Maybe I just type what I feel like typing, when I feel like typing it. And I don't give a shit about "UID" (except in that I think it's insulting to be identified by a number and not a name), karma, or being called a troll. Maybe that's what it is.
Duh. If they knew more, they would have a better job. What do you expect?
Next, we're going to bring up the revelation that public schools have crappy network administrators! Could it be because public schools don't pay well? News at 11:00!
No, those applications are what the Notification Area in Windows is for, or nasty blinking icons in the Dock in OS X is for. (I have no idea how Linux communicates things like that, but knowing Linux it either doesn't have a way at all, or is has 3 dozen incompatible different ways and nobody uses any.)
Personally, I think Microsoft did a good job creating the notification area as long as software doesn't abuse it-- and of course, software does. Heck, when you first log in, MSN pops up all kinds of useless "add your passport to Windows!" stuff you don't care about. But the theory behind it is sound.
Of course you're missing the MOST IMPORTANT reason that critical notices shouldn't interrupt your work in another application: If you happen to be typing when it comes up, you can easily close the notification by accident before you have a chance to read it. And then you're a ton worse off than if it was in the background, or a bubble in the Notification Area.
I'm not an expert, but I seem to recall that the reason Windows XP doesn't ship with a JavaVM is the result of a lawsuit by Sun. In any case, blaming Microsoft isn't much of an excuse; if Java were compelling, people would go download the JavaVM.
There may be a lot of Java client-side GUI apps, but they all suck. What would you call the flagship Java app? Lotus Notes? Sucks ass. The last one I personally tried was a BitTorrent client called something like Azureus, and I was pleased to note that after a decade, Java apps still suck. Period. Slow, mutant GUIs, inability to use OS-native features (like the OS X spellchecker, for instance).
So far the most I've ever used Java is the VM on my cellphone. Other than that, I avoid it like the plague.
Just this week, we installed a webapp from a vendor that (unfortunately) requires Java. Of course, not only that, but it requires the MS version of Java and not the Sun version. So I have to go to 150 computers, uninstall Sun's version of Java and then install Microsoft's version of Java. That represents a failing of Java!
Once you have the Microsoft Java VM installed, you can't hit control-P to print or you only get half the page. You have to use the mutant weird menu they created in Java to print correctly. That represents a failing of Java!
To make things worse, this Java version runs *slower* than the Lotus Notes version of the same product. How can anything possibly be slower than Notes?
If you can do with Windows the same things you can do with Linux, but it requires less specialized knowledge, doesn't that make Windows better?
Of course the Linux community will say no, because the vast majority of the Linux community doesn't believe in software usability. God forbid you suggest that admining a server should be easy. Why, if it was easy, ANYONE could do it! Then how would we charge insane consulting fees? The High Priesthood of Technology must stand!
Ok, sorry for the sarcasm, but still. Usability is important. If Linux were as easy to use as Windows, if those features that Linux supports were as visible to the admins as they were in Windows, I'm sure all three of those businesses would still be using Linux right now.
I let the update go a couple days and look for stories about it on Slashdot. If the problems with it aren't big enough to show up on Slashdot, I usually install it.
The two alternatives are ThinkOffice and MarinerWrite/MarinerCalc (or whatever they call their spreadsheet package. ThinkOffice is cheap, cross-platform, and Java... and basically an *exact* clone of Office 97. Mariner is a better piece of software, a bit more expensive and not cross-platform. Both read/write Office formats, or at least do a pretty good job of it.
I ended up buying ThinkOffice, but I think if I had it to do again I'd buy Mariner's package.
1) The entire point of the *new* Lara Croft is that she's more realistic. Sure it's still a blow-up doll, but at least it's something that a real woman could look like with a huge dose of plastic surgery and talented make-up artists. Maybe. But it's a dozen times better than the old Lara Croft who had basketballs for breasts. This change has nothing to do with geeky/non-geeky, it's just a long-overdue response to the criticism the character has taken since day one.
2) The American pilot of Red Dwarf wasn't that bad. It didn't screw with the format any more than Red Dwarf did every couple seasons, and it had some really good writing (and some really bad acting.) "Three million years? My God... my baseball cards must be worth MILLIONS!" is a good joke. It's not a British joke, but it's a good one.
Anyway, I'm just sick of seeing your brand of geek elitism. People are just people... if a guy likes both video games and football, what's so bad about that?
