An we continue to be pissed about it except it makes no news because we have "mini-bush" in the PM's office!

- Yo Grark

Except in Quebec. Just want to point that out.

- YoGrark

Why not, drug companies are continually sued over the failure of their "code"

- Yo Grark

Canadians?

Yo Grark

Not that I would ever admit it, but we gave the USA Justin Bieber cause he was fricken getting on our nerves.

Yo Grark

Just like my Sager 7280, can't idle without sounding like a jet engine!!!!

- Yo Grark

Can I draw a straight line without following a website yet? /me ducks

Yo Grark

Why.... are you a mean drunk?

Yo Grark

Blame the lack of easy use of Access.

I routinely wanted to share out a simple sheet, allowable for anyone to edit easily, but have always fallen flat on my face by the complexity of simple tasks.

Yes I'm a novice user, however like Excel, I can use Calc or any similar thing because the interface is similar and or easy to use. I cannot use a database and have people interface with it to updated it without having to create a form, create a web interface or other complex things which are beyond my ability.

Now, you add database like abilities to Excel, and a lot more people would use them (like linking to other workbooks, multiple users editing simultaneously etc.)

Everyone gets help in Office suite, however Access remains the most neglected app. Only education or simplicity can change that, and people are not in the mood to learn new things*

*office drones, 9-5ers

Yo Grark

I was thinking just drop them in the Ocean at a deep depth to add to the simulation. There's no-one coming for you in an emergency in that case, and there's a very real possibility of system failure.

Yo Grark

Oh I never said it was REAL. I just said it was a good thing CIO's need to checkmark their responsibilities :)

Yo Grark

The only thing I can add is Liability. RedHat assumes some liability in the day to day operations of your company. Liability which if you sell to customers (aduh) they require for certain forms and certifications. Insurance is not enough. We're talking SOX, we're talking HIPAA etc. At the end of the day though, just remember that these are just tools. No different than someone saying "I want a stanley hammer" and you getting a black and decker.

I've written a few whitepapers on Support and Maintenance, and in my surveying of customers, liability or the ability to checkmark that their supplier/vendor has liability for the code they use to produce their goods has been a very GOOD thing in a few cases like government and lawfirms.

Yo Grark

Maybe that's my problem, always been using it on older hardware because I never wanted to give my good hardware to it until it was proven.

Although an athlon 2500 with a gig of ram I would have thought would be pretty detectable. And the wireless IS a usb, so more problems there, but it's no different from windows, "install driver" no problem.

Want to install this RPM? just chmod a few letters which mean nothing in a terminal you don't understand and you're there!

I just want to doubleclick the driver and have it work, not prompt me to extract it then have no idea how to run it.

But again, that's from a windows mentality, but its what people really do think when they try Linux for the first time!

Forgive me if this is off topic, but I just wanted to get my views out there with this new release.

Unity or no, the real problem is that simple tasks are not that simple. In simple terms, that simple people can understand.

I booted a live cd of Ubuntu and had 2 hard drives, main drive and storage drive. I wanted to prepare (wipe) the storage drive and backup everything in the main drive.

However, I found that the secondary drive was readonly (I couldn't make a directory). Without knowing how to prep the drive or under what circumstance, it almost stopped me from continuing until I read some articles about how to unmount it, the fact that journaling was enabled, all enough to make my head spin.

So I went on a crusade (just for fun) to track down a GUI based tool to let me wipe my drive and control the properies (like RENAME FFS). Almost none exist. Sure I eventually got to GPARTED or whatever it's called, but the point is, there is no easy, straight forward way to do things which Windows users are used to doing.

About once a year I try to go LINUX ONLY on my desktop and I would consider myself a poweruser on windows, but I keep getting frustrated by the eventual lack of something working, something not working, or having no idea how to have an app start on startup without editing some seemingly random txt file in a some subset of folders (see what I did there?) which I don't understand.

Linux leaves me feeling stupid that I don't know how to do simple tasks. So I go back to Windows.

The only distro I tried which kind of tried to address this is Puppylinux, but even then, I got stopped when I tried to install an app which wasn't puppy approved or some nonsense. I'm sure it could have been done, just not easily.

So now, I've got a Kbuntu system at home I tried, came back, frozen screensaver. Common problem which the only resolution to is to install a new screensaver app and guess what? Edit more text files.

I used to get excited about the "year of the linux" but truth is, even within its own community it fights "GNOME vs KDE", "Debian vs Ubuntu". So now I just think it's a bunch of people doing really cool things, competing for a dwindling user base who finds they will not invest time and energy into learning/fixing new things via text files and who are longing for a real alternative to Microsoft, but linux always comes up short.

Well if anyone knows of good user-based distro's which speak and step people through the basics of its innerworkings, let me know, I'd love to try it and get my family, friends, and business associates off of Microsoft!

Yo Grark

I resemble that comment, and let me counter yours with real life things that happen at my company.

It starts off with a requirement. Now, whether this requirement is real or not, is depending on who's asking for it, and if it contributes to sustained profitability in its execution.

Then you start to dig into it and ask users what they want. See what happened? It went from a need to a want when you start asking users more details.

Who's fault is that? No-one's. It's human nature to take requirements further to get more work done. Are users idiots? Yes. Are developers oblivious to a users need? Yes, but that's the BA's fault for not translating the two.

So before everyone gets it into their heads this is a flame war between user and developer, here's when you can properly apply your logic.

User gets a new piece of software, it doesn't do what they want, developer is an idiot.
User gets input into a new piece of software and asks for things that less than 1 % of users want but take 80% of developers time, user is an idiot.

BA's are always idiots for getting it always wrong.

Now with that said, I should give props to the ACTUALLY good BA's out there. The ones that anticipate need, the ones that can head off compromise before the scope creep, the ones that keep users in the loop and continually garner true feedback on needs (because like everything, needs change) and can put their foot down on what's possible and what's needed vs what's wanted and what's a waste.

We're all idiots in another persons eyes, it's just a matter of who you talk to, and when.

Yo Grark