Whoa, there! Not to be rude, but you need to do some investigation here. NeXTSTEP had its own distinctive style of window management, sure, but also a number of very powerful, object-oriented toolkits, and a killer rapid application development environment. AppKit (the OO GUI toolkit) had its own distinctive GUI style, too.
GNUstep aims to be an open-source implementation of those powerful toolkits and development environment, plus a number of the fine NeXTSTEP apps.
WindowMaker simply mimics the window decoration of NeXTSTEP; GNUstep takes care of what's in the window, and that's where the magic happens.
Is globalism as relentlessly evil and corrupt a force as all those nasty demonstrations in Seattle and Milan would suggest? Anti-globalists sometimes seem to confuse corporatism with globalism, lumping in all sorts of issues under one term.
The news out of the demonstrations was that thousands of people were protesting so-called "free trade" where representatives of powerful business interests met behind barricades to further the process of allowing multi-national corporations to flout national sovereignty through shadowy, unaccountable organizations that can overrule laws and regulations designed to protect laborers and consumers (i.e. people) as "anti-competitive."
Quite a number of these protesters promote the idea of "fair trade," i.e. globalism that raises the standard of living for the vast majority of the people on this planet through better working conditions, more healthful products, and a cleaner environment.
Mr. Katz, if you're gonna rag on people over vocabulary, at least get it right yourself
Forget video games, I hardly play any. I read books, so I want to hear more about this premise lighting! That sounds like a "literary device" whose time has come. Everybody knows that while most Americans refuse to think, many works of literature don't portray a world of absolutes, and hence require the reader to engage the ol' noggin'. Now, if authors could use LED-based colored lighting, this would allow readers to see the premise in a different light without requiring brainpower. Sheer genius!
What I regard as innovations were the result of people putting existing techniques and technology together in useful new ways. (Very few innovations truly have no antecedents.) As much as I love Unix, I can't say that very many of what I consider innovations in the computer realm were developed on Unix in C. Here's a random, non-comprehensive selection of those innovations:
The Microprocessor: Created by Intel in 1971.
The Mouse: Developed by Douglas Engelbart, and famously demonstrated by him in 1968. Launched into widespread use by the Macintosh in 1984.
The Screen: Credited to Mr. Engelbart again.
The Spreadsheet: VisiCalc, which ran on the IBM PC, is considered the first spreadsheet.
The Word Processor: Some consider WordStar, which was developed on CP/M, as the first word processor. However, with just a short Google search, I found a 1963 memo from DEC describing TJ-2, a text justifier running on a PDP-1.
The GUI: It's well-known that the Xerox PARC researchers came up with the fundamentals of the modern WIMP GUI while Unix was in its infancy, and that Apple brought the WIMP GUI to the masses with M68000 assembler, C, and Pascal.
Virtual memory: Hell, I don't even know where it started, but I know Multics (which came before Unix) had it.
Unix: Originally developed in chalk on blackboards in 1969, then PDP-7 assembler, then B, then NB, then C.
The C language: BCPL begat B, which begat NB, which begat C on the nascent Unix.
The Amiga: An inspired hardware/software combination. The hardware was designed mostly on hand-drawn schematics, and the software developed in large part on the prototype hardware, although a some Sun workstations were used later on. Developed in M68000 assembler, C, and BCPL.
The Free Software movement: This began in C on Unix. Yay!
The Video Toaster: Developed in secret by NewTek on the Amiga computer. The software for it was written in M68000 assembly and C.
The Personal Computer: MITS generally gets the credit for this one, with the Altair. IBM built a PC in the early '80s, and Compaq cloned the BIOS, which brought what we now call "the PC" to the masses.
The Internet and TCP/IP: Developed on a while variety of computer systems, mostly mainframes and mini-computers.
Hypertext: Dreamed up by Vannevar Bush decades before computers made it practical.
The World Wide Web: The first servers were written in C on Unix, but the first graphical Web browser was written in Objective C on NeXTStep (only sorta Unix).
Shrink-wrapped software: Created by Bill Gates and Microsoft from their software efforts on the early personal computers.
Well then, as far as I can see, Unix and/or C helped along many innovations, but claiming all computer innovations were developed in C on Unix is quite an outrageous claim.
C'mon, let's get it right. Mosaic was not the first graphical Web browser. That honor belongs to WorldWideWeb.app, written by Tim Berners-Lee in Objective C on NeXTStep. This FAQ item gives the story: First, there was WorldWideWeb.app for NeXTStep, then ViolaWWW, Erwise and Midas for Unix. Marc Andreessen and Eric Bina then wrote Mosaic for Unix after seeing ViolaWWW and Midas. Later, other NCSA people ported Mosaic to the PC, and it came out about the same time as Cello on the PC.
So, Mosaic was not the first at anything. Not the first graphical Web browser, not the first on Unix, and tied for first on the PC. Let's get it straight!
