Recent Posts

2126

General Software Discussion / Re: The Next Leap for Linux

« Last post by zridling on October 17, 2007, 04:58 PM »

Semi-related is David Pogue's article on OLPC. And whatever you do, don't miss Pogue's video — it's great.

Unless Microsoft is going to start giving away Windows, then more than a billion new computer users around the globe will be using GNU/Linux. Microsoft won't lose it dominance, but at least it will no longer be first-choice by default.

2127

General Software Discussion / The Next Leap for Linux

« Last post by zridling on October 17, 2007, 04:50 PM »

I missed this great Larry Magid article in the New York Times a couple of weeks ago, on how more barriers are falling for GNU/Linux, and tells of Linux's new place of prominence, despite its still small share of the market.



LINUX runs the Google servers that manage billions of searches each day. It also runs the TiVo digital video recorder, the Motorola Razr cellphone and countless other electronic devices. But why would anyone want to use Linux, an open-source operating system, to run a PC? “For a lot of people,” said Jim Zemlin, executive director of the Linux Foundation, “Linux is a political idea — an idea of freedom. They don’t want to be tied to Microsoft or Apple. They want choice. To them it’s a greater cause.” That’s not the most compelling reason for consumers. There is the price: Linux is free, or nearly so. Unlike Windows from Microsoft and OS X from Apple, Linux is not owned, updated or controlled by a single company. Thousands of developers around the world work on Linux, making improvements and issuing new versions several times a year. Because the core Linux software is open source, these developers have the right — some would say responsibility — to borrow from one another’s work, constantly looking for enhancements.

But Linux has always had a reputation of being difficult to install and daunting to use. Most of the popular Windows and Macintosh programs cannot be used on it, and hand-holding — not that you get that much of it with Windows — is rare. But those reasons for rejecting Linux are disappearing..... Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux, acknowledged that "there are a few dark spots but they really tend to be fairly rare, and in practice quite often the biggest hurdle is simply that Linux mostly doesn’t come preinstalled and set up for you."

2128

Living Room / Ten Funny Quotes by Linus Torvalds

« Last post by zridling on October 15, 2007, 03:45 PM »

Ten Funny Quotes by Linus Torvalds, among them:

• "How should I know if it works? That's what beta testers are for. I only coded it." (somewhere in a posting)
  
• "I'm an idiot.. At least this one [bug] took about 5 minutes to find." (in response to a bug report)
  
• "If you want to travel around the world and be invited to speak at a lot of different places, just write a Unix operating system." (source unknown)
  
• "Really, I'm not out to destroy Microsoft. That would just be a completely unintentional side effect." (New York Times interview)
  
• "An infinite number of monkeys typing into GNU emacs would never make a good program." (source unknown)

This toon has absolutely nothing to do with the post. However, it is funny.

2129

DC Website Help and Extras / Bring back (volunteer) blogs?

« Last post by zridling on October 15, 2007, 03:27 PM »

Having been on hiatus from DC for several months (again), when I returned and reviewed the general software and living room sections, it's as if the conversation was narrowing. What I've always loved about DC is its expansiveness, and comments from a wide variety of perspectives. I miss the bloggers, and perhaps we could figure a way to generate them again?

Yes, people have obligations that distract from consistently blogging — ask any blogger — but it would spark broader participation in the forum, I believe. Perhaps have an 'Open' blog section or something. Just an idea.

2130

General Software Discussion / Re: Should a software app be allowed to change the user's settings?

« Last post by zridling on October 15, 2007, 03:16 PM »

Adrian Hughes weighs in with What’s really broken with Windows Update — Trust:

See, here’s the problem. To feel comfortable with having an open channel that allows your OS to be updated at the whim of a third party (even/especially* Microsoft … * delete as applicable) requires that the user trusts the third party not to screw around with the system in question. This means no fiddling on the sly, being clear about what the updates do and trying not to release updates that hose systems. While any and all updates have the potential to hose a system, there’s no excuse for hiding the true nature of updates and absolutely no excuse for pushing sneaky updates down the tubes.

2131

General Software Discussion / Re: What are Your Top Tech/Software Podcasts?

« Last post by zridling on October 12, 2007, 11:16 PM »

Renegade, I think you've got the field covered. Maybe throw in some Howard Stern, Riley Martin, or something?

2132

General Software Discussion / Re: What are your top 10 Tech/Software Blogs?

