I used to work in this field and after about a year of twisting my mind for obtaining performant algorithms for optimizing the allocation of the frequencies I can tell you it's not an easy job. However, even if you may not have heard of companies like MSI (as in Mobile Systems International) or ComOpt, I can tell you there are big bucks there. So if you are a good programmer (preferably c/c++) and willing to study/implement software that optimizes the traffic in the network (something similar with the graph coloring problem) watch the news because it is very likely to be some in the very near future. The same thing goes for the engineers (hardware part) - although I am less familiar with their job.
Actually it's not as impressive as it looks. They say that The $6 Generic Visual Perception Processor (GVPP) can automatically detect objects and track their movement in real-time, according to Bureau d'Etudes Vision (BEV) This can be easily accomplished by a technique called blob tracking - which is the coarsest image vision technique. A similar project (impressive too) was developed at a japanese company (although I don't remember exactly where). It was some sort of interactive game where a pet was playing with you in a projected image. You moved, played with it and it seemed to understant if you touched him,petted him etc. The catch was that the camera was filled with cameras and they detected the movement of your hands. Given the speed, direction etc. they could actually appreciate what you were supposed to do. Cute, but nothing interesting from a research point of view. I assume that they are doing the same. It is very easy to identify the movements in an image (you can do it in real time even on a Pentium). Check any image vision book for details. Probably they built some chip that works at the speed of a controller (i.e. very fast) but, as any controller performs very few operations. Still they don't say anything about actual image understanding. And this is where comes the commercial part. Because they actually are not saying their chip can understand an image. They simply can track motion. That system wouldn't have a clue whether that movement is a fighter or a flying orange. It may be useful in a computer that is used in a vision lab, but we're quite far from industrial pattern recognition or image understanding. So please don't take commercial ads as truth If you are French please don't read what will follow. After all, they are French, and they are the best sellers in the world. Every one believes that French wines are great and French women are beautiful. Have you ever tasted those sour poisons ? Or ever went to France to watch their women ?
Personally I hated a bit the way he put the things. Not because I cannot stand what he calls a "critical point of view" but because his ideas, apparently correct, hid something that I don't like.
Wouldn't it be cool if the VCL core packages were distributed with the OS? No it wouldn't. This only means that we would be somewhat forced to use the VCL for any application we have. And unless it's released under GPL I wouldn't agree with this. Why do you think Microsoft didn't agree to include those packages on its own OS ? Because it would have ment to give Borland the control over a part of their OS. Of course, they weren't that stupid. Should we be instead ? As a possible solution : unless they release the packages under GPL (or some license that would not allow them to control the OS) they should stick with the installation kit solution
Another question : what are they going to do about the non-ANSI extensions in the BCB compiler (__property and so on) ? I agree they are actually extremely useful, but they are not ANSI. If we are going to use them, at least let's standardize them.
Third question : what about Qt - on which is based KDE ? Will the VCL based on that ? Will it try to replace it ? In what conditions ?
Ok. I asked a bunch of questions that may seem that I see this article and the whole Delphi story aas an evil thing. I don't. I worked for a couple of years with BCB/Delphi and I consider them the best RAD tools available now. Still, I wouldn't like Borland to become something it always wanted to be : some sort of Microsoft. Not because I have something with them - it's just the idea of monopoly that I don't consider viable.
I am not exactly sure about my feelings when I read this article. For sure I am not glad that the new company has decided not to support Slackware. Then again, perhaps it's better this way. Because, even if I haven't been following the financial situation of Walnut Creek, I almost can bet it's not very good. Correct me if I am wrong, but from the agreement (i.e. the merger contract) it seems that BSD Inc bought itself a large portal. One that has been very popular for years (not only in the Linux side of the world) and which could bring them come more popularity. Which for the moment the need just as much as they need air. Let's face it : who is (Free)BSD ? No, I'm not throwing stoones at them (I wouldn't dare since I never used their OS) - I'm just looking at their share of the OS market. am I right, or are they in the Other Unices slice ? On the other hand it seems unlikely that Walnut Creek would give up a Linux distribution, knowing that the trend is pointing towards a Linux growth. Conclusion : this is a takeover like any other (see also AOL and Netscape) nicely disguised in a merger (lately it seems very fashionable to merge your company with another one). Who has to loose the most ? The Linux community. Or maybe not. Slackware may survive and I will be among the first to enjoy that. Because I always liked their distribution, because it is the first one I bought, because it is so damn' cool.
And if they don't succeed I wouldn't wonder in about two years to see BSD-WC releasing Slackware 9.0 (yes - it does mean 7.0 + 2.0 - skipping 8.0).
I have no idea if you know how living in a communist country, but I do and there are a few things I would like to say When I firstly got to the embassy I went there prepared with a lot of identification papers etc, to make sure they had enough information about me. Do you know what they asked me ? To tell them my name. The very next second the operator of that pc knew even the size of my underwear. Honestly this scared me like hell - and made me see the communist police as naive. I haven't changed my mind since.
