Recent Posts

526

Living Room / Re: The March 2011 6th Anniversary Fundraiser Has Begun! Cheer for Victory Thread

« Last post by zridling on March 01, 2011, 08:41 PM »

I love this place. Will donate the second week of March. Just finished putting LibreOffice over the top. My nips are tingly! Oh wait, that's TMI.

 

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General Software Discussion / Re: Goodbye OpenOffice, Hello LibreOffice

« Last post by zridling on March 01, 2011, 11:46 AM »

The Document Foundation raised the 50,000 Euros needed to incorporate in Germany in only eight days. Looks like they're off to a great start and here to stay. Woohoo!
http://www.pcworld.c...is_here_to_stay.html
 

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Living Room / Re: Should ebook users have any rights?

« Last post by zridling on February 28, 2011, 10:39 PM »

Just because ebooks are in a digital format doesn't mean they should be treated with the same restrictions that govern OSX or MS Windows. You can't buy those, only license them. I don't want rent-a-book, I want own-a-book in a format I can take to any device, anytime, anywhere. In other words, the same liberties I have with a paperback.

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Living Room / Should ebook users have any rights?

« Last post by zridling on February 28, 2011, 12:16 PM »

ReadWriteWeb has a better question:  Do E-Book Users Need a Bill of Rights? (Librarians Think So.)
http://www.readwrite...hts_librarians_t.php



Publishers like HarperCollins are already jumping in and setting limits to what users can and cannot do with ebooks, viz., a lot less than you ever could with paper books! This includes broad DRM schemes that tie books to specific devices, composing them in proprietary formats, limiting the number of times they can be read, limiting whether they can be shared, and if so, for how long, and whether a distributor like Amazon can remotely delete your ebooks without your approval. Put simply, ebook consumers want to be treated with respect rather than as a pre-criminal. They suggest not buying DRM books in any form, which includes Google not letting you download the ePub file of purchased books.

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Living Room / Re: Gmail accidentally resets some accounts

« Last post by zridling on February 28, 2011, 11:41 AM »

Failures and security breaks are the cloud's 800-lb. gorilla if you ask me, on top of privacy issues. I've used Gmail within a few months of its rollout (2004?) and have only been burned once: Google said that Chinese hackers took over my account and used it to spam folks. Great. Problem was, until they could re-secure it, I was locked out of my account for almost two weeks. Completely unacceptable. And it wasn't the emails that were important, it was the various backup files I had saved throughout my account -- mail, docs, calendar. No problems since, but like an amputation, I'd rather not have first-hand experience of it!

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Living Room / Re: Ten Stunning Science Visualizations

« Last post by zridling on February 28, 2011, 11:34 AM »

I actually hate the increasing gimmick of flip-chart articles that make you click-click-click through the list just so the site can garner more ad hits. But nature shows once again it is great sci-fi source material.

532

Living Room / Re: Microsoft unveils new UI prototype - Windows 8?

« Last post by zridling on February 26, 2011, 11:52 PM »

Where is Kinect? Never thought I'd see the day where we're told the mouse was unnatural and just too difficult to learn. As one commenter said: "At least they're experimenting."

533

Living Room / Re: We are doomed: IBM's Watson debuts on Jeopardy today (14 Feb 2011)

« Last post by zridling on February 25, 2011, 11:55 PM »

Watson is already a better medical doctor than I've ever been to in my life. Every doctor has always blown me off. At least Watson would give me three choices.

534

General Software Discussion / Re: Is DonationCoder too exposed of a brand?

« Last post by zridling on February 25, 2011, 12:22 PM »

What brought me here was mouser's mega review of text editors. I thought, here's a guy who really loves software. I must have read that thing ten times.

_________________
Back to an earlier line of thought, and this observation: one reason some may feel stagnation is the very state of software itself. Desktop software -- including operating systems -- are at an all-time high for maturity, stability, power, and choice. Whatever my text editor doesn't presently do, I can write a script to do within it. There's little room to argue improvement in something like Microsoft Office, for, what does it not do at this point! Same for Windows and for me, Linux. We know the Apple folks are hooked and we also know they have no influence on what Steve Jobs will do next. And I haven't even gotten to cloud software, which morphed into "apps" but are packaged and sold as "services" -- the browser is the focus for today's mass of users.

535

General Software Discussion / Re: Most Pirated Software?

« Last post by zridling on February 25, 2011, 10:20 AM »

@Bamse:
I don't see piracy in righteous, black-and-white terms except for myself and those I know and work with. I've quit two jobs -- one turned out that they wanted me in accounting! and the other was highly paid -- because my employer was pirating MS Office to his clients! Calls to Microsoft and the BSA provoked no response, so I gave my resignation and told the HR person exactly why in the brief exit interview. If someone has kleptomania with regard to software, heck, just switch to a Linux distro, add some software repositories to your update list and you'll have more software choices than time to sift through them.

