This assumes that the samples are at the peaks, if the sample 180 degrees out of phase of the signal, sampling the valleys, then you have no signal.
Wrong. 180 degrees will indeed sample at the valleys instead of the peaks but the magnitude is the same, only the sign is different. Perhaps you meant 90 degrees.
If an input sine wave is near 1/3rd the sampling rate, you can easily get a bunch of nasty phase and magnitude modulations as part of your output signal.
Nope. Still wrong.
For your own education, here is Nyquist's Theorem.
Nyquist's theorem: A theorem, developed by H. Nyquist, which states that an analog signal waveform may be uniquely reconstructed, without error, from samples taken at equal time intervals. The sampling rate must be equal to, or greater than, twice the highest frequency component in the analog signal.
Notice the language "without error". There is no error. It's hard to grok, and impossible to believe without doing the maths, but it is 100% true.
Though as I said before, the real world is more fun because sampling is never exact. Errors in the times when samples are taken and errors in the magnitudes of the samples will screw you.
Having 96 kHz sampling isn't about recording pitches above 22 kHz; it's about getting a better, smoother approximation of the sound waves. With 44 kHz sampling, a 22kHz sound wave is very discrete and choppy. Good ears would almost certainly detect this.
No, this is simply wrong. It's hard to explain without the mathematics but basically the "square edges" you see will be completely removed by the obligatory low-pass filter after the DA convertor.
Nyquist's theorem proves (with mathematics and I've done the derivation myself) that sampling at (slightly more than) 2x the highest frequency can EXACTLY reproduce the original wave. Not approximate. Exact.
That's all assuming that you have infinite bit resolution. Of course, in practise you don't have infinite bit resolution, so that's (one reason) why SACD and DVDA sample much higher than the Nyquist rate. You can trade bit resolution for higher sampling rates because they are equivalent. But once again, you need to grok the mathematics to understand why.
This is just my opinion, but I think that Mac has always been geared towards the artist, while IBM has always been aimed at engineers. Using either of these machines one could see the begining of this trend, and now in the year 2004 it is still true. I do not believe that either machine is better than the other, and they never were. The difference between the two is more right-brain left brain.
Amongst the engineers I know - and I'm talking real engineers, not these fake "I learnt HTML and now I'm an engineer" twits - the laptop of choice is an Apple Powerbook running MacOS X.
When I was doing university, Macintoshes were the dominant computer in almost every department. If you were in physics, engineering, mathematics and chemistry, the prof's loved their Macs. This was back in the era of Quadras and LCs.
There was a recent article about Sun where the CTO said the same thing about their engineering staff. The overwhelming majority of Sun's engineers use Powerbooks running MacOS X.
Companies like Microsoft don't need help to break standards, they are more than capable of doing it on their own. In fact the SFU example demonstrates the exact opposite: the code was available, it was adopted in a compatible manner, the license was followed and the result was good for everyone.
The number of Windows installations that will use SFU will be measured in the 1/10ths of a percent of the total Windows installation base. I really don't think it's a very good example of results being "good for everyone". It would have been better if SFU had been properly integrated into the Windows core, so that all Windows users received the benefits of secure connections and powerful scripting languages. But I cynically think that SFU is nothing more than a tickmark in their feature list so Microsoft can say: "Look! We do UNIX too, so why would you want to use that nasty Linux?".
If anything, the existence of code in a incompatible license is going to increase the likelihood of deranged implementation. If they already have to reimplement it because they are unwilling to put up with GPL code in their product, then they are just as likely to implement all the features that they want while they are there (and standards be damned).
This is a good point, and I don't have an answer. The alternative is to give them a BSD license and cross your fingers that they don't do as I describe in my previous post. I'm even less comfortable with that scenario! So there is no perfect solution here. Companies are anti-social and untrustworthy. If they can copy source code with impunity, they will. The GPL tries to force them into cooperation with copyright law. The BSD license ignores the problem. Some BSD people justify the apathy as being intentional. Other BSD people say "the companies will contribute! I know they will!" but I'm not convinced. I see more examples of companies using without contributing, than I see examples of cooperation.
