Well, not rm -rf/ but yesterday I did rm * in/etc (to much windows open, and focus follow mouse) I had to ask YaST to fix it, and still need to reconfigure some stuff.
I'd realy think that if Corel, Novell and Borland would do a combined effort to move to Linux, things could change very fast. Between them they have a very large and broad spectrum of commmercial grade high quality software. Their combined portfolio is huge and without much overlap. All of them have tried in some half-harted way, only Novell now seems want to go all the way. - Operating system: SuSE - Directory Services/Network management: eDirectory, ZENWorks, eXtend - Office productivity: Ximian, Groupwise, OpenExchange - Office suite: Wordperfect Office - Developement environment: JBuilder, CBuilder, Delphi, Kylix - Graphics: CorelDraw, Photopaint, Ventura, Paintshop Pro, R.A.V.E
I own WP12, CD12, CBuilder, Kylix, SuSE 9.2, but they do not work together well. Some run have (older) versions running on some versions of Linux (WP8 and Kylix run on older versions of SuSE)
I think the real problem none of their ported Linux versions caught on, was that they didn't appear at the same time, weere only supported for1-2 years. They therefore operated essentially in a vacuum. I think Novell should try to get Borland and Corel on board, creating a landscape of high profile Linux apps, and offering them in a combined comprehensive marketing effort, that assures customers that support will not be dropped again in 1-2 years.
Maybe these have had their greatest glory days, in the days before Windows95, but I think they could dominate a commercial desktop/corporate Linux environment. I think people would buy if it just worked, was well supported, and out of conventience and to have someone to yell at if stuff breaks.
Somewhat unrelated: I still lament the demise of Loki Games, still own their Civ:CTP for Linux.
If I understood correctly, the problem wasn't that Microsoft included MediaPlayer with Windows, but that it _forbid_ OEM's to install Quicktime or Realplayer on systems shipped. This is why they were convicted in the EU to allow OEM's to ship Windows with other players as MediaPlayer, and as additional measure even without Mediaplayer, _if_ the OEM would choose that option.
It's not about cripling PC's, but about MS preventing OEM's to ship PC's with competing products, thus allowing the customer even more convenience. This is also the main difference with Linux distributions, that ship most/all competing offerings in one distribution. It's like if Trolltech's Qt licence would disallow the use of Gnome or Borland VCL, coupled with Qt having (fictively) 95%+ market share.
I would like to add that a lot of USA based organisations have large (> 50%) overhead cost because of advertizing and management. I have been told Foster Parents Plan is one of them. It spends most of it's resources on giving their contributers the idea that they are helping.
In the Netherlands we have the CBF certificate program http://www.cbf.nl/ (in dutch) http://www.cbf.nl/pages/cbf-erkende_goede_ doelen/m et_cbf-keur.php gives a list in Dutch of certified organisations.
One of their criteria is that overhead costs for advertizing, organisation, etcetera should be less that 25% of the average last 3 years collected funds. I think this limit is a little high, but it gives a valid criterium.
A lot of USA based organisations fail this test. Certified organisations are Amnesty Internantional, Greenpeace, Medecins sans Frontieres (Artsen zonder grenzen), OXFAM (NOVIB), UNICEF, WarChild, WWF (WNF), Red Cross.
Furthermore you could look at how and who forms the board of directors, income of the director, publicly available financial information. Stuff that can give you cues about accountability.
I can offer a 486DX4-100 with 36MB RAM and a VESA Localbus Mach64 4MB it's even got it's BIOS upgraded to support the 6.4 GB harddisk. I call it the "486 on steroids" concept.
