You just finished explaining how the people who want "easy" should use GNOME because it's "intrinsically" easy. Surely this is evidence that KDE is easy too, by your own admission.
Actually, no. You see, these easy distros are for Windows converts. KDE is easier to customize, right? We can agree on this. Companies like Linspire like to use it because it's easier to mold into a Windows clone.
I would argue that gnome is generally more intuitive still. It's better as its own environment.
Too many arbitrary options generally confuse people. Gnome's simple, intuitive design principles are partially responsible for the new surge of linux users through ubuntu. I could put a completely non-technical user in front of a default Ubuntu distro and they can do ANYTHING with it. KDE confuses even me. And I'm AWESOME.
I should revise that statement. Gnome really sucked in 2002, as well. Perhaps I was exaggerating, perhaps 2004ish is a better mark for when Gnome surpassed KDE in usability.
It isn't a legacy thing. KDE was undeniably superior until the last 4-5 years.
However, it was not always as such. Back when KDE received all the development attention from the major distros, it was better. Now that GNOME is the de facto default in most cases, it's better. Basically, depending on whichever gets more attention, one will be more modern than the other.
The other issue is that Gnome has really solid User Interface Guidelines. KDE's basic HIG is just "see how many buttons you can add to that menu".
Say desktops are like lawn gnomes. In this case, gnome is a gnome. KDE is a tree stump. You must whittle it down in order to make it resemble something attractive or functional. If you love to whittle, you'll love KDE. If you want something that works well out of the box and is inherently easy on the eyes and hands, use GNOME.
So, those who are still using KDE are possibly: A) Northern European (this is true for some reason) B) Have been using linux since the 90's and don't feel like changing ANYTHING C) Using Linspire or Xandros or PC-BSD or some other "easy" distro D) Like the letter "K"
The onomatopoeias in this article would make even the likes of Crazy Frog jealous.
I've been using an eeepc with a flash drive for a while and it is indeed eerily silent. I generally have to check the LED's to see what state the system is in.
If you're into loud drives, though- might I recommend magnetic tape, a Chobit, Robbie the Robot, or Seagate.
Open-source, in my experience, is not particularly good at innovating. Ha, you got mod-attacked for making that observation. You're absolutely right, though. Open source projects are generally like Communist Russian product utilities.
You're not allowed to make this observation on slashdot. On slashdot, Open Source is vastly superior to commercial software in all cases- but it's kept down by some sort of shadowy conspiracy. Remember that when you post.
For example window manager: dwm less than 2K lines of code, is the most feature complete WM I've seen. Wow, someone created a window manager for time travelers from the late 70's. This is really impressive for under 2,000 lines of code.
There is a great amount of merit to making things attractive and apparently usable. It seems to me that someone decided to implement Plan9's window manager, which is obscure for a reason.
However, I think you'll find more usability embedded in Windows 3.1 or the original Mac OS and most would agree. Since computers are used by humans, not other computers, there's more than reason enough to make robust interfaces that serve the user- and these interfaces can be slim and attractive. See: the original Mac OS.
All the same VB? At my university that language was barred from use in assignments, because it was considered to be without merit. You mean in computer science, right? If scientists need software written, they're probably not going to get political. They probably needed easy to read and write code that specified values for the collider.
Basic is fairly venerable and very well documented and supported.
If you just need to feed values and explain to the collider what to do- it doesn't matter what language you use, since it's really not an issue of speed or elegance. It's just an issue of what the physicists are comfortable writing in and using. Talking to the collider in (Objective-)C(++/#) would be a waste of time because of the unneeded level of complexity in terms of memory use. Using FORTRAN only might be silly because they might need some quick GUI's for non programmer scientists to muck with.
You see where I am going with this? VB makes for fast and easy graphical applications. I trust their judgment, since- well, there are alot of smart people at Fermi Lab.
Where are all these people? I'm yet to see any major organization academic or corporate that I've come across think twice about updating to Office 2007- OpenOffice is just something the IT guy brings up in passing- which is usually ignored.
In fact, Office 2007 is just excellent. You can generate simply beautiful documents and presentations extremely fast with it. I use OpenOffice at home, so I've dealt with the fact that it's an okay viewer/editor but for what it's worth everything I make on it looks like utter ass.
