Yeahhh. And did you notice that the "disembodied soul" is missing from bungie.com? Or that the whole Marathon's Story site has been replaced by a single page that quotes Leela (the first AI from Marathon) saying "There are obviously many things which we do not understand, and may never be able to."
Yeah, SURE Bungie will remain free within the gates of Redmond... As free as any Pfhor conquest or borg drone!
Was MS-BOB some kind of MA-75B target practice level? But Seriously--
So purchasing Bungie isn't necessarily bad. If Bungie gets to keep doing what they're doing...
But this is highly unlikely. See Bob Crigely's story "Be Careful What You Wish For: Why Being Acquired by Microsoft Makes Hardly Anyone Happy in the Long Run" here
This is a NIGHTMARE. I love Bungie, but I'm sure they will have all the freedom of any drones in the collective...
It is about reviews. The names of the games are trademarked. Difficult to review a product without identifying it... Don't think that "fair use" supercedes UCITA. Recent DMCA interpretations have tended to indicate that "fair use" is being superceded by these garbage laws.
If you have played the game, you have agreed to the license. The license prohibits you from using the marks _including the name of the game_ in a negative context. Your license to use the game will be reovked, but you may face additional legal trouble for using the protected marks without license...You can say "I played a game that sucks" or "DN sucks" but they own "Duke Nuke'em"...
I think the tree of liberty is asking for a little nourishment...
Re:The problem of bullies
on
Virtual War
·
· Score: 1
A nicely phrased argument, fitting well with theory generated during and after World Wars I-II but profoundly ahisotrical. And untrue.
What was the style of war practiced by Tamerlane? How about the doctrine of Genghis Khan? When the Celts of northern Italy were entirely wiped out by the Romans, who drew the line between civilian and military targets? What were the rules of war that governed the ancient Israelites when they "slew all that breathed" in the towns of the Moabites? Just a few examples from the good old days before the 20th century when men were men and killed eachother hands-on with pointed and edged weapons.
And a fine, moral time was had by all.
Anti-American Nonsense!
on
Virtual War
·
· Score: 1
Americans have not "made it clear that they don't want to get their hands dirty"
Americans have made it clear that they would like to minimized the risk to their soldier's lives.
There is nothing "virtual" about 2,000 pound bombs or warheads. There is nothing "virtual" about the death and destruction that American weapons cause. The Pentagon has no illusions about this and neither does most of the American public. The questions of ethical conduct in the pursuit of war are complex, but the argument that minimizing risk is immoral is worthy of ridicule. The conflict in the little part of our planet that was once known as Yugoslavia was not created by American propaganda and the European nations (with the exception of France) were more risk-averese than the US. Given the history of warfare in Europe -- from the Celts and Romans, through the fine displays of brotherly love that charatererized the middle ages and right up to modern examples of ethical conduct as demonstrated by Napoleon or Kaiser Wilhelm -- it is beyond belief that an educated, intelligent person would try to pass this off as rational argument. It is also sad and troubling that a seemingly bright person like Katz would receive this rubbish so uncritically.
If you are in any doubt about the validity of my argument look up the history of Caesar's reprisals in Gaul. Hundreds of thousands were killed, primarily with pointed or edged weapons. Was that nice, risky, "moral" war? It certainly had the kind of "unambiguous" results apparently favored Katz--You know, going for "unconditional surrender" or good old fashioned genocide
I had the same thought. He might have an aversion to R.M. Stallman, but credit where credit's due! GNU should have been mentioned.
And although he mentioned sendmail, bind, Apache etc., the main thrust of his refutation seemed to suggest that Red Hat Linux = open source. Still, if I was a Red Hat guy, I can imagine feeling personally attacked by the original article...
Your comments are interesting, largely correct but somewhat irrelevant...
Reality check: the majority of contibutors to open source projects are not rellying on these efforts to provide their means of livelihood. Whether the GIMP or GNUCash ever make one-tenth of one percent of the profit generated by sales of similar products from Adobe or Intuit will have no effect on whether they continue to be developed, refined and improved. At some point a cuasual user will be faced with the option: pay a high fee for a proprietary application or get the same functionality for little or no cost...