In my limited experience userfriendliness is about presenting the UI that the user expects. what this boils down to: - Same look-n-feel as the OS. - Multiple ways of doing the same thing. (menu, right-click context, shortcut keys, CLI) - Lot's of help and documentation, and easy access to it. Pressing F1 should always result in relevant help. But a help button should be there too, hovering should give a short description, and preferably wizards should be available for most tasks. - Consistence in and between different parts of your application(s). For example OK/Cancel should be in the same order everywhere. Tab-order of buttons should be logical. - Correct analogies to "real world" examples. When creating a tool for electrical-engineers, know what tools they use and how they look. - Don't give the user to much choices at the same time, split into multiple windows if choices get above 3-6 works for me. - Don't bother users with stuff that can be automated. - Minimize the amount of work a user has to do to accomplish something. - Allow the user to configure settings, but provide sane defaults.
In short: Just read the different UI guides that are around, and rigoriously adhere to them. Next to that try to use good methaphores and try to make life easy for your user.
- Next to that I find that pretty pictures can make your application be percieved as "more professional", but "pretty" is somewhat subjective. People think of themselves a professional and want their software to give them that impression.
A 486 DOES NOT manage mp3. I've tried on a 486DX4-100, both windows and linux. A P60 or P75 will not manage either, a P90 or P100 will, if it's the only thing it has to do.
Building LOFAR on the backside of the Moon is relatively feasible. Having two telescopes at two positions in earth orbit would result in an even longer baseline, and therefore larger precission, but you'd need 183 days exposure time to generate a picture.
You're post is somewhat of a flame, but I agree to some extent, so I'll reply.
I've used the Word autosave for the first time in 1997, comming from WordPerfect 7. I had two problems with it: - Autosaving a file larger as 720kb that's stored on a floppy corrupts the floppies entire file system. - Autosaving a large file (20Mb) every 3 minutes as I was used to do on WP, fills up that 500Mb HD space FAST as it creates a new.TMP every 3 minutes. Windows will crash and fail to boot on a reset after this, if you're unlucky.
My most recent experience with Word is from 2004, and some things have improved since 1997, but: - The equation editor is still horrible. - It will randomly loose entries from the TOC. Oh, and you have to tell it to update the TOC! - References to other chapters/pages, links, automatic numbering, captions on figures and equations, are cumbersome at best.
Some other points I want to make: 1) I use WordPerfect. Check out http://www.wpvsword.com for a comparison. 2) MS Office killer feature is Outlook+Exchange, not Word, maybe a little Powerpoint & Excel. Most users have everything they need in Wordpad. 3) I use OpenOffice on Linux and as a speadsheet (quatro pro s****) but I find it to much an MS-office clone on many occasions. 4) The.doc format, as pervasive as it is isn't the anchor that keeps businesses on Office. I used RTF & PDF for an entire year at my previous employer to communicate and nobody even noticed or cared.
- Try detecting a sleeping human. - Try detecting a human behind you. - Try detecting a human with your car (no appropriate sensors (at least mine)). - Try detecting individual humans in a crowd. - Try detecting a human under a tree on a sunny windy day. - Explain to your Roomba "squishy" (if you don't have a roomba, use your PC instead) and how it can detect that.
All I'm saying is: Really try doing this, and you'll find that this is quite hard, especially if the camera is moving, lighting varies, or multiple objects are moving, partially blocking eachother.
I do not know this specific device, althoug I now have some idea, as I googled for it. I agree that in a controlled environment with a stationary camera and a constant background and lighting, you can identify moving objects. Things get hard if the camera starts moving, there are overlapping objects or lighing varies.
Run around town with a digital camera and take 100 pictures, then tell me how I could identify ALL moving objects in those pictures, while not selecting any non moving ones. Preferibly within 100 lines of C code (or whatever) to have it simple enough to implement in your average vacuum cleaner.
IA is hard, everyone should try a year of robocup football once.
I find that a lot of this is about excercise and frequency. Only after my mother found that copy-pasty often works with the right-mouse button, did she started to remember it's other uses, as before that she maybe had a need for it once every 1-2 months, and she had just forgotten about it. Secondly I find that having her repeat stuff a few times when I teach her new things helps a lot in her remembering it.
