"going to force Microsoft to spend more time on security and stability, and less time on adding new features."
That's exactly what Microsoft has been doing for some time now. We're 2.5 years out from the release of Windows XP; in this time there's been a fairly significant update to Windows Media Player, Movie Maker, and Messenger, and umm... that's it for features, folks! Pretty much everything else MS has released as updates to XP in that timeframe directly addresses security and stability. XP SP2 will be more of the same: all the binaries have been recompiled with stack corruption checking mechanisms in place, the firewall will be turned on by default, automatic updates will be pushed harder than ever, IE will get additional ActiveX security controls, there will be better integration with third-party AV solutions, RPC has been thoroughly worked over to improve security, etc. etc. Even Athlon 64 owners will get additional security in the form of the NX protection.
There's very little in the way of new features that aren't security-related. The closest one I can think of is the pop-up blocker, and that could even be considered a "job security" feature.
It's o this CTO's discredit that he has had his head in the sand for so long that he hasn't actually noticed this going on!
I'm sure the "good souls at NAMBLA" will appreciate us calling attention to a society of 'kiddies' who have no social life, know how to chat about 'body parts', and exchange nude pictures over the Internet.
Second, one of the features being added to Internet Explorer with SP2, is a lot of additional flexibility in controlling ActiveX behaviour. You can get a list of all the components that have been installed, and selectively remove them. You can also force IE to always disallow controls from a particular company, if you don't trust them (good for Gator, etc.)
Third, the firewall itself gives the user far more control and feedback than it used to have. You can read about the changes in more detail on this webpage. I'll bet you didn't know that you can control the new Windows Firewall from the command-line! How is this taking control away from the user? BTW, the reason applications like FTP and P2P are breaking, is because they make use of ports in strange and unconventional ways. Lots of firewalls have problems with this.
Fourth, Outlook XP didn't remove the ability to view attachments; they merely implemented a list of extensions which would be blocked by default. That's saved a lot of people from being infected by some of the viruses that have come around in the last couple of years... most of the time, the people who DO get infected are people who don't believe in upgrading their software and applying the latest Windows Updates.
Don't blame the tool for these things. Blame the people who design sites poorly, and who use Flash for advertising.
Flash excels in things like interactive presentation and training systems (e.g. online product demonstration), and it is of course popular wtih online humour sites like Homestar Runner, Camp Chaos, and Rather Good. There's no lack of political satire Flash cartoons out there, either.
Another reason Flash is good is that it's well-supported on many OS platforms. It's certainly more consistently supported, and has better development tools than the equivalent W3C standards.
I'm sure some people reading this have passed over Mozilla in the past because the "extra mouse buttons" as provided on the nicer Logitech, MS etc. mice that were bound to commands such as "Internet Back" didn't work.
Well, it works now -- musta happened sometime in the last two months, because it wasn't working then.
This was the last major usability flaw that prevented me from finally switching to Mozilla from IE6. Between that and the "native XP theming" support, this is finally a usable browser for me.
I'm no Mozilla advocate or anything, but if you are using IE, at least give Mozilla a shot...
Remember that, by default, the root password for MySQL is blank. Yes, the installation instructions tell you how to change it, but you aren't forced to do so in order to get a database up and running.
I consider this to be a design flaw in MySQL, and I imagine most security-conscious people would agree. Even if it was a case of generating a random password (or, e.g., falling back to PAM authentication for accounts w/o password), that would be preferrable to the current situation.
Aside from that, yes, MySQL does offer a pretty comprehensive "Internet security" solution when compared with MS-SQL 2000.
You may want to skip out a bit early, the main Zentraedi fleet of 4.8 million warships will be arriving in August of 2011 to blow the crap out of us...
I'm not clear as to where licensing issues would arise from using an ECMA standard -- especially considering Microsoft (and others, in the future) offer a *free* C# compiler and tools. I doubt you're clear as to what licensing issues would arise, either.
The W3C standards body isn't in the business of defining programming languages. They should stick with what they do well -- markup languages, and communication protocols built around HTTP.
That's fine and all, but what I really want to know is how these "simple forms of life" end up getting to Earth and acquiring jobs as managers and politicians...
We represent Ford Motor Company in intellectual property matters. We are writing to you regarding your unauthorized use of our client's "Ford(tm)" trademark.
