The Message
Peter
Only 2 demo games for Linux out 50 or so on the Nvidia site.
Jazz on line seems to use itunes to play back selections of CD,s.
Netscape,AOL Music,Yahoo and many other sites seem to need Windows to play
back streaming media.
Yes there are probably ways to get around some of these problems but it's
not a point a click solution like Windows.
Linux is secure, stable and probably the best operating system ever
invented.
But at the end of the day the message is the medium and not the medium the
message.
John Bailo
Here I am...spending hours on my Linux machine.
I play tunes from somafm.com and radioparadise.com and kexp.com using RP10
for Linux streaming at 128Mbs and higher.
I play the best game available on any system, UT2004 using a $79 dollar
GeForce $79 that performs fantastic on my Linux box and makes Windows and
hardware gaming look like crap.
I use azureus bittorrent to download tv shows and watch them when I want,
many in hdtv which looks great on my monitor.
My Linux media center is right here, right now.
And as far as your reference to Marshall McLuhan, it reminds me of the scene
in Annie Hall where Alby Singer brings McLuhan on stage and McLuhan says
"You know nothing of my work".
--
Texeme
http://www.texeme.com
rapskat
<linuxl...@yahoo.co.uk> caused an invalid page fault at address
<d64g3c$p5b$1...@nwrdmz02.dmz.ncs.ea.ibs-infra.bt.com>, details as follows:
I can see where you're coming from. The implied "message" that you are
referring to is, "Even if there is a better solution, it's best to just
use the common one", is that it?
Think on what you are saying for a moment and then consider this...where
would society be if everyone shared this outlook?
Mindsets like yours would have us still living in caves.
--
rapskat - 06:21:54 up 2 days, 10:44, 5 users, load average: 0.13, 0.05, 0.02
"The cure for 1984 is 1776."
-- Anonymous
Jim
<snip M$ FUD>
fuck off.
--
Cheers,
Jim
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Opinions expressed in this message may or may not be representative of
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Mark Kent
rapskat <rap...@gmail.com> espoused:
I just tried to connect my Nokia phone to my work Windows machine. I
could install the suite, but couldn't get the USB link to work, and there's
no bluetooth capability on the PC, and no serial cable with the phone...
Much digging later on the web as to why the phone wasn't recognised turned
up a binary which provided the USB driver as a stand-alone thing, rather
than on the supplied CD.
A lengthy download (big big file), ran it, and got told that it need at
least SP3 to load on Win2k.
Yet more digging, I determined that I could get SP4 onto the machine via
a work server, if I requested it, and then waiting for it to be put in a
queueing system, which would then allow me to download it. This thing
was 10s of Megs, took *ages* to download, but finally, it was there.
Then had to stop everything on the machine, go through the SP install
process, reboot twice or three times, and then I had to re-install the
Nokia office stuff, and then the USB driver thing. The USB driver thing
took a good twenty minutes to install all the required drivers, and
then required a further reboot. The drivers weren't actually enabled
(or whatever it is that Windows does) until the phone was connected,
naturally.
Intermixed with my normal work, it took /two days/ to get this working.
If that's point and click, then you can keep it - I'll stick to Linux
where things work...
--
end
| Mark Kent -- mark at ellandroad dot demon dot co dot uk |
"Just think, with VLSI we can have 100 ENIACS on a chip!"
-- Alan Perlis
Linønut
And we'll keep working to change from a monopoly-driven economy to a
more free and open economy. IBM, HP, and now DELL seems to be getting
the message that they need a new medium for media, and that putting all
one's eggs in the Microsoft basket is dangerous.
--
When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
Sinister Midget
On 2005-05-14, quoth Mark Kent <mark...@demon.co.uk>:
> begin oe_protect.scr
> I just tried to connect my Nokia phone to my work Windows machine. I
> could install the suite, but couldn't get the USB link to work, and there's
> no bluetooth capability on the PC, and no serial cable with the phone...
>
> Much digging later on the web as to why the phone wasn't recognised turned
> up a binary which provided the USB driver as a stand-alone thing, rather
> than on the supplied CD.
>
> A lengthy download (big big file), ran it, and got told that it need at
> least SP3 to load on Win2k.
>
> Yet more digging, I determined that I could get SP4 onto the machine via
> a work server, if I requested it, and then waiting for it to be put in a
> queueing system, which would then allow me to download it. This thing
> was 10s of Megs, took *ages* to download, but finally, it was there.
> Then had to stop everything on the machine, go through the SP install
> process, reboot twice or three times, and then I had to re-install the
> Nokia office stuff, and then the USB driver thing. The USB driver thing
> took a good twenty minutes to install all the required drivers, and
> then required a further reboot. The drivers weren't actually enabled
> (or whatever it is that Windows does) until the phone was connected,
> naturally.
