I use MySQL to store a lot of meta-data about files on my computers. It's really a very useful tool to have and I'd like to see something like it made standard as a virtual filesytem.
With Microsoft's and Apple's push for db-driven filesystems has MySQL considered doing anything in this area? It'd seem to me that MySQL has a strong position to become a cross-platform defacto standard for this type of thing.
Maybe M$ needs to make a Knoppix-like cd that can download and install Windows updates to the computer? Put the disc in, bootup, it automaticly finds Windows and the network, finds, downloads, and installs any updates, and then reboots into Windows. Give one such cd to every Windows user (and make it easy to burn a new copy) and then it's easy to apply updates before booting into Windows.
Such a CD could run Linux, some secured variant of Windows, or whatever other OS M$ wanted so as long as it came with no network ports open. Since it'd be a read-only medium and would have no additional software (besides the update program) that could be ran it'd be very unlikely to get infected during the update.
They should build an armored mode into Windows where it rejects all network connections and won't let any other programs run. Start Windows in armored mode, fetch updates, and then return to the user-friendly easy-target mode. I do something like this on my Linux boxes by specifying a very strict firewall at boot. Then I have rug (part of Red Carpet) fetch the updates. Then it goes into a safe put usable firewall mode that lets normal traffic in and out. Pretty much the same idea.
That's being done but it's a hell of a pain to get any logs from the dot com companies involved in the meantime. Without those third party logs we can't further investigate and all the evidence is getting colder and harder to follow. That and we just don't have the funds to take off work for weeks to do such an investigation. Even if we got all the evidence lined up you know as well as I do that any hacking attempts by someone that has any idea what they're doing will be all but impossible to prove in court.
The whole thing has already seriously drained our funds. To stay in business the best we can really do is ignore the bastards and hope that everybody in the office obeys the security policies we put in place.
Reminds me a lil of my talk with the FBI the other day. They said thye really couldn't do anything about an ongoing attack on our business by a competitior, although the actions are definately illegal and criminal, until the damages can be verified to be at least US$1,000,000. If we don't make it to that level of damages because we've been driven out of business first then tough luck. Great.
On the other hand my backup plan is to go into hacking myself and steal about US$900,000 from the jerks doing this to us. As long as the FBI doesn't care I guess I might as well. Oh yeah, the local police, who have an Internet crime department, claim to be unable to deal with any crimes involving the Internet.
Added to your story about the SEC I think my confidence in the governments ability to help me is pretty low. Nice that my tax dollars are paying to protect only big businesses.
If it might be used by children you could teach mousing skills with a coloring book such as mine at http://kavlon.org/index.php/cb as well as whatever skills could be fueled by appropiate pictures to color. Runs under Windows, Linux, or whatever you happen to have.
I have a small diskless mini-itx system hooked to my tv and (wired) network for this purpose. It runs my own custom Linux distro off a CF card. It can scan the lan for NFS and SMB shares. It then scans all shares for media files and then offers playback of all such files it finds. It doesn't play DVD or CD discs though because I figured I already have several machines hooked to my tv that can do that.
I'm working to sepperate my custom stuff out so it can be added to the WOMP distro (and others?) so that maybe I won't have to keep making my own distro. When nano-itx boards come out I'm planning on making an even smaller device.:)
The system I use is mostly beneficial because 1) it allows payments as small as 1/10th a cent and 2) because it charges neither the vendor or the customer any fees and 3) it's much easier to implement than most payment systems and 4) it allows easy management of what funds are released to whom. I use it for online auctions, pay-per-view content, buying from my online store, etc.
Yes, it'd be good for porn sites but it's also good for so many other things. Really credit cards are something of a hassle for both th vendor and the customer. It's only because there isn't yet any easier mainstream method of paying that we still use them.
The really sad part is that movie studios needed someone to tell them these things to begin with. It's so obvious.
You have a size of disc customers have grown used to and find convient. You have data you want to deliver. You can fit your data on a disc of the size your customers find convient. Okay light bulb #1.. put your data on those damn discs and sell it.
