Posts by dave hands 41 publicly visible posts • joined 2 Jan 2008
No part of my post made judgement on Apple or Steve Jobs or anyone, except the post I replied to.
It is high time people started calling Google what they are - scary, power mad control freaks.
Are Apple the same?
Quite possibly - on the other hand - Apple have never declared a desire to be the gate keepers of all human knowledge.
"I say the same exact thing about most of Apple's recent products: they're bullshit, or at the very least a load of crap."
But you didn't have the balls to post that under your own name though did you?
He's right - "Don't be evil" is a load of crap, it's just a shame it's taken him till now to say it.
I've only had three internet enabled phones, one of which is my current phone - the iPhone. Of the three only the iPhone has actually worked. The others were a joke, tiny screens and hopelessly slow page load times.
Basically - Apple got it right, the rest added it as an after thought and didn't.
Simple.
Don't wait for Apple to sell it as a generic install, because that isn't going to happen.
Apple are perfectly happy without putting themselves in the nightmare position of trying to provide support to all the different hardware combinations currently at large in MS land.
That old saying about being nice to people on the way up because you'll meet them on the way down is going to bite Microsoft on the arse.
Hard.
And there will be laughing, snickering and a pointing of fingers.
There is frustration in the lower ranks that every time MS come up with something "new", that it's that same old 3rd rate, poorly engineered crap that they are then told to go and sell as "Microsoft gets it right this time", when everyone knows this is almost certainly never going to happen.
They should probably stop trying to copy Apple - it's a fools game. Let Apple be Apple and go in another direction. Copying others says "I have nothing original to offer you so I thought I'd offer you a 3rd rate copy of someone else's idea".
I had a Samsung Tocca Lite - it was hideous. The screen scrolling didn't work, menus were very hard to get through.
I have an iPhone - it works beautifully. It is a delight to use.
All these phone companies saw the iPhone and thought - "let's copy it" and they did it badly. They would have been better off saying "wow, let's go into a different area of the market". Competing against Apple, especially against a product as strong as the iPhone, is a mugs game.
There's two sets of drivers in the Ubuntu repo - 180 and 173 - 180 is few "newer cards" and 173 for older. (Unless this has changed recently).
Mandriva has everything on the disk, 3d drivers, wireless drivers, flash, codecs, plugins etc, it installs much faster than Ubuntu and has the most stable version of KDE4 I've used.
I mostly gave up with Linux - I got Macs and that was that. Such is the delight of OSX that I'd rather use a single core 800Mhz ppc chip based Mac box than a dual core 64bit AMD Win/Lin one.
I've been using Linux on my many computers over the last 7 years. I worked, using Linux, for several years (proving that it can lead to paid employment). The only thing I can't do on Linux is play some games, and that's purely down to the software houses not developing for Linux and not because Linux can't cope with the demands of games.
Everything else, DVD's, all websites, music, 2d games, word processing etc are all completely stable, easy to use and work and are present "out of the box" (as no doubt many of you will know).
If one could buy computers with Linux set up properly then Windows would see a serious loss in sales. It's only because certain companies that did offer Linux didn't (from what I've read online) set it up properly and didn't stress its inherent difference from Windows that lead to "high numbers of returns" (one suspects that MS pressured said companies into doing this in order to hinder Linux's uptake and let's face it, they've done a lot worse than that before).
Point being that Linux is not being taken up in the numbers some would like more due to the outright lies and manipulation of certain vested interests than because of its inability to meet people's needs.
Computers are tools. It's just so bloody typical of people to turn them into statements of political purity or apathy.
I have all three OS's. I use all three OS's.
Windows for gaming (which it does very well on the whole), and nothing else - why go to sea in a tissue paper boat designed by landlubbers?.
OSX for laptop (Mac's are investments in a way Wintel machines never will be). Apple attested to the power of Unix when they switched to BSD. Microsoft are too proud to admit it's a better model and will keep releasing reiterations of NT/XP until the final trumpet and so the virus/trojan problem will never go away (or won't until the last hole in the MS code is closed).
Linux for everything else. Meaning, Linux for online browsing, all music and video (playback), word processing etc. No meaningful viral threat and thus no need to have some awful crappy program sitting in the background scanning everything (most of which fail to spot and protect against new fast spreading threats anyway). Total customisability - to some of us, being able to change anything is a bonus.
If I had to run Photoshop et al the first place I'd check would be Crossover to see if it supported it, followed by the Wine forums to see if anyone else had successfully run it on Linux, then I'd look at a Mac. Windows wouldn't even be under consideration.
The Internet is to us similar to what the printing press was to the folks then.
For the first time in a long time we can say what we want and talk to each other and compare experiences and accounts. This makes the job of governments much harder because their lies are found out much sooner.
This cannot be allowed.
And just as technically you may be able to publish anything in print (if you can afford it), in reality the printing press system is heavily controlled and you and I don't get a look in - so it will be with the internet.
It is not acceptable that we should be able to communicate freely and share information - this does not tally with their idea of total information control. So, it will be curtailed, in the name of some bogus threat.
Enjoy the internet while you still have it - it will not always be this way.
Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. Man, I'm so tired of this bullshit.
The amount of times on this, and other, tech sites that some self appointed "expert" comes along and informs us that the only reason Linux doesn't have the same problems as Windows is because not enough people use it.
Really?
YOU. ARE. WRONG.
There is a massive difference in design between the two. Microsoft play games with security. Linux does it properly.
Tricking someone into installing a virus on a linux box would require a degree of social engineering (this applies to people who set Linux up correctly, not the fools who go around in root mode all the time). Linux does not allow remote installation of code by websites. That Microsoft are not the laughing stock of all creation goes to show the ignorance and apathy most people display.
1) I agree with what you say.