I've bought a PII-350/92Mb/3.5Gb/CDx24 for 25 euro's, and use it as a small linux server. The stuff I have still lying around doesn't seem to interest anyone anymore, like a P-75, 486DX-33, 486DX4-100, 286-20, 386-40. These all work, but I only used the 486DX4-100 last year, the others haven't seen use in years, and nobody wants them anymore.
The problem with the 200-800 Mhz range stuff that is still in use is support if something breaks. The owners tend not to be the most technologically savvy. A reinstall of windows after the latest mess is often beyond their capacity. A friend of mine bought a cheap printer, after which I had to tell him that his PC doesn't have USB, so he'll have to buy a PCI USB card to get it to work.
I think no amount of "implementing security post-invasion" could have solved the problem. I think the only solution that could have worked is giving the Iraqi themselves the tools to oust Saddam. Essentialy what the USA has done now is telling the Iraqi people as a whole that they are incompetent and need to be patronized. Essentially the USA destroyed their selfesteem, and handles the Iraqi like children. This makes people angry and uncooperative.
Imagine brittish commando's raiding Guantanamo Bay and freeing all imprisoned there, returning them to the UK and giving them a fair and public trial there. How would you feel? You might think that keeping those prisoners there is wrong, but I think you would be ENRAGED if the the UK would "help" you solve the situation. Now imagine millions of Iraqi with that feeling. I think you will find very few Iraqi that feel the USA "helped" them, if they would have supported the 1991 Shiit revolt, things would have been very different.
Although I'd like to agree with you, I'm not sure. I think you should consider that your opinion is the result of your upbringing in western culture. Relatively speaking these "western values" are quite recent "inventions" (last 100-200 years) and only a minority of the worlds population might agree with you. Even within the western world the definitions of freedom, democracy and human rights differs a lot.
I think a lot of the problems in USA foreign affairs stem from an attitude that their view is Right, godgiven and unnegociable. It tends to allienate people if they get talked to like they are children and "daddy knows what's best for them."
Maybe you are right, and I tend to agree with your opinion, but I think you should realise that you too are very much a product of how you were reared.
I do not know where you live, but here in the Netherlands we get very little freakish weather. The last mayor event was in 1953.
We do have an occasional hot summer, windy autumn, wet spring or cold winter, but nothing very special. I can't recall any distinguishing weather feature of 2004, 2003 or 2002. We had some little problems with to much rain in 2000 and 2001. and cold winters in 1996, 1989, 1980 and 1976 I think.
I for one like our climate that way. This also makes it clear that the average temperature has been climbing the last 20-30 years. Dutch people interested can see more at http://www.knmi.nl/onderzk/CKO/Challenge_live/
You don't have too, it's perfectly possible to install SuSE over ftp, or even only update certain packages. This is what I did between some CD/DVD versions I bought. It's just convenience, pop in the DVD, select what packages you want, go drink some coffee, and 30-40 minutes later you have a working system, network, WiFi, right kernel (smp), etc. In the past 5 years I maybe 10-15 times used an rpm that wasn't supplied by SuSE, and those installed with YaST correctly too.
Some other reasons I used CD/DVD's: - until recently I only had a modem, not DSL, so getting 7-8 CD's or 2 DVD's with software was really nice. - At work I do not have internet access with my own system (P4 laptop!) so being able to install missing programs from DVD is still occasionally handy. (work also uses SuSE 9.1, but I am not root there, and asking the IT dep. sometimes just is to much hassle.)
I don't use it because I can't do anything else, but for convenience, __it just works__.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, not rm -rf / /etc
but yesterday I did rm * in
(to much windows open, and focus follow mouse)
I had to ask YaST to fix it, and still need to reconfigure some stuff.
I'd realy think that if Corel, Novell and Borland would do a combined effort to move to Linux, things could change very fast. Between them they have a very large and broad spectrum of commmercial grade high quality software. Their combined portfolio is huge and without much overlap. All of them have tried in some half-harted way, only Novell now seems want to go all the way.