Sorry guys, NSCA Mosaic was not the first Web browser. It wasn't even the first GUI Web browser. Instead, that honor goes to WorldWideWeb.app on NeXTSTEP.
Therefore, the oldest Web pages may still exist on Tim Berners-Lee's old NeXT cube, but it's not on the Web anymore. Thinking back to the first Web page you saw doesn't help you find the oldest page still on the Web, unless it's still available.
After I finally burned out on the Amiga scene in 1998, I put together an Intel box with the intention of running Linux. Instead, I ended up with FreeBSD because it's generally a cleaner, more cohesive system. I've run it on my desktop since.
That said, I still don't think FreeBSD is a desktop operating system. Oh sure, a robust kernel and fantastic stability are great things in a desktop OS, but FreeBSD still isn't close on one thing: Hardware.
Grab that snazzy USB and plug it in. But wait, does it work? It wasn't until relatively recently that USB got decent on FreeBSD. Now you can use keyboards, mice, and printers. A few select scanners. Maybe a modem, but when I tripped over the cable and unplugged my USB modem while online, the machine locked solid.
How about Firewire devices? There's a device driver patch that you can add to the kernel, if you know where to find it, and it's only good for downloading video from a camcorder. The core team doesn't seem much interested in Firewire, though there's some outside development going on.
Sound cards? They're supported. Fancy surround-sound and/or 3D sound cards? Nope. Maybe in a few special cases, at best.
As for accelerated 3D video cards, I'm not even sure because I haven't found a definitive guide. It looks like you can do it with 3dfx, Intel i810, and older ATI chipsets.
I stick with FreeBSD even though it lacks these things because I like it and it suits many of my uses for a computer. But as a result, I still wouldn't call it a desktop OS.
I hate it when these sensationalist bastards over-hype something they don't even understand, then rip it down when it doesn't live up to the hype. Just read this lousy little piece-of-crap editoral linked here. Just who decided that Linux was going to take over the desktop, and hyped that claim? Oh, that's right-- the self-serving journalists and clueless industry pundits. And now that Linux has failed to take over the desktop, they get to gloat about it. WTF?!
Look, you bastards, just because some hackers work on GNOME or KDE, doesn't mean all of us even want to turn Linux into a desktop OS. Some of us appreciate it for its virtues, like complete control by the administrator (yes, administrator), stability, and transparency, and also appreciate other operating systems for their easy-for-clueless-Joe-User qualities. We're not all behind the 'castrated-Linux' desktop idea you so firmly latched onto last year, alright?!
Gah! I can't stand smug bastard pundits like this Reynolds guy, especially when they're only smugly ripping down a strawman.
Just to clarify, a NIB and a gmodel are two slightly different means to the same end.
A NIB is an archive of the user interface object tree. NeXTSTEP and OPENSTEP just serialized the objects into the archive, but now Apple archives them as XML on MacOS X. NIBs represent the 'freeze-dried' internal state of the objects. A gmodel, on the other hand, is an archived representation of the user interface object tree obtained through the objects' API. At load time, it re-constructs the user interface by creating new objects and setting their attributes based on the values in the archive. This is an important distinction, because a gmodel doesn't (or shouldn't) contain internal object state. Thus, it is in theory possible to compile the gmodel library on MacOS X and use the same archive files on GNUstep and MacOS X.
However, that's only nice in theory, because GNUstep uses the NeXTSTEP look, and MacOS X uses Apple's slick, new Aqua look. The interface loaded from the gmodel just wouldn't look/work right on one or the other. I believe the current concensus in the GNUstep camp is to use a NIB-analogue for apps, because once Gorm is done, it'll be a pretty simple matter to whip up a GNUstep-specific user interface in minutes, and to use a gmodel as a transfer format if one wants to automatically convert an OPENSTEP or MacOS X NIB to GNUstep.
GNUstep is not a GUI theme engine. Far, far from it.
GNUstep (for now) consists of a number of parts: gnustep-base, gnustep-gui, gnustep-make, gnustep-db, and gnustep-web.
gnustep-base
The GNUstep Base library is the counterpart to the OpenStep Foundation. Think of it as an extensive class library for Objective C. It provides basic classes for arrays, object dictionaries, strings, dates, high-precision decimal numbers, object sets, notifications, hash tables, and map tables. It extends Objective C a bit by providing object archiving, a powerful distributed objects system, exceptions, invocations, and forwarding. (You'll have to read up on ObjC to understand these latter two.) It also includes abstract classes for run loops, timers, mutexes, reading/writing files and URLs, tasks, threads, timezones and user settings. A couple of GNUstep extensions include an XML parser class, and a MIME handling class.
gnustep-gui
The GNUstep GUI library is the counterpart to the OpenStep AppKit. It provides all the widgets: buttons, sliders, pop-up buttons, images, text fields, Miller-style column browsers, menus, checkboxes, text areas, panels, et cetera. It also provides a color panel, font panel, help panel, and printer panel. And once finished, its text system is going to be quite powerful.
