Gave 'em about 120 bucks. Bought a year of the Club, then bought a boxed 9.2 set with the discount Club membership gives you. That throws an extra month into the Membership as well.
The way I see it, they deserve some support for services well rendered. I downloaded 8.2 and am still using it. (Very good release overall.)
9.2 was a bit of a wash for me. Lots of new stuff, but some rather annoying bugs. The 9.2.1 iso looks to be well worth the club membership. (When I get to downloading it that is..)
Back before I tried 8.2, I tried many distros. All of them were cool, but 8.2 really stuck with me. Their overall direction is the most Desktop like for me. (I detect a slight IRIXish feel to the tools and terminology I like.
because I am simply not going to use Microsoft search. --ever.
At work, I do have to use their products, but everywhere else it is Open Software. I see a growing number of users downloading little widgets that make search a bit quicker, so there is some room for Microsoft to play. It is not hard to just ask for Google though, so I can't see these affecting the audience as much as, say shipping a free browser.
Google has a very high mindshare right now. Most computer users, who know anything about what they are doing, know what Google is. Since a fair number of those users are actually running Microsoft stuff, intergration will grab some of them, but it will only stick if the quality rises above what it is now. (Something I seriously doubt will happen in the near term.) Factor in word of mouth combined with slow upgrade cycles and Microsoft does not have an easy task set in front of them.
Microsoft can grab the noobs and clueless users who won't know or can't know the differences early on. Longer term, this is a problem because Google needs to continue to attract new users. I suppose the lack of new bodies will cause Google some longer term grief, but quality matters here, so I imagine they will still get their share. It is not that tough to try out different search services, unlike browsers.
Given these things, I just can't see Microsoft taking over Internet search. If they spend enough, they will get an audience, then what? Ads? Subscriptions? Intergration? They are going to have to work hard to provide a lot of value in order to profit. The simple, quality message coming from Google is going to be hard to beat.
I'll bet they are going to try and claim to have search be part of the 'Microsoft Office System' brand they are pimping right now. They have already done it with Placeware, why not search? This has a chance with the business crowd and might steal revenue from the Google Ad Words program. Maybe this is the area they are looking hard at. Making money from ads delivered to noobs and the casual/clueless is not going to make anyone rich, but getting the attention of businesses trying to run targeted marketing efforts online would. Microsoft might actually have a chance at this.
In the end, still a non-issue. Still am not going to use their search, even if it happens to be a bit better. Will spend a lot of time letting others know why also.
because they have used up the very public domain that they plundered getting to where they are now. Having capped the well, they are finding it a bit hard to develop new material.
I love computers and have been computing since an early age. If the big companies have their way, computing will be devalued in general. Closed systems and the control they bring will basically marginalize most mainstream computing to a degree that limits their career potential for most of us.
It's not that we are anywhere close to being done with computing, far from it. The problem to me appears to be coming from the powerful faction of our society that really does not want US to be doing new things with our computers. Established interests are growing increasingly hostile toward new, uncontrolled, approved, whatever, development.
Ever wonder exactly why a lot of interesting projects begin outside the land of the free? I sure do, and it does not look good. When I find my computing interests leaning toward all the work done in other countries, I get worried. Computing in the US is stagnating under the weight of corporate lobbyists and ignorant on the take politicians.
Are you sure you want to start down that path? Perhaps you would be happier if you didn't know better.... You can likely afford to do either, which is less hassle longer term? I know, if I had more money, I would not care as much as I do. The fact that I don't is no big deal, but seeing all of this grind slowly into action takes a lot of fun out of something I really love doing.
Maybe OSS can save the day, but then again, maybe not. (Seriously.)
I have made the transition to open tools, so if things begin to happen, I am ready to go. This also lets me continue to do what I like, how I like it in a hobby form as well.
Having said all of that, I also have started networking again. Time to get some new skills --leverage my computing ability while I can. I fear the time is coming soon where computing will no longer stand on its own as a reasonable career path. Computing + other things does make sense though. (Beats starting at entry level again...)
Why not combine your knowledge of medicine with computing somehow? Build up a shop with all open tools, then start consulting? At least this way, you can strongly leverage your current skill set while trying hard to avoid many of the problems mentioned above. The movie studios have basically done this, perhaps medicine can too.
Or, forget the whole thing and try another field with promise. Biotech seems a good fit. At least you would get to use computers along with some of what you know now. Besides, the way things look from a laypersons point of view, genetics are very computer like. Debugging life forms might just be interesting in the way that our current computers are today. Just be sure you keep any new critters on a very tight leash!
having recently tried a number of Q3A mods that really did nothing to balance the game.
Most of the really good things that define a highly playable mod from a 'cool, lets try something else' one are in the basic mechanics of the game.
