On Wed, 13 Feb 2008 21:56:48 +0000, Orchid XP v7 wrote:

>> Yes, but at first you do need to make an effort.  Also note that there
>> is a difference between "easy to use" and "works exactly the same way
>> Windows does".  Most people confuse the two, and say it's not easy to
>> use because it isn't Windows.
> 
> I'd rather say "most current Windows users". People who aren't used to
> computers at all aren't going to care either way.

Possibly.

>> I use Linux every day for work.  I'm using it right now.  I've used it
>> for 10 years (from when it was actively user-hostile).  I also have
>> used Windows extensively, and while I dislike Windows, if it were the
>> optimum choice for me, I'd use it.  Given the choice, I'd use Linux any
>> day of the week and twice on Sunday.
> 
> I tried to go down that road. I found too many things I couldn't do
> without Windoze. Sadly...

Like what?  I do have a couple apps that I need Windows for, and I have a 
VMware machine for those circumstances.  Like the odd MS Excel XML 
document that won't open in OpenOffice (had one a couple days ago like 
that).  Usually they open fine, but every once in a while the converter 
just seizes up.

Similarly, I've found no OSS product that compares to Mappoint.  But now 
with a GPS for my phone, I don't need that app.

>> My HP Pavilion workstation came with Vista.  What a load of horse crap
>> that is.
> 
> It's becoming seriously difficult to find a machine that comes with
> something that isn't Vista... This does not amuse me.

Nor me.  My experience with Vista was bad.  Very bad.  You just won't 
believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly bad it was.  I mean, it's a 
long way from my experience with XP, but that's just peanuts to Vista!  
Listen!.... (and so on)

Jim

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On Tue, 12 Feb 2008 18:50:35 +0000, Orchid XP v7 wrote:

> Only hyper-nerds are going to be able to get anything remotely useful
> out of a dump file. To everybody else, it's just wasted disk space.

We've had this discussion before.  It doesn't take a hyper-nerd to get 
info out of a dump file.  Just a good debugger and access to the source 
code.

As for confidential data being leaked, the core file typically will 
contain just the crashed program info, but if it's reproducible, you send 
them a core from a simplified setup.

Jim

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"Jim Henderson" <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote in message 
news:47b37404@news.povray.org...
> On Wed, 13 Feb 2008 21:56:48 +0000, Orchid XP v7 wrote:
>> I tried to go down that road. I found too many things I couldn't do
>> without Windoze. Sadly...
>
> Like what?  I do have a couple apps that I need Windows for, and I have a
> VMware machine for those circumstances.  Like the odd MS Excel XML
> document that won't open in OpenOffice (had one a couple days ago like
> that).  Usually they open fine, but every once in a while the converter
> just seizes up.
>

I'm considering Ubuntu but I need to know if there is something free 
available like CorelDraw or Illustrator. I need to be able to export vectors 
to pdf and fonts and I like all the advanced capabillities of Corel and 
Illustrator.

-- 
-Nekar Xenos-

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"Nekar Xenos" <nek### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
> I'm considering Ubuntu but I need to know if there is something free
> available like CorelDraw or Illustrator.

I can't recommend Inkscape enough.
http://www.inkscape.org

just after installing Ubuntu, go to Applications -> Add/Remove and search for
it.  Or just download the version for Windows and play with it.

> I need to be able to export vectors
> to pdf

it exports to PDF, Postscript, povray (paths to prism) and a lot of others.  Its
native format is SVG.  I've designed some povray lathes with its bézier drawing
tool, which is one of the smoothest I've ever touched.

> and fonts and I like all the advanced capabillities of Corel and
> Illustrator.

I'm actually reading the Adobe Features page of Illustrator, having done some
work myself previously on Corel Draw (some years ago).  Most of the features
seem to be  just there, like tracing bitmaps automatically, gaussian blur etc.
Try it for yourself to see if it matches.  Of course, don't expect the same
interface or the same way of doing the same things.

here's a nice sample of what it can do, from a fellow brazilian:
http://img88.imageshack.us/img88/8295/capturadatelavc6.jpg
http://img248.imageshack.us/img248/4769/capturadatela2lj4.jpg

looks like acrylic painting to me... :)

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>> ...which is what I meant. If HP gets to pick what hardware goes in, they
>> can pick exactly the hardware that works with whichever OS they're
>> preloading.
> 
> Sure.  Now, how surprised are you going to be when I tell you that my HP 
> didn't come with openSUSE installed, but with Vista installed, and I 
> installed openSUSE with no problems?