Conclusion : this is not a communist model ! It's worse.
There are a couple of differences between the situations evoqued int the article ans I think they are woth mentioning. Firstly let's analyse who is behind the two acts mentioned in the article : DMCA - large corporates, people that are trying to grab the control of everything (I'm not questioning why - I assume you all will have a different, correct answer). CDA - the US government (and others too - is there a law in Australia that forbids 4 letter words in information sent over the net ?). If the CDA would have passed, it would have ment the sudden death of a very young industry : cyber-sex. Does anyone know how much money does this mean ? Billions ? More ? Thus, you have a perfectly good reason for not passing the CDA - that would have hurt the corporations - which is bad On the other hand, the DMCA is trying to prevent free access to information (music is only a fashionable subject) by imposing some stupid rules. And even if this may seem far out of line : this is exactly what happened in the late '70s when the govt. banned drugs. There was a movement that preached freedom, that was non-conformist, that didn't care about the rules imposed from above. As long as they could make money from selling drugs to them, they allowed it. When a whole generation said "Fxxk you, I don't want to fight your stupid war" then all changed. It wasn't profitable any more. So they destroyed it. They may do the same with the internet. I'm almost sure they will. However, we will find another way to express our freedom (virtual reality, populating other planets, who knows ?) because after all that's what all is about. Since Adam, we tried to be free, to be our own chiefs to assume responsibilities.
This has been around long before Microsoft, AOL or WalMart. And it will remain long after they will not even be remembered. What's this all about then ? Easy : there will always be a battle for dominance between corporates trying to own the minds and souls of individuals and their will to remain free. History tells us that human have existed longer than corporates. This is the difference !
No matter how many I may hurt with what I am saying please consider that my words are not badly intentioned. In my opinion every movement needs its prophets, its legends, odes and history. Or at least that's what has happened with all other movements (either religious, ethical or anything that was based on principles). For now we have some "prophets" (Mr. Stallmann, Mr Torvalds, Mr Cox - and I wrote Mr because I respect them and what they are doing, although it sounds a bit unusual to use this particle), we have legends (how many of you havent't heard about the quick patches of Alan Cox ?) - I agree they may be real (I haven't seen that though) and even if they aren't there must be something true about them. Now with this book we have an "ode" to the free software movement and from what I read it looks really good. Not to mention that it is accessible to the most computer illiterated human being.
As you can see there is only one thing to be said : all the things written in that book, and that happened lately will make history. And this sounds really great.
Oh, yes : and the picture of billy - really cool !!!!!
Opening the source of a project can only be a good idea (yes,Windows is included:) ). Opening the source of a project destined to a mainly closed-source market is even better. However, there are other interesting consequences to add : Later this year, Borland is supposed to release both Delphi and C++Builder for Linux. I salute this, since I consider their tools the best I've ever seen. Releasing now the sources of a Windows project written in Delphi will be the first step in filling a gap beteween Windows and Linux programmers. Think about it : if there are similar libraries (i.e. VCL) couldn't this mean that Linux will gain thousands of programmers over night ? Furthermore, the actual Linux programmers will find easier to learn a new (and funny) way of doing a part of their job Again, an open source program also means reliability (and sometimes the old-fashioned trustworthness). Wouldn't this be a benefit for the Windows world ? After all, I really would like to see some fair and honest competition between operating systems and that could start from here. Because, just as many others I am not against Windows per se, but against the way it's promoted, the way M$ tries to bury everything else - in a few words : against Billy
As far as licence is concerned : GPL would be great but I know how the average manager think, so I wouldn't go that far and recommend this. you could even create your own open-source license, or adopt one of the existing. Really, I think this hase to be your choice.
Just for the records I would like to say that there are a couple of mistakes (lack of information ?) in the article, the first and weirdest one being that there are no graphical file managers for Linux. At the moment I am typing I am using Kruiser (and I have been using it for a couple of months now) which looks a lot like the Explorer of NT4 (only that it is better). So don't tell me that there aren't any file managers On the other hand (and here I speak for myself) I wouldn't even consider not having the CLI since sometimes it is more useful that any graphical tool (mainly because I can type faster than I can move the mouse - and I am really good at that too). So, in my opinion, and I won't be the first to say this, a system that can be acccessed only via GUI is deemed to be a Windows. No matter of what is under the hood. And I'll give you an example. Say you have a huge list of files that you want to rename (e.g. from Prefix-*******.something to ******.something). I'd like to see the average user doing this by hand (especially if you have 1000 files or more). Of course, any Unix/Linux user could tell me to use awk (at least I would) and do the job in a few seconds. Where is the use of the GUI here ? The second part (and I like to dream, only that this article was too much) is about a system that plays the secretary. Come on, guys, I've been working with computers since '90 and I can tell you that there is no machine stupider that this one. And believe me, as long as we don't find something really revolutionary (i.e. understand the human brain and imitate it in AI) it won't be possible to have this sort of GUI. I mean, look at the search engines. I happens so often to return weird results even when your query is quite well constructed. And of course, what you need is there, in the result, only that it is in the 2nd or even 3rd page. So, no matter how much I would like an intelligent interface, I think that allowing the computer to filter the information and hide some of it is very risky. It is very likely that an important message will be purged without giving you the chance to do anything about it. And this is only an example Don't take my considerations as pesimistic - I simply don't think we can do this yet. And, of course : the most important part of all. No, there shouldn't be only one interface. We are saying that in the bussiness a monopoly is harmful and leads to stagnation. Well, don't you think this is true in almost every situation ? Including GUIs ? Or the author of the article is under the influence of the Apple strategy : we are the owners, we produce a unitary product, we offer only one choice. Period. Oh, I forgot : you are not allowed to modify anything. How does this fit in the GPL/GNU/Linux/... scheme ?
