A government enquiry in the UK a couple of years ago found that the music industry was running a monopoly and that CDs were overpriced. Unfortunately, the "Monopolies and Mergers Commission" announced that they were going to take no action on the results
The enquiry lasted quite a long time as I recall but wan't covered heavily in the news (probably largely because those running TV and those running the music industry are largely from the same cartel) so we didn't get to hear much of the details (like for example which of the MMC's relatives was a high-up in the music industry)
You reckon? I had my £30 one stolen from my car, the thieves naturally causing around £50 worth of damage in the process (would have been more if I hadn't fixed it myself) not to mention the hassle of having to pick all that glass out of the car.
Indeed, with early cars, you had to adjust the timing and mixture via levers on the steering column. And not so long ago, you had to operate the choke manually (though it is not always helpful to have this operation removed from you if it is not implemented well).
But even ignoring that, the analogy is bogus. My wife is having to relearn the user interface to be able to drive my car (it is a manual, she knows automatic), some cars have the handbrake in the centre, some pull out from the dashboard. In an automatic, is the gear change in the centre or in the steering column? My wife's automatic mini doesn't have a "park" position, you have to use the handbrake. Are the indicators on the left or right of the steering column (left on my car, right on my wife's and I've even driven a car where the indicator switch was on a separate console)? Where is the headlight switch (I've seen them on the dash, on a stalk you twist, on a stalk you lift and some cars even had them on the floor, (likewise with the starter))? On a manual, where is the bite point of the clutch? Is reverse left and up or right and down and is the interlock push the lever down or lift the knob up (As a student, we once "borrowed" a friend's car and ended up having to push it out of a parking space because we couldn't figure out how to select reverse)?
But then, there's more to driving a car than turning wheels and moving levers. If I go to another country, I have to (usually) drive on the other side of the road and sit on the other side of the car, not to mention have a reasonable understanding of the local rules and laws (roundabouts vs 4-way stops)
In summary, about the only thing standard about cars is the steering wheel/brake/accelerator setup and even then, since the advent of ABS, you really need to be learning a different braking style
When I was at school, I couldn't keep a pencilcase for 5 minutes without losing it and in one particularly boring lesson, a friend of mine ended up with his ruler cut into millimeter slivers
Laptops? Hahah. Kids have no respect at all for their own property and (literally*) less still for other peoples'
Rich
*Literally used in it's true sense and not the mistaken false "literally" of "my schoolbag weighed literally tons"
I'm glad we Brits had our own computer scene because I think it has given us something unique. If I'd had a C64 I think I wouldn't be such a coder as I am now. The BBC almost forced me to learn about computers in a way the games machines would never have done. Thank you Acorn and thank you Clive Sinclair.
Exactly. England got a great start in IT because of it. We'd definitely have dropped down a league as a country if it weren't for it. Unfortunately, the lack of decent internet access is starting to pull us back.
BTW, remember the time that Clive Sinclair was reported as bashing the BCC guy over the head with a rolled up magazine containing an ad which slapped down Sinclair for it's lack of quality control?
I almost shouldn't dignify your coments with a response;)
the spectrum didn't even have a proper keyboard!
And you could sit it on your lap while sitting on the sofa and play games in comfort. Anyway, from what I've seen, most cheap PC keyboards use Spectrum keyboard technology just putting solid plastic moving bits over the top.
the bbc seriously rooled for _serious_ computer hobbyists
nah, all *serious* computer hobbyists needed was bus lines out the back and IIRC, both the BBC and the spectrum had those.
the Basic it used had procedures and functions not just gosubs - i never used a gosub in all the years I spent programming on it.
Basic, who ever used basic? Assembler was where it was at. At which point, z80/6502 becomes horses for courses (my preference was z80 but 6502 was fine too).
[Later addendum: the Spectrum actually did have functions but they weren't the same as the BBC ones and hardly anyone ever used them]
Of course, as I've said before, it's all moot since if you put it in any reasonable graphics mode, the beeb had no space for basic programs anyway (the in-line assembler was nice though)
it was 32k on the Model B, the Model A had 16k!
And the Spectrum had 41k of available memory
it had a memory mapped i/o port and four a/d converters (i built a steering wheel out of a 10k pot to play Revs). I miss that stuff on my inferior but faster PC.
