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Nat Friedman on the Future of Collaboration
sp3298622 writes "Nat Friedman, co-founder of Ximian, expresses his excitement about the Hula collaboration Server, talks about the plugins in development for Evolution 2.2, the potential of XGL and the revolution of the Linux Desktop.
The
interview is a 30MB MP3 file."
How the heck am I going to listen to this on Fedora?
The interview is a 30MB MP3 file
*snickers* This was really a great idea!
time is a perception of a being's consciousness
time is your 6th sense, the wierd ones are 7+
Really, I love you guys, but "The interview is a 30MB MP3 file." is telling me you're fscking nuts. For how many days is he talking here? Is this 5.1 surround or something? How high a sampling rate is necessary for this kind of thing?
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
And before someone complains about smalltalk, it could be done in other ways.
Just look at http://crystal.sourceforge.net/
And one implimentation of it in http://www.planeshift.it/
And yes, there is a problem with non-free 3D acceleration, but they should be working on that too.
Here's Stalin speaking about the merits of Democracy!
Thursday afternoon is here,
Boobies links and time for beer,
We've been good, but we can't last,
Hurry Slashdot, hurry fast,
Knock your server for a loop,
Collaborating hula hoop,
We are those shall not mate,
Please Slashdot, don't be late!
- CmdrTaco and the Chipmunks
> The interview is a 30MB MP3 file.
Not for long, it ain't. ALVIN! Put that server cable down!
I want a calendar that I can maintain on my own, yet, allow for a dynamic overlay of a subset of this calendar to be viewed and/or maintained in other user calendars.
For example:
I have a work calendar and a personal calendar. It would be nice if I could see both my work calendar and personal calendar at both home and work (yes, I know it is possible to fudge this...). Also, I'd like to add my wife's calendar info to my view as well. And verse vica.
So we can all maintain our calendars anywhere and have realtime info from anywhere. A simple sort-by would allow me to see only work or only personal, etc. Friends could publish overlays for other friends to see (allowing for public and private data, of course).
This would be huge. Is it possible?
As I see it, we'd need a local copy of the calendar data as well as a server copy that is publically accessible (insert security concerns here). Standardize an "overlay" file and it would be pretty simple to send someone the link to a subset of your calendar.
I would imagine that, for tomorrow, my public-to-friends overlay would look like:
Darren, 2/25/2005, 5PM EST to ?, Beer and movies at my place.
More
I can't use it, since I do have a Geforce 6600, and afaik I can't use XGL with the X.org server. However, if I'm wrong, please post how it is possible to integrate XGL into an existing X.org server, so that I can use the nvidia glx module.
This sig does not contain any SCO code.
You must've missed the Enlightenment article yesterday. Check out the videos.
I remember when legal used to mean lawful, now it means some kind of loophole. - Leo Kessler
I'm really tired but also very excited so I have to type a few words about something.
David Reveman, who became a Novell employee a couple of weeks ago, has been writing a new X server on OpenGL/Glitz called Xgl. Because Xgl is built on GL primitives it naturally gets the benefit of hardware acceleration. For example, window contents get rendered directly into textures (actually they get copied once in video memory for now), and so you get the benefit of the 3d hardware doing the compositing when you move semi-opaque windows or regions around.
But there are other benefits too. Simple GL operations on the windowing system can suddenly produce incredible results. Want live, running thumbnailed versions of iconified windows? Done. Want your six virtual desktops to be the six faces of a cube that spins, with lighting? Done.
David has a lot of ideas like these, and you probably do too. Apple's cute hacks, like Expose, are inspirational but now that space can be ours to explore. Xgl opens up a whole world of hardware acceleration, fancy animations, separating hardware resolution from software resolution, and more.
I'm personally pretty excited about this. I think running the X server on hardware-accelerated GL directly seems like a very elegant way to go. David was educating me tonight on how X's last lingering limitations are being cast off. With Gtk moving to Cairo, the X server running on Glitz/OpenGL, and hardware vendors providing 3d-accelerated OpenGL drivers for their cards, we will have a UI/graphics platform as powerful as OS X or Windows.
David is going to be demoing his server at XDevConf in Boston this weekend. The source code for Xgl is here.
Update: Thanks to David's help, I am now running Xgl on my laptop (ATI FireGL T2). Some observations: dragging windows doesn't generate any expose events, and is incredibly smooth and solid; antialiased text rendering is hardware-accelerated and so vte now screams (though it still uses all my CPU, so is not useful for compiling); it is a bit unstable, but far better than I expected.
I need to write stuff, browse the web, make phone calls, send IM, add to my blog, collaborate on an application with someone over the net, etc. I can do all of that very well with the tools I already have.
I don't see how a "seamless 3D environment" makes that any easier. If anything, I want less clutter and less glitz on my desktop, not omre.
Somebody please make sure that ATI and nVidia notice that this is on the horizon, in the oft chance that they don't hear about it.
