Two things:
1 - Do you think/know that PalmOS GUI is *embedded* in the kernel ? I find it difficult to believe (though it could be). A 'logical' design would suggest that the GUI is a layer on the top of the kernel.Granted, X is too heavy for today handhelds (it's too heavy for many old PC, too )
2 - I'm not sure that you need a *graphical* interface in an handheld. Text-based widget libraries (ncurses?), with support for mouse (gpm-like) could give the same functionalities of a graphical interface (menu, windows, pop-ups, buttons,... ) with very minimal resource requirements. And think of the Linux virtual consoles : just tremove the need for multiple login and you have already 'desktop workspaces' almost out-of-the-box.
Granted, graphical interfaces have an higher cool-factor, and seems to be more marketable. But a well-designed text based interface could close the gap, IMO.
That's it. For not having ever used an handheld, I talked too much.
Just my 20 lire, anyway.
It expain it in the (annoying) help screen which is displayed after you choose select option:
(Mainly for new installations:) Standard packages will be requested by default.
Use capital `D' or `R' key to override this - see the keybindings help screen.
I just noticed these lines a few days ago, after two years of using Debian.(sic!)
The problems start when developers write software for problems that are outside their personal skills or experiences. Without the structure
of a conventional organization to ensure that software get designed and written in a user-centric manner, projects like this are doomed.
Mmm, let's see :
A 'conventional organization' can hire marketeers, which should find out what users really need. But, often enough, marketeers are instead payed to find out how the organization (read:corporation) can collect the most money from the users. Which is not the same than giving the users what they most need ( though there is a partial overlapping ).
An 'open-source project' starts often ( not always ) from programmers which want to scratch their own need. So, it looks like it will not be able to cover generic user needs. But, please consider that programmer does not necessarly need 'working as software engineer' or 'computer nerd': it only means 'person which has enough brain/attitude to write a program'. I use a driver which was written by a student of nuclear physics (iirc) ). So, open-source programmers are representative of more branches of uman activities than one would expect.
And OSS programmers love having a user base (is part of the 'score keeping' ), so they may go after non-programmer needs. Of course, ego and personal interests get into the way (nobody pays them, after all, so they have full right to to whatever they fancy ).
So, I'll call it a draw. Both 'conventional organizations' and OSS projects can do a good job for users. Both sometime don't. That's why it is good to have both.
Never used Napster myself, but know a few people
which do, and they download music INSTEAD of
buying CD's.
One of them even purchased a better
Internet connection, reasoning that its cost would
be covered by the minor number of CD purchased.
(matter of few hundred euros per year, not a big thing)
Of course, they download a lot more music that they would ever purchase, including almost unknown artists whose music would never have been sold in the part of Europe I leave.
So, at least from my experience, increased Napster usage means that more music got listened to (which is good), but also that less CD are sold ( which is bad... at least for RIAA ).
From a posting of Guido van Rossum, Tue, 05 Sep 2000 09:29:44, in python-dev :
The bad news is that there's still no agreement from Stallman that the
CNRI open source license is GPL-compatible. See my previous post
here. (Re: Conflict with the GPL.) Given that we still don't know
that dual licensing will be necessary and sufficient to make the 2.0
license GPL-compatible, we decided not to go for dual licensing just
yet -- if it transpires later that it is necessary, we'll add it to
the 2.0 final license
So, they're considering it, at least for 2.0. But
they hope to avoid it, and they are not sure it is enough.
If you translate RMS 'holy' speak in common terms, he might have a point.
GPL, as many other licenses, is automatically revoked if its terms are infringed. This might
mean that legally licence-holders need to grant again the license ( 'forgiveness', in RMS talk ).
Or maybe not. Any lawyer around?
Looking for the silver lining, at least he invited any licence holder to grant its 'forgiveness'. And KDE people invited to the same thing ( with very different words ). And there is finally a detailed assessment of the 'legal status' of each KDE component.
So maybe things are not locked anymore and can move on.
Will a license change apply also to already delivered software? I see it difficult, but IANAL ( and I'm not American, too, though we started to copy all your worste laws about IP and Copyright ).
If license changes do not apply backward, there is a solution to it : fork.
I take it that it's not too much unlike Perl/Tk or Perl/GTK in the rapid-prototyping sense?
IMO, python is better for rapid prototyping, because of is more dynamic than Perl, it gives more freedom to the programmers and and has a less encumbered syntax.