For the business user/IT manager the cost factor becomes more complex... the basic economics of an expensive site-license versus a cheap, reproducible Distro is a strong argument in favour of open source apps, but IT managers will calculate a Total Cost of Ownership based on support, upgrade fees, training costs and support fees. This is where the commercial Open Source Distrubutors hope to make money...
This business model is not competitve with the tradional models, but to say this means it will fail may be like predicting that mammals would not make it out of the Jurassic because they just couldn't compete with dinosaurs as carnivores or herbivores... The changes underway may be larger than you are imagining.
Take your example of an open source video editor that had all the features of Adobe Premiere... You make many false assumptions that betray a lack of understanding of the real value of the open source model:
First you misconstrue the opensource paradigm as "..even if the original developer ceases to work on it, one can just bring in a programmer of their own to continue developement." -- A video editor like Premiere is NOT the work of an individual. In a firm like Adobe, it has a the number of programmers that are assigned to it by management (this is ususally large--check out the credits in Premiere some time!). In an open source project, the pool of programmers is limited to the number of people on the internet with the appropriate skills and the inclination and time to contribute -- almost always a larger number.
Second, you state that the media assets would be tied up in it's file formats... but the open source movement is characterized by a reliance on and the promotion of standard formats... The file format problem is far more likely to occur in proprietary products (do you remember Persuasion? How supported is the user with an archive of media assets in that format?).
Finally, you suggest that the hypothetical open source video user is left with the option of paying a single programmer's salary or abandoning the application and their assets. This goes back to the erroneous assumption that such a project is the work of an individual. You can be sure that such a package would be the result of the collaboration of many programmers in many countries. The editor you are describing would be a hot project, and if one or more of the original developers dropped out, you can be sure that the project would be maintained.
Your argument about the value of competition is belied by the real history of proprietary software development. Good packages with large narkets are frequently dropped because managers see greater profitability in other efforts. Despite the large number of Mac users, many proprietary packages are available only to Wintel users because the software developers see a larger Return On Investment in that market... These are not concerns for open source hackers.
Within the framework of your argument, you are right... but the framework is wrong.
So what you're saying is Evolution allows you to replace Exchange clients... And your non-open-source product allows you to replace Exchange on the server side...
I don't think you've answered your own question anymore than he did...
Obviously, you hope that some admins will replace Exchange server with your "drop-in replacement" BUT this is very far from stating that this will happen!
I use Mac OS and Windows at my job and think the panel beats the crap out of anything either of those OSs has to offer. Well, that's an overstatement -- the Apple menu is easier to congfigure than the "foot"... but I am praying that Mac OS X will abandon the silly "dock" and I'll be thrilled if they add half the functional power of the GNOME panel.
As for layout and customizability, try using the other mouse buttons! I played around with the options and put panels in all corners of my screen... had them runing vertically on the left and right and across the top and bottom, added applets and drawers with more applets... I found it very easy to set up an efficient set of tools that supported my work. True, some hairy bugs made an earlier version of the panel lock up or disappear sometimes (and zombied X at times) but customizability was not a problem.
It has long been known that "reality" is based on the consensus views of groups of human beings. It has also long been understood, if rarely precisely formulated, that the human perception of time is variable. A host of factors, such as adrenal activity, endocrine system fluctuations, auditory stimuli like the roar of crowds or aircraft engines, extremes of snesory input of any kind, emotional and mental states (e.g excitement, boredom etc.) are known to influence the perception of time.
