I've been using Linux as a distro since about 1999. I've been using Ubuntu exclusively since the first release.
Ubuntu made GNOME palatable to me, but the few complaints I have had I have been told to take it up with GNOME because it was in their bailiwick. I have found a "have it OUR way" and a "if you don't like it vote with your feet" attitude prevalent in that org. I am told that it is their decision and that mentality why I live with these issues as an Ubuntu user:
1. A GUI interface that limits the number of hot keys _easily_ made 2. Why bringing up the calculator via a keyboard command takes several times longer than using the GUI 3. Why bringing up the System | About Ubuntu window takes a minute and a half while similar shell commands are instant 4. Why I can't pick "Monday" as the start of my week in the calendar applet or have it stay that way once I hacked it
I realize there a lot of technical and political issues of which I am ignorant. I'm just saying as an ignorant desktop end user and Ubuntu fan, that if Unbuntu can make all of these technologies work well I don't have a reason to miss GNOME.
I've been using Ubuntu for eons, but I do not follow the OSS world as closely as I used to.
Is "Wayland" a replacement for X Windows? If so, does that also make it a replacement for the KDE and GNOME or do those two things sit on top of X windows?
What is Unity and how does it relate to GNOME or the KDE?
Is Ubuntu moving to these technologies because they use less resources are faster and will allow Ubuntu to work better on devices other than PCs?
People signed up for Gmail without any expectation that their address book would be used to distribute information about their habits. Google did that, did it without permission and even did it without notice.
I'm amazed that Google thought that people wouldn't have a problem with those moves.
My guess is that there was a socially retarded executive at Google who thought people would like it, had enough power to silence the common sense wielding opposition to push the release of Buzz through.
To Googles credit, once people started screaming they did a quick 180 and apologized.
Facebook made private information public, by default, without notice, without permission, not only did not apologize, but told people they would learn to like it.
Poor quality movies, high ticket prices, home theaters and television commercials shown in the theater have been killing movie theaters. Now they want to spy on you too. Another nail in the coffin.
They need to ask themselves, if they were a patron, what would be their motivation to go to a movie versus staying home.
Why would removing Java do all those things? OO uses Java for the wizards. If LO removes the Java they would replace it with native code for the platform LO is running on so, so the wizards would still be usable.
[quote] I've used some great Java programs, [/quote]
Bill;
Again, no disrespect, this is honest curiosity. Would you care to list the names of some of those JAVA GUI programs that you used that you thought were great and that were not compromising on performance?
[quote] Startup times can be an issue. [/quote]
Again, no disrespect, but that is like saying death can be a downer. Java GUI apps have a big problem in this regard. At least personally I find this to be a huge irritation. Along with periodically slow menus it is the reason why I use an IDE that is not written in Java ( Visual Slickedit ) to develop Java server side programs.
Of all the interpreted languages, I believe Java is the fastest (or pretty damn close to the fastest).
I would agree to that, but as far as running GUI desktop apps none of the interpreted languages are good enough or good.
I use and occasionally develop Java programs to display telemetry during flight experiments, and haven't experienced any failure due to Java.
It is my intuition that professionals using an app designed for them will be a lot more charitable that desktop end users expecting things just to work and work fast.
Again, my afforementioned speed issues when trying to use Java IDES. Maybe your users don't have to interact with the GUI component as much as a programmer using a GUI IDE does.
I'm not saying Java is the best. I'm just saying that a lot of its criticisms is unwarranted.
GUI apps, I'll say it is the best, for sophisticated server side applications. I remember what it was like to get a web form built before Java. I've seen microsofts sucky attempts to make a competitor. I also don't see languages like pHp scaling very well.
Just like Apple has people who will criticize it just for being Apple, Java has that too. It has since it ever started. First it was Smalltalk programmer crying over how Java ate Smalltalk's lunch and it didn't deserve it. Now it is kids who have learned some mickey mouse language and find the time and patience to learn Java intimidating.