As you know, Ford Motor Company produces and sells low-quality automobiles and trucks, and provides related services in the U.S.A. and internationally. Ford Motor Company is the owner of the mark (Ford) in the U.S. and other countries, and also owns domain names such as "ford.com", "ford.ca", "ford.co.uk", and "ford.de". Enclosed is a copy of U.S patent number 75799920 for your convenience and information.
We have become aware that you are using the mark "Ford" in connection with personal identification, family members, business associations and matters pertaining to your presidency of the United States of America. We also note that you have made use of the mark "Ford" when making personal acquaintences, making speeches, and when subscribing to magazines.
In view of Ford Motor Company's widespread use of its (Ford) mark in many countries around the world, any unauthorized use of the (Ford) mark causes Ford Motor Company great concern. In particular, such use may falsely suggest that political science students and professors, newspaper editorialists, and historians may use the Ford trademark in a manner which could dilute, tarnish and degrade the image associated with our client's (Ford) mark.
We request that you cease all use of (Ford), including "Gerald R. Ford", "President Ford", and "Mr. Ford", and/or any name, mark or logo which is confusingly or deceptively similar. In particular, we request that you stop using (Ford) in any form, as part of your name, your family's name, and/or in any verbal or written communication with other people, and take all steps necessary to have your name removed from any texts and material containing the name "Gerald R. Ford".
Please confirm in writing by February 9, 2001, that you, on behalf of yourself, your family, and history in general, will agree to this request.
Quoted from original post: "Only NetBSD can take advantage of high-quality Open Source OpenGL hard acceleration for a truly embedded gaming experience. Because of the BSD licence, game companies can embed NetBSD into their games to produce a bootable gaming disc. Put the disc in, reboot, and you're playing the game!" Don't get me wrong here, I have nothing against NetBSD, but there are several significant reasons why this is a bad idea. You can't patch or upgrade the game via the Internet -- If the company that made the game wanted to fix some bugs, or add new features, they can't. It'd be very slow -- games these days are big. Hundreds of megabytes is typical for an installation of any reasonably complex game. The files are copied to the hard-drive during installation simply because it'd be unbearably slow to repeatedly access the CD-ROM. Can't save or load games -- Unless you're proposing a file system, too... or maybe the CD should come packaged with support for several common filesystems? Then it becomes the game's responsibility to figure out where to put the flies -- and how the heck do you do that on a Linux- or Windows NT-based system, where you need to identify yourself prior to gaining access to parts of the system? Newer video/audio hardware may not be supported -- the only video and audio cards that would be supported would have to have all their support code on the CD, thus taking a lot of space away from the game itself. Card manufacturers provide drivers for major operating systems already, and update them for years after the card is first released to the public. Forget networked games -- Unless you're suggesting that traditional and WinModem drivers, LAN, ISDN, etc. card drivers, a TCP/IP (and IPX) stack should all be packed onto the CD, too. Even then, if you're arranging to play a multiplayer game with some other people, you'd probably arrange it ahead of time via ICQ or what-not. Many older machines can't boot CD-ROMs -- Oh yeah, that too, eh? Doesn't actually solve any problems -- The current system of writing, compiling, executing games on Windows, Mac, and Linux systems works fairly well. Bottlenecks aren't in the OS so much as they are in the architecture of the hardware you're using. There's no sense in reinventing the wheel all over again for the sake of less than one frame per second in Quake 3 Arena. If you want embedded gaming, use a console platform. There are several, and none of the above issues apply, since you're dealing with a single hardware spec. PC's are simply not suited. Daltorak
Amazing stuff. Lord British, thank you for a decade and change of incredible work. Tonight I'm gonna see if my original (!) copy of Ultima I, written in Integer BASIC on an Apple ][+, still boots. I have a feeling I won't be getting any sleep tonight.
Two decades... but let's not split hairs.;-)
It was really, really nice of them to include the entire Ultima I-IX series (plus Ultima's precursor, Akalabeth) in the Dragon Edition of Ultima IX. They've been nicely packaged with installers and such, along with a utility (MoSlo) to slow the older games down so that they will run on your fast machine. Well worth the money you pay for the box.
If you'd care to check your dates, you'd notice that Linux wasn't around for the best of the Ultima series. I was playing Ultima IV on an Apple// back in the early/mid 80's.