Prefered the separate io bus of the z80 myself (I mean, why tie up valuable memory space for IO). a/d is OK (BTW, you can do that with your PC joystick port if you're careful) but I didn't particularly have much use for it. And of course, the spectrum had a steering wheel too (some hideous ashtray type thing you mashed down on the keys apparently)
I've still got my two BBC's and occasionally play chuckie egg or frak!
Ah, yes. The power of the BBC. You didn't have to go to the trouble of using more than the fingers of two hands to count the number of good games
I computerised my dad's business on it when I was 13 before the company he had the franchise from computerised theirs so our stock levels and money were always what they expected when they audited us (the difference in or out of our pockets - good days and ten years before they caught on to computers - much $-). Try writing a database on a crappy Spectrum.
People did. The lack of standard floppy drives was always a hold-back for that kind of thing though. And I don't know anyone who would say otherwise than that the Microdrive was a piece of crap. Sure, the Spectrum didn't have analogue ports or floppy drives or "The Tube" but it was a quarter of the price of the BBC, the manual was excellent and you could buy any extra stuff you needed and of course, it didn't suck:P
The most sucky thing about the BBC was that it allocated screen memory from RAM so if you wanted to do any decent graphics (e.g. mode 2), you had no space left for your program.
My personaly preference was for the Spectrum compromise, essentailly monochrome graphics with a colour overlay grid. Never bothered trying to understand the C64 model though.
Rich
print at 10,10;ink 5;paper 1;bright 1;flash 1;"Spectrum rools";
Apparently it was used by the spectrum from time to time as well.
Apparently not I'm afraid. The spectrum only had one screen mode (though I think the American Timex versions had more). Funky pixel addressing too which made sense when you started getting into assembly.
OK, I am certainly not accusing anyone of naziism here but I'm sure the people of Germany in the late 30s were more concerned about the more immediate effect on their living conditions of their problematic economy than the abstract and esoteric right of a small part of their population not to be portrayed as thieves and baby-eaters. The exploitation of this of course led to the rise and rise of the Nazi party and the death of millions of that small segment of the population and millions more on the battlefields of Europe
Throughout history, corrupt and evil governments have cast aside "abstract and irrelevant" principles as irrelevant in their quest to "do the right thing" and usually end up doing more harm than the bad things they were claiming to work against.
Of course the little things do need to be taken care of but we must hold high principles and measure our leaders and governments up against them constantly otherwise we betray ourselves and everybody and everything we claim to hold dear.
Rich
Sorry to post this again. Formatting is there now but I didn't change anything. weird.
OK, I am certainly not accusing anyone of naziism here but I'm sure the people of Germany in the late 30s were more concerned about the more immediate effect on their living conditions of their problematic economy than the abstract and esoteric right of a small part of their population not to be portrayed as thieves and baby-eaters. The exploitation of this of course led to the rise and rise of the Nazi party and the death of millions of that small segment of the population and millions more on the battlefields of Europe Throughout history, corrupt and evil governments have cast aside "abstract and irrelevant" principles as irrelevant in their quest to "do the right thing" and usually end up doing more harm than the bad things they were claiming to work against. Of course the little things do need to be taken care of but we must hold high principles and measure our leaders and governments up against them constantly otherwise we betray ourselves and everybody and everything we claim to hold dear. Rich
This would be nothing new, Charles Dickens used to publish his work in serialised form and indeed often changed the storyline to fit in with the desires of his readers
Perhaps this is why I thought his stories were such a pile of cack.
I have to say that I have used the later versions of Trumpet Winsock and DUN sucks badly when put next to it. Most notably because it's idea of timing out "when the connection is idle" seems to revolve around the creation of new TCP connections rather than the continued use of already open ones (fine for web browsing but crap for big file downloads) but also because if it has timed out, it dials up to close connections (for example persistent http connections for netscape) which costs me 5p a time (thanks a lot Microsoft). Trumpet Winsock seems to get it right.
I was actually on the verge of registering it but bought another machine so now I IP-masquerade through Linux. Much more configurable, handles timeouts correctly and a cinche to script so that it could dial different numbers at different times of the day (I get free internet calls in the evening and weekends but it is a different number than the daytime one). It still dials up to close connections but I figure that using diald rather than pppd with on-demand will likely fix that.
