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Call me when Diaspora has released something. They claim to have code, but they've forgotten that open source means "release early, release often" in Romulan. Skip that, even if they release code, still don't call me if it's P2P (as I understand is their plan) since

• No normal person wants to set up a node on his computer; and
• Social networks need to have access to information even when your computer is off.

I asked the devs over at OneSocialWeb (which have an actual, working product) if they had tried to contact Diaspora, but it appears the Diaspora devs want to do their own thing based on P2P and GPG, not specifications like ActivityStrea.ms, SocialNet, or PortableContacts. [1]

This isn't some kind of EULA situation where a provision in the contract will be thrown out: the cameras are stated to be for non-commercial use because no one paid for a commercial license. Suing would be quick and dirty, and the user would be at fault. The user could possibly then sue the manufacturer for misleading claims (TFA's "professional camera" that doesn't allow professional shots), I guess, but the user would definitely be unlicensed and therefor have to pay.

Take a look at Gregory Maxwell's response to the accusation of OGG falling under patents. He has a good bit to say about MPEG-LA and anti-trust, as well.

The solution is to create a standard and build it into browsers. I know! It's bloat, but your browser is already trying to handle your Internet communication and your online identity (through remembering all your passwords). Why not give the browser the tools it needs to do these things effectively? Whether it's got the IM portion of the spec built in or not, I couldn't care less.

I know a lot of people have given you crap about this choice, but I think it's great. We should all have the freedom to have our blog wherever we want, post our pictures and videos to any service (even our own server), and set up events on any calendar without being shut out of social sites. I shouldn't have to have twenty-five accounts. I've given up several in the last few months, and am glad to see a move to OpenID and OAuth by sites like Twitter.

That's not enough, though. We need glue, too. I'm a big proponent of an open, federated social networking standard. I think we (techies) should look at http://www.onesocialweb.org/ for inspiration.

I also think that whatever this standard ends up being, it should be built into web browsers (with profiles and private browsing, of course) so that online identity becomes more reachable. I wrote an open letter to Mozilla and Google about it.

While you may not be able to choose, Google is opening its Adwords network to third parties.

We have launched a new capability in AdSense allowing Google-certified ad networks compete directly within AdSense, which means that advertisers from these third-party networks will be able to compete with AdWords advertisers to show on the Google Content Network.

Unsupported network card. Fix it

Change the virtual network card to one that's supported. How to Try Out ChromeOS in Virtualbox

Or to implement a standard -- see ODF the Microsoft way.

Except that the director of ODF has publicly stated that MS implements ODF completely differently than any other vendor's implementation, making an MS Office ODF file useless on anything but MS Office. Surprised? I'm not. They use the same strategy with virtually everything.

Have you heard about ODF support in MS Office 2007? It won't be compatible with other implementations. Surprise!

Or even more recently, creating an implementation of ODF which isn't interoperable.

Mostly Gamehouse, Sandlot, and Reflexive-type games. These aren't games that your average gamer is interested. In fact, a lot of them have been reviewed by my gal and said to work on Wine 1.0+. Are you sure the "more robust version" is Windows and the games aren't Wined?

In Amazon's top 25 netbooks, only #19 runs Linux. Linux lost the netbook war. It's true. What's not true is that it failed because of developers. It failed because of lazy OEMs and the network effect.

They were pre-installed, but the OEMs did such a piss-poor job that it didn't matter. The webcams and wifi still didn't work on many of them. Linux lost the netbook war. Didn't you get the memo? ;)

I recently did a basic test of Win 7 Beta and found it quite lean and just as fast in 512 MB as 1 GB RAM. It still got destroyed by the Ubu 9.04 Alpha 4, though.

I'll have to replicate it on some real hardware to make the numbers count, though.

Ubuntu 9.04 Alpha4 destroys Windows 7 in benchmarks.

The Windows desktop is twenty-five years old. OS X (via NeXT) is over twenty years old. The first versions of Gnome and KDE are barely over ten. Does Linux Lag Windows? If So, Why?

I've got an "Officially Supported" section in Games That Work which includes Starport Galactic Empires and Soldat running under Wine. I tried to convince Reflexive (since my gal plays hundreds of their website's games) to let me test and certify games so that they could be marked as "Works with Wine 1.0" on the download site. I was snubbed.

Things I miss when I'm forced to work in Windows.

According to this, Microsoft's ODF implementation isn't inter-operable with the other implementations already available. That makes it useless for this (or any) purpose.

Too bad you missed my list of stupidities for 2008. Chin up. Maybe you'll make 2009.

When you go for "standards," though, and let MS dictate, you end up with ODF that doesn't conform to ISO/IEC 26300:2006.

Not likely. MS already has plans to embrace / extend (/extinguish?) ODF. Thinking that they will change their tune on IE is silly.

When are we going to admit to ourselves that not only are they NOT standards compatible, they do NOT want to be; nor will they ever be!

You are absolutely right. MS just released their plans for Office 2007's ODF support (in SP@). Surprise! It won't be compliant or interoperable with other implementations.

With no security? WebDAV + Apache + Avahi to announce. I guess you could use Apache's security as global protection, but it still wouldn't really get you anything file-level.