Origin was smarter, smaller, and more personable back in the mid-80's... I was referring to the Origin/Electronic Arts of the last several years.
For the record, I played (in this order, at or around the time of their releases) Ultima 2 on an Apple ][, Ultima ]I[ on a Commodore 64 (took five minutes to load... but had the best music to be found in any game at the time!)... Ultima IV on an Apple 2 and IBM PCjr (or was it a 286? probably the latter come to think of it), and Ultima V on the Amiga and PC... (The Amiga version also had some music whereas the other editions didn't).
This is what I meant by multi-platform... note that I didn't say multi-operating system (ie. Linux vs. Windows vs. DOS on i386 architecture).
Appearantly there IS an Ultima Online client port for Linux. And I don't suppose I will get into too much trouble for mentioning that server developers at Origin use Linux religiously.
"port", perhaps... on-the-shelf game, no. Besides, i's not the server developers that get to make marketing decisions.
And why are we talking about Linux here anyhow? This isn't a story about Linux, nor is this site entirely about Linux... so let's move on.
Richard Garriot, aka Lord British is one of the greatest game designers and conceptualists of our time. The behemoth-ness of Origin and Electronic Arts has crippled his ability to produce truly great games.
Anyone in the Open Source community can appreciate this on a certain level; if you were ordered by, let's say Linus Torvalds, how to design your Linux-compatible software, which you came up with the original idea for, -and- you were told to have it done by a deadline or less lose all support for developing your software, how would you feel? You'd probably say, "screw that, I want to do things my own way".
Regardless of the fact that Ultima never made it to Linux (thank Origin for that oversight -- Garriot was actually a believer in cross-platformed games!), the twelve (major) games released under the Ultima banner have collectively done more for fantasy role-playing on computers than anything else out there.
What the hell are overlays? They sound interesting - is it for overlaying, say, video from a card or MPEG player, or for something completely different?
- What's the key combination to print something in Windows?
Ctrl+P. Or... Alt-F, P... same as in KDE, generally...
- What's the key combination to close a window?
Ctrl+F4 to close a window in a multiple-document application. Alt+F4 to close the program itself.... same as in KDE.
- What's the key combination to save a file?
Ctrl+S... same as in KDE.
- Where does Game X install itself in the Start menu?
Any piece of software which has received a Microsoft Windows Windows-Logo certification, is required to ask you what location in the start folder to install. Incidentally, every game I've installed recently in Windows has asked me this (Ultima IX, Quake III, Unreal Tournament, The Sims, Alpha Centauri, Starcraft, and others). Oddly enough, the only recent game I've come across that -doesn't- let you choose, is a Microsoft game: Age of Empires II. Go figure...
Precious few KDE (or GNOME) apps, especially the non-KDE (or GNOME) ones, actually install themselves into your "menu" anyhow. Certainly there aren't nice, organized links to things like the software's web-page, the documentation, and so on... A lot of Windows programs do this. KDE (and GNOME) do not, except on initial install of the operating system.
Hopefully, -hopefully-, the good folks working on KDE 2.0 will address this issue, and come up with a really great system for installing/uninstalling software designed for their manager. It's about time we dump this text-based autoconf crap for GUI apps, and make install procedures "even your mother could use".
(And before anyone extolls the virtues of the various GUI package managers, I've yet to see one that provides icons... and certainly none of them will propogate said icons for multiple users, so that distributing a new app to all of a machine's users (or uninstalling) is easy.)
Sounds like you don't have any real experience been an Open Source developer...
This is fairly straight-forward: Making money at a day job, and pursuing a hobby (read: Open Source software development) are two entirely different things for many people. Some fortunate people at a growing number of companies get to develop "free" software and be paid for it, but a lot don't... and that's fine. OSS is -not- a de-facto industry; it's a well-developed hobby, purused by thousands and thousands of people around the world.
Linus Torvalds' day-job has nothing to do with his hobby, which is a sort of stweardship and direction-provider for the Linux kernel. Sure, Linux is part of the Transmeta strategy; why? Not because Linus works for them, but becuase they're smart... it doesn't take a lot of marbles to figure out that the Linux kernel is a very suitable fit for the 'portable computing' and 'internet appliance' market, than, say, the Windows 98 kernel.