I agree with the above poster, Winsock cut themselves out of the market. Also, netmeeting doesn't work with it. Though I wouldn't put this beyond microsoft doing a bit of competitor-bashing since Trumpet oddly seem to be pushing their own OS (though not very vocally so far it seems)
A "clueless" user asks some questions in a forum (Usenet/slashdot/irc/...) and get RTFM'ed before he has a chance of figuring out, where to get The Fine Manual. When he asks how to make apache do this or that people reply "vi access.conf" and expect him to in a flash of light be totally sure what to do.
In these cases, it's more often that the user asks in an obnoxious way or demands that someone give them the answer and really, they should probably consider that someone more than likely has had the same problem as them and they should be asking where to find the answers rather than asking the question directly. In many ways, it is a good learning experience because, firstly, the user learns how to ask useful questions rather than clueless ones, secondly, by finding the documentation, the user is more likely to get many more potential questions answered and thirdly, the forum in question doesn't get cluttered to uselessness by users asking clueless questions.
Don't forget that the answerers are not being paid for support and can respond any way they see fit. And if someone can't make it through this "trial by fire", they probably don't have the right mentality to cope with Linux anyway.
A "clueless" user who is not unixified yet asks: "Why is X configured so many places?", "Why is there an stty, a termcap, a keyb.conf, an xkeymap, a resource file floating all over?" or another finger-on-sore-spot question and immidiately is flamed as Microserf of Gates lover or other verbal abuse.
No excuse for rudeness here but there is often a reason for things which is not easy to explain or too long winded. By using things the way they are, a user will come to understand. Understanding the way Unix is is a mindset that takes a time to develop.
A "clueless" user has a need for a program to do this or that. He is not a programmer but quite knowledgable in his field of profession, and poses an idea for an OSS project. Some replies that "If he wants this $&?! program he can do it him self!"
There is more to a project than programming. Often, users will take the attitude "I want this, you guys do it for me, let me know when it's done". Well, that doesn't cut it in the OS community. Manage the project, draw some graphics, make some design specs whatever but if you want something done, you're going to have to put some in yourself.
My girlfriend is a fashion modeler and uses programs under another OS to make models for sewers. She don't know a thing about programming but all about clothes and asked me, how such a modeling program would come to be in an OSS world. She is the "clueless" user of computers, but the skilled modeler, who desires to contribute to the OSS with her knowledge if she can convince a programmer to transform this knowledge into programs.
A fashion sewer designer? Well, there are two options. Pay someone else to do it (OSS does not preclude this) or find some interested people to form a base team (others may join in if interest grows). If neither of these are acceptable, maybe it isn't a viable open source project.
If feedback an input from users are weighted solemnly on the user's computer skills, the OSS community will never go beyond making programming tools.
So what, who's to say it has to? OSS software is driven internally, not by others prodding from outside. It has it's own agenda and it's own rules. The only reason you're seeing it encroaching into the desktop arena at all is that some of the user-programmers have an interest in seeing it there. Always remember that most of us gain no financial benefit from this, we do it because united we stand, devided we have to buy Microsoft products.
Inter-client communication would be weakly peer-to-peer and individual client 'hello' could be handled by either a single server (a la ICQ) or by simple contact list notification and keep-alive (NetPhone).
Alternative: Multicast your search requests. Client responses come back as appropriate. Connections then ensue.
Sure, client to client is open to abuse but then again, so is napster to a degree. The actual file communication is peer to peer anyway.
No, you're assuming on the "learned" stuff again. Many new users have a real hard time understanding what that blob of plastic with the wire coming out of it sitting to the right of the keyboard is for.
Your VMS user will see a keyboard with letters on it and might think to type the first word that comes into his head, "help" for which he gets a full page of help and maybe some instruction. Of course, this assumes on the learned use of typewriters and that the user knows to press return afterwards.
The true answer of course is that any new user should have some documentation and preferably a little tuition before using a computer for the first time (At uni, we got issued with a "getting started" pamphlet which expressed what was needed to use unix in a few pages without requiring page after page of explanatory graphics as you would for Windows.)
About the only really intuitive interface is a touch screen with a very simplified interface behind it and even then, experience shows that users will often need a little encouragement to start prodding the screen. But the "point with finger" is very low level and even instinctual. The mouse tries to emulate this but needs to be learned and often the interface it interacts with is certainly not intuitive.