An interesting aside - someone from a company that offers commercial Windows interop tools has already has posted patches to build OpenSSH under Interix SFU. So please don't tell me that the BSD license equates to wasted effort and closed derivates.
One example of a company being gracious does not refute what I said. I'm not saying every company will purposefully fork the code into a closed derivative. I'm saying that the license permits a company to create a closed derivative. There's no disputing that point because it's one of the touted benefits of the BSD license!
What I then described was one possible outcome if the closed-fork becomes popular (ie, incompatibility, wasted effort, redundant work). And you and I both know what I described has already happened in the Real World(tm). I wasn't describing a theoretical possibility. I was describing in general terms the fact that closed derivatives have already occured. So please don't tell me that it's not true.
I'm quite happy for anyone to use the code I have released under BSD licenses. I'd love it if Microsoft included a port of OpenSSH with their operating system, just as I am happy that they are releasing some POSIXy tools (mostly based on BSD licensed code).
But it's not about including a port. Microsoft could include a port of OpenSSH even if used the GPL. In fact, that's basically what they're doing with SFU: it's bundled with software using both the GPL and the BSD licenses.
The danger of the BSD license is when Microsoft modifies OpenSSH in some manner that means MS-SSH clients can communicate with MS-SSH servers, but the standard OpenSSH client cannot communicate with MS-SSH servers. As the maintainer of OpenSSH you're now in a pickle. You can either leave OpenSSH without "MS-SSH server support", which means OpenSSH is inferior to MS-SSH. Or you can expend the effort to reverse-engineer the feature and independently implement it in OpenSSH. But that's a fairly inefficient use of your time that could be better spent on improving other aspects of OpenSSH.
So the BSD license leads to repeated work and redundant work. Or it leads to bifurcation and incompatibility. Either way, I don't like it. But it's your code so if you like the BSD license... shrug... go for it.
No, the BSD developers are (mostly) very serious software professionals that have a far deeper understanding of the implications of their design decisions than most Linux developers do. They're often interpreted as "arrogant" by pimply-faced kids...
You know, it's a running joke that nobody reads the linked articles, but it's pretty sad when you don't even read the comment you're responding to. I said...
BSD developers are great.
Notice how I never said BSD developers were arrogant.
But it's gratifying to see my cynical opinion once again confirmed.
[BSD developers] have a far deeper understanding of the implications of their design decisions than most Linux developers do.
It's almost comical how condescending the BSD fanboys can be.
BSD is for those that love Unix. Linux is for those that hate Windows.
Linux is for those that love UNIX. BSD is for those who think they're better than everybody else.
I wish I didn't believe that but sayings like that just keep reaffirming my cynical opinion.
BSD is great. BSD developers are great. But BSD fanboys are arrogant snobs.
And I am not trolling. I just fail to see why BSD fanboys get moderated up for this contemptuous behaviour towards Linux. If somebody tried the same thing with BSD they'd be moderated into oblivion, and rightly so.
(Also, for the nostalgic, I copied a checkout of that laptop picture - it's now at c133.org/files/kdelaptop.gif [c133.org] for those of you who're interested in ancient KDE history.)
Ahhh, nostalgia... and it's only 6 years old;-)
I remember downloading KDE 1.0 via a 14.4kbps modem and battling for a day to build it. The result was well worth it. Even in its infancy, a KDE 1.0 desktop was a dream. KFM blew away the rest of the file-managers. I remember being truly amazed that KDE could deliver what the squabbling UNIX vendors hadn't managed in over a decade. I came to the conclusion at the time that the future of UNIX was in free software. I don't think I've yet seen anything else to convince me otherwise.
It's incredible to look back and see how far it's come in just 5 years. The modern KDE 3.2 is an outstanding leap forwards. I can't wait to see what happens when XComposite and XDamage become standard X extensions. The next 5 years are going to be a real blast.