Of course, they also got Windows to operate on their platform, which is really just a demonstration of 100% x86-compatibility. Good for them; it shows that they're not blind to where a good chunk of the market is still at.
You said: If the Open Source movement and philosophy are strong enough that companies such as Red Hat, SuSe, TurboLinux, VA Linux, and others are willing to build a business around it, then Transmeta, with Open Source's icon as an employee, should be out in front of everbody else. Instead, they cynically use Linus to garner interest and at the same time to shield themselves from criticisms of the company's behaviors.
Uhh, no. Transmeta isn't targeting just the Linux audience. Linus is there, helping with the Linux end of things; that doesn't exclude Transmeta from creating something that's Windows-compatible, too. And let's face it, the Technology behind Transmeta is pretty darned cool (literally!)... But he's not a decision-maker there by any means. He's an employee.
So what if he's world-famous for the work he's done outside of the context of Transmeta? It's a hobby...
Daltorak.
(P.S. For what it's worth, more and more companies are putting up "open source"esque pages. Why? Cause they want to give the appearance that they're 'with it', and they want to attract the attention of the otherwise hard-to-impress segment of computing society -- the geeks)
With the good people at Mandrake working towards a "7.0" release, they're really showing that they've come out of the shadows of Redhat, and can now stand on their own as a great distribution which most anybody could use.
It's also not a bad idea at all to get the beta program rolling now. Who knows, it may be weeks or months before a 7.0 final comes out; that's not so important. They just might be waiting for Xfree86 4.0... and once that's all set and ready to go, the remainder of their distribution will already be looking sharp. This sort of extended program is needed, considering that Mandrake also enjoys the pleasure of sitting on a lot of store shelves (often enough in places where Redhat isn't!), so they have more to live up to than the average geek's-paradise distribution.
It's humour, Mr. Lee. I'm playing on the word 'scuzzy' in the context of slimy, sleazy, etc... since we all know there are a great many guys out there who comfortably fit into that category.
That's all. No ranting here. Now shoo, take your useful posts to another thread.
Slashdot Mirror
"going to force Microsoft to spend more time on security and stability, and less time on adding new features."
That's exactly what Microsoft has been doing for some time now. We're 2.5 years out from the release of Windows XP; in this time there's been a fairly significant update to Windows Media Player, Movie Maker, and Messenger, and umm... that's it for features, folks! Pretty much everything else MS has released as updates to XP in that timeframe directly addresses security and stability. XP SP2 will be more of the same: all the binaries have been recompiled with stack corruption checking mechanisms in place, the firewall will be turned on by default, automatic updates will be pushed harder than ever, IE will get additional ActiveX security controls, there will be better integration with third-party AV solutions, RPC has been thoroughly worked over to improve security, etc. etc. Even Athlon 64 owners will get additional security in the form of the NX protection.
There's very little in the way of new features that aren't security-related. The closest one I can think of is the pop-up blocker, and that could even be considered a "job security" feature.
It's o this CTO's discredit that he has had his head in the sand for so long that he hasn't actually noticed this going on!
I'm sure the "good souls at NAMBLA" will appreciate us calling attention to a society of 'kiddies' who have no social life, know how to chat about 'body parts', and exchange nude pictures over the Internet.
SP2 doesn't include anti-virus software. It provides better integration with third-party anti-virus solutions, and that's it.
You, sir, have not done your research. While this is typical of a ranting & raving slashdotter, it also spreads lies and misinformation.
First of all, Microsoft has published a document titled How to Enable Remote Debugging on Windows XP Service Pack 2.
Second, one of the features being added to Internet Explorer with SP2, is a lot of additional flexibility in controlling ActiveX behaviour. You can get a list of all the components that have been installed, and selectively remove them. You can also force IE to always disallow controls from a particular company, if you don't trust them (good for Gator, etc.)
Third, the firewall itself gives the user far more control and feedback than it used to have. You can read about the changes in more detail on this webpage. I'll bet you didn't know that you can control the new Windows Firewall from the command-line! How is this taking control away from the user? BTW, the reason applications like FTP and P2P are breaking, is because they make use of ports in strange and unconventional ways. Lots of firewalls have problems with this.
Fourth, Outlook XP didn't remove the ability to view attachments; they merely implemented a list of extensions which would be blocked by default. That's saved a lot of people from being infected by some of the viruses that have come around in the last couple of years... most of the time, the people who DO get infected are people who don't believe in upgrading their software and applying the latest Windows Updates.