Same story, different year. Programmers hate any language they don't know well. It takes a lot of time to learn a new language and many programmers don't have a lot of time. Instead of admitting they are intimidated they dis the technology.
I'm afraid I'm going to have insist on disagreeing with you and I want you to know I mean no disrespect.
I've been programming in Java since a little bit after it came out. I started off as WORA/Applet/GUI fanboy. Over the years I have kept my eye on the Java GUI apps, hoping to see them succeed.
I haven't seen that.
The only Java GUI apps that I have seen that are not a nuisance to use are some tiny utilities that come with networking apps.
The only significant Java GUI apps I have seen have been those made for developers ( netbeans, JBuilder, intelliJ,Eclipse). All take a long time to load compared to other apps and I have had the irritating experience with each clicking on a menu and having to periodically wait until the entry came up.
I have always had powerful systems at work, yet I have never been able to run a significant Java GUI app with another such Java ( or other app) app without there being decrease in performance.
I think the Java GUI API is well designed. I'm guessing the internals are too, because the non-GUI stuff runs AMAZINGLY GOOD. I just think, from my experience, that interpreted GUI apps just aren't there and aren't likely to be there anytime soon.
I think having very similar menus to MS Office is a good idea. That is what non-tech enthusiasts know how to use and if they are using OO they want to use something like MS Office, but without the cost/hassles.
There is no reason to make people relearn how to do something that they already know how to do elsewhere.
I love Java and have programming in it since Applets were the hot deal. It is matched by none as a server side language. However, being honest and not a fan-boy it isn't that great for GUI apps. LibreOffice people, please remove Java from Open Office. If you do, it will jump in popularity. Right now users have the choice of Open Office either performing clunky because of the Java based wizards or turning the wizards off, which people actually do want to use sometimes.
Safari is a nice browser, but it is proprietary and Steve Jobs has proven he is willing to be quite the dick that way.
Chrome is also very nice, but I don't trust Google not to spy on me.
I'm sure at some point I will be on a Windows box for work and will have to use IE 9 at least little bit, you know, check to make sure things work there after I make sure it works in Firefox.
Internal combustion engines have to eat something and then excrete something else. Doing less of each is good, but the problem is that we are running out of stuff to feed engines and we are running out of capacity to deal with what engines excrete.
Hence, the interest in electric motors for cars.
Given the where electric car development is now, someone would have to have a significantly better engine right now, ready for production to make it attractive to consumers on a wide and enduring basis.
If things keep going well with electric car development, in 5 - 10 years nobody will want cars driven by engines.
Seriously, "the needs of the many, outweigh the needs of the few", sounds like socialism......AND in Texas yet. Rush LImbaugh better sound the alarm bells.
Hmm. Notice the name "G.V. Ramanathan". I wonder if he wants to keep Americans dumb. Indians are getting ahead because they value education and studying the hard stuff, so much so the poor will even study under street lamps. We could learn something from having those values, not just saying we do.
Sarcasm aside, he has a point, but I have a better one.
My disciplines use a math requirement as a "weed out course", usually Calculus. There are many people in many fields who struggle through that weed out class in their education and then go on to never use any math other than arithmetic.
My point, the better one, is that all of the sciences, engineering, technical related fields, the highest paying careers and the careers with the most power to change things run on mathematics. If you are strong in math, any of those fields are yours for the choosing.
The fact is math education sucks.
Up until the beginning of highschool most children don't get taught anything but arithmetic. Then when they get to higher mathematics they usually get a teacher who is math geek and a lousy communicator. It is taught sink or swim without making students realize that math is a language. It is also taught with very little exposure, not enough to learn even a natural language much less an abstract one. Europeans speak several languages well, but they start as small children and are continuously exposed to it. American kids get higher mathematics thrown at them, poorly taught and at a fast pace, for the first time in their teens. Then we wonder why most don't do well. Only a few talented ones are and they aren't necessarily good educators. Then the cycle continues.
I've adjusted to the fact that the Democrats are going to get clobbered ( some of them deserve it ).
