. Their niche is to be the distro that's best at fooling people into thinking they're using Windows, which I think is totally off the mark for what a distro should be, even for a Linux beginner.
All that one-click, everything-is-easy-even-for-you-Grandpa marketing (which seems to have tailed off over the early part of this decade) is what drove me away from Windows, so I'm less enthusiastic when I see Linspire carry that torch in the Linux world.
But if it actually does work better than anything else, I'll use it.
Apparently, it markets itself without relying on users or grassroots popularity.
apt-get requires you to know the commands, or use synaptic to manage your packages with a two-or-three click system. CNR guarantees fewer clicks that anyone else!
Ok, this does seem a little superfluous. In the "How is this different?" section, most of their bullet points are either silly or not actual differences. It's not really one click, you've got click it open, right? And you group programs together in 'aisles' to install them all at once. That seems awfully familiar.
There are a couple of features that could be interesting (user polls maybe), but they don't seem worthy of starting a whole new package management protocol. Linspire's goal seems to be to bring Linux to mainstream users. I'm not sure if another package system will help or hinder that cause.
When and where did you hear that? In my experience, Mathematica is only for symbolic exercises and abstraction. MATLAB is designed for actual data and numeric simulations, and is just about unbeatable for that purpose. I doubt this has changed since I stopped using Mathematica about 1.5 years ago (but I'll listen for a few seconds if someone wants to tell me it has).
In addition, on the subject of Office, I've done some spreadsheet (excel and others) import/export in both MATLAB and Mathematica, and MATLAB's interface makes it much better suited for the task. Mathematica's UI is designed to feel like writing in a notebook, doing math homework, while MATLAB is more like, well, working with data on a computer. If you're looking to process huge datasets, Mathematica is in the wrong section of the store.
Actually, this looks like it might be the perfect solution to the problem that TV-out, S-video, et. al. were inadequately addressing.
I have a 2.5 year-old notebook that is pretty much my entire media center. If I want to watch something with decent resolution, I pretty much have to watch it on my notebook's 15.4" screen. Fine for me watching something on my own, but it's a little frustrating if I want to show a video at someone's house and they've got a brand new gigantic HDTV sitting next to my little LCD. If there happens to be an S-video cable sitting around (probably not), I still need to hunt down an 1/8" to stereo RCA to route the sound out, and the picture quality is still terrible. I looked into alternatives, but there's pretty much no reasonable way to get good video from my laptop onto a nicer screen--VGA to HDMI? VGA to component? I've been told I'd be pretty lucky to get it to work at all (maybe I fell for Dell kiosk fud, but that's part of the same frustration).
But 802.11g should be easy enough. Let this box worry about video processing and video compatibility. And sound. All my computer has to do is send data, and it's great at doing that. The device's concept seems so obvious, but apparently no one has bothered to try making it until now.
The Bazaar is fun, but it can be exhausting after a little while. If you want to come away from it with anything worthwhile, you need to be pretty clever, or have some insider information. Otherwise, it's a lot of noise and junk and hobbyists selling kitsch. There are some great deals, but you have to know how to operate and where to look. Everyone is working for themselves; some things make sense, and some are just crazy. See the above replies to this article to see what I mean (check for lower scores).
I think when the author refers to cathedrals, it also has to do with the end result. There's management, and it's mostly separate from the chaos of a bazaar or the all-directions-at-once FOSS universe. Good management gets you a cathedral as a result. Bad management gets you a Spanish Inquisition. FOSS has accomplished a lot, but there are some real masterpieces of software in the closed-source world, the 'cathedral' world, that I haven't seen FOSS get anywhere near.
For the sake of discussion, here are the two titles that keep Windows on my HD: Native Instruments Traktor and Ableton Live--they're pro DJ programs for music production and live performance. If anyone can show me a FOSS project that really competes, please tell me about it. I've looked, but most of what I can find is more of a proof-of-concept than anything I would trust performing at a club. The projects are so specific that someone apparently needs to round people up, interview them, and pay a select few of them to write and maintain the software. The hobbyist/genius inventor thing is interesting, and I don't mean to say that I'm not really impressed with what people have managed to create on their own, but the resulting software just isn't going to work for me when I actually have to cue up a timecode record and match beats.