For instance, you do not need to qualify variables in any way ( not event with the pre-pended special characters Perl uses). And you can assign an integer to the same variable which until then
contained a string. This is a bonus for fast prototyping , altough it might lead to troubles in
in the hands of bad programmers ( but the same might be said of many features of more constrained
languages ).
Python is also better in doing Object Oriented stuff - in this is even better than C++ ( not that it takes much ), and as good as Java.
The drawback is that you pay all this in performance. But for several classes of application, this is not an issue.
And Python is incredibly easy to learn. Give it a try!
Now the KDE project should be able to claim
this money.
Re:Except Qt is copylefted.
on
Qt Going GPL
·
· Score: 1
Maybe you're right. I was wondering wy QT didn't make this move before ( GPL-ing the tollokit and making money by selling a GUI Builder/ RAD environment ).
Now, however, it could be too late for this strategy, with KDevelop already well on his way - and both free and gratis, apart from powerful( I never used it, but I've read a lot of praising reviews ).
So, let's hope they have a better strategy - or that they offer has enough added-value wrt KDevelop to gain them customers.
Re:Except Qt is copylefted.
on
Qt Going GPL
·
· Score: 4
QT Professional Licence costs are not a big issue for proprietary development, since the cost of one developer for a few days covers more than enough for it. So all Trolltech shall do is to convince managers that they can reduce work costs choosing QT over alternative free-as-in-beer toolkits.
IMO, big companies will still prefer GTK+, however, because they wouldn't like depending on Trolltech for strategic issues like a GUI toolkit.
As the French have been quoted as saying anything can be seen as a political statement because politics intercets almost anything.
Yes, broadly speaking
That being said for example using MS products makes a statement rather implicetly stated that you agree with the procedures that they utilize in development and marketing. Same with patronizing certain stores and the like.
I'm not so sure about that. It could imply a different statement, like : " I believe that having M$oft tools is more important than figthing M$oft", or even "The way to fight M$oft is not avoid to buy their software". Or a thousand other ones.
Implicit politic statements are hard to guess. Better ask people to explicit them.
form a restricted team (not necessarly inside your company, but not yet
open to everybody's contribution ) and develop
the application core, with few essential features
an expansion mechanism which allows contributors to supply 'modules'
which add functionalities to the applicatio
Open source the app
Collect modules, pack and sell 'user-ready' versions of the app. Collect
also patches to the core, and enlarge the core team to
include the most clueful contributors
When no improvements can be made, start a Version 2 of the application... or have another bright idea.
As I see it, most of the successful open-source projects (Emacs,Linux,Apache,Perl,Python... ) have been done this way.
You have to buy into GNOME to an unacceptable degree to get the solutions to work. For instance, you have to use GTK, CORBA, etc, etc, etc.
Mmmm... When you have a problem, you have to choose a solution. E.g. : IPC => Corba =>Orbit.
The wrong thing would be to bind toghether solutions which could stay separated. Now, I never programmed seriously in the Gnome environment, but it looks like they are paying attention to this, at least judging by the amount of libraries they have. ASAIK, you can use Orbit or glib without using GTK, or vice-versa.
Of course, if played right, this could be a big win for Linux and other free-software projects. I believe that once users get bitten by the ASP model, they will want to get away from it. Obviously, the big companies won't let them. If, however,they can just switch to a purely-local free-software office suite, we might see a large jump in the use of free systems.
I'm not so sure about that : if distributed processing take foot, manifacturers will stop producing full-fledged PC (at least the cheap ones) to start producing network PC. And then you and I will have to eat the same distributed soup of everybody else, or pay extra bucks.
Message from the creator to the Universe
on
Calculating God
·
· Score: 2
And the creator may respond with a small message... According to Douglas Adams it should read : "We are sorry for the inconvenience..."
Seriously, history shows that mixing theology and science is not a good idea... as finally even Catholic Church is admitting (600 years later).
A corrupt government will always find a way. In Zimbabwe yesterday, the government refused access to the count to all journalists and candidates' agents. So we know that the elections were not free.
Who can tell whether a vote's been rigged? Experts.If someone is interested in monitoring elections, they can learn the technology, or work with someone who knows it. In my country, the whole voting process is monitored by repesentative of each political party. During voting, they just observe( that cards do not disappear ). After the voting, they read and count the votes. I don't think these people qualify as 'experts', but they are enough to ensure the quality of the process.
With electronic voting, the majority needs to trust into an elite which knows how computers work ( not how to use them, but how they really work ).This raises concerns, not only for legality but also for anonimity : whith computers is just too easy to find out who voted what.
