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Recent Posts

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801
Living Room / Re: Weekend moment of zen -- Caturday!
« Last post by zridling on June 25, 2010, 06:19 PM »
I thought tomorrow was Caturday...

Every day is Caturday at my house. (Not me in the photo, of course.)
802
Living Room / Re: The internet: Everything you ever need to know
« Last post by zridling on June 25, 2010, 08:07 AM »
Porn also sped up the popularization of VHS back in the day, bringing privacy to viewing rather than going into adult theaters or the back rooms of adult bookstores (don't ask me how I know). If Mom ever asks how do you make money from the internet, well, there's always porn.
803
Living Room / Weekend moment of zen -- Caturday!
« Last post by zridling on June 25, 2010, 06:43 AM »
byz.jpg

I feel better now.
804
What rgdot said. Anyone counting on Microsoft going down in the next 10-15 years doesn't know Microsoft. What the company needs is for Ballmer to retire and move on to the next great thing. While there are billions to be had, an OS and an office suite is only going to take you so far in a landscape where Linux and Google Docs/Zoho, etc. are "good enough" for many. Losing low end users to online apps and high cost users to Apple is leaving Microsoft squeezed for now.
805
Living Room / Re: The internet: Everything you ever need to know
« Last post by zridling on June 24, 2010, 08:50 PM »
One of the best articles of the year, indeed. Thanks for posting. This made me slow down:

On the other (Orwellian) hand, the internet is the nearest thing to a perfect surveillance machine the world has ever seen. Everything you do on the net is logged – every email you send, every website you visit, every file you download, every search you conduct is recorded and filed somewhere, either on the servers of your internet service provider or of the cloud services that you access. As a tool for a totalitarian government interested in the behaviour, social activities and thought-process of its subjects, the internet is just about perfect.
_________________________________
When I watch 70s cop/detective dramas, I ask: how did cops catch crooks in the days before ubiquitous phone/GPS, surveillance, DNA, and other technologies? (This is why most of the great serial murderers were from earlier times, I suppose.)
806
Living Room / Re: I am so very very sick of copyright issues.
« Last post by zridling on June 24, 2010, 08:42 PM »
Glyn Moody has dealt with these issues for quite a while now. Great blogger:

http://opendotdotdot...gspot.com/index.html
http://twitter.com/glynmoody
807
Living Room / Re: Is Apple a victim of sour grapes?
« Last post by zridling on June 24, 2010, 08:40 PM »
And yet their users are proud to take the abuse. Stockholm Syndrome, anyone?  ;D
808
Living Room / Re: I am so very very sick of copyright issues.
« Last post by zridling on June 24, 2010, 09:23 AM »
SuperboyAC is right.

Problem is, now that corporations dominate large parts of the internet landscape, they see everything in terms of MAKING MONEY, not of sharing. They spend billions lobbying governments around the world for extremely restrictive legislation like DMCA, ACTA, ridiculously extended copyright lifetimes, and so on. If you're not PAYING to watch their "content," then you're stealing it (according to them).

Let your government know someway somehow that you want an open web, open content, open standards, open data, open source,.... and keep letting them know.
809
Living Room / Is Apple a victim of sour grapes?
« Last post by zridling on June 24, 2010, 09:13 AM »
Headline in Thursday's New York Times:

apple-a-victim01.png

Hilarious.
http://www.nytimes.c...hnology/24apple.html
810
The Register to the rescue with a guide to picking a Linux distro:

One of the common complaints about Linux is that there are too many different editions (or “distributions”) to choose from, and only a hardcore nerd can tell them apart.... Well, it's true, but you can safely ignore 99 per cent of them. Welcome to The Register's guaranteed impartiality-free guide. Tomorrow, we'll tell you how to get them, burn them and set them up to dual-boot with Windows and on Wednesday there will be a guide to tweaking your new setup and getting it ready for use.

__________________________
My fav, of course:
OpenSuSE-Red.png
though the Register trashes it.
811
General Software Discussion / Re: OpenOffice at the crossroads
« Last post by zridling on June 21, 2010, 06:41 PM »
And my friends wonder why I'm still a text editor guy for 90% of everything I write! Couldn't have said it better, 40hz.