But the real magic -- the stuff that makes developers giggle uncontrollably -- is the interface builder, called Gorm. (NeXT already took the name Interface Builder.) OpenStep uses a fairly strict Model-View-Controller paradigm for its apps.* You write your model and controller in Objective C. Then, you put together your view (the GUI) in Gorm by dragging real, live GUI objects into place. You can test your GUI interface, right there in Gorm. Using the power of Objective C's runtime method bindings, it's a simple matter to hook the GUI up to your controller object with a few mouse clicks. Then, Gorm uses the archiver classes in gnustep-base to write the GUI to an object archive file. No code involved. (Not even behind the scenes.)
This scheme has some really cool implications. For one, the user can twiddle with the application's interface easily, without the need to look at code or re-compile the app. And the developer just needs to spend a few minutes with Gorm to create an entirely different GUI for a different platform. None of the Mozilla-style XUL interface that's not at home on any platform; it's a real, native interface, that hooks easily onto the app with no extra coding needed.
Now, to be honest, gnustep-gui will be this cool when finished. Gorm is still a work in progress, and there's only support for NeXTSTEP-style GUIs on X11 right now. Volunteers for other platforms always appreciated!
* The quick intro to MVC is that you have a set of classes which model your application logic, a view (i.e. the GUI), and a controller object to hook them together.
gnustep-make
This is the makefile package which makes creating your project makefile easy. Of course, GNUstep ProjectCenter.app creates the makefile for you, so it's all done behind the scenes, if you work that way.
gnustep-db
The GNUstep Database library is a work-in-progress counterpart to the Enterprise Object Framework. I haven't worked with either to really do a description justice, but I'm told EOF and gnustep-db are neat systems to handle large object graphs, typically backed by an RDBMS. You implement your application logic in ``Enterprise Objects'' and they're automatically insulated from both the storage backend, and the user interface, which makes distributed processing and code maintenance one heck of a lot easier. These objects are quite useful as the model in a GUI app, or for use in gsweb (below).
gnustep-web
The GNUstep Web system implements a system like WebObjects, for building Web applications on top of gnustep-db, or other of your GNUstep libraries. Again, I haven't used it enough to do a full description justice.
Anyway, that should give you a good overview of how much GNUstep is not a GUI theme engine, and many of the reasons to get excited about it.
it's a shame ObjectiveC is slowly fading into oblivion, now betrayed even by its once-time
main supporters: the former NeXT software team, now working on Mac OS X.
Luckily, this is not the case. Apple's effort to force the Java language onto Cocoa ended in a big bust because, hype notwithstanding, Java simply has too many performance problems. Most of the utilities re-written in Java for later Rhapsody builds are back in Objective C now, and the people responsible for the Java push are no longer in decision-making positions. The Objective C lovers are running things again, and Objective C is the preferred development language for MacOS X.
Apple's Stan Shebs has taken over the GNU Objective C compiler in GCC from Ovidiu Predescu, and is working to sync Apple's source base with GCC 3.0. He reports that they're working to even bring back Objective C++, for easy ObjC/C++ interaction.
What's more, MacOS X ships this Saturday, and the reports I hear are that it includes the development tools. That's going to bring Objective C to a whole new generation of programmers.
And if nothing else, there's the GNUstep project to carry it on. Objective C can only fade away if everybody stops using it.:-)
The latter site's page "Passenger Vehicles Fatality Facts Tables" tells the story well. The figures show that in a multiple vehicle crash, you're best bets are large (but not very large) cars and utility vehicles. However, in single-vehicle accidents, pickup trucks and utility vehicles are more likely to roll over and kill you than any size car.
The table "DEATHS PER MILLION REGISTERED PASSENGER VEHICLES 1-3 YEARS OLD" summarizes it nicely: All passenger vehicles, except pickup trucks, have basically the same death rate. Also, if you look at the table "DEATHS IN PASSENGER VEHICLES", the number of deaths has remained more or less constant since 1975, with the car fatality rate dropping, and pickup/utility vehicle rate rising, which reflects the growing popularity of those vehicles in recent years. If pickups/utility vehicles were safer, you should see the total death rate drop.
So, here's my inflammatory analysis: If people bought cars instead of SUVs, they'd not increase their risk, but would reduce the danger to others. And if everybody bought cars, the danger from monster SUVs would disappear and everybody'd be safer.
Hard to say, really. I believe the reason ISPs charge for extra IP addresses these days is that IPv4 addresses are relatively scarce. IPv6 has 128-bit addresses, which works out to, hell, probably enough for every atom on/in the planet to be uniquely Internet-addressable.:-)
After the IPv6, ISPs will probably still charge for extra IP addresses for a while, simply because they're addicted to the extra money, but it seems to me a savvy ISP could start giving out IP addresses like candy at a parade to gain a competitive advantage.