Regardless of my personal feelings I don't think this is that bad. After all, it's not that they will grab the control of the OS. And I think there will not be able to modify the GPL. Besides, they will come into a market that already has some powerful toys (er, tools). KOffice will be released quite soon, StarOffice as buggy as it is, it is a strong competitor, and least but not last there is Word Perfect. What will be the place of Microsoft in this scenario ? Well, you'll have to consider that someone that owns a Linux is aware that there are cheaper word processors on the market and I think the price will make the difference. And this will be the main criteria because now there won't be a monopoly (something like : everyone is using Word so I'll have to buy it). Thus, I think they should do whatever they want... Unless, this is another weird marketing campaign. Try our Word for Linux for free and see that it is just as slow as under Windows. Probably I'm just being paranoid
Just one more thing - if you're going to port the damn thing, please loose the paperclip !
You will probably be able to use the compiler. I never tried it but I don't see too many problems with this. What I would wonder is if you could also use the linker (which is very different). Anyways, what's the worst that could happen ? Reinstall the package ? Besides, I recommend you 5.x versions because they are more up-to-date (4.5 doesn't know bool as type and I'm not sure it recognizes namespaces).
Well, even if I risk being flamed to death, let's face it guys - this story appeared on Borland site 2 days ago. It must be that today is a very boring Sunday. I even tried to download it and I was really sorry to find that it was a binary compiled for Windows. So, those of you that are expecting to see those beautiful tools on the web, well, your time hasn't come yet. The download process is somewhat time-consuming (especially that damn survey), but this is not something new. They've been doing it for a long time and I say that it's not that painful every once in a while. Wait and see how long it takes to download the JBuilder ! Anyways - where is the Linux compiler I'm expecting ? As long as I don't see CBuilder on my desktop I will be a very unsatisfied customer of Borland.
So, if someone knows a way to make things move faster, please push all the buttons (tm to whoever owns it) and do it. Another thing : could you at least have mentioned the Klyrix project ? I think it's far more interesting than the compiler story.
Firstly i would say that I am very pleased to see Philips involved in this, since I have a great deal of respect for this firm (for those who don't know we owe the the audio casette and the CD) In the web page, though, it was stated that the diplay supports full motion video @800x600 which makes it quite useless for the desktop (at least for now). After all, of you had a 36'' monitor, it would be a shame to use it at a resolution smaller than 2000. And I guess that LCD doesn't go that far for the moment. Then again, the first purpose would be large panels for public sites and I think what they provide is enough. And as a mean question : on the site says that the announcement was made on Nov 9 1999. Don't you think this is a bit old even for a boring Sunday ?
Why does this seem familiar ? Because it was stated in a X-files episode long time ago. I saw it by chance (I'm not a X-files fan) about 2 years ago. That much for the french intelligence, I guess
I can't stop myself from wondering why the question on the message is "possible ammo... " After having a brief look at the article two things were very clear : 1. the guys at Rice showed that the transaction language makes the protocol look a lot like ftp. And we all know that ftp servers are pretty well pretected 2. in the conclusion of the article said (and I quote) " our analysis has revealed no glaring security flaw... a user must have posession of the original CD (or a bit-for-bit perfetc copy )... The security of the system is not dependent on the mocule secrecy"
I guess it should be pretty obvious for anyone that this article doesn't say anything about the security of the mp3 format. Or of a CD... So why do you post misleading questions ?
First of all, I don't really care about what he said. Noone has actually seen a Crusoe in a machine (except, of course, at the presentation) so I guess it is way too early to speak about this. As for what he said, well, not only that he doesn't have a clue about software industry, but he didn't even understand Animals Farm (in the eventuality he read it - perhaps he only saw the cartoon). Anyway, I don't think this is the kind of flame we should be paying attention to PS. Beware of stupid poeple because they are smarter than you.