Where are the weapons and are they appropriate for the playspace? Do they work well for a few players? Lots of players?
What about the playspace itself? Does one side have a clear advantage? How about a particular path? Many of the classic levels avoid dead end ways making it tough for players to just sit and wait for others to show.
For games like capture the flag, where is the balance of power? Is it possible for a team to cover all their bases without being forced to venture off for new weapons/ammo?
Visuals have never been as important as play mechanics are, but they do play an important part. A dark spot or interesting texture placed just so, might allow a player to hide for a bit, or clash horribly with the target, making for either a sneaky element of challenge and tension, or a frustrating experience...
Spawn points should be in areas where players have a fighting chance at actually spawning without being camped too often. Best ones are those where the player forms near the action while campers always are watching their back.
All of this is specific to Q3A --hey, I still play the game because it is well balanced and interactive, but other games have similar issues. The parent is right, you gotta play.
If it were me, fun first, beauty later, but that's just me.
Having played Q3A a lot, I have been thinking about this too. Be sure to check out other mods and play them. You will get a great sense of what you want to do. --Then do it!
X is not slow by design. Look at SGI machines, they all run X. Even the really old 30Mhz ones will provide a nice snappy GUI experience and they were made in 91! The linux implementation needs further refinement which is some of what this project looks to provide (finally).
As far as the eye-candy goes, you are right for many casual/home users. With regard to enterprise computing you are dead wrong. People are supposed to be working with their machines. The less that gets in the way of that, the better.
Do we need the work? For sure. Is any of this stuff work replacing X. Not a bloody chance. X plays hard in the enterprise computing space, saving money & time through central administration and effective use of avaliable computing resources. Buffers simply cannot compare.
Network transparancy was wonderful and innovative 20 years ago. Just think, networks were young then and they still bothered to build it. Today, we have networks everywhere, and people call for the removal of the network display feature? WTF! Now is the time to be pushing it because the networks/ OS / hardware are all dirt cheap!
The only reason people say this sort of thing is because of the PC mindset.
X is great today, and it is going to continue to get better. Most of the old slashdot responses are dead on in that regard. Will we get the eye-candy nirvana you claim other systems have?
Given the excellent response qualities of my SGI, running X, I would say it is only a matter of time for Linux...
None of this stuff requires getting rid of X. It does require some coordinated effort to solve them however. Which this project appears to be.
All display systems have to specify these things. The simple truth about X is that nobody has focused on these things yet. (Looks like it is about to start.)
If we do this, new applications will be written for the framebuffer. When this happens we lose our multi-user computing ability and begin to have many of the same problems Microsoft currently enjoys having...
You want to trade our killer enterprise computing features for the short-term ability to make home and casual users happy.
This is crazy!
We need to continue to refine how X works, not get rid of it because it is hard somehow. These are simple presentation issues, not core problems.
X is better than everything else out there and has been from conception. We are fools to abandon that now.
I am with you on the unified server front, but
on
X.org and XFree86 Reform
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· Score: 2, Informative
you are barking up the wrong tree on the local / remote display issue.
The network stuff does not hurt X one bit with the display is local. Your particular X server / driver combination might be slow or not depending on your environment, but that does not mean X is slow.
Changing things now would break a lot of things that do not need to be broken. Everything written for many years now makes use of X. Do you really think we should start tearing into that? Sure, build a compatability layer right? Well, why not just make the changes to X that need to be made instead?
We need X to continue to be a feature of Linux. Not an addon, but a feature. X is what seperates UNIX machines from all the other machines out there. X preserves the multi-user attributes of UNIX at the GUI level.
Most people here bitchin' about X really have no idea what multi-user computing is about. I have written about this many times here before, but what the hell. As many times as it takes...
X allows you to distribute your computing as you see fit. It scales very nicely. It also needs more work to fit in to the single home user experience. This can be done without breaking it or mangling it into something less capable.
Besides, Microsoft would love to see X die. Then they would no longer be at a disadvantage in the display area. Just had another thought in this area. With a Microsoft (and others) system, you need to actually have a copy of a document in order to make use of it. Thus, they are putting in lots of ugly DRM stuff to limit what people can do.
With X, you can give the user the ability to work on a document, within limits you specify, yet not actually allow them any sort of real access to the document in question. How? Set up a machine with a limited set of tools specific to your document access needs. Then remote the display to the users computer. This is possible because of two UNIX multi-user features; namely, X and the ability for a program to SUID and run as its owner, not the user asking it to execute.
Want unified fonts for every machine in the building located in one place ready to use? Host a font server.
Tired of installing basic applications on every last machine? Host them on an application server for everyone to share. Make a change in one place and you are done. No pushing software through the network, no login scripts full of reg hacks and such.