Actually, no. KDE, from the beginning, has been a UNIX desktop, not a Linux desktop. GNOME was the "Linux desktop" from the start, at least until Sun got their hands on it and started to weed out the Linuxisms in their code so that they could actually build their desktop on Solaris.
You KDE developers just can't help taking a stab at GNOME, eh;-)
I remember the original KDE slogan now. It was "Is Linux Ready For The Desktop" and it had a picture of a laptop running KDE pre-1.0. I remember it was very exciting at the time because the only other decent options for a Linux desktop were a non-free CDE port (teal?) and FVWM95.
(If you want, you can pull a copy of the KDE web pages out of CVS from the appropriate dates - KDE 1.0 was released on July 12, 1998, so the web pages from those days are what you'll probably want to look at.) All of the graphics and text specify KDE as a UNIX desktop, not a Linux one.
The CVS seems to go both ways. Some of the pages talk about UNIX. Some talk about Linux. I remember the slogan was for Linux and the ALT tag in this page contains that slogan. But I'll concede the point because it certainly seems there was a directed effort to support all UNIX, not just Linux. My mistake.
So they failed and the excuse is pretty ridiculous. Their claim is that Linux's code is owned, in part, by SCO. To prove this, they only need to show their code in their source in their product and show where it is identical within Linux's code. How is it necessary that IBM show completely unrelated code from AIX?
Because SCO's theory seems to be - and I know this sounds completely insane - that JFS is owned by IBM but IBM needs permission from SCO before JFS can be donated to Linux. This all hinges on a very bizarre interpretation of "derivative works" that basically means any code that IBM ever wrote in AIX is a derivative work of SYSV, as opposed to the whole of AIX being the derivative work. This is why Darl and Sontag keeps saying "this case is about breach of contract, not copyright infringement".
So none of SCO's products have JFS. But Linux has JFS. And AIX has JFS. SCO wants a copy of AIX so they can say "LOOK! There's JFS in AIX and it was copied into Linux!". But SCO can't prove JFS was copied from AIX to Linux without a copy of the source code to AIX.
Of course, SCO would still need to prove that IBM needed SCO's permission to copy JFS from AIX to Linux - which is about as likely as President Bush becoming intelligent - but I'm assuming SCO wants this early "win" so they can trumpet it in the press and pump-up their stock some more. SCO will claim "See! Proof that IBM copied JFS from AIX to Linux! Linux users must now pay up!". That will go on for about a year until we get to the actual court case (April 2005) where it will be decided if IBM needed SCO's permission. That's 1 whole year of pumping and dumping.
As a separate issue, SCO is claiming there is SYSV code in Linux (eg, the SCOForum slides and the recent list of 65 files including errno.h). I think they're full of shit on that one, but what would I know.
That will never happen. If ever there was just one distro, somebody would complain about some trivial feature and within a week there would be a fork. So it's just not going to happen.
So instead of reducing our choices to one - which is also undesirable - we need a solution where there are many choices but the overall package is unified. This means standards, interoperability, conformance tests, compatibility layers.
If you want a real world example, look no further than the browser in front of you. The Internet works despite there being literally 100s of TCP/IP implementations. This website works despite there being literally 100s of HTML and HTTP implementations. Yes, there are sometimes incompatibilities. No, the solution is not to force everybody to use the same software.
I'm not saying it doesn't offer anything or that no one is using it now, just that in the grand scheme of things, Linux is not a quality desktop product. Heck, Windows is completely horrible too and OS X has some major flaws, but they both have things pretty sorted out in terms of their direction. My point mostly is that Linux has to get a UI plan which doesn't just address "good enough" but actually tries to take the whole computing experience forward.
I really do disagree and for one very simple reason: Windows 3.0. It was a horrible interface. It was kludgy and undirected. Applications all looked different. Cut and paste did not work properly. You had to edit CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT from the command line. It had memory leaks and was unstable. Drivers were a nightmare, especially for networking.
But it won. It beat out the obviously better alternatives. The majority of users didn't really care about unified interfaces or simplicity. They're only interested in "good enough" and "costs less". And part of the "costs less" component was the hardware that it ran on.