It's very funny (and nice in the same time) to see an article that actually contradicts the M$ one. It's a shame that we couldn't see all the results of the test, but since it's copyrighted and it's not for free I guess I can live only with what I saw. Anyway, guys, if you're interested look on the bloor-research site (this article costs some 81$ - kind of expensive for me). There are 2 major parts of the article : 1. Linux had the biggest growth on '99. And as far as I am concerned I see things only acclerating in the year to come. However, do not neglect that M$ has the best propaganda machine in the software industry, and that the Win 2k comes right on time. They may even bury NT4 and '98 only for commercial purposes (although I don't think they are that smart). And it comes right on time for presenting a "new" face of the company (with another CEO, prehaps bit shaken by some "anti-innovative" government employees etc). Their only cutback : price. Remember DOS was so popular not because it was good, but because it was so damn' cheap. Win 2k is not. Switching from NT4 to 2k costs a lot and I am not sure how many will be willing to do so just because MS says they should. Furthermore, this year I expect companies to sit and look - not buying either one of the OS's - at the struggle. And this is where Linux can enlarge the break it has made in '99. 2. Appilcations : while his statement is somewhat true, nothing is built overnight. Remember the applications available no longer than 18 months ago ? You'll see my point then.
At the first look it seems that Netscape released some code a while ago, and after a couple of years they are reclaiming it (only that they are getting an improved version). Even if it is not clearly said, I don't think they will actually pay very much for the work they didn't do. What I also think as weird is the following statement : "CNN, for example, can create a CNN starter icon and a browser that is customized to work very well with CNN content," Blodget said in an interview Could this mean that I will have to launch a different browser every time I want to acces a certain site (e.g CNN-scape, WB-scape etc ) ? I know it seems not very likely, but look ar what M$ has done with the HTML extensions. Adding that during the summer will be launched the AOL TV service, looks like we're going to face another behemot of multimedia. And I'm not very sure that I like being caught between AOL and M$.
Of course it is. US is doing the same thing with many other products. and now that there are more interesting european products (i.e Suse, KDE & co.) why wouldn't they do this ? Furthermore, it's only nice to know that they are finally seeing that there are other os'es as well. I don't know if you are aware, but the business and govt. sectors run solely on windows. Which sucks. Big time. And, btw - I think it's the time to have a more serious competition on the os business as well (not only Linux/Windows) - what about something else ? And furthermore, what about breaking the US "monopole" on the software market ? Not that this will happen in the following decade, but still...
Ever since I heard that Borland intended to port Delphi and Builder under Linux I wondered if they had the financial power to resist to a tremendous pressure that's been lying above their heads lately. And, of course, by this I mean Microsoft. Furthermore, their only chance to succeed in the Linux World is to release the products for free (or almost) and if possible open sourced. Because otherwise there are other IDE's that are more interesting. Take for example Kdevelop - it doesn't provide the same features as Builder, it is less powerful, but it is released under GPL, it started really well and it's only a matter of time to achieve the functionality of Builder. In this situations, who'd want a similar, more expensive product ? Corel, has the means to make Delphi and Builder a part of their distribution, and this would be a big advantage for them. I, for one, I would think of buying it only because of Builder. I know, the development tools don't make a distribution, but for me they are very important. And Builder is great. As you can see one can wonder of what will happen in the (near) future. Will Corel speed-up the porting of Delphi and Builder ? Will they continue to release Windows versions of the above mentioned IDE's ? How are they going to deal with the portability ? Because even if I find the VCL very well designed (and complete too), I don't think it is actually very portable. Will Qt be an option ? I certainly hope these questions will have an aswer really soon 'cause I'm very curious.
Even if this is mostly a retorical question, don't you think that 63% is a bit too small ? I mean since the survey was practically conducted by MS ? Couldn't this actually mean that the average american citizen doesn't really care what will happen with MS ? After all, what's the difference between MS and GS (as in gigasoft) - it's just a name.
Re:Is there gonna be any Linux support?
on
Minolta 3D Camera
·
· Score: 1
Probably not. At least not in the near future. They support only Windows and SGI. And the support for SGI will probably be suppressed.
I have been working with such a camera for about 5 months now and I can tell that it's not that useless as some said. Unfortunately it has a major disadvantage : it users a laser beam to "see" the object and scanning a fairly normal object takes.6 seconds. Which does not allow real-time image capture. However I can give anyone a hint about it utility. Imagine an intelligent system that looks for/identifies/retrieves objects in an environment. Yes, like a robot that is asked to fetch an object (say a book). You can do it in several ways, but one of them implies storing a database of book features. These features constitute a description of the object you need. Well, as you may have guessed, these features are obtained from such a camera. There are other possible usages, like CAM (I guess no-one noticed that the software that comes with it generates a mesh of the object Everything I said seems to be very nice - don't worry. Just look at the price and you won't be excited any longer.
Slashdot Mirror
I used to work in this field and after about a year of twisting my mind for obtaining performant algorithms for optimizing the allocation of the frequencies I can tell you it's not an easy job.