Wideley accepted universal standards that work in a broad set of hardware and software is good. Life is easier for the manufacturers. Life is easier for the customers. Everything is cheaper due to mass adoption. Light bulb #2 use universal standards.
That such things even need someone to come along and fight hard to make them happen shows why the entertainment business is so hopeless and why computers and the Internet are going to shatter their business.
I disagree that people, in the future, won't want to buy music and movies on physical media though. I think there is a feeling of holding a physical item that is pleasing for a buyer. Not that online distribution won't be popular but I don't think sales of physical discs is a concept going away. I have many movies on my hdd's but I still own hundreds of DVDs because I like owning them. Besides, buying physical discs leaves the chance open to buy a copy of your favorite movie in a neat box with a tshirt thrown in or whatever.
Re:Plenty of colors for the dirty deed.
on
Reverse Graffiti
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· Score: 1
They can feel free to do some negative graffiti on my living room. I'd be properly amussed to find someone had came in and cleaned certain areas of the floor to make a logo.
You think there hasn't been a flood of people in the software development market that drove the prices down? That happens in every market. The point is to realize that if your competition can sell what is good enough for lower than you can sell your high quality work then you'll have to match their rates unless you can find enough people looking for high quality work. That's just the way life is. It sucks but what can you do? Either live with it or simply learn to find those high paying jobs that demand quality.
Just to make a suggestion.. if you do contract work then try to find a good sales guy to do your sales for you. Work I'd have charged $500 for I've seen good sales guys sale for $15000. Give them 1/2 as commission and you still make a lot more profit than you otherwise would have. $7500 beats the hell out of $500 for a weeks worth of work.
If you think you're the only one that got ripped off from doing free or low cost work then you're obviously blind. I doubt many of us on here haven't had stuff like that happen. That's no reason to be an ass and assume everyone is out to get you. A good many of us does contract work and yes sometimes we don't get paid and yes sometimes we don't get credit where it's due. It sucks monkey balls. That doesn't mean you should go live in a closet and never work again. Not even if it's a really nice walk in closet.
Dude, I think you need to go get a job and a girlfriend and chill out. I realize you were abducted by aliens and forced to work at minimum wage while undergoing an anal probe but jeez you are off your rocker.;)
So if you're to good to work for $8/hr then go back to working at Burger King for $5/hr.;)
Besides I didn't say I wasn't going to pay the going rate. I've always been fair when hiring contractors for projects in the past. If that means I pay $20/hr instead of $200/hr and that isn't good enough for you then simply don't apply. I would have been very happy to be making $20/hr to practice my skills when I was in school.
I didn't mention a specific project because my DNS is messed up for a few days and thus nobody can go to my website right now. Here is the Freshmeat link though. This project is a coloring book and I'd like to make it a decent little edutainment program. I have other projects I'd like to hire artists for too if the process goes smooth for this project. I'm largely interested in edutainment so most of my games are oriented towards that.
I'm perfectly okay with paying artists for their work. If anyone wants to donate time that's great too but I don't mind paying.
I have every intention of paying with real cash. The couple possible artists I've talked to so far I would pay for their work if they were interested. If someone just offered to donate their work to the project I'd probably accept but I'd still look for someone to hire also. In this case there is really no end to the art I can use so it's my intention to keep buying it until I have enough to, with the rest of my program, fill a CD. Then I'd like to sell the program on CD for like $5 for people that don't want to download it all. The Windows executable is only a couple megs in size and the Linux executable is less than one meg.. so that leaves a lot of room for art.
Well part of the idea of posting on Slashdot was to see if any users were, or knew, artists that might want to make a few bucks.