Linux could topple Windows and they would still be able to waste OpenOffice with Microsoft Office for those who demand usability and quality.
So OOXML might not become an international standard- what does it matter if everyone in the corporate and academic world is using Microsoft Office? People will likely just save in DOC like they do with openoffice until OOXML is mainstream-- doesn't matter if it's THE STANDARD.
Who out there actually uses ODF? Or even OOXML for that matter? Everyone just uses MS-DOC! The worst case scenario for Microsoft is that they create a Service Pack that adds ODF support for Europe.
I really wish OpenOffice was competitive with Microsoft Office so they would create a free version to compete.
There's no reason to recompile a kernel just to get a system working these days, nor has there been since about 2001; indeed, vendors tend to recommend against doing so. But you do at least get the chance to say "no, I know what I'm doing" and choose. Well, I don't think this detracts from my point in any way. All I am saying is this: people just don't need to recompile their NT kernels. I agree with you with the restriction that recompiling NT would only be interesting or useful for either enthusiasts (a fringe market) or people trying to exploit the system (for better or worse).
You might not have heard this, but Linux does have support for these things called kernel modules. Also BSD and OpenSolaris don't use the GNU userland for the most part. It certainly does. These modules must be compiled for the specific kernel they support or can be compiled into the kernel. Windows' driver interface is a little more separated from the kernel, thus allowing IHV's to compile drivers without the source code of the kernel.
BSD uses a bit of its own userland, true, but beyond the basic text mode legacy unix junk, it's running X.org, Gnome (or KDE), and other modern unix applications- which I consider to be part of the Gnu environment.
OpenSolaris is truly a GNU environment- It's not like Solaris 10, which had Sun versions of BSD tools-- they are stripping as much sun out of the system as they can now-a-days. OpenSolaris is becoming very much like Red Hat Linux. I think the system is even compiled in GCC as opposed to Sun CC.
I disagree. Windows is not monolithic in the same way that Linux is- it's more of a hybird microkernel. It's like a microkernel with a monolithic structure, whereas BSD or Linux are true monolithic kernels.
I think wikipedia does a good job of describing it.
When I can recompile the Windows kernel to my liking, then we'll talk about how Windows will be a better FOSS platform. Of course, you don't need to because it's not monolithic. The benefits of recompiling the linux kernel stem from the fact that everything in linux-land is jammed into the kernel.
You can simply load different drivers in pseudo-userland and run a separate set of services to completely rework your windows system. As far as enterprises and business customers are concerned, there's little to no benefit for them to be able to compile their own kernel unless it is completely monolithic- it's just a waste of time and a leak of talent for microsoft.
FOSS is mostly GNU userland, not the linux kernel. If you don't believe me, try BSD or OpenSolaris.
Linux may have been around in some broken form since the mid-90's, but it's really only been competitive with Windows (for non-unix-centric applications) since 2004-2006 in a realistic sense. For the purpose of the media, it's a new operating system. As far as they're concerned, it's as old as it has been relevant.
For Linux enthusiasts, Linux is fairly old. For regular people, it's as old as Ubuntu 7.04.
First, open source zealots could be anybody. They're either low level employees at some forgotten enterprise or they're academics who code according to theory- maybe they're CS undergrads. If something is very valuable to an enterprise and has no strategic reason to be open sourced, it won't be. If it's less cost efficient to reinvent the wheel, then they won't- unless they're an enterprise doomed to failure (or, they are google, and they have so much ad revenue that they can stay afloat while constantly blowing away engineering resources on web toys). Open sourcing code is often done because either A) you're starting with open sourced code, or B) you are trying to push interoperability with your product or C) you are looking to be hired or purchased.
If you need to get a job done and you have the resources, why not simply license a single Microsoft Windows Server? It's not like it "attacks" your unix boxes or anything. It's really a huge time saver when compared with what a professional coder's time costs.
My point is that you'd have to be a zealot to write some half-baked open source solution over a thousand man hours instead of simply using office (office is cheap. Windows Server is cheap).
And the idea that your competitors are "beta testing" your software is simply ridiculous. You don't have a product until it passes your QA- and QA is relatively cheap compared with the cost of product development. It's irresponsible to spit beta software out into the cloud and expect the kindness of strangers to solve all your problems- especially in the web world where security is always an issue.