But then, for everyday stuff, FOSS is totally the way to go. When I do general computing--web surfing, programming, chatting, frozen bubble--open-source programmers have run circles around the 'cathedral' folks. So maybe they just need to get around to my niche market someday (I'll admit it first: I'm not smart enough to do it myself). Only problem is I can't wait that long. For now, and I'm glad there was some management good enough to make it, FOSS or not.
McFarland says FOSS and management/leadership aren't mutually exclusive. He says 'hybrids of both styles will provide better frameworks to deal with large projects'. There, that doesn't cramp your style too much, does it?
I know there are a lot of sincere libertarians on this site, and I sympathize with the libertarian idea (breifly, get the government off our backs). But this is what always gets me. If we just deregulate, it leaves a power vacuum, and we're left with these other entities governing us instead. Private, unelected oligarchs get to be in charge, and no one 'gets them off your back' if they decide that getting on your back is going be more profitable.
VNRs seem to be a symptom of this. There's no law, that I know of (or that I could find cited in either article), forcing stations to disclose a 3rd-party PR puff-piece. In the same department, what is there to discourage corporate conflicts of interest in general between the larger corporations and their news companies (i.e. between selling ads and promoting journalism)? Really, I'm asking, is there anything?
On the other hand, we do have the internet. I doubt incidents like 'macaca' would get any traction without this big, unregulated, free-for-all of journalism. So let's pretend the market stays totally 'unregulated' for the next 10 years, and AT&T manages to dominate the entire ISP market in, say North Carolina. And they decide that all forum posts, sites, videos and emails critical of Sen. Dole (who happens to be in a close re-election race) violate their Terms Of Service, so they get second-tier delivery, or dropped entirely from their routers and servers. Effectively, it's the pre-internet information landscape all over again, but without those pesky equal-time regulations. Still no government regulation of the internet, but would you feel freer? What, besides faith in (free market == personal freedom) makes you think this wouldn't happen?
You mean East German Stasi (Staatssicherheitsdienst). The SS were the Schutzstaffel in Nazi Germany. So SS would still be nazi comparison, and has nothing politically to do with East Germany.
Just wanted to clear that up.
I'm young(ish), and I got my iPod to work on amarok. I download my podcasts through amarok and sync it up daily. No, it's not as easy as Windows or Mac, but amarok does default to syncing without deleting tracks that aren't on the hard drive. Amarok can 'rip' tracks off my iPod and add them to my HD's library. And amarok is free (not shareware or nagware or crackware like all of the Windows/Mac rippers I've been able to find). It was worth the two extra minutes of setup, and I can't imagine that the setup process would beguile any relatively computer-literate person, many of which happen to be: young iPod owners.
I started using linux six months ago. There are a couple things that keep a windows kernel in my boot menu at home (ok, just age of empires and Traktor DJ studio), but ipod compatibility is not one of them. Grandma (or her young, equally non-technical equivalent, whoever that is) doesn't need to be able to install and sync ipods to every single OS candidate on the market. The market comprises more than just Grandma.
That is, you'll work your ass off trying to play them. I see a weekend worth of googling to broken forum links in your future, dear mac gamer.
This is a weird and unsatisfying article. There are two paragraphs or so stating that the employer essentially 'broke in' to this guy's facebook profile. It doesn't mention how (did facebook allow them in? Do they keep crackers on staff? Did they serve a subpoena?), and it doesn't mention what they felt they needed to bring up and address at the interview. The rest of the story is just the boilerplate myspace/facebook/social-networking introduction and privacy discussion/lecture (which shouldn't even apply if the site was designated private). So maybe it's a hoax--another product of the paranoia bred by the parade of spying programs coming to light in the U.S.
But, assuming it's real, this seems pretty sloppy. The PATRIOT act was supposed to be used to prevent terrorism right? Of course, it's a little bit tough to picture the connection between one internship applicant's social networking profile and the prevention of terrorism. If the guy was anything anywhere near being a terrorist threat, they wouldn't have hired him (raided his house maybe, but not hired), so the 'questionable' material had to be harmless. And if they had suspected him enough to say, "this guy might be a terrorist, but we can only know for sure if we check his facebook site," well, they're not really very effective in anti-terrorism then, are they?