Exposure isn't yet what I'm really working on though. My one program I most need artists for was actually in the July issue of Linux Journal Magazine. Sadly I had no advance warning and my own website has been down due to dns problems I'm trying to get worked out. Darn, talk about bad timing! I hope when I get a 1.x version they'll give me another print up.:)
I'd pay extra for a console that was not only backward compatible with it's previous version but also with other older consoles. I don't stop playing games just because they aren't the newest coolest thing out anymore. I play lots of PS1 and Dreamcast games and now and then even break out old favorites like Super Mario Brothers, Sonic, or even Atari classics. I have so many boxes plugged to my tv that I've actually popped the fuse for my living room by turning them all on at once.
So in short.. I'm another of that 10% that likes consoles to be backward compatible.
If the PS3 would not only support PS1 and PS2 games but also Atari, Nintendo, Sega, games that'd definately cinche me buying one. Even if they only added an extra chip or two to the console to add that support and I had to buy all those old games on a PS3 compatible DVD or download them from the network to the PS3 harddrive. That sort of legacy support would be cheap and easy to add and I would be willing to pay extra for it. I'm sure Atari, Nintendo, Sega, etc could be talked into cutting a pretty good licensing deal for the rights too. They license the rights to Sony and then they can all put out their Classic Collections and make a profit selling to all us old people that remember those games with fondness.. and no code hacking required.
My #1 classic game wish? DOS games! Since it's difficult to get proper play on a moden PC from the old Commander Keen, Wolf 3D, etc games I'd love to be able to buy these on disk and just pop them in my PS3 and have them play like a console game. No changes to the game. No new artwork. Just emulate a standard PC hardware configuration from the decade required and load up FreeDOS and run the game. It couldn't be that hard to do. Make it so it can use cd-r's and put a tutorial on the Net for us gamers to make our our discs for games that are no longer available to buy.;)
Windows is a fine system as long as you follow one basic rule. Never connect it, even by sneakernet, to any untrusted machine. If you plug Windows into the Internet then it can, and probably will, be compromised. Windows is fine for running Office or playing games but it can never be secure. This is my experience of years as a programmer, hacker, admin, and security guy.
But then.. any system can be penetrated. It just depends how far those trying are willing to go and risk as to if they can do so. Windows is just easier than most systems.:)
I did something like this for a while.. nobody used it. I might try again when I can afford a more powerful antenea. Wasn't to hard to set up though. Apache, PHP, Bind, and DHCP. Just like setting up a decent home lan really. I was also thinking of adding a dial-in line though.
I have seen customers [of mine] buy a refurbished drive that came direct from a major harddrive maker that had not even been formatted let alone really cleaned. This knowledge would make me wary of taking a busted drive in for an exchange if I'd already wrote some of my data to it before it failed.
The main problem I have with Apple, Microsoft, KDE, Gnome, and just about every other desktop visionaries are that they want to make the easy stuff easier but they rarely make the hard stuff easier. This is partly why users can get themselves into trouble but have to pay someone to get them out of it. Just today I talked to a guy that is going to bring me his computers to remove all the spyware crap from.
Linux can, and does, embrace and extend technologies but it lacks the same force because the code is open and Linux doesn't have nearly as big a slice of the marketshare. It did conquer the server market because of this embrace, extend, and expose concept though and in time it'll do the same on the desktop. I don't think KDE or Gnome are going to do that though. Not without a radical change in vision.
I did have a lil shell wizard program that was similar to the GUI shell commands + pipes idea I mentioned earlier. I canned the project mostly because NOBODY found it interesting other than me and also because I really wanted it more tightly intergrated with the desktop than I had time to do. IMO lack of user feedback is a big problem. If nobody uses a program I make or tells me what changes need to be made then I just won't bother trying to help them.
I think I agree that the desktop is something of an idiot box interface and the command-line is sort of a power users interface and the two do a very poor job of merging gradually together.. making a spectrum of accessibility to the system.
Never heard of that newsreader.. but then I usually use custom programs to access usenet. I've been thinking of writing a full custom mail client because gradually I've been writing most the bits of one. It might be interesting to add news support in. Any special features Gravity has that make it more accessible or powerful? Just reg expressions?