- Operating system: SuSE
- Directory Services/Network management: eDirectory, ZENWorks, eXtend
- Office productivity: Ximian, Groupwise, OpenExchange
- Office suite: Wordperfect Office
- Developement environment: JBuilder, CBuilder, Delphi, Kylix
- Graphics: CorelDraw, Photopaint, Ventura, Paintshop Pro, R.A.V.E
I own WP12, CD12, CBuilder, Kylix, SuSE 9.2, but they do not work together well. Some run have (older) versions running on some versions of Linux (WP8 and Kylix run on older versions of SuSE)
I think the real problem none of their ported Linux versions caught on, was that they didn't appear at the same time, weere only supported for1-2 years. They therefore operated essentially in a vacuum. I think Novell should try to get Borland and Corel on board, creating a landscape of high profile Linux apps, and offering them in a combined comprehensive marketing effort, that assures customers that support will not be dropped again in 1-2 years.
Maybe these have had their greatest glory days, in the days before Windows95, but I think they could dominate a commercial desktop/corporate Linux environment. I think people would buy if it just worked, was well supported, and out of conventience and to have someone to yell at if stuff breaks.
Somewhat unrelated: I still lament the demise of Loki Games, still own their Civ:CTP for Linux.
If I understood correctly, the problem wasn't that Microsoft included MediaPlayer with Windows, but that it _forbid_ OEM's to install Quicktime or Realplayer on systems shipped. This is why they were convicted in the EU to allow OEM's to ship Windows with other players as MediaPlayer, and as additional measure even without Mediaplayer, _if_ the OEM would choose that option.
It's not about cripling PC's, but about MS preventing OEM's to ship PC's with competing products, thus allowing the customer even more convenience. This is also the main difference with Linux distributions, that ship most/all competing offerings in one distribution. It's like if Trolltech's Qt licence would disallow the use of Gnome or Borland VCL, coupled with Qt having (fictively) 95%+ market share.
It helps somewhat if on a regular basis laptops* with VPN account on them get stolen.
*) They run Knoppix and don't use encrypted filesystems.
I found a list of overhead percentages here:
http://www.karthick.com/relief.html
I would like to add that a lot of USA based organisations have large (> 50%) overhead cost because of advertizing and management. I have been told Foster Parents Plan is one of them. It spends most of it's resources on giving their contributers the idea that they are helping.
Your Plan USA seems a similar organisation.
In the Netherlands we have the CBF certificate program_ doelen/m et_cbf-keur.php
http://www.cbf.nl/ (in dutch)
http://www.cbf.nl/pages/cbf-erkende_goede
gives a list in Dutch of certified organisations.
One of their criteria is that overhead costs for advertizing, organisation, etcetera should be less that 25% of the average last 3 years collected funds. I think this limit is a little high, but it gives a valid criterium.
A lot of USA based organisations fail this test. Certified organisations are Amnesty Internantional, Greenpeace, Medecins sans Frontieres (Artsen zonder grenzen), OXFAM (NOVIB), UNICEF, WarChild, WWF (WNF), Red Cross.
Furthermore you could look at how and who forms the board of directors, income of the director, publicly available financial information. Stuff that can give you cues about accountability.
I believe there was this guy Tim Berners-Lee whom had something to do with the WWW too?
Wasn't he at CERN, like Geneva, Switserland or something?
Bleh,
I can offer a 486DX4-100 with 36MB RAM and a VESA Localbus Mach64 4MB
it's even got it's BIOS upgraded to support the 6.4 GB harddisk.
I call it the "486 on steroids" concept.
In my limited experience userfriendliness is about presenting the UI that the user expects. what this boils down to:
- Same look-n-feel as the OS.
- Multiple ways of doing the same thing. (menu, right-click context, shortcut keys, CLI)
- Lot's of help and documentation, and easy access to it. Pressing F1 should always result in relevant help. But a help button should be there too, hovering should give a short description, and preferably wizards should be available for most tasks.