I think this workaround is for companies and professionals with resources, not just zealots. Chances are if you are doing web applications that parse MS Office formats, you're intelligent enough to be running office on one of your servers, instead of pouring thousands of man hours into implementing something that you can give away to competitors through the GPL.
If you are an open source zealot, I recommend the following work-arounds:
* Complain that the code is somehow inferior
* Make a conspiracy theory about how Microsoft foresaw open source and were trying to stifle it
* Solve 40% of the problem and claim superiority
* Hack something unreadable together in perl and pretend that it's more interoperable- once more, claim superiority
I have an eeepc. For this reason, I've had an experience with a pre-installed linux machine that offered decent functionality.
It had Windows FLP on it within two months. Here are the various reasons why:
Google Talk - Google Talk is a wonderful application. Just because I can use Pidgin's jabber protocol to communicate over GTalk's networks doesn't mean I like the fact that the client is slow, awkward, and may never have working file transfer. (File Transfer is nice)
SDL - SDL is presented as the end-all solution for porting game-y windows applications to linux. Here's the problem: It's incredibly slow and inefficient. It's riddled with bugs and unsolveable feature snafus that relate to their "lowest common denominator" approach to platform support. If SDL excites you, you should try DirectX. SDL brings even the strongest system to its knees.
Wine - is a nightmare. I would really rather have native software.
KDE - is ugly. Look at applications like kopete- it's like every message box is kword. Xandros for eeepc ships with a lean mean version of kde that is based on an older release. It's passable because it does not use konqueror, but xandros file manager. It's still ugly as hell.
GNOME - is REALLY REALLY slow. I mean, jesus. I can't believe linux people can cite Vista's performance issues with a straight face.
Drivers - are fine, if your hardware is mostly in the range of 1-4 years old. The eee did not have driver or codec issues. It was well stocked.
Firefox - Why do I need 512 mb of ram to run a web browser. It's still not very fast, either. This must be the most wasteful application I've ever run- it's just awful. With Windows, I can run IE7 when I need browser-specific AJAX crap and Opera for most of my browsing. Fast web browsers are more than just a dream.
OpenOffice.org - Since I live in reality, I need to use MSOOXML documents to get work done. By putting Windows on my machine, I was able to use Openoffice.org, Novell Edition. It's just excellent. Sun's Star Office is too much of a war machine and not enough of a product.
Windows FLP - Once I got my hands on a copy of this, Linux was gone. A full XP interface using about 64 mb of ram with an 800 mb install? This needs to be made available to the public. So far, this windows system does everything the default Xandros does, but better, faster (wifi connections, sleep/wake behavior, applications, media, everything...)
Linux is still like a low-end free alternative. It's great-- for cloud computing. Sometimes I am just not connected, though. I tried very hard to make Linux work on my little lappy, but I just couldn't stand the nightmare of trying to find crappy, alpha-beta alternatives to anything I need. I either need to use bleeding edge, unstable software for its competitive features, or old, non-competitive but stable software. Windows is both feature rich and stable.
...in the market of "13 year old boy's imaginations".
I was thinking maybe they should add something that looks like a jet intake, a sub-woofer, some neon underglow, flame stickers on the side, and maybe some spinnaz.
I am pre-emptively naming it the Dell Alienware AREA 51 EXXTREME XENOMORPH. Its default ring tone would be "Crawling in my skin" by Linkin Park. I hope it has Myspace Mobile.
We're talking about rails, though. It's notorious for grossly mishandling data types, hashes, and databases. It's the shift of embedded to ruby ON RAILS that cathes me offguard. Last I checked, the device market is thriving.
The impression I've gotten from ruby on rails development is that it offers generic functionality and ease of use to non-developers (I guess, its syntax is hideously awkward) over performance and agility. I don't think wastefulness is good on any level of development, no matter how large scale things get.
So you dropped writing low-level optimized device code in assembly and C to start developing (web applications?) in the slowest, most inefficient, and poor performing programming language on the market?
Sounds like a major career change. Were you a hobbyist embedded developer then?
That's like saying "I got tired of being a gourmet chef so now I am making vats of spaghetti-o's". It's more fun because they're shaped like dinosaurs.
