The thing I find most useful in IDE is that they shorten the cycle write code--compile--debug, on which I spend most of time when writing code. Things like clicking on the error and going directly to the line that generated it *are* useful, IMHO.
This I found in almost all IDE, starting with Emacs and going upward ( or downward? ).
The only other feature I look for is an MMI generator, if my app has MMI.
Code browsing ( graphical and not ) is nice, mainly if you have to handle other people code. But give me grep and a good naming policy, and I can survive without.
Other features I don't care much about. Wizards are for lusers, not for coders. Makefile generation is nice, but a coder shall know how to make its own makefiles and once you have written a good one, you only need to change the file names. Projects do little you can't do with file system hierarchy.
And yes, I always try to use on the development platform tools that I can use on the target platform ( which is rarely possible, since most tools are licenced on a per-installation base ). Failing this, I make sure I can handle the code also without the tools [e.g. separating tool-generated code from handly-written code].
It's matter of taste, I guess. Lucky us which can customize the window manager at our heart desire.:-)
However, I mostly use it on my laptop (11"), because I find easier moving on the title bar and double-tapping on the touchpad rather than moving on the icon button and tapping once ( the title bar being larger ). Same thing when I need to work again with that window.
If we don't like a story, we shouldn't post to it or even click the 'Read More' link. Maybe the story editors will get it, after a while.
The fact is, many of./ers [including me:-)] like the sound of their own voice more than anything else. All editors need to do is just give us excuses to post our version of THE ONLY AND COMPLETE TRUTH.
I guess I could always send a mail to myself, but it wouldn't be the same.
it's relatively easy to get a group of skilled Linux people to do support, at least on a small scale. With easy entry and exit from the market, there's no real barrier to competition. Thus, in this industry, the tendency toward profit is ZERO. It has nothing to do with whether or not it's OSS.
IMHO, with OSS is easier to find skilled people, because there is no way to artificially raise the entry barrier, as is often the case with close source operating systems or other software. The only limit anybody has in becoming expert of some OSS is its capability to understand the source.
This is a VERY GOOD THING, and it goes to advantage of users. But, it also makes very difficult make money selling support, at least for large-scale companies.
It's just an idea, but maybe franchising[sp?] whould work much better. Did anybody tried that?
Not surprisingly. Is easier to sell bottled water in a desert than close to a spring. Yes, you can start building acqueducts[sp?], starting a new line of business... but I'm not sure if/how this is possible with OSS.
One problem with selling support for OSS is that a small company of 30-or-so hackers with little or no management/marketing overhead can offer a better level of support than a big corporation, at least locally.
In other words, I'm afraid that OSS does not scale well to big corporations.
This maybe only a problem for Linux corporations, but where would be Linux without them? [I can use my winmodem on Linux because Lucent made it for RH... ]
I've always had troubles to understand how encryption should allow to stamp out 'piracy'.
Let's assume that you have encrypted your content (audio, video, whatever) in a way which cannot be broken.
Whoever wants to copy and distribute it illegally, does not need to decode the content. It can copy the media, encryption and all, and then sell/give it to other people, which then will not buy it from official channels.
Moreover, in order to be read/played, the contents shall be decoded at some point in the process. Applying a bypass after that point and sending the output to a recording device, it should be possible to make unencrypted copy with little or no loss of quality.
Sure, encryption may prevent common user to easily make copies on its own. But it would never stop the determined 'pirate'. And once the contents are decoded, with Internet it will always be possible to distribute them.
This is why I believe that the best solution for 'piracy' is social engineering, not encryption.
2a) Would-be RH System Admin : according with the reviewer, these at least should get enough for their money.
It is just possible that someone at RH decided that this is the best kind of coustomer to aim for with their course. Therefore they tailored the course accordingly.
Yeah, it would be nice if they turned away people saying 'you know too much already'. Maybe in the next universe:-)
When Melissa hit, the big "X" got slammed... HARD! One reason is because, the first address in everyone's address book was "all@corpname.com, so there were literaly hundreds of thousands of emails being sent. Compeletely shut down the mail system for the better part of the day.
Does any mailing system applies 'quotas' to its users ? E.G. no more than 1000 e-mail per day, no more than 1 e-mail every ten seconds?
A reason for E-commerce failure in my country ...
on
Boo No More
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· Score: 1
... is that people are still scared to use credit cards on-line. Consider that we use credit-cards much less than in USA. For instance, it is not possible to buy something by phone only giving the credit card number and expiration date [ I always wonder: How USA firms and CC owners manage to hold off cheating?].