However, even if you may not have heard of companies like MSI (as in Mobile Systems International) or ComOpt, I can tell you there are big bucks there. So if you are a good programmer (preferably c/c++) and willing to study/implement software that optimizes the traffic in the network (something similar with the graph coloring problem) watch the news because it is very likely to be some in the very near future.
The same thing goes for the engineers (hardware part) - although I am less familiar with their job.
Actually it's not as impressive as it looks.
They say that The $6 Generic Visual Perception Processor (GVPP) can automatically detect objects and track their movement in real-time, according to Bureau d'Etudes Vision (BEV)
This can be easily accomplished by a technique called blob tracking - which is the coarsest image vision technique. A similar project (impressive too) was developed at a japanese company (although I don't remember exactly where). It was some sort of interactive game where a pet was playing with you in a projected image. You moved, played with it and it seemed to understant if you touched him,petted him etc. The catch was that the camera was filled with cameras and they detected the movement of your hands. Given the speed, direction etc. they could actually appreciate what you were supposed to do.
Cute, but nothing interesting from a research point of view.
I assume that they are doing the same. It is very easy to identify the movements in an image (you can do it in real time even on a Pentium). Check any image vision book for details.
Probably they built some chip that works at the speed of a controller (i.e. very fast) but, as any controller performs very few operations.
Still they don't say anything about actual image understanding.
And this is where comes the commercial part. Because they actually are not saying their chip can understand an image. They simply can track motion. That system wouldn't have a clue whether that movement is a fighter or a flying orange.
It may be useful in a computer that is used in a vision lab, but we're quite far from industrial pattern recognition or image understanding.
So please don't take commercial ads as truth
If you are French please don't read what will follow.
After all, they are French, and they are the best sellers in the world. Every one believes that French wines are great and French women are beautiful. Have you ever tasted those sour poisons ? Or ever went to France to watch their women ?
Personally I hated a bit the way he put the things. Not because I cannot stand what he calls a "critical point of view" but because his ideas, apparently correct, hid something that I don't like.
Wouldn't it be cool if the VCL core packages were distributed with the OS? No it wouldn't. This only means that we would be somewhat forced to use the VCL for any application we have. And unless it's released under GPL I wouldn't agree with this. Why do you think Microsoft didn't agree to include those packages on its own OS ? Because it would have ment to give Borland the control over a part of their OS. Of course, they weren't that stupid. Should we be instead ?
As a possible solution : unless they release the packages under GPL (or some license that would not allow them to control the OS) they should stick with the installation kit solution
Another question : what are they going to do about the non-ANSI extensions in the BCB compiler (__property and so on) ? I agree they are actually extremely useful, but they are not ANSI. If we are going to use them, at least let's standardize them.
Third question : what about Qt - on which is based KDE ? Will the VCL based on that ? Will it try to replace it ? In what conditions ?
Ok. I asked a bunch of questions that may seem that I see this article and the whole Delphi story aas an evil thing. I don't. I worked for a couple of years with BCB/Delphi and I consider them the best RAD tools available now. Still, I wouldn't like Borland to become something it always wanted to be : some sort of Microsoft. Not because I have something with them - it's just the idea of monopoly that I don't consider viable.
I am not exactly sure about my feelings when I read this article. For sure I am not glad that the new company has decided not to support Slackware.
Then again, perhaps it's better this way. Because, even if I haven't been following the financial situation of Walnut Creek, I almost can bet it's not very good. Correct me if I am wrong, but from the agreement (i.e. the merger contract) it seems that BSD Inc bought itself a large portal. One that has been very popular for years (not only in the Linux side of the world) and which could bring them come more popularity. Which for the moment the need just as much as they need air. Let's face it : who is (Free)BSD ? No, I'm not throwing stoones at them (I wouldn't dare since I never used their OS) - I'm just looking at their share of the OS market. am I right, or are they in the Other Unices slice ?
On the other hand it seems unlikely that Walnut Creek would give up a Linux distribution, knowing that the trend is pointing towards a Linux growth.
Conclusion : this is a takeover like any other (see also AOL and Netscape) nicely disguised in a merger (lately it seems very fashionable to merge your company with another one).
Who has to loose the most ? The Linux community. Or maybe not. Slackware may survive and I will be among the first to enjoy that. Because I always liked their distribution, because it is the first one I bought, because it is so damn' cool.
And if they don't succeed I wouldn't wonder in about two years to see BSD-WC releasing Slackware 9.0 (yes - it does mean 7.0 + 2.0 - skipping 8.0).
Of course it is. I eran a lot more.
I have no idea if you know how living in a communist country, but I do and there are a few things I would like to say
When I firstly got to the embassy I went there prepared with a lot of identification papers etc, to make sure they had enough information about me. Do you know what they asked me ? To tell them my name. The very next second the operator of that pc knew even the size of my underwear.