Well, not quite. Alot of office programs use and support ODF. And therein lies the beauty of it: it is designed from the ground up to not be application specific. And, it is controlled by a consortium, not a single company. The standard was drafted primarily by OASIS... which is just Sun and IBM, essentially.
The opendocument consortium is a bunch of non-members (just cities and small linux consulting firms) and then the linux companies(Novell, Red Hat), IBM, Sun, and Google. On the other hand, we have Apple and Microsoft (since both house Microsoft Office- and Apple really has no proper OpenOffice). This isn't a consortium, it's really just Sun. Let me simplify this: Sun is the only member that is doing real work on ODF/OpenOffice. Everyone else is re-integrating it into different frameworks, using it, or simply trying to spite Microsoft. Technically, this is Sun vs. Microsoft.
What office suites are you talking about? All I can seem to think of are Koffice and OpenOffice and its many various constituents. Google Office is a zombie version of OpenOffice, even. All you have to say is that Microsoft Office supports MS-OOXML for it to be more widespread, then point out that Corel, Microsoft, Apple, and Novell support the format to varying extents and it's already more popular.
OpenOffice is the only TRULY multi-platform ODF-based document handler. So, we must ask ourselves: is this really about standards or is it about Sun and IBM seeking market domination for their products in an extremely misleading and underhanded way- by claiming it's more "ethical"?
ODF was clearly designed for OpenOffice, by the same people who brought you OpenOffice. Its a legalese means of bring Microsoft Office to the lowest common denominator in terms of features, defeating its years-lead on component integration.
I've got a great idea: How about Novell uses its Microsoft agreement and participation to write a complete and supported MS-OOXML plug-in for OpenOffice, and we let the poor customers free of this psychotic attempted coup by Sun, IBM, and Google? That way I can stop converting my documents to "incompatible" formats whenever I need to do homework on my OpenSuSE box that needs to be opened on Microsoft Office.
Can we please just give the customers a pass for once and make something CONVENIENT for a change? Or would that violate the unix philosophy?
I will second this comment. You signed an agreement that said all the work you do belongs to them. You can't free "your" project. Chances are the company will see it as a threat to have a free competitive implementation of something you do available at no cost.
Isn't this what IBM's stance has always been? I don't see how this is any different. IBM has been fervently pro-ODF. Here's them spouting more pro-ODF lingo.
I personally think they're wrong; ODF is just as product specific. It's designed around the feature constraints of OpenOffice just as OOXML is designed around MS Office.
Besides, all of the bitchly compatibility code in OOXML would prove to be a huge boon to the industry if ever correctly implemented, whereas ODF would require manual kludging of an endless mound of legacy documents because it's so "clean-room". Chances are the implementation required to properly bring all the proprietary legacy documents smoothly into ODF in an automated manner would likely bring ODF closer to the 6000 pages of OOXML. ODF is, in this sense, less complete, in sight of its real world purpose.
Not that I care-- I'm not spending any money on MS Office... I'm just tired of having to convert my documents back and forth in order to get work done across platforms. One specification would be nice- I think it would work best if we just implemented the one that's being used in the dominant office product.
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Too many arbitrary options generally confuse people. Gnome's simple, intuitive design principles are partially responsible for the new surge of linux users through ubuntu. I could put a completely non-technical user in front of a default Ubuntu distro and they can do ANYTHING with it. KDE confuses even me. And I'm AWESOME.
I should revise that statement. Gnome really sucked in 2002, as well. Perhaps I was exaggerating, perhaps 2004ish is a better mark for when Gnome surpassed KDE in usability.
It isn't a legacy thing. KDE was undeniably superior until the last 4-5 years.
Gnome is better.
However, it was not always as such. Back when KDE received all the development attention from the major distros, it was better. Now that GNOME is the de facto default in most cases, it's better. Basically, depending on whichever gets more attention, one will be more modern than the other.
The other issue is that Gnome has really solid User Interface Guidelines. KDE's basic HIG is just "see how many buttons you can add to that menu".
Say desktops are like lawn gnomes. In this case, gnome is a gnome. KDE is a tree stump. You must whittle it down in order to make it resemble something attractive or functional. If you love to whittle, you'll love KDE. If you want something that works well out of the box and is inherently easy on the eyes and hands, use GNOME.