I notice that you didn't post what model you had so I could independently verify your claims. What about power management, though? That's the biggest thing keeping Linux off my laptop at the moment.
Microsoft doesn't make modems. You need to offer at least a little bit of evidence of your claims before I can accept them at face value... no I don't think you're a lunatic if there's a good reason to believe that Microsoft did what you claim.
Look, Ebert's like, what, 85 years old? The reason he is down on video games is simple: He doesn't understand them. He's admitted in his columns before that he hasn't played many (if any) video games, and my guess is that most of what he knows about video gaming comes from the mainstream media. And you know how well they cover video game-related news.
This is a complete non-story. I like Ebert and I respect his opinion of movies, but he's not qualified to judge video games and thus anything he says about video games is, at best, speculation.
Did the CSS encryption for DVDs have public specifications before the Linux community reverse-engineered it? Did the SMB protocol? What about the open-source drivers for ATI and nVidia video cards? How about WINE?
This strikes me as a very weak argument, since the linux community has reverse-engineered so many other hardware devices and protocols.
What is so special about "winmodems" that linux users hate them so much?
1) How much of your CPU time could it *possibly* be using? I mean, hell, that little widget that checks the internet time servers to sync the clock every day probably uses more CPU time when it runs than a modem would.
2) So? If anything, that makes it *better* than a modem, because you can use it to do things like (for instance) record voice mails. (Apple used to make their equivalent to a 'winmodem' which supported voicemail and some other features that real modems simply can't do.) If there was a new modem protocol (which admittedly isn't likely, but I remember that whole flex thing for 56k modems), you could adapt the "winmodem" for it by just swapping the driver, which is much easier than flashing firmware.
And the point you're missing:
3) Not only does it use very little CPU power, and give you more options than a real modem, but it makes the hardware cheaper.
And what's so wrong with this that the Linux community treats owning a "winmodem" like having leprosy? Seriously, I don't get it.
BTW, speaking of weaknesses of the Linux community (and I'm not trying to pick on the parent specifically here) is the "but it's just as bad as Windows" syndrome.
Every problem, no matter what it is, is answered by, "but Windows is just as bad!"
"I can't get this printer working reliably, the printer spooler seems to be crashing." "Yeah, well, it crashes in Windows, too!"
"How come the help system is so slow and takes a long time to create a search index?" "The help system in Windows is slow, too!"
You see this on Slashdot all the time. Who gives a crap about what Windows does? Why does the Linux community have to constantly measure its genitals against Microsoft?
How come the Macintosh community *never* replies to a criticism by saying, "well, it's just as bad in Windows!" Is it because the Macintosh community is more mature and secure? That would be my guess.
Linux community: Your product will never be BETTER than Windows if you excuse every shortcoming with "Windows is just as bad!"
So the difference between a "modem" and a "winmodem" is that a winmodem has a minimal set of hardware and does most of the work of connecting/transferring data in the driver instead?
And, uh, what exactly is wrong with that? What makes that so inferior to a "modem" that does processing in hardware? Seriously?
Also, what about that means Linux can't support it? Linux supports video chipsets that shares RAM with the rest of the system, right? Linux works with sound cards that do effects and mixing in software and not hardware, right? Why not a modem built with the same philosophy?
In short, you're not really helping Linux's case here.
Except you have to sooner or later, because a bunch of Linux drivers are packaged (or, more accurately, not packaged) that way, and from my experience there's as good a chance as not that those drivers aren't in the repository. My specific problem was with the drivers for my USB wireless network dongle and my video capture card. (Turns out, Ubuntu did ship with a version of ndiswrapper for the USB wireless network card, but there's no way of using ndiswrapper without the commandline, so it still applies.)
Yes, it is true that the answers to your questions are out there...Linux does have copious documentation.
Depends on the project. The IVTV drivers for Hauppauge video capture cards have very little documentation, and all of it both leaves out steps and assumes you're an expert Linux user.
I had a similar experience, except I don't use IRC chat very often so I don't know the 'invisible rules.' I was trying to get help setting up the IVTV drivers for my Hauppauge card to run MythTV on my computer. The Ubuntu chat room (that the support link goes to) told me to ask in the MythTV chat room. So I did.