- Consistence in and between different parts of your application(s). For example OK/Cancel should be in the same order everywhere. Tab-order of buttons should be logical.
- Correct analogies to "real world" examples. When creating a tool for electrical-engineers, know what tools they use and how they look.
- Don't give the user to much choices at the same time, split into multiple windows if choices get above 3-6 works for me.
- Don't bother users with stuff that can be automated.
- Minimize the amount of work a user has to do to accomplish something.
- Allow the user to configure settings, but provide sane defaults.
In short:
Just read the different UI guides that are around, and rigoriously adhere to them. Next to that try to use good methaphores and try to make life easy for your user.
- Next to that I find that pretty pictures can make your application be percieved as "more professional", but "pretty" is somewhat subjective. People think of themselves a professional and want their software to give them that impression.
A 486 DOES NOT manage mp3. I've tried on a 486DX4-100, both windows and linux. A P60 or P75 will not manage either, a P90 or P100 will, if it's the only thing it has to do.
Building LOFAR on the backside of the Moon is relatively feasible.
Having two telescopes at two positions in earth orbit would result in an even longer baseline, and therefore larger precission, but you'd need 183 days exposure time to generate a picture.
See LOFAR: http://www.lofar.org/
You're post is somewhat of a flame, but I agree to some extent, so I'll reply.
.TMP every 3 minutes. Windows will crash and fail to boot on a reset after this, if you're unlucky.
.doc format, as pervasive as it is isn't the anchor that keeps businesses on Office. I used RTF & PDF for an entire year at my previous employer to communicate and nobody even noticed or cared.
I've used the Word autosave for the first time in 1997, comming from WordPerfect 7. I had two problems with it:
- Autosaving a file larger as 720kb that's stored on a floppy corrupts the floppies entire file system.
- Autosaving a large file (20Mb) every 3 minutes as I was used to do on WP, fills up that 500Mb HD space FAST as it creates a new
My most recent experience with Word is from 2004, and some things have improved since 1997, but:
- The equation editor is still horrible.
- It will randomly loose entries from the TOC. Oh, and you have to tell it to update the TOC!
- References to other chapters/pages, links, automatic numbering, captions on figures and equations, are cumbersome at best.
Some other points I want to make:
1) I use WordPerfect. Check out http://www.wpvsword.com for a comparison.
2) MS Office killer feature is Outlook+Exchange, not Word, maybe a little Powerpoint & Excel. Most users have everything they need in Wordpad.
3) I use OpenOffice on Linux and as a speadsheet (quatro pro s****) but I find it to much an MS-office clone on many occasions.
4) The
- Try detecting a sleeping human.
- Try detecting a human behind you.
- Try detecting a human with your car (no appropriate sensors (at least mine)).
- Try detecting individual humans in a crowd.
- Try detecting a human under a tree on a sunny windy day.
- Explain to your Roomba "squishy" (if you don't have a roomba, use your PC instead) and how it can detect that.
All I'm saying is: Really try doing this, and you'll find that this is quite hard, especially if the camera is moving, lighting varies, or multiple objects are moving, partially blocking eachother.
I do not know this specific device, althoug I now have some idea, as I googled for it. I agree that in a controlled environment with a stationary camera and a constant background and lighting, you can identify moving objects.
Things get hard if the camera starts moving, there are overlapping objects or lighing varies.
How do you detect if it's moving?
Run around town with a digital camera and take 100 pictures, then tell me how I could identify ALL moving objects in those pictures, while not selecting any non moving ones. Preferibly within 100 lines of C code (or whatever) to have it simple enough to implement in your average vacuum cleaner.
IA is hard, everyone should try a year of robocup football once.
I find that a lot of this is about excercise and frequency. Only after my mother found that copy-pasty often works with the right-mouse button, did she started to remember it's other uses, as before that she maybe had a need for it once every 1-2 months, and she had just forgotten about it.
