SuSE Linux was my first Linux distro, back when I thought 'I paid money for this, it came in a box' automatically means 'This is better'.
I've moved to other distributions since, but I still think SuSE has the best packaging mechnanics. I'm not talking about their packages/repositories or the merits of apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade. I mean that SuSE better optimise the package transfer and installation.
To my knowledge, SuSE Linux is still the only pre-compiled distribution that patches/upgrades a package by downloading only the changes. They have delta rpms that are much smaller to download than completely new packages.
The linked video would suggest that their new package front end is much nippier also.
Agreed on the default GTK theme, ugly as sin. The native look and feel (WIMP) theme for Windows is not great, but okay. I rarely see the default theme these days though & I quite like the theme chosen for Ubuntu Gutsy. It's all a matter of personal taste though.
My personal gripe with GTK, is it's choice to use non-native open/save dialogs on Windows. Alex.
My first hand experience with SoC is nil and Kyokugenryu posting history is similar to mine - extended and sporadic. So I I won't refute your point, but I prefer to assume the best in him/her.
I'll just say I agree with your sentiments on this particular post & it royally sucks that CoS practices mean we must have this debate. Alex
I like your idea, but unless the requirement was very carefully phrased I'm sure they would find a way to license every patent to some holding company for $1.
I'm not sayng CoS aren't behind this story, a joe job by them was my first reaction. However the post count for Kyokugenryu is 58 going back at least to 2006, I think they're genuine person, rather than a sock puppet. Alex.
I've wondered this a while. What is the difference between the gaming cards and the workstation cards from Nvidia and ATI? Do they just have better DACs? Certified driver support for business apps? Or is the GPU itself somehow?
Apologies, I did get that wrong (or at least I over generalised).
If I understand correctly, then:
The 900 change block vote (the 80% that were not discussed) passed based on approve/disapprove votes, but only by counting votes from non P attendees.
There is disagreement about whether non P attendees were entitled to vote on this ballot, under ISO rules.
The consensus is settling toward the non P vote being against ISO rules.
Although a majority decided to carry out the block vote, the majority of attendees chose to abstain or cast no vote during the block vote itself. This brings into question how representative it was.
I read groklaw, consortiuminfo.org, the msdn blog and notoooxml. This was on Sunday, when things were still settling down.
I tried to stick with stuff that is generally agreed. I didn't see much evidence of out right corruption. I am aware of the chair allowing non P attendees to vote against ISO rules. All I'll say for now is that it's odd, not sure what his motives were.
The process as a whole has been corrupted by MS and OOXML is still a very flawed standard in conception and detail. However it seemed that the BRM itself was a genuine effort to make the most of a bad situation. Alex.
I read up a bit on this last weekend. I got the following impression:
The time allowed for the BRM (1 week) was fixed by ISO rules for a fast track standard
Attendees generally felt it was better to get most suggested changes in as were. It was better to make the changes even if they had reservations, rather than leave the text of MS OOXML in it's original form.
All Participants were genuinely trying to improve the standard, regardless of their stance on ODF vs MS OOXML. Better to fix it as much as possible now, inc case it does become approved.
The failings of this BRM seem to stem from the following:
MS OOXML is a voluminous body of text. There are a approx 6000 pages
MS OOXML is controversial. There were over a 1000 comments, many participants were not happy in many ways
MS and ECMA inappropriately tried to push OOXML as a fast track standard, given it's size and the controversy
ISO were not setup for a standards process where the participants are so combative. I'm not so sure on this one, just a feeling I got.
As I understand the situation. Name, address and bank details alone cannot be used to withdraw money or take out bank loans. However they provide useful leverage when fraudulently making consumer purchases with in store credit or fabricating/stealing an identity.
A phishing attempt that included one's name, address, bank & tax details would be very convincing indeed.
I don't dispute your assertion that Silverlight, Flex etc are easier to program in. I also agree that HCJ have weaknesses.