That's a little different, yeah.

> (Only thing not working is 
> wireless, and I don't care about that - but I understand there are 
> drivers for Linux for it, just can't be bothered).

One of the prime areas that doesn't work, so I'm told. (I don't use such 
technology myself, so...)

> This thing's got an 
> Nvidia chipset ethernet card in it, not exactly a common type of ethernet 
> card, at least not in my experience.

My motherboard has the nVidia nForce IV chipset. For quite a while I had 
trouble with various distros not recognising either the Ethernet ports 
or the SATA ports. (Guess where my HD is...) Makes installing the OS 
interesting when it can't find your HD. (Also, the early nForce driver 
would enumerate the HDs in reverse order, which is damn confusing...)

>> :-|   <== not shocked face.
> 
> Given that you're on v7, I'm not surprised. :-)

Well, so many applications won't uninstall cleanly. :-S

>> Like I said, Linux has now become pretty easy to use once it's set up
>> right. I find it's still tricky to set it up correctly sometimes, but
>> once it works it's really not much different to Windoze. [Except no
>> random OS crashes.]
> 
> It can be, particularly with laptops.  As I said, 5 years ago, it was 
> fairly painful on laptops (in particular), but today the support is very 
> good.

Something like 8 years ago, I was manually editing the X11 configuration 
file to tell it what DAC chip my graphics card has in it... o_O

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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Orchid XP v7 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> Well, so many applications won't uninstall cleanly. :-S

I truly hope you're not doing "rm -f /usr/bin/fooapp"

O_o

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And lo on Wed, 13 Feb 2008 17:11:27 -0000, scott <sco### [at] laptopcom> did  
spake, saying:

>>>> From Amazon the non-OEM non-upgrade 32-bit versions
>>>>
>>>> Home Basic £175
>>>> Home Premium £214
>>>> Business £238
>>>> Ultimate £352
>>>
>>> You'd be silly not to buy the OEM version though...
>>
>> I agree, except the point is these are the real prices Microsoft are  
>> trying to sell their operating system for. You're essentially saying  
>> it's silly to buy that suit from the actual store when you can get it  
>> cheaper in their 'factory' store except what is the cheaper price based  
>> upon?
>
> Actually I read an interesting article the other day about things like  
> this, where you get certain groups of people to pay more for essentially  
> the same product.  Like when cinemas charge kids and OAPs half-price,  
> what they're actually doing is charging people who have a job and can  
> afford it double. Seems the same with MS here, they're just charging  
> people who aren't geeks a lot more.  Which kind of makes sense, as the  
> geeks are the ones most likely to switch to another OS...

Try  
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Undercover-Economist-Tim-Harford/dp/0349119856/ he  
discusses much the same thing though he concentrates on how companies get  
us to differentiate ourselves by the amount we spend. For example  
Sainsbury's bananas are 14p each, Sainsbury's Fair Trade bananas are 22p  
each; do you think the entire extra 8p per banana is going to the grower?

-- 
Phil Cook

--
I once tried to be apathetic, but I just couldn't be bothered
http://flipc.blogspot.com

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And lo on Wed, 13 Feb 2008 17:27:28 -0000, Jim Henderson  
<nos### [at] nospamcom> did spake, saying:

> On Wed, 13 Feb 2008 11:49:23 +0100, scott wrote:
>
>>> Well I don't live in America, do I? :-P
>>
>> Didn't they take over Asda in the UK?
>
> Yep.  And I hope Asda treats their employees better than they (Wallmart)
> do over here.

Fortunately I think the only practice that got transferred over was having  
a greeter on the door.

-- 
Phil Cook

--
I once tried to be apathetic, but I just couldn't be bothered
http://flipc.blogspot.com

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nemesis wrote:
> Orchid XP v7 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
>> Well, so many applications won't uninstall cleanly. :-S
> 
> I truly hope you're not doing "rm -f /usr/bin/fooapp"
> 
> O_o

I meant on Windoze. :-P

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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nemesis wrote:
> "Nekar Xenos" <nek### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
>> I'm considering Ubuntu but I need to know if there is something free
>> available like CorelDraw or Illustrator.
> 
> I can't recommend Inkscape enough.
> http://www.inkscape.org

I use it on Windoze. It works OK. Has a few annoying features, but I'm 
not aware of any other tool that does what Inskape does...

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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>> Or send them the core file.
>
> I'm pretty sure my employer would freak out about all the potentially 
> confidential data I'd be leaking...