Does the current system of checks discriminate against people who can't read? Yes. But it is reasonable in most country to expect that most of people can read. It is not (IMO) to expect that most people become programmers or cripto experts.
The problem with electronic voting is not that people shall learn how to click on the box of a candidate, or to click the Yes or No button.
The real problem is that if voting results are purely virtual, they are too easy to be manipulated ( by external crackers, but also by a corrupt government ). And only people with very deep knowledge in the involved technology would be able to tell the difference [ if ever ].
Moreover, I'd like to be able to write this in Java ( or any other non-proprietary language ):
enum i_color { RED, WHITE, GREEN }; System.out.println( "My preferred flag is:"); for ( i_color c=i_color.first; c i_color.last;c++) System.out.println( "\t"+c.name ); System.out.println(":-)");
I know, I can do that with classes, but this is not the point: IMO powerful enum are a great feature in any high-level programming language.
Slashdot Mirror
Two things : ... ) with very minimal resource requirements. And think of the Linux virtual consoles : just tremove the need for multiple login and you have already 'desktop workspaces' almost out-of-the-box.
1 - Do you think/know that PalmOS GUI is *embedded* in the kernel ? I find it difficult to believe (though it could be). A 'logical' design would suggest that the GUI is a layer on the top of the kernel.Granted, X is too heavy for today handhelds (it's too heavy for many old PC, too )
2 - I'm not sure that you need a *graphical* interface in an handheld. Text-based widget libraries (ncurses?), with support for mouse (gpm-like) could give the same functionalities of a graphical interface (menu, windows, pop-ups, buttons,
Granted, graphical interfaces have an higher cool-factor, and seems to be more marketable. But a well-designed text based interface could close the gap, IMO.
That's it. For not having ever used an handheld, I talked too much.
Just my 20 lire, anyway.
DISCLAIMER : I never owned an organiser, nor I will in the near future ( paper scraps fit my needs, for now ).
Smart and funny trolling, anyway. Instructive, too. Are you a 'professional troll', or just couldn't help it?
Ciao.
(Mainly for new installations:) Standard packages will be requested by default. Use capital `D' or `R' key to override this - see the keybindings help screen.
I just noticed these lines a few days ago, after two years of using Debian.(sic!)
BTW, I thought I invented the 'm_' thing for class attributes! I swear I didn't copy it (intentionally). Let's hope there is no patent on it ;->
And here we adhore that stuff (IANAF).
Please respect our religion.
Mmm, let's see :
A 'conventional organization' can hire marketeers, which should find out what users really need. But, often enough, marketeers are instead payed to find out how the organization (read:corporation) can collect the most money from the users. Which is not the same than giving the users what they most need ( though there is a partial overlapping ).
An 'open-source project' starts often ( not always ) from programmers which want to scratch their own need. So, it looks like it will not be able to cover generic user needs. But, please consider that programmer does not necessarly need 'working as software engineer' or 'computer nerd': it only means 'person which has enough brain/attitude to write a program'. I use a driver which was written by a student of nuclear physics (iirc) ). So, open-source programmers are representative of more branches of uman activities than one would expect. And OSS programmers love having a user base (is part of the 'score keeping' ), so they may go after non-programmer needs. Of course, ego and personal interests get into the way (nobody pays them, after all, so they have full right to to whatever they fancy ).
So, I'll call it a draw. Both 'conventional organizations' and OSS projects can do a good job for users. Both sometime don't. That's why it is good to have both.
One of them even purchased a better Internet connection, reasoning that its cost would be covered by the minor number of CD purchased. (matter of few hundred euros per year, not a big thing)
Of course, they download a lot more music that they would ever purchase, including almost unknown artists whose music would never have been sold in the part of Europe I leave.
So, at least from my experience, increased Napster usage means that more music got listened to (which is good), but also that less CD are sold ( which is bad ... at least for RIAA ).
On the other side of the wire you have the rest of the world, which the computer knows only via some electric signal sent through the wire.
On which one would you like to bet?
The bad news is that there's still no agreement from Stallman that the CNRI open source license is GPL-compatible. See my previous post here. (Re: Conflict with the GPL.) Given that we still don't know that dual licensing will be necessary and sufficient to make the 2.0 license GPL-compatible, we decided not to go for dual licensing just yet -- if it transpires later that it is necessary, we'll add it to the 2.0 final license
So, they're considering it, at least for 2.0. But they hope to avoid it, and they are not sure it is enough.
GPL, as many other licenses, is automatically revoked if its terms are infringed. This might mean that legally licence-holders need to grant again the license ( 'forgiveness', in RMS talk ).