The problem is -- as we all know -- is that projects as complex and layered as an office suite or a Photoshop-level graphics solution require vast and long-term commitments from someone/anyone who's going to pay developers to stick with them for years. A Mozilla-like foundation and its main funding source could perhaps work, but even then, you'd need a lot of patience.
812
General Software Discussion / Re: This Mac devotee is moving to Linux
« Last post by zridling on June 21, 2010, 06:32 PM »
The 1-2% user base of Linux (larger outside the US) is just not enough to attract a commercial graphics vendor. It got a text editor to come along in UltraEdit, but Carol speaks for many a Windows user in her fondness for and skill with Photoshop.

Women don't care much about if an operating system is "free" or in a "walled garden", but if the system is easy to understand how to use. And this is exactly where Linux is failing BIG time. My point is, that Linux never will be a major system until women easily can operate it.

Women, really? I'd say the youngest and the oldest among us. Curt, from installation to software management to disc burning and to security, it doesn't get much easier than today's KDE. If it were, I would have never bothered since I don't have the time I once had to futz with my system. If you combine the fact that more people than ever spend their online time among social and SaaS sites, the Apple user Dan Gillmore just doesn't want to be walled into buying Apple products in perpetuity.

The very way a Linux works, proves beyond reasonable doubt that it is a system written by male geeks, for male geeks.

Why yes, yes it was. Linus Torvalds, et al. I'm sure you know the story by now, and much of that legacy was embedded by Unix-think.

Nowadays the authors are told Linux must be easier to operate, so some of the Linux software authors try adding userfriendly procedures, but so far only "some" & "try". There are still so many details under the surface where a request for help will result in an answer including geek talk impossible to understand for normal people (man or woman!).

I'm curious, can you give an example? I presume you're talking about the BASH shell, where you might enter commands like this or this? If so, I haven't opened a shell window in a long time on my openSUSE system. I could, but like Windows, there's rarely a need for the common user under KDE.
813
General Software Discussion / OpenOffice at the crossroads
« Last post by zridling on June 21, 2010, 10:39 AM »
Developer Michael Meeks takes a look at the myriad licenses and bad code among the various versions of OpenOffice floating around.

openoffice200-7234852c47cbb723.png

Meeks contends that Novell and IBM have done admirable jobs at making things better, with Sun (now Oracle) controlling the copyrights, developers will only go so far to improve it. Interesting backstory to say the least on why OpenOffice isn't doing better than it is.

OpenOffice.org is a flagship for free and open source software, released under free software licenses and achieving downloads in the hundreds of millions. OO.o is a success by most measurements, but there have long been murmurings of discontent among developers resulting in complaints of "non-responsiveness and lack of leadership" on the project. The argument is not that the project is a failure, but that OpenOffice.org could be so much more, given a less top down approach to project management and a looser rein on developers' ability to get involved.

The code of OpenOffice.org is released under free software licenses but the copyright for all internal and third party contributions are assigned to Oracle/Sun, and the OpenOffice development team within Oracle/Sun dictates the rate of progress.... The most vocal critic of the process has been Novell employee and long time GNOME and OO.o developer, Michael Meeks. Meeks argues that copyright assignment discourages external contributions, and that over zealous control of the project inhibits developer initiative.... Meeks has long contended that OpenOffice.org has failed to attract and keep individual and corporate developers due to "a half-hearted open-source strategy that is not truly 'Open'" and lacks transparency. This has inhibited the potential of OO.o to be "even greater" than it already is.
814
General Software Discussion / This Mac devotee is moving to Linux
« Last post by zridling on June 21, 2010, 10:32 AM »
Dan Gillmore says enough is enough and he's checking out of Steve Jobs' pleasure prison:

I realize that I won't persuade the many people who prefer to live in gated communities, believing they can leave any time they wish. But switching costs will only get higher over time for those who choose to live in the Apple ecosystem.

mac-to-linux.jpg

That leaves, for practical purposes, Linux, which is freely available and not controlled by any one company. Linux is anything but a walled garden. It's almost nothing but choice, with all the good and bad that comes with it. Linux comes in all kinds of flavors. Volunteers around the world, who value freedom of choice and the ability to modify what they use, have created an ecosystem of their own -- software based on the concept that you, not Steve Jobs or Steve Ballmer, should have control over what you own.
815
@40hz:
Doesn't IBM already do this with their cloud services? They've also got a specific version designed for campuses. Bob Sutor talks about this a lot.
___________________
@Paul:
Never made the jump to Zoho full time. I do more on Google Docs (and text editor) for convenience more than anything. If I'm not buying printer ink, then I can afford a better brand of hot dog! For spreadsheets, I use OpenOffice Calc.
816
I find that Ubuntu and Suse are nicer to use than OS X, so in some ways, I think that coolness factor could rub off there. It seems to me that there's a lack of ability for Linux distros to communicate that coolness though. I suppose that is Apple's magic where they make themselves cool.

