Hi Sridhar, First, thanks for all the help I've seen you offer to newbie and geek alike here, me included. I am very happy to discuss the bits of the GNU World that I can, seeing as my contributions technically are zilch! My only skill is really in seeing solutions for sick corporations - and sometimes people who are really ill. MOST people like to contribute in some way, there are really very few - and usually very young and frustrated - who don't.
As Joy C says, " Even Cybervandals (scriptkiddies) usually burn into people by 30." I am very happy to help anyone where I can and discussing practical commerce-oriented matters is where I do have the experience to share is how to do it. Answers to your post : ********** ----- Original Message ----- From: Sridhar Dhanapalan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Friday, March 22, 2002 2:26 PM Subject: Re: [newbie] Living in the real world - Win4Lin4 NO INTEREST TO GEEK FOLKS > Wordperfect was one of the first things I got going myself after I started using > GNU/Linux. I had next to no GNU/Linux experience at the time, but I found the > installation to be a breeze. It is a free (as in beer) download. ******* There was a post here about it a week ago - I couldn't even understand the "simple" destructions needed. :-) I did try and install a freebie copy way back when but it had no sense to it for a non-geek. The "expert" at the Oz Computer magazine confessed he couldn't either at the time. > FrontPage98 is a joke. It is malware like this that is destroying the open > Internet. ******** I agree it could be lots better, but an awful lot of pros use it for QANTAS ( No, not the Airline, Quick And Not Too Arty Sites). I know of nothing faster and easier anywhere for non-geeks. So long as you don't use FP Extensions and keep off IIS Sites........... there aren't a lot of tricks to using it. :-) > > > 2. If you are a serious business user, you NEED to be moving toward voice > > recognition as you know. > > No, I don't know. Why would a business need voice recognition? I once tried > using Viavoice for a whole year -- my productivity decreased despite my best > efforts at speaking clearly (something which I've been told I'm good at) and > training the software. These packages often advertise 90%-95% accuracy. This > sounds great, until you realise that this means that every 10-20 words will be > incorrectly interpreted. John Dvorak recently wrote an interesting article on > the topic: http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1107-826862.html. ******** A point at a time: 1. Because real men never did type and modern liberated females won't anymore. :-) Like Dvorak, you might have vocal range problem, much less an accent one. I couldn't imagine a "Good Ol' Boy" ever getting to use it, or an excitable Southern Indian. :-) More to the point, at around 40 w.p.m. with 90% accuracy as a typist, VR will break even under most conditions. Over that it drops rapidly. HOWEVER , in the publishing world, in technical material we used to cost on 19 w.p.m. with girls whose "rating" was 65 w.p.m. in Pittmans test. In the real world ( that phrase again!) it was extremely rare to find an executive that could properly dictate to a stenographer. They were status symbols for the most part. As a professional dictator (ha!) I must say I do know few people as experienced, trained and natural as me at it, for over 30 years. I am approximately 120% more effective/productive using VR. BUT as a typist I am only "quite fast" - about twice the rate of finished work as an average self-typing person creatively trying to do the two things at once. But poor old Dvorak - a most unhappy puppy alla time - lives in the wannabee world of pontificating pundits. He has no idea of the incredible science and wonder that has got VR this far! But, it isn't for everyone. Like playing with command lines thrashing around with broken software and loving it! :-) > What is your definition of "incredibly poor presentation"? Open source > developers usually prefer to focus on code quality rather than polish. MS bangs-and-whistles. ********* I used to teach methods engineering ( IT speak Systems Analysis) and the very first thing I would stress was: forget the production, write the manual. Do that first and you will always do well. Yes, it is boring - and usually embarrassing, too. But I also meant overall. The physical display of onscreen fonts was not acceptable to a serious user. Imagine trying to write for 5 hours using it. StarOffice and KDE (to use your examples) are very usable > and stable. They _do_ have extensive help structures, so either you didn't > install them or you just didn't look properly. ********* No they just weren't there - it was a problem not resolved at the time on this list - it was a known bug as I recall. > Nothing is perfect. Go to a Windows list and I'll guarantee you that you'll see > many users with problems. On this list, most problems are quite minor, and many > messages are simple enquiries. ******** Oh, I