Finland too. And people, in general, don't find drivers test that hard to pass - even though they have to do it with the dreaded (wooo, scary...) manual transmission. People who can't handle that don't have what it takes to be safe on the road, no matter if they drive manual or auto.
Auto transmissions are rare breed here in Finland and I rarely (very) see this kind of lack of any driving skills on the road here. These people actually got approved for a drivers license? Manual or automatic, I think those people are probably high risk on the road anyway - they shouldn't be there, not on the drivers seat anyway.
I sometimes help people with windows problems, however I point to them that they could live with less problems and when they had one I wouldn't ask them to compensate my help with anything... I actually like helping people, but it frustrates me to no end that people who don't do anything they couldn't do with any other OS refuse to try out Linux, which I've installed to several not very computer savvy folks and received way fewer help requests after and only positive feedback of the system in comparison (people who like/want/need to use software not available for Linux are not the subject of this mini-rant part).
Anyway, I like helping people, but I don't normally promise to people that I will be there for them any time, any day for any problem - however I have committed myself to helping people who have decided to try Linux because of what I've told them. Part of my "selling speech" actually includes supporting them as long as they have the Linux, without compensation.
I like to think of it as my small contribution to Linux and Open Source community.
no, dhat was coal!
Damn, you have TEH MOAST INTERWEBZ!
(typing that actually hurt my soul)
It may sound funny, but I really do miss the simpler days of the WWW. Yes, I know... horrible tables, banner texts, under construction signs, and the dreaded blink tag. I miss Geocities. I miss personal "home pages". I miss Web rings.
Strange that it is I know what you mean and share, up to some amount, the same feelings.
You know what I also miss? BBS systems, actually dialing up them (not the newfangled telnet connection which was just a useless layer to slow down the communication which wasn't exactly fast to begin with), playing Lord on them, sharing pirated applications via zmodem protocol, and most of all I miss Fidonet. But these things don't really compare to what you said because they actually weren't crap, they were awesome - and I don't miss shitty BBS's, only the good ones
Nowdays nobody buys landline phones in Finland anymore - would it be, in theory, possible to use cell phone + PC to run a BBS?
I think the first browser I saw was Mosaic in library - I didn't know anything about web except that there was supposed to be hypertext links and images mixed in text on webpages. I didn't know where to go - but there was a huge address book, an "internet phonebook" if you will with subject categories.
I don't think the librarian knew what the book was about or about the computer and software either. There was only standard installation of Windows 3.? with only the Mosaic, if I remember correctly, to use for accessing the web. I was baffled because none of the addresses in the book worked so I got nowhere and nothing out of it - later when I became just slightly aware of this stuff (back then I didn't yet even have a modem to access BBS systems) I've learned that the book was basically a printed list of *usenet* groups, not web pages
I feel so guilty and ashamed of my past right now... But then again, in the mid-90's, which DooM related website didn't have the game music as
I know that the genius idea on Unix is to have a large number of small applications that do one job and do it well - so unlike with zip/arj/rar we get to choose our archiving and compressing software independently of each others, or even combine them with something totally different for reason that the authors of these programs couldn't even have thought when they made the tools, but still...
HEAR HEAR!
I have to say, it's become a lot easier than it was in the old days, where almost nothing worked after you stripped out the nonfree bits. Modems and network cards were notoriously hard to get working.
How old days was this? I know it was hard before, but when I got into Linux (Red Hat 7.1) I still had to hand hunt RPM's to install dependencies, but network cards and even most of time video cards (I never got my old P200MMX with Hercules Stingray 128 3D to work with X but with nvidia I had the choice between nv and proprietary drivers) worked fine out of box - even so that moving my install HD to another computer usually didn't need any other changes than possibly changing the video driver name in XFree config file...
The link recommends bull... nv is much better than Vesa, though doesn't offer 3D acceleration / DRI, it offers much more 2D optimization, which Vesa offers none. Nowdays there is also Nouveau, which is FOSS nvidia driver with 3D acceleration, though it's features are only fraction of those NVidia has and their drivers provide. So the best options are from best to worst:
1. nvidia official binary blob
2. Nouveau
3. nv
4 vesa
My opinions (which may be wrong):
Compare this with Ubuntu - based on Debian unstable - which is both up-to-date and stable
Heard or Debian Backports (3rd party repository)?
Good in my opinion too, but for other reasons.
Looking at the app store I see roughly 2 dozens of browsers for iPads/iPhones. Most of them iOS only. So independend developers easily can make a browser for iOS
Sorry this claim is ridiculous.
The limitation is that those browsers must use the Webkit built into iOS, so Chrome was an easy one - they already use Webkit.
They are also limited to inferior Webkit/Javascript engine while Safari uses optimized (like NitroJS for JavaScript while inferior javascript engine is available for 3rd party apps.
Disraeli was pretty close: actually, there are Lies, Damn lies, Statistics, Benchmarks, and Delivery dates.
