The real goal is to demolish Microsoft's argument that XP is an inseperable whole and to demonstrate that it is possible to remove or disable large chunks of it. And if chunks of it can be removed then they can also be replaced.
Therefore this demonstration is not just about modular windows but also rationalises why Microsoft should be required to release interfaces and specifications in XP that allow third party integration.
Trust me, the bulk of the book is the Salmon of Doubt, a Dirk Gently novel. I flicked through a copy in my local bookstore. There are also various snippets of other stories, including some HHGTTG stuff which is perhaps where the confusion arose from.
I played EQ for 3 years but Verant have just fouled stuff up so much recently that I decided to cancel. The Luclin rollout was a disaster (EQ doesn't even run on my laptop anymore), downtime has been unacceptably high and to cap it all they've hiked the prices. To hell with them.
When I look back it wasn't that much fun anyway. It certainly had its moments and an addictive quality but it was a game more based on repetition and sitting around for long periods of time than actual fun.
My pet peeve was the total lack of attention Verant paid to the UI. For 3 years it has been a piece of shit and it doesn't look like improving anytime soon. Even in fullscreen it's just terrible and Verant seem more interested in keeping the 50+ players happy than actually improving things like the UI that affect everyone.
I've tried DAoC too which has a gorgeous and well designed UI but suffers from it's own problems with regards to repetition. My ideal game would be a cross-between the two - DAoC's UI and ruleset combined with EQ's zone variety.
In case it's not obvious, Sony are just doing what Microsoft have done to so many of their competitors - putting a bit of FUD about.
Let's face it, so far the Xbox has been a disaster and Sony want to make sure it stays that way even with the recent price cuts. What better way to make sure of that than cut their own prices and drop heavy hints that a PS3 might be just around the corner?
Of course realistically no PS3 is going to appear before Christmas 2003 unless its a revamped PS2 with a harddrive, but anyone thinking of getting an XBox is likely to think again.
The XBox has a serious problem on its hands now. It's still the most expensive of the games consoles, and the games are expensive and boring. It's rapidly becoming the next Dreamcast.
If you want to see Ogg succeed then the easiest way is write a plugin for the "Copy Music" feature in windows media player. Media player uses the stinky WMA by default and has lousy MP3 support (on purpose). Write a plugin encoder/decoder for it and distribute it far and wide. And don't forget ask the user during installation if they want to make it the default.
It would also help to lobby people like Winamp, LimeWire, WinMX etc. to include Ogg as a recognized format by default making it easier to locate and play music.
Sorry, but it shouldn't require 40Mb of binaries (not including fonts, man pages etc. or the WM on top of that) to make GNOME or KDE run. That's what XFree86 requires.
Microwindows demonstrates that it is quite feasible to produce something with the right kind of functionality required but considerably less overhead. That is what KDE & GNOME should be running on, a lightweight, local desktop. If someone wants remote they can run XFree86 in rootless mode, but a lot of people won't care about that.
And yes, it must be possible to produce an equivalent feature set simply because Win32 & Mac both manage to have fast desktops despite not using X at all.
Why would anyone complain about lack of network transparency? If you want X, then run XFree86 on top of the desktop in rootless mode, just like people do on Win32 or Mac.
I'm not saying toss away X if you need it, but consider that an ever increasing number of desktop users do not need remote access yet they are burdened by the architecture.
Yes it works and it works very slowly. Graphics applications are very clunky compared to their Win32/Mac counterparts.
Linux needs to consider running X on top of the desktop rather than underneath it. Implement versions of GTK/QT that talk to the framebuffer directly and run KDE/GNOME on top of that. I bet the performance increase would be astounding. It's getting to the stage now where more and more people exclusively or generally run their desktops locally so it's a makes little sense that everything must go via clunky old XFree86.
People who run remote could simply fire up XFree86 just as before running in rootless mode. I do this on the OS X and XP and it works fine.
AOL uses something called ART format and compresses and caches incoming images into that. I guess when you have 30 million users it saves a LOT of money, space and bandwidth to do this rather than fetch them from the net each time.
I think AOL has a pref on the user side to disable this behaviour. You should search their site because they might have some way to disable it on the server as well, for example by inserting a meta tag or http header to data as its pushed out.
Someone tell me how hidden voyeur cameras have anything to do with domain name extensions for adult/hate sites and why the two are bundled together in a single bill like this?
