They totally broke the USENET access engine they purchased from deja.com. Deja was so much better. It allowed expansion by thread, advanced filtering and searching based on the group, personal posting history, marking threads to watch, etc.
Now they're "Google Groups" and they have just recently enabled **trumpets sound** POSTING!
It's really exciting to see several different groups independently and together developing players.
Exciting? I've got a wheel for you to re-invent if you find that sort of thing exciting. I don't know about you, but I'd rather see ONE quality Linux DVD player than five unfinished ones, each in a different stage of brokenness.
A better analogy is multithreading and recursion. Just because you CAN use recursion to solve a problem, doesn't mean you should. An iterative solution is (almost?) always faster and simpler, and often more elegant.
Just because you can make your application multi-threaded, doesn't mean you necessarily should. Ask yourself what problem are you solving with threads that you can't do otherwise (besides quenching your thirst for pain and suffering)?
I've talked to programmers who think that making an application multi-threaded will, in and of itself, make the application "better." When pressed for reasons they usually end up shaking their heads muttering something about multiple CPUs or modularized code.
Pick KDE, Gnome, or some other GUI and cease development and inclusion of the others.
Or, even better, DON'T pick one.
Pardon me if I rant a bit more:
Make your program GUI-independant. Write the guts as a command-line tool, and if you find you really need a flashy GUI, you can always wrap one around the core program.
There are already too many Linux apps hopelessly tied to a particular GUI, likely to break when the GUI undergoes the next major change (*cough* GTK).
I often find myself saying "Gee that looks like a great app... too bad I'd have to install all of KDE in order to use it!"
Moving certain critical _parts_ of XFree into the kernel might be a win, like the graphics drivers. After all, why the heck should a user space application like XFree be doing PCI management?
The X Window system is not a Linux-only application. For portability's sake alone, putting X components in the kernel is "A Bad Idea". Sure, there's os-specific code in X, but you shouldn't need a particular version of a kernel to run a particular version of X. Don't even get me started about DRI. ARGH!!!!
I agree with the rest of your post though... I personally think we need LESS stuff in the kernel. Anyone who wants to write device drivers should be made to chant over and over: "If it doesn't need to be put in the kernel, don't put it in the kernel!"
"But maybe you could indulge me and imagine, just for a moment, that the fact that we live in a world increasingly made by geeks actually makes their collective imagination worth understanding."
Ha ha ha...
This guy reminds me of the high school sports stars that are still living in my home town flipping burgers, saying "Those damn nerds are taking over the world. What a bunch of losers!"
To me, unhealthy sexuality means STD's. I'm not familiar with that particular flavor of porn. Sure we should protect anyone (including ourselves) from unhealthy sexuality. I certainly don't want herpes!
To address the second point, as much as no one likes spam, spammers are hardly PUSHING porn on people. Spammers OFFER porn. Chris Rock did a similar gig about drug dealers. No one pushes drugs. They offer them. And if your kid is curious about porn they'll seek it out.
Bottom line, as far as I'm concerned if a child is old enough to ask about something, he or she is old enough to get a straight answer.
Employees must never send or store e-mails or attachments that are obscene, indecent, sexist, racist, defamatory, abusive, in breach of copyright, encrypted or otherwise inappropriate.
(emphasis mine)
Does this strike anyone else as unusually facist? They are lumping privacy into the list of "naughty" types of email. Has anyone else heard of a company that forbids using encryption?
You say "we weren't meant to breed until we were 18 then humans wouldn't sexually mature till then. " Well, maybe that's because our culture is pushing for a more developed sexuality earlier.
I think his point was, NORMAL humans mature sexually around age 12-15. So why do Americans insist on protecting people from sexuality before they turn 18?
I can't go beat up someone who's been pushing this junk on my kids but I could call me DAs office and let them handle it.
HAHAHAH I've never heard of someone PUSHING porn on someone else--you don't have to. Porn sells itself. If a kid has a copy of Playboy it's because they were curious enough to go out and get ahold of it.
That's interesting. go-gnome totally fails on my RedHat 6.2 system. Manually downloading and running the installer also fails.
# cat/var/cache/redcarpet/install.log.20010502175156
Download directory is "/var/cache/redcarpet/packages"
Distro is redhat-62-i386
The Ximian installer was unable to initialize the packaging
system. This is often caused when another application has
accessed the packaging system first, such as rpm, apt-get,
dpkg, or Red Carpet. Please quit any of these applications
and re-run the installer application.
I heard this "uber-box" has already arrived. Some people call it a "PC", or "personal computer". These "PC's" can be purchased anywhere, and are relatively inexpensive! Anyone can use a "PC". There's a wide range of applications available for "PC's" already. Some people may not have heard of "PC" but hopefully someone can clue them in before yet another wheel is re-invented....
"Advertising serves not so much to advertise products as to promote consumption as a way of life." - Carl Lash 1978
People don't respond to normal advertising by mindlessly running out and buying things. Instead they become accustomed to the idea that buying things makes them happy. Why should online advertisers expect immediate returns (click-throughs) from advertising?