I just hope Christine O'Donnell loses the race for Senate in Delaware. I find her to be the most offensive candidate. Watching her lose will be like a preview of watching Sara Palin's demise. They seem very similar. Luckily, her opponent has a solid lead on her in the real polls( not google ).
After that, every TEA party candidate who loses will be a bonus for me.
I think this election cycle will be called the end of the TEA party as a party versus being a fringe faction of the GOP. The TEA candidates are running on GOP tickets, with GOP money and many of them on GOP platforms ( Rand Paul, the turncoat ). Most of the TEA candidates are in tight races, so only a few, not all of them will win. Additionally, the GOP is looking towards 2010 and doesn't want the TEA people buzzing around, for example Karl Rove's recent comments about Sara Palin not being qualified for president.
Whether it is sanctioned sexual molestation ( pat downs ) or getting nuked with scanner radiation Americans didn't cause this problem and we do deserve to be treated this way. It is time to find another solution.
A start might be to make the scanning more palatable by hiring higher caliber people for security and giving them training in how to act and be more mature about the process. Their behavior and comments started many of the objections with scanning.
I think more than one company has made the mistake of choosing a technology without thinking things all of the way through as to whether or not that technology would be supported in the future.
A number of companies thought Microsoft was a safe bet and ActiveX was long enough ago to not be acutely aware of Microsoft making new versions of things that are not compatible with older versions.
FOSS has been proven to be the safer bet. Even if all development stops on a technology, it is still there, it isn't removed from being used. You can also get the source code and you can likely find some forum someplace to get questions answered.
Unfortunately the safety issue looks inverted to managers. FOSS looks like the more dodgey choice ( nobody to send an angry letter or legal threats too if something goes wrong ) while going with a big company does.
Probably the worst choice is going with proprietary technology from a small company. I've worked for companies that did that and got stuck with dead software they had to rebuild in something else.
Probably everyone knows by now that it is not a good idea to post that picture of yourself in a dress at the Halloween party, but even innocent things can come back to bite you in the ass. I remember reading one story about a woman who was denied disability for extreme clinical depression because someone searched Facebook and found a picture of her with a smile on her face at a beach.
Facebook is the first stop after Google for HR people. It is possible to make many innocent comments or jokes that an HR person may not like and decide to see that you never get the job.
There is that much snooping going on. I knew a woman who was doing amateur beauty contest/modeling pictures. She never mentioned the name of her company at all on the web sites where she appeared. She never mentioned those web sites at work. Yet, somebody found those sites and gave her an ultimatum.
If Microsoft had take W3 standards seriously sooner, they wouldn't be losing potential sales on Windows 7 now.
The companies that built software targeted only at IE 6 are also reaping what they are sowing. For years many web designers and tech managers have been ignorant of the existence of W3 standards. I have seen many instances where upon being told that the internet and IE are not same thing these people brushed that piece of information off.
At the time when IE 6 was the most advanced IE, if you wanted to increase the chances of your web app working everywhere you would develop it using a standards compliant browser like Firefox and then test it in IE 6, adjusting your code if necessary to get it working in both.
Too many programmers viewed this inconvenience as a pain in the ass and convinced managers in meetings to not mandate this practice.
I guess it comes down to pay now or pay later.
They didn't want to pay then as they were building things, so they have to pay now unless their users don't mind using a very old browser.
Opera is nice, but I don't seem them having a lot of vigor for fighting hard in the browser wars.
Tianamen Square? Google Buzz? Chrome is nice, but it will always feel like a "Facebook browser" to me, it will always have the potential for being spyware.
Safari is also nice, but it is proprietary and Steve Jobs is a control freak who can take away his ball anytime he is tired of playing. Or tell you how to use your ball.
Slashdot Mirror
I've been using Linux as a distro since about 1999. I've been using Ubuntu exclusively since the first release.