>
> Intermixed with my normal work, it took /two days/ to get this working.
> If that's point and click, then you can keep it - I'll stick to Linux
> where things work...
I think I may know what you did wrong. You're supposed to point at the
'Restart' button and all of those other dialogs, then klik, making it
true point'n'klik. You musta used the keyboard. You probably started
hitting <ENTER> on the dialog boxes without thinking about it, taking
the joy out of the WinDOS eXPerience.
One thing I noticed with the average Windoze user is they hate using
keyboard shortcuts, <ENTER> or anything that lets them keep their hands
in one place. If you demonstrate a concept using just the keyboard
(CTRL-I does an interesting thing on our maintenance management
program, and it's a function people there have to use a whole bunch),
the question that immediately follows is "What did you just do?" When
you grab the mouse, push the pointer over 85% of the screen, klik a
little icon and the same dialog box opens, the puzzled look falls from
their eyes once more.
Showing them the shortcuts and explaining what you were doing amazes
them no end, and pushes one into the status of Power User (the same
status as one who can explain to others, without props or notes, how to
push icons around on the desktop)(1). But will they make the effort to
learn any of the builtin shortcuts? Absolutely not!
It feels foreign to them to keep their hands on the keyboard. There's
something *wrong* with that. Why anyone would want to keep their hands
on a keyboard is completely outside any possibility of comprehnsion.
It's second nature (for many Windummies) to think something, move the
right (usually) hand to a mouse, move the pointer around to a menu,
drop the pointer down, klik something (hoping it was the right one and
not a slip of the klikking finger), moving back to the keyboard to type
something into the little box, grabbing the mouse, moving the pointer
to 'OK" or whatever the "I want to do this" box is labelled, kliking
again, and doing it over as many times as needed.
Even htting <ENTER> to select the default option, or ESC to get rid of
a dialog box, confuses many to no end. Unless they try it and learn to
start using it. Then they think they're gurus or something.(2)
That's probably what you missed. Try installing that stuff all over
again, but this time use the mouse every chance you get. See if that
doesn't make it even more pleasurable than the first way you did it.
You should be finished in 2 days, just like before. But *now* you
already know what you need to get and what to do. If you'd done it the
"right" way in the first place, you'd be finished with it in about
another week.
(1) I'd bet some of our trolls, like DooFuS and Bilge, are Power Users,
and can demonstrate pushing icons around with great ease.
(2) I once ran across a girl named Monica. She called herself Nibuca.
It seems she was a touch typist, and when using Winders she moved her
right hand to klik-klik-klik. When moving it back she ended off a
little, with her name always coming out Nibuca. Even using shortcuts as
much as possible required her to move her hand off the keyboard
frequently to do things there just weren't any shortcuts for. She said
once she started using linux her name became Monica again (most of the
time) because she could handle 98% of her work without ever having to
touch a mouse. But now she doesn't get to enjoy that point'n'klik
feeling that makes so many Windross users wet themselves.
--
"Microsoft Vaccine 2000 is configuring your immune system. This may take
a few minutes. If your body stops responding for a long time and there is
no brain activity please die. Setup will continue after you are reborn."
rapskat
Linønutlinøn...@bone.com> caused an invalid page fault at address
<u72dnTUpP-R...@comcast.com>, details as follows:
Big full page add from DELL in the latest LM. Shocked me to no ends,
thought I had grabbed the wrong one for a second!
--
rapskat - 13:51:55 up 2 days, 18:14, 5 users, load average: 0.00, 0.03, 0.06
"Do you smell something burning or is it me?"
-- Joan of Arc
Mark Kent
Sinister Midget <sini...@stinkfoot.biz> espoused:
Aha - could be it, yes...
>
> One thing I noticed with the average Windoze user is they hate using
> keyboard shortcuts, <ENTER> or anything that lets them keep their hands
> in one place. If you demonstrate a concept using just the keyboard
> (CTRL-I does an interesting thing on our maintenance management
> program, and it's a function people there have to use a whole bunch),
> the question that immediately follows is "What did you just do?" When
> you grab the mouse, push the pointer over 85% of the screen, klik a
> little icon and the same dialog box opens, the puzzled look falls from
> their eyes once more.
I was using vi at work recently, to take notes in a meeting, with the
cygwin tools. I had totally entranced the people sitting next to me,
as they watched abbreviations magically transform into full names and
words, and a couple of keystrokes would get me anywhere on the screen,
or in the text... at no point did I take my hands off the keyboard...
>
> Showing them the shortcuts and explaining what you were doing amazes
> them no end, and pushes one into the status of Power User (the same
> status as one who can explain to others, without props or notes, how to
> push icons around on the desktop)(1). But will they make the effort to
> learn any of the builtin shortcuts? Absolutely not!
