Slashdot Mirror


Nat Demos Dashboard

pheared writes "Nat Friedman from Ximian gave a fairly in depth, quite hilarious (got embarrassing screensaver?), and somewhat impromptu, talk about his project "Dashboard" at OLS. From his blog: "The dashboard is a piece of software which performs a continous, automatic search of your personal information space to show you things in your life that are related to whatever you happen to be doing with your computer at the time." Neat stuff, but I don't think I will be warming up to Mono and C# any time soon."

4 of 274 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Unnecessary commentary? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Ahahaha. Yes, just as SCO were concerned about their IPR three years ago, when Project Monteray collapsed on them. Just as Unisys made it clear right from the start that they wanted royalties for LZW in GIF. Yeah, I'm sure they would have done something by now. Thats right. Microsoft would never wait until a developer base had grown around C# among FOSS developers and then pull the rug out from under them and leave them with no choice but to switch to Microsoft .NET No, they'd never do exactly the same thing as they've done to countless others before, for example OS/2. No. Never.

    Pull my head out indeed.

  2. Re:Nice to see the sideswipe at .NET (not) by nepheles · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It's maybe a little ironic that large portions of the OS community are generally against C# and Mono, as it is a Microsoft technology. Mono is an OS clone of a mainly proprietary technology.

    ...Almost like a certain Operating System

    --
    ((lambda x ((x))) (lambda x ((x))))
  3. Yeah, Like That's Proof by reallocate · · Score: 4, Insightful

    >> As always, if you think something doesn't suck then prove it.

    Says who? You?

    >> Everything I've seen of .NET has looked retarded...

    Oh, there's the proof.

    >> I don't like most things Microsoft...

    ..and, therefore, anything and everything associated with Microsoft is beneath contempt, by definition.

    Have you ever considered the possiblity that you might, sometimes, be wrong?

    --
    -- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
  4. Ah, but that's exctly the point! by Lysol · · Score: 4, Insightful

    So what exactly is wrong with .NET? If you need to work on the Windows platform it's a godsend!

    Precisely. And that's where it will stay - on a Win platform. At least until Win is made much smaller (think Novell) and the platform becomes less important compared to the app and development technologies.

    Anyway, I have to say that I'm a huge Ximian fan. I think they've contributed a great desktop. So my hat's off to them.

    However, as someone who has done some hacking on dotGNU, I am pessimistic about the whole .NET thing.

    Besides domination, what is m$'s ultimate goal: lock in. This has been documented and has hit people over the head for years so I don't need to go into a lengthy discussion about it.
    Coupled with the fact that even from a clean room implementation standpoint, m$ will pull ip claims. No question about it. Especially when GNU/Linux starts making more and more inroads. I mean, if it's (.NET) supported on *nix, why go with costly m$?

    Like I said, I think Nat, Miguel and co. have done an excellent job. They're doing great things. But unless there is some strict, free, licensing agreement submitted along with the .NET ECMA stuff (to my knowledge, only C# has been submitted), then I just can't see how m$ will stay away from shutting Mono down.

    Also, while I think Mono is cool, I still have a problem supporting a language/platform that was created by a company such as m$ for the reasons they did. It still feels tainted and dirty to me. m$ has not become the largest software company in the world by being 'compatible'. There's a documented history that goes back well over a decade that proves this.

    Good luck guys! The dashboard looks reall cool, btw.