« Last post by zridling on October 12, 2007, 10:29 PM »

mouser, I'm with you on this one — here's nine, since you covered a couple of my favs.
________________________________________________
OSNews — Reports on every OS out there, and sadly, all the damn lawsuits.
Bob Sutor — Bob's Open Blog covers a lot of interesting ground, and not always on software.
Rob Weir — Where logic and tech meet, and tech doesn't always come out ahead.
Steven Sinofsky — His I Started Something Windows blog is funny and pretty classy.
Groklaw (Pamela Jones) — Giving Microsoft and other corporations pure hell, and jeez, the woman is superhuman-smart.
NixCraft — GNU/Linux administration and tips. I learn something new every day.
Grand Stream Dreams — An incredible comparative software blog that does a lot of heavy lifting to find the best apps.
Flow|State UI — A blog about UI design; moreover, what not to do.
Adam Eiberger — His Inkwell hardware blog isn't just techcrunch, he takes you behind the scenes on what motivates newer/better everything.

2133

General Software Discussion / Should a software app be allowed to change the user's settings?

« Last post by zridling on October 12, 2007, 09:50 PM »

[via Mary Jo Foley]:
Windows Update seems to be automatically changing user settings (again).  —  After Patch Tuesday this week (October 9), some Windows Vista users noticed something strange: Windows Update had changed their Automatic Update settings and rebooted their machines automatically without their consent.
________________________________________________
Microsoft responded with a "Who me?" statement Friday. This kind of behavior — or rather not fixing it — is what drove me away from Vista. Is there any circumstance where a software application or company should change a user's settings and reboot without their approval? This ain't right. I don't mind applying the changes, but it seems half the time that we find a few days after updating that the latest Windows Update broke something else.

2134

Living Room / Re: The worst thing about Macs

« Last post by zridling on October 11, 2007, 04:41 PM »

I'm finally becoming agnostic toward operating systems. At this point, I just want it to run things and leave me alone.

While I personally don't like Vista, it's fine if you run it on a powerhouse system; XP-SP3 will be wonderful by all accounts; Mac, bleh: my mac friends and relatives treat their computers as toys, not tools — they can't wait to get the next new shiny thing Steve Jobs rolls out. Also, if Apple's so great, why do they spend an inordinate amount of time and money telling us how crappy their competition is? Can you imagine going to buy a Mini Cooper and the dealer spending 30 minutes telling you how terrible BMW's are? Finally, I've had a lot of fun in the past year implementing GNU/Linux as my main OS. It runs all but four of my favorite apps from Windows (3 of which I can run under WINE if I choose), and I'm no longer wasting energy being mad at Microsoft 23 hours a day.

2135

General Software Discussion / Re: Have any web-based applications replaced desktop apps for you?

« Last post by zridling on October 11, 2007, 04:30 PM »

Crispy makes a good point, and Zoho will soon launch a local version of their client software as Thinkfree already has. Seems the best of both worlds. My biggest gripe with online apps is the most basic one: unless there's a local version installed, then my computer is virtually dead without a connection.

2136

General Software Discussion / Have any web-based applications replaced desktop apps for you?

« Last post by zridling on October 10, 2007, 08:39 PM »

If so, which ones?

Gmail has long replaced my email client, since it's good enough. And Zoho Apps have saved me a small fortune in the past 15 months. I also play a lot of online chess and use online PGN viewers for studying games.



The two great advantages to web-based apps is online storage/backup and hey, it's OS-independent, which means they could care less whether I'm with XP, GNU/Linux, or that other one.

2137

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: 20$ off XYplorer and lifetime license

« Last post by zridling on October 10, 2007, 08:27 PM »

wraith makes the open source case! I really like the additional licensing option for XYplorer, and once again, it's a first. XYplorer is the first application to retain its Lifetime License option rather than drop it solely in favor of version upgrades. I love it. Use whatever file manager you like, but if you haven't checked out XYplorer 6.40, you're cheating yourself, I promise.

2138

Living Room / Re: Linux Genuine Advantage™

« Last post by zridling on October 05, 2007, 04:02 AM »

Now if Fedora will shut down my computer remotely, and then deny that Red Hat had anything to do with it.... hey wait, that will NEVER happen — woohoo!!

Thanks for the laugh, mitzevo!

2139

General Software Discussion / Re: What linux needs?

« Last post by zridling on October 04, 2007, 02:43 AM »

Although I don't share mouser's frustrations with GNU/Linux, perhaps it's because I've waded into it gradually over the past two years, and now there's only a couple of tasks that I reserve for a Windows machine in the background. At this point in my life, I'm much more agnostic toward operating systems than I ever was before. Perhaps it's because Vista is a Pandora's Box that lured lifelong Windows users like myself to try another OS and be surprised at how good it was. Now onto the question, which is only half of what I wanted to post in my little 'making the switch' series as a final post.
________________________________________________
WHAT I DON'T LIKE ABOUT GNU/LINUX:
(01) Font rendering in some distros. For some weird reason, font rendering in the licensed distros are better in my experience, though they shouldn't be. I spend almost all my computer time reading and looking at type. The OS with the best fonts wins with the average user. Typographers don't work for free, and until someone spends a lot of money, GNU/Linux fonts will never be "as good" as those in the latest Windows version.

