Is software support that you pay for better than software support you get for free? Are you going to do better, for instance, with Microsoft Office vs. OpenOffice.org Office when you need to fix something?
The answer is obvious. But still, many of you manage to not understand. But this can be helped………..
………. CLICK HERE NOW.
Well, a person who edits. Are editors passe, no longer of use, old school, in the New Media of the Internet?
Maybe. Maybe not.
Here is a post suggesting that Editors have a role, and an important role, and I have a feeling that this is going to be the beginning of an interesting discussion.
It is a ground breaking company, it is a bookstore that is mega mega like few other companies are. It is a bookstore that is a huge corporation. Think about that for a second. Think about bookstores in the old days then think about this thing, Amazon Dot Com. A bookstore that is leading the way in mega cloud computing. It has one of the most effective ways ever of interfacing with its customers. It has become the go to place for many people for the purchase of almost anything one can imagine being delivered by mail. Amazon Dot Com is a thing the likes of which we have not seen before.
You all know about the #AmazonFail maneno1. I suspect that most of what you know is slightly incorrect. I have read three or four blog posts about it, and not long ago I listened to a current NPR report. They neither jibe nor jive. I suspect as more details come out this will be a two part story: A serious socio-political screwup followed by a “glitch” of very significant proportions. I could be wrong about that, but we shall see.
(Here is a very insightful commentary on the situation giving details and links.)
What is important here is this: Whatever rules you were thinking may apply to the conduct of a large corporation and how they must interface with the rest of society do not apply here. Amazon is not a private corporation that can do whatever it wants. It is actually a utility, a public good, part of our economic commons. It is like Google in this respect.
I know, I know, Amazon and Google are private corporations yada yada yada. You can think that if you want, but you’d be ignoring the important reality that all of our public goods and utilities, including the police, the fire companies, the energy suppliers, even the road building agencies of city, county, state and federal governments (in the US) have transited between private and public and sometimes back (or to some combination). What our society needs to get it’s pin-headed collective head around is the nature of this thing, this Amazon and Google (and whatever) thing. And to recognize that it is very real and not just a dot com that will go away when everyone realizes they don’t need it or the loans come due. Which will bring us, ultimately, to the question of OpenAccess and OpenSource. And who owns The Internet. And a few other issues.
1 = big problem.
Everybody knows the answer is almost always Linux, and one of the reasons for that is because Windows cheats. Mr. Exile has run a test in which he compares two laptops, one with four times the memory and about double the processor speed and a more advanced processor, with the hotter computer running XP and the older, less powered computer running Linux.
Since the valid test is not when the desktop pops up (because Windows is still busy booting when that happens), Mr. Exile instead timed how long it took for him to have a browser opened to his web based email page.
If you are a Windows Apologist Jingoist, don’t even bother reading Mr. Exile’s analysis, because you will simply become depressed and despondent when you see the results. If you are a Happy Linux person, go over to Mr. Exile’s post and drop him a line.
The analysis and results are here.
I should say that I have the same exact experience, except to get to email, I compare Evolution on a Linux computer with Outlook on a managed Windows computer. The amount of time from turning on the Windows computer on a Monday Morning (I turn the computer off over the weekend) and being able to read the most recent email on the managed computer is between 15 and 25 minutes, if I don’t have to reboot. It has been as long as 45 minutes, and earlier this week it was one day because the network was borked so I just went home and worked there. Yes, you read that right. NORMAL startup is 15 to 20 minutes before the first readable email.
The amount of time on the computer running Linux and using Evolution to access the same account plus four other accounts is … I don’t know, never felt the need to measure it. Three or four minutes, I think.
… as usual …
a legislator in Texas has introduced a bill to require open document formats in all state government business. The bill is carefully worded such that only ODF could pass its test as “open.” The story is covered by the Fort Worth Star Telegram, which is careful to be even-handed, giving Microsoft’s spokesman equal time. A ZDNet blogger notes that the bill, introduced by a Democrat in a state whose politics is dominated by Republicans, faces chances that “…fall somewhere east of slim and west of none.”