The entire American culture demonstrates that I'm right. McDonalds is more popular than decent restaurants. StarBucks is more popular than decent cafes. Walmart is more popular than speciality stores. People are happy with good enough if it costs less. They very fact that people buy Palsonic is enough proof for me.
I think you're right that Linux isn't as cohesive, unified, directed, etc as alternatives like Windows and MacOSX. I just don't agree with you that it matters. People will buy the cheapest option and that cheapest option is Linux[1]. It just needs to be good enough and then it wins.
[1] And they won't consider TCO. If they did then they would never have lumbered themselves with Windows in the first place. Upfront cost is the only cost that people really care about.
None of KDE, GNOME, Gimp, mplayer or OpenOffice come out for Linux. They just come out.
At least KDE did. I recall KDE 1.0. Its slogan was "Desktop for Linux" or some such. The entire point of KDE was to create a decent desktop for Linux.
Yes, this software is available for Linux. But it's not Linux software.
I think everybody here is already aware that UNIX software works on nearly any UNIX platform. Did you just figure it out?
Anyway, my point is that KDE did come out specifically for Linux. That it worked on other UNIXs is testament to the compatibility between all UNIXs. But the initial target was Linux.
Mine did. Plugged it in. Started the "gphoto2" program (from the meaningful name in the GNOME menu, not "gphoto2"). Clicked "download images". Worked first time. No effort. No configuration.
Can 1-touch scanning be setup without the use of a complex script?
Worked for me. Plugged in the USB scanner. Started the "xsane" program (from the meaningful name in the GNOME menu, not "xsane"). Clicked preview. There was an image. Worked first time. No effort. No configuration.
Joe Dialup doesn't want to go to Sourceforge to find a piece of software called gkehjg2 just to get his device to install and compile (compile? what's that!)
I recently installed a Windows 2000 machine. After finishing my "installation" I had to get nvidia drivers, canon drivers, asus drivers (for the onboard sound). Now I knew how to do all that but I'd dread to think what a normal user would think, booting their new machine only to find 3D graphics were slooow and there was no sound.
My point is that drivers are either preloaded for you by the store, or postloaded for you by a knowledgeable friend. Complaining about having to find obscure drivers on any platform is false reasoning. Missing drivers are just as difficult on all the platforms! Yes, even Macintoshes, as I've found when installing 3DFX cards into older Macintoshes.
Being a Mac user, I've learned to take these kind of prognostications with a grain of salt over the years. Linux has a good foundation and it's nearly free but that's no where near enough to win the hearts and minds of the average computer user. Obviously it has to do what they need, with the minimum amount of hassle and the maximum amount of pleasure. Linux has too many loose ends, too much variability, and a really substandard user interface at this point. It's going to have to be at least as polished as Windows and probably closer to OS X level before it really starts swaying people. I'm eager to use Linux and I check out all the distributions when they have notable releases, but nothing has shown me a reason to switch, not even for a bare bones e-mail/web machine.
I've been a Linux user for the past 12 years and it has been my primary desktop for most of those (as in, no dual-boot, just Linux). I've lived through TWM and FVWM. I've hand-editted Modelines with the aide of a calculator. I've suffered through the growing pains of Linux on the desktop. I say all this to show that I know that the Linux desktop has big hairy warts.
Recently I bought an Apple iBook G4 and it came with all the latest MacOSX software. I toyed with MacOSX for about an hour before reformatting and installing Linux. I honestly prefer Linux as my desktop. It does exactly what I want with no fuss or effort. I haven't needed to edit a config file in more than two years. XFree86 doesn't even need Modelines anymore; they're all autodiscovered with DDC and EDID. Even traditional UNIX applications are configured with debconf; I just click on the little GUI buttons that appear after selecting my package updates in the GUI software manager. The Linux desktop has all the applications I want (ie, email, browser, word processor). All the features I want (ie, MP3, DVD). And all the games I want (ie, chess). It's a perfect setup for me.