On the gray side, I've had a very talented friend who was an artist and thought she had to have Photoshop. Lacking the cash, she downloaded and installed Photoshop 6 back then and used it to get a good job, and from then on got a small discount on subsequent versions through her employer. I'm betting Adobe loves her now that she's given them thousands of dollars.

Then there are the Chinese, who I consider the same as those murderous thugs robbing ships and kidnapping people from ships off the coast of Somalia. Will they be so forgiving of others when their tech gets stolen someday?

536

Living Room / Re: We are doomed: IBM's Watson debuts on Jeopardy today (14 Feb 2011)

« Last post by zridling on February 25, 2011, 10:03 AM »

Deozaan, what a brilliant graphic! I wish they had done that in the show.

537

Living Room / Re: [Humor]: An update is available for your computer!

« Last post by zridling on February 25, 2011, 10:00 AM »

Josh, I run openSUSE 11.3 and I've had two updates in the past 7 days, both of them security without having to logout; system runs fine. ubuntu I don't know. Are you running it as a server or do you have 65 active repositories? (I have 14, including Chrome beta.) Also, I've only had to reboot twice in the past year, once was for a kernel upgrade. Your exaggerations make me wonder.
 

538

Living Room / [Humor]: An update is available for your computer!

« Last post by zridling on February 24, 2011, 11:48 PM »

http://yfrog.com/gzxcwzbj

539

General Software Discussion / Re: 20 New User Misconceptions about Linux

« Last post by zridling on February 24, 2011, 11:31 PM »

It's a lot like some hardcore Linux users. They are so closed to converting users into Linux. Just a little bit more attitude towards gratis than closed club house preacher and RTFM could have easily been WWWTM (What's wrong with this manual?) ...and Linux users would have an easier time converting people just a tiny bit and making up for all the shortcomings of Linux but only a few do that and we get this circular argument where valid arguments become cliche arguments just because the source of the concept becomes hijacked by the wrong fundamentalists on a cult level.

-Paul Keith (February 24, 2011, 01:51 PM)

Where are these mythical, horrible Linux people you speak of? Maybe that's "misconception #21." The only time I've seen vitriol is in Linux usenet groups that Microsoft employees regularly troll and spam. They are much harder on each other than outsiders. And if I need not use the command line anymore, there's no need for a effing manual. Otherwise, in five years I've not encountered the hardcore, closed, cult, preachy, fundamentalists.

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General Software Discussion / Re: Ubuntu: Where Did the Love Go?

« Last post by zridling on February 24, 2011, 11:06 PM »

Ubuntu did experiments from release 7.10 onwards i guess. Apple like window theme skin was one experiment they still continue to do.

-mahesh2k (February 24, 2011, 05:21 AM)

That's merely a downloadable theme that's part of GNOME or KDE. KDE has them for OSX, Vista, XP, Win7, in case users either like those schemes or want to ease the transition from Windows/Apple. I consulted in a marketing office that ran Fedora/KDE but used an Apple theme that had Apple's dock.

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General Software Discussion / Re: Is DonationCoder too exposed of a brand?

« Last post by zridling on February 24, 2011, 10:56 PM »

Paul, do me a favor and summarize your original post. Like housetier, I'm having trouble understanding what point you're trying to make. Here's what I take from it.

1. Donationcoder.com is vaguely branded and amorphous.
2. Why are people here at DC -- the forum? (me), the donationware? the contests? Choose one?
3. Donationware is an unprofitable and unsustainable model. Instead, let's charge $1/download, standardized by mobile apps.
4. Devs get little or poor feedback from donationware. Better to charge a set fee and this will change.
__________________________
2 cents:
1. Donationcoder.com is vaguely branded and amorphous.
Yes, this is recognized. Creating a front page in a paper.li (http://paper.li/) style (http://paper.li/MichaelWuensch/android) might help rein in the boards, but it would have to be automated created/updated and linked to forum posts. Not aware that any forum has ever done this.

2. Why are people here at DC -- the forum? (me), the donationware? the contests? Choose one?
All of the above. A better question might be: What brings them back to DC?

3. Donationware is an unprofitable and unsustainable model. Instead, let's charge $1/download, standardized by mobile apps.
No trial? If I try six apps and keep none, I'm out the money. Okay, still not that much. How about first time as trial, all subsequent downloads and upgrades cost $1?

4. Devs get little or poor feedback from donationware. Better to charge a set fee and this will change.
This is interesting if true. If I'm buying it, I might expect more. If I'm donating, I should be happy with what I got. Is that the thinking? (I don't know. This is primarily a Windows shop, so I can't use the software here.)