Would the webmaster please delete this item, which contains proprietary and confidential information. This is a polite request; I hope that no further request will be necessary. I understand the Internet as well as the next man, and I mean no disrespect to this site or its values, but I cannot allow the above post to remain.
Firstly, tithead, the original article was anonymous with no tracability. By following up with a with request with your name and address, you have provided tracability between "proprietary an confidential information" and your company. Nice one. The other guy may have loaded the gun but you pulled the trigger.
Secondly, that was my post you followed up to requesting removal rather than (presumably) the one you meant so while you may know the internet as much as the next man, you previously do not know it as much as the previous one.
Nextly, This is Slashdot, not your personal little sandbox. I dont see that you have the ability to "allow" or not "allow" posts to remain you arrogant fucker.
Finally, The original poster was participating in the community and getting potentially valuable feedback. With attitudes like yours, it's no wonder your company doesn't "get it" and won't be supporting Linux. I suspect the original poster is the most clueful person working there (or was)
Geeks and marketroids, we have our differences but everyone hates the scum-sucking layers
Aha, good. Some dialogue rather than just firing comments off into the wild blue yonder
Your statement is not the case. Most "geeks" do not "grok" CAPITALISM but they make absolutely no effort to adjust their perspective.
Well, my own data point is that most of the coders I know are just about the most capitalistic bastards in existence. The reason they don't like marketing is that most of what they see of it is about 60% bullshit and only about 5% of the capability of the product. Most of us are extremely clear thinkers and would rather just have a datasheet of the facts rather than some salesdroid telling us unmeasurable opinions about how their product is "fantastic" and "the best" (often at the bottom of an advert where 9/10 of the page is taken up with some anorexic model)
They do not understand that fundamentally, they owe their living to the hard working guys and girls in their marketing departments
And I'm sure that they feel it's the other way around. The fact is that in this world, marketeers are needed so it's more of a symbiotic or team relationship. Again, coders can visualise a world where they can produce their product and people would buy it on their merits without the need for marketeers. A utopian view perhaps but somewhat more realistic than the other way around where marketeers would sell stuff that never needs to be produced.
who slave daily to persuade the software-buying public that the bug-ridden mess they have developed is worth spending $$$s on.
Im sure many programmers feel they would like to produce bug free code but don't have time to. Well, who's fault is that? The marketeers who sold the product for a fixed price and to a deadline. The reality is that bug free software isn't currently financially viable for most applications at the moment (Except for Open Source which has no deadlines or budget of course). Now, that is capitalism for you.
And I would like to talk more on this subject, but events have overtaken me, as I seem to have upset someone in our legal department with my previous posting. If you don't hear from me for a while, it will be because I am dealing a rather large amount of that "corporate BS" that you open source guys are lucky to be free from.
Oh, I'm not an "open source" guy, I code distinctly commercial software for a living, as I suspect, do many people who contribute to open source. So we all get to see some of that corporate BS. I'm fortunate enough to work for a company where we don't see much of that and that I'm happy to say, goes for honesty in its marketing rather than BS (But we can afford to because we're damn good)
I'm still not sure that you're not a troll (I can't see that you'd have been still posting on here if your legal dept had jumped on you) but if you're not, I hope you get through all the legal stuff. Far as I could see, there wasn't anything too commercially sensitive in there and I don't have a clue which company you're working for. Also, IMO, posting to this kind of forum is exactly the kind of reasearch you should have been doing.
Slashdot Mirror
The enquiry lasted quite a long time as I recall but wan't covered heavily in the news (probably largely because those running TV and those running the music industry are largely from the same cartel) so we didn't get to hear much of the details (like for example which of the MMC's relatives was a high-up in the music industry)
Rich
You reckon? I had my £30 one stolen from my car, the thieves naturally causing around £50 worth of damage in the process (would have been more if I hadn't fixed it myself) not to mention the hassle of having to pick all that glass out of the car.
Rich
But even ignoring that, the analogy is bogus. My wife is having to relearn the user interface to be able to drive my car (it is a manual, she knows automatic), some cars have the handbrake in the centre, some pull out from the dashboard. In an automatic, is the gear change in the centre or in the steering column? My wife's automatic mini doesn't have a "park" position, you have to use the handbrake. Are the indicators on the left or right of the steering column (left on my car, right on my wife's and I've even driven a car where the indicator switch was on a separate console)? Where is the headlight switch (I've seen them on the dash, on a stalk you twist, on a stalk you lift and some cars even had them on the floor, (likewise with the starter))? On a manual, where is the bite point of the clutch? Is reverse left and up or right and down and is the interlock push the lever down or lift the knob up (As a student, we once "borrowed" a friend's car and ended up having to push it out of a parking space because we couldn't figure out how to select reverse)?