Anybody know how a person or company gets into a position to add data to credit report databases? I can envision a few (thousand) credit agency executives, bank officials, powerful politicians, and et cetera, suddenly finding little nasties on their credit reports one day....
I heard on NPR that there were rumors of imminent layoffs at Edgewater. Management denied these rumors, of course. Well, that's probably true, since they just reduced the headcount today...
I was gonna post my own rant, but I love this title so much, I just had to reply.:-)
In short, I agree! I looked at the screenshots of AmigaOS 3.5, and saw that they'd re-written much of the GUI to use that thrice-damned ClassAct toolkit. Now, I know the mere mention of MUI used to spark never-ending discussion threads/flames by the score, and I know it processes events in the application's context, rather than at the input.device's 20 priority, and yadda, yadda, yadda, but I have never seen any GUI toolkit other than on the MacOS (with Apple's detailed guidelines) that got GUI layout so right. On the other hand, ClassAct is just butt-ugly. It gets all of the proportions almost, but not entirely, unlike what's pleasing. And now it's part of AmigaOS. Ugh!
Furthermore, they couldn't just stick to ClassAct, could they? No, they had to come up with an MP3 player that apes WinAmp, too. Plus a QuickTime player that doesn't resemble either of the aforementioned. And if that wasn't enough, they added freakin' VINCEd, with its bizarre, unwieldy interface that's different yet.
I've used X for the last two years after switching to FreeBSD. It's really strange that I should think the AmigaOS GUI got hit with the ugly stick by comparison, but there you go.
Non-English? What about: café, résumé, encyclopædia, and naïve? True, these words came from other languages, but they're English words that use diacritical marks and ligatures. These other letters certainly have a raison d'être on an English keyboard. So I agree, I hope they paid attention to such characters....
Hell, if you're gonna be that picky about American versus British English, then you need to also ask: Yankee, Midwest or Southern English?
I know that here in the Midwest, we stand "in line," but a lot of crazy right coasters I've met stand "on line." (What's the log-in proceedure, then?) And a few of 'em even "queue up." We also cook our bratwurst on those UFO-esqe things in the backyard we call "grills." I gather that in other places, they're "barbeques." And I've even heard some people call them a "hibachi." We put things like ketchup and onions on those brats, i.e. "condiments." I was surprised when I headed south to see that they use "fixin's." (I'd always thought that "fixin'" was a synonym of "to intend," as in: "I'm fixin' to fix me a brat, with fixin's.") Of course, there's an on-going debate about whether we drink "soda" or "pop," so it's just easier to get a drink of water from the "bubbler." Somebody here might even ask if you "want to come with?"
I feel I must also mention the Southerners coming up with new pronouns. There's the traditional "y'all", which in recent years has become the preferred singular, second-person pronoun, and "all y'all" has taken over the plural, second-person pronoun spot. That's some real language innovation!
I hope you are prepared to live in a country where our personal freedoms are abridged, our environment is destroyed, and the rich get tax breaks
at the expense of the poor.
I'm sorry, but you need to clarify. Which major-party candidate was this supposed to scare us away from?
Question: How is it that the incumbent vice-president in an historically unprecedented era of prosperity (so they tell us) can poll so close to his challenger that a measly percent here and there is even an issue? How can it be that in an election that overwhelmingly favored incumbents, said incumbent vice-president lost his own home state?
And where do his supporters get the chutzpah to blame such a stunning defeat on a guy who got less than 3% of the vote?
I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree, especially if you think you know my beliefs better than I do. I would like to hear how you think the "real work" should be done, though.
How's it an irrelevant point when you drag out the hysterics about how Bush in the White House will plunge us back into the dark ages? That's what I was addressing.
And for what it's worth, your 'important' point that I didn't address is just wrong. Nader almost got endorsements from the major labor unions, but they reluctantly went with Gore. The same with the Sierra Club. When the Greens continue their work after election day, they'll listen. And just recently, a large group of farmers did endorse Nader. In addition, Nader's campaign is a natural extension of the sentiments that came to the fore in the Battle of Seattle, the protests in Prague, and the like. In these cases, labor, farmers, environmentalists, and other groups came together. There is a building leftist coalition. You just don't hear about it in the mainstream media.
I think it's not a problem with the political system so much as it's a problem in the Democratic Party. Frankly, I see the Democratic Party as diseased. All they can offer in support of Gore is the assertion that Bush is worse. They've accepted the sad truth that their leaders have ulterior motives, and can only stand up for getting screwed less harshly. Furthermore, they're alienating a new generation of voters with their campaign of terror against Ralph Nader. When they tell millions of energized young people who support Nader to, in essence, "shut up and tow our party line, because you and your views don't matter," I think the Democratic Party is digging its own grave.
