Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

LWCE Bits and Pieces

Posted by Hemos on from the coverage-from-afar dept.

Well, we've gotten a massive number of submissions with the haps at LWCE. I've distilled some of the good ones below: Chanc_Grokon wrote to us with the press release from Ximian about the monthly charges for Red Carpet, their installer. He also raises the "Why not just use apt-get?" point. A number of people wrote pointing out LinuxLookup.com's Day 1 coverage and Day 2 coverage. Of particular interest to Daeslin was Larry Lessig's attack on overly strong intellectual property laws. A number of people, Krismon included, have voiced some disappointment at the excitement of the show - not being there, I make no judgments. Sun has unveiled more details about StarOffice 6. Compaq's CTO also made comments about Linux improving in the enterprise. jrbw sent in Linus' thoughts (dismissive) of .Net/Hailstorm. And KDE has won the "Best Open Source Project" award. Newsforge has also got a round-up and coverage piece. More news as it happens.

3 of 123 comments (clear)

  1. If I'm going to pay for Red Carpet... by TomatoMan · · Score: 3, Interesting

    ...I'd be more interested in them keeping their packages current than giving me a fatter download pipe. Mozilla is still at 0.9.1 in Red Carpet; I chatted with some team members and they advised against maually installing 0.9.3 over the Red Carpet install because it would break things, and 0.9.3 isn't on the current radar for packaging according to the folks I taked to..

    For minor updates, that's not such a big deal, but Moz users know that 0.9.3 is a quantum leap ahead of anything before it in terms of usability and stability, and it's a pretty huge piece of software in the desktop Linux world. I'm stuck at 0.9.1 until they put a package together. I know the guys are busy and doing it for nothing (so far), but take my money and pay someone to keep the packages as current as possible, please, if you want to take it.

    --
    -- http://frobnosticate.com
  2. Gates' wife wrote the paper clip by Wee · · Score: 4, Interesting
    Who knows who wrote the paper clip in [Microsoft] Word?.

    Bill Gates' wife was responsible for the paper clip. Really, it's true. Melinda French Gates was a project lead on MS Bob (you have to remember MicroSoft Bob -- it was that cartoony software that slowed your machine to a crawl and insulted you while balancing your checkbook or reading email). When Bob was revealed to be the complete and utter turkey that it was always destined to be, guess what got some of the "usability and human interface" stuff? Office. Guess who happened to also be, ah, "seeing" The Boss? Melinda. Why wasn't Bob just canned, like any other project that wastes millions and failed completely? You have to wonder if Bill G wasn't getting pillow-talked into something. In fact, MS Bob was the first consumer product Bill Gates released personally. People do the strangest things for love.

    Anyway, a lot of what Bob had to offer didn't get canned (as it should have). It got repuposed and wound up in other MS products. Take a look at the screenshot on this page. See that dog in the lower corner? That was Bob's dog Rex. (I wish they had a picture of the dragon named "Java"; I wonder if McNealy every knew about that?) Looks like that paper clip, eh? Bob's ghost is in other stuff, too. MS Agent had a re-incarnation.

    Well this is all way OT. But I think the Bob fiasco sheds some light on what goes on at MS. There's really no reason to wonder about the pape clip. I'm sure Melinda will insist on touchy-feely stuff being included in every MS product. I love it when someone thinks for me...

    -B

    --

    Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.

  3. Disappointment by krismon · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I was really disappointed with this year's show. I didn't think it had the same energy as last year's show in San Jose. I think the number of exhibitors have gone down. I'm sure the economy has something to do with it, probably half the companies that were there last year have gone under. I thought the general mood was: eh.. we're here.. let's TRY to sell something.. whereas last year was: Hey! I've got something new and innovative, this is something you can't live without. There was also a lot more anticipation last year I think, there was the release of Helix(now Ximian) and OSDN, 2.4 kernel, and the economy and the technology outlook was much better. SGI was noticably absent, they had one of the biggest areas last year. There just wasn't the noise and excitement this year.