… comes from D.C. Sessions.
…
Why is Linux the coolest erector set in the world, that you should be willing to pay for? In part because Linux lacks the kind of freaky design oddities that arise when the makers of the software must go to meetings with a marketing department and a bunch of liability conscious lawyers, alternatively. In part because the fundamental design of the system is such that it is powerful yet lean at the same time. In part because basic security is so much easier to manage in Linux that it is not necessary for the processor to spend a sizable amount of time (using big chunks of memory) fighting viruses and other threats.
You know how spam works: It does not matter if one in one thousand people are annoyed by spam, as long as one in a thousand responds in the way the spammer wants. If you send out a million spamoids, that will yield one thousand positive results. Not bad.
If a committee of managers and marketers sits down and makes decisions about how the software everyone will be using works, how it looks, how it operates, they will sometimes (often, perhaps) make decisions that actually cause harm. They will opt for features that will annoy many users, if they know they can get away with it and that it will produce some positive effect that may have nothing to do with what the end user is looking for. A relatively innane example, but one that illustrates this principal well, is the feature of Window’s Help that provides, as an answer to almost any question (sometimes as the only answer) “Would you like to tell if the software you are using is pirated?” WTF?
In contrast, OpenSource software is designed, built, and deployed in an entirely different manner. Yes, there are committees, or small groups that actually are making most of the decisions, but these groups are generally open in their communication and anyone can get involved. The decision making process is fundamentally different for OpenSource than it is for Commercial software.
(Note: OpenSource does not equal Linux. Linux IS an OpenSource operating system, and Ubuntu Linux and a couple of other versions are especially well designed for people just cutting their teeth on the penguin, but OpenSource software is also available to run on Windows and Macs.)
If you want to see how this works, and get a feel for how open this process is, pick up a copy of Linux Journal (the one meatland computer mag I read regularly) and read the column they have every month on what is going on with the Linux Kernel. If you are like me, you’ll understand a very small percentage of the technical detail, but you will see things being discussed of the type that are not discussed openly in commercial context. If you came apon a document discussing this sort of detail for Windows, you would either be a very very deep insider or you would be followed by guys in a black helicopter until they hunted you down and killed you. Like in that movie.
That is a pretty remarkable difference. And it is one of the main reasons that Linux is better.
Open source healthcare is forging forward quickly on the Internet. But, fast developments often produce many failures. But, many medicinal open source projects that have gained success development. This success shows that open source alone is not the solitary factor in development. Instead, look to great management, public relations, marketing and a sound program that stands up under the scrutiny of a growing number of peer users and, often, patients.
……… read it here …
This is actually quite interesting . Not every “project” is a linux app, as one might expect with the “Open Source” reference. But Open Source is not LInux, after all. Some of these projects are file or data format standards, some are webby project, and some are regular apps.
Have a look.
No, this is not a post about which one is better. Not yet, anyway. I just want to mention that today, March 18th, the next version of Gnome is expected to come out, and yesterday, March 17th, I finished my personal test run of KDE 4.whatever.
I like KDE … the new version …. to recommend it and to seriously consider using it just for fun on some computer somewhere. But my main desktop will remain Gnome because, well, it has not annoyed me and it works.
Keep an eye out for the new Gnome. Details here.
Dear President Obama,
Congratulations on passing the stimulus package! I hope that the stimulus package will help the economy get back on track.
One thing that could help is to eliminate some of the approximately five billion dollars a day that we waste as a world economy with closed source, proprietary software.
How do I arrive at that figure?…
… Not politically better, not feel good better, not any of that. Well, yes, that too. But for all areas where Open Source is developed, it it simply better technologically. Anybody telling you different is selling you a bill of goods.