First I got yelled at for asking the same question twice in 10 minutes, because it was unanswered. Despite there being something like 250 people listed in the room, NOBODY was chatting whatsoever-- and they yelled at me for asking the same question twice in ten minutes!
Then I got yelled at because this was "the wrong room" to ask questions about setting up hardware. I asked what the right chat room was, and the answer was basically, "I don't know, but not here." Gee, that's helpful... the Ubuntu forums (that the Support menu links to!) told me to come here, and you tell me to go away.
Then I was yelled at because someone in the IRC channel who was trying to help me (which I do appreciate) asked me to paste in the error log. So I did, and I got yelled at by someone else for "spamming" the channel with 8 lines of text. (To remind you, this is a channel with NO conversations going on except mine.) God forbid I paste in 8 lines of text and spam the 248 people sitting in the room and not even talking at all.
I've had equally bad experiences with mailing lists. Look, if I want to answer a specific question, I don't want to have to go through the effort of signing up for the mailing list, whitelisting it in my email client, "confirming" that I actually signed up for the mailing list, posting my question, then waiting for an answer that may or may not come.
Please, PLEASE, use web forums for support. They are far, far superior. They are searchable, they are linkable, they aren't full of 248 people doing absolutely NOTHING except complaining when other people are being helpful.
And whoever runs the IVTV project: What is the point of creating drivers that are so difficult to install that no mortal could possibly do it? What's the point? Why not spend your time counting cracks in the sidewalk, it seems like that would be equally productive.
After my experience with IVTV drivers, including having two different Linux gurus walking me through the process over email, just makes me come to the conclusion that open source has nothing to do with producing usable software, but is instead just a huge circle-jerk for techies so they can pretend they're better than you. Out of the hundreds of people exposed to this problem, only two were actually helpful, and even with the help of those two I never got working IVTV drivers installed.
(And for the record, the Hauppauge card was recommended to me by a MythTV forum, so it's not like I bought some weird-ass hardware from Mars.)
Now I'm a lot more selective:
1) I won't use an open source product unless it's at least version 1.0. All those sub-1.0 projects are the ones that are impossible to install, use, get documentation for, or get help for, and I'm sick of it-- screw it.
2) I won't even bother trying to get support unless there's a support forum. If I have to sign up for a mailing list, I'll just delete it and use something else. If I have to go into a IRC chat room, same.
3) I won't even bother trying to use the product unless the website is actually slightly useful. Firefox, for instance, has a very usable and useful website (until you go to report a bug, but that's another topic), where IVTV has a Wiki with perhaps a total of 500 words worth of documentation.
(FYI, if your Wiki tutorial sucks, nobody's going to come down from heaven and fix it for you for the simple reason that the people confused by the tutorial *don't know* what the correct process is-- if they did, they wouldn't need the Wiki in the first place. It's more efficient for the developer, who knows the process by heart, to spend 10 minutes fixing the Wiki than random Joe on the internet spending 10 days researching how to install the software and fixing it when he's done only to be told by the developer that he did it all wrong. Wikis are as bad as mailing lists and IRC chat rooms.)
Except, uh, it doesn't use icons anymore-- except those universally recognized. Everything else is words. And you know why? Because Microsoft saw the problem with people failing to recognize obscure icons and *fixed it.* I know that's inconceivable, but they've done it, and that's exactly why Office 2007 is noteworthy, whether or not the Linux community recognizes it.
Considering the insanely pro-Nintendo slant to the comments section, I'd love it if the editors paid more attention to the Xbox.
But in reality, I think Zonk's coverage is pretty even, and I appreciate that Slashdot is posting some original content instead of just linking to other websites all the time.
Have you looked at the screenshots for it? It's not even really a WIMP interface, it uses something called Ribbons to replace both toolbars and menus. So far, everybody's been raving about it... even if it doesn't add a lot of new features, it allows people to easily find the features that have been in there since Office 97 but nobody knew how to get at them. It vastly lowers the learning curve for the product.
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe I just type what I feel like typing, when I feel like typing it. And I don't give a shit about "UID" (except in that I think it's insulting to be identified by a number and not a name), karma, or being called a troll. Maybe that's what it is.
Duh. If they knew more, they would have a better job. What do you expect?
Next, we're going to bring up the revelation that public schools have crappy network administrators! Could it be because public schools don't pay well? News at 11:00!