Yeh I have that problem a lot.  One of the pieces of software we run (not by 
MS btw!) crashes a lot and they keep requesting I send them my files for 
them to see why it's crashing.  Except they're all confidential so I can't 
send them the files.  Great.  There's not really any way to move forward 
with this...

Post a reply to this message

Orchid XP v7 wrote:
> Nicolas Alvarez wrote:
>> Orchid XP v7 escribió:
>>> Oh, BTW, have Apple added the ability to right-click yet?
>>>
>>
>> You can Ctrl-click to get a popup menu. And many mouses for Mac have 
>> two buttons.
> 
> ...so basically that's "yes" then. :-)

And you know the best thing? On their laptops, tapping the touchpad with 
two fingers instead of just one performs a right-click (I don't think 
this is default behaviour, but it's in the desktop settings - and it's 
genius).

Post a reply to this message

scott wrote:
>>> Or send them the core file.
>>
>> I'm pretty sure my employer would freak out about all the potentially 
>> confidential data I'd be leaking...
> 
> Yeh I have that problem a lot.  One of the pieces of software we run 
> (not by MS btw!) crashes a lot and they keep requesting I send them my 
> files for them to see why it's crashing.  Except they're all 
> confidential so I can't send them the files.  Great.  There's not really 
> any way to move forward with this...

Well, unless you invite the devs to come camp at your place until the 
next time it crashes, and don't let them take any data away with them.

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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Bill Pragnell wrote:

> And you know the best thing? On their laptops, tapping the touchpad with 
> two fingers instead of just one performs a right-click (I don't think 
> this is default behaviour, but it's in the desktop settings - and it's 
> genius).

Gah. I *hate* that! I wish I knew how to disable that on my Linux 
laptop... You go to make a big mouse movement, which involves lifting 
your fingers off the glide pad and putting them down again several 
times, and each time you do you end up randomly clicking something on 
the screen. GRRR!

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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> Try 
> http://www.amazon.co.uk/Undercover-Economist-Tim-Harford/dp/0349119856/ he 
> discusses much the same thing though he concentrates on how companies get 
> us to differentiate ourselves by the amount we spend. For example 
> Sainsbury's bananas are 14p each, Sainsbury's Fair Trade bananas are 22p 
> each; do you think the entire extra 8p per banana is going to the grower?

Yeh the article was by him ;-)

Post a reply to this message

Invisible wrote:
> Bill Pragnell wrote:
> 
>> And you know the best thing? On their laptops, tapping the touchpad 
>> with two fingers instead of just one performs a right-click (I don't 
>> think this is default behaviour, but it's in the desktop settings - 
>> and it's genius).
> 
> Gah. I *hate* that! I wish I knew how to disable that on my Linux 
> laptop... You go to make a big mouse movement, which involves lifting 
> your fingers off the glide pad and putting them down again several 
> times, and each time you do you end up randomly clicking something on 
> the screen. GRRR!

You must be joking! This sort of behaviour is what makes laptops usable 
without a mouse. Anyway, it's easy to avoid your problem on the Mac 
because the pointer speed varies non-linearly with finger speed. That 
is, move quickly and you can go from one side of the desktop to the 
other without lifting your finger, but move slowly and you get 
pixel-by-pixel accuracy.

Having seen the wealth of desktop settings in e.g. SUSE, I'd be very 
surprised if you couldn't set all this and more on your machine.

The other thing I like is scrolling the currently active window by 
moving two fingers on the touchpad instead of one. Better than a mouse 
scrollwheel cos you can go in any direction. This sort of thing makes 
most of my casual desktop use 10x faster than it otherwise would be. :-)

Post a reply to this message

And lo on Thu, 14 Feb 2008 10:37:46 -0000, scott <sco### [at] laptopcom> did  
spake, saying:

>> Try  
>> http://www.amazon.co.uk/Undercover-Economist-Tim-Harford/dp/0349119856/  
>> he discusses much the same thing though he concentrates on how  
>> companies get us to differentiate ourselves by the amount we spend. For  
>> example Sainsbury's bananas are 14p each, Sainsbury's Fair Trade  
>> bananas are 22p each; do you think the entire extra 8p per banana is  
>> going to the grower?
>
> Yeh the article was by him ;-)

Heh it's a good book, I don't agree completely with his conclusions of the  
Free Market System. From what I recall he tends to skip over the effects  
of transparency, and illegality; that is where that 8p goes, how you can  
compete with a nation that might enslave their population to work  
producing goods, and why we shouldn't follow the Afghan example and grow  
poppies

-- 
Phil Cook

--
I once tried to be apathetic, but I just couldn't be bothered
http://flipc.blogspot.com

Post a reply to this message

>> Gah. I *hate* that! I wish I knew how to disable that on my Linux 
>> laptop... You go to make a big mouse movement, which involves lifting 
>> your fingers off the glide pad and putting them down again several 
>> times, and each time you do you end up randomly clicking something on 
>> the screen. GRRR!
> 
> You must be joking! This sort of behaviour is what makes laptops usable 
> without a mouse.