There are other things wrong with the political system, such as the overwhelming influence of big money....
Slashdot Mirror
Whoa, there! Not to be rude, but you need to do some investigation here. NeXTSTEP had its own distinctive style of window management, sure, but also a number of very powerful, object-oriented toolkits, and a killer rapid application development environment. AppKit (the OO GUI toolkit) had its own distinctive GUI style, too.
GNUstep aims to be an open-source implementation of those powerful toolkits and development environment, plus a number of the fine NeXTSTEP apps.
WindowMaker simply mimics the window decoration of NeXTSTEP; GNUstep takes care of what's in the window, and that's where the magic happens.
The news out of the demonstrations was that thousands of people were protesting so-called "free trade" where representatives of powerful business interests met behind barricades to further the process of allowing multi-national corporations to flout national sovereignty through shadowy, unaccountable organizations that can overrule laws and regulations designed to protect laborers and consumers (i.e. people) as "anti-competitive."
Quite a number of these protesters promote the idea of "fair trade," i.e. globalism that raises the standard of living for the vast majority of the people on this planet through better working conditions, more healthful products, and a cleaner environment.
Mr. Katz, if you're gonna rag on people over vocabulary, at least get it right yourself
Forget video games, I hardly play any. I read books, so I want to hear more about this premise lighting! That sounds like a "literary device" whose time has come. Everybody knows that while most Americans refuse to think, many works of literature don't portray a world of absolutes, and hence require the reader to engage the ol' noggin'. Now, if authors could use LED-based colored lighting, this would allow readers to see the premise in a different light without requiring brainpower. Sheer genius!
What I regard as innovations were the result of people putting existing techniques and technology together in useful new ways. (Very few innovations truly have no antecedents.) As much as I love Unix, I can't say that very many of what I consider innovations in the computer realm were developed on Unix in C. Here's a random, non-comprehensive selection of those innovations:
The Microprocessor: Created by Intel in 1971.
The Mouse: Developed by Douglas Engelbart, and famously demonstrated by him in 1968. Launched into widespread use by the Macintosh in 1984.
The Screen: Credited to Mr. Engelbart again.
The Spreadsheet: VisiCalc, which ran on the IBM PC, is considered the first spreadsheet.
The Word Processor: Some consider WordStar, which was developed on CP/M, as the first word processor. However, with just a short Google search, I found a 1963 memo from DEC describing TJ-2, a text justifier running on a PDP-1.
The GUI: It's well-known that the Xerox PARC researchers came up with the fundamentals of the modern WIMP GUI while Unix was in its infancy, and that Apple brought the WIMP GUI to the masses with M68000 assembler, C, and Pascal.
Virtual memory: Hell, I don't even know where it started, but I know Multics (which came before Unix) had it.
Unix: Originally developed in chalk on blackboards in 1969, then PDP-7 assembler, then B, then NB, then C.
The C language: BCPL begat B, which begat NB, which begat C on the nascent Unix.
The Amiga: An inspired hardware/software combination. The hardware was designed mostly on hand-drawn schematics, and the software developed in large part on the prototype hardware, although a some Sun workstations were used later on. Developed in M68000 assembler, C, and BCPL.
The Free Software movement: This began in C on Unix. Yay!
The Video Toaster: Developed in secret by NewTek on the Amiga computer. The software for it was written in M68000 assembly and C.
The Personal Computer: MITS generally gets the credit for this one, with the Altair. IBM built a PC in the early '80s, and Compaq cloned the BIOS, which brought what we now call "the PC" to the masses.
The Internet and TCP/IP: Developed on a while variety of computer systems, mostly mainframes and mini-computers.
Hypertext: Dreamed up by Vannevar Bush decades before computers made it practical.
The World Wide Web: The first servers were written in C on Unix, but the first graphical Web browser was written in Objective C on NeXTStep (only sorta Unix).
Shrink-wrapped software: Created by Bill Gates and Microsoft from their software efforts on the early personal computers.
Well then, as far as I can see, Unix and/or C helped along many innovations, but claiming all computer innovations were developed in C on Unix is quite an outrageous claim.
C'mon, let's get it right. Mosaic was not the first graphical Web browser. That honor belongs to WorldWideWeb.app, written by Tim Berners-Lee in Objective C on NeXTStep. This FAQ item gives the story: First, there was WorldWideWeb.app for NeXTStep, then ViolaWWW, Erwise and Midas for Unix. Marc Andreessen and Eric Bina then wrote Mosaic for Unix after seeing ViolaWWW and Midas. Later, other NCSA people ported Mosaic to the PC, and it came out about the same time as Cello on the PC.
So, Mosaic was not the first at anything. Not the first graphical Web browser, not the first on Unix, and tied for first on the PC. Let's get it straight!