But then, there's more to driving a car than turning wheels and moving levers. If I go to another country, I have to (usually) drive on the other side of the road and sit on the other side of the car, not to mention have a reasonable understanding of the local rules and laws (roundabouts vs 4-way stops)
In summary, about the only thing standard about cars is the steering wheel/brake/accelerator setup and even then, since the advent of ABS, you really need to be learning a different braking style
Rich
Laptops? Hahah. Kids have no respect at all for their own property and (literally*) less still for other peoples'
Rich
*Literally used in it's true sense and not the mistaken false "literally" of "my schoolbag weighed literally tons"
Exactly. England got a great start in IT because of it. We'd definitely have dropped down a league as a country if it weren't for it. Unfortunately, the lack of decent internet access is starting to pull us back.
BTW, remember the time that Clive Sinclair was reported as bashing the BCC guy over the head with a rolled up magazine containing an ad which slapped down Sinclair for it's lack of quality control?
Rich
the spectrum didn't even have a proper keyboard!
And you could sit it on your lap while sitting on the sofa and play games in comfort. Anyway, from what I've seen, most cheap PC keyboards use Spectrum keyboard technology just putting solid plastic moving bits over the top.
the bbc seriously rooled for _serious_ computer hobbyists
nah, all *serious* computer hobbyists needed was bus lines out the back and IIRC, both the BBC and the spectrum had those.
the Basic it used had procedures and functions not just gosubs - i never used a gosub in all the years I spent programming on it.
Basic, who ever used basic? Assembler was where it was at. At which point, z80/6502 becomes horses for courses (my preference was z80 but 6502 was fine too).
[Later addendum: the Spectrum actually did have functions but they weren't the same as the BBC ones and hardly anyone ever used them]
Of course, as I've said before, it's all moot since if you put it in any reasonable graphics mode, the beeb had no space for basic programs anyway (the in-line assembler was nice though)
it was 32k on the Model B, the Model A had 16k!
And the Spectrum had 41k of available memory
it had a memory mapped i/o port and four a/d converters (i built a steering wheel out of a 10k pot to play Revs). I miss that stuff on my inferior but faster PC.
Prefered the separate io bus of the z80 myself (I mean, why tie up valuable memory space for IO). a/d is OK (BTW, you can do that with your PC joystick port if you're careful) but I didn't particularly have much use for it. And of course, the spectrum had a steering wheel too (some hideous ashtray type thing you mashed down on the keys apparently)
I've still got my two BBC's and occasionally play chuckie egg or frak!
Ah, yes. The power of the BBC. You didn't have to go to the trouble of using more than the fingers of two hands to count the number of good games
I computerised my dad's business on it when I was 13 before the company he had the franchise from computerised theirs so our stock levels and money were always what they expected when they audited us (the difference in or out of our pockets - good days and ten years before they caught on to computers - much $-). Try writing a database on a crappy Spectrum.
People did. The lack of standard floppy drives was always a hold-back for that kind of thing though. And I don't know anyone who would say otherwise than that the Microdrive was a piece of crap. Sure, the Spectrum didn't have analogue ports or floppy drives or "The Tube" but it was a quarter of the price of the BBC, the manual was excellent and you could buy any extra stuff you needed and of course, it didn't suck :P
Rich
Basically, the apparent incongruity between what I posted and my sig can be reconciled with the following statement...
People are sucky.
Rich (born cynic)
My personaly preference was for the Spectrum compromise, essentailly monochrome graphics with a colour overlay grid. Never bothered trying to understand the C64 model though.
Rich
print at 10,10;ink 5;paper 1;bright 1;flash 1;"Spectrum rools";
Apparently not I'm afraid. The spectrum only had one screen mode (though I think the American Timex versions had more). Funky pixel addressing too which made sense when you started getting into assembly.
Rich
Rich (not *really* wanting to go over all those old arguments again)
Throughout history, corrupt and evil governments have cast aside "abstract and irrelevant" principles as irrelevant in their quest to "do the right thing" and usually end up doing more harm than the bad things they were claiming to work against.