So, those who are still using KDE are possibly:
A) Northern European (this is true for some reason)
B) Have been using linux since the 90's and don't feel like changing ANYTHING
C) Using Linspire or Xandros or PC-BSD or some other "easy" distro
D) Like the letter "K"
Or so I figure.
The onomatopoeias in this article would make even the likes of Crazy Frog jealous.
I've been using an eeepc with a flash drive for a while and it is indeed eerily silent. I generally have to check the LED's to see what state the system is in.
If you're into loud drives, though- might I recommend magnetic tape, a Chobit, Robbie the Robot, or Seagate.
There is a great amount of merit to making things attractive and apparently usable. It seems to me that someone decided to implement Plan9's window manager, which is obscure for a reason.
However, I think you'll find more usability embedded in Windows 3.1 or the original Mac OS and most would agree. Since computers are used by humans, not other computers, there's more than reason enough to make robust interfaces that serve the user- and these interfaces can be slim and attractive. See: the original Mac OS.
Basic is fairly venerable and very well documented and supported.
If you just need to feed values and explain to the collider what to do- it doesn't matter what language you use, since it's really not an issue of speed or elegance. It's just an issue of what the physicists are comfortable writing in and using. Talking to the collider in (Objective-)C(++/#) would be a waste of time because of the unneeded level of complexity in terms of memory use. Using FORTRAN only might be silly because they might need some quick GUI's for non programmer scientists to muck with.
You see where I am going with this? VB makes for fast and easy graphical applications. I trust their judgment, since- well, there are alot of smart people at Fermi Lab.
Where are all these people? I'm yet to see any major organization academic or corporate that I've come across think twice about updating to Office 2007- OpenOffice is just something the IT guy brings up in passing- which is usually ignored.
In fact, Office 2007 is just excellent. You can generate simply beautiful documents and presentations extremely fast with it. I use OpenOffice at home, so I've dealt with the fact that it's an okay viewer/editor but for what it's worth everything I make on it looks like utter ass.
Linux could topple Windows and they would still be able to waste OpenOffice with Microsoft Office for those who demand usability and quality.
So OOXML might not become an international standard- what does it matter if everyone in the corporate and academic world is using Microsoft Office? People will likely just save in DOC like they do with openoffice until OOXML is mainstream-- doesn't matter if it's THE STANDARD.
Who out there actually uses ODF? Or even OOXML for that matter? Everyone just uses MS-DOC! The worst case scenario for Microsoft is that they create a Service Pack that adds ODF support for Europe.
I really wish OpenOffice was competitive with Microsoft Office so they would create a free version to compete.
BSD uses a bit of its own userland, true, but beyond the basic text mode legacy unix junk, it's running X.org, Gnome (or KDE), and other modern unix applications- which I consider to be part of the Gnu environment.
OpenSolaris is truly a GNU environment- It's not like Solaris 10, which had Sun versions of BSD tools-- they are stripping as much sun out of the system as they can now-a-days. OpenSolaris is becoming very much like Red Hat Linux. I think the system is even compiled in GCC as opposed to Sun CC.
I disagree. Windows is not monolithic in the same way that Linux is- it's more of a hybird microkernel. It's like a microkernel with a monolithic structure, whereas BSD or Linux are true monolithic kernels.
I think wikipedia does a good job of describing it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Architecture_of_Windows_NT
Although Windows is not a true microkernel, I still believe that there's little to be gained in recompiling it.
You can simply load different drivers in pseudo-userland and run a separate set of services to completely rework your windows system. As far as enterprises and business customers are concerned, there's little to no benefit for them to be able to compile their own kernel unless it is completely monolithic- it's just a waste of time and a leak of talent for microsoft.
FOSS is mostly GNU userland, not the linux kernel. If you don't believe me, try BSD or OpenSolaris.
Linux may have been around in some broken form since the mid-90's, but it's really only been competitive with Windows (for non-unix-centric applications) since 2004-2006 in a realistic sense. For the purpose of the media, it's a new operating system. As far as they're concerned, it's as old as it has been relevant.
For Linux enthusiasts, Linux is fairly old. For regular people, it's as old as Ubuntu 7.04.
You're right, open source is more applicable to academia than business. Now go solve for t.