Sorry guys, NSCA Mosaic was not the first Web browser. It wasn't even the first GUI Web browser. Instead, that honor goes to WorldWideWeb.app on NeXTSTEP.
Therefore, the oldest Web pages may still exist on Tim Berners-Lee's old NeXT cube, but it's not on the Web anymore. Thinking back to the first Web page you saw doesn't help you find the oldest page still on the Web, unless it's still available.
After I finally burned out on the Amiga scene in 1998, I put together an Intel box with the intention of running Linux. Instead, I ended up with FreeBSD because it's generally a cleaner, more cohesive system. I've run it on my desktop since.
That said, I still don't think FreeBSD is a desktop operating system. Oh sure, a robust kernel and fantastic stability are great things in a desktop OS, but FreeBSD still isn't close on one thing: Hardware.
Grab that snazzy USB and plug it in. But wait, does it work? It wasn't until relatively recently that USB got decent on FreeBSD. Now you can use keyboards, mice, and printers. A few select scanners. Maybe a modem, but when I tripped over the cable and unplugged my USB modem while online, the machine locked solid.
How about Firewire devices? There's a device driver patch that you can add to the kernel, if you know where to find it, and it's only good for downloading video from a camcorder. The core team doesn't seem much interested in Firewire, though there's some outside development going on.
Sound cards? They're supported. Fancy surround-sound and/or 3D sound cards? Nope. Maybe in a few special cases, at best.
As for accelerated 3D video cards, I'm not even sure because I haven't found a definitive guide. It looks like you can do it with 3dfx, Intel i810, and older ATI chipsets.
I stick with FreeBSD even though it lacks these things because I like it and it suits many of my uses for a computer. But as a result, I still wouldn't call it a desktop OS.
I hate it when these sensationalist bastards over-hype something they don't even understand, then rip it down when it doesn't live up to the hype. Just read this lousy little piece-of-crap editoral linked here. Just who decided that Linux was going to take over the desktop, and hyped that claim? Oh, that's right-- the self-serving journalists and clueless industry pundits. And now that Linux has failed to take over the desktop, they get to gloat about it. WTF?!
Look, you bastards, just because some hackers work on GNOME or KDE, doesn't mean all of us even want to turn Linux into a desktop OS. Some of us appreciate it for its virtues, like complete control by the administrator (yes, administrator), stability, and transparency, and also appreciate other operating systems for their easy-for-clueless-Joe-User qualities. We're not all behind the 'castrated-Linux' desktop idea you so firmly latched onto last year, alright?!
Gah! I can't stand smug bastard pundits like this Reynolds guy, especially when they're only smugly ripping down a strawman.
Just to clarify, a NIB and a gmodel are two slightly different means to the same end.
A NIB is an archive of the user interface object tree. NeXTSTEP and OPENSTEP just serialized the objects into the archive, but now Apple archives them as XML on MacOS X. NIBs represent the 'freeze-dried' internal state of the objects. A gmodel, on the other hand, is an archived representation of the user interface object tree obtained through the objects' API. At load time, it re-constructs the user interface by creating new objects and setting their attributes based on the values in the archive. This is an important distinction, because a gmodel doesn't (or shouldn't) contain internal object state. Thus, it is in theory possible to compile the gmodel library on MacOS X and use the same archive files on GNUstep and MacOS X.
However, that's only nice in theory, because GNUstep uses the NeXTSTEP look, and MacOS X uses Apple's slick, new Aqua look. The interface loaded from the gmodel just wouldn't look/work right on one or the other. I believe the current concensus in the GNUstep camp is to use a NIB-analogue for apps, because once Gorm is done, it'll be a pretty simple matter to whip up a GNUstep-specific user interface in minutes, and to use a gmodel as a transfer format if one wants to automatically convert an OPENSTEP or MacOS X NIB to GNUstep.
GNUstep is not a GUI theme engine. Far, far from it.
GNUstep (for now) consists of a number of parts: gnustep-base, gnustep-gui, gnustep-make, gnustep-db, and gnustep-web. gnustep-base
The GNUstep Base library is the counterpart to the OpenStep Foundation. Think of it as an extensive class library for Objective C. It provides basic classes for arrays, object dictionaries, strings, dates, high-precision decimal numbers, object sets, notifications, hash tables, and map tables. It extends Objective C a bit by providing object archiving, a powerful distributed objects system, exceptions, invocations, and forwarding. (You'll have to read up on ObjC to understand these latter two.) It also includes abstract classes for run loops, timers, mutexes, reading/writing files and URLs, tasks, threads, timezones and user settings. A couple of GNUstep extensions include an XML parser class, and a MIME handling class.
gnustep-guiThe GNUstep GUI library is the counterpart to the OpenStep AppKit. It provides all the widgets: buttons, sliders, pop-up buttons, images, text fields, Miller-style column browsers, menus, checkboxes, text areas, panels, et cetera. It also provides a color panel, font panel, help panel, and printer panel. And once finished, its text system is going to be quite powerful.