Running a tweaked window manager for some reason? Host it as well.
Have a group of people who all need to use a powerful machine / application combination on occasion, but spend much of their time running normal applications? You could buy them all top of the line machines, or you could buy one really nice machine and let them *all* use it when they want to.
Of course you could just buy them all really nice machines and spend the time to load the application onto all of those machines. Most applications of this type require licensing as well. Getting that license to float across all of those machines takes time and effort as well, not to mention the dollars companies ask for that option.
Or, install it once and let X do your work for you.
All of these things might seem goofy to you if you are running a couple of machines at home, or have never really been exposed to a multi-user computing environment before. Don't feel stupid, check out this actual event that happened to me at SUN a while back.
I was there to install an application, but the admin was sick that day. Since I had flown in, things needed to happen that day. So, I installed the application in the user-space, then gave the others instructions on how to make use of it. (One user had a pretty nice machine.)
The guys were stunned! They said that was pretty cool. They did not know they could do that, somebody should market that stuff. Told them a three letter company was trying hard to do just that.
He is the guy responsible for the series of Atari chips beginning with Stella on the 2600. (It was the bare minimum for display) He went on to create the Amiga stuff and from there into medical imaging applications. Cool Guy.
The most interesting aspect of his designs were their inherent hackability. He left key bits exposed to the programmer that allowed for technique to be developed beyond the target for the hardware.
I too had an Atari, actually a couple of them. Old tricked out 400, which I still have because of how it looks, and an 800XL which died:(
Poking around that machine taught wonders. Display lists and their interrupts, graphics modes and memory mapping for scrolling and such, the sound chip. Lots of fun hardware ready to play with.
The Atari did lots of interesting things, once you decided to hack around a bit. Joystick ports were bi-directional and latched if you wanted. Great for controlling things.
Most hardware has the really good bits hidden from the programmer. Today this is really true, given the API we almost all work through. (Not that this is a bad thing, it just is.) Back in the day, the Atari was unique in its design. The smarter you were, the more you could make the machine do --true for the game machine as well.
Many years later, people are still finding new ways to get those bits of hardware to do new and interesting things. No wonder people still hack the old machines. It is worth doing.
To me, this is what really appeals about OSS. The hardware hacks are not as common or necessary --to me at least. Hacking your OS to work a specific way is as good as using display list interrupts, creative display memory mapping and complementary colors displayed on alternate scan lines to double your horizontal screen resolution. (Yes, you can get an Atari to display 640x192, though it is a slow beast while doing it. Heck, if you had a broken TV that could display the entire NTSC signal, the Atari was capable of using almost the entire overscan if you wanted.)
Anyway, I only purchased a few pieces of software. MAC/65 -- Best damn assembler/editor/debugger ever for 8bit machines, Star Raiders, and Archon along with a few other disk games. Did the same thing others did. Wrote lots of interesting programs, learning at the same time.
(One nostalgic Atarian thinking about seeing if the old beast still boots!)
You hit the nail on the head. Music is easier to move on the Internet compared to movies.
THIS MEANS THE RIAA and friends SIMPLY NEED TO MOVE FASTER!
They are in this mess because they have not done that, even though they were given a damn nice chance to do so. The Napster subscription offer would have made them a ton of money. This combined with more marketing data than they can possibly need makes a hell of a lot more sense than their actions today.
I don't mind downloading the spam because I have broadband. Getting mail is no big deal, but sorting it is.
The solution I use requires that one owns a domain. Simply provide specific addresses to people/places/things depending on your expectation for spam. Filter on the client name based on the to: field and most of the crap drops into the crap folder where it belongs.
This combined with a bayesian filter keeps the spam to a very reasonable level. One added bonus:
You can know who sold you out and pass the word to others.
I use gandi.net for this. They provide e-mail redirection for free with a grab bag for unspecified addresses. 12 euros per year with nice online admin tools combined with very reasonable legal terms makes the service well worth it.
As for the e-mail problem, it is going to come down to trusted mail servers. I believe we all should be able to run mail out of our homes, because that is part of being peers on the Internet.
So, anyone can send mail, but if you expect anyone to actually read it, you need to be trusted by at least someone
They cannot have it both ways. If they intend to sell us a license, don't we need to see the terms and enter into some sort of contract? (God forbid the EULA for music CD's.)
If they sell us a license, does that not mean we have paid for a given piece of music. If we lose the media, we still have the license right?
If they sell us a copy to enjoy, then we can do what we want with our copy so long as we don't sell it for money. As long as I can give a CD for a christmas gift, I say we are buying copies, not licenses.
but in a different way. You see, using WMA limits your choice of OS, but does allow many different hardware types.
