You mean this isn't an elitist forum? Well hell, I'm outta here!

Regards,
Omega

Well, good riddance, cuz we're too l33t for you anyway.

(Sometimes, when it seems everyone's being elite, the only way to be really elite is to change the spec to an unsigned type, be square, and shoot for the underflow!)
It works, until your neighbor turns on encryption!

Also: if that was the problem, she must not have had the latest Ubuntu; I hear it has zealous autoconfig.

I find this situation frustrating for two reasons. Firstly, "personal attacks" aside, the station did present Ubuntu in an unreasonably negative light. They treated it as if the girl in question deserved to be pitied by all for having to deal with such a horrible, unusable system, when all she wanted was to go to College. I'll grant you that the situation was unfortunate, and I wouldn't have wanted to be her, but they put it rather harshly. Ubuntu isn't for everyone, and admittedly lots of people would be confused by such a thing as the Verizon CD not working. However, without implying any insult in the statement, that is ignorance on the part of the user. It's not her fault - for example, if you had used Linux, with a package management system all your life, you might justifiably wonder "what the heck is a 'setup.exe'?". That said, neither is it Ubuntu's fault for being different. As a side note, I do find it strange that someone would /accidentally/ buy a Linux-based Dell computer... they're not as prominent as the Windows computers, and (from what I've seen) the fact that they come with Linux is well-explained. Heck, Dell isn't pushing them -- the info page on Ubuntu has a "Dell recommends Windows Vista" at the top!
My second annoyance is for the idiots that wrote all the hatemail. They were being idiots, and that's all there is to it. Likely, the journalists there don't spend enough time on the Internet, or they'd know to Not Feed the Trolls. That said, there was no excuse for what they did. But in the non-excusing, I also take issue with the way the letters were presented. If you read the blog page, the guy who wrote the article is quite rude, and not realistic; at one point he says that the nasty letters were the minority, and then he proceeds to make it sound like every Ubuntu user is a jerk.
The whole situation makes me sick: an unhappy user, bad press, and a bunch of Trolls making it into the mainstream news...

The one thing I found funny was how (in the first video) they stressed how hard it was (apparently) to pronounce Ubuntu, while saying it properly... and then proceeded to completely mis-pronounce it in the second video XD

Here's my favorite slashdot Q & A about the Verizon CD:

slashdot user 1: What's the replacement for VZAccess?

slashdot user 2: 192.168.0.1:80

You know, thinking about it, there are a lot of problems with her scenario:

A) Why did she not test the laptop BEFORE signing up for classes?
B) Why did she not enroll in normal classes?
C) Why could she not use a free public computer?
D) Why did she not drop the classes?
E) How did she order the computer online in the first place?

It makes no sense... mostly because Dell specifically says "Windows Programs will not work with Ubuntu, but there is alternative software," and "Ubuntu is NOT recommended for the average user"

Nevermind...

Agreed... College Admission FAIL!

***

This should be part of a standard pre-admission test for all undergrads.

I mean, why waste education resources on a rock?

Wow. This is incredible. Are you sure this is not a hoax?

I am in our company's customer service department, and I used to be on the helpline myself some years ago. I had all kinds of eerie calls that made me bang my forehead against my desk, but this girl beats it all - this girl and, above all, the journalists who did the story.

It is true that it's an easy mistake for a noob to try to make windows-CDs run on Ubuntu. But: What would a normal person with a healthy brain do after it fails? Read what's printed on the CD or the cover? Maybe it says "Windows 2000/XP/Vista required" or so. Also, one would probably call the support hotline (the provider's hotline, of course) and ask them for help. Thats what consumers do, normally. That's what our customers do.

Same with the MATC-"requirement" of MS Word. They said they don't require Word at all; besides, she would have managed to save documents as some version of Word. Only thing she should have done is call and ask those people.
Instead, it seems all she did was call Dell and complain that she got what she ordered and didn't return it when she had a chance to do so.

People cannot be so dumb and reach this age without running into cars and trees - natural selection and stuff, you know.
I'll tell you what happened:

She ordered th Ubuntu version because it's cheaper. Then her younger brother barked at her because he couldn't install the games he got from his classmates. Now she needed to make up a story to get the Windows version, which didn't work... To put extra pressure on Dell, she asked her ex-boyfriend to get the story on TV. Maybe Dell would react then?
I'm sure that's the whole truth.

I've actually met several people that were that baffled by Linux. Some people seriously don't understand that there is different OS's.. or even what an OS is. Their friends are able to do this, this way, why can't they??? Yes, anyone, including grandmothers can be TAUGHT linux - but the people who are the kind of people that know "Click here, click here, double click this, type here" people, having no idea what they just did, just knowing that gets them into the app they want - Those people are not likely to be able to FIGURE OUT linux by themselves.

I'm positive she ordered the Ubuntu because it was cheaper and she was trying to save money. She had no idea what ubuntu was; she just assumed it was the "cheap" option of normal winblows.

I fault her for not doing an iota of research when it looked different, and wouldn't run her disk, and for contacting a news agency to complain instead of a support department. That was simply a "look at me; I'm on TV" moment.

Anyone with even a basic knowledge of computers could have figured out the problems she had.

All this considered though.. doesn't give some people the right to act high and mighty and flame both her and the channel. That's just childish.

At my Current Job I deal with people (and these people work the US gubbernment mind you) that are the kinds of people that if we push out a piece of software, and during the newer version install it removes the desktop icon, for whatever reason, there are dozens of people that call us and scream that we "uninstalled their software". After 20 minutes of "WTF?" .. you have them click on Start->Programs and hear on the other side of the phone they go "OH THERE IT IS!" and proceed to hang up on you.

And yes... some of these are college graduates. College, quite honestly, doesn't mean jack in the way of IQ.

[QUOTE=Thesandlord;257978]...B) Bought the laptop with Ubuntu because it was cheaper....

I think you got that right. However, that is NOT a crime.

bun