Don't blame the tool for these things. Blame the people who design sites poorly, and who use Flash for advertising.
Flash excels in things like interactive presentation and training systems (e.g. online product demonstration), and it is of course popular wtih online humour sites like Homestar Runner, Camp Chaos, and Rather Good. There's no lack of political satire Flash cartoons out there, either.
Another reason Flash is good is that it's well-supported on many OS platforms. It's certainly more consistently supported, and has better development tools than the equivalent W3C standards.
a flight-attendant simulator, too. You know, like, a hot red-head with pretty eyes, who brings you free food and alcohol.
I'm sure some people reading this have passed over Mozilla in the past because the "extra mouse buttons" as provided on the nicer Logitech, MS etc. mice that were bound to commands such as "Internet Back" didn't work.
Well, it works now -- musta happened sometime in the last two months, because it wasn't working then.
This was the last major usability flaw that prevented me from finally switching to Mozilla from IE6. Between that and the "native XP theming" support, this is finally a usable browser for me.
I'm no Mozilla advocate or anything, but if you are using IE, at least give Mozilla a shot...
Remember that, by default, the root password for MySQL is blank. Yes, the installation instructions tell you how to change it, but you aren't forced to do so in order to get a database up and running.
I consider this to be a design flaw in MySQL, and I imagine most security-conscious people would agree. Even if it was a case of generating a random password (or, e.g., falling back to PAM authentication for accounts w/o password), that would be preferrable to the current situation.
Aside from that, yes, MySQL does offer a pretty comprehensive "Internet security" solution when compared with MS-SQL 2000.
You may want to skip out a bit early, the main Zentraedi fleet of 4.8 million warships will be arriving in August of 2011 to blow the crap out of us...
Feeling masochstic? Try the Brainfuck language. It's every bit as good as it sounds.
C# is not proprietary, it's an ECMA standard:
http://www.ecma.ch/ecma1/STAND/ecma-334.htm
I'm not clear as to where licensing issues would arise from using an ECMA standard -- especially considering Microsoft (and others, in the future) offer a *free* C# compiler and tools. I doubt you're clear as to what licensing issues would arise, either.
The W3C standards body isn't in the business of defining programming languages. They should stick with what they do well -- markup languages, and communication protocols built around HTTP.
That's fine and all, but what I really want to know is how these "simple forms of life" end up getting to Earth and acquiring jobs as managers and politicians...
Dear Gerald R. Ford,:
We represent Ford Motor Company in intellectual property matters. We are writing to you regarding your unauthorized use of our client's "Ford(tm)" trademark.
As you know, Ford Motor Company produces and sells low-quality automobiles and trucks, and provides related services in the U.S.A. and internationally. Ford Motor Company is the owner of the mark (Ford) in the U.S. and other countries, and also owns domain names such as "ford.com", "ford.ca", "ford.co.uk", and "ford.de". Enclosed is a copy of U.S patent number 75799920 for your convenience and information.
We have become aware that you are using the mark "Ford" in connection with personal identification, family members, business associations and matters pertaining to your presidency of the United States of America. We also note that you have made use of the mark "Ford" when making personal acquaintences, making speeches, and when subscribing to magazines.
In view of Ford Motor Company's widespread use of its (Ford) mark in many countries around the world, any unauthorized use of the (Ford) mark causes Ford Motor Company great concern. In particular, such use may falsely suggest that political science students and professors, newspaper editorialists, and historians may use the Ford trademark in a manner which could dilute, tarnish and degrade the image associated with our client's (Ford) mark.
We request that you cease all use of (Ford), including "Gerald R. Ford", "President Ford", and "Mr. Ford", and/or any name, mark or logo which is confusingly or deceptively similar. In particular, we request that you stop using (Ford) in any form, as part of your name, your family's name, and/or in any verbal or written communication with other people, and take all steps necessary to have your name removed from any texts and material containing the name "Gerald R. Ford".
Please confirm in writing by February 9, 2001, that you, on behalf of yourself, your family, and history in general, will agree to this request.
Your cooperation is anticipated and appreciated.