However Silverlight, Flex etc are proprietary. They are not based on standards and they require additional plugins that aren't available everywhere a browser is. Because of that, I say they are not a suitable replacement for HCJ.
The solution should not be to rip and replace HCJ, it should be to evolve HCJ itself.
I'm guessing we aren't going to convince each other on this.
Your position as I understand it, is that HTML/CSS/Javascript are inferior to Silverlight - having less consistency, fewer features and requiring greater developer expertise.
My position is that Silverlight, Flash & Flex are inferior to HTML/CSS/Javascript because they are proprietary. They are closed formats, tied to their creator and not standardised by an recognised body such as W3C, IETF or ISO. I argue that because they're proprietary they will never be as widely supported as the web and they make everybody dependant on the creator, so called lock in.
XAML is an XML Schema, how is it ignoring document standards?
The XAML syntax may be specified by an XML Schema, to my knowledge the semantics & meaning of XAML are entirely implementation defined. There is no public standard that specifies how to interpret a XAML document. I said that it ignores document layout and styling, which it does: Silverlight uses WPF. WPF has it's own style model rather than using CSS, and WPF is completely seperated from XForms, SVG & HTML. These are the standards for layout & styling on the web, are you saying that Silverlight uses them?
the plug-in runs on Macs and Windows, it presents the content exactly the same with the same fidelity
The Silverlight plugin currently runs on Windows XP/Vista with IE 6SP2/7 and OSX 10.4.8+ with Firefox or Safari. Support is planned for Windows 2000 with Firefox, Linux x86/x86_64 with anything, anything with Opera & Linux x86/x86_64 Konqueror. Which leaves out mobile phones, PDAs, games consoles, internet tablets, Windows 95/98, earlier versions of OSX and pretty much anything but a modern PC. Two operating systems on 1 architecture does not count as cross platform. The web will work on everything I just mentioned, because every single one has atleast one example with a modern browser of some sort. Additionally all planned Silverlight support on any platform other than Windows and OSX is through Moonlight, the clone by Mono. Moonlight will not have access to WMA or WMV on most platforms, so Silverlight/Moonlight cannot guarantee 'HD Video support out of the box' as you stated.
C# is more powerful and more expressive than javascript. just because you are more comfortable with a language does not make it more expressive. weight will remain to be seen.
I happen to prefer higher level languages that aren't statically typed, but each to their own. I do not agree with you that C# is more expressive than javascript.
explain how XAML schema is problematic to implement? Learn how to write the XAML and your solid.
Firstly, the subject of your original post was Silverlight, my post responded to that. XAML is one component of Silverlight, one that I believe is not a publicly specified standard. Unlike HTML, SVG or XForms XAML is not fully implementable by anyone other than Microsoft. This makes Silverlight proprietary, therefore in my opinion it is not part of the 'rich web'. Instead it is an inferior substitute for the 'rich web'.
You are wrong, the web is a sloppy combination of repurposed standards and half-implementations that has evolved. It isn't clean, it isn't pretty but it works for the widest range of people: those with a web browser.
Silverlight is like flash, only worse: * It ignores all the work on document layout and styling, instead it chooses to reinvent the wheel. XAML is untested beyond a few Windows developers and power users on Windows with a PC. HTML has been deployed, tested & debugged on about every platform in existence. * It is in no way cross platform. The DLR class libraries are not an open specification beyond 'do what MS does', whomever independently implements it will be forever playing catchup. Needless to say MS will not be releasing the a DLR runtime for Solaris on SPARC anytime soon. * It brings C# to the browser. It is my opinion that this move to a less expressive, more heavyweight language would be a step backward. In my opinion it would be better to fix Javascript, than to rip and replace with another language. * Granted, the web does not have universal vector and HD video native to the browser. Neither would DLR/Silverlight, only Microsoft's implementation could be relied on to have full support of any given video format, due to restrictive licensing of US software patents. SVG support is improving in all browsers except Internet Explorer. * Ease of update of a runtime is an implementation issue. It has nothing to do with how widely deployed implementations of a revised standard would be.