Of course the little things do need to be taken care of but we must hold high principles and measure our leaders and governments up against them constantly otherwise we betray ourselves and everybody and everything we claim to hold dear.
Rich
Sorry to post this again. Formatting is there now but I didn't change anything. weird.
* Did it work?
OK, I am certainly not accusing anyone of naziism here but I'm sure the people of Germany in the late 30s were more concerned about the more immediate effect on their living conditions of their problematic economy than the abstract and esoteric right of a small part of their population not to be portrayed as thieves and baby-eaters. The exploitation of this of course led to the rise and rise of the Nazi party and the death of millions of that small segment of the population and millions more on the battlefields of Europe Throughout history, corrupt and evil governments have cast aside "abstract and irrelevant" principles as irrelevant in their quest to "do the right thing" and usually end up doing more harm than the bad things they were claiming to work against. Of course the little things do need to be taken care of but we must hold high principles and measure our leaders and governments up against them constantly otherwise we betray ourselves and everybody and everything we claim to hold dear. Rich
Perhaps this is why I thought his stories were such a pile of cack.
Rich
I put a CD-ROM of Linux on top of my toaster and it melted down into the slot a treat.
Rich
I mean come on, aren't we all fed up with pundits pontificating on "The end of X" by now?
Rich
Get better porn then :)
I was actually on the verge of registering it but bought another machine so now I IP-masquerade through Linux. Much more configurable, handles timeouts correctly and a cinche to script so that it could dial different numbers at different times of the day (I get free internet calls in the evening and weekends but it is a different number than the daytime one). It still dials up to close connections but I figure that using diald rather than pppd with on-demand will likely fix that.
I agree with the above poster, Winsock cut themselves out of the market. Also, netmeeting doesn't work with it. Though I wouldn't put this beyond microsoft doing a bit of competitor-bashing since Trumpet oddly seem to be pushing their own OS (though not very vocally so far it seems)
Rich
In these cases, it's more often that the user asks in an obnoxious way or demands that someone give them the answer and really, they should probably consider that someone more than likely has had the same problem as them and they should be asking where to find the answers rather than asking the question directly. In many ways, it is a good learning experience because, firstly, the user learns how to ask useful questions rather than clueless ones, secondly, by finding the documentation, the user is more likely to get many more potential questions answered and thirdly, the forum in question doesn't get cluttered to uselessness by users asking clueless questions.
Don't forget that the answerers are not being paid for support and can respond any way they see fit. And if someone can't make it through this "trial by fire", they probably don't have the right mentality to cope with Linux anyway.
A "clueless" user who is not unixified yet asks: "Why is X configured so many places?", "Why is there an stty, a termcap, a keyb.conf, an xkeymap, a resource file floating all over?" or another finger-on-sore-spot question and immidiately is flamed as Microserf of Gates lover or other verbal abuse.
No excuse for rudeness here but there is often a reason for things which is not easy to explain or too long winded. By using things the way they are, a user will come to understand. Understanding the way Unix is is a mindset that takes a time to develop.
A "clueless" user has a need for a program to do this or that. He is not a programmer but quite knowledgable in his field of profession, and poses an idea for an OSS project. Some replies that "If he wants this $&?! program he can do it him self!"
There is more to a project than programming. Often, users will take the attitude "I want this, you guys do it for me, let me know when it's done". Well, that doesn't cut it in the OS community. Manage the project, draw some graphics, make some design specs whatever but if you want something done, you're going to have to put some in yourself.
My girlfriend is a fashion modeler and uses programs under another OS to make models for sewers. She don't know a thing about programming but all about clothes and asked me, how such a modeling program would come to be in an OSS world. She is the "clueless" user of computers, but the skilled modeler, who desires to contribute to the OSS with her knowledge if she can convince a programmer to transform this knowledge into programs.
A fashion sewer designer? Well, there are two options. Pay someone else to do it (OSS does not preclude this) or find some interested people to form a base team (others may join in if interest grows). If neither of these are acceptable, maybe it isn't a viable open source project.
If feedback an input from users are weighted solemnly on the user's computer skills, the OSS community will never go beyond making programming tools.
So what, who's to say it has to? OSS software is driven internally, not by others prodding from outside. It has it's own agenda and it's own rules. The only reason you're seeing it encroaching into the desktop arena at all is that some of the user-programmers have an interest in seeing it there. Always remember that most of us gain no financial benefit from this, we do it because united we stand, devided we have to buy Microsoft products.