* Fast, non-X-based 2D (GGI) and 3D (??) graphics control.
Well, we already have/dev/fb. Anything more complex would severely bloat the kernel, IMHO.
What I'd like to see is a DMA subsystem that allows you to allocate large areas of physical memory (optionally mapped through the AGP GART)--something the rest of the *nix's can adopt.
What kind of video card do you have? What version of XFree? I find the latest versions of XFree (3.3.x and 4.x) to be very fast.
X isn't as much of a bottleneck as many people would claim. Likely the problem lies with how some of these apps are programmed, and how they use the toolkit.
Having a window manager, toolkitk and desktop heavily themed with huge pixmaps doesn't help either.
Let's see--we have xine, xmms, oms, and now gstreamer... How often does the wheel have to be reinvented before there is an extensible media-playing system for *nix that provides what "Video for Windows" did for Windows years ago?
Just to *catch up* with Windows, let alone trump it, this system needs:
1. The ability to load a platform-independant module that provides any arbitrary codec, and all your movie or sound players will make use of the module.
2. Something that can take advantage of hardware acceleration (MJPEG or MPEG accelerators, and capture cards)
3. Is network transparent like X, for remote displaying over a high-speed network (none of them do this right, yet)
I sure don't have the answers, but I bet if the amount of work that is put into so many seperate projects was concentrated on making them work together, Linux video woudln't be in such a sorry state.
Now someone decides that although it does what you have said it will it dosen't do what they want it to. They buy it, reverse engineer it, and publish their results on the web for all to see. (The BAD part)
Becasue of this you start to loose market share. People no longer need you program to do what it was designed to becasue it has been reverse engineered and released in the holy name of RMS and all things open-source.
How would this person magically start "losing market share"? This is like saying a sound card company loses users when someone releases linux drivers for the card? If anything, this hypothetical person would GAIN customers, since there is now MORE software out there that works with his hardware.
Slashdot Mirror
They totally broke the USENET access engine they purchased from deja.com. Deja was so much better. It allowed expansion by thread, advanced filtering and searching based on the group, personal posting history, marking threads to watch, etc.
Now they're "Google Groups" and they have just recently enabled **trumpets sound** POSTING!
It's really exciting to see several different groups independently and together developing players.
Exciting? I've got a wheel for you to re-invent if you find that sort of thing exciting. I don't know about you, but I'd rather see ONE quality Linux DVD player than five unfinished ones, each in a different stage of brokenness.
Mod me down, they're your points...
If each application has different menu items for the same functionality (eg: Options v Properties) then it is never going to be user friendly.
I guess that means Windows isn't user-friendly either, since not all of its applications use the exact same menus..
I can't agree with this more!
A better analogy is multithreading and recursion. Just because you CAN use recursion to solve a problem, doesn't mean you should. An iterative solution is (almost?) always faster and simpler, and often more elegant.
Just because you can make your application multi-threaded, doesn't mean you necessarily should. Ask yourself what problem are you solving with threads that you can't do otherwise (besides quenching your thirst for pain and suffering)?
I've talked to programmers who think that making an application multi-threaded will, in and of itself, make the application "better." When pressed for reasons they usually end up shaking their heads muttering something about multiple CPUs or modularized code.
Pick KDE, Gnome, or some other GUI and cease development and inclusion of the others.
Or, even better, DON'T pick one.
Pardon me if I rant a bit more:
Make your program GUI-independant. Write the guts as a command-line tool, and if you find you really need a flashy GUI, you can always wrap one around the core program.
There are already too many Linux apps hopelessly tied to a particular GUI, likely to break when the GUI undergoes the next major change (*cough* GTK).
I often find myself saying "Gee that looks like a great app... too bad I'd have to install all of KDE in order to use it!"
Unix systems have the concept of a version -- you change the API, you rev the major version of the library.
:-)
Now if only glibc followed this guideline...
Moving certain critical _parts_ of XFree into the kernel might be a win, like the graphics drivers. After all, why the heck should a user space application like XFree be doing PCI management?
The X Window system is not a Linux-only application. For portability's sake alone, putting X components in the kernel is "A Bad Idea". Sure, there's os-specific code in X, but you shouldn't need a particular version of a kernel to run a particular version of X. Don't even get me started about DRI. ARGH!!!!
I agree with the rest of your post though... I personally think we need LESS stuff in the kernel. Anyone who wants to write device drivers should be made to chant over and over: "If it doesn't need to be put in the kernel, don't put it in the kernel!"
"But maybe you could indulge me and imagine, just for a moment, that the fact that we live in a world increasingly made by geeks actually makes their collective imagination worth understanding."
Ha ha ha...
This guy reminds me of the high school sports stars that are still living in my home town flipping burgers, saying "Those damn nerds are taking over the world. What a bunch of losers!"
Look who the losers are now, guys...
LOL!