A few sites here allows customers to pay through a service run by the national Post Office: you pay in cash and only when you receive the envelope by snail-mail. But I guess that this makes quite a dent in the site economy balance. And you can't count on out-of-country customers.
I'm not sure about that. How do you make sure that the two or three not-so-baby-MS really compete with each other? Wouldn't be their common interest to co-operate instead, still damaging out-of-family companies?
Maybe a better solution would have been to force MS to open the Windows API, not only publishing the specifications (aren't they alredy known ?) but also giving up the *control* of them, maybe defining a standard control body like W3c or something like that.
The same moment a company realizes that its linux-only game is a 'killer-app', it would start a Windows port. The temptation would be too strong. And managers would be sued/fired if they didn't.
Also, it would be easier than porting a Windows game on Linux. You don't need a multi-user or multi-process OS to play a game. Stability is not a big issue, too.
I agree that umankind seems not to able to cope with the ethical issues derived by the power that science and technology are providing. On the other hand, when man was less powerful it wasn't more ethical ( just think of what was the life of an *average* guy one or two centuries ago ). So, instead of slowing the technology, maybe we should accellerate the development of human sciences. Ant the Internet might be a great help in that, if we all learn to use it for other than buying things and gaping at graphically-cool but content-empty sites.
I too used to think that my PC would look less messy if any application had his hown root directory (say/usr/App) and all its files under sub-directories of it (/usr/App/bin,/usr/App/etc,/usr/App/lib,...).
And this is how I organize the software I write. I see some problems, however :
User preference files shall be under user home directory, so he can backup all its settings in a single shot.
If any application adds its own bit to the search path, it might grow too long ( a tipical Linux box has hundreds of apps ).
People think every file can be read by everything.
You know? They are right. This is how it *should* be.
Maybe we could get closer to this model, if you sometime choose not to follow the line of least resistence ( let's say one time out of ten, with the smartest of your students ) and try to teach them the drawbacks of using proprietary standards.
The sad end of the two ASI-NASA TSS missions told us that it is quite complex to cope with the in-orbit dynamics of a single rope [admittedly, 20 Km long].
What will happen if/when we try to deploy a gigantic sail?
KDE & Konqueror are Open Source ( and, if you are willing to forget their dependency from QT, Free Software too[maybe] ).
This means that, if there is any wicked dependency or relationship between the above system components, you can edit the code, remove it and publish it under the same licence. Maybe not you or me. But any company/organization which feel cheated by the wicked dependency could. Then users will choose the version they like.
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This I found in almost all IDE, starting with Emacs and going upward ( or downward? ).
The only other feature I look for is an MMI generator, if my app has MMI.
Code browsing ( graphical and not ) is nice, mainly if you have to handle other people code. But give me grep and a good naming policy, and I can survive without.
Other features I don't care much about. Wizards are for lusers, not for coders. Makefile generation is nice, but a coder shall know how to make its own makefiles and once you have written a good one, you only need to change the file names. Projects do little you can't do with file system hierarchy.
And yes, I always try to use on the development platform tools that I can use on the target platform ( which is rarely possible, since most tools are licenced on a per-installation base ). Failing this, I make sure I can handle the code also without the tools [e.g. separating tool-generated code from handly-written code].
However, I mostly use it on my laptop (11"), because I find easier moving on the title bar and double-tapping on the touchpad rather than moving on the icon button and tapping once ( the title bar being larger ). Same thing when I need to work again with that window.
People like repetition. It's reassuring.
I think MS Users whould really appreciate the possibility to shade/unshade the window, as an alternative to iconising.
I don't know which window manager came out first with it, but it seems that everybody likes it, since all others have added this feature since.
I got so addicted to it, that I keep double-clicking on the title bar even when I'm working with Windows9*, getting the *opposite* result :-).
The fact is, many of ./ers [including me :-)] like the sound of their own voice more than anything else. All editors need to do is just give us excuses to post our version of THE ONLY AND COMPLETE TRUTH.
I guess I could always send a mail to myself, but it wouldn't be the same.
IMHO, with OSS is easier to find skilled people, because there is no way to artificially raise the entry barrier, as is often the case with close source operating systems or other software. The only limit anybody has in becoming expert of some OSS is its capability to understand the source.
This is a VERY GOOD THING, and it goes to advantage of users. But, it also makes very difficult make money selling support, at least for large-scale companies.
It's just an idea, but maybe franchising[sp?] whould work much better. Did anybody tried that?
Yes, you can start building acqueducts[sp?], starting a new line of business
One problem with selling support for OSS is that a small company of 30-or-so hackers with little or no management/marketing overhead can offer a better level of support than a big corporation, at least locally.