Does the Linux desktop still have warts? Sure, but from my experiences at work, so does Windows. And I've owned various Macintoshes including more than one PowerPC model, so I know MacOS has warts too (at least Classic did, I don't know a lot about MacOSX)! I think Linux as a desktop is great. It's my preference. I don't care if you don't use it; your usage or non-usage of Linux doesn't affect me either way. But I think you're mistaken if you think there's no compelling reason to use Linux on the desktop. The fact that many of us do use Linux on the desktop should be your first hint that it offers something, even if you can't see what that something is.
However, having solely used OS X for the past 2 years or so, I can safely say my reservations have been 95% unfounded. As it turned out, it was more a case of "I fear change" than anything substantial. My overall productivity is still much higher as a result of the whole of OS X's new features.
I think this "higher productivity" is one of the most pervasive myths in computing. Every year somebody announces that the latest software has made them "more productive". By my reckoning, a modern office worker should be able to produce an entire report with a single keystroke, if all these productivity increases were true.
I think the reality is that productivity is about the same but it's much more pleasant to work with modern computers. It's also more accessible to the wider populace. But I'm not convinced that it's more productive.
For example, science tells us and we all agree that craters are formed either by meteorite impacts or vulcanism. What? all of them? I think not. But as long as we hang onto that obsolete idea, we're blind to any other possibilities.
Science doesn't tell us anything. People tell us things. Sometimes they use science to come to those conclusions, and sometimes they don't use science but claim that they did.
If you have evidence that some craters didn't come from vulcanism or meteors then guess what... you've just used science! That's right. You used science to correct a false belief.
If you use science to correct a false belief then you've demonstrated that science is working. Science doesn't make you blind, or force you to hold onto obsolete ideas. The fact that you think you have evidence to the contrary is what science is all about. Show the world. Change the world. You'll be changing the world with science.
Nathan! I'm shocked - absolutely shocked - at the level of self-deprecation I see here! (-:
Leon Brooks! I'm not at all surprised to see you talking about "blind scientists" holding onto "obsolete ideas" on a thread which had absolutely nothing to do with science. Are you sure you wouldn't be happier over in talk.origins?
Maybe it would be *fart* easier to remember *burp* if they didn't have to *scratch scratch... yoink* listen to all your body noises *splurg gurgle flurp*.
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Wrong. 180 degrees will indeed sample at the valleys instead of the peaks but the magnitude is the same, only the sign is different. Perhaps you meant 90 degrees.
Nope. Still wrong.
For your own education, here is Nyquist's Theorem.
Notice the language "without error". There is no error. It's hard to grok, and impossible to believe without doing the maths, but it is 100% true.
Though as I said before, the real world is more fun because sampling is never exact. Errors in the times when samples are taken and errors in the magnitudes of the samples will screw you.
No.
Wrong.
No, this is simply wrong. It's hard to explain without the mathematics but basically the "square edges" you see will be completely removed by the obligatory low-pass filter after the DA convertor.
Nyquist's theorem proves (with mathematics and I've done the derivation myself) that sampling at (slightly more than) 2x the highest frequency can EXACTLY reproduce the original wave. Not approximate. Exact.
That's all assuming that you have infinite bit resolution. Of course, in practise you don't have infinite bit resolution, so that's (one reason) why SACD and DVDA sample much higher than the Nyquist rate. You can trade bit resolution for higher sampling rates because they are equivalent. But once again, you need to grok the mathematics to understand why.
Amongst the engineers I know - and I'm talking real engineers, not these fake "I learnt HTML and now I'm an engineer" twits - the laptop of choice is an Apple Powerbook running MacOS X.
When I was doing university, Macintoshes were the dominant computer in almost every department. If you were in physics, engineering, mathematics and chemistry, the prof's loved their Macs. This was back in the era of Quadras and LCs.
There was a recent article about Sun where the CTO said the same thing about their engineering staff. The overwhelming majority of Sun's engineers use Powerbooks running MacOS X.
At least it's not a walkie-talkie.
How was it innovative when Digital's GEM did the same thing before Windows even existed?