I use it anywhere I just need to share stuff. It's a lot simpler than FTP or Samba. See Debian2Debian

Windows hit 1.0 in 1984. Windows NT 3.1 (It's initial rlease, or real 1.0) came out in 1993, but had been in development as OS/2 3.0 for some time and kept the same basic Windows API from Windows 3.0. Nextstep (now OS X) 1.0 was released in 1989. Linux (the kernel) 1.0 was released in 1994, but the desktop environments (KDE/GNOME) were almost five years later (98 and 99, respectively).

So when people come down hard on the Linux desktop, they need to remember that it's really only about ten years old, compared to almost 25 for Mac/Windows. FD.o is not very old and is the desktop specification machine for the Linux (and other Unix-alike) desktops.

If we graphed the desktop capabilities for each OS over time, I think it would be obvious that Linux-based OSes are moving much faster than the others. Even if distance is not on our side now, velocity and acceleration are. The distance is only a matter of time (*velocity ;))
Source

Would you use a smartphone dock? I know I would if the interface were an open standard, the terminal were really dumb, and the phone used biometric security.

Everyone seems to have misunderstood my statement. I support this. I think the long-term move is toward appliancizing.

Comparing Gnome 2.24 to Win2000 is a joke. Heck, comparing it to WinXP is a joke. Gnome 2.24 is a modern desktop just like Windows Vista is, only faster. Same bling available. Better consistency. Better features than WinXP (though probably not Vista). In fact, using Windows XP makes my ears bleed after only a few minutes.

Stop. You are switching back and forth on your comparison environment. Pick one. Since 2.24 came out today, stick to Vista since that is the most recent. Comparing to XP would necessitate choosing a Gnome from that year. Something I rather imagine you would prefer to avoid.

Gnome has strict accessibility and localization requirements and has since 2.2. Windows wasn't even localized in Thai until Gnome adoption there forced it to be, and even then they just half-assed the "start menu" and nothing else. A generation of Thais learned to do computing in a language they didn't understand.

This is irrelevant to the comparison of desktop features, bugs, and usability.

ESD never had a problem with mixing stuff if you used it instead of OSS or ALSA. It even mixes stuff locally and outputs it to another computer if you want it to. Maybe your problem is that you didn't know what you were doing ....

It could be that, or it could be the well recognized and horrifying mess that is the linux soundsystem.
Here is some reading for you:
http://insanecoding.blogspot.com/2007/05/sorry-state-of-sound-in-linux.html
http://4front-tech.com/hannublog/?p=5
http://jeffreystedfast.blogspot.com/2008/07/pulseaudio-my-last-post-on-topic.html

I used Gnome for years, and the inability to maintain consistent audio levels across multiple applications was always frustrating and painful (literally in some cases, thanks totem!)

Don't resort to ad homimem attacks. It cheapens your argument and hides the potential value of any possible truth.

Gnome configures everything for Gnome and always has. Since Gnome runs on a large number of operating systems, it doesn't deal withthe underlying system, and you'll have to be specific about which one isn't configurable and take that up with the OS vendor. That's not the job of a cross-platform desktop.

This is entirely true, but it is still not an excuse for the poor consistency within Gnome and the inability for small things like keeping my taskbar arranged like it was before I logged out. Seriously. That is internal to Gnome and there is no scapegoat here.

Since we're playing this game, these are the places Windows doesn't live up to Gnome:

1. UI consistency
2. Context menus
3. Window management
4. Virtual desktops
5. Select and middle-click to paste
6. Deskbar applet (pre-Vista)
7. User filesystem layout
8. Menu layout
9. System messages
10. Mime handling
11. Panel layout
12. See them all

Gnome vs. Win95 or Win2000? Pshaw!

UI consistency works better in Windows Vista. Actually, it worked better in Windows 98 than Gnome does. When I arrange something in one of those, it stays that way. When I add something to the menu it stays where I left it. When I change my quick launch icons, they remain in the order I put them in. Amazingly, Mac OS X also got this right despite being newer to the market than Gnome as well.

Contextual menus work just fine in Windows. They have for quite a while. They work pretty darn well in Mac OS X. In other news the sun rose in the east this morning. I don't know what you mean or where you were going with this, but righ

1. UI consistency
2. Context menus
3. Window management
4. Virtual desktops
5. Select and middle-click to paste
6. Deskbar applet (pre-Vista)
7. User filesystem layout
8. Menu layout
9. System messages
10. Mime handling
11. Panel layout
12. See them all

Gnome vs. Win95 or Win2000? Pshaw!

It would be kind of like how Ubuntu 8.04 was the beta release, and people should have waited for 8.04.1.

Most home Windows machines are infested with spyware. People that understand it can avoid it, on any version of Windows.
You know what? I've been hearing Windows users say this for a long time. It's rubbish

I wrote up the SoC's projects which will probably end up in Gnome (and by extension, Ubuntu) about a month ago.
http://www.ibeentoubuntu.com/2008/04/where-do-we-go-from-here-now-that-gnome.html

You don't need the .iso to reinstall.

I got Ubuntu (64bit) Hardy during the Alpha cycle, and as usual, I reinstalled about three days before the actual release.

You don't need to download a CD to reinstall, by the way. You can do it all through GRUB.