On the contrary - this is the number #2 reason for me always plugging a 
mouse in. (#1 is that, obviously, a glide pad is, what, 2 inches square?)

> Anyway, it's easy to avoid your problem on the Mac 
> because the pointer speed varies non-linearly with finger speed.

Ah-hah! Another thing I really hate... Makes it easy to move the pointer 
half way across the screen, but almost impossible to aim at a 1-pixel dot.

> Having seen the wealth of desktop settings in e.g. SUSE, I'd be very 
> surprised if you couldn't set all this and more on your machine.

Well, under Windoze the device driver for the glide pad lets you change 
it. I had assumed it's a software thing, but under SUSE the glide pad 
seems to malfunction in exactly the same way, so it must be hardware...

> The other thing I like is scrolling the currently active window by 
> moving two fingers on the touchpad instead of one.

Ah, yet another thing I really hate about using the glide pad. "Oh, I 
accidentally touched the pad slightly too far to the side, now it thinks 
I want to *scroll* this window rather than point at the one behind it". >_<

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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Invisible wrote:
> Ah, yet another thing I really hate about using the glide pad. "Oh, I 
> accidentally touched the pad slightly too far to the side, now it thinks 
> I want to *scroll* this window rather than point at the one behind it". >_<

Oh well, we're going to have to agree to differ on this one!

I see a lot of people using laptops, and hardly any of them use tapping 
the pad as a mouse click, preferring to use the buttons (often with 
their other hand!). I find this tedious and slow.

If you're used to linear pointer speeds and no additional pad 
functionality I guess it will take some practice and getting used to. 
Bizarrely, I used to hate the turbo-mouse behaviour when actually using 
a mouse, but found it really easy with the pad.

Post a reply to this message

Bill Pragnell wrote:

> Oh well, we're going to have to agree to differ on this one!

Fair enough. It's a free country... ;-)

> I see a lot of people using laptops, and hardly any of them use tapping 
> the pad as a mouse click, preferring to use the buttons (often with 
> their other hand!). I find this tedious and slow.

Well, you can't type with one hand anyway, so you might as well use both 
to work the glide pad.

As for the scroll pads... now if there was some kind of divider between 
the part of the pad that scrolls things and the part that moves the 
mouse, that would be fine. (Indeed, having a vertical strip of pad would 
probably be easier than a scroll wheel - it's bigger after all.) But 
with no dividing line, it's frustratingly hard to make the thing do what 
you actually want.

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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Invisible wrote:
> Bill Pragnell wrote:
>> I see a lot of people using laptops, and hardly any of them use 
>> tapping the pad as a mouse click, preferring to use the buttons (often 
>> with their other hand!). I find this tedious and slow.
> 
> Well, you can't type with one hand anyway, so you might as well use both 
> to work the glide pad.

True, but if you're using keyboard shortcuts a lot then you *can* use 
one hand (say, moving blocks of text or code around in an editor 
window), and then a tap-click is much more convenient.

> As for the scroll pads... now if there was some kind of divider between 
> the part of the pad that scrolls things and the part that moves the 
> mouse, that would be fine. (Indeed, having a vertical strip of pad would 
> probably be easier than a scroll wheel - it's bigger after all.) But 
> with no dividing line, it's frustratingly hard to make the thing do what 
> you actually want.

My HP windoze laptop has exactly that - a thin strip on the right edge 
of the touchpad that does the job of a scroll wheel. It's just so 
frustrating, when switching from the Mac to the PC, expecting the (to 
me) wonderful, convenient navigation and having to fanny around with 
scrollbar buttons or switch to using the keyboard instead... :)

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> Well, unless you invite the devs to come camp at your place until the next 
> time it crashes, and don't let them take any data away with them.

Well yes, but given that half of the dev team is in a different country, and 
the other half is in a different continent...

And still, I don't think my superiors would want me to show them what we're 
doing, especially since it's one of two industry standard packages - so I 
guess they are working with our competitors too...