Ubuntu made GNOME palatable to me, but the few complaints I have had I have been told to take it up with GNOME because it was in their bailiwick. I have found a "have it OUR way" and a "if you don't like it vote with your feet" attitude prevalent in that org. I am told that it is their decision and that mentality why I live with these issues as an Ubuntu user:
1. A GUI interface that limits the number of hot keys _easily_ made
2. Why bringing up the calculator via a keyboard command takes several times longer than using the GUI
3. Why bringing up the System | About Ubuntu window takes a minute and a half while similar shell commands are instant
4. Why I can't pick "Monday" as the start of my week in the calendar applet or have it stay that way once I hacked it
I realize there a lot of technical and political issues of which I am ignorant. I'm just saying as an ignorant desktop end user and Ubuntu fan, that if Unbuntu can make all of these technologies work well I don't have a reason to miss GNOME.
I've been using Ubuntu for eons, but I do not follow the OSS world as closely as I used to.
Is "Wayland" a replacement for X Windows? If so, does that also make it a replacement for the KDE and GNOME or do those two things sit on top of X windows?
What is Unity and how does it relate to GNOME or the KDE?
Is Ubuntu moving to these technologies because they use less resources are faster and will allow Ubuntu to work better on devices other than PCs?
I did read the article and google on these terms
Thanks
Word.
I might go to a mainstream theater once a year for a super special movie like an Avatar or some other huge movie event.
Otherwise it is alternative movie theaters or DVDs at home for me.
People signed up for Gmail without any expectation that their address book would be used to distribute information about their habits. Google did that, did it without permission and even did it without notice.
I'm amazed that Google thought that people wouldn't have a problem with those moves.
My guess is that there was a socially retarded executive at Google who thought people would like it, had enough power to silence the common sense wielding opposition to push the release of Buzz through.
To Googles credit, once people started screaming they did a quick 180 and apologized.
Facebook made private information public, by default, without notice, without permission, not only did not apologize, but told people they would learn to like it.
Poor quality movies, high ticket prices, home theaters and television commercials shown in the theater have been killing movie theaters. Now they want to spy on you too. Another nail in the coffin.
They need to ask themselves, if they were a patron, what would be their motivation to go to a movie versus staying home.
+1
Why would removing Java do all those things? OO uses Java for the wizards. If LO removes the Java they would replace it with native code for the platform LO is running on so, so the wizards would still be usable.
[quote]
I've used some great Java programs,
[/quote]
Bill;
Again, no disrespect, this is honest curiosity. Would you care to list the names of some of those JAVA GUI programs that you used that you thought were great and that were not compromising on performance?
[quote]
Startup times can be an issue.
[/quote]
Again, no disrespect, but that is like saying death can be a downer. Java GUI apps have a big problem in this regard. At least personally I find this to be a huge irritation. Along with periodically slow menus it is the reason why I use an IDE that is not written in Java ( Visual Slickedit ) to develop Java server side programs.
I would agree to that, but as far as running GUI desktop apps none of the interpreted languages are good enough or good.
It is my intuition that professionals using an app designed for them will be a lot more charitable that desktop end users expecting things just to work and work fast.
Again, my afforementioned speed issues when trying to use Java IDES. Maybe your users don't have to interact with the GUI component as much as a programmer using a GUI IDE does.
GUI apps, I'll say it is the best, for sophisticated server side applications. I remember what it was like to get a web form built before Java. I've seen microsofts sucky attempts to make a competitor. I also don't see languages like pHp scaling very well.
Just like Apple has people who will criticize it just for being Apple, Java has that too. It has since it ever started. First it was Smalltalk programmer crying over how Java ate Smalltalk's lunch and it didn't deserve it. Now it is kids who have learned some mickey mouse language and find the time and patience to learn Java intimidating.
Same story, different year. Programmers hate any language they don't know well. It takes a lot of time to learn a new language and many programmers don't have a lot of time. Instead of admitting they are intimidated they dis the technology.
Exactly.
The only reason Java was in Open Office was because Sun was footing the bill and someone at Sun thought that Sun should eat its own dogfood.
Hi Bill;
I'm afraid I'm going to have insist on disagreeing with you and I want you to know I mean no disrespect.