Honestly this scared me like hell - and made me see the communist police as naive. I haven't changed my mind since.
Conclusion : this is not a communist model ! It's worse.
There are a couple of differences between the situations evoqued int the article ans I think they are woth mentioning.
Firstly let's analyse who is behind the two acts mentioned in the article : DMCA - large corporates, people that are trying to grab the control of everything (I'm not questioning why - I assume you all will have a different, correct answer). CDA - the US government (and others too - is there a law in Australia that forbids 4 letter words in information sent over the net ?).
If the CDA would have passed, it would have ment the sudden death of a very young industry : cyber-sex. Does anyone know how much money does this mean ? Billions ? More ? Thus, you have a perfectly good reason for not passing the CDA - that would have hurt the corporations - which is bad
On the other hand, the DMCA is trying to prevent free access to information (music is only a fashionable subject) by imposing some stupid rules. And even if this may seem far out of line : this is exactly what happened in the late '70s when the govt. banned drugs. There was a movement that preached freedom, that was non-conformist, that didn't care about the rules imposed from above. As long as they could make money from selling drugs to them, they allowed it. When a whole generation said "Fxxk you, I don't want to fight your stupid war" then all changed. It wasn't profitable any more. So they destroyed it.
They may do the same with the internet. I'm almost sure they will.
However, we will find another way to express our freedom (virtual reality, populating other planets, who knows ?) because after all that's what all is about. Since Adam, we tried to be free, to be our own chiefs to assume responsibilities.
This has been around long before Microsoft, AOL or WalMart. And it will remain long after they will not even be remembered.
What's this all about then ? Easy : there will always be a battle for dominance between corporates trying to own the minds and souls of individuals and their will to remain free. History tells us that human have existed longer than corporates. This is the difference !
No matter how many I may hurt with what I am saying please consider that my words are not badly intentioned.
In my opinion every movement needs its prophets, its legends, odes and history. Or at least that's what has happened with all other movements (either religious, ethical or anything that was based on principles).
For now we have some "prophets" (Mr. Stallmann, Mr Torvalds, Mr Cox - and I wrote Mr because I respect them and what they are doing, although it sounds a bit unusual to use this particle), we have legends (how many of you havent't heard about the quick patches of Alan Cox ?) - I agree they may be real (I haven't seen that though) and even if they aren't there must be something true about them.
Now with this book we have an "ode" to the free software movement and from what I read it looks really good. Not to mention that it is accessible to the most computer illiterated human being.
As you can see there is only one thing to be said : all the things written in that book, and that happened lately will make history. And this sounds really great.
Oh, yes : and the picture of billy - really cool !!!!!
Opening the source of a project can only be a good idea (yes,Windows is included :) ). Opening the source of a project destined to a mainly closed-source market is even better.
However, there are other interesting consequences to add :
Later this year, Borland is supposed to release both Delphi and C++Builder for Linux. I salute this, since I consider their tools the best I've ever seen. Releasing now the sources of a Windows project written in Delphi will be the first step in filling a gap beteween Windows and Linux programmers. Think about it : if there are similar libraries (i.e. VCL) couldn't this mean that Linux will gain thousands of programmers over night ? Furthermore, the actual Linux programmers will find easier to learn a new (and funny) way of doing a part of their job
Again, an open source program also means reliability (and sometimes the old-fashioned trustworthness). Wouldn't this be a benefit for the Windows world ? After all, I really would like to see some fair and honest competition between operating systems and that could start from here. Because, just as many others I am not against Windows per se, but against the way it's promoted, the way M$ tries to bury everything else - in a few words : against Billy
As far as licence is concerned : GPL would be great but I know how the average manager think, so I wouldn't go that far and recommend this. you could even create your own open-source license, or adopt one of the existing. Really, I think this hase to be your choice.
Just for the records I would like to say that there are a couple of mistakes (lack of information ?) in the article, the first and weirdest one being that there are no graphical file managers for Linux. At the moment I am typing I am using Kruiser (and I have been using it for a couple of months now) which looks a lot like the Explorer of NT4 (only that it is better).
So don't tell me that there aren't any file managers
On the other hand (and here I speak for myself) I wouldn't even consider not having the CLI since sometimes it is more useful that any graphical tool (mainly because I can type faster than I can move the mouse - and I am really good at that too).
So, in my opinion, and I won't be the first to say this, a system that can be acccessed only via GUI is deemed to be a Windows. No matter of what is under the hood. And I'll give you an example. Say you have a huge list of files that you want to rename (e.g. from Prefix-*******.something to ******.something). I'd like to see the average user doing this by hand (especially if you have 1000 files or more). Of course, any Unix/Linux user could tell me to use awk (at least I would) and do the job in a few seconds. Where is the use of the GUI here ?