Being able to write a spreadsheet equation, or, the gods forbid, a
macro, makes one king of the cells...
>
> It feels foreign to them to keep their hands on the keyboard. There's
> something *wrong* with that. Why anyone would want to keep their hands
> on a keyboard is completely outside any possibility of comprehnsion.
> It's second nature (for many Windummies) to think something, move the
> right (usually) hand to a mouse, move the pointer around to a menu,
> drop the pointer down, klik something (hoping it was the right one and
> not a slip of the klikking finger), moving back to the keyboard to type
> something into the little box, grabbing the mouse, moving the pointer
> to 'OK" or whatever the "I want to do this" box is labelled, kliking
> again, and doing it over as many times as needed.
There's little more irritating than the slip-click :-) App shuts
down instead of slide moving forward...
>
> Even htting <ENTER> to select the default option, or ESC to get rid of
> a dialog box, confuses many to no end. Unless they try it and learn to
> start using it. Then they think they're gurus or something.(2)
I've never liked the moose as an interface. The only thing it's really
good for is drawing pictures and playing quake.
>
> That's probably what you missed. Try installing that stuff all over
> again, but this time use the mouse every chance you get. See if that
> doesn't make it even more pleasurable than the first way you did it.
As you say, it should help me with handwaving, which could come in
handy for any meetings I'll be subsequently attending.
>
> You should be finished in 2 days, just like before. But *now* you
> already know what you need to get and what to do. If you'd done it the
> "right" way in the first place, you'd be finished with it in about
> another week.
:-))
>
> (1) I'd bet some of our trolls, like DooFuS and Bilge, are Power Users,
> and can demonstrate pushing icons around with great ease.
>
> (2) I once ran across a girl named Monica. She called herself Nibuca.
> It seems she was a touch typist, and when using Winders she moved her
> right hand to klik-klik-klik. When moving it back she ended off a
> little, with her name always coming out Nibuca. Even using shortcuts as
> much as possible required her to move her hand off the keyboard
> frequently to do things there just weren't any shortcuts for. She said
> once she started using linux her name became Monica again (most of the
> time) because she could handle 98% of her work without ever having to
> touch a mouse. But now she doesn't get to enjoy that point'n'klik
> feeling that makes so many Windross users wet themselves.
>
I know the problem well. I too can touch-type. There's nothing more
truly aggravating than being forced to remove my hands from the keyboard
in order to click something, as a short-cut was not made available by
the ui designer.
I expect that global productivity could be improved by 20% by teaching
everyone to touch-type, and abandoning GUIs...
--
end
| Mark Kent -- mark at ellandroad dot demon dot co dot uk |
"The hands that help are better far than the lips that pray."
-- Robert G. Ingersoll
Linønut
> I expect that global productivity could be improved by 20% by teaching
> everyone to touch-type, and abandoning GUIs...
It is very stressful, sometimes excruciatingly slow, to make the minute
movements you need with the mouse to get the cursor just so.
You can do it with Ctrl-arrow, etc, but even that is a wrist-stretch.
But Microsoft has allocated all the good keys to less-frequently used
functions than cursor movement and text selection.
So much so that I often create and edit a text file under vi, and then
copy it into Microsoft Turd so that I can finish off the edit with a
clumsier tool.
Kier
>
> I've never liked the moose as an interface.
:-) Mark, you've been supping the ale too much or summat, old lad!
--
Kier
The Ghost In The Machine
<linuxl...@yahoo.co.uk>
wrote
on Sat, 14 May 2005 09:23:56 +0000 (UTC)
<d64g3c$p5b$1...@nwrdmz02.dmz.ncs.ea.ibs-infra.bt.com>:
> Linux for home use single user only.
Oh yes. Microsoft Windows was designed from DOS 1.0 with the
enterprise in mind; the user authorization capabilities
in 1.1 were just phenomenal. And Win3.1, of course, was
the best in the business, with Win95 following closely
behind as a technological leap in protection.
Small wonder that Microsoft can boast the best viruses
in the business (and the most), whereas Linux' paltry
dozen or two or so simply can't keep up with the
technological innovation made by the major army of
scriptkiddies creating brand new secure code for Microsoft
Windows.
(Or was that brand new security issues?)
> Only 2 demo games for Linux out 50 or so on the Nvidia site.