No, those applications are what the Notification Area in Windows is for, or nasty blinking icons in the Dock in OS X is for. (I have no idea how Linux communicates things like that, but knowing Linux it either doesn't have a way at all, or is has 3 dozen incompatible different ways and nobody uses any.)
Personally, I think Microsoft did a good job creating the notification area as long as software doesn't abuse it-- and of course, software does. Heck, when you first log in, MSN pops up all kinds of useless "add your passport to Windows!" stuff you don't care about. But the theory behind it is sound.
Of course you're missing the MOST IMPORTANT reason that critical notices shouldn't interrupt your work in another application: If you happen to be typing when it comes up, you can easily close the notification by accident before you have a chance to read it. And then you're a ton worse off than if it was in the background, or a bubble in the Notification Area.
Nothing wrong with writing them down as long as:
1) It doesn't have more login details (username, company name, specific software it's for, etc)
2) It goes with the user in their wallet or purse, and isn't sitting right next to the computer its used on.
If you have: "Novell Login for J Smith, Sting Ray Systems: moonunit" in your wallet, that's bad.
If you have: "moonunit" in your wallet, that's just confusing and weird.
The point is that Linspire is the only distro that acknowledges that Linux should be more friendly towards commercial software.
I'm not an expert, but I seem to recall that the reason Windows XP doesn't ship with a JavaVM is the result of a lawsuit by Sun. In any case, blaming Microsoft isn't much of an excuse; if Java were compelling, people would go download the JavaVM.
There may be a lot of Java client-side GUI apps, but they all suck. What would you call the flagship Java app? Lotus Notes? Sucks ass. The last one I personally tried was a BitTorrent client called something like Azureus, and I was pleased to note that after a decade, Java apps still suck. Period. Slow, mutant GUIs, inability to use OS-native features (like the OS X spellchecker, for instance).
So far the most I've ever used Java is the VM on my cellphone. Other than that, I avoid it like the plague.
Just this week, we installed a webapp from a vendor that (unfortunately) requires Java. Of course, not only that, but it requires the MS version of Java and not the Sun version. So I have to go to 150 computers, uninstall Sun's version of Java and then install Microsoft's version of Java. That represents a failing of Java!
Once you have the Microsoft Java VM installed, you can't hit control-P to print or you only get half the page. You have to use the mutant weird menu they created in Java to print correctly. That represents a failing of Java!
To make things worse, this Java version runs *slower* than the Lotus Notes version of the same product. How can anything possibly be slower than Notes?
Uh, whoa, think about this.
If you can do with Windows the same things you can do with Linux, but it requires less specialized knowledge, doesn't that make Windows better?
Of course the Linux community will say no, because the vast majority of the Linux community doesn't believe in software usability. God forbid you suggest that admining a server should be easy. Why, if it was easy, ANYONE could do it! Then how would we charge insane consulting fees? The High Priesthood of Technology must stand!
Ok, sorry for the sarcasm, but still. Usability is important. If Linux were as easy to use as Windows, if those features that Linux supports were as visible to the admins as they were in Windows, I'm sure all three of those businesses would still be using Linux right now.
I let the update go a couple days and look for stories about it on Slashdot. If the problems with it aren't big enough to show up on Slashdot, I usually install it.
Yeah, it's funny, but it's true.
Zenith. Last TVs made in America... everything else is either Japan or China now.
The two alternatives are ThinkOffice and MarinerWrite/MarinerCalc (or whatever they call their spreadsheet package. ThinkOffice is cheap, cross-platform, and Java... and basically an *exact* clone of Office 97. Mariner is a better piece of software, a bit more expensive and not cross-platform. Both read/write Office formats, or at least do a pretty good job of it.
I ended up buying ThinkOffice, but I think if I had it to do again I'd buy Mariner's package.
Ok, I think you're full of crap and here's why:
1) The entire point of the *new* Lara Croft is that she's more realistic. Sure it's still a blow-up doll, but at least it's something that a real woman could look like with a huge dose of plastic surgery and talented make-up artists. Maybe. But it's a dozen times better than the old Lara Croft who had basketballs for breasts. This change has nothing to do with geeky/non-geeky, it's just a long-overdue response to the criticism the character has taken since day one.