Using AAC limits your hardware (for now), but does let you choose your OS.
Many folks probably don't care about the OS being limited, though they really should. Understanding hardware choices is easier than OS choices are, but keeping both in mind reveals that both companies offer limited choices.
For me, the choice of OS is far more important than the hardware choice is. (And I think the hardware issues are about to begin working themselves out which is even better.)
Making the Microsoft choice permits more hardware, but at what cost. How many other choices am I forced into because of this particular one? Going down the Apple road limits your hardware, at present, but does not limit anywhere as many other choices you might otherwise have made for you.
All in all, the Apple path permits far greater overall choice than the Microsoft path will, but it takes a bit more thought to see.
BTW, that is worth the hardware premium in my book. You do get exactly what you pay for.
Microsoft is not about choice at all. You mention that you can get all kinds of devices from different vendors that all work with Windows, and you are correct in this.
What that has done is drive the cost of hardware down for all of us, which is good. So, that seems to support your notion of choice right? Microsoft is good for us right?
Well, I have two problems with this:
- All of those little devices work the same way. Compute using Windows or not at all. You may think you have choice, but remember Microsoft calls the shots on all of those. They write the OS, they provide the API for developers to work with. They establish the limits.
These things all work together to make sure you compute the way Microsoft wants you to compute. Keeping this in mind, ask yourself this question and think long and hard about the answer:
"What incentive does Microsoft have to act in your best interests given the control they have over the industry?"
My answer: None at all really. They have been convicted of illegal activity, our current administration is friendly to that and the pressure from Wall Street forces them to continue doing what they have been doing because it is good for the shareholders.
- The other problem involves these other device and software makers. Sometimes one of them really hits the nail on the head. People start buying and life is good for a while. What happens when Microsoft sees that success? They get greedy and introduce their own version, or litigate, or flat out purchase it for their own.
Once they have done this, they bastardize the tech and make sure it is nothing more than added leverage for you to continue spending in the Microsoft direction.
Take a look at web conference software. They recently purchased Placeware. Now it is called "Microsoft Office System Web Conferencing" or something along those lines. Called to renew contract the other day. Got told the services we were using were no longer offered. That same package would cost more, unless we chose to purchase their new services package with Outlook and Office intergration...
The result? A bit more money plus additional hassles to use and otherwise fine service, unless I accept their intergration as part of the deal?
(Sorry for the reply to my own, but I forgot something. I know, bad form and all that, forgive a little today...)
Buying a computer from your local retailer sucks. They package the OS in a way that makes it hard to really make use of it. Hardware and services are tied together in ways that are useless, yet somehow add value to the machine. You get serviced by morons in most places and your choices suck.
Buying a business machine is totally different. You are respected, have the ability to make deals, and get your packaged software on real media that can, for the most part, be used as it needs to.
Most people don't see the difference because they are either buying for business or as comsumers. (citizens dammit!)
The parent to my first post indicated that HP does not care. Looking at things this way makes that very clear. Too bad the average person can't somehow see that.
(Wishing we could edit posts sometimes, or amend them at the least with a time stamp...)
we should be supporting our local mom 'n pop computer builders, or building our own for friends and family.
Lots of people want the general purpose computer to go away now. Same for the Internet. Seems that everybody likes open standards until they somehow establish a position of dominance. Then greed and fear of what might come next takes over.
Wall street wants nice little quarters, every single quarter better than the last for as many as they can get them. This means our "market" works against us because the incentive to create change and improve is just not there.
They say it is, but really it isn't. Any company willing to take significant risks will see its stock go down, particularly if said risk takes more than a few of their nice little quarters down during the investment period.
Nobody wants that because it is hard to come back from. Better to simply litigate and license away the potential changes because that means lots more of those nice little quarters one after the others...
I used to respect HP and what it stood for. In some ways I still do, but I fear the pressure of Wall Street means I am going to be able to plot my history on the corporate road maps and that sucks.
Do business locally, use OSS tools and tell your friends. Sometimes this will come at a slight cost premium --so what? Most people can afford a little bit more for choice, particularly when they combine their new hardware with OSS.
It comes down to this:
Is a better choice worth a bit of work or not? Seems to me, this country was founded with a bit of work and a desire for choice in life. Man, just how far away from that have we come?
On one hand, HP is making good use of OSS in their higher-end offerings. Their value proposition is growing sound along with the other slow learners. (IBM, SGI, SUN... --Not in any particular order BTW.) But, the stuff they sell to consumers (cough, gasp hack), I mean American citizens is utter crap designed to maximize monthly revenue. This is best done with lock-in and they know it.