Rich
Alternative: Multicast your search requests. Client responses come back as appropriate. Connections then ensue.
Sure, client to client is open to abuse but then again, so is napster to a degree. The actual file communication is peer to peer anyway.
Rich
Rich
Your VMS user will see a keyboard with letters on it and might think to type the first word that comes into his head, "help" for which he gets a full page of help and maybe some instruction. Of course, this assumes on the learned use of typewriters and that the user knows to press return afterwards.
The true answer of course is that any new user should have some documentation and preferably a little tuition before using a computer for the first time (At uni, we got issued with a "getting started" pamphlet which expressed what was needed to use unix in a few pages without requiring page after page of explanatory graphics as you would for Windows.)
About the only really intuitive interface is a touch screen with a very simplified interface behind it and even then, experience shows that users will often need a little encouragement to start prodding the screen. But the "point with finger" is very low level and even instinctual. The mouse tries to emulate this but needs to be learned and often the interface it interacts with is certainly not intuitive.
Rich
Oh well, time to go home.
Rich
Firstly, tithead, the original article was anonymous with no tracability. By following up with a with request with your name and address, you have provided tracability between "proprietary an confidential information" and your company. Nice one. The other guy may have loaded the gun but you pulled the trigger.
Secondly, that was my post you followed up to requesting removal rather than (presumably) the one you meant so while you may know the internet as much as the next man, you previously do not know it as much as the previous one.
Nextly, This is Slashdot, not your personal little sandbox. I dont see that you have the ability to "allow" or not "allow" posts to remain you arrogant fucker.
Finally, The original poster was participating in the community and getting potentially valuable feedback. With attitudes like yours, it's no wonder your company doesn't "get it" and won't be supporting Linux. I suspect the original poster is the most clueful person working there (or was)
Geeks and marketroids, we have our differences but everyone hates the scum-sucking layers
Rich
I still think I'm being trolled.
Your statement is not the case. Most "geeks" do not "grok" CAPITALISM but they make absolutely no effort to adjust their perspective.
Well, my own data point is that most of the coders I know are just about the most capitalistic bastards in existence. The reason they don't like marketing is that most of what they see of it is about 60% bullshit and only about 5% of the capability of the product. Most of us are extremely clear thinkers and would rather just have a datasheet of the facts rather than some salesdroid telling us unmeasurable opinions about how their product is "fantastic" and "the best" (often at the bottom of an advert where 9/10 of the page is taken up with some anorexic model)
They do not understand that fundamentally, they owe their living to the hard working guys and girls in their marketing departments
And I'm sure that they feel it's the other way around. The fact is that in this world, marketeers are needed so it's more of a symbiotic or team relationship. Again, coders can visualise a world where they can produce their product and people would buy it on their merits without the need for marketeers. A utopian view perhaps but somewhat more realistic than the other way around where marketeers would sell stuff that never needs to be produced.
who slave daily to persuade the software-buying public that the bug-ridden mess they have developed is worth spending $$$s on.
Im sure many programmers feel they would like to produce bug free code but don't have time to. Well, who's fault is that? The marketeers who sold the product for a fixed price and to a deadline. The reality is that bug free software isn't currently financially viable for most applications at the moment (Except for Open Source which has no deadlines or budget of course). Now, that is capitalism for you.
And I would like to talk more on this subject, but events have overtaken me, as I seem to have upset someone in our legal department with my previous posting. If you don't hear from me for a while, it will be because I am dealing a rather large amount of that "corporate BS" that you open source guys are lucky to be free from.
Oh, I'm not an "open source" guy, I code distinctly commercial software for a living, as I suspect, do many people who contribute to open source. So we all get to see some of that corporate BS. I'm fortunate enough to work for a company where we don't see much of that and that I'm happy to say, goes for honesty in its marketing rather than BS (But we can afford to because we're damn good)
I'm still not sure that you're not a troll (I can't see that you'd have been still posting on here if your legal dept had jumped on you) but if you're not, I hope you get through all the legal stuff. Far as I could see, there wasn't anything too commercially sensitive in there and I don't have a clue which company you're working for. Also, IMO, posting to this kind of forum is exactly the kind of reasearch you should have been doing.
Rich