Actually though I already have some of the tools I'd like to build into the desktop.. a special moduler suite that collects data and makes it searchable. I've been working on making it into a P2P network (just for searching.. no files transfered) and it'd be cool if every Linux desktop had it intergrated. It can search pretty much any type of data.. you just have to install a module for that particular use.
The ability to change the buttons required to highlight to copy, add icons or dialogs, etc would be fine IMO to make all easy through the UI but I'd leave the default as it is. Individual distros could feel free to change the defaults if they thought it'd please their users.
I think most of what Microsoft and Apple do is bad.. not everything. Microsoft's pie in the sky vision of a db based OS is closer to what I do on my systems and I think closer to what the Linux desktop should be targetting. There should be less concentration on eye candy and more on enabling the user. It's fine to have eye candy, when appropiate, but it shouldn't be more important than the purpose of a computer which is to manage data of all types.
My first suggestion is to make UI oriented tools for working with (or reimplementing) popular command-line tools and creating an easy graphical way to string those tools together. Pipes are powerful and easy to use and IMO well suited to a graphical construction tool. Go ahead and make it easy to create new modules that can be piped together. Make it so these modules can be bound to menu options either on the desktop or even in programs. Make modules that can index, search, and variously access many different types of data from the local filesystem or from the network. A user should be able to create a desktop button that will instantly find all music on their harddrive, eliminate anything that wasn't by X artist, and play the remaining music in the default music playing app. Something like that should be buildable in a couple minutes time for an average user. Three commands: locate '.mp3' '.ogg' | match -artist 'X' | $DEFAULT_MUSIC_APP should be all that needs to be done.. these modules just need made and added to an easy GUI.
In relation, I'd also beef up automatic indexing of data the user uses.. on the local machine and the network. There should be a database kept with important file and network resource data indexed for quick searching.
The user shouldn't have to know what program they are looking for.. they should be able to just select the file, or file type, they want to work with and the associated app(s) should be listed.
Virtual directories listing recently used documents, programs, network resources, etc should exist and be easy to create. This is Unix - take advantage of 'everything is a file' because it'sa powerful concept.
Simple commands with pipes and everything is a file. The Unix way. Why is the desktop not following these key concepts? If only I had time to implement my own desktop.:)
I have no interest in converting the world to Unix. Anyone that can benefit from the tools I help refine then great.. but I'm not going to dumb things down for them. Anyone can learn.. I'm willing to help them.. if they are unwilling then let them suffer for it. I'm not going to sacrifice usabilty by me for usability by others.
Clicking even one extra button takes more than.1 seconds because your mind has to register on what pops up, select the right choice, and then click. Would you also suggest that for every keystroke combination that a dummy 'did you really mean it?' dialog should pop up?
I will agree though that there should be further work on working out the little glitches. Most have been fixed for years now but some still exist and it'd be nice if they didn't. I'd also like to see highlight to copy extended to include non-text.. like in the file manager. Any place you can highlight something that should copy it. I'd also not be against an easy universal way to disable highlight to copy.. for those that don't like it.
My biggest complaint about Linux on the desktop is that it sucks almost as much as Windows or MacOS. Cloning those interfaces is not the way to embrace and extend the desktop concept. You can't win a race by always following. We should concentrate more on enabling faster, better, more flexible access to the information users need rather than on trying to imitate the look and feel of Windows. I still get most of my work done on the command-line and that seems to be the major failing. The power of the command-line needs to find the ease of use of the desktop.
You can sepperate the programs but still realize they'll need default mail and web programs to interact with even if not the counterpart from the Mozilla Suite. I'd just like a uniform UI place in these programs where these options can be set. Underneath it should just set the default in the OS's standard way.. I just want a common UI to that already existing functionality.
I'd actually like to scrap Thunderbird and make a Mozilla based db-driven mail client. You can get a Thunderbird extension that does this (sort of) so maybe a lot of the code could be reused. I like Evolution's virtual folders and I like the way Gmail is described to use virtual folders based on filter (search) data rather than real folders. I'd like to see Thunderbird extend that concept.