But the real magic -- the stuff that makes developers giggle uncontrollably -- is the interface builder, called Gorm. (NeXT already took the name Interface Builder.) OpenStep uses a fairly strict Model-View-Controller paradigm for its apps.* You write your model and controller in Objective C. Then, you put together your view (the GUI) in Gorm by dragging real, live GUI objects into place. You can test your GUI interface, right there in Gorm. Using the power of Objective C's runtime method bindings, it's a simple matter to hook the GUI up to your controller object with a few mouse clicks. Then, Gorm uses the archiver classes in gnustep-base to write the GUI to an object archive file. No code involved. (Not even behind the scenes.)
This scheme has some really cool implications. For one, the user can twiddle with the application's interface easily, without the need to look at code or re-compile the app. And the developer just needs to spend a few minutes with Gorm to create an entirely different GUI for a different platform. None of the Mozilla-style XUL interface that's not at home on any platform; it's a real, native interface, that hooks easily onto the app with no extra coding needed.
Now, to be honest, gnustep-gui will be this cool when finished. Gorm is still a work in progress, and there's only support for NeXTSTEP-style GUIs on X11 right now. Volunteers for other platforms always appreciated!
* The quick intro to MVC is that you have a set of classes which model your application logic, a view (i.e. the GUI), and a controller object to hook them together.
gnustep-makeThis is the makefile package which makes creating your project makefile easy. Of course, GNUstep ProjectCenter.app creates the makefile for you, so it's all done behind the scenes, if you work that way. gnustep-db
The GNUstep Database library is a work-in-progress counterpart to the Enterprise Object Framework. I haven't worked with either to really do a description justice, but I'm told EOF and gnustep-db are neat systems to handle large object graphs, typically backed by an RDBMS. You implement your application logic in ``Enterprise Objects'' and they're automatically insulated from both the storage backend, and the user interface, which makes distributed processing and code maintenance one heck of a lot easier. These objects are quite useful as the model in a GUI app, or for use in gsweb (below).
gnustep-webThe GNUstep Web system implements a system like WebObjects, for building Web applications on top of gnustep-db, or other of your GNUstep libraries. Again, I haven't used it enough to do a full description justice.
Anyway, that should give you a good overview of how much GNUstep is not a GUI theme engine, and many of the reasons to get excited about it.
Luckily, this is not the case. Apple's effort to force the Java language onto Cocoa ended in a big bust because, hype notwithstanding, Java simply has too many performance problems. Most of the utilities re-written in Java for later Rhapsody builds are back in Objective C now, and the people responsible for the Java push are no longer in decision-making positions. The Objective C lovers are running things again, and Objective C is the preferred development language for MacOS X.
Apple's Stan Shebs has taken over the GNU Objective C compiler in GCC from Ovidiu Predescu, and is working to sync Apple's source base with GCC 3.0. He reports that they're working to even bring back Objective C++, for easy ObjC/C++ interaction.
What's more, MacOS X ships this Saturday, and the reports I hear are that it includes the development tools. That's going to bring Objective C to a whole new generation of programmers.
And if nothing else, there's the GNUstep project to carry it on. Objective C can only fade away if everybody stops using it. :-)
Check out The Ultimate Poseur's Sport Utility Page. It's got a good page on the SUV safety myths, plus links to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.
The latter site's page "Passenger Vehicles Fatality Facts Tables" tells the story well. The figures show that in a multiple vehicle crash, you're best bets are large (but not very large) cars and utility vehicles. However, in single-vehicle accidents, pickup trucks and utility vehicles are more likely to roll over and kill you than any size car.
The table "DEATHS PER MILLION REGISTERED PASSENGER VEHICLES 1-3 YEARS OLD" summarizes it nicely: All passenger vehicles, except pickup trucks, have basically the same death rate. Also, if you look at the table "DEATHS IN PASSENGER VEHICLES", the number of deaths has remained more or less constant since 1975, with the car fatality rate dropping, and pickup/utility vehicle rate rising, which reflects the growing popularity of those vehicles in recent years. If pickups/utility vehicles were safer, you should see the total death rate drop.
So, here's my inflammatory analysis: If people bought cars instead of SUVs, they'd not increase their risk, but would reduce the danger to others. And if everybody bought cars, the danger from monster SUVs would disappear and everybody'd be safer.
Hard to say, really. I believe the reason ISPs charge for extra IP addresses these days is that IPv4 addresses are relatively scarce. IPv6 has 128-bit addresses, which works out to, hell, probably enough for every atom on/in the planet to be uniquely Internet-addressable. :-)
After the IPv6, ISPs will probably still charge for extra IP addresses for a while, simply because they're addicted to the extra money, but it seems to me a savvy ISP could start giving out IP addresses like candy at a parade to gain a competitive advantage.