First, open source zealots could be anybody. They're either low level employees at some forgotten enterprise or they're academics who code according to theory- maybe they're CS undergrads. If something is very valuable to an enterprise and has no strategic reason to be open sourced, it won't be. If it's less cost efficient to reinvent the wheel, then they won't- unless they're an enterprise doomed to failure (or, they are google, and they have so much ad revenue that they can stay afloat while constantly blowing away engineering resources on web toys). Open sourcing code is often done because either A) you're starting with open sourced code, or B) you are trying to push interoperability with your product or C) you are looking to be hired or purchased.
If you need to get a job done and you have the resources, why not simply license a single Microsoft Windows Server? It's not like it "attacks" your unix boxes or anything. It's really a huge time saver when compared with what a professional coder's time costs.
My point is that you'd have to be a zealot to write some half-baked open source solution over a thousand man hours instead of simply using office (office is cheap. Windows Server is cheap).
And the idea that your competitors are "beta testing" your software is simply ridiculous. You don't have a product until it passes your QA- and QA is relatively cheap compared with the cost of product development. It's irresponsible to spit beta software out into the cloud and expect the kindness of strangers to solve all your problems- especially in the web world where security is always an issue.
I think this workaround is for companies and professionals with resources, not just zealots. Chances are if you are doing web applications that parse MS Office formats, you're intelligent enough to be running office on one of your servers, instead of pouring thousands of man hours into implementing something that you can give away to competitors through the GPL.
If you are an open source zealot, I recommend the following work-arounds:
* Complain that the code is somehow inferior
* Make a conspiracy theory about how Microsoft foresaw open source and were trying to stifle it
* Solve 40% of the problem and claim superiority
* Hack something unreadable together in perl and pretend that it's more interoperable- once more, claim superiority
I have an eeepc. For this reason, I've had an experience with a pre-installed linux machine that offered decent functionality.
It had Windows FLP on it within two months. Here are the various reasons why:
Google Talk - Google Talk is a wonderful application. Just because I can use Pidgin's jabber protocol to communicate over GTalk's networks doesn't mean I like the fact that the client is slow, awkward, and may never have working file transfer. (File Transfer is nice)
SDL - SDL is presented as the end-all solution for porting game-y windows applications to linux. Here's the problem: It's incredibly slow and inefficient. It's riddled with bugs and unsolveable feature snafus that relate to their "lowest common denominator" approach to platform support. If SDL excites you, you should try DirectX. SDL brings even the strongest system to its knees.
Wine - is a nightmare. I would really rather have native software.
KDE - is ugly. Look at applications like kopete- it's like every message box is kword. Xandros for eeepc ships with a lean mean version of kde that is based on an older release. It's passable because it does not use konqueror, but xandros file manager. It's still ugly as hell.
GNOME - is REALLY REALLY slow. I mean, jesus. I can't believe linux people can cite Vista's performance issues with a straight face.
Drivers - are fine, if your hardware is mostly in the range of 1-4 years old. The eee did not have driver or codec issues. It was well stocked.
Firefox - Why do I need 512 mb of ram to run a web browser. It's still not very fast, either. This must be the most wasteful application I've ever run- it's just awful. With Windows, I can run IE7 when I need browser-specific AJAX crap and Opera for most of my browsing. Fast web browsers are more than just a dream.
OpenOffice.org - Since I live in reality, I need to use MSOOXML documents to get work done. By putting Windows on my machine, I was able to use Openoffice.org, Novell Edition. It's just excellent. Sun's Star Office is too much of a war machine and not enough of a product.
Windows FLP - Once I got my hands on a copy of this, Linux was gone. A full XP interface using about 64 mb of ram with an 800 mb install? This needs to be made available to the public. So far, this windows system does everything the default Xandros does, but better, faster (wifi connections, sleep/wake behavior, applications, media, everything...)
Linux is still like a low-end free alternative. It's great-- for cloud computing. Sometimes I am just not connected, though. I tried very hard to make Linux work on my little lappy, but I just couldn't stand the nightmare of trying to find crappy, alpha-beta alternatives to anything I need. I either need to use bleeding edge, unstable software for its competitive features, or old, non-competitive but stable software. Windows is both feature rich and stable.
...in the market of "13 year old boy's imaginations".