These variations are so strong that people devised so-called "objective" means of assessing the passage of time, such as sundials, hourglasses and clocks. People have abandoned their rolse as codeterminants of consensus reality and delegated their authority in determining time to these external aids, but the solution is not wholly satisfactory. Consensus perception of time is often at odds with the time keeping devices comonly employed resulting in emotionally and physcally damaging stress. Advanced OS developers recognizr the destructive role that system clocks are currently playing and have sought to introduce a more user-friendly "Real Time" system. The "Real Time" clock analyzes a variety of environmental factors and estimates the impact these might have on perceived time. Sensors like those used in the polygraph feed physical data about users into the system allowing what is called "near Real-Time" adjsutment of perceptual time. Some systems periodically poll users and add the results to a weighted, consensual time. Such a time index is considered more "real" than an abstract measure.
The powerful effect of perceptual variation in "Real Time" is partly responsible for the essential meaningless debate around "benchmarking" between proponents of the Pentium and PowerPC families of precessors.
Will someone please start the HOSTILE Linux Distro? Something with no GUI, No X, ed as the only text editor--maybe vi for the Uber Hostile Linux User..;) Then those whoe want it--can have it!
Isn't this sandbox big enough for everyone to play?
These features are not in The Gimp because they're patented.
Which features? The Encapsulated Postscript Format? Prepress covers a broad area and designers have a long history of inventive workarounds... like specifying that spot colors be used on process plates to allow spot color mixing in Illustrator (e.g., the cyan plate prints in PMS 284 and the Magenta plate prints in PMS 186)...When Linux grows enough, someone will write that licensed plugin, but it won't be woth much with out good layout software...Who will step up and write the GPL'd QuarkExpress/InDesign replacement?
I am a graphic designer, so this is a mission critical feature to me. I see a lot of comments in the Linux world about the joy of text editting and how much better it is than WYSIWYG. Could be trye for them (could be ideology in drag) but it utterly misses the point for me. There are people called "Typographers" who spend entire careers designing type. That is, the visual appearance of letterforms X-based type is a nightmare.
I don't get all bent out of shape eover widget choices or other GUI issues that generate a lot of heat, but this is fundamental.
I bet those guys at Eazel are working on something.
You so right. Us Mac people so happy. No we get new system thing from smart-smart hack people. So happy happy joy for us Mac people. Simple, Simple like we like.
Have you tried MacPerl on a G4? Python lives nicely on the Mac, too. And of cource we have one or two compiled languages to toy with. You should see the Tex/Latex menu (gooey latex? there's an image!) in Alpha (a Tcl powered text editor). Us Mac users live in a bigger world than you might realize;) Let Mac and Linux flourish, and a thousand OSs bloom!
Linux is not ready because it's still quite young. Linux will take computing to worlds undreamed of by Unix and it (or its progeny) will be for the voice activated virtual environment... and the desktop
Are you experienced? Or have you ever been experienced? Well, I have.
Actually Photoshop 5 and 5.5 introduced many powerful new features:
effects layers (too powerful to describe)
history (undos/redos limited only by memory!)
new batch automation features
integration with Imageready for multiplatform and web optimazation, image "slicing" and a html table gneneration, javascript rollovers etc.
new grid control and other layout features
It's a very rich feture set. Which isn't to knock the Gimp... I think that the Gimp will ultimately surpass Photoshop because some ahckers will say "it would be cool to have better prepress and spot color features" and then write the code! I have nice fantasies about the day when I can get it done with the Gimp and Killustrator (or whatever) and my (here's a nice challenge, uber hackers) GPL's page layout software that kills Quark's bloated and buggy Quark 4... But right now I have to use the best tool for the job and that is a Mac with Adobe software. And my clients don't care about file formats or compression. Their questions are more along the lines of "is it on the website yet?' or "can I have the brochure tomorrow afternoon even though I won't be able to release final copy until tomorrow morning?";)
I know we are all very sensative about these issues so don't flame me if I tresspass on your dogma.
I think the main reason for the success of Windows was brand recogniton
The thing that give Microsoft their start was IBM's selection of Microsoft's purchased CP/M clone as OS for the original IBM PC.
True, the ability of the clone makers to compete thanks to the Phoenix BIOS, etc. are significant reasons for the success of MS, but all of these flow from that original selection by IBM.