It's not like they couldn't handle it now, but I'd rather like it if they actively noticed and considered an additional use for their hardware.
To see what Hula is about go to Hula Server site. You can also view a few screen shots
A religious war is an adult version of a fight over who has the best imaginary friend
Just in case it gets slow, here is my new server (you can help me load test):
30 mb mp3 file
I mean they are horrible. I know this is the latest trend, podcasting and all, but it's freaking useless.
I don't care what Nate sounds like, I just want the content, and I want it in txt so I can index it, search against it, quote it easily etc..
Not only are these shows just incredibly badly done (wtf is the first 3 minutes of this thing?) but the format itself is just asinine. mp3's are great for music, they are not great for interviews.
For the love of god, at least give us a transcript!
-Nic
XGL seems great but AFAIK you need a recent Graphic video to use like nvidia or ati.
AFAIK (nvidia at least) their drivers are XFree86/X.org only. They won't even work with fb.
So, we need XFree86/X.org to run XGL on top of it?!?
"http://www.opencroquet.org/"
Amen brother. Anybody that dosn't understand why should see whose involved (and if you don't recognize the names, look them up).
IMO this is the most significant advancement since the web.
Need Mercedes parts ?
One of the main advantages Linux and FreeBSD have over Microsoft systems is that they are backwards compatible to nearly an infinite extent, and almost anything can be done on the most minimal of power.
Maybe it's because I didn't listen to the interview, but surely that's not going to change. The 2d X server is going nowhere (as in, "not leaving," as opposed to "not progressing").
What it seems like all these new developers are trying to do
The important word there is "new." Nothing is being taken away from other projects.
A few OSS developers are not going to catch up to Windows Longhorn -- they should stick to what they do best, and not alienate their base, which includes users of old PCs and small, cheap embedded devices by trying to standardize the minimum requirements of a GUI on some bloated XML/XUL/C#/Mono system with OpenGL as the minimum requirements for spinning around text. By doing that, they're going to lose on both fronts.
Really. Do configure, Makefile, and #ifdef mean nothing to you? AFAIK the same 2.6 kernel codebase can run huge servers, powerful workstations, and your 386 (given enough RAM) in the attic.
Hula Networks? Has anyone else seen their trippy commercial?
Nat is a great guy to watch if you want ideas. His blog always has nice little insights into the technologies he's working on, or on things he thinks should exist. He has some great projects up his sleeve, particularly Dashboard which gives Tiger's Spotlight a real run for its money.. and it's all on the Linux desktop!
30MB in MP3 format. I'd probably get 10 times the lawsuits from the RIAA. I'll pass on downloading this pup.
!@#$% whole-grain cereal. When I want fiber, I eat some wicker furniture. - G. Carlin
Indeed, ppl just deride Alan Kay and others because it's using smalltalk and fail to see that imagination behind this.
I wouldn't believe it was good myself for the longest time until I walked through a 3D spreadsheet and started conjuring 3D objects into my rooms. It's "Second Life" but without fees and with much more potential. And it's working now.
I mean I am not totally dissing the Ximian stuff, but that's news for corporate nerds. This looks way further ahead and begins to realise the "VR" net we were all once promised.
All I can say is, "this is not drop shadows people", you have to check it out to believe it.
I read "Nat Friedman" (which is funny by itself) as :(
"Nat friendly"
i'll go outside now...
I for one, welcome our new hot grits... PROFIT!
While I agree that OSS developers shouldn't stop supporting older hardware, that doesn't mean developers shouldn't also try to utilize the all the features and power of newer computers. There's no reason why the "few" OSS out there can't "catch up"with Windows (the quotes are there for a reason).
Fair nuff, but it's not his job to care about that crap.
That doesn't' mean it isn't someone's job to do.
And frankly, when it comes to people working with money or designing the aircraft or automobiles or subway cars I ride in, I would rather they have a solid accountable trail. Groupware tools can be easier to manage than huge email threads.
"Indeed, ppl just deride Alan Kay and others because it's using smalltalk and fail to see that imagination behind this.
I wouldn't believe it was good myself for the longest time until I walked through a 3D spreadsheet and started conjuring 3D objects into my rooms. It's "Second Life" but without fees and with much more potential. And it's working now.
I mean I am not totally dissing the Ximian stuff, but that's news for corporate nerds. This looks way further ahead and begins to realise the "VR" net we were all once promised.
All I can say is, "this is not drop shadows people", you have to check it out to believe it."
Exactly. Actually it's squeek not smalltalk, but that's a terribly minor distinction.
Some caveats: it's beta. you get debug messages. It's a 60 meg download and you need OpenGL.
I'm convinced it's the future though.
Need Mercedes parts ?
Novell Servers VS Slashdot Effect, Round 1
*DING*
Decent accelerated drivers let you do this sort of thing - where OpenGL really shines is the 3D rendering - for 2D you use other things well supported in all recent versions of X. Old matrox millenium cards still look good in linux due to the decent 2D acceleration and good drivers.