(02) Switching takes time (like anything else, immersion), and it took a while to find all the apps that could acceptably substitute for their Windows counterparts. That said, many Windows apps already have Linux versions, such as Nero, Opera, Filezilla, and so on. For other alternatives, visit osalt.com.

(03) Application availability. Windows has it, GNU/Linux doesn't. But it would be a smart thing for more vendors to make their mark on Linux.  File management apps suck. Period.

(04) Text Editors are too basic, or geared directly for programming. UltraEdit has announced a Linux version beta for late '08. Not soon enough.

(05) Most people don't like the lack of gaming and Photoshop, Autocad, and no enterprise-level accounting applications. It's not that GNU/Linux can't do certain things, it's just that those specific tasks were not written to be run under the Linux kernel, but written specifically for Win32.

(06) There should be a GUI for everything. Although it's more efficient, lots of newbies don't want to go to the command line. Still, I rarely ever open a command line. Really.

(07) I've come to dislike dual-booting and have opted for separate machines. It's easier to tear down and rebuild, experiment, and I tend to use one or the other for various background tasks, such as usenet downloading, gaming, or burning media. Dual-booting seemed like having both cable and satellite TV just to get a few extra channels the other does not provide.

(08) Linux has made incremental headway on the desktop for one obvious reason: it has no significant commercial backer on the desktop. The open source approach to software development usually produces products built by software developers for software developers, and often for specific tasks. As more apps become RIA (rich internet application/s), this becomes more irrelevant each day.

(09) As so many in this thread have noted, right now, ISVs [independent software vendors] have to certify their applications on a distribution-by-distribution approach. As such, Linux distros are competing on application availability now and not quality of code. GNU/Linux needs to somehow standardize the ISV certification process. The industry has a responsibility to have a program to make it easier for ISVs. Although it has LSB (Linux Standard Base), which is great, but more is needed for ISV certification.

(10) Finally, the whole "distro" scene is part and parcel of the nature of GNU/Linux which centers around ultimate customizability. I've installed and used over 40 distros in the past two years, and most of them aren't for me or my machine. But each distro is created for a specific philosophy — ease of use, speed with an old machine, multimedia, portability, research, video editing, mimicking Windows or OS X, etc. Beyond the simplicity of obtaining applications, this is often the most confusing element of switching to GNU/Linux. However, if you want a more cohesive and enclosed Windows-like entry experience into GNU/Linux, check out distros like SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop or Zenwalk or Fedora.

________________________________________________
PS: Sorry I'm late to the topic, but I've been nursing a sick wife for the past six weeks. She's all better now.

2140

General Software Discussion / Re: ReNamer: The best freeware file renamer? (yes says cybernetnews.com)

« Last post by zridling on September 13, 2007, 06:38 AM »

I have to agree with a few others that Bulk Rename Utility is both the most powerful and easiest to use (for me). The UI is cluttered for good reason — it's all right there in front of you, and once you stare at it for a couple of minutes it makes sense (each function is labeled and numbered). No tabs, no backdoors, no subdialogs, just one level, and BAM! you're done. Makes it easy to save any renaming profile, and it's donationware, comes in Unicode, and 64-bit versions.

I considered and then rejected doing a meta-review of renamers a year ago because there were so many, several of them very, very good, and most of them useful. But their UI's varied so much among each other, I soon saw it became a matter of personal preference; often, simply what you were accustomed to using. Best thing is, the high-end file managers like XYplorer and DOpus include extensive renaming abilities if you don't use one of these utilities.

2141

Living Room / Re: Acceptable expletives

« Last post by zridling on August 31, 2007, 05:35 AM »

My dad was a master cusser, especially when working on the car. Man, he could conjure up a shitstorm of words that was music to my pre-teen ears. I was indelibly marked (not marred) by his explosive reactions to anything that didn't work right. And if he misplaced or lost a tool, holy crap, steer clear. I see cussing as spice, as long as it's not meaningless. I hear people preface every other sentence with stupid qualifiers as "like," "actually," and "truthfully." Whaa? Just SAY it, and stop telling me you're going to tell me the truth.

Traditional British cuss words such as 'wanker,' 'bugger,' 'bloody,' and such have no real equivalents on the American side. But here's a few that do.

2142

Living Room / Re: Respectance - a site for remembering people you lost

« Last post by zridling on August 14, 2007, 07:43 AM »

Got a brother-in-law who died long before his time at age 32. His two young kids could use a site like this. Thanks for sharing.

2143

Living Room / Re: I have to confess

« Last post by zridling on August 14, 2007, 07:38 AM »

All right man, thanks for sharing the good news!