Look at the specs for the original PC. It was a real piece of crap. But the business men, who had seen that PCs would be useful when they saw Visicalc on Apple IIs, knew absolutely nothing about PCs.
What they knew was the name IBM and that was the golden key.
If you want to see office Linux boxen, you will have to create the killer office apps. Given the poor functionality of most MS Office components, this really isn't that great a challenge. And the businessmen already know the name Linux. They just have to be given the tools and they will make the change. But only real, working apps will do the job. Not just equivalent funtionality to MS Office, but better. Then they will come.
Now, I don't particularly care. but I think it's inevitable, people will write the apps because they think it's fun, or profitable, the community will keep improving them. It's just a matter of time.
Whoops. I knew that "preview: button was there for a reason:) Tog says it's bad form to put buttons like this right next to each other! Bad, Bad UI. So, its not really my fault...;)
Why? Why would you want this? if a distro comes out that is so easy to use that it is the clear choice for people who want an easy to use system, then everyone who wants it will use it. Why should anyone else be forced to? I don't think you get Linux, the GPL or open source. The key idea is intellectual freedom. You go ahead and install Eazel 2.4 or Suse 21.8 or whatever. If someone else wants to creat the "Hostile Linux" distro with no X, no GUI and Ed as the only means of manipulating text, what is that to you?
Why would--Hell, how could--having a nice consitent UI that let lots of workers do their thing without paying attention to the OS prevent you or anyone else from using whatever WM or desktop or shell you want?
Seriously, do you want to prevent developers who are interested in the project from usin Linux as a base for a great, user friendly, task/application oriented environment? If so why? The shell will allways be there. So will Sawmill. Why all the anxiety?
Can't there be many "target audiences"?
Didn't you say you like Variety
Isn't this sandbox big enough for everone who wants to play?
Actually. you can have much of what you're looking for today. This is an area where Mac people have taken the lead out of necessity. Check out LinuxPPC. There has been substantial support for USB and Firewire since LinuxPPC Q3 and they are very solid in LinuxPPC 2000.
Don't have a PPC machine? Not a problem, source is highly portable. Check it out. Mac G4s are running under LinuxPPC and Yellow Dog Linux and those Boxes come with USB/Firewire only:)
Ahhh that 1200dpi is a *little* misleading. Film is sometimes 1200dpi but usually 2400dpi, 4800dpi and often higher. This does not mean that image files must be created at that resolution. The very high dpi is used in creating the "greys" or dots that make up halftone grids (screens). Postscript supports a maximum of 256 greys/color (in process printing there are cyan, magneta, yellow and balck screens but the term for their halftone cells is "greys"...) So the tighter your screen, the higher the dpi you need to get a decent number of grays. Go to low and you'll get a "posterized" or solarized effect with stepped transitions continuous tone images. A second factor is the interference patterns (moires) that can be created by the interaction of an imaages pixel grid and the one or more of the screens used to print it. The generic formula for protecting yourself against this is to create the image at a resolution doubles the line screen (there is a more precise way to determine the minimum acceptable pixel per inch resolution for a screen of a given lines per inch, but one of the terms has a square root in it so designers stick with "double the lpi";) )yhe reason 300 dpi is a common res is that 150lpi is a commonly specified screen.
All this aside. Anyone who says that the Gimp is more powerful than Photoshop has not looked at Photoshop 5.5 and doesn't understand the requirements of professional graphics for the commercial print environment. The scripting features in the Gimp are powerful. But so are Photoshop's actions. I have an action that takes a high res scan and saves it in 15 different resolutons, sizes and file formats. I have a second action which is set with interrupts because the process involves cropping and requires human aesthetc evaluation and decision--after the crop the script, er, "action" resumes and saves the cropped image in the correct format. My Mac G4 does this at (to me) incredible speed and Photoshop 5.5 s features have taken what would have been a multi-week process (many, many images) and reduces it to a few a days. An average run of this image processing on my job yields 1,634 files and takes several gigs of storage. The Gimp is truly awesome, but it isn't quite there yet and claiming that it is doesn't advance anyone's cause.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeahhh. And did you notice that the "disembodied soul" is missing from bungie.com? Or that the whole Marathon's Story site has been replaced by a single page that quotes Leela (the first AI from Marathon) saying "There are obviously many things which we do not understand, and may never be able to."