My point is that it's wrong that it is happening. It ought not to be this way. Why should tools be withheld from the poor? It's outrageous.
In just the same way that certain people are OK with the idea that in a world where we have the where-with-all to treat everyone for a lot of low level medical issues, we don't. We shrug and put the medicine in the cupboard and say "when you can afford it you can have it" - this is a monstrous crime. And while I realise that software isn't the answer to the world's problems, it, like everything else, is kept in the cupboard for those who can afford it.
And this way of thinking and behaving stinks to high heaven.
(Spare me any diatribes on motivation and any grotesque nonsense about "capitalism is the best system we ever had" - (if that's true there is no hope)).
2) Waste of time money and electricity. Though of course, if you need more than one pc running at any one time then yes, you're right.
"> It doesn't take a month; most are installed by default on Ubuntu.
Oh goody, so now Ubuntu or whatever is the 'darling distro' this minute comes with Autocad, Paintshop, Adobe Premiere / After effects / Illustrator / Photoshop / Lightroom / Dreamweaver , Altium Designer, Visual Studio, Nero and some other stuff i use (like Ride, Keil's ARM tools, Lauterbach tools) . Yay i'm switching right now !
> dual boot
Is for whiners that can't decide. You either go route A or you go route B. If linux is all its crack'd up to be, you should not need your windows anymore. So you don't need dual boot."
You muppet. You gave in to the anger.
1) Perhaps you should be asking why it is that so many people accept being held hostage by bloated software houses for over priced software. Why is it ok that poor people don't get a look-in unless they pirate? Why do "you" just roll over and accept the mindless profiteering?
Any standard that is dependent upon expensive, proprietary software is not a standard. It's a trick to lock you and everyone else in to a never-ending cycle of pay and pay again.
2) Dual boot is for whiners who can't decide.
I hope you feel thoroughly ashamed of that statement.
iWork is going online in some form or other.
So, Apple make it easy to get iWork and then sometime soon you'll need an online subscription for it to work - by which time, hopefully, many people will have got used to the suite and won't want to lose what they've done with it.
It's much cheaper than MSOffice. It's much nicer than MSOffice. It's not MSOffice.
Marketing, marketing, marketing.
Hello. Remember us - Microsoft?
Anyone?
Please don't buy a Mac.
We're still the same Microsoft, er, I mean, we're different now, we've learned.
Look, mmmmm Windows 7 - now even faster and more secure.
Why is everyone laughing?
Please don't buy a Mac.
Look we've sold 20 million phones with WIndows on. OK, we haven't sold them and we know there's precious little alternative for the mobile manufacturers. But still, please don't buy a Mac.
Hello?
Anyone?
some one once said "there is lies then there is damn lies"
No they didn't. They said "there are lies, damned lies and there are statistics".
A much more applicable quote to the original theme.
Ubuntu is faster than Windows, I know because I used every version up to and including the last release. As to bugs, the Open Source model means they're more likely to be fixed.
All OS's crash. From my own experience, OSX crashes less than anything else.
Lack of Cut & Paste is simply staggering. There are few words to describe such an act of hard headed stupidity.
That said, DAMN but these things are attractive. I for one will be buying one just as soon as the coffers are full enough to take the hit and I don't care if I can't use it on the Enterprise (some of you are taking this Star Trek thing way too far). It's already got, having used one before, everything on it that I'll ever want from a phone and a bit more besides. Sometimes things have to be purchased and used because they are so damned nice, regardless of whether they are perefect or not.
And I can understand why so many people are negative about them.
Jealousy is a terrible thing.
Linux is as usful as a computer full of cow Manure.
You sure put the "I am a twat" hat on with that statement.
And of course, Windows which comes with boatloads of holes, needs further money spending on it to offset the appalling security model it uses and has a shit web browser, a shit email client and notepad is SO superior to an OS which needs no money spending on it to make it safe, comes with several safe browsers, several good email clients, a serious office suite and the option of a further 10-20,000 applications.
Might as well disconnect from the internet then as Linux runs a fair proportion of that too.
Xandros and Linspire are awful distros. A hopeless attempt to make Linux into something like Windows - somewhat like taking a Rolls Royce and painting it up to look like a milk float. And they're going the way they deserve as a consequence.
Ubuntu is OK, doing well, spreading the word.
You want an out of the box good experience you could do worse than to try one of the Mandriva 2008 Live disks. Comes with most of what you need and installs in about 10 minutes.
As to the desktop thing - Gnome is over simplified and annoying (though very graceful and beautiful) and KDE is more or less instantly intuitive but overly cluttered in places.
And both require a brain.
The software on Linux is crap - you really are ladling it out today huh?
And firefox - an open source project that started out in Linux? Apache? MySQL?
I'll grant you that a lot of Open Source applications seem to have fallen out of the ugly tree and hit most of the branches on the way down. Huge buttons, acres of white space, etc.
On the other hand, take Evolution (the email client) - has a far far better interface than Outlook. Take Konqueror - far superior to Windows Explorer.
Try taking a Win XP disk and installing your computer with it - you're not allowed to use driver cd's or 3rd party software installs - how functional would your pc be?
Now do the same with a single Linux disk. You'd find 99.9% of drivers were present and you'd have enough software to get going without further installs.
I know we like to be funny on the Reg comments, but there's funny and there's ignorant. Do try to learn the difference.
Does this mean that every Linux distro that comes with such tools is then illegal?
Are the government going to ban RedHat, Slackware and Ubuntu etc etc etc?
Is the grubby hand of MS in this somewhere (probably up someones nether regions)?
In reality this is largely unenforcable, especially as the police will need buckets full of forensic IT specialists to sift through Linux boxes to determine whether said tools have ever been used - a cost I can't see them being likely to bear.
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