In other words, I'm afraid that OSS does not scale well to big corporations.
This maybe only a problem for Linux corporations, but where would be Linux without them? [I can use my winmodem on Linux because Lucent made it for RH ... ]
In this way, even if someone steal it, the loss is bearable.
This is not my idea. I read it on-line some time ago. Possibly, someone already patented it :-.
Let's assume that you have encrypted your content (audio, video, whatever) in a way which cannot be broken.
Whoever wants to copy and distribute it illegally, does not need to decode the content. It can copy the media, encryption and all, and then sell/give it to other people, which then will not buy it from official channels.
Moreover, in order to be read/played, the contents shall be decoded at some point in the process. Applying a bypass after that point and sending the output to a recording device, it should be possible to make unencrypted copy with little or no loss of quality.
Sure, encryption may prevent common user to easily make copies on its own. But it would never stop the determined 'pirate'. And once the contents are decoded, with Internet it will always be possible to distribute them.
This is why I believe that the best solution for 'piracy' is social engineering, not encryption.
It is just possible that someone at RH decided that this is the best kind of coustomer to aim for with their course. Therefore they tailored the course accordingly.
Yeah, it would be nice if they turned away people saying 'you know too much already'. Maybe in the next universe :-)
Does any mailing system applies 'quotas' to its users ? E.G. no more than 1000 e-mail per day, no more than 1 e-mail every ten seconds?
... is that people are still scared to use credit cards on-line.
Consider that we use credit-cards much less than in USA. For instance, it is not possible to buy something by phone only giving the credit card number and expiration date [ I always wonder: How USA firms and CC owners manage to hold off cheating?].
A few sites here allows customers to pay through a service run by the national Post Office: you pay in cash and only when you receive the envelope by snail-mail.
But I guess that this makes quite a dent in the site economy balance. And you can't count on out-of-country customers.
I'm not sure about that. How do you make sure that the two or three not-so-baby-MS really compete with each other? Wouldn't be their common interest to co-operate instead, still damaging out-of-family companies?
Maybe a better solution would have been to force MS to open the Windows API, not only publishing the specifications (aren't they alredy known ?) but also giving up the *control* of them, maybe defining a standard control body like W3c or something like that.
Also, it would be easier than porting a Windows game on Linux. You don't need a multi-user or multi-process OS to play a game. Stability is not a big issue, too.
I agree that umankind seems not to able to cope with the ethical issues derived by the power that science and technology are providing.
On the other hand, when man was less powerful it wasn't more ethical ( just think of what was the life of an *average* guy one or two centuries ago ).
So, instead of slowing the technology, maybe we should accellerate the development of human sciences.
Ant the Internet might be a great help in that, if we all learn to use it for other than buying things and gaping at graphically-cool but content-empty sites.
User>Please, list all the files in my home directory
...
Computer>
.gnome : it's a directory
.cshrc : it's an executable file
my_secrets.txt : it's a crypted ASCII file
User>Open the file my_secrets.txt
Computer> do you want to use the program 'vi' with it? It's your defaut editor.
User>No. Use 'read_cripto', instead.
Pity it would take ages to do anything this way. But, ah, if computers could talk and listen
Wait a moment. They can [almost].
And this is how I organize the software I write. I see some problems, however :
Good luck to them all.
You know? They are right. This is how it *should* be.
Maybe we could get closer to this model, if you sometime choose not to follow the line of least resistence ( let's say one time out of ten, with the smartest of your students ) and try to teach them the drawbacks of using proprietary standards.
Which possibly you do already.
I know, I'm a dreamer.
I definitely agree with the following sentence:
What you need to teach in schools is concepts, not implementations.
In other words, schools need to teach more on computers than how to push buttons, whatever OS they choose to use.
If more people knew the difference between data and program, the ILOVEYOU virus would have had a much less impact, if any.
What will happen if/when we try to deploy a gigantic sail?
I hope you will put a --no-basic switch in the right places.
and someone will be annoyed at the point to write the first linux virus.
It is not so difficult, as we all know.
:-?
Linux is Free Software.
KDE & Konqueror are Open Source ( and, if you are willing to forget their dependency from QT, Free Software too[maybe] ).
This means that, if there is any wicked dependency or relationship between the above system components, you can edit the code, remove it and publish it under the same licence. Maybe not you or me. But any company/organization which feel cheated by the wicked dependency could. Then users will choose the version they like.
Try that with M$oft products.
Just call John Wayne :-) [ I hope ]