We know it too, yet most people don't care. Just can't figure that out. I mean, if it were food, people would be up in arms. "It's inhumane to force people to eat food from one source! Blah Blah..." Electronics are no different yet somehow people don't make the connection.
It is so bad, the big corps are flat out saying they are going to screw us over in the name of providing more choice! Liars and doublespeakers all of them...
Build your own damn box, then use it to tell (HP/DELL, others) what you did and why they did not get the business.
Do you run VNC there too? The case we were talking about happens when you are working on the local display and have to move...
Application needs to move also, but cannot unless you have done something in advance (xmove, VNC...).
In a corporate situation I can see this working nicely with application servers, but what about the home machine, or machines in different locations/networks?
I am not sure how VNC works in this case. Hints? ???
Slashdot Mirror
Gave 'em about 120 bucks. Bought a year of the Club, then bought a boxed 9.2 set with the discount Club membership gives you. That throws an extra month into the Membership as well.
The way I see it, they deserve some support for services well rendered. I downloaded 8.2 and am still using it. (Very good release overall.)
9.2 was a bit of a wash for me. Lots of new stuff, but some rather annoying bugs. The 9.2.1 iso looks to be well worth the club membership. (When I get to downloading it that is..)
Back before I tried 8.2, I tried many distros. All of them were cool, but 8.2 really stuck with me. Their overall direction is the most Desktop like for me. (I detect a slight IRIXish feel to the tools and terminology I like.
Nice to see them in the positive.
and co, present their LTSP system using those words at the committee hearing for HB2892. (Oregon Open Source bill)
Got a lot of nods from the members of the legislature present. Too bad the industry lobby worked Minnis over....
Anyway, I like it too.
because I am simply not going to use Microsoft search. --ever.
At work, I do have to use their products, but everywhere else it is Open Software. I see a growing number of users downloading little widgets that make search a bit quicker, so there is some room for Microsoft to play. It is not hard to just ask for Google though, so I can't see these affecting the audience as much as, say shipping a free browser.
Google has a very high mindshare right now. Most computer users, who know anything about what they are doing, know what Google is. Since a fair number of those users are actually running Microsoft stuff, intergration will grab some of them, but it will only stick if the quality rises above what it is now. (Something I seriously doubt will happen in the near term.) Factor in word of mouth combined with slow upgrade cycles and Microsoft does not have an easy task set in front of them.
Microsoft can grab the noobs and clueless users who won't know or can't know the differences early on. Longer term, this is a problem because Google needs to continue to attract new users. I suppose the lack of new bodies will cause Google some longer term grief, but quality matters here, so I imagine they will still get their share. It is not that tough to try out different search services, unlike browsers.
Given these things, I just can't see Microsoft taking over Internet search. If they spend enough, they will get an audience, then what? Ads? Subscriptions? Intergration? They are going to have to work hard to provide a lot of value in order to profit. The simple, quality message coming from Google is going to be hard to beat.
I'll bet they are going to try and claim to have search be part of the 'Microsoft Office System' brand they are pimping right now. They have already done it with Placeware, why not search? This has a chance with the business crowd and might steal revenue from the Google Ad Words program. Maybe this is the area they are looking hard at. Making money from ads delivered to noobs and the casual/clueless is not going to make anyone rich, but getting the attention of businesses trying to run targeted marketing efforts online would. Microsoft might actually have a chance at this.
In the end, still a non-issue. Still am not going to use their search, even if it happens to be a bit better. Will spend a lot of time letting others know why also.
The really smart parent will take the time to do things with their kids, right when Barney is supposed to be showing.
Does both parties some good!
because they have used up the very public domain that they plundered getting to where they are now. Having capped the well, they are finding it a bit hard to develop new material.
They deserve it.
I love computers and have been computing since an early age. If the big companies have their way, computing will be devalued in general. Closed systems and the control they bring will basically marginalize most mainstream computing to a degree that limits their career potential for most of us.
It's not that we are anywhere close to being done with computing, far from it. The problem to me appears to be coming from the powerful faction of our society that really does not want US to be doing new things with our computers. Established interests are growing increasingly hostile toward new, uncontrolled, approved, whatever, development.
Ever wonder exactly why a lot of interesting projects begin outside the land of the free? I sure do, and it does not look good. When I find my computing interests leaning toward all the work done in other countries, I get worried. Computing in the US is stagnating under the weight of corporate lobbyists and ignorant on the take politicians.
Are you sure you want to start down that path? Perhaps you would be happier if you didn't know better.... You can likely afford to do either, which is less hassle longer term? I know, if I had more money, I would not care as much as I do. The fact that I don't is no big deal, but seeing all of this grind slowly into action takes a lot of fun out of something I really love doing.
Maybe OSS can save the day, but then again, maybe not. (Seriously.)