Seems Microsoft can just say "innovate" enough times and people start to believe it.
The number of Windows installations that will use SFU will be measured in the 1/10ths of a percent of the total Windows installation base. I really don't think it's a very good example of results being "good for everyone". It would have been better if SFU had been properly integrated into the Windows core, so that all Windows users received the benefits of secure connections and powerful scripting languages. But I cynically think that SFU is nothing more than a tickmark in their feature list so Microsoft can say: "Look! We do UNIX too, so why would you want to use that nasty Linux?".
This is a good point, and I don't have an answer. The alternative is to give them a BSD license and cross your fingers that they don't do as I describe in my previous post. I'm even less comfortable with that scenario! So there is no perfect solution here. Companies are anti-social and untrustworthy. If they can copy source code with impunity, they will. The GPL tries to force them into cooperation with copyright law. The BSD license ignores the problem. Some BSD people justify the apathy as being intentional. Other BSD people say "the companies will contribute! I know they will!" but I'm not convinced. I see more examples of companies using without contributing, than I see examples of cooperation.
One example of a company being gracious does not refute what I said. I'm not saying every company will purposefully fork the code into a closed derivative. I'm saying that the license permits a company to create a closed derivative. There's no disputing that point because it's one of the touted benefits of the BSD license!
What I then described was one possible outcome if the closed-fork becomes popular (ie, incompatibility, wasted effort, redundant work). And you and I both know what I described has already happened in the Real World(tm). I wasn't describing a theoretical possibility. I was describing in general terms the fact that closed derivatives have already occured. So please don't tell me that it's not true.
But it's not about including a port. Microsoft could include a port of OpenSSH even if used the GPL. In fact, that's basically what they're doing with SFU: it's bundled with software using both the GPL and the BSD licenses.
The danger of the BSD license is when Microsoft modifies OpenSSH in some manner that means MS-SSH clients can communicate with MS-SSH servers, but the standard OpenSSH client cannot communicate with MS-SSH servers. As the maintainer of OpenSSH you're now in a pickle. You can either leave OpenSSH without "MS-SSH server support", which means OpenSSH is inferior to MS-SSH. Or you can expend the effort to reverse-engineer the feature and independently implement it in OpenSSH. But that's a fairly inefficient use of your time that could be better spent on improving other aspects of OpenSSH.
So the BSD license leads to repeated work and redundant work. Or it leads to bifurcation and incompatibility. Either way, I don't like it. But it's your code so if you like the BSD license... shrug... go for it.
You know, it's a running joke that nobody reads the linked articles, but it's pretty sad when you don't even read the comment you're responding to. I said...
Notice how I never said BSD developers were arrogant.
But it's gratifying to see my cynical opinion once again confirmed.
It's almost comical how condescending the BSD fanboys can be.
OSX is not based on BSD. The kernel is Mach and most OSX applications use Cocoa, not Darwin.
Maybe he never used Windows. I went straight from a proprietary SYSV to Linux. I can't imagine I'm the only one.
Linux is for those that love UNIX. BSD is for those who think they're better than everybody else.
I wish I didn't believe that but sayings like that just keep reaffirming my cynical opinion.
BSD is great. BSD developers are great. But BSD fanboys are arrogant snobs.
And I am not trolling. I just fail to see why BSD fanboys get moderated up for this contemptuous behaviour towards Linux. If somebody tried the same thing with BSD they'd be moderated into oblivion, and rightly so.
Ahhh, nostalgia... and it's only 6 years old ;-)
I remember downloading KDE 1.0 via a 14.4kbps modem and battling for a day to build it. The result was well worth it. Even in its infancy, a KDE 1.0 desktop was a dream. KFM blew away the rest of the file-managers. I remember being truly amazed that KDE could deliver what the squabbling UNIX vendors hadn't managed in over a decade. I came to the conclusion at the time that the future of UNIX was in free software. I don't think I've yet seen anything else to convince me otherwise.