Post a reply to this message

Invisible escribió:
> Ah-hah! Another thing I really hate... Makes it easy to move the pointer 
> half way across the screen, but almost impossible to aim at a 1-pixel dot.
> 

You got that backwards... The non-linear movement is what LETS you aim 
at a 1-pixel dot and ALSO move the pointer from one corner of the screen 
to the other.

Move twice as fast, cursor moves three times as fast. If you move 
slowly, you can surely get 1px precision.

Post a reply to this message

Bill Pragnell escribió:
> If you're used to linear pointer speeds

...you can configure the Mac to have linear speed.

Post a reply to this message

Nicolas Alvarez wrote:
> Invisible escribió:
>> Ah-hah! Another thing I really hate... Makes it easy to move the 
>> pointer half way across the screen, but almost impossible to aim at a 
>> 1-pixel dot.
>>
> 
> You got that backwards... The non-linear movement is what LETS you aim 
> at a 1-pixel dot and ALSO move the pointer from one corner of the screen 
> to the other.

Not IME. Generally it means that no matter how you move your hand, the 
pointer shoots off so fast it smashes into the corner of the screen. 
Unless you move your finger so slowly it sticks to the pad and pulls all 
the skin out from under your nails...

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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Nicolas Alvarez wrote:
> Bill Pragnell escribió:
>> If you're used to linear pointer speeds
> 
> ...you can configure the Mac to have linear speed.

Yes. The default is the nonlinear though, and by the time I got around 
to hunting out the settings I'd got used to it, and preferred it.

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"Darren New" <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote in message
news:47b210da$1@news.povray.org...
> Orchid XP v7 wrote:
> > Darren New wrote:
> >
> >>> Only hyper-nerds are going to be able to get anything remotely useful
> >>> out of a dump file. To everybody else, it's just wasted disk space.
> >>
> >> Generally, the source code is sufficient.
> >
> > Cool. Let me just contact the makers of every device driver I'm running
> > and we can see where th... no, wait, that won't work. ;-)
>
> Or send them the core file.

I had IBM once insist that I attach a debugger to the application that was
crashing, so they could get detailed stack anaylsis.

Let's see, attach a debugger to my production SQL Server, just so I can
track a problem with one ODBC driver. I think not.

Post a reply to this message

On Thu, 14 Feb 2008 07:31:18 +0000, Orchid XP v7 wrote:

>>> ...which is what I meant. If HP gets to pick what hardware goes in,
>>> they can pick exactly the hardware that works with whichever OS
>>> they're preloading.
>> 
>> Sure.  Now, how surprised are you going to be when I tell you that my
>> HP didn't come with openSUSE installed, but with Vista installed, and I
>> installed openSUSE with no problems?
> 
> That's a little different, yeah.
> 
>> (Only thing not working is
>> wireless, and I don't care about that - but I understand there are
>> drivers for Linux for it, just can't be bothered).
> 
> One of the prime areas that doesn't work, so I'm told. (I don't use such
> technology myself, so...)

Um, my wife's wireless card works fine, the one in my t42p works fine, 
and the one in my kids' machine (running from a liveCD) works fine.  In 
fact, the t42p uses an atheros chipset, and the driver is a reverse-
engineered driver, and it works pretty well (just don't ask about the 
access point at the office - that thing is a piece of crap.  The one here 
at home works fine).

>> This thing's got an
>> Nvidia chipset ethernet card in it, not exactly a common type of
>> ethernet card, at least not in my experience.
> 
> My motherboard has the nVidia nForce IV chipset. For quite a while I had
> trouble with various distros not recognising either the Ethernet ports
> or the SATA ports. (Guess where my HD is...) Makes installing the OS
> interesting when it can't find your HD. (Also, the early nForce driver
> would enumerate the HDs in reverse order, which is damn confusing...)

Oh, yes, and this HP uses a SATA drive as well.

>>> :-|   <== not shocked face.
>> 
>> Given that you're on v7, I'm not surprised. :-)
> 
> Well, so many applications won't uninstall cleanly. :-S

One of the *major* problems I have with Windows.