I tried to say something of this sort here, on Bill Hooker’s blog post “On science and selfishness,” but his #%$@$#$ (presumably OpenSource) blog software would not accept my comment!!!! (Hey Bill, get that fixed, man, you’re ruining it for everybody!!!). So, instead of saying it there, I’ll say it here. This is my comment:
Bill:
I deeply disagree with an underlying assumption made in this blog post. That assumption is that it is NOT the case that OpenSource software and OpenAccess publication are technically, systemically, and procedurally superior to closed source equivalents. That is simply untrue.
For the most part, developed OpenSource software is technologically superior to closed source alternatives. More secure, less buggy, faster and more efficient, stable features that don’t change to suit marketing strategies, support that does not rely on Orwellian tactics and so on. In the mathematical sciences, OpenSource software is the ONLY valid way to carry out studies that you expect to be taken seriously (though most math people don’t get this, astonishingly) The OpenAccess publishing sources are simply a zillion times easier to use for the end user. How is that not better?
Otherwise I agree with everything you said.
Greg
Emacs is exactly like a religion. A western religion, at least, operates by testing the faith of its participants. The god coldly allows babies to die of unexplained illnesses, violence to affect the innocent, wars to break out, natural disasters to ruin everything. That we mortals have faith that this is a loving and intelligent, all knowing god causes us to question reality itself, our selves, our church or temple, and our religious leaders. But this questioning followed by resolve, strengthens character. Or, ruins character. It could really go either way, which is why so many object to religious pursuits.
But in Emacs we find a solution.
Continue reading The One True Editor
Should OpenOffice.org (OOo) writer (the text editor unit of the OpenSource office suite) have the horizontal ruler, on the top of the page, visible by default, or should it be hidden by default? This is the argument that it should be hidden by default. If you become a registered user of the OOo web site, you can actually vote on this. Let me know how that goes.
Xfce 4.6 is released (yesterday). Xfce is a gnome-ish desktop for Linux that uses very few resources (and has very few bells and whistles). “Xfce 4.6 features a new configuration backend, a new settings manager, a brand new sound mixer, and several huge improvements to the session manager and the rest of Xfce’s core components.” Details here. Personally, I’m thinking about setting up an install that uses emacs as the ‘desktop.’ I’ve got an old laptop that I might try that with. I would have the simplest possible windows manager to run a web browser and do everything else in emacs. This would be for writing in coffee shops and similar locals. That would be cool. I would name the computer “Ivan.”
But even with emacs running the interface, one might want to use vim now and then. and since everything is running on the command line one would want to use regular expressions all the time. So I’ll be wanting to read about Using regular expressions in Vim
According to reports, OpenOffice 3.1 is blindingly fast, and it has some interesting new features and important bug fixes. It won’t ever be as good as my fantasy emacs system, but for a gui-office it is pretty impressive. Here’s and early look.
I know every computer box needs a CD/DVD reader in order to boot the thing up under adverse conditions (and your system should always be set up so that you can do this, by the way!). But as a matter of actual functionality, maintaining a current and high-functioning version of this sort of device, or two or more of them especially, built into the box is usually a bad idea for me. My computer boxes are not ever conveniently located. For my main computer, I can reach the off on switch with my toe, which is how I start up the machine. (The button is not needed to turn it off, of course.) So I can’t really easily reach the CD/DVD drives. And, over time, these drives get old, or slow, or just don’t do everything you want, and if you have two or three computers in the household (don’t forget to count everyone’s laptop) an external DVD/CD burner/reader might be a better option than trying to keep each machine functioning in top form.
Continue reading LightScribe Technology and Why Windows Sucks
If you buy an iPhone from Apple, you don’t own the iPhone. No. Apple owns you.
According to this item on Slashdot regarding this item from somewhere else on the intertubules.
So if you buy this thing, you can do whatever you want with it as long as whatever you want is what Apple wants. If you want to do something else with your thing, the Apple Police will come and get you.
Big brother, it turns out, is all about Oedipus.