Yeah, SURE Bungie will remain free within the gates of Redmond... As free as any Pfhor conquest or borg drone!
Was MS-BOB some kind of MA-75B target practice level? But Seriously--
So purchasing Bungie isn't necessarily bad. If Bungie gets to keep doing what they're doing...
But this is highly unlikely. See Bob Crigely's story "Be Careful What You Wish For: Why Being Acquired by Microsoft Makes Hardly Anyone Happy in the Long Run" here
This is a NIGHTMARE. I love Bungie, but I'm sure they will have all the freedom of any drones in the collective...
Can you say
Repetitive Motion Injury?
This thin looks like a horror for anything but intermitent single key strokes...
Wrong.
It is about reviews. The names of the games are trademarked. Difficult to review a product without identifying it... Don't think that "fair use" supercedes UCITA. Recent DMCA interpretations have tended to indicate that "fair use" is being superceded by these garbage laws.
Go read up on UCITA, then re-read the agreement.
If you have played the game, you have agreed to the license. The license prohibits you from using the marks _including the name of the game_ in a negative context. Your license to use the game will be reovked, but you may face additional legal trouble for using the protected marks without license...You can say "I played a game that sucks" or "DN sucks" but they own "Duke Nuke'em"...
I think the tree of liberty is asking for a little nourishment...
A nicely phrased argument, fitting well with theory generated during and after World Wars I-II but profoundly ahisotrical. And untrue.
What was the style of war practiced by Tamerlane? How about the doctrine of Genghis Khan? When the Celts of northern Italy were entirely wiped out by the Romans, who drew the line between civilian and military targets? What were the rules of war that governed the ancient Israelites when they "slew all that breathed" in the towns of the Moabites? Just a few examples from the good old days before the 20th century when men were men and killed eachother hands-on with pointed and edged weapons.
And a fine, moral time was had by all.
Americans have not "made it clear that they don't want to get their hands dirty"
Americans have made it clear that they would like to minimized the risk to their soldier's lives.
There is nothing "virtual" about 2,000 pound bombs or warheads. There is nothing "virtual" about the death and destruction that American weapons cause. The Pentagon has no illusions about this and neither does most of the American public. The questions of ethical conduct in the pursuit of war are complex, but the argument that minimizing risk is immoral is worthy of ridicule. The conflict in the little part of our planet that was once known as Yugoslavia was not created by American propaganda and the European nations (with the exception of France) were more risk-averese than the US. Given the history of warfare in Europe -- from the Celts and Romans, through the fine displays of brotherly love that charatererized the middle ages and right up to modern examples of ethical conduct as demonstrated by Napoleon or Kaiser Wilhelm -- it is beyond belief that an educated, intelligent person would try to pass this off as rational argument. It is also sad and troubling that a seemingly bright person like Katz would receive this rubbish so uncritically.
If you are in any doubt about the validity of my argument look up the history of Caesar's reprisals in Gaul. Hundreds of thousands were killed, primarily with pointed or edged weapons. Was that nice, risky, "moral" war? It certainly had the kind of "unambiguous" results apparently favored Katz--You know, going for "unconditional surrender" or good old fashioned genocide
Yeah bring on that old time warfare!
I had the same thought. He might have an aversion to R.M. Stallman, but credit where credit's due! GNU should have been mentioned.
And although he mentioned sendmail, bind, Apache etc., the main thrust of his refutation seemed to suggest that Red Hat Linux = open source. Still, if I was a Red Hat guy, I can imagine feeling personally attacked by the original article...