>>> Like I said, Linux has now become pretty easy to use once it's set up
>>> right. I find it's still tricky to set it up correctly sometimes, but
>>> once it works it's really not much different to Windoze. [Except no
>>> random OS crashes.]
>> 
>> It can be, particularly with laptops.  As I said, 5 years ago, it was
>> fairly painful on laptops (in particular), but today the support is
>> very good.
> 
> Something like 8 years ago, I was manually editing the X11 configuration
> file to tell it what DAC chip my graphics card has in it... o_O

That was 8 years ago.  This is now - with OpenSUSE, you use sax2 to do 
the configuration.  ATI cards can be a little flakey to get working, but 
AMD has opened the specs so real OSS drivers are on the way.  The Nvidia 
graphics drivers are quite good, even though they're binary-only (that's 
also what's in the HP for video).

Jim

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On Thu, 14 Feb 2008 08:27:59 +0200, Nekar Xenos wrote:

> "Jim Henderson" <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote in message
> news:47b37404@news.povray.org...
>> On Wed, 13 Feb 2008 21:56:48 +0000, Orchid XP v7 wrote:
>>> I tried to go down that road. I found too many things I couldn't do
>>> without Windoze. Sadly...
>>
>> Like what?  I do have a couple apps that I need Windows for, and I have
>> a VMware machine for those circumstances.  Like the odd MS Excel XML
>> document that won't open in OpenOffice (had one a couple days ago like
>> that).  Usually they open fine, but every once in a while the converter
>> just seizes up.
>>
>>
> I'm considering Ubuntu but I need to know if there is something free
> available like CorelDraw or Illustrator. I need to be able to export
> vectors to pdf and fonts and I like all the advanced capabillities of
> Corel and Illustrator.

I use Inkscape for that kind of work - the latest version is pretty 
good.  It ain't Illustrator (which I have running in a VM).

Jim

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On Thu, 14 Feb 2008 02:22:44 -0500, nemesis wrote:

> povray (paths to prism)

I do wish it did a better job with fonts.  I'm always trying to remember 
how I got it to work "the last time".  It's something about having to 
convert the object to curves, IIRC.

I also have odd problems with it coming up with "nan" values for some of 
the points.

But generally, I like that feature a lot.

Jim

Post a reply to this message

On Thu, 14 Feb 2008 10:41:20 +0000, Invisible wrote:

> Bill Pragnell wrote:
> 
>> And you know the best thing? On their laptops, tapping the touchpad
>> with two fingers instead of just one performs a right-click (I don't
>> think this is default behaviour, but it's in the desktop settings - and
>> it's genius).
> 
> Gah. I *hate* that! I wish I knew how to disable that on my Linux
> laptop... You go to make a big mouse movement, which involves lifting
> your fingers off the glide pad and putting them down again several
> times, and each time you do you end up randomly clicking something on
> the screen. GRRR!

Change the mouse sensitivity.

Jim

Post a reply to this message

On Thu, 14 Feb 2008 09:15:19 +0000, Phil Cook wrote:

> And lo on Wed, 13 Feb 2008 17:27:28 -0000, Jim Henderson
> <nos### [at] nospamcom> did spake, saying:
> 
>> On Wed, 13 Feb 2008 11:49:23 +0100, scott wrote:
>>
>>>> Well I don't live in America, do I? :-P
>>>
>>> Didn't they take over Asda in the UK?
>>
>> Yep.  And I hope Asda treats their employees better than they
>> (Wallmart) do over here.
> 
> Fortunately I think the only practice that got transferred over was
> having a greeter on the door.

That's a relief.

Jim

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Jim Henderson escribió:
> On Thu, 14 Feb 2008 07:31:18 +0000, Orchid XP v7 wrote:
>> Well, so many applications won't uninstall cleanly. :-S
> 
> One of the *major* problems I have with Windows.

He was talking about Windows.

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On Thu, 14 Feb 2008 16:00:11 -0200, Nicolas Alvarez wrote:

> Jim Henderson escribió:
>> On Thu, 14 Feb 2008 07:31:18 +0000, Orchid XP v7 wrote:
>>> Well, so many applications won't uninstall cleanly. :-S
>> 
>> One of the *major* problems I have with Windows.
> 
> He was talking about Windows.

I know, I was agreeing with him.

Jim

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>> Something like 8 years ago, I was manually editing the X11 configuration
>> file to tell it what DAC chip my graphics card has in it... o_O
> 
> That was 8 years ago.  This is now - with OpenSUSE, you use sax2 to do 
> the configuration.

Or just... install OpenSUSE and it instantly works. (Although on my 
laptop I *always* have to tweak the settings to get the picture to fill 
the display...)

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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Jim Henderson wrote:
> 
> As for confidential data being leaked, the core file typically will 
> contain just the crashed program info, but if it's reproducible, you send 
> them a core from a simplified setup.