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I use MySQL to store a lot of meta-data about files on my computers. It's really a very useful tool to have and I'd like to see something like it made standard as a virtual filesytem.
With Microsoft's and Apple's push for db-driven filesystems has MySQL considered doing anything in this area? It'd seem to me that MySQL has a strong position to become a cross-platform defacto standard for this type of thing.
Maybe M$ needs to make a Knoppix-like cd that can download and install Windows updates to the computer? Put the disc in, bootup, it automaticly finds Windows and the network, finds, downloads, and installs any updates, and then reboots into Windows. Give one such cd to every Windows user (and make it easy to burn a new copy) and then it's easy to apply updates before booting into Windows.
Such a CD could run Linux, some secured variant of Windows, or whatever other OS M$ wanted so as long as it came with no network ports open. Since it'd be a read-only medium and would have no additional software (besides the update program) that could be ran it'd be very unlikely to get infected during the update.
They should build an armored mode into Windows where it rejects all network connections and won't let any other programs run. Start Windows in armored mode, fetch updates, and then return to the user-friendly easy-target mode. I do something like this on my Linux boxes by specifying a very strict firewall at boot. Then I have rug (part of Red Carpet) fetch the updates. Then it goes into a safe put usable firewall mode that lets normal traffic in and out. Pretty much the same idea.
That's being done but it's a hell of a pain to get any logs from the dot com companies involved in the meantime. Without those third party logs we can't further investigate and all the evidence is getting colder and harder to follow. That and we just don't have the funds to take off work for weeks to do such an investigation. Even if we got all the evidence lined up you know as well as I do that any hacking attempts by someone that has any idea what they're doing will be all but impossible to prove in court.
The whole thing has already seriously drained our funds. To stay in business the best we can really do is ignore the bastards and hope that everybody in the office obeys the security policies we put in place.
Reminds me a lil of my talk with the FBI the other day. They said thye really couldn't do anything about an ongoing attack on our business by a competitior, although the actions are definately illegal and criminal, until the damages can be verified to be at least US$1,000,000. If we don't make it to that level of damages because we've been driven out of business first then tough luck. Great.
On the other hand my backup plan is to go into hacking myself and steal about US$900,000 from the jerks doing this to us. As long as the FBI doesn't care I guess I might as well. Oh yeah, the local police, who have an Internet crime department, claim to be unable to deal with any crimes involving the Internet.
Added to your story about the SEC I think my confidence in the governments ability to help me is pretty low. Nice that my tax dollars are paying to protect only big businesses.
Usually it's been done before by me.. but this one I find quite useles.. so nope I haven't done it before.
If it might be used by children you could teach mousing skills with a coloring book such as mine at http://kavlon.org/index.php/cb as well as whatever skills could be fueled by appropiate pictures to color. Runs under Windows, Linux, or whatever you happen to have.
I have a small diskless mini-itx system hooked to my tv and (wired) network for this purpose. It runs my own custom Linux distro off a CF card. It can scan the lan for NFS and SMB shares. It then scans all shares for media files and then offers playback of all such files it finds. It doesn't play DVD or CD discs though because I figured I already have several machines hooked to my tv that can do that.
:)
I'm working to sepperate my custom stuff out so it can be added to the WOMP distro (and others?) so that maybe I won't have to keep making my own distro. When nano-itx boards come out I'm planning on making an even smaller device.
The system I use is mostly beneficial because 1) it allows payments as small as 1/10th a cent and 2) because it charges neither the vendor or the customer any fees and 3) it's much easier to implement than most payment systems and 4) it allows easy management of what funds are released to whom. I use it for online auctions, pay-per-view content, buying from my online store, etc.
Yes, it'd be good for porn sites but it's also good for so many other things. Really credit cards are something of a hassle for both th vendor and the customer. It's only because there isn't yet any easier mainstream method of paying that we still use them.
The really sad part is that movie studios needed someone to tell them these things to begin with. It's so obvious.