$ cd /usr/portage
$ for i in games-*; do ls $i | grep -v 'metadata.xml' | wc -l | sed \
"s,^,$i: ,"; done
games-action: 56
games-arcade: 96
games-board: 53
games-emulation: 84
games-engines: 10
games-fps: 89
games-kids: 13
games-misc: 52
games-mud: 19
games-puzzle: 67
games-roguelike: 16
games-rpg: 22
games-server: 14
games-simulation: 14
games-sports: 10
games-strategy: 36
games-util: 21
$
This on a Gentoo system. Of course, a fair number of games are fairly
lame (balloonchase and deathchase3d are graphical, but that's about
it; Moria, Dungeon, and NetHack are classics but text-only), but
there's also a fair number of games with very good graphics:
UT 2004, Doom III, Quake III, FlightGear, Cube, and TuxRacer
come to mind.
> Jazz on line seems to use itunes to play back selections of CD,s.
> Netscape,AOL Music,Yahoo and many other sites seem to need
> Windows to play back streaming media.
Everyone needs Windows to play back Windows media. It's the codecs. :-)
> Yes there are probably ways to get around some of these problems but it's
> not a point a click solution like Windows.
> Linux is secure, stable and probably the best operating system ever
> invented.
> But at the end of the day the message is the medium and not the
> medium the message.
>
Microsoft of course delivers the message.
--
#191, ewi...@earthlink.net
It's still legal to go .sigless.
Liam Slider
> and NetHack are classics but text-only
Actually, I beg to differ. NetHack has classically been text only, but
there are graphical versions out there.
The Ghost In The Machine
<li...@nospam.liamslider.com>
wrote
on Mon, 16 May 2005 19:35:50 GMT
<pan.2005.05.16....@nospam.liamslider.com>:
Falcon's Eye (?) is a Nethack variant that is in fact graphical.
Rather a nice adaptation, admittedly.
But one can still go for classical Nethack. :-)
chrisv
>Netscape,AOL Music,Yahoo and many other sites seem to need Windows to play
>back streaming media.
Then fsck 'em.
The Ghost In The Machine
<chr...@nospam.invalid>
wrote
on Tue, 17 May 2005 09:17:10 -0500
<v3vj81hr5dtm5kiv7...@4ax.com>:
Kinda like a drug, isn't it? :-) One's gotta have J.Lo,
Lil' Kim, P. Diddy -- not to be confused with S. Diddly,
who's a purple/lavender color and lived in a squid tank :-).
(Personally, I prefer Tchaikovsky, Mozart, and Beethoven.)
Sinister Midget
On 2005-05-17, quoth The Ghost In The Machine <ew...@sirius.athghost7038suus.net>:
> In comp.os.linux.advocacy, chrisv
><chr...@nospam.invalid>
> wrote
> on Tue, 17 May 2005 09:17:10 -0500
><v3vj81hr5dtm5kiv7...@4ax.com>:
>> Peter wrote:
>>
>>>Netscape,AOL Music,Yahoo and many other sites seem to need Windows to play
>>>back streaming media.
>>
>> Then fsck 'em.
>>
>
> Kinda like a drug, isn't it? :-) One's gotta have J.Lo,
> Lil' Kim, P. Diddy -- not to be confused with S. Diddly,
> who's a purple/lavender color and lived in a squid tank :-).
>
> (Personally, I prefer Tchaikovsky, Mozart, and Beethoven.)
If sales keep dropping they'll probably DRM that stuff, too. And if
sales drop further afterward, they'll start seeking legislation in
Congress to make pre-copy-protected music illegal, start their own
BSA-like secret police and start taking major offenders (owners of 400
or more CDs in their collections) to court for infringment of the
'Right to Gouge Consumers and Make Criminals of Everybody Act' of 2006.
--
Ypsan - Innovative Microsoft peer-to-peer software.
The Ghost In The Machine
<sini...@stinkfoot.biz>
wrote
on Tue, 17 May 2005 18:45:05 GMT
<slrnd8kea6....@laptop.harry.net>:
Well, can't be too careful with Al Qaeda running around, now, can we?
I mean, they just might pirate Lil' Kim and that would be devastating
to the American military.... :-)
(Or was it the other way around?)
Mark Kent
Linųnut <linųn...@bone.com> espoused:
Hehe - I do exactly the same. Cygwin has a range of major benefits,
one of which is getting a decent editor onto Windows (I believe there's
an emacs for the other half of the room). It's amazing how useless
and limited word feels directly after using vi for even a few minutes.
--
end
| Mark Kent -- mark at ellandroad dot demon dot co dot uk |
"...[Linux's] capacity to talk via any medium except smoke signals."
(By Dr. Greg Wettstein, Roger Maris Cancer Center)
Mark Kent
Kier <val...@tiscali.co.uk> espoused:
> On Sun, 15 May 2005 07:15:46 +0100, Mark Kent wrote:
>>
>> I've never liked the moose as an interface.
>
>:-) Mark, you've been supping the ale too much or summat, old lad!
>
Hehe :-))
--
end
| Mark Kent -- mark at ellandroad dot demon dot co dot uk |