2) The American pilot of Red Dwarf wasn't that bad. It didn't screw with the format any more than Red Dwarf did every couple seasons, and it had some really good writing (and some really bad acting.) "Three million years? My God... my baseball cards must be worth MILLIONS!" is a good joke. It's not a British joke, but it's a good one.
Anyway, I'm just sick of seeing your brand of geek elitism. People are just people... if a guy likes both video games and football, what's so bad about that?
I notice that you didn't post what model you had so I could independently verify your claims. What about power management, though? That's the biggest thing keeping Linux off my laptop at the moment.
Microsoft doesn't make modems. You need to offer at least a little bit of evidence of your claims before I can accept them at face value... no I don't think you're a lunatic if there's a good reason to believe that Microsoft did what you claim.
Look, Ebert's like, what, 85 years old? The reason he is down on video games is simple: He doesn't understand them. He's admitted in his columns before that he hasn't played many (if any) video games, and my guess is that most of what he knows about video gaming comes from the mainstream media. And you know how well they cover video game-related news.
This is a complete non-story. I like Ebert and I respect his opinion of movies, but he's not qualified to judge video games and thus anything he says about video games is, at best, speculation.
Did the CSS encryption for DVDs have public specifications before the Linux community reverse-engineered it? Did the SMB protocol? What about the open-source drivers for ATI and nVidia video cards? How about WINE?
This strikes me as a very weak argument, since the linux community has reverse-engineered so many other hardware devices and protocols.
What is so special about "winmodems" that linux users hate them so much?
1) How much of your CPU time could it *possibly* be using? I mean, hell, that little widget that checks the internet time servers to sync the clock every day probably uses more CPU time when it runs than a modem would.
2) So? If anything, that makes it *better* than a modem, because you can use it to do things like (for instance) record voice mails. (Apple used to make their equivalent to a 'winmodem' which supported voicemail and some other features that real modems simply can't do.) If there was a new modem protocol (which admittedly isn't likely, but I remember that whole flex thing for 56k modems), you could adapt the "winmodem" for it by just swapping the driver, which is much easier than flashing firmware.
And the point you're missing:
3) Not only does it use very little CPU power, and give you more options than a real modem, but it makes the hardware cheaper.
And what's so wrong with this that the Linux community treats owning a "winmodem" like having leprosy? Seriously, I don't get it.
BTW, speaking of weaknesses of the Linux community (and I'm not trying to pick on the parent specifically here) is the "but it's just as bad as Windows" syndrome.
Every problem, no matter what it is, is answered by, "but Windows is just as bad!"
"I can't get this printer working reliably, the printer spooler seems to be crashing." "Yeah, well, it crashes in Windows, too!"
"How come the help system is so slow and takes a long time to create a search index?" "The help system in Windows is slow, too!"
You see this on Slashdot all the time. Who gives a crap about what Windows does? Why does the Linux community have to constantly measure its genitals against Microsoft?
How come the Macintosh community *never* replies to a criticism by saying, "well, it's just as bad in Windows!" Is it because the Macintosh community is more mature and secure? That would be my guess.
Linux community: Your product will never be BETTER than Windows if you excuse every shortcoming with "Windows is just as bad!"
But since there isn't a single laptop on the market that Linux supports 100%, this argument sums to, "you can't use Linux on a laptop."
So the difference between a "modem" and a "winmodem" is that a winmodem has a minimal set of hardware and does most of the work of connecting/transferring data in the driver instead?
And, uh, what exactly is wrong with that? What makes that so inferior to a "modem" that does processing in hardware? Seriously?
Also, what about that means Linux can't support it? Linux supports video chipsets that shares RAM with the rest of the system, right? Linux works with sound cards that do effects and mixing in software and not hardware, right? Why not a modem built with the same philosophy?
In short, you're not really helping Linux's case here.
Except you have to sooner or later, because a bunch of Linux drivers are packaged (or, more accurately, not packaged) that way, and from my experience there's as good a chance as not that those drivers aren't in the repository. My specific problem was with the drivers for my USB wireless network dongle and my video capture card. (Turns out, Ubuntu did ship with a version of ndiswrapper for the USB wireless network card, but there's no way of using ndiswrapper without the commandline, so it still applies.)
Yes, it is true that the answers to your questions are out there...Linux does have copious documentation.
Depends on the project. The IVTV drivers for Hauppauge video capture cards have very little documentation, and all of it both leaves out steps and assumes you're an expert Linux user.