You have a size of disc customers have grown used to and find convient. You have data you want to deliver. You can fit your data on a disc of the size your customers find convient. Okay light bulb #1.. put your data on those damn discs and sell it.
Wideley accepted universal standards that work in a broad set of hardware and software is good. Life is easier for the manufacturers. Life is easier for the customers. Everything is cheaper due to mass adoption. Light bulb #2 use universal standards.
That such things even need someone to come along and fight hard to make them happen shows why the entertainment business is so hopeless and why computers and the Internet are going to shatter their business.
I disagree that people, in the future, won't want to buy music and movies on physical media though. I think there is a feeling of holding a physical item that is pleasing for a buyer. Not that online distribution won't be popular but I don't think sales of physical discs is a concept going away. I have many movies on my hdd's but I still own hundreds of DVDs because I like owning them. Besides, buying physical discs leaves the chance open to buy a copy of your favorite movie in a neat box with a tshirt thrown in or whatever.
They can feel free to do some negative graffiti on my living room. I'd be properly amussed to find someone had came in and cleaned certain areas of the floor to make a logo.
You think there hasn't been a flood of people in the software development market that drove the prices down? That happens in every market. The point is to realize that if your competition can sell what is good enough for lower than you can sell your high quality work then you'll have to match their rates unless you can find enough people looking for high quality work. That's just the way life is. It sucks but what can you do? Either live with it or simply learn to find those high paying jobs that demand quality.
Just to make a suggestion.. if you do contract work then try to find a good sales guy to do your sales for you. Work I'd have charged $500 for I've seen good sales guys sale for $15000. Give them 1/2 as commission and you still make a lot more profit than you otherwise would have. $7500 beats the hell out of $500 for a weeks worth of work.
If you think you're the only one that got ripped off from doing free or low cost work then you're obviously blind. I doubt many of us on here haven't had stuff like that happen. That's no reason to be an ass and assume everyone is out to get you. A good many of us does contract work and yes sometimes we don't get paid and yes sometimes we don't get credit where it's due. It sucks monkey balls. That doesn't mean you should go live in a closet and never work again. Not even if it's a really nice walk in closet.
Dude, I think you need to go get a job and a girlfriend and chill out. I realize you were abducted by aliens and forced to work at minimum wage while undergoing an anal probe but jeez you are off your rocker. ;)
So if you're to good to work for $8/hr then go back to working at Burger King for $5/hr. ;)
Besides I didn't say I wasn't going to pay the going rate. I've always been fair when hiring contractors for projects in the past. If that means I pay $20/hr instead of $200/hr and that isn't good enough for you then simply don't apply. I would have been very happy to be making $20/hr to practice my skills when I was in school.
I didn't mention a specific project because my DNS is messed up for a few days and thus nobody can go to my website right now. Here is the Freshmeat link though. This project is a coloring book and I'd like to make it a decent little edutainment program. I have other projects I'd like to hire artists for too if the process goes smooth for this project. I'm largely interested in edutainment so most of my games are oriented towards that.
I'm perfectly okay with paying artists for their work. If anyone wants to donate time that's great too but I don't mind paying.
I have every intention of paying with real cash. The couple possible artists I've talked to so far I would pay for their work if they were interested. If someone just offered to donate their work to the project I'd probably accept but I'd still look for someone to hire also. In this case there is really no end to the art I can use so it's my intention to keep buying it until I have enough to, with the rest of my program, fill a CD. Then I'd like to sell the program on CD for like $5 for people that don't want to download it all. The Windows executable is only a couple megs in size and the Linux executable is less than one meg.. so that leaves a lot of room for art.
Well part of the idea of posting on Slashdot was to see if any users were, or knew, artists that might want to make a few bucks.
:)
Exposure isn't yet what I'm really working on though. My one program I most need artists for was actually in the July issue of Linux Journal Magazine. Sadly I had no advance warning and my own website has been down due to dns problems I'm trying to get worked out. Darn, talk about bad timing! I hope when I get a 1.x version they'll give me another print up.