FYI, FreeBSD 4.x includes a command called 'burncd' for burning CDs on IDE CD writers.
So there's one less excuse not to use it... :-)
Anybody know how a person or company gets into a position to add data to credit report databases? I can envision a few (thousand) credit agency executives, bank officials, powerful politicians, and et cetera, suddenly finding little nasties on their credit reports one day....
Sit down, you're in for a shock:
I heard on NPR that there were rumors of imminent layoffs at Edgewater. Management denied these rumors, of course. Well, that's probably true, since they just reduced the headcount today...
I was gonna post my own rant, but I love this title so much, I just had to reply. :-)
In short, I agree! I looked at the screenshots of AmigaOS 3.5, and saw that they'd re-written much of the GUI to use that thrice-damned ClassAct toolkit. Now, I know the mere mention of MUI used to spark never-ending discussion threads/flames by the score, and I know it processes events in the application's context, rather than at the input.device's 20 priority, and yadda, yadda, yadda, but I have never seen any GUI toolkit other than on the MacOS (with Apple's detailed guidelines) that got GUI layout so right. On the other hand, ClassAct is just butt-ugly. It gets all of the proportions almost, but not entirely, unlike what's pleasing. And now it's part of AmigaOS. Ugh!
Furthermore, they couldn't just stick to ClassAct, could they? No, they had to come up with an MP3 player that apes WinAmp, too. Plus a QuickTime player that doesn't resemble either of the aforementioned. And if that wasn't enough, they added freakin' VINCEd, with its bizarre, unwieldy interface that's different yet.
I've used X for the last two years after switching to FreeBSD. It's really strange that I should think the AmigaOS GUI got hit with the ugly stick by comparison, but there you go.
Non-English? What about: café, résumé, encyclopædia, and naïve? True, these words came from other languages, but they're English words that use diacritical marks and ligatures. These other letters certainly have a raison d'être on an English keyboard. So I agree, I hope they paid attention to such characters....
I know that here in the Midwest, we stand "in line," but a lot of crazy right coasters I've met stand "on line." (What's the log-in proceedure, then?) And a few of 'em even "queue up." We also cook our bratwurst on those UFO-esqe things in the backyard we call "grills." I gather that in other places, they're "barbeques." And I've even heard some people call them a "hibachi." We put things like ketchup and onions on those brats, i.e. "condiments." I was surprised when I headed south to see that they use "fixin's." (I'd always thought that "fixin'" was a synonym of "to intend," as in: "I'm fixin' to fix me a brat, with fixin's.") Of course, there's an on-going debate about whether we drink "soda" or "pop," so it's just easier to get a drink of water from the "bubbler." Somebody here might even ask if you "want to come with?"
I feel I must also mention the Southerners coming up with new pronouns. There's the traditional "y'all", which in recent years has become the preferred singular, second-person pronoun, and "all y'all" has taken over the plural, second-person pronoun spot. That's some real language innovation!
I'm sorry, but you need to clarify. Which major-party candidate was this supposed to scare us away from?
Question: How is it that the incumbent vice-president in an historically unprecedented era of prosperity (so they tell us) can poll so close to his challenger that a measly percent here and there is even an issue? How can it be that in an election that overwhelmingly favored incumbents, said incumbent vice-president lost his own home state?
And where do his supporters get the chutzpah to blame such a stunning defeat on a guy who got less than 3% of the vote?
I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree, especially if you think you know my beliefs better than I do. I would like to hear how you think the "real work" should be done, though.
How's it an irrelevant point when you drag out the hysterics about how Bush in the White House will plunge us back into the dark ages? That's what I was addressing.
And for what it's worth, your 'important' point that I didn't address is just wrong. Nader almost got endorsements from the major labor unions, but they reluctantly went with Gore. The same with the Sierra Club. When the Greens continue their work after election day, they'll listen. And just recently, a large group of farmers did endorse Nader. In addition, Nader's campaign is a natural extension of the sentiments that came to the fore in the Battle of Seattle, the protests in Prague, and the like. In these cases, labor, farmers, environmentalists, and other groups came together. There is a building leftist coalition. You just don't hear about it in the mainstream media.
I think it's not a problem with the political system so much as it's a problem in the Democratic Party. Frankly, I see the Democratic Party as diseased. All they can offer in support of Gore is the assertion that Bush is worse. They've accepted the sad truth that their leaders have ulterior motives, and can only stand up for getting screwed less harshly. Furthermore, they're alienating a new generation of voters with their campaign of terror against Ralph Nader. When they tell millions of energized young people who support Nader to, in essence, "shut up and tow our party line, because you and your views don't matter," I think the Democratic Party is digging its own grave.
There are other things wrong with the political system, such as the overwhelming influence of big money....