It seems to me that this is a case of an extremely unpopular censorious measure (requiring sites to have certain extensions) trying to coast into law on the shirttails of a more worthy measure.
This is why US lawmaking just stinks. Can you say "patriot" act? The first hurdle a bill should be required to face is that it is representing itself truthfully in its own title. Deceptive bills like this deserve be tossed out no matter how worthy parts of it may be.
If you do respond to the guy asking why RH 6.2 had so many updates, remind him that those patches are for an OS, a webserver, an ftp server, an ssh server, file/print services, C++/Java/Perl development, editors, office applications, databases and a ton more besides.
If you totalled up all the patches required to fix a machine filled MS software it would probably be not much different. Except of course it would be different in that RH (and other Unix/Linux distros) release patches in a timely fashion whereas MS doesn't.
Why do you assume it's "unfinished"? NS 6.2 is a very good browser even though it's based off of 0.9.4. Part of the reason is that it has been continuously pounded on for the last year which means its extremely stable.
If CS took the engine from the 0.9.4 it would be a more than adequate substitute for IE. In six months from now, perhaps they'll run an update that switches to the 1.0 engine assuming that proves itself to be as stable.
Excel is an ActiveX document server. It would be reasonably straightforward though rather pointless to host it within Mozilla, by modifying the existing ActiveX control hosting plugin to also support OLE in-place active objects and ActiveX documents.
The reason it doesn't do this is because there is little benefit to supporting it running in-place, so it launches it as a standalone application.
Mozilla is actually more powerful than IE in this regard. Using XPCOM, JS, XUL, XPI packages and more besides, it's possible to extend or modify the behaviour of the browser in any number of ways.
Unlike ActiveX you're not even confined to Win32. It is quite possible to develop cross-platform components or even whole applications using just JS & XUL.
I haven't used AOL for a while but my understanding is they only force minor updates, i.e. a patch that fixes bugs in 6.0, but not forcing you to switch a whole version, e.g. from 6.0 to 7.0.
Because the CS & AOL dev teams have their own schedules to keep. If they waited for 1.0 to appear the CS client development cycle would have been set back by 6 months or more.
Some people won't pay for it, but the vast, vast majority will. If there was a site where for 50 cents I could download an MP3 track (signed to me if necessary) from a superfast server then I would happily pay for it.
Aside from the convenience, such a site could be a community where I could rate songs, find similar music, read news about my favourite bands, meet other fans, buy the CD, buy concert tickets etc. If such a site was prominently placed in AOL, MSN etc. the pirate market would dry up overnight.
Gnutella et al would be second rate by comparison. Yes you could get your song eventually but it would probably cost you more than 50 cents of your time and connection to do so.
I played Halo and thought it was pretty boring. Trying to play a first person shooting using your thumb isn't fun.
I'm sure the XBox is technologically superior but as as the Saturn found out to its disadvantage, that's only half the story. People want good games. The Playstation has good games and plenty of bargain bin oldies to boot. It doesn't help either that the PS2 is cheaper than an X-Box.
I never said it should be like XP or OS X at all. Both manage to be user friendly despite looking nothing like each other.
The issue is not with KDE/GNOME being more like XP but with both suffering from information overload - too many settings and too much jargon. It needs to be cleaned up. The control panel in particular is a usability disaster, a lot of those settings should go into advanced tabs.
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Therefore this demonstration is not just about modular windows but also rationalises why Microsoft should be required to release interfaces and specifications in XP that allow third party integration.
Trust me, the bulk of the book is the Salmon of Doubt, a Dirk Gently novel. I flicked through a copy in my local bookstore. There are also various snippets of other stories, including some HHGTTG stuff which is perhaps where the confusion arose from.
It isn't a Hitchikers sequel, it's a Dirk Gently novel.
When I look back it wasn't that much fun anyway. It certainly had its moments and an addictive quality but it was a game more based on repetition and sitting around for long periods of time than actual fun.
My pet peeve was the total lack of attention Verant paid to the UI. For 3 years it has been a piece of shit and it doesn't look like improving anytime soon. Even in fullscreen it's just terrible and Verant seem more interested in keeping the 50+ players happy than actually improving things like the UI that affect everyone.
I've tried DAoC too which has a gorgeous and well designed UI but suffers from it's own problems with regards to repetition. My ideal game would be a cross-between the two - DAoC's UI and ruleset combined with EQ's zone variety.