Silverlight is not the web and it is not an improvement in my opinion.
Try Amazon France, my parents got one from there quite easily. Similarly, people have posted about positive results ordering from Germany. The accute shortages appear to be UK only. Alex.
Disclaimer: I'm guessing. The OP said they look like like cameras, and they do a bit. However I don't believe they are cameras, there are too many and they're very distinct from the obvious CCTV cameras that sit on top of poles along the M42. I'd guess they have the same electronics as a speed gun, without the camera.
This seems a good time to mention http://www.givemebackmygoogle.com/ as featured in the b3ta newsletter recently. It filters the majority of shopping comparison sites from a google search, it's not perfect but it makes a big difference.
Motorola showed actual thought and innovation for the V3 RAZR and it's ilk. Thin flip-phones makes so much more sense. I hope they can do it again with the software.
Other than an old Ericsson T39m, the V3i is the best phone design I've ever used. That is, except for the software - which is.. quirky, to say the least. Games consoles get much of the attention in terms of reverse engineering and modding, each generation is designed to be more locked down and 'trustworthy'. However phones seem to have fared infinately better against the modding crowds and this sucks. Mobile operators get away with charging 15p for a 20 byte SMS and other restrictions that would leave Sony/MS XBox division drooling.
I wish it were possible to rip the Motorola supplied firmware and replace it with something buggy but useful. I wish I could sync to anything and actually run real software, that does real things like access bluetooth and the camera. I wish my current phone could run programs written in C, C++, Perl, Python, Ruby, Java, C# and AIML. I want my phone to make a Star Trek communicator noise every time it opens. I want it to work in landscape mode and allow input from a bluetooth keyboard and to log GPS. I want it to do all the things Motorola didn't think of or didn't have the budget for.
So please, if anyone from Motorola is reading, do this properly. Open up more than just a few smartphones or far east only models. Let your geek users break from the shackles of MIDP across everything. I note from TFA that you've released an open source mmc+sd driver, that's a great move - make it the first of many.
Slashdot Mirror
SuSE Linux was my first Linux distro, back when I thought 'I paid money for this, it came in a box' automatically means 'This is better'.
I've moved to other distributions since, but I still think SuSE has the best packaging mechnanics. I'm not talking about their packages/repositories or the merits of apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade. I mean that SuSE better optimise the package transfer and installation.
To my knowledge, SuSE Linux is still the only pre-compiled distribution that patches/upgrades a package by downloading only the changes. They have delta rpms that are much smaller to download than completely new packages.
The linked video would suggest that their new package front end is much nippier also.
Hats off to you.
Agreed on the default GTK theme, ugly as sin. The native look and feel (WIMP) theme for Windows is not great, but okay. I rarely see the default theme these days though & I quite like the theme chosen for Ubuntu Gutsy. It's all a matter of personal taste though.
My personal gripe with GTK, is it's choice to use non-native open/save dialogs on Windows. Alex.
Out of curiosity, in what ways does GTK suck for you?
Not trying to troll, I'm a detail junkie. Alex.
My first hand experience with SoC is nil and Kyokugenryu posting history is similar to mine - extended and sporadic. So I I won't refute your point, but I prefer to assume the best in him/her.
I'll just say I agree with your sentiments on this particular post & it royally sucks that CoS practices mean we must have this debate. Alex
I like your idea, but unless the requirement was very carefully phrased I'm sure they would find a way to license every patent to some holding company for $1.
I'm not sayng CoS aren't behind this story, a joe job by them was my first reaction. However the post count for Kyokugenryu is 58 going back at least to 2006, I think they're genuine person, rather than a sock puppet. Alex.
I've wondered this a while. What is the difference between the gaming cards and the workstation cards from Nvidia and ATI? Do they just have better DACs? Certified driver support for business apps? Or is the GPU itself somehow?
Alex
Oops, confused the name of noooxml and no2id.net. Thanks for spotting that.
- The 900 change block vote (the 80% that were not discussed) passed based on approve/disapprove votes, but only by counting votes from non P attendees.