Content of a file being limited doesn't stop people from thinking what's
inside of it.

> Jim


-- 
Eero "Aero" Ahonen
   http://www.zbxt.net
      aer### [at] removethiszbxtnetinvalid

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On Thu, 14 Feb 2008 18:54:30 +0000, Orchid XP v7 wrote:

>>> Something like 8 years ago, I was manually editing the X11
>>> configuration file to tell it what DAC chip my graphics card has in
>>> it... o_O
>> 
>> That was 8 years ago.  This is now - with OpenSUSE, you use sax2 to do
>> the configuration.
> 
> Or just... install OpenSUSE and it instantly works. (Although on my
> laptop I *always* have to tweak the settings to get the picture to fill
> the display...)

Well, that works as well.  Unless you have an ATI card at present (just 
updated the kernel on this machine, my t42p, and had to reinstall the old 
driver because the new one still doesn't work for me).  But I've got a 
process down now to do that.

Jim

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Bill Pragnell wrote:
> 
> And you know the best thing? On their laptops, tapping the touchpad with
> two fingers instead of just one performs a right-click (I don't think
> this is default behaviour, but it's in the desktop settings - and it's
> genius).

My X performs a middle-click when clicked with two fingers. Much better
for me :).

-- 
Eero "Aero" Ahonen
   http://www.zbxt.net
      aer### [at] removethiszbxtnetinvalid

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On Thu, 14 Feb 2008 22:20:48 +0200, Eero Ahonen wrote:

>> As for confidential data being leaked, the core file typically will
>> contain just the crashed program info, but if it's reproducible, you
>> send them a core from a simplified setup.
> 
> Content of a file being limited doesn't stop people from thinking what's
> inside of it.

True, but they can't know for sure.  But IME most technicians at software 
vendors don't have time to spend digging through core files to see what 
confidential data is being leaked.  Then again, most of those who do core 
file analysis where I work are highly trusted professionals as well.

Jim

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Invisible wrote:
>>
>> You must be joking! This sort of behaviour is what makes laptops
>> usable without a mouse.

No, it's what makes a laptop *faster* to use than a desktop.

> On the contrary - this is the number #2 reason for me always plugging a
> mouse in. (#1 is that, obviously, a glide pad is, what, 2 inches square?)

Sigh, learn to use the touchpad :p. What comes for the 2" square,
acceleration is absolutely needed option - fast move, long movement.
Correctly configured touchpad is fast and pretty accurate to use (yes, I
prefer normal mouse too, if I'll need to draw something).

>> Anyway, it's easy to avoid your problem on the Mac because the pointer
>> speed varies non-linearly with finger speed.
> 
> Ah-hah! Another thing I really hate... Makes it easy to move the pointer
> half way across the screen, but almost impossible to aim at a 1-pixel dot.

Wrong. Statically set fast speed would do this, but non-linear
acceleration feature doesn't.

Besides touchpad have "scrolling areas" - when you'll reach the end of
the touchpad, you hold your finger there and the cursor still moves,
until you raise your finger.

> Well, under Windoze the device driver for the glide pad lets you change
> it. I had assumed it's a software thing, but under SUSE the glide pad
> seems to malfunction in exactly the same way, so it must be hardware...

It's configurable also in Linux ;).

>> The other thing I like is scrolling the currently active window by
>> moving two fingers on the touchpad instead of one.

I prefer scrollbar on the side of the touchpad, so one finger is enough.
I'll never have to raise my hands from the keyboard when I'm using
laptop, since the touchpad is fully usable with thumbs (mostly the right
one - middle-click makes also left one needed).

> Ah, yet another thing I really hate about using the glide pad. "Oh, I
> accidentally touched the pad slightly too far to the side, now it thinks
> I want to *scroll* this window rather than point at the one behind it". >_<

If you miss a hit on a keyboard, it writes wrong letter...

-- 
Eero "Aero" Ahonen
   http://www.zbxt.net
      aer### [at] removethiszbxtnetinvalid

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>> Ah, yet another thing I really hate about using the glide pad. "Oh, I
>> accidentally touched the pad slightly too far to the side, now it thinks
>> I want to *scroll* this window rather than point at the one behind it". >_<
> 
> If you miss a hit on a keyboard, it writes wrong letter...