I had a similar experience, except I don't use IRC chat very often so I don't know the 'invisible rules.' I was trying to get help setting up the IVTV drivers for my Hauppauge card to run MythTV on my computer. The Ubuntu chat room (that the support link goes to) told me to ask in the MythTV chat room. So I did.
First I got yelled at for asking the same question twice in 10 minutes, because it was unanswered. Despite there being something like 250 people listed in the room, NOBODY was chatting whatsoever-- and they yelled at me for asking the same question twice in ten minutes!
Then I got yelled at because this was "the wrong room" to ask questions about setting up hardware. I asked what the right chat room was, and the answer was basically, "I don't know, but not here." Gee, that's helpful... the Ubuntu forums (that the Support menu links to!) told me to come here, and you tell me to go away.
Then I was yelled at because someone in the IRC channel who was trying to help me (which I do appreciate) asked me to paste in the error log. So I did, and I got yelled at by someone else for "spamming" the channel with 8 lines of text. (To remind you, this is a channel with NO conversations going on except mine.) God forbid I paste in 8 lines of text and spam the 248 people sitting in the room and not even talking at all.
I've had equally bad experiences with mailing lists. Look, if I want to answer a specific question, I don't want to have to go through the effort of signing up for the mailing list, whitelisting it in my email client, "confirming" that I actually signed up for the mailing list, posting my question, then waiting for an answer that may or may not come.
Please, PLEASE, use web forums for support. They are far, far superior. They are searchable, they are linkable, they aren't full of 248 people doing absolutely NOTHING except complaining when other people are being helpful.
And whoever runs the IVTV project: What is the point of creating drivers that are so difficult to install that no mortal could possibly do it? What's the point? Why not spend your time counting cracks in the sidewalk, it seems like that would be equally productive.
After my experience with IVTV drivers, including having two different Linux gurus walking me through the process over email, just makes me come to the conclusion that open source has nothing to do with producing usable software, but is instead just a huge circle-jerk for techies so they can pretend they're better than you. Out of the hundreds of people exposed to this problem, only two were actually helpful, and even with the help of those two I never got working IVTV drivers installed.
(And for the record, the Hauppauge card was recommended to me by a MythTV forum, so it's not like I bought some weird-ass hardware from Mars.)
Now I'm a lot more selective:
1) I won't use an open source product unless it's at least version 1.0. All those sub-1.0 projects are the ones that are impossible to install, use, get documentation for, or get help for, and I'm sick of it-- screw it.
2) I won't even bother trying to get support unless there's a support forum. If I have to sign up for a mailing list, I'll just delete it and use something else. If I have to go into a IRC chat room, same.
3) I won't even bother trying to use the product unless the website is actually slightly useful. Firefox, for instance, has a very usable and useful website (until you go to report a bug, but that's another topic), where IVTV has a Wiki with perhaps a total of 500 words worth of documentation.
(FYI, if your Wiki tutorial sucks, nobody's going to come down from heaven and fix it for you for the simple reason that the people confused by the tutorial *don't know* what the correct process is-- if they did, they wouldn't need the Wiki in the first place. It's more efficient for the developer, who knows the process by heart, to spend 10 minutes fixing the Wiki than random Joe on the internet spending 10 days researching how to install the software and fixing it when he's done only to be told by the developer that he did it all wrong. Wikis are as bad as mailing lists and IRC chat rooms.)
Except, uh, it doesn't use icons anymore-- except those universally recognized. Everything else is words. And you know why? Because Microsoft saw the problem with people failing to recognize obscure icons and *fixed it.* I know that's inconceivable, but they've done it, and that's exactly why Office 2007 is noteworthy, whether or not the Linux community recognizes it.
Considering the insanely pro-Nintendo slant to the comments section, I'd love it if the editors paid more attention to the Xbox.
But in reality, I think Zonk's coverage is pretty even, and I appreciate that Slashdot is posting some original content instead of just linking to other websites all the time.
Have you looked at the screenshots for it? It's not even really a WIMP interface, it uses something called Ribbons to replace both toolbars and menus. So far, everybody's been raving about it... even if it doesn't add a lot of new features, it allows people to easily find the features that have been in there since Office 97 but nobody knew how to get at them. It vastly lowers the learning curve for the product.