I have made the transition to open tools, so if things begin to happen, I am ready to go. This also lets me continue to do what I like, how I like it in a hobby form as well.
Having said all of that, I also have started networking again. Time to get some new skills --leverage my computing ability while I can. I fear the time is coming soon where computing will no longer stand on its own as a reasonable career path. Computing + other things does make sense though. (Beats starting at entry level again...)
Why not combine your knowledge of medicine with computing somehow? Build up a shop with all open tools, then start consulting? At least this way, you can strongly leverage your current skill set while trying hard to avoid many of the problems mentioned above. The movie studios have basically done this, perhaps medicine can too.
Or, forget the whole thing and try another field with promise. Biotech seems a good fit. At least you would get to use computers along with some of what you know now. Besides, the way things look from a laypersons point of view, genetics are very computer like. Debugging life forms might just be interesting in the way that our current computers are today. Just be sure you keep any new critters on a very tight leash!
having recently tried a number of Q3A mods that really did nothing to balance the game.
Most of the really good things that define a highly playable mod from a 'cool, lets try something else' one are in the basic mechanics of the game.
Where are the weapons and are they appropriate for the playspace? Do they work well for a few players? Lots of players?
What about the playspace itself? Does one side have a clear advantage? How about a particular path? Many of the classic levels avoid dead end ways making it tough for players to just sit and wait for others to show.
For games like capture the flag, where is the balance of power? Is it possible for a team to cover all their bases without being forced to venture off for new weapons/ammo?
Visuals have never been as important as play mechanics are, but they do play an important part. A dark spot or interesting texture placed just so, might allow a player to hide for a bit, or clash horribly with the target, making for either a sneaky element of challenge and tension, or a frustrating experience...
Spawn points should be in areas where players have a fighting chance at actually spawning without being camped too often. Best ones are those where the player forms near the action while campers always are watching their back.
All of this is specific to Q3A --hey, I still play the game because it is well balanced and interactive, but other games have similar issues. The parent is right, you gotta play.
If it were me, fun first, beauty later, but that's just me.
Having played Q3A a lot, I have been thinking about this too. Be sure to check out other mods and play them. You will get a great sense of what you want to do. --Then do it!
You forgot one other point; namely, you can just lie!
Essentially you give up nothing, but a small amount of time.
Maybe this project will see faster development in this area.
Thinking of old school widgets, which we could get the SGI viewkit. Old school maybe, but pretty useful and good looking today...
X is not slow by design. Look at SGI machines, they all run X. Even the really old 30Mhz ones will provide a nice snappy GUI experience and they were made in 91! The linux implementation needs further refinement which is some of what this project looks to provide (finally).
As far as the eye-candy goes, you are right for many casual/home users. With regard to enterprise computing you are dead wrong. People are supposed to be working with their machines. The less that gets in the way of that, the better.
Do we need the work? For sure. Is any of this stuff work replacing X. Not a bloody chance. X plays hard in the enterprise computing space, saving money & time through central administration and effective use of avaliable computing resources. Buffers simply cannot compare.
Network transparancy was wonderful and innovative 20 years ago. Just think, networks were young then and they still bothered to build it. Today, we have networks everywhere, and people call for the removal of the network display feature? WTF! Now is the time to be pushing it because the networks/ OS / hardware are all dirt cheap!
The only reason people say this sort of thing is because of the PC mindset.
X is great today, and it is going to continue to get better. Most of the old slashdot responses are dead on in that regard. Will we get the eye-candy nirvana you claim other systems have?
Given the excellent response qualities of my SGI, running X, I would say it is only a matter of time for Linux...
None of this stuff requires getting rid of X. It does require some coordinated effort to solve them however. Which this project appears to be.
All display systems have to specify these things. The simple truth about X is that nobody has focused on these things yet. (Looks like it is about to start.)
If we do this, new applications will be written for the framebuffer. When this happens we lose our multi-user computing ability and begin to have many of the same problems Microsoft currently enjoys having...
You want to trade our killer enterprise computing features for the short-term ability to make home and casual users happy.
This is crazy!
We need to continue to refine how X works, not get rid of it because it is hard somehow. These are simple presentation issues, not core problems.
X is better than everything else out there and has been from conception. We are fools to abandon that now.
you are barking up the wrong tree on the local / remote display issue.
The network stuff does not hurt X one bit with the display is local. Your particular X server / driver combination might be slow or not depending on your environment, but that does not mean X is slow.
Changing things now would break a lot of things that do not need to be broken. Everything written for many years now makes use of X. Do you really think we should start tearing into that? Sure, build a compatability layer right? Well, why not just make the changes to X that need to be made instead?