I was thinking maybe they should add something that looks like a jet intake, a sub-woofer, some neon underglow, flame stickers on the side, and maybe some spinnaz.
I am pre-emptively naming it the Dell Alienware AREA 51 EXXTREME XENOMORPH. Its default ring tone would be "Crawling in my skin" by Linkin Park. I hope it has Myspace Mobile.
We're talking about rails, though. It's notorious for grossly mishandling data types, hashes, and databases. It's the shift of embedded to ruby ON RAILS that cathes me offguard. Last I checked, the device market is thriving.
The impression I've gotten from ruby on rails development is that it offers generic functionality and ease of use to non-developers (I guess, its syntax is hideously awkward) over performance and agility. I don't think wastefulness is good on any level of development, no matter how large scale things get.
So you dropped writing low-level optimized device code in assembly and C to start developing (web applications?) in the slowest, most inefficient, and poor performing programming language on the market?
Sounds like a major career change. Were you a hobbyist embedded developer then?
That's like saying "I got tired of being a gourmet chef so now I am making vats of spaghetti-o's". It's more fun because they're shaped like dinosaurs.
The opendocument consortium is a bunch of non-members (just cities and small linux consulting firms) and then the linux companies(Novell, Red Hat), IBM, Sun, and Google. On the other hand, we have Apple and Microsoft (since both house Microsoft Office- and Apple really has no proper OpenOffice). This isn't a consortium, it's really just Sun. Let me simplify this: Sun is the only member that is doing real work on ODF/OpenOffice. Everyone else is re-integrating it into different frameworks, using it, or simply trying to spite Microsoft. Technically, this is Sun vs. Microsoft.
What office suites are you talking about? All I can seem to think of are Koffice and OpenOffice and its many various constituents. Google Office is a zombie version of OpenOffice, even. All you have to say is that Microsoft Office supports MS-OOXML for it to be more widespread, then point out that Corel, Microsoft, Apple, and Novell support the format to varying extents and it's already more popular.
OpenOffice is the only TRULY multi-platform ODF-based document handler. So, we must ask ourselves: is this really about standards or is it about Sun and IBM seeking market domination for their products in an extremely misleading and underhanded way- by claiming it's more "ethical"?
ODF was clearly designed for OpenOffice, by the same people who brought you OpenOffice. Its a legalese means of bring Microsoft Office to the lowest common denominator in terms of features, defeating its years-lead on component integration.
I've got a great idea: How about Novell uses its Microsoft agreement and participation to write a complete and supported MS-OOXML plug-in for OpenOffice, and we let the poor customers free of this psychotic attempted coup by Sun, IBM, and Google? That way I can stop converting my documents to "incompatible" formats whenever I need to do homework on my OpenSuSE box that needs to be opened on Microsoft Office.
Can we please just give the customers a pass for once and make something CONVENIENT for a change? Or would that violate the unix philosophy?
I will second this comment. You signed an agreement that said all the work you do belongs to them. You can't free "your" project. Chances are the company will see it as a threat to have a free competitive implementation of something you do available at no cost.
Isn't this what IBM's stance has always been? I don't see how this is any different. IBM has been fervently pro-ODF. Here's them spouting more pro-ODF lingo.
I personally think they're wrong; ODF is just as product specific. It's designed around the feature constraints of OpenOffice just as OOXML is designed around MS Office.
Besides, all of the bitchly compatibility code in OOXML would prove to be a huge boon to the industry if ever correctly implemented, whereas ODF would require manual kludging of an endless mound of legacy documents because it's so "clean-room". Chances are the implementation required to properly bring all the proprietary legacy documents smoothly into ODF in an automated manner would likely bring ODF closer to the 6000 pages of OOXML. ODF is, in this sense, less complete, in sight of its real world purpose.
Not that I care-- I'm not spending any money on MS Office... I'm just tired of having to convert my documents back and forth in order to get work done across platforms. One specification would be nice- I think it would work best if we just implemented the one that's being used in the dominant office product.
Why is everyone in perpetual fear that Microsoft will just sweep down from the sky one day and steal everyones' fruitsnacks, then?
Linux is in no danger; it's now being accepted as an interoperability scenario by Microsoft's own. Why the sudden defensiveness?
Linux is in absolutely no danger. Linus is just shooting his mouth off like the CS undergrad he is.