- There is disagreement about whether non P attendees were entitled to vote on this ballot, under ISO rules.
- The consensus is settling toward the non P vote being against ISO rules.
- Although a majority decided to carry out the block vote, the majority of attendees chose to abstain or cast no vote during the block vote itself. This brings into question how representative it was.
How's that? Alex.I read groklaw, consortiuminfo.org, the msdn blog and notoooxml. This was on Sunday, when things were still settling down.
I tried to stick with stuff that is generally agreed. I didn't see much evidence of out right corruption. I am aware of the chair allowing non P attendees to vote against ISO rules. All I'll say for now is that it's odd, not sure what his motives were.
The process as a whole has been corrupted by MS and OOXML is still a very flawed standard in conception and detail. However it seemed that the BRM itself was a genuine effort to make the most of a bad situation. Alex.
- The time allowed for the BRM (1 week) was fixed by ISO rules for a fast track standard
- Attendees generally felt it was better to get most suggested changes in as were. It was better to make the changes even if they had reservations, rather than leave the text of MS OOXML in it's original form.
- All Participants were genuinely trying to improve the standard, regardless of their stance on ODF vs MS OOXML. Better to fix it as much as possible now, inc case it does become approved.
The failings of this BRM seem to stem from the following:Wow, financial identity is even more screwed than I thought. Thanks for the clue. Do you know if this applies just to the US, or to the UK also?
As I understand the situation. Name, address and bank details alone cannot be used to withdraw money or take out bank loans. However they provide useful leverage when fraudulently making consumer purchases with in store credit or fabricating/stealing an identity.
A phishing attempt that included one's name, address, bank & tax details would be very convincing indeed.
Alex
I don't dispute your assertion that Silverlight, Flex etc are easier to program in. I also agree that HCJ have weaknesses.
However Silverlight, Flex etc are proprietary. They are not based on standards and they require additional plugins that aren't available everywhere a browser is. Because of that, I say they are not a suitable replacement for HCJ.
The solution should not be to rip and replace HCJ, it should be to evolve HCJ itself.
I'm guessing we aren't going to convince each other on this.
Your position as I understand it, is that HTML/CSS/Javascript are inferior to Silverlight - having less consistency, fewer features and requiring greater developer expertise.
My position is that Silverlight, Flash & Flex are inferior to HTML/CSS/Javascript because they are proprietary. They are closed formats, tied to their creator and not standardised by an recognised body such as W3C, IETF or ISO. I argue that because they're proprietary they will never be as widely supported as the web and they make everybody dependant on the creator, so called lock in.
The XAML syntax may be specified by an XML Schema, to my knowledge the semantics & meaning of XAML are entirely implementation defined. There is no public standard that specifies how to interpret a XAML document. I said that it ignores document layout and styling, which it does: Silverlight uses WPF. WPF has it's own style model rather than using CSS, and WPF is completely seperated from XForms, SVG & HTML. These are the standards for layout & styling on the web, are you saying that Silverlight uses them?
The Silverlight plugin currently runs on Windows XP/Vista with IE 6SP2/7 and OSX 10.4.8+ with Firefox or Safari.
Support is planned for Windows 2000 with Firefox, Linux x86/x86_64 with anything, anything with Opera & Linux x86/x86_64 Konqueror.
Which leaves out mobile phones, PDAs, games consoles, internet tablets, Windows 95/98, earlier versions of OSX and pretty much anything but a modern PC. Two operating systems on 1 architecture does not count as cross platform.
The web will work on everything I just mentioned, because every single one has atleast one example with a modern browser of some sort.
Additionally all planned Silverlight support on any platform other than Windows and OSX is through Moonlight, the clone by Mono. Moonlight will not have access to WMA or WMV on most platforms, so Silverlight/Moonlight cannot guarantee 'HD Video support out of the box' as you stated.
I happen to prefer higher level languages that aren't statically typed, but each to their own. I do not agree with you that C# is more expressive than javascript.