Yeah, but you know what? The keys are all seperate. ;-)

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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Orchid XP v7 wrote:
> 
> Something like 8 years ago, I was manually editing the X11 configuration
> file to tell it what DAC chip my graphics card has in it... o_O
> 

9 years ago I said "Xconfigurator" and got a curses-based application to
configure my X easily and correctly. Today I mostly use xorgconfig,
which makes you need to know more :p.

-- 
Eero "Aero" Ahonen
   http://www.zbxt.net
      aer### [at] removethiszbxtnetinvalid

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>> Something like 8 years ago, I was manually editing the X11 configuration
>> file to tell it what DAC chip my graphics card has in it... o_O
>>
> 
> 9 years ago I said "Xconfigurator" and got a curses-based application to
> configure my X easily and correctly. Today I mostly use xorgconfig,
> which makes you need to know more :p.

IIRC, Xconfigurator never worked properly, and I always had to use vim 
to edit the X11 config, wait the the filesystem to sync, and then reboot 
the PC to exit vim... :-S

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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On Thu, 14 Feb 2008 20:00:58 +0000, Orchid XP v7 wrote:

>>> Something like 8 years ago, I was manually editing the X11
>>> configuration file to tell it what DAC chip my graphics card has in
>>> it... o_O
>>>
>>>
>> 9 years ago I said "Xconfigurator" and got a curses-based application
>> to configure my X easily and correctly. Today I mostly use xorgconfig,
>> which makes you need to know more :p.
> 
> IIRC, Xconfigurator never worked properly, and I always had to use vim
> to edit the X11 config, wait the the filesystem to sync, and then reboot
> the PC to exit vim... :-S

Odd, I never had those problems with Xconfigurator myself...

Jim

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>> IIRC, Xconfigurator never worked properly, and I always had to use vim
>> to edit the X11 config, wait the the filesystem to sync, and then reboot
>> the PC to exit vim... :-S
> 
> Odd, I never had those problems with Xconfigurator myself...

I'm just trying to remember exactly what video card I was trying to 
configure... Something obscure. It's not S3 or ATI or nVidia or 
anything. Hmm, what was it called? Might have been a Matrox of some 
kind, I don't recall now.

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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On Thu, 14 Feb 2008 20:05:24 +0000, Orchid XP v7 wrote:

>>> IIRC, Xconfigurator never worked properly, and I always had to use vim
>>> to edit the X11 config, wait the the filesystem to sync, and then
>>> reboot the PC to exit vim... :-S
>> 
>> Odd, I never had those problems with Xconfigurator myself...
> 
> I'm just trying to remember exactly what video card I was trying to
> configure... Something obscure. It's not S3 or ATI or nVidia or
> anything. Hmm, what was it called? Might have been a Matrox of some
> kind, I don't recall now.

The Matrox cards ISTR were fairly fussy about configuration. I think I 
owned one once and swore I'd never go back.

Jim

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On Thu, 14 Feb 2008 15:06:56 -0500, Jim Henderson wrote:

> On Thu, 14 Feb 2008 20:05:24 +0000, Orchid XP v7 wrote:
> 
>>>> IIRC, Xconfigurator never worked properly, and I always had to use
>>>> vim to edit the X11 config, wait the the filesystem to sync, and then
>>>> reboot the PC to exit vim... :-S
>>> 
>>> Odd, I never had those problems with Xconfigurator myself...
>> 
>> I'm just trying to remember exactly what video card I was trying to
>> configure... Something obscure. It's not S3 or ATI or nVidia or
>> anything. Hmm, what was it called? Might have been a Matrox of some
>> kind, I don't recall now.
> 
> The Matrox cards ISTR were fairly fussy about configuration. I think I
> owned one once and swore I'd never go back.

go back to buy another one, that is.

Jim

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Jim Henderson <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote:
> I also have odd problems with it coming up with "nan" values for some of
> the points.

yes, alphaQuad raised that point.  I wonder how it can output perfectly readable
numbers for the points in the SVG and get some of those wrong in the povray
export...

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nemesis wrote:
> Jim Henderson <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote:
>> I also have odd problems with it coming up with "nan" values for some of
>> the points.
> 
> yes, alphaQuad raised that point.  I wonder how it can output perfectly readable
> numbers for the points in the SVG and get some of those wrong in the povray
> export...

Probably trying to scale them in same way and ending up with a zero 
denominator somewhere or something daft like that...

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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Orchid XP v7 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> I always had to use vim
> to edit the X11 config, wait the the filesystem to sync, and then reboot
> the PC to exit vim... :-S

God. How about ":q", ":wq" or even the ever popular "ZZ"?

How about learning a tool before using it?

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