We need X to continue to be a feature of Linux. Not an addon, but a feature. X is what seperates UNIX machines from all the other machines out there. X preserves the multi-user attributes of UNIX at the GUI level.
Most people here bitchin' about X really have no idea what multi-user computing is about. I have written about this many times here before, but what the hell. As many times as it takes...
X allows you to distribute your computing as you see fit. It scales very nicely. It also needs more work to fit in to the single home user experience. This can be done without breaking it or mangling it into something less capable.
Besides, Microsoft would love to see X die. Then they would no longer be at a disadvantage in the display area. Just had another thought in this area. With a Microsoft (and others) system, you need to actually have a copy of a document in order to make use of it. Thus, they are putting in lots of ugly DRM stuff to limit what people can do.
With X, you can give the user the ability to work on a document, within limits you specify, yet not actually allow them any sort of real access to the document in question. How? Set up a machine with a limited set of tools specific to your document access needs. Then remote the display to the users computer. This is possible because of two UNIX multi-user features; namely, X and the ability for a program to SUID and run as its owner, not the user asking it to execute.
Want unified fonts for every machine in the building located in one place ready to use? Host a font server.
Tired of installing basic applications on every last machine? Host them on an application server for everyone to share. Make a change in one place and you are done. No pushing software through the network, no login scripts full of reg hacks and such.
Running a tweaked window manager for some reason? Host it as well.
Have a group of people who all need to use a powerful machine / application combination on occasion, but spend much of their time running normal applications? You could buy them all top of the line machines, or you could buy one really nice machine and let them *all* use it when they want to.
Of course you could just buy them all really nice machines and spend the time to load the application onto all of those machines. Most applications of this type require licensing as well. Getting that license to float across all of those machines takes time and effort as well, not to mention the dollars companies ask for that option.
Or, install it once and let X do your work for you.
All of these things might seem goofy to you if you are running a couple of machines at home, or have never really been exposed to a multi-user computing environment before. Don't feel stupid, check out this actual event that happened to me at SUN a while back.
I was there to install an application, but the admin was sick that day. Since I had flown in, things needed to happen that day. So, I installed the application in the user-space, then gave the others instructions on how to make use of it. (One user had a pretty nice machine.)
The guys were stunned! They said that was pretty cool. They did not know they could do that, somebody should market that stuff. Told them a three letter company was trying hard to do just that.
(Blank stare, then understanding... SUN!)
These guys w
actually. The appeal of the hardware lingers. It is a bug much like music is.
:)
You can ignore it for a while, but every so often it strikes...
Seems that embedded tech is going to continue on its upswing for a while yet.
Recommend me a kit. I will take a hard look at it.
(Board Applications Engineer looking at the greener grass
He is the guy responsible for the series of Atari chips beginning with Stella on the 2600. (It was the bare minimum for display) He went on to create the Amiga stuff and from there into medical imaging applications. Cool Guy.
The most interesting aspect of his designs were their inherent hackability. He left key bits exposed to the programmer that allowed for technique to be developed beyond the target for the hardware.
how they can reasonably know this is a piece of mars?
I know millions of years brings the event into statistical probability, but I have my doubts.
How do they know for sure?
I too had an Atari, actually a couple of them. Old tricked out 400, which I still have because of how it looks, and an 800XL which died :(
Poking around that machine taught wonders. Display lists and their interrupts, graphics modes and memory mapping for scrolling and such, the sound chip. Lots of fun hardware ready to play with.
The Atari did lots of interesting things, once you decided to hack around a bit. Joystick ports were bi-directional and latched if you wanted. Great for controlling things.
Most hardware has the really good bits hidden from the programmer. Today this is really true, given the API we almost all work through. (Not that this is a bad thing, it just is.) Back in the day, the Atari was unique in its design. The smarter you were, the more you could make the machine do --true for the game machine as well.
Many years later, people are still finding new ways to get those bits of hardware to do new and interesting things. No wonder people still hack the old machines. It is worth doing.
To me, this is what really appeals about OSS. The hardware hacks are not as common or necessary --to me at least. Hacking your OS to work a specific way is as good as using display list interrupts, creative display memory mapping and complementary colors displayed on alternate scan lines to double your horizontal screen resolution. (Yes, you can get an Atari to display 640x192, though it is a slow beast while doing it. Heck, if you had a broken TV that could display the entire NTSC signal, the Atari was capable of using almost the entire overscan if you wanted.)
Anyway, I only purchased a few pieces of software. MAC/65 -- Best damn assembler/editor/debugger ever for 8bit machines, Star Raiders, and Archon along with a few other disk games. Did the same thing others did. Wrote lots of interesting programs, learning at the same time.
(One nostalgic Atarian thinking about seeing if the old beast still boots!)
You hit the nail on the head. Music is easier to move on the Internet compared to movies.