I've been programming in Java since a little bit after it came out. I started off as WORA/Applet/GUI fanboy. Over the years I have kept my eye on the Java GUI apps, hoping to see them succeed.
I haven't seen that.
The only Java GUI apps that I have seen that are not a nuisance to use are some tiny utilities that come with networking apps.
The only significant Java GUI apps I have seen have been those made for developers ( netbeans, JBuilder, intelliJ,Eclipse). All take a long time to load compared to other apps and I have had the irritating experience with each clicking on a menu and having to periodically wait until the entry came up.
I have always had powerful systems at work, yet I have never been able to run a significant Java GUI app with another such Java ( or other app) app without there being decrease in performance.
I think the Java GUI API is well designed. I'm guessing the internals are too, because the non-GUI stuff runs AMAZINGLY GOOD. I just think, from my experience, that interpreted GUI apps just aren't there and aren't likely to be there anytime soon.
I think having very similar menus to MS Office is a good idea. That is what non-tech enthusiasts know how to use and if they are using OO they want to use something like MS Office, but without the cost/hassles.
There is no reason to make people relearn how to do something that they already know how to do elsewhere.
I don't mean to be ignorant or trollish, but isn't this a good thing for Oracle?
Oracle wouldn't make any money out of Open Office and now ( or soon ) they will not have the burden of it.
I love Java and have programming in it since Applets were the hot deal. It is matched by none as a server side language. However, being honest and not a fan-boy it isn't that great for GUI apps. LibreOffice people, please remove Java from Open Office. If you do, it will jump in popularity. Right now users have the choice of Open Office either performing clunky because of the Java based wizards or turning the wizards off, which people actually do want to use sometimes.
I'll take Firefox.
Safari is a nice browser, but it is proprietary and Steve Jobs has proven he is willing to be quite the dick that way.
Chrome is also very nice, but I don't trust Google not to spy on me.
I'm sure at some point I will be on a Windows box for work and will have to use IE 9 at least little bit, you know, check to make sure things work there after I make sure it works in Firefox.
It is amazing that there will be an IE 9 coexisting in the world with an IE 6 in use.
Internal combustion engines have to eat something and then excrete something else. Doing less of each is good, but the problem is that we are running out of stuff to feed engines and we are running out of capacity to deal with what engines excrete.
Hence, the interest in electric motors for cars.
Given the where electric car development is now, someone would have to have a significantly better engine right now, ready for production to make it attractive to consumers on a wide and enduring basis.
If things keep going well with electric car development, in 5 - 10 years nobody will want cars driven by engines.
Seriously, "the needs of the many, outweigh the needs of the few", sounds like socialism......AND in Texas yet. Rush LImbaugh better sound the alarm bells.
Hmm. Notice the name "G.V. Ramanathan". I wonder if he wants to keep Americans dumb. Indians are getting ahead because they value education and studying the hard stuff, so much so the poor will even study under street lamps. We could learn something from having those values, not just saying we do.
Sarcasm aside, he has a point, but I have a better one.
My disciplines use a math requirement as a "weed out course", usually Calculus. There are many people in many fields who struggle through that weed out class in their education and then go on to never use any math other than arithmetic.
My point, the better one, is that all of the sciences, engineering, technical related fields, the highest paying careers and the careers with the most power to change things run on mathematics. If you are strong in math, any of those fields are yours for the choosing.
The fact is math education sucks.
Up until the beginning of highschool most children don't get taught anything but arithmetic. Then when they get to higher mathematics they usually get a teacher who is math geek and a lousy communicator. It is taught sink or swim without making students realize that math is a language. It is also taught with very little exposure, not enough to learn even a natural language much less an abstract one. Europeans speak several languages well, but they start as small children and are continuously exposed to it. American kids get higher mathematics thrown at them, poorly taught and at a fast pace, for the first time in their teens. Then we wonder why most don't do well. Only a few talented ones are and they aren't necessarily good educators. Then the cycle continues.
