"IMHO, if one-tenth the energy that was put into whining about X and flailing at never-quite-ready replacement rendering systems went into these sorts of things instead, we'd have a nicer-than-Mac/Windows desktop GUI for free by now"
This would require three things: consistancy, usability, and testing. All applications would need to look the same, behave the same, and the overall environment would need to undergo massive usability testing. Right clicking would need to preform the same action in every program. Most of all, someone would need to write up a user interface guidebook that the application developers would adhere to and follow exactly (much easier said than done in the open source world;D ).
I am willing to bet that the need for transparent networking, while really freaking cool and useful, has deminished greatly in recent years, especially with desktops becoming much more powerful and with the move away from terminal/host to client/server computing.
MS Windows 3/95/NT do not have this feature out of the box, and yet it wasn't a huge issue for administrators or especially the users. Plus things like PCAnywhere or Timbuktu let you do screen sharing when needed.
Re:Moving away from X
on
Xfree86 4.2.0 Out
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
In my original post I failed to mention that, yes all of those features do exist today as extensions or whatnots (except a new programming environment obiviously).
Yes, I want what would be today's X + ext + wm, but is this a good and efficient architecture, or piles of backwards compatability on top of each other? How about color matching of various displays and printers?
Here's a question that I want to address carefully, because it does sound a bit like flamebait.
Should the Unix/Linux world move away from X? Redesign a graphical layer from the ground up, supporting antialiasing, transparency, enhanced programming environment, and a new, well defined and examined user interface? This would be going the Mac OS X route. In this model, I am not advocating abandoning X completely, but instead for backwards compatability run a rootless X server.
Which would you rather do, set up a colony for the first time a few months away or a few years away? At least with Mars, if something goes horribly horribly wrong, they'll only be a few days or months away, as opposed to lightyears.
Some have suggested that we colonize a small part of the sea as a training ground.
My lease for my apartment had a 'no jury trial' clause. What it meant was that you didn't wave your right to go to court, but instead the trial would be held without a jury, and a judge making the final decision. This is done because sometimes the judge has a better understanding of the law and the technicalities than the jury. This would make sense here.
"Honestly, the people that attach word docs are usually the people that give you a blank stare when you say words like 'linux' and 'unix'"
I attach word documents every day. My organization has standardizied on Word, and for good reason too. It works decently, and can read the notes and information vendors send me. The above generalization is so far removed from reality its silly.
I've seen enough bad MIS student presentations that I don' t think anyone teaches it right. Although public speaking and negotiating is as much learned as it is psychological.
I might of spoken too fast here, not fully realizing the original poster's point.
My previous message is about viruses spreading via email to other users. As for getting a virus on in the first place, use one of those remote holes that pop up from time to time.:) Or stop using outlook and switch to Eudora.;)
Groups are working on deafness too, it's not like everyone's doing eyes today. Rush Limbaugh has gone deaf and is trying a new surgery to regain his hearing.
We're chiefly visual creatures. I'd rather be deaf than blind. Much safer, plus you can drive.
This would be nice to have one day. On my PDA on the way home from work.
Computer, connect to SuperFoodMart and SmartShop database. What might I need today?
"You buy corn approximately every 14 days. It has been 8 days since you last bought corn."
Hmm. Nah, I do not need to purchase corn.
"You have bought milk 4 days ago. You normally buy milk every 6 days. Milk is on sale at SmartShop today for $3.48."
Ah, indeed. I will pick up milk today so I don't need to go get some over the weekend when it might not be on sale.
They're tracking the information anyways, we might as well use it. Interconnect multiple stores and you can find the cheapest deal in town. I'm not sure how practicle this application would be in real life, it might be too inaccurate or intrusive to work effectively.
>I'm not sure what the costs are on actual fiber cable, but it's certainly not as cheap as CAT5.
The price (as of about 2 weeks ago) for 1,000 feet of bulk Cat5E (PVC) from www.datacommwarehouse.com is $99.99, plenum is $279.99, two-wire PVC fiber costs $329.99, and two-wire plenum fiber is $349.99.
Yes, I know datacomm isn't the cheapest place out there.:)
Same thing with power outlets. There used to never be enough power outlets in rooms. Then that changed over the past few decades.:)
Remote control for lighting should be done with X-10 enabled equipment. It's a simple, low speed network, but it doesn't need to be fast. Most X-10 devices just need to turn on or off. Plus it runs over the existing power lines, so that will save a lot of money not having to run all those cables to turn on each light.
HDTV at its max resolution, uncompressed, requires 1.2Gbps. Heehee. Bandwidth!:)
Slashdot Mirror
"IMHO, if one-tenth the energy that was put into whining about X and flailing at never-quite-ready replacement rendering systems went into these sorts of things instead, we'd have a nicer-than-Mac/Windows desktop GUI for free by now"
;D ).
This would require three things: consistancy, usability, and testing. All applications would need to look the same, behave the same, and the overall environment would need to undergo massive usability testing. Right clicking would need to preform the same action in every program. Most of all, someone would need to write up a user interface guidebook that the application developers would adhere to and follow exactly (much easier said than done in the open source world
I am willing to bet that the need for transparent networking, while really freaking cool and useful, has deminished greatly in recent years, especially with desktops becoming much more powerful and with the move away from terminal/host to client/server computing.
MS Windows 3/95/NT do not have this feature out of the box, and yet it wasn't a huge issue for administrators or especially the users. Plus things like PCAnywhere or Timbuktu let you do screen sharing when needed.