Reality check: the majority of contibutors to open source projects are not rellying on these efforts to provide their means of livelihood. Whether the GIMP or GNUCash ever make one-tenth of one percent of the profit generated by sales of similar products from Adobe or Intuit will have no effect on whether they continue to be developed, refined and improved. At some point a cuasual user will be faced with the option: pay a high fee for a proprietary application or get the same functionality for little or no cost...
For the business user/IT manager the cost factor becomes more complex... the basic economics of an expensive site-license versus a cheap, reproducible Distro is a strong argument in favour of open source apps, but IT managers will calculate a Total Cost of Ownership based on support, upgrade fees, training costs and support fees. This is where the commercial Open Source Distrubutors hope to make money...
This business model is not competitve with the tradional models, but to say this means it will fail may be like predicting that mammals would not make it out of the Jurassic because they just couldn't compete with dinosaurs as carnivores or herbivores... The changes underway may be larger than you are imagining.
Take your example of an open source video editor that had all the features of Adobe Premiere... You make many false assumptions that betray a lack of understanding of the real value of the open source model:
First you misconstrue the opensource paradigm as "..even if the original developer ceases to work on it, one can just bring in a programmer of their own to continue developement." -- A video editor like Premiere is NOT the work of an individual. In a firm like Adobe, it has a the number of programmers that are assigned to it by management (this is ususally large--check out the credits in Premiere some time!). In an open source project, the pool of programmers is limited to the number of people on the internet with the appropriate skills and the inclination and time to contribute -- almost always a larger number.
Second, you state that the media assets would be tied up in it's file formats... but the open source movement is characterized by a reliance on and the promotion of standard formats... The file format problem is far more likely to occur in proprietary products (do you remember Persuasion? How supported is the user with an archive of media assets in that format?).
Finally, you suggest that the hypothetical open source video user is left with the option of paying a single programmer's salary or abandoning the application and their assets. This goes back to the erroneous assumption that such a project is the work of an individual. You can be sure that such a package would be the result of the collaboration of many programmers in many countries. The editor you are describing would be a hot project, and if one or more of the original developers dropped out, you can be sure that the project would be maintained.
Your argument about the value of competition is belied by the real history of proprietary software development. Good packages with large narkets are frequently dropped because managers see greater profitability in other efforts. Despite the large number of Mac users, many proprietary packages are available only to Wintel users because the software developers see a larger Return On Investment in that market... These are not concerns for open source hackers.Within the framework of your argument, you are right... but the framework is wrong.
So what you're saying is Evolution allows you to replace Exchange clients... And your non-open-source product allows you to replace Exchange on the server side...
I don't think you've answered your own question anymore than he did...
Obviously, you hope that some admins will replace Exchange server with your "drop-in replacement" BUT this is very far from stating that this will happen!
I love the panel
I use Mac OS and Windows at my job and think the panel beats the crap out of anything either of those OSs has to offer. Well, that's an overstatement -- the Apple menu is easier to congfigure than the "foot"... but I am praying that Mac OS X will abandon the silly "dock" and I'll be thrilled if they add half the functional power of the GNOME panel.
As for layout and customizability, try using the other mouse buttons! I played around with the options and put panels in all corners of my screen... had them runing vertically on the left and right and across the top and bottom, added applets and drawers with more applets... I found it very easy to set up an efficient set of tools that supported my work. True, some hairy bugs made an earlier version of the panel lock up or disappear sometimes (and zombied X at times) but customizability was not a problem.
It has long been known that "reality" is based on the consensus views of groups of human beings. It has also long been understood, if rarely precisely formulated, that the human perception of time is variable. A host of factors, such as adrenal activity, endocrine system fluctuations, auditory stimuli like the roar of crowds or aircraft engines, extremes of snesory input of any kind, emotional and mental states (e.g excitement, boredom etc.) are known to influence the perception of time.