Sincerely,
Quoted from original post: "Only NetBSD can take advantage of high-quality Open Source OpenGL hard acceleration for a truly embedded gaming experience. Because of the BSD licence, game companies can embed NetBSD into their games to produce a bootable gaming disc. Put the disc in, reboot, and you're playing the game!" Don't get me wrong here, I have nothing against NetBSD, but there are several significant reasons why this is a bad idea. You can't patch or upgrade the game via the Internet -- If the company that made the game wanted to fix some bugs, or add new features, they can't. It'd be very slow -- games these days are big. Hundreds of megabytes is typical for an installation of any reasonably complex game. The files are copied to the hard-drive during installation simply because it'd be unbearably slow to repeatedly access the CD-ROM. Can't save or load games -- Unless you're proposing a file system, too... or maybe the CD should come packaged with support for several common filesystems? Then it becomes the game's responsibility to figure out where to put the flies -- and how the heck do you do that on a Linux- or Windows NT-based system, where you need to identify yourself prior to gaining access to parts of the system? Newer video/audio hardware may not be supported -- the only video and audio cards that would be supported would have to have all their support code on the CD, thus taking a lot of space away from the game itself. Card manufacturers provide drivers for major operating systems already, and update them for years after the card is first released to the public. Forget networked games -- Unless you're suggesting that traditional and WinModem drivers, LAN, ISDN, etc. card drivers, a TCP/IP (and IPX) stack should all be packed onto the CD, too. Even then, if you're arranging to play a multiplayer game with some other people, you'd probably arrange it ahead of time via ICQ or what-not. Many older machines can't boot CD-ROMs -- Oh yeah, that too, eh? Doesn't actually solve any problems -- The current system of writing, compiling, executing games on Windows, Mac, and Linux systems works fairly well. Bottlenecks aren't in the OS so much as they are in the architecture of the hardware you're using. There's no sense in reinventing the wheel all over again for the sake of less than one frame per second in Quake 3 Arena. If you want embedded gaming, use a console platform. There are several, and none of the above issues apply, since you're dealing with a single hardware spec. PC's are simply not suited. Daltorak
Two decades... but let's not split hairs. ;-)
It was really, really nice of them to include the entire Ultima I-IX series (plus Ultima's precursor, Akalabeth) in the Dragon Edition of Ultima IX. They've been nicely packaged with installers and such, along with a utility (MoSlo) to slow the older games down so that they will run on your fast machine. Well worth the money you pay for the box.
Daltorak
Origin was smarter, smaller, and more personable back in the mid-80's... I was referring to the Origin/Electronic Arts of the last several years.
For the record, I played (in this order, at or around the time of their releases) Ultima 2 on an Apple ][, Ultima ]I[ on a Commodore 64 (took five minutes to load... but had the best music to be found in any game at the time!)... Ultima IV on an Apple 2 and IBM PCjr (or was it a 286? probably the latter come to think of it), and Ultima V on the Amiga and PC... (The Amiga version also had some music whereas the other editions didn't).
This is what I meant by multi-platform... note that I didn't say multi-operating system (ie. Linux vs. Windows vs. DOS on i386 architecture).
Appearantly there IS an Ultima Online client port for Linux. And I don't suppose I will get into too much trouble for mentioning that server developers at Origin use Linux religiously.
"port", perhaps... on-the-shelf game, no. Besides, i's not the server developers that get to make marketing decisions.
And why are we talking about Linux here anyhow? This isn't a story about Linux, nor is this site entirely about Linux... so let's move on.
Daltorak
Anyone in the Open Source community can appreciate this on a certain level; if you were ordered by, let's say Linus Torvalds, how to design your Linux-compatible software, which you came up with the original idea for, -and- you were told to have it done by a deadline or less lose all support for developing your software, how would you feel? You'd probably say, "screw that, I want to do things my own way".
Regardless of the fact that Ultima never made it to Linux (thank Origin for that oversight -- Garriot was actually a believer in cross-platformed games!), the twelve (major) games released under the Ultima banner have collectively done more for fantasy role-playing on computers than anything else out there.
Best wishes to Garriot in his future endeavours.
Daltorak
Or maybe they could just pay off Courtney Love to make her go away...
Daltorak.
Yes.
Daltorak
Ctrl+P. Or... Alt-F, P... same as in KDE, generally...
- What's the key combination to close a window?