Or maybe not. Any lawyer around?
Looking for the silver lining, at least he invited any licence holder to grant its 'forgiveness'. And KDE people invited to the same thing ( with very different words ). And there is finally a detailed assessment of the 'legal status' of each KDE component.
So maybe things are not locked anymore and can move on.
If license changes do not apply backward, there is a solution to it : fork.
IMO, python is better for rapid prototyping, because of is more dynamic than Perl, it gives more freedom to the programmers and and has a less encumbered syntax.
For instance, you do not need to qualify variables in any way ( not event with the pre-pended special characters Perl uses). And you can assign an integer to the same variable which until then contained a string. This is a bonus for fast prototyping , altough it might lead to troubles in in the hands of bad programmers ( but the same might be said of many features of more constrained languages ).
Python is also better in doing Object Oriented stuff - in this is even better than C++ ( not that it takes much ), and as good as Java.
The drawback is that you pay all this in performance. But for several classes of application, this is not an issue.
And Python is incredibly easy to learn. Give it a try!
Sorry for the sermon, but I quite like Python.
Now the KDE project should be able to claim this money.
Now, however, it could be too late for this strategy, with KDevelop already well on his way - and both free and gratis, apart from powerful( I never used it, but I've read a lot of praising reviews ).
So, let's hope they have a better strategy - or that they offer has enough added-value wrt KDevelop to gain them customers.
IMO, big companies will still prefer GTK+, however, because they wouldn't like depending on Trolltech for strategic issues like a GUI toolkit.
Yes, broadly speaking
That being said for example using MS products makes a statement rather implicetly stated that you agree with the procedures that they utilize in development and marketing. Same with patronizing certain stores and the like.
I'm not so sure about that. It could imply a different statement, like : " I believe that having M$oft tools is more important than figthing M$oft", or even "The way to fight M$oft is not avoid to buy their software". Or a thousand other ones.
Implicit politic statements are hard to guess. Better ask people to explicit them.
As I see it, most of the successful open-source projects (Emacs,Linux,Apache,Perl,Python
I remember having seen a -fbound_check option on
a compiler on a SUN machine, but I'm not sure if it was the GNU C-compiler or the SUN C-compiler.
I was almost sure it was GCC, but I can't find anything related on my Linux box ( and I've checked in the architecture-specific flags ).
Does anybody knows anything about ?
Mmmm ... When you have a problem, you have to choose a solution. E.g. : IPC => Corba =>Orbit.
The wrong thing would be to bind toghether solutions which could stay separated. Now, I never programmed seriously in the Gnome environment, but it looks like they are paying attention to this, at least judging by the amount of libraries they have. ASAIK, you can use Orbit or glib without using GTK, or vice-versa.
I'm not so sure about that : if distributed processing take foot, manifacturers will stop producing full-fledged PC (at least the cheap ones) to start producing network PC. And then you and I will have to eat the same distributed soup of everybody else, or pay extra bucks.
According to Douglas Adams it should read : "We are sorry for the inconvenience
Seriously, history shows that mixing theology and science is not a good idea ... as finally even Catholic Church is admitting (600 years later).
So we know that the elections were not free.
Who can tell whether a vote's been rigged? Experts.If someone is interested in monitoring elections, they can learn the technology, or work with someone who knows it.
In my country, the whole voting process is monitored by repesentative of each political party. During voting, they just observe( that cards do not disappear ). After the voting, they read and count the votes. I don't think these people qualify as 'experts', but they are enough to ensure the quality of the process.
With electronic voting, the majority needs to trust into an elite which knows how computers work ( not how to use them, but how they really work ).This raises concerns, not only for legality but also for anonimity : whith computers is just too easy to find out who voted what.
Does the current system of checks discriminate against people who can't read?
Yes. But it is reasonable in most country to expect that most of people can read. It is not (IMO) to expect that most people become programmers or cripto experts.
The real problem is that if voting results are purely virtual, they are too easy to be manipulated ( by external crackers, but also by a corrupt government ). And only people with very deep knowledge in the involved technology would be able to tell the difference [ if ever ].
For one, they allow for better type checking.
Moreover, I'd like to be able to write this in Java ( or any other non-proprietary language ):
enum i_color { RED, WHITE, GREEN };
System.out.println( "My preferred flag is:");
for ( i_color c=i_color.first; c i_color.last;c++)
System.out.println( "\t"+c.name );
System.out.println(":-)");
I know, I can do that with classes, but this is not the point: IMO powerful enum are a great feature in any high-level programming language.