Let's face it, so far the Xbox has been a disaster and Sony want to make sure it stays that way even with the recent price cuts. What better way to make sure of that than cut their own prices and drop heavy hints that a PS3 might be just around the corner?
Of course realistically no PS3 is going to appear before Christmas 2003 unless its a revamped PS2 with a harddrive, but anyone thinking of getting an XBox is likely to think again.
The XBox has a serious problem on its hands now. It's still the most expensive of the games consoles, and the games are expensive and boring. It's rapidly becoming the next Dreamcast.
It would also help to lobby people like Winamp, LimeWire, WinMX etc. to include Ogg as a recognized format by default making it easier to locate and play music.
Microwindows demonstrates that it is quite feasible to produce something with the right kind of functionality required but considerably less overhead. That is what KDE & GNOME should be running on, a lightweight, local desktop. If someone wants remote they can run XFree86 in rootless mode, but a lot of people won't care about that.
And yes, it must be possible to produce an equivalent feature set simply because Win32 & Mac both manage to have fast desktops despite not using X at all.
I'm not saying toss away X if you need it, but consider that an ever increasing number of desktop users do not need remote access yet they are burdened by the architecture.
Linux needs to consider running X on top of the desktop rather than underneath it. Implement versions of GTK/QT that talk to the framebuffer directly and run KDE/GNOME on top of that. I bet the performance increase would be astounding. It's getting to the stage now where more and more people exclusively or generally run their desktops locally so it's a makes little sense that everything must go via clunky old XFree86.
People who run remote could simply fire up XFree86 just as before running in rootless mode. I do this on the OS X and XP and it works fine.
I think AOL has a pref on the user side to disable this behaviour. You should search their site because they might have some way to disable it on the server as well, for example by inserting a meta tag or http header to data as its pushed out.
If browsing is slow for you on OS X, you might like to try Mozilla Release Candidate 1.
You're better off using Mozilla, especially the rapidly developing Mach-O version which has an multithreaded Unix backend and is very fast.
It seems to me that this is a case of an extremely unpopular censorious measure (requiring sites to have certain extensions) trying to coast into law on the shirttails of a more worthy measure.
This is why US lawmaking just stinks. Can you say "patriot" act? The first hurdle a bill should be required to face is that it is representing itself truthfully in its own title. Deceptive bills like this deserve be tossed out no matter how worthy parts of it may be.
If you totalled up all the patches required to fix a machine filled MS software it would probably be not much different. Except of course it would be different in that RH (and other Unix/Linux distros) release patches in a timely fashion whereas MS doesn't.
If CS took the engine from the 0.9.4 it would be a more than adequate substitute for IE. In six months from now, perhaps they'll run an update that switches to the 1.0 engine assuming that proves itself to be as stable.
The reason it doesn't do this is because there is little benefit to supporting it running in-place, so it launches it as a standalone application.
Unlike ActiveX you're not even confined to Win32. It is quite possible to develop cross-platform components or even whole applications using just JS & XUL.
Plus Mozilla has pretty good support for drag and drop, clipboatd and shortcuts which are also OLE/ActiveX related activities.
Where does it say force? A Compuserve user is only going to get the new 7.0 client if they install it. In other words it's voluntary.
I haven't used AOL for a while but my understanding is they only force minor updates, i.e. a patch that fixes bugs in 6.0, but not forcing you to switch a whole version, e.g. from 6.0 to 7.0.
Because the CS & AOL dev teams have their own schedules to keep. If they waited for 1.0 to appear the CS client development cycle would have been set back by 6 months or more.
Aside from the convenience, such a site could be a community where I could rate songs, find similar music, read news about my favourite bands, meet other fans, buy the CD, buy concert tickets etc. If such a site was prominently placed in AOL, MSN etc. the pirate market would dry up overnight.
Gnutella et al would be second rate by comparison. Yes you could get your song eventually but it would probably cost you more than 50 cents of your time and connection to do so.
I'm sure the XBox is technologically superior but as as the Saturn found out to its disadvantage, that's only half the story. People want good games. The Playstation has good games and plenty of bargain bin oldies to boot. It doesn't help either that the PS2 is cheaper than an X-Box.
Thanks for the link, it pretty much echoes the point I was trying to make. Too bad I didn't know about it beforehand :)
The issue is not with KDE/GNOME being more like XP but with both suffering from information overload - too many settings and too much jargon. It needs to be cleaned up. The control panel in particular is a usability disaster, a lot of those settings should go into advanced tabs.