Ctrl+F4 to close a window in a multiple-document application. Alt+F4 to close the program itself.... same as in KDE.
- What's the key combination to save a file?
Ctrl+S... same as in KDE.
- Where does Game X install itself in the Start menu?
Any piece of software which has received a Microsoft Windows Windows-Logo certification, is required to ask you what location in the start folder to install. Incidentally, every game I've installed recently in Windows has asked me this (Ultima IX, Quake III, Unreal Tournament, The Sims, Alpha Centauri, Starcraft, and others). Oddly enough, the only recent game I've come across that -doesn't- let you choose, is a Microsoft game: Age of Empires II. Go figure...
Precious few KDE (or GNOME) apps, especially the non-KDE (or GNOME) ones, actually install themselves into your "menu" anyhow. Certainly there aren't nice, organized links to things like the software's web-page, the documentation, and so on... A lot of Windows programs do this. KDE (and GNOME) do not, except on initial install of the operating system.
Hopefully, -hopefully-, the good folks working on KDE 2.0 will address this issue, and come up with a really great system for installing/uninstalling software designed for their manager. It's about time we dump this text-based autoconf crap for GUI apps, and make install procedures "even your mother could use".
(And before anyone extolls the virtues of the various GUI package managers, I've yet to see one that provides icons... and certainly none of them will propogate said icons for multiple users, so that distributing a new app to all of a machine's users (or uninstalling) is easy.)
Daltorak.
This is fairly straight-forward: Making money at a day job, and pursuing a hobby (read: Open Source software development) are two entirely different things for many people. Some fortunate people at a growing number of companies get to develop "free" software and be paid for it, but a lot don't... and that's fine. OSS is -not- a de-facto industry; it's a well-developed hobby, purused by thousands and thousands of people around the world.
Linus Torvalds' day-job has nothing to do with his hobby, which is a sort of stweardship and direction-provider for the Linux kernel. Sure, Linux is part of the Transmeta strategy; why? Not because Linus works for them, but becuase they're smart... it doesn't take a lot of marbles to figure out that the Linux kernel is a very suitable fit for the 'portable computing' and 'internet appliance' market, than, say, the Windows 98 kernel.
Of course, they also got Windows to operate on their platform, which is really just a demonstration of 100% x86-compatibility. Good for them; it shows that they're not blind to where a good chunk of the market is still at.
You said: If the Open Source movement and philosophy are strong enough that companies such as Red Hat, SuSe, TurboLinux, VA Linux, and others are willing to build a business around it, then Transmeta, with Open Source's icon as an employee, should be out in front of everbody else. Instead, they cynically use Linus to garner interest and at the same time to shield themselves from criticisms of the company's behaviors.
Uhh, no. Transmeta isn't targeting just the Linux audience. Linus is there, helping with the Linux end of things; that doesn't exclude Transmeta from creating something that's Windows-compatible, too. And let's face it, the Technology behind Transmeta is pretty darned cool (literally!)... But he's not a decision-maker there by any means. He's an employee.
So what if he's world-famous for the work he's done outside of the context of Transmeta? It's a hobby...
Daltorak.
(P.S. For what it's worth, more and more companies are putting up "open source"esque pages. Why? Cause they want to give the appearance that they're 'with it', and they want to attract the attention of the otherwise hard-to-impress segment of computing society -- the geeks)
I really doubt people are itching to write emails like:
Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right B A Select Start.
Daltorak
With the good people at Mandrake working towards a "7.0" release, they're really showing that they've come out of the shadows of Redhat, and can now stand on their own as a great distribution which most anybody could use.
It's also not a bad idea at all to get the beta program rolling now. Who knows, it may be weeks or months before a 7.0 final comes out; that's not so important. They just might be waiting for Xfree86 4.0... and once that's all set and ready to go, the remainder of their distribution will already be looking sharp. This sort of extended program is needed, considering that Mandrake also enjoys the pleasure of sitting on a lot of store shelves (often enough in places where Redhat isn't!), so they have more to live up to than the average geek's-paradise distribution.
They deserve your support.
Daltorak
It's humour, Mr. Lee. I'm playing on the word 'scuzzy' in the context of slimy, sleazy, etc... since we all know there are a great many guys out there who comfortably fit into that category.
That's all. No ranting here. Now shoo, take your useful posts to another thread.
Daltorak