The second part (and I like to dream, only that this article was too much) is about a system that plays the secretary. Come on, guys, I've been working with computers since '90 and I can tell you that there is no machine stupider that this one. And believe me, as long as we don't find something really revolutionary (i.e. understand the human brain and imitate it in AI) it won't be possible to have this sort of GUI. I mean, look at the search engines. I happens so often to return weird results even when your query is quite well constructed. And of course, what you need is there, in the result, only that it is in the 2nd or even 3rd page. So, no matter how much I would like an intelligent interface, I think that allowing the computer to filter the information and hide some of it is very risky. It is very likely that an important message will be purged without giving you the chance to do anything about it. And this is only an example
Don't take my considerations as pesimistic - I simply don't think we can do this yet.
And, of course : the most important part of all. No, there shouldn't be only one interface. We are saying that in the bussiness a monopoly is harmful and leads to stagnation. Well, don't you think this is true in almost every situation ? Including GUIs ?
Or the author of the article is under the influence of the Apple strategy : we are the owners, we produce a unitary product, we offer only one choice. Period. Oh, I forgot : you are not allowed to modify anything.
How does this fit in the GPL/GNU/Linux/... scheme ?
Regardless of my personal feelings I don't think this is that bad. After all, it's not that they will grab the control of the OS. And I think there will not be able to modify the GPL. ...
Besides, they will come into a market that already has some powerful toys (er, tools). KOffice will be released quite soon, StarOffice as buggy as it is, it is a strong competitor, and least but not last there is Word Perfect.
What will be the place of Microsoft in this scenario ? Well, you'll have to consider that someone that owns a Linux is aware that there are cheaper word processors on the market and I think the price will make the difference. And this will be the main criteria because now there won't be a monopoly (something like : everyone is using Word so I'll have to buy it).
Thus, I think they should do whatever they want
Unless, this is another weird marketing campaign. Try our Word for Linux for free and see that it is just as slow as under Windows. Probably I'm just being paranoid
Just one more thing - if you're going to port the damn thing, please loose the paperclip !
You will probably be able to use the compiler. I never tried it but I don't see too many problems with this.
What I would wonder is if you could also use the linker (which is very different). Anyways, what's the worst that could happen ? Reinstall the package ?
Besides, I recommend you 5.x versions because they are more up-to-date (4.5 doesn't know bool as type and I'm not sure it recognizes namespaces).
Well, even if I risk being flamed to death, let's face it guys - this story appeared on Borland site 2 days ago. It must be that today is a very boring Sunday.
I even tried to download it and I was really sorry to find that it was a binary compiled for Windows. So, those of you that are expecting to see those beautiful tools on the web, well, your time hasn't come yet.
The download process is somewhat time-consuming (especially that damn survey), but this is not something new. They've been doing it for a long time and I say that it's not that painful every once in a while. Wait and see how long it takes to download the JBuilder !
Anyways - where is the Linux compiler I'm expecting ? As long as I don't see CBuilder on my desktop I will be a very unsatisfied customer of Borland.
So, if someone knows a way to make things move faster, please push all the buttons (tm to whoever owns it) and do it.
Another thing : could you at least have mentioned the Klyrix project ? I think it's far more interesting than the compiler story.
Firstly i would say that I am very pleased to see Philips involved in this, since I have a great deal of respect for this firm (for those who don't know we owe the the audio casette and the CD)
In the web page, though, it was stated that the diplay supports full motion video @800x600 which makes it quite useless for the desktop (at least for now). After all, of you had a 36'' monitor, it would be a shame to use it at a resolution smaller than 2000. And I guess that LCD doesn't go that far for the moment.
Then again, the first purpose would be large panels for public sites and I think what they provide is enough.
And as a mean question : on the site says that the announcement was made on Nov 9 1999. Don't you think this is a bit old even for a boring Sunday ?
Why does this seem familiar ?
Because it was stated in a X-files episode long time ago. I saw it by chance (I'm not a X-files fan) about 2 years ago.
That much for the french intelligence, I guess
I can't stop myself from wondering why the question on the message is "possible ammo ... " ... a user must have posession of the original CD (or a bit-for-bit perfetc copy ) ... The security of the system is not dependent on the mocule secrecy"
... So why do you post misleading questions ?
After having a brief look at the article two things were very clear :
1. the guys at Rice showed that the transaction language makes the protocol look a lot like ftp. And we all know that ftp servers are pretty well pretected
2. in the conclusion of the article said (and I quote) " our analysis has revealed no glaring security flaw
I guess it should be pretty obvious for anyone that this article doesn't say anything about the security of the mp3 format. Or of a CD
First of all, I don't really care about what he said. Noone has actually seen a Crusoe in a machine (except, of course, at the presentation) so I guess it is way too early to speak about this.
As for what he said, well, not only that he doesn't have a clue about software industry, but he didn't even understand Animals Farm (in the eventuality he read it - perhaps he only saw the cartoon).
Anyway, I don't think this is the kind of flame we should be paying attention to
PS. Beware of stupid poeple because they are smarter than you.