I've adjusted to the fact that the Democrats are going to get clobbered ( some of them deserve it ).
I just hope Christine O'Donnell loses the race for Senate in Delaware. I find her to be the most offensive candidate. Watching her lose will be like a preview of watching Sara Palin's demise. They seem very similar. Luckily, her opponent has a solid lead on her in the real polls( not google ).
After that, every TEA party candidate who loses will be a bonus for me.
I think this election cycle will be called the end of the TEA party as a party versus being a fringe faction of the GOP. The TEA candidates are running on GOP tickets, with GOP money and many of them on GOP platforms ( Rand Paul, the turncoat ). Most of the TEA candidates are in tight races, so only a few, not all of them will win. Additionally, the GOP is looking towards 2010 and doesn't want the TEA people buzzing around, for example Karl Rove's recent comments about Sara Palin not being qualified for president.
Whether it is sanctioned sexual molestation ( pat downs ) or getting nuked with scanner radiation Americans didn't cause this problem and we do deserve to be treated this way. It is time to find another solution.
A start might be to make the scanning more palatable by hiring higher caliber people for security and giving them training in how to act and be more mature about the process. Their behavior and comments started many of the objections with scanning.
Thanks for the interesting reply.
I had long ago forgotten about ActiveX.
I think more than one company has made the mistake of choosing a technology without thinking things all of the way through as to whether or not that technology would be supported in the future.
A number of companies thought Microsoft was a safe bet and ActiveX was long enough ago to not be acutely aware of Microsoft making new versions of things that are not compatible with older versions.
FOSS has been proven to be the safer bet. Even if all development stops on a technology, it is still there, it isn't removed from being used. You can also get the source code and you can likely find some forum someplace to get questions answered.
Unfortunately the safety issue looks inverted to managers. FOSS looks like the more dodgey choice ( nobody to send an angry letter or legal threats too if something goes wrong ) while going with a big company does.
Probably the worst choice is going with proprietary technology from a small company. I've worked for companies that did that and got stuck with dead software they had to rebuild in something else.
Things like this will eventually kill Facebook.
Probably everyone knows by now that it is not a good idea to post that picture of yourself in a dress at the Halloween party, but even innocent things can come back to bite you in the ass. I remember reading one story about a woman who was denied disability for extreme clinical depression because someone searched Facebook and found a picture of her with a smile on her face at a beach.
Facebook is the first stop after Google for HR people. It is possible to make many innocent comments or jokes that an HR person may not like and decide to see that you never get the job.
There is that much snooping going on. I knew a woman who was doing amateur beauty contest/modeling pictures. She never mentioned the name of her company at all on the web sites where she appeared. She never mentioned those web sites at work. Yet, somebody found those sites and gave her an ultimatum.
If Microsoft had take W3 standards seriously sooner, they wouldn't be losing potential sales on Windows 7 now.
The companies that built software targeted only at IE 6 are also reaping what they are sowing. For years many web designers and tech managers have been ignorant of the existence of W3 standards. I have seen many instances where upon being told that the internet and IE are not same thing these people brushed that piece of information off.
At the time when IE 6 was the most advanced IE, if you wanted to increase the chances of your web app working everywhere you would develop it using a standards compliant browser like Firefox and then test it in IE 6, adjusting your code if necessary to get it working in both.
Too many programmers viewed this inconvenience as a pain in the ass and convinced managers in meetings to not mandate this practice.
I guess it comes down to pay now or pay later.
They didn't want to pay then as they were building things, so they have to pay now unless their users don't mind using a very old browser.
More popular would be an extension to remove all of those Facebook symbols and links you find all over the web.
No thanks.
Opera is nice, but I don't seem them having a lot of vigor for fighting hard in the browser wars.
Tianamen Square? Google Buzz? Chrome is nice, but it will always feel like a "Facebook browser" to me, it will always have the potential for being spyware.
Safari is also nice, but it is proprietary and Steve Jobs is a control freak who can take away his ball anytime he is tired of playing. Or tell you how to use your ball.