It's incredible to look back and see how far it's come in just 5 years. The modern KDE 3.2 is an outstanding leap forwards. I can't wait to see what happens when XComposite and XDamage become standard X extensions. The next 5 years are going to be a real blast.
You KDE developers just can't help taking a stab at GNOME, eh ;-)
I remember the original KDE slogan now. It was "Is Linux Ready For The Desktop" and it had a picture of a laptop running KDE pre-1.0. I remember it was very exciting at the time because the only other decent options for a Linux desktop were a non-free CDE port (teal?) and FVWM95.
The CVS seems to go both ways. Some of the pages talk about UNIX. Some talk about Linux. I remember the slogan was for Linux and the ALT tag in this page contains that slogan. But I'll concede the point because it certainly seems there was a directed effort to support all UNIX, not just Linux. My mistake.
Because SCO's theory seems to be - and I know this sounds completely insane - that JFS is owned by IBM but IBM needs permission from SCO before JFS can be donated to Linux. This all hinges on a very bizarre interpretation of "derivative works" that basically means any code that IBM ever wrote in AIX is a derivative work of SYSV, as opposed to the whole of AIX being the derivative work. This is why Darl and Sontag keeps saying "this case is about breach of contract, not copyright infringement".
So none of SCO's products have JFS. But Linux has JFS. And AIX has JFS. SCO wants a copy of AIX so they can say "LOOK! There's JFS in AIX and it was copied into Linux!". But SCO can't prove JFS was copied from AIX to Linux without a copy of the source code to AIX.
Of course, SCO would still need to prove that IBM needed SCO's permission to copy JFS from AIX to Linux - which is about as likely as President Bush becoming intelligent - but I'm assuming SCO wants this early "win" so they can trumpet it in the press and pump-up their stock some more. SCO will claim "See! Proof that IBM copied JFS from AIX to Linux! Linux users must now pay up!". That will go on for about a year until we get to the actual court case (April 2005) where it will be decided if IBM needed SCO's permission. That's 1 whole year of pumping and dumping.
As a separate issue, SCO is claiming there is SYSV code in Linux (eg, the SCOForum slides and the recent list of 65 files including errno.h). I think they're full of shit on that one, but what would I know.
That will never happen. If ever there was just one distro, somebody would complain about some trivial feature and within a week there would be a fork. So it's just not going to happen.
So instead of reducing our choices to one - which is also undesirable - we need a solution where there are many choices but the overall package is unified. This means standards, interoperability, conformance tests, compatibility layers.
If you want a real world example, look no further than the browser in front of you. The Internet works despite there being literally 100s of TCP/IP implementations. This website works despite there being literally 100s of HTML and HTTP implementations. Yes, there are sometimes incompatibilities. No, the solution is not to force everybody to use the same software.
I really do disagree and for one very simple reason: Windows 3.0. It was a horrible interface. It was kludgy and undirected. Applications all looked different. Cut and paste did not work properly. You had to edit CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT from the command line. It had memory leaks and was unstable. Drivers were a nightmare, especially for networking.
But it won. It beat out the obviously better alternatives. The majority of users didn't really care about unified interfaces or simplicity. They're only interested in "good enough" and "costs less". And part of the "costs less" component was the hardware that it ran on.
The entire American culture demonstrates that I'm right. McDonalds is more popular than decent restaurants. StarBucks is more popular than decent cafes. Walmart is more popular than speciality stores. People are happy with good enough if it costs less. They very fact that people buy Palsonic is enough proof for me.
I think you're right that Linux isn't as cohesive, unified, directed, etc as alternatives like Windows and MacOSX. I just don't agree with you that it matters. People will buy the cheapest option and that cheapest option is Linux[1]. It just needs to be good enough and then it wins.
[1] And they won't consider TCO. If they did then they would never have lumbered themselves with Windows in the first place. Upfront cost is the only cost that people really care about.
At least KDE did. I recall KDE 1.0. Its slogan was "Desktop for Linux" or some such. The entire point of KDE was to create a decent desktop for Linux.
I think everybody here is already aware that UNIX software works on nearly any UNIX platform. Did you just figure it out?