Unfortunately, it makes total sense to many pointy-haired bosses...
Parenting means getting your kid to adulthood by any means necessary.
...which is probably there are so many screwed-up adults on the loose...
To me, unhealthy sexuality means STD's. I'm not familiar with that particular flavor of porn. Sure we should protect anyone (including ourselves) from unhealthy sexuality. I certainly don't want herpes!
To address the second point, as much as no one likes spam, spammers are hardly PUSHING porn on people. Spammers OFFER porn. Chris Rock did a similar gig about drug dealers. No one pushes drugs. They offer them. And if your kid is curious about porn they'll seek it out.
Bottom line, as far as I'm concerned if a child is old enough to ask about something, he or she is old enough to get a straight answer.
Notice in the "Most PC Disclaimer" award:
Employees must never send or store e-mails or attachments that are obscene, indecent, sexist, racist, defamatory, abusive, in breach of copyright, encrypted or otherwise inappropriate.
(emphasis mine)
Does this strike anyone else as unusually facist? They are lumping privacy into the list of "naughty" types of email. Has anyone else heard of a company that forbids using encryption?
What about SSL or SSH?
You say "we weren't meant to breed until we were 18 then humans wouldn't sexually mature till then. " Well, maybe that's because our culture is pushing for a more developed sexuality earlier.
I think his point was, NORMAL humans mature sexually around age 12-15. So why do Americans insist on protecting people from sexuality before they turn 18?
I can't go beat up someone who's been pushing this junk on my kids but I could call me DAs office and let them handle it.
HAHAHAH I've never heard of someone PUSHING porn on someone else--you don't have to. Porn sells itself. If a kid has a copy of Playboy it's because they were curious enough to go out and get ahold of it.
I guess my question would be: What's an ``analogue''?
That's interesting. go-gnome totally fails on my RedHat 6.2 system. Manually downloading and running the installer also fails.
# cat
Download directory is "/var/cache/redcarpet/packages"
Distro is redhat-62-i386
The Ximian installer was unable to initialize the packaging
system. This is often caused when another application has
accessed the packaging system first, such as rpm, apt-get,
dpkg, or Red Carpet. Please quit any of these applications
and re-run the installer application.
I heard this "uber-box" has already arrived. Some people call it a "PC", or "personal computer". These "PC's" can be purchased anywhere, and are relatively inexpensive! Anyone can use a "PC". There's a wide range of applications available for "PC's" already. Some people may not have heard of "PC" but hopefully someone can clue them in before yet another wheel is re-invented....
"Advertising serves not so much to advertise products as to promote consumption as a way of life." - Carl Lash 1978
People don't respond to normal advertising by mindlessly running out and buying things. Instead they become accustomed to the idea that buying things makes them happy. Why should online advertisers expect immediate returns (click-throughs) from advertising?
* Fast, non-X-based 2D (GGI) and 3D (??) graphics control.
Well, we already have
What I'd like to see is a DMA subsystem that allows you to allocate large areas of physical memory (optionally mapped through the AGP GART)--something the rest of the *nix's can adopt.
Dear Slashdot,
Please do my research for me. Thanks!
Anyone have an mpeg copy of the reentry movie? It seems everything on the net is either Quicktime, Real or AVI.
What is a computer-illiterate boss doing hiring technical staff?
What kind of video card do you have? What version of XFree? I find the latest versions of XFree (3.3.x and 4.x) to be very fast.
X isn't as much of a bottleneck as many people would claim. Likely the problem lies with how some of these apps are programmed, and how they use the toolkit.
Having a window manager, toolkitk and desktop heavily themed with huge pixmaps doesn't help either.
Nah.. Matrox isn't out of the 3D market... They just don't typically sell on the store shelves.
Flame suit on and ready!
Let's see--we have xine, xmms, oms, and now gstreamer... How often does the wheel have to be reinvented before there is an extensible media-playing system for *nix that provides what "Video for Windows" did for Windows years ago?
Just to *catch up* with Windows, let alone trump it, this system needs:
1. The ability to load a platform-independant module that provides any arbitrary codec, and all your movie or sound players will make use of the module.
2. Something that can take advantage of hardware acceleration (MJPEG or MPEG accelerators, and capture cards)
3. Is network transparent like X, for remote displaying over a high-speed network (none of them do this right, yet)
I sure don't have the answers, but I bet if the amount of work that is put into so many seperate projects was concentrated on making them work together, Linux video woudln't be in such a sorry state.
Now someone decides that although it does what you have said it will it dosen't do what they want it to. They buy it, reverse engineer it, and publish their results on the web for all to see. (The BAD part)
Becasue of this you start to loose market share. People no longer need you program to do what it was designed to becasue it has been reverse engineered and released in the holy name of RMS and all things open-source.
How would this person magically start "losing market share"? This is like saying a sound card company loses users when someone releases linux drivers for the card? If anything, this hypothetical person would GAIN customers, since there is now MORE software out there that works with his hardware.
No one is stealing anything here.