Firstly, the subject of your original post was Silverlight, my post responded to that. XAML is one component of Silverlight, one that I believe is not a publicly specified standard. Unlike HTML, SVG or XForms XAML is not fully implementable by anyone other than Microsoft. This makes Silverlight proprietary, therefore in my opinion it is not part of the 'rich web'. Instead it is an inferior substitute for the 'rich web'.
Sincerely, Alex
You are wrong, the web is a sloppy combination of repurposed standards and half-implementations that has evolved. It isn't clean, it isn't pretty but it works for the widest range of people: those with a web browser.
Silverlight is like flash, only worse:
* It ignores all the work on document layout and styling, instead it chooses to reinvent the wheel. XAML is untested beyond a few Windows developers and power users on Windows with a PC. HTML has been deployed, tested & debugged on about every platform in existence.
* It is in no way cross platform. The DLR class libraries are not an open specification beyond 'do what MS does', whomever independently implements it will be forever playing catchup. Needless to say MS will not be releasing the a DLR runtime for Solaris on SPARC anytime soon.
* It brings C# to the browser. It is my opinion that this move to a less expressive, more heavyweight language would be a step backward. In my opinion it would be better to fix Javascript, than to rip and replace with another language.
* Granted, the web does not have universal vector and HD video native to the browser. Neither would DLR/Silverlight, only Microsoft's implementation could be relied on to have full support of any given video format, due to restrictive licensing of US software patents. SVG support is improving in all browsers except Internet Explorer.
* Ease of update of a runtime is an implementation issue. It has nothing to do with how widely deployed implementations of a revised standard would be.
Silverlight is not the web and it is not an improvement in my opinion.
Try Amazon France, my parents got one from there quite easily. Similarly, people have posted about positive results ordering from Germany. The accute shortages appear to be UK only. Alex.
Surely you mean the site of Arial?
Aha, I'd seen it referred to in the Linux kernel style guide for C. I assumed it was equally applicable to C++.
Thankyou for answering. Alex
I'm not trolling, honest. Why wasn't GNU Indent suitable? I'm not a C++ programmer by any stretch, but it seems ideal.
Disclaimer: I'm guessing. The OP said they look like like cameras, and they do a bit. However I don't believe they are cameras, there are too many and they're very distinct from the obvious CCTV cameras that sit on top of poles along the M42. I'd guess they have the same electronics as a speed gun, without the camera.
Erm, doesn't this link your identity to the disclosure? Making steps 1-3 pointless.
This seems a good time to mention http://www.givemebackmygoogle.com/ as featured in the b3ta newsletter recently. It filters the majority of shopping comparison sites from a google search, it's not perfect but it makes a big difference.
Motorola showed actual thought and innovation for the V3 RAZR and it's ilk. Thin flip-phones makes so much more sense. I hope they can do it again with the software.
Other than an old Ericsson T39m, the V3i is the best phone design I've ever used. That is, except for the software - which is.. quirky, to say the least. Games consoles get much of the attention in terms of reverse engineering and modding, each generation is designed to be more locked down and 'trustworthy'. However phones seem to have fared infinately better against the modding crowds and this sucks. Mobile operators get away with charging 15p for a 20 byte SMS and other restrictions that would leave Sony/MS XBox division drooling.
I wish it were possible to rip the Motorola supplied firmware and replace it with something buggy but useful. I wish I could sync to anything and actually run real software, that does real things like access bluetooth and the camera. I wish my current phone could run programs written in C, C++, Perl, Python, Ruby, Java, C# and AIML. I want my phone to make a Star Trek communicator noise every time it opens. I want it to work in landscape mode and allow input from a bluetooth keyboard and to log GPS. I want it to do all the things Motorola didn't think of or didn't have the budget for.
So please, if anyone from Motorola is reading, do this properly. Open up more than just a few smartphones or far east only models. Let your geek users break from the shackles of MIDP across everything. I note from TFA that you've released an open source mmc+sd driver, that's a great move - make it the first of many.
Thanks
Alex