X is far more "powerful" - it just often looks like crap. How is the single virtual desktop windows screen powerful? Run more than two apps that happen to open multiple windows and it takes real time to find the correct window to switch to. Stick a CD in and watch the screen freeze up for a few seconds until it spins up, checks for autorun programs and gets a directory listing - so much for a responsive GUI. If powerful is smooth opaque moves and animations, various window managers have had them for some time - but obviously no-one has put the talent and time in that apple did.Personally I find even twm a more productive environment than the WinXP desktop - butt ugly but functional - and twm predates the entire XFree86 project by a few years.
You can already do this with Kontact/KOrganizer in KDE 3.3 and 3.4. You can add as many calender "resources" as you want. A resource can come from many things... an iCal file on a local machine (or a remote machine via any protocol KIO supports), a GroupDAV server, an Exchange server via WebDAV, Blogger API, Bugzilla TODOs, many others.
If you add many resources, they are all merged into one calendar. If you add a new event to the 'merged' calender, the app will ask you which of the resources you want it saved to.
They could have considered HE AAC perhaps. It has decent playback support, and would sound worlds better than mp3 (or keep same quality, but with lower bitrate, hence smaller file, less bandwidth costs...) AAC is getting more and more popular (part of the mpeg4 standard, used by iTunes, nero, quicktime, and a lot more software)
WMA is just a poor choice. Worse sound quality than mp3, and windows only (unless someone wrote some filters to playback wma on linux, I never checked).
Ogg is only marginally better than a good AAC encoder imho (if at all). The support (playback) isn't exactly great, and if you asked most people, they wouldn't have a clue it's even related to audio.
mp3 is the most widely known (and most likely supported) format. Perhaps they were more worried about that than file size or quality.
///<sig
What we really want is for Novell to license Microsoft's ActiveSync for Exchange protocol, and include a module for it in the GPL source for one of these Novell servers. So we can "embrace and extend" Microsoft's only hope of keeping their "desktop" monopoly as it moves away from Windows desktops, and onto the "Webtop", distributed across all manner of Internet devices. PalmOne has licensed it, among others, and Novell could really get the Internet Age going again with that kind of interop.
--
make install -not war
Nice one. Ya done good.
Need Mercedes parts ?
unfortunately hula doesn't appear to support maildir. only mbox.
the hula project also has some BS on their website about maildir being slower than mbox. this myth was disproven many moons ago:
mbox versus maildir
http://www.courier-mta.org/mbox-vs-maildir/
how is referencing to something non-commercial which *is* the future of collaboration a "troll"? I am sorry if I see the future of collaboration as different to Novell's vision, but that's hardly a troll. It was designed to get discussion of really forward-looking collaboration tools going.
MP3 and other audio interviews are completely and utterly useless to me. Why? Because I'm DEAF. No "insensitive clod" appeded to the comment here, because I'm not trying to be funny. It's true. Besides, most people have a hard enough time writing in a way that is presentable to a wide audience, even after a great deal of editing - let alone SPEAKING in a way that comes across as polished. Until you can afford a studio, professional editors, and someone to transcribe your speech - please, FOR THE LOVE OF THE GODS - stick to text. It's harder to mess up with text. Trust me on this. Until we have real-time text-to-speech transcription for arbitary speakers, I'd be extremely grateful if the internet stuck to what it's good at: text. While I have my own agenda for this, there's another factor to consider: audio files cannot easily be indexed or searched, so they're really just kind of useless on the internet - after all, a great deal of the power we get from the net today comes from the information being available via search engines.
Typical slashdot.
Damn *no-one* has read the fucking article.
Err, hang on....
So does Anonymous Coward have good karma?
What a moron JWZ is. Perhaps when he becomes an adult he'll see things differently. Not all software of value involves penises.
If you look into it you will discover that the main points in the above article are actually where Nat has got a lot of his inspiration for the direction of the Hula project. I have seen a few people using this article as a device against Hula, however, those attempts are really misguided.
MP3 sucks the sweat from a dead man's balls when compared to WMA, especially bitrate-for-bitrate. You might not like what Microsoft do with the format (I don't want to schlurp down that DRM either), but you ought to take your blinkers off. The WMA forat has been under continual refinement now, and MS can afford lots of research to improve it. MP3 as a format hasn't really changed since it came out.
Having said that, my 4500 music files are all MP3 - I just rip at quite high settings, VBR @ 128-320kbps.
"Life is like a sewer - what you get out of it depends on what you put into it" - Tom Lehrer
when is this "Evolution" program being released for Windows?
My Journal
"When it's ready"
If it came with a nice synopsis, complete with a keywords, it would be nicer. Add to that a time index of different topics, and it gets good. You can index the audio, and jump right to the part you are interested in.