In my original post I failed to mention that, yes all of those features do exist today as extensions or whatnots (except a new programming environment obiviously).
Yes, I want what would be today's X + ext + wm, but is this a good and efficient architecture, or piles of backwards compatability on top of each other? How about color matching of various displays and printers?
Here's a question that I want to address carefully, because it does sound a bit like flamebait.
Should the Unix/Linux world move away from X? Redesign a graphical layer from the ground up, supporting antialiasing, transparency, enhanced programming environment, and a new, well defined and examined user interface? This would be going the Mac OS X route. In this model, I am not advocating abandoning X completely, but instead for backwards compatability run a rootless X server.
There is a nice piece of shareware (freeware?) PrintToPDF by James Walker for classic Mac. It works quite well.
by the article submitter, slashdot editors, and moderators of course. Who else is there? :D
Which would you rather do, set up a colony for the first time a few months away or a few years away? At least with Mars, if something goes horribly horribly wrong, they'll only be a few days or months away, as opposed to lightyears.
Some have suggested that we colonize a small part of the sea as a training ground.
"Remember those annoying commercials with the flashing colors and slow, loud beat?"
:)
You've just described....every MTV commercial, ever.
Although failure the first time around doesn't necessarily mean you shouldn't try again, after learning which mistakes you made in the past.
My lease for my apartment had a 'no jury trial' clause. What it meant was that you didn't wave your right to go to court, but instead the trial would be held without a jury, and a judge making the final decision. This is done because sometimes the judge has a better understanding of the law and the technicalities than the jury. This would make sense here.
Can a lawyer verify this for me?
I don't think anyone notices the little label, whether it's there or not.
PDF is an excellent final presentation format. I perfer manuals to be in PDF format instead of Word. Agreed.
My organization does use PDF as well, however, I'm in need of creating, editing, and tracking changes to documents all day, so we use Word for that.
"So, you are saying that your organization is a nice little Microsoft utopia guided by the gentle hands of the Microsoft dictatorship?"
No I'm not. And claiming that a place that standardizes on Office is a little Microsoft utopia will make your arguments look foolish.
"Honestly, the people that attach word docs are usually the people that give you a blank stare when you say words like 'linux' and 'unix'"
I attach word documents every day. My organization has standardizied on Word, and for good reason too. It works decently, and can read the notes and information vendors send me. The above generalization is so far removed from reality its silly.
Don't you mean ascii txt? ;)
http://boston.internet.com/news/article/0,1928,200 1_950451,00.html
Public free search engine didn't pan out for them.
Lucent makes a VPN firewall thingie called "Lucent Brick". That's it, just Brick.
I've seen enough bad MIS student presentations that I don' t think anyone teaches it right. Although public speaking and negotiating is as much learned as it is psychological.
I like Scott Adam's term "PowerPoint Poisoning"
I might of spoken too fast here, not fully realizing the original poster's point.
:) Or stop using outlook and switch to Eudora. ;)
My previous message is about viruses spreading via email to other users. As for getting a virus on in the first place, use one of those remote holes that pop up from time to time.
Okay fine. You have a mail spool, saved messages, locally cached messages, and sent mail files in your home directory right?
/var/spool/mail/you; cat ~/.addressbook
cat
parse out every email address
for each user
mail -s "Hey look at this!" ++ $virus
Groups are working on deafness too, it's not like everyone's doing eyes today. Rush Limbaugh has gone deaf and is trying a new surgery to regain his hearing.
We're chiefly visual creatures. I'd rather be deaf than blind. Much safer, plus you can drive.
And what brilliant piece of case study brought you to this conclusion?
If a book printer stops printing a tome, it doesn't automatically lose it's copyright and reproduction privilages.
This would be nice to have one day. On my PDA on the way home from work.
Computer, connect to SuperFoodMart and SmartShop database. What might I need today?
"You buy corn approximately every 14 days. It has been 8 days since you last bought corn."
Hmm. Nah, I do not need to purchase corn.
"You have bought milk 4 days ago. You normally buy milk every 6 days. Milk is on sale at SmartShop today for $3.48."
Ah, indeed. I will pick up milk today so I don't need to go get some over the weekend when it might not be on sale.
They're tracking the information anyways, we might as well use it. Interconnect multiple stores and you can find the cheapest deal in town. I'm not sure how practicle this application would be in real life, it might be too inaccurate or intrusive to work effectively.
My mistake. It's an 8 port switch with one gigabit port. I misread the press release.
>I'm not sure what the costs are on actual fiber cable, but it's certainly not as cheap as CAT5.
:)
The price (as of about 2 weeks ago) for 1,000 feet of bulk Cat5E (PVC) from www.datacommwarehouse.com is $99.99, plenum is $279.99, two-wire PVC fiber costs $329.99, and two-wire plenum fiber is $349.99.
Yes, I know datacomm isn't the cheapest place out there.
Same thing with power outlets. There used to never be enough power outlets in rooms. Then that changed over the past few decades. :)
:)
Remote control for lighting should be done with X-10 enabled equipment. It's a simple, low speed network, but it doesn't need to be fast. Most X-10 devices just need to turn on or off. Plus it runs over the existing power lines, so that will save a lot of money not having to run all those cables to turn on each light.
HDTV at its max resolution, uncompressed, requires 1.2Gbps. Heehee. Bandwidth!