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Living Room / Ten Stunning Science Visualizations

« Last post by zridling on February 24, 2011, 07:16 AM »

From Wired Science: 10 Stunning Science Visualizations
http://www.wired.com...ualizations-gallery/



Wow.

543

Developer's Corner / Re: Defending Against Frivolous Software Patent Infringement Claims - Nice Talk

« Last post by zridling on February 24, 2011, 05:22 AM »

Glyn Moody has spent years talking about and lobbying against the patent/trademark/copyright mess. It kills innovation. He blogs, tweets, and writes for the trades.
http://opendotdotdot...gspot.com/index.html

544

General Software Discussion / Re: Ubuntu: Where Did the Love Go?

« Last post by zridling on February 24, 2011, 05:14 AM »

Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols confirms 40hz and weighs in with other distros that fell out of favor and have come back:
http://www.zdnet.com...ng-ubuntu-linux/8310

For years there was a site called Boycott Novell, now called Techrights, which pounded on Novell for its Microsoft partnership and related issues. Back in 2004, I wrote about why Linux users hated Red Hat. The reason then was that many Red Hat Linux users felt betrayed by Red Hat leaving its personal distribution behind for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). I could go on and on, but you get the point. FOSS fans tend to be passionate. They don’t dislike something, they “hate” it. They don’t like anything, they “love” it. To which I can only say, “It’s just software people!” Without Ubuntu I know many people who never in a million years would have touched Linux. It was too strange, too techie. Ubuntu has made it possible for pretty much anyone to use Linux.

_______________________
Q: How can a man have a hyphenated name? I see male athletes now putting hyphenated names (Smith-Jones) on their jerseys. Someone please unstupify me.

545

General Software Discussion / Re: Ubuntu: Where Did the Love Go?

« Last post by zridling on February 24, 2011, 04:38 AM »

"Most" people confuse -- and stay confused -- Linux desktop environments with Linux itself. KDE and GNOME are the two most popular environments for the big distros and provide intuitive, attractive desktops. They offer a large array of editors, multimedia software, games, administration programs, network tools, educational applications, utilities, artwork, web development tools, etc. These two desktops focus more on providing users with a sleek environment with all the bells and whistles featured in Win7. But there are many others built for low spec, netbooks, or older machines such as Xfce, ROX, and LXDE among others.

With version 6.04, Ubuntu was notable for putting GNOME together in an attractive and coherent way for first time users. And even as simple as it was five years ago, someone like me had to unlearn several things that Microsoft had burned in my brain, e.g., software installation -- "You mean it updates all my programs at the same time?!" My biggest attraction to openSUSE has been its advanced integration of KDE. It's been a lot of fun and the progress in just the last two years has been impressive.

546

General Software Discussion / Re: Most Pirated Software?

« Last post by zridling on February 24, 2011, 04:09 AM »

@xtabber: thanks, corrected.
@Josh: It doesn't allow for a write-in, but let us know which one/s are more often pirated beyond this list.

PS: I'd love to know how much money Microsoft has lost to Chinese pirates in the past 13 years. I have colleagues who regularly return from China and each time they're carrying a suitcase full of movie and software DVDs they buy for $1-$2. I just shake my head: "Dude, just use Linux if you think this is the only way you can get this sofware."

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General Software Discussion / Most Pirated Software?

« Last post by zridling on February 23, 2011, 04:43 PM »

Two votes are available if you need it. I have no idea which is the most pirated, just curious about what DC'ers perceive. This list does not include games, of course. I figure Call of Duty wins that one every year.

548

General Software Discussion / Re: 20 New User Misconceptions about Linux

« Last post by zridling on February 23, 2011, 02:35 PM »

@Paul: Thanks for the laugh. That made me spew my chocolate milk. 

549

General Software Discussion / Re: Google Chrome continues to ruin standard user interface

« Last post by zridling on February 23, 2011, 02:31 PM »

I don't see the utility of the "Switch-to-Tab" extension when Ctrl+Tab does the same (or a mouse-over). Guess I'm not getting it. To me the gorilla in the browser room is the memory load of multiple extensions. Just like Firefox, by the time you get 6-12 of your favs loaded, suddenly the browser is a hog.

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General Software Discussion / Re: Ubuntu: Where Did the Love Go?

« Last post by zridling on February 23, 2011, 02:21 PM »

The first distro I ever successfully loaded was Softlanding's SLS back somewhere around 1994.

-40hz (February 22, 2011, 06:49 PM)

Holy smokes, you were in on it at the beginning! And I thought I was daring in '98 and then again in'01. Took me until '06 to make the full switch.
_____________________
I've said many times here, I think the problem with Ubuntu is the failure to address bugs that carry over from one version to another. And I do agree with the author that Shuttleworth has never really delivered on the 'promise' of his big talk. Now if Mint were his, then he might have something to brag about.