Yeah, I chose the wrong words. by right on time I didn't mean "as planned". I ment at a very appropirate moment.
It's very funny (and nice in the same time) to see an article that actually contradicts the M$ one.
It's a shame that we couldn't see all the results of the test, but since it's copyrighted and it's not for free I guess I can live only with what I saw. Anyway, guys, if you're interested look on the bloor-research site (this article costs some 81$ - kind of expensive for me).
There are 2 major parts of the article
: 1. Linux had the biggest growth on '99. And as far as I am concerned I see things only acclerating in the year to come. However, do not neglect that M$ has the best propaganda machine in the software industry, and that the Win 2k comes right on time. They may even bury NT4 and '98 only for commercial purposes (although I don't think they are that smart). And it comes right on time for presenting a "new" face of the company (with another CEO, prehaps bit shaken by some "anti-innovative" government employees etc). Their only cutback : price. Remember DOS was so popular not because it was good, but because it was so damn' cheap. Win 2k is not. Switching from NT4 to 2k costs a lot and I am not sure how many will be willing to do so just because MS says they should. Furthermore, this year I expect companies to sit and look - not buying either one of the OS's - at the struggle. And this is where Linux can enlarge the break it has made in '99. 2. Appilcations : while his statement is somewhat true, nothing is built overnight. Remember the applications available no longer than 18 months ago ? You'll see my point then.
At the first look it seems that Netscape released some code a while ago, and after a couple of years they are reclaiming it (only that they are getting an improved version). Even if it is not clearly said, I don't think they will actually pay very much for the work they didn't do.
What I also think as weird is the following statement : "CNN, for example, can create a CNN starter icon and a browser that is customized to work very well with CNN content," Blodget said in an interview
Could this mean that I will have to launch a different browser every time I want to acces a certain site (e.g CNN-scape, WB-scape etc ) ? I know it seems not very likely, but look ar what M$ has done with the HTML extensions.
Adding that during the summer will be launched the AOL TV service, looks like we're going to face another behemot of multimedia. And I'm not very sure that I like being caught between AOL and M$.
Of course it is. US is doing the same thing with many other products. and now that there are more interesting european products (i.e Suse, KDE & co.) why wouldn't they do this ? ...
Furthermore, it's only nice to know that they are finally seeing that there are other os'es as well. I don't know if you are aware, but the business and govt. sectors run solely on windows. Which sucks. Big time.
And, btw - I think it's the time to have a more serious competition on the os business as well (not only Linux/Windows) - what about something else ?
And furthermore, what about breaking the US "monopole" on the software market ? Not that this will happen in the following decade, but still
Ever since I heard that Borland intended to port Delphi and Builder under Linux I wondered if they had the financial power to resist to a tremendous pressure that's been lying above their heads lately. And, of course, by this I mean Microsoft.
Furthermore, their only chance to succeed in the Linux World is to release the products for free (or almost) and if possible open sourced. Because otherwise there are other IDE's that are more interesting. Take for example Kdevelop - it doesn't provide the same features as Builder, it is less powerful, but it is released under GPL, it started really well and it's only a matter of time to achieve the functionality of Builder. In this situations, who'd want a similar, more expensive product ?
Corel, has the means to make Delphi and Builder a part of their distribution, and this would be a big advantage for them. I, for one, I would think of buying it only because of Builder. I know, the development tools don't make a distribution, but for me they are very important. And Builder is great.
As you can see one can wonder of what will happen in the (near) future.
Will Corel speed-up the porting of Delphi and Builder ?
Will they continue to release Windows versions of the above mentioned IDE's ?
How are they going to deal with the portability ? Because even if I find the VCL very well designed (and complete too), I don't think it is actually very portable. Will Qt be an option ?
I certainly hope these questions will have an aswer really soon 'cause I'm very curious.
Even if this is mostly a retorical question, don't you think that 63% is a bit too small ? I mean since the survey was practically conducted by MS ? Couldn't this actually mean that the average american citizen doesn't really care what will happen with MS ? After all, what's the difference between MS and GS (as in gigasoft) - it's just a name.
Probably not. At least not in the near future. They support only Windows and SGI. And the support for SGI will probably be suppressed.
I have been working with such a camera for about 5 months now and I can tell that it's not that useless as some said. Unfortunately it has a major disadvantage : it users a laser beam to "see" the object and scanning a fairly normal object takes .6 seconds. Which does not allow real-time image capture.
However I can give anyone a hint about it utility. Imagine an intelligent system that looks for/identifies/retrieves objects in an environment. Yes, like a robot that is asked to fetch an object (say a book). You can do it in several ways, but one of them implies storing a database of book features. These features constitute a description of the object you need.
Well, as you may have guessed, these features are obtained from such a camera.
There are other possible usages, like CAM (I guess no-one noticed that the software that comes with it generates a mesh of the object
Everything I said seems to be very nice - don't worry. Just look at the price and you won't be excited any longer.