Anyway, my point is that KDE did come out specifically for Linux. That it worked on other UNIXs is testament to the compatibility between all UNIXs. But the initial target was Linux.
Mine did. Plugged it in. Started the "gphoto2" program (from the meaningful name in the GNOME menu, not "gphoto2"). Clicked "download images". Worked first time. No effort. No configuration.
Worked for me. Plugged in the USB scanner. Started the "xsane" program (from the meaningful name in the GNOME menu, not "xsane"). Clicked preview. There was an image. Worked first time. No effort. No configuration.
I recently installed a Windows 2000 machine. After finishing my "installation" I had to get nvidia drivers, canon drivers, asus drivers (for the onboard sound). Now I knew how to do all that but I'd dread to think what a normal user would think, booting their new machine only to find 3D graphics were slooow and there was no sound.
My point is that drivers are either preloaded for you by the store, or postloaded for you by a knowledgeable friend. Complaining about having to find obscure drivers on any platform is false reasoning. Missing drivers are just as difficult on all the platforms! Yes, even Macintoshes, as I've found when installing 3DFX cards into older Macintoshes.
I've been a Linux user for the past 12 years and it has been my primary desktop for most of those (as in, no dual-boot, just Linux). I've lived through TWM and FVWM. I've hand-editted Modelines with the aide of a calculator. I've suffered through the growing pains of Linux on the desktop. I say all this to show that I know that the Linux desktop has big hairy warts.
Recently I bought an Apple iBook G4 and it came with all the latest MacOSX software. I toyed with MacOSX for about an hour before reformatting and installing Linux. I honestly prefer Linux as my desktop. It does exactly what I want with no fuss or effort. I haven't needed to edit a config file in more than two years. XFree86 doesn't even need Modelines anymore; they're all autodiscovered with DDC and EDID. Even traditional UNIX applications are configured with debconf; I just click on the little GUI buttons that appear after selecting my package updates in the GUI software manager. The Linux desktop has all the applications I want (ie, email, browser, word processor). All the features I want (ie, MP3, DVD). And all the games I want (ie, chess). It's a perfect setup for me.
Does the Linux desktop still have warts? Sure, but from my experiences at work, so does Windows. And I've owned various Macintoshes including more than one PowerPC model, so I know MacOS has warts too (at least Classic did, I don't know a lot about MacOSX)! I think Linux as a desktop is great. It's my preference. I don't care if you don't use it; your usage or non-usage of Linux doesn't affect me either way. But I think you're mistaken if you think there's no compelling reason to use Linux on the desktop. The fact that many of us do use Linux on the desktop should be your first hint that it offers something, even if you can't see what that something is.
I think this "higher productivity" is one of the most pervasive myths in computing. Every year somebody announces that the latest software has made them "more productive". By my reckoning, a modern office worker should be able to produce an entire report with a single keystroke, if all these productivity increases were true.
I think the reality is that productivity is about the same but it's much more pleasant to work with modern computers. It's also more accessible to the wider populace. But I'm not convinced that it's more productive.
Science doesn't tell us anything. People tell us things. Sometimes they use science to come to those conclusions, and sometimes they don't use science but claim that they did.
If you have evidence that some craters didn't come from vulcanism or meteors then guess what... you've just used science! That's right. You used science to correct a false belief.
If you use science to correct a false belief then you've demonstrated that science is working. Science doesn't make you blind, or force you to hold onto obsolete ideas. The fact that you think you have evidence to the contrary is what science is all about. Show the world. Change the world. You'll be changing the world with science.
Leon Brooks! I'm not at all surprised to see you talking about "blind scientists" holding onto "obsolete ideas" on a thread which had absolutely nothing to do with science. Are you sure you wouldn't be happier over in talk.origins?
I hadn't read that page, so I'd assumed Ogg was from Nanny Ogg (one of the 3 witches in Equal Rites).
Maybe it would be *fart* easier to remember *burp* if they didn't have to *scratch scratch... yoink* listen to all your body noises *splurg gurgle flurp*.