Well, short of a $150mn worth of marketing here, $80mn there, and the entire US media absolutely gaga over everything Apple, why would they bother to notice? I can make my KDE (on openSUSE) mimic either Win7 or OSX with themes, but I don't. As you say, I think the defaults are even better. But after you've paid all that money, you better like what you bought from Apple! (Or you're going to feel mighty stupid.)
817
The sad part though is that despite what zridling said in the beginning, we're still talking about OpenOffice instead of the likes of Zoho or Google Docs.... In the end, OpenOffice has made it's mark. The question remains when the Fat Office suite will sing it's way to a sexier Fox.

Perhaps it depends on the industry on whether the need for heavy desktop suites will thrive, no doubt for spreadsheet use at the least. But since most business "documents" (I use that term very loosely) are simple communications, i.e., simple shared documents, you'll likely see the likes of Google Docs, Zoho, and Office Live rise as mobile/tablet computing becomes more prevalent. Placing these "simple" documents online using HTML bypasses the need for proprietary formats, file conversion, and the cost of a proprietary program to read and access them.
818
Engadget has a photo gallery of the latest Droid phone. If this stuff keeps up, I might have to spring for one of these in the next few years, or months.

motoroladroidx17.jpg

And I don't talk on the phone! I just use my basic cellphone to call a business and ask their hours, and that's about it. I better rethink this.
819
Fantastic, superboy!
820
Wow, thanks for the response guys, especially Josh, Darwin, CWuestefeld, et al.

Maybe someone can take some time later this year and write a new Word Processor mega-review, or, an extended review of Office 2010.
821
It's really the massive installed user base of MS Office. To a lesser extent, you might say Google Docs or Zoho, which some businesses are switching to the software for its lower costs and fewer administrative, deployment, and licensing hassles. Odd thing is, if Microsoft beefed up Office Live, it would be a boon for SOHO users.

Microsoft-Office-2010.jpg

That said, if you're an MS Office 2007 user, will you be upgrading to the 2010 (twenty-ten!) version? And if so, which features are compelling enough to do so?
822
Living Room / Re: 20 years later, the movie "Total Recall" still kicks butt
« Last post by zridling on June 14, 2010, 01:31 AM »
Cherry 2000 made me think of some others I can't pen down right now. As for cheesy sci-fi/doomsday movies I can't resist, here's a few:

Soylent Green (1973)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0070723/

Coneheads (1993) -- highly underrated!
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106598/

Hell Comes to Frogtown (1988) -- so, so bad it's good
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093171/

They Live (1988)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096256/

Galaxy Quest (1999)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0177789/

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2005) -- not cheesy, but I liked it after the third time.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0371724/

Ice Pirates (1984)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087451/
823
Living Room / Re: What the heck has happened to Google search?
« Last post by zridling on June 12, 2010, 08:56 AM »
Fine for me, but they did change their results page format recently to include photos, video, maps, and as many Google services as needed on one page. The FIFA info alone is invaluable this month.

http://www.google.co...gs_rfai=&prmdo=1
824
Living Room / Re: 20 years later, the movie "Total Recall" still kicks butt
« Last post by zridling on June 12, 2010, 08:53 AM »
Be honest, could any of us have resisted Sharon Stone, no matter how evil she was?
825
A theme here with regard to corporate behaviors is certainly frustration at cutting corners (whether it's skirting regulations, using cheap fixes, slow-walking fixes, suing each other over endless frivolities -- Novell finally won, SCO finally lost! -- and so on).

Google is no exception. In fact, their rhetoric demands we hold them to their word.
Microsoft is no exception.
Neither is Apple (under FTC investigation this week).

Like it or not, these companies exert vast influence over our tech lives. No, check that: our lives! Whether it's locking out developers, raising prices, insane EULAs, patent stupidity, data liberation, or what have, we just want their products to work without ruining our data, our businesses, and wasting our time and money. But in every real world example, asking that is asking too much from a corporation! ("Corporations" aren't the problem, it's those fools who run them, give themselves hundreds of millions in compensation, and then when things go wrong because they cut corners, they claim: "No one could have known!"

Oy.
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