I'd pay extra for a console that was not only backward compatible with it's previous version but also with other older consoles. I don't stop playing games just because they aren't the newest coolest thing out anymore. I play lots of PS1 and Dreamcast games and now and then even break out old favorites like Super Mario Brothers, Sonic, or even Atari classics. I have so many boxes plugged to my tv that I've actually popped the fuse for my living room by turning them all on at once.
;)
So in short.. I'm another of that 10% that likes consoles to be backward compatible.
If the PS3 would not only support PS1 and PS2 games but also Atari, Nintendo, Sega, games that'd definately cinche me buying one. Even if they only added an extra chip or two to the console to add that support and I had to buy all those old games on a PS3 compatible DVD or download them from the network to the PS3 harddrive. That sort of legacy support would be cheap and easy to add and I would be willing to pay extra for it. I'm sure Atari, Nintendo, Sega, etc could be talked into cutting a pretty good licensing deal for the rights too. They license the rights to Sony and then they can all put out their Classic Collections and make a profit selling to all us old people that remember those games with fondness.. and no code hacking required.
My #1 classic game wish? DOS games! Since it's difficult to get proper play on a moden PC from the old Commander Keen, Wolf 3D, etc games I'd love to be able to buy these on disk and just pop them in my PS3 and have them play like a console game. No changes to the game. No new artwork. Just emulate a standard PC hardware configuration from the decade required and load up FreeDOS and run the game. It couldn't be that hard to do. Make it so it can use cd-r's and put a tutorial on the Net for us gamers to make our our discs for games that are no longer available to buy.
Windows is a fine system as long as you follow one basic rule. Never connect it, even by sneakernet, to any untrusted machine. If you plug Windows into the Internet then it can, and probably will, be compromised. Windows is fine for running Office or playing games but it can never be secure. This is my experience of years as a programmer, hacker, admin, and security guy.
:)
But then.. any system can be penetrated. It just depends how far those trying are willing to go and risk as to if they can do so. Windows is just easier than most systems.
I did something like this for a while.. nobody used it. I might try again when I can afford a more powerful antenea. Wasn't to hard to set up though. Apache, PHP, Bind, and DHCP. Just like setting up a decent home lan really. I was also thinking of adding a dial-in line though.
I have seen customers [of mine] buy a refurbished drive that came direct from a major harddrive maker that had not even been formatted let alone really cleaned. This knowledge would make me wary of taking a busted drive in for an exchange if I'd already wrote some of my data to it before it failed.
The main problem I have with Apple, Microsoft, KDE, Gnome, and just about every other desktop visionaries are that they want to make the easy stuff easier but they rarely make the hard stuff easier. This is partly why users can get themselves into trouble but have to pay someone to get them out of it. Just today I talked to a guy that is going to bring me his computers to remove all the spyware crap from.
Linux can, and does, embrace and extend technologies but it lacks the same force because the code is open and Linux doesn't have nearly as big a slice of the marketshare. It did conquer the server market because of this embrace, extend, and expose concept though and in time it'll do the same on the desktop. I don't think KDE or Gnome are going to do that though. Not without a radical change in vision.
I did have a lil shell wizard program that was similar to the GUI shell commands + pipes idea I mentioned earlier. I canned the project mostly because NOBODY found it interesting other than me and also because I really wanted it more tightly intergrated with the desktop than I had time to do. IMO lack of user feedback is a big problem. If nobody uses a program I make or tells me what changes need to be made then I just won't bother trying to help them.
I think I agree that the desktop is something of an idiot box interface and the command-line is sort of a power users interface and the two do a very poor job of merging gradually together.. making a spectrum of accessibility to the system.
Never heard of that newsreader.. but then I usually use custom programs to access usenet. I've been thinking of writing a full custom mail client because gradually I've been writing most the bits of one. It might be interesting to add news support in. Any special features Gravity has that make it more accessible or powerful? Just reg expressions?