These variations are so strong that people devised so-called "objective" means of assessing the passage of time, such as sundials, hourglasses and clocks. People have abandoned their rolse as codeterminants of consensus reality and delegated their authority in determining time to these external aids, but the solution is not wholly satisfactory. Consensus perception of time is often at odds with the time keeping devices comonly employed resulting in emotionally and physcally damaging stress. Advanced OS developers recognizr the destructive role that system clocks are currently playing and have sought to introduce a more user-friendly "Real Time" system. The "Real Time" clock analyzes a variety of environmental factors and estimates the impact these might have on perceived time. Sensors like those used in the polygraph feed physical data about users into the system allowing what is called "near Real-Time" adjsutment of perceptual time. Some systems periodically poll users and add the results to a weighted, consensual time. Such a time index is considered more "real" than an abstract measure.
The powerful effect of perceptual variation in "Real Time" is partly responsible for the essential meaningless debate around "benchmarking" between proponents of the Pentium and PowerPC families of precessors.
This is one of the best comedy routines I've heard in a while... She's a pro straightman.
I gues it's offtopic, but damn!
How did you keep from laughing? Can you give me any tips on compiling and debugging with that cool-sounding RPM thing?
I agree.
;) Then those whoe want it--can have it!
Will someone please start the HOSTILE Linux Distro? Something with no GUI, No X, ed as the only text editor--maybe vi for the Uber Hostile Linux User..
Isn't this sandbox big enough for everyone to play?
The typo should convince you: I really am a graphic designer ;)
Yes!
I am a graphic designer, so this is a mission critical feature to me. I see a lot of comments in the Linux world about the joy of text editting and how much better it is than WYSIWYG. Could be trye for them (could be ideology in drag) but it utterly misses the point for me. There are people called "Typographers" who spend entire careers designing type. That is, the visual appearance of letterforms X-based type is a nightmare.
I don't get all bent out of shape eover widget choices or other GUI issues that generate a lot of heat, but this is fundamental.
I bet those guys at Eazel are working on something.
You so right. Us Mac people so happy. No we get new system thing from smart-smart hack people. So happy happy joy for us Mac people. Simple, Simple like we like.
;) Let Mac and Linux flourish, and a thousand OSs bloom!
Have you tried MacPerl on a G4? Python lives nicely on the Mac, too. And of cource we have one or two compiled languages to toy with. You should see the Tex/Latex menu (gooey latex? there's an image!) in Alpha (a Tcl powered text editor). Us Mac users live in a bigger world than you might realize
Linux is not ready because it's still quite young. Linux will take computing to worlds undreamed of by Unix and it (or its progeny) will be for the voice activated virtual environment... and the desktop
Are you experienced? Or have you ever been experienced? Well, I have.
-- J. Hendrix
Actually Photoshop 5 and 5.5 introduced many powerful new features:
- effects layers (too powerful to describe)
- history (undos/redos limited only by memory!)
- new batch automation features
- integration with Imageready for multiplatform and web optimazation, image "slicing" and a html table gneneration, javascript rollovers etc.
- new grid control and other layout features
It's a very rich feture set. Which isn't to knock the Gimp... I think that the Gimp will ultimately surpass Photoshop because some ahckers will say "it would be cool to have better prepress and spot color features" and then write the code! I have nice fantasies about the day when I can get it done with the Gimp and Killustrator (or whatever) and my (here's a nice challenge, uber hackers) GPL's page layout software that kills Quark's bloated and buggy Quark 4... But right now I have to use the best tool for the job and that is a Mac with Adobe software. And my clients don't care about file formats or compression. Their questions are more along the lines of "is it on the website yet?' or "can I have the brochure tomorrow afternoon even though I won't be able to release final copy until tomorrow morning?"I know we are all very sensative about these issues so don't flame me if I tresspass on your dogma.
I think the main reason for the success of Windows was brand recogniton
The thing that give Microsoft their start was IBM's selection of Microsoft's purchased CP/M clone as OS for the original IBM PC.
True, the ability of the clone makers to compete thanks to the Phoenix BIOS, etc. are significant reasons for the success of MS, but all of these flow from that original selection by IBM.
Look at the specs for the original PC. It was a real piece of crap. But the business men, who had seen that PCs would be useful when they saw Visicalc on Apple IIs, knew absolutely nothing about PCs.