agree 100% on both points. But I've never failed to get a Windows system up - and remember I'm not a geek. I just can't get them to keep up!! > You seem awfully pessimistic for one who is "in hopes". OH no! Just realistic. On current performance levels and rate of improvement, at least a year to go, unless someone gets the message and looks at the true market mechanics. Then you need 6-8 months, in my experience of many product developments over the decades, to eradicate the negative past and develop impetus. Financially Mandrake has not got anything like that long on its dwindling reserves and realistic income expectations. > > > I believe you really need a Geek to get you online. > > Then the geekiness kicked in. I remembered that LILO used to have a problem with > booting from a partition that was past the 1024th cylinder on a drive. I deduced > that Win2K might have the same problem (probably deliberately, to prevent users > from dual-booting with a non-MS OS). I repartitioned my drive, making an NTFS > partition at the beginning. After reinstalling Win2k, it booted to the GUI. Had > I not been a geek, I would not hae known this relatively obscure tidbit of > information. *********** Actually, you had a well-documented problem there from using Partition Magic. I take it you were using V.4 or prior? It didn't know about Big Bill's inalienable right to come first! Drive C: or else, amongst others. But remember, people do not install OS's in the real world. They come on the machine, or the shop that flogs them the "upgrade" does it. > > Getting online was the interesting bit. I have a Netcomm external modem (which > are very common in Australia), which has a _real_ Rockwell (now Connexant) > chipset. I tried a variety of different generic and vendor-issued drivers, and I > tried just about every Dial-up-networking setting. After a week of trying and > then giving up, my modem magically started to work. I still don't know why this > happened. *************** Netcomm always was strange.......... .they started out making for Apples you know - nobody could get anything to work with them. > > In Caldera OpenLinux, Red Hat and Mandrake, all I had to do to connect to the > Internet was run KPPP (the KDE 1 version) and enter a few settings. Simple. ************ Funnily enough, Internet access was the one thing I did achieve on a few attempts........ but, after all, that IS what the OS was born for, wasn't it? > > non-Geeks who WANT an alternative and the 300 million who don't even know - > > ( the ones who keep buying Apples!) > > Please tell me why you hate Macs so much. Enlighten me. ************ I don't hate anything that is successful without it hurting people, Sridah. I am simply astounded. If EVER my case for marketing being the key success always, it is the juxtaposition of Apple and Amiga - or even Linux Domestic. > > Like with GNU/Linux, you obviously don't even know what Macs are about, and > what's worse is that you don't even want to know. How can you criticise > something you don't understand? ******** Incorrect. I know perfectly well what they are about. I owned Unix systems while you were in grade school. Believe me I knew quickly. Same with Linux. As for GNU - well, I can bat that ball with lawyers, much less philosophers. You are confusing the mechanic with the owner/driver. I do not want/need to know how a gearbox works to drive a car well. Apples? Well, I owned part of a company that used to sell them. The owner had owed us money. They sold those dreadful things into critical commercial situations as networked devices. We got them out of trouble. My own Technical Director heavied me into getting out of that Company. He was a German perfectionist and a REAL Computer Engineer. "We shouldn't have anything to do with those things, they are just expensive toys for the unitiated and I don't feel that we should take advantage of people." He was right. We built 10x better machines for less than half the price. AND I'm talking about the good ol' days when the simplest PC installed could set you back $4,000. I hope that this does explain things a little more clearly for you, Sridhar. It will eventually be good people like yourself who can save the whole Freedom Of Choice thing for us. It is simply a matter of reading Kilneth's "The Lion & The Lamb", an explanation of singular disparity of commonsense missing from the "Cathedral & The Bazaar" and the succinct explanation of why the very few "They" are filthy rich and "we" are not. It is not nice. It is not warm and fuzzy like "Cat & Baz", it is cold, hard truth, impeccable if unpleasant, logic.................. Remember at school/uni? The two ends of the political spectrum were always sold as communism one end, fascism the other and democracy............? The two ends are Anarchy and Feudalism and on the right IS everything else. Bless you all folks, it's nighttime here and bedtime for an oldie, Cheers, John Hoping for V.9.1
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