Actually though I already have some of the tools I'd like to build into the desktop.. a special moduler suite that collects data and makes it searchable. I've been working on making it into a P2P network (just for searching.. no files transfered) and it'd be cool if every Linux desktop had it intergrated. It can search pretty much any type of data.. you just have to install a module for that particular use.
The ability to change the buttons required to highlight to copy, add icons or dialogs, etc would be fine IMO to make all easy through the UI but I'd leave the default as it is. Individual distros could feel free to change the defaults if they thought it'd please their users.
:)
I think most of what Microsoft and Apple do is bad.. not everything. Microsoft's pie in the sky vision of a db based OS is closer to what I do on my systems and I think closer to what the Linux desktop should be targetting. There should be less concentration on eye candy and more on enabling the user. It's fine to have eye candy, when appropiate, but it shouldn't be more important than the purpose of a computer which is to manage data of all types.
My first suggestion is to make UI oriented tools for working with (or reimplementing) popular command-line tools and creating an easy graphical way to string those tools together. Pipes are powerful and easy to use and IMO well suited to a graphical construction tool. Go ahead and make it easy to create new modules that can be piped together. Make it so these modules can be bound to menu options either on the desktop or even in programs. Make modules that can index, search, and variously access many different types of data from the local filesystem or from the network. A user should be able to create a desktop button that will instantly find all music on their harddrive, eliminate anything that wasn't by X artist, and play the remaining music in the default music playing app. Something like that should be buildable in a couple minutes time for an average user. Three commands: locate '.mp3' '.ogg' | match -artist 'X' | $DEFAULT_MUSIC_APP should be all that needs to be done.. these modules just need made and added to an easy GUI.
In relation, I'd also beef up automatic indexing of data the user uses.. on the local machine and the network. There should be a database kept with important file and network resource data indexed for quick searching.
The user shouldn't have to know what program they are looking for.. they should be able to just select the file, or file type, they want to work with and the associated app(s) should be listed.
Virtual directories listing recently used documents, programs, network resources, etc should exist and be easy to create. This is Unix - take advantage of 'everything is a file' because it'sa powerful concept.
Simple commands with pipes and everything is a file. The Unix way. Why is the desktop not following these key concepts? If only I had time to implement my own desktop.
I have no interest in converting the world to Unix. Anyone that can benefit from the tools I help refine then great.. but I'm not going to dumb things down for them. Anyone can learn.. I'm willing to help them.. if they are unwilling then let them suffer for it. I'm not going to sacrifice usabilty by me for usability by others.
.1 seconds because your mind has to register on what pops up, select the right choice, and then click. Would you also suggest that for every keystroke combination that a dummy 'did you really mean it?' dialog should pop up?
Clicking even one extra button takes more than
I will agree though that there should be further work on working out the little glitches. Most have been fixed for years now but some still exist and it'd be nice if they didn't. I'd also like to see highlight to copy extended to include non-text.. like in the file manager. Any place you can highlight something that should copy it. I'd also not be against an easy universal way to disable highlight to copy.. for those that don't like it.
My biggest complaint about Linux on the desktop is that it sucks almost as much as Windows or MacOS. Cloning those interfaces is not the way to embrace and extend the desktop concept. You can't win a race by always following. We should concentrate more on enabling faster, better, more flexible access to the information users need rather than on trying to imitate the look and feel of Windows. I still get most of my work done on the command-line and that seems to be the major failing. The power of the command-line needs to find the ease of use of the desktop.
You can sepperate the programs but still realize they'll need default mail and web programs to interact with even if not the counterpart from the Mozilla Suite. I'd just like a uniform UI place in these programs where these options can be set. Underneath it should just set the default in the OS's standard way.. I just want a common UI to that already existing functionality.
I'd actually like to scrap Thunderbird and make a Mozilla based db-driven mail client. You can get a Thunderbird extension that does this (sort of) so maybe a lot of the code could be reused. I like Evolution's virtual folders and I like the way Gmail is described to use virtual folders based on filter (search) data rather than real folders. I'd like to see Thunderbird extend that concept.