2144

Living Room / Re: LV here I come!

« Last post by zridling on August 14, 2007, 07:25 AM »

(1) One of the most exciting cities on the planet. If Tom Jones is in town, KILL SOMEONE FOR A TICKET! (Yes, yes, the man is a GOD!!) If you have to, that is.

(2) Otherwise, do the casino thing for ten minutes (they're the most boring part, when you consider the rest), then (3) head to see the real Las Vegas, the nude side. You won't forget it, I promise. Also, (4) don't stay at the most expensive hotel — you won't be spending hardly any time in your room! This time of year, you're going to spontaneously combust when you walk outside. So (5) buy an umbrella if you do any daytime walking or pool lounging. Better, (6) buy a monorail ticket for the week (you can thank me later). And (7) if you got the extra cash, take a helicopter tour of the Grand Canyon, about 125 miles east. Just google 'grand canyon las vegas' and buy a ticket in advance. There are also lots of other National Parks near Las Vegas if you have a day to get out of town. (8) Finally, build in flight delay time going and coming. American airline travel has been worse this year than any other in history.



Tom Jones, August 14-15 and September 20-26, MGM Grand's Hollywood Theater!
Tom Jones' Tour Schedule

2145

General Software Discussion / Re: Linux or Mac: Which is the better alternative to Windows?

« Last post by zridling on August 14, 2007, 07:10 AM »

At least Apple recognizes the value of virtualization. Microsoft either shuts it down on most Vista versions or makes it difficult. The more Microsoft wants to lock-me-in, the more desperate I become to break free. I bought your software, now leave me alone!

2146

Living Room / Smashing Magazine's Best of July links — holy freakin' moly

« Last post by zridling on August 14, 2007, 07:07 AM »

Here's a Best of July list you won't find just anywhere by Smashing Magazine, centered primarily around graphics, web design, and cool web stuff. This article alone on Data Visualization Approaches is enough to get you started.

2147

General Software Discussion / Google now includes StarOffice as a free download!

« Last post by zridling on August 14, 2007, 04:20 AM »

Free software offered by Google under Google Pack just got bigger with the addition of StarOffice.



According to PCPro on Monday:
Not content with taking on Microsoft Office with its online Docs and Spreadsheet service, Google has now included StarOffice in its free download suite. StarOffice is, curiously, the paid-for cousin of the open-source OpenOffice, which has been selling for around $70 on Sun's website. StarOffice includes extra features, fonts and templates over OpenOffice. Sun also offers customers three free support calls during the first 60 days of ownership. "Google Pack includes a free, non-expiring version of StarOffice 8 that includes all the major functionality of the paid consumer version, except for the Adabas D database," says a Google spokesperson. "We believe that users will benefit from access to a free, full-featured office suite for the desktop." ...However, it poses yet another problem for Microsoft, which is struggling to match Google's vast range of popular online services.

2148

General Software Discussion / Re: Linux or Mac: Which is the better alternative to Windows?

« Last post by zridling on August 11, 2007, 05:56 PM »

[nontroppo]: I *love* Apple's superior typography support....
________________________________________________
One of the big negatives I've found to many GNU/Linux distros is font rendering. Red Hat's Fedora 7 looks great; Ubuntu and its variants do not on my systems. Typographers cost a fortune for good reason. I spend 95% of my computer time reading in some fashion — web pages, code, menus, dialogs, etc. — and to see how big a difference this makes, just turn off ClearTweak for a day. Yet, with two of the "licensed" distros I've used like SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop, the fonts are just as clear as those in Vista. I figure they pay to license something, even though the fonts are the same.

Gothi[c], for the average user (repeat that three times), I presume they could care less about open source, if they even know what FLOSS is. I figured they say, just give me a reliable system that's reasonably fast and they're happy. The OS should be transparent, but it's not. You, on the other hand, are probably not just looking for FLOSS software, but the best technology, best coding, best managed, etc.

I use my neighbor as an example. He just wants to know, "Can I do this, that, and that?" Yes? Then he's happy, whether it's Apple, Microsoft, or PCLinuxOS. I can't argue with that, although I can ask him questions and offer alternatives.

2149

Living Room / Don't copy that floppy! (old times)

« Last post by zridling on August 11, 2007, 12:34 AM »

Via T. Colin Dodd on Red Hat's Truth Happens blog:

The 'Don't copy that floppy' rap song that's part of this video is longer than Led Zepp's Stairway to Heaven!



Brings back lots of memories if you can stand to sit through it all.

2150

Living Room / Re: 2007 Worst dialog nominee, spelling category

« Last post by zridling on August 10, 2007, 10:29 PM »

You know the saying: it's no shame to make a mistake, just a shame not to correct it.