What they knew was the name IBM and that was the golden key.
If you want to see office Linux boxen, you will have to create the killer office apps. Given the poor functionality of most MS Office components, this really isn't that great a challenge. And the businessmen already know the name Linux. They just have to be given the tools and they will make the change. But only real, working apps will do the job. Not just equivalent funtionality to MS Office, but better. Then they will come.
Now, I don't particularly care. but I think it's inevitable, people will write the apps because they think it's fun, or profitable, the community will keep improving them. It's just a matter of time.
Whoops. I knew that "preview: button was there for a reason :) Tog says it's bad form to put buttons like this right next to each other! Bad, Bad UI. So, its not really my fault... ;)
Why? Why would you want this? if a distro comes out that is so easy to use that it is the clear choice for people who want an easy to use system, then everyone who wants it will use it. Why should anyone else be forced to? I don't think you get Linux, the GPL or open source. The key idea is intellectual freedom. You go ahead and install Eazel 2.4 or Suse 21.8 or whatever. If someone else wants to creat the "Hostile Linux" distro with no X, no GUI and Ed as the only means of manipulating text, what is that to you?
Why do people see this as an either/or?
Why would--Hell, how could--having a nice consitent UI that let lots of workers do their thing without paying attention to the OS prevent you or anyone else from using whatever WM or desktop or shell you want?
Seriously, do you want to prevent developers who are interested in the project from usin Linux as a base for a great, user friendly, task/application oriented environment? If so why? The shell will allways be there. So will Sawmill. Why all the anxiety?
Can't there be many "target audiences"?
Didn't you say you like Variety
Isn't this sandbox big enough for everone who wants to play?
Actually. you can have much of what you're looking for today. This is an area where Mac people have taken the lead out of necessity. Check out LinuxPPC. There has been substantial support for USB and Firewire since LinuxPPC Q3 and they are very solid in LinuxPPC 2000.
:)
Don't have a PPC machine? Not a problem, source is highly portable. Check it out. Mac G4s are running under LinuxPPC and Yellow Dog Linux and those Boxes come with USB/Firewire only
Ahhh that 1200dpi is a *little* misleading. Film is sometimes 1200dpi but usually 2400dpi, 4800dpi and often higher. This does not mean that image files must be created at that resolution. The very high dpi is used in creating the "greys" or dots that make up halftone grids (screens). Postscript supports a maximum of 256 greys/color (in process printing there are cyan, magneta, yellow and balck screens but the term for their halftone cells is "greys"...) So the tighter your screen, the higher the dpi you need to get a decent number of grays. Go to low and you'll get a "posterized" or solarized effect with stepped transitions continuous tone images. A second factor is the interference patterns (moires) that can be created by the interaction of an imaages pixel grid and the one or more of the screens used to print it. The generic formula for protecting yourself against this is to create the image at a resolution doubles the line screen (there is a more precise way to determine the minimum acceptable pixel per inch resolution for a screen of a given lines per inch, but one of the terms has a square root in it so designers stick with "double the lpi" ;) )yhe reason 300 dpi is a common res is that 150lpi is a commonly specified screen.
All this aside. Anyone who says that the Gimp is more powerful than Photoshop has not looked at Photoshop 5.5 and doesn't understand the requirements of professional graphics for the commercial print environment. The scripting features in the Gimp are powerful. But so are Photoshop's actions. I have an action that takes a high res scan and saves it in 15 different resolutons, sizes and file formats. I have a second action which is set with interrupts because the process involves cropping and requires human aesthetc evaluation and decision--after the crop the script, er, "action" resumes and saves the cropped image in the correct format. My Mac G4 does this at (to me) incredible speed and Photoshop 5.5 s features have taken what would have been a multi-week process (many, many images) and reduces it to a few a days. An average run of this image processing on my job yields 1,634 files and takes several gigs of storage. The Gimp is truly awesome, but it isn't quite there yet and claiming that it is doesn't advance anyone's cause.