Secondly I find that having her repeat stuff a few times when I teach her new things helps a lot in her remembering it.
I've bought a PII-350/92Mb/3.5Gb/CDx24 for 25 euro's, and use it as a small linux server.
The stuff I have still lying around doesn't seem to interest anyone anymore, like a P-75, 486DX-33, 486DX4-100, 286-20, 386-40. These all work, but I only used the 486DX4-100 last year, the others haven't seen use in years, and nobody wants them anymore.
The problem with the 200-800 Mhz range stuff that is still in use is support if something breaks. The owners tend not to be the most technologically savvy. A reinstall of windows after the latest mess is often beyond their capacity. A friend of mine bought a cheap printer, after which I had to tell him that his PC doesn't have USB, so he'll have to buy a PCI USB card to get it to work.
[Quote] :-(
Early X11 programming was done using Athena.
[/Quote]
Yup, and part of my new job is maintaining those.
I think no amount of "implementing security post-invasion" could have solved the problem. I think the only solution that could have worked is giving the Iraqi themselves the tools to oust Saddam.
Essentialy what the USA has done now is telling the Iraqi people as a whole that they are incompetent and need to be patronized. Essentially the USA destroyed their selfesteem, and handles the Iraqi like children. This makes people angry and uncooperative.
Imagine brittish commando's raiding Guantanamo Bay and freeing all imprisoned there, returning them to the UK and giving them a fair and public trial there. How would you feel?
You might think that keeping those prisoners there is wrong, but I think you would be ENRAGED if the the UK would "help" you solve the situation. Now imagine millions of Iraqi with that feeling. I think you will find very few Iraqi that feel the USA "helped" them, if they would have supported the 1991 Shiit revolt, things would have been very different.
Although I'd like to agree with you, I'm not sure. I think you should consider that your opinion is the result of your upbringing in western culture. Relatively speaking these "western values" are quite recent "inventions" (last 100-200 years) and only a minority of the worlds population might agree with you. Even within the western world the definitions of freedom, democracy and human rights differs a lot.
I think a lot of the problems in USA foreign affairs stem from an attitude that their view is Right, godgiven and unnegociable. It tends to allienate people if they get talked to like they are children and "daddy knows what's best for them."
Maybe you are right, and I tend to agree with your opinion, but I think you should realise that you too are very much a product of how you were reared.
You forgot Super Hyper Ultra and "Gold"
I do not know where you live, but here in the Netherlands we get very little freakish weather. The last mayor event was in 1953.
We do have an occasional hot summer, windy autumn, wet spring or cold winter, but nothing very special. I can't recall any distinguishing weather feature of 2004, 2003 or 2002. We had some little problems with to much rain in 2000 and 2001. and cold winters in 1996, 1989, 1980 and 1976 I think.
I for one like our climate that way. This also makes it clear that the average temperature has been climbing the last 20-30 years. Dutch people interested can see more at http://www.knmi.nl/onderzk/CKO/Challenge_live/
You don't have too, it's perfectly possible to install SuSE over ftp, or even only update certain packages. This is what I did between some CD/DVD versions I bought. It's just convenience, pop in the DVD, select what packages you want, go drink some coffee, and 30-40 minutes later you have a working system, network, WiFi, right kernel (smp), etc.
:
In the past 5 years I maybe 10-15 times used an rpm that wasn't supplied by SuSE, and those installed with YaST correctly too.
Some other reasons I used CD/DVD's
- until recently I only had a modem, not DSL, so getting 7-8 CD's or 2 DVD's with software was really nice.
- At work I do not have internet access with my own system (P4 laptop!) so being able to install missing programs from DVD is still occasionally handy. (work also uses SuSE 9.1, but I am not root there, and asking the IT dep. sometimes just is to much hassle.)
I don't use it because I can't do anything else, but for convenience, __it just works__.