And then, assuming all this is true, it means they were comfortable enough with this breach to bring it up casually? It means they're breaching privacy a lot, and they suck at it.
Good work replying to the summary though. A+ for effort.
Actually, I didn't even read the summary; I just read the parent's post and let 'er rip! Glad to know someone appreciates my effort, though. Thanks!
Now in national media, the RIAA vs. Everyone Else fight is probably a draw; or at least they're not seeing a lot of potential in pushing their agenda on the national stage. However, it's so much easier to be the only source for a shoestring local news station and make sure that they report your story from exactly your spin angle. Ask Karen Ryan about that.
RIAA can make sure that their local raids, local lawsuits etc. are reported in category 3a along the lines of "The dangers of filesharing in the tri-county area" or "Is your neighbor a dangerous media pirate?" And they'll show some poor hapless dropout sputtering to defend himself. He'll get one soundbite that makes him sound like a rube or thug. The local RIAA rep, (polished, well-dressed and trained), will politely yet sternly rattle off some talking points (probably trying to sound like a DA), and the report will wrap up with a conclusion that justice has been served. Think the EFF will be able to keep up in that realm? I doubt anyone could develop the rapid response needed to get a rebuttal into local news cycles, nationally distributed.
We love to complain about the terrible quality of the major nationwide news networks, but the local stuff is just horrific. It's diabolically clever for them to use it to their advantage.
Prism Durosport.
"Did you notice you've been using linux all this time?"
"no."
"Well, that's KDE running on SuSE. When did they switch?"
"I don't know. They switched what now? Who's Katie?"
I asked her colleagues in the English department if they knew when the switch took place. No one noticed it. SD loves to have debates about whether *nix is ready to replace windows for the everyday user. Ok, so maybe joe schmo or the proverbial English-major girlfriend (or boyfriend) wouldn't be able to install Ubuntu or SuSE, but if it's there, they can use it. There's a lot of money to be saved on public terminals for general use.
Oh, and no MRIs either.
I'm not old enough to remember the old AT&T monopoly days, and that might be the problem with a lot of voting constituents. I do remember what my mom told me about those times. It's hard to imagine that, back then, The Phone Company was basically able to give you the finger and get away with it. What could you do? Pretty much nothing, you might as well be asking the IRS for a sales tax refund. That's how monopolies work.
For the past fifteen years or so (don't know the exact dates, but since the courts broke up the old AT&T), there's been competition in both different service types and different companies offering the same solutions. But they've slowly consolidated, and now the monopolistic entity is back. It's more of a cartel now; and they have no incentive to go out of their way for you. Live in Idaho and don't like that you can't access Google without waiting ten minutes for the page to load? "Sorry. Try Verizon speedsearch!, with the all the info you need on your favorite music, videos, games, and sports-and-news!" It's the same as if you flip on the cable TV and veg. It doesn't matter to them. They make money on both. The difference is now, there are even fewer laws regulating who gets access to communication and information.
We can't imagine that the internet could just be taken away like that. But what's stopping them? We do technically own the pipes, but congress just proved to us that it's really only a meaningless technicality in their opinion. So the telco/cable cartel gets carte-blanche control. The CEO of SBC has even refered to them casually as "[his] pipes." In all but official title, it looks like he's right.
Then again, let's hope we don't have to consider the details of this bill--that it gets borked altogether. It sounds like an industry throw-everything-at-the-wall approach. They're either hoping to get lucky and pass this, or come back with a slightly less ridiculous "sensible compromise" after everyone gets lathered up about the completely brain-dead ridiculous version here.
1.) iTunes quality couldn't compare with my ripped or recorded mp3s. (Try it. Burn iTunes DLs side-by-side with some mp3s from deejay dl-services. Enjoy the muffled midrange from iTunes.)
2.) DRM was left uncracked since v6.0. Having to burn-and-rip was just not worth it; especially considering the additional quality drop. Traktor, like everything else, won't play DRM'd music.
Plus, shopping at iTunes is like trying to shop for spinnable tracks at Best Buy. It's not for djs. I'll pay more for usability.
What does DRM prevent? The only redistribution I do is when I spin out in public and people listen. I wouldn't be able to that do if I followed iTunes' rules. I can't imagine the artists I spin would make their music not to go into DJ record crates.