THIS MEANS THE RIAA and friends SIMPLY NEED TO MOVE FASTER!
They are in this mess because they have not done that, even though they were given a damn nice chance to do so. The Napster subscription offer would have made them a ton of money. This combined with more marketing data than they can possibly need makes a hell of a lot more sense than their actions today.
I don't mind downloading the spam because I have broadband. Getting mail is no big deal, but sorting it is.
The solution I use requires that one owns a domain. Simply provide specific addresses to people/places/things depending on your expectation for spam. Filter on the client name based on the to: field and most of the crap drops into the crap folder where it belongs.
This combined with a bayesian filter keeps the spam to a very reasonable level. One added bonus:
You can know who sold you out and pass the word to others.
I use gandi.net for this. They provide e-mail redirection for free with a grab bag for unspecified addresses. 12 euros per year with nice online admin tools combined with very reasonable legal terms makes the service well worth it.
As for the e-mail problem, it is going to come down to trusted mail servers. I believe we all should be able to run mail out of our homes, because that is part of being peers on the Internet.
So, anyone can send mail, but if you expect anyone to actually read it, you need to be trusted by at least someone
Is it a license, or a copy to enjoy?
They cannot have it both ways. If they intend to sell us a license, don't we need to see the terms and enter into some sort of contract? (God forbid the EULA for music CD's.)
If they sell us a license, does that not mean we have paid for a given piece of music. If we lose the media, we still have the license right?
If they sell us a copy to enjoy, then we can do what we want with our copy so long as we don't sell it for money. As long as I can give a CD for a christmas gift, I say we are buying copies, not licenses.
Which is it? Want your cake and eat it too?
but in a different way. You see, using WMA limits your choice of OS, but does allow many different hardware types.
Using AAC limits your hardware (for now), but does let you choose your OS.
Many folks probably don't care about the OS being limited, though they really should. Understanding hardware choices is easier than OS choices are, but keeping both in mind reveals that both companies offer limited choices.
For me, the choice of OS is far more important than the hardware choice is. (And I think the hardware issues are about to begin working themselves out which is even better.)
Making the Microsoft choice permits more hardware, but at what cost. How many other choices am I forced into because of this particular one? Going down the Apple road limits your hardware, at present, but does not limit anywhere as many other choices you might otherwise have made for you.
All in all, the Apple path permits far greater overall choice than the Microsoft path will, but it takes a bit more thought to see.
BTW, that is worth the hardware premium in my book. You do get exactly what you pay for.
Microsoft is not about choice at all. You mention that you can get all kinds of devices from different vendors that all work with Windows, and you are correct in this.
What that has done is drive the cost of hardware down for all of us, which is good. So, that seems to support your notion of choice right? Microsoft is good for us right?
Well, I have two problems with this:
- All of those little devices work the same way. Compute using Windows or not at all. You may think you have choice, but remember Microsoft calls the shots on all of those. They write the OS, they provide the API for developers to work with. They establish the limits.
These things all work together to make sure you compute the way Microsoft wants you to compute. Keeping this in mind, ask yourself this question and think long and hard about the answer:
"What incentive does Microsoft have to act in your best interests given the control they have over the industry?"
My answer: None at all really. They have been convicted of illegal activity, our current administration is friendly to that and the pressure from Wall Street forces them to continue doing what they have been doing because it is good for the shareholders.
- The other problem involves these other device and software makers. Sometimes one of them really hits the nail on the head. People start buying and life is good for a while. What happens when Microsoft sees that success? They get greedy and introduce their own version, or litigate, or flat out purchase it for their own.
Once they have done this, they bastardize the tech and make sure it is nothing more than added leverage for you to continue spending in the Microsoft direction.
Take a look at web conference software. They recently purchased Placeware. Now it is called "Microsoft Office System Web Conferencing" or something along those lines. Called to renew contract the other day. Got told the services we were using were no longer offered. That same package would cost more, unless we chose to purchase their new services package with Outlook and Office intergration...
The result? A bit more money plus additional hassles to use and otherwise fine service, unless I accept their intergration as part of the deal?
Choice? Sure, theirs.
business purchases.
(Sorry for the reply to my own, but I forgot something. I know, bad form and all that, forgive a little today...)
Buying a computer from your local retailer sucks. They package the OS in a way that makes it hard to really make use of it. Hardware and services are tied together in ways that are useless, yet somehow add value to the machine. You get serviced by morons in most places and your choices suck.
Buying a business machine is totally different. You are respected, have the ability to make deals, and get your packaged software on real media that can, for the most part, be used as it needs to.
Most people don't see the difference because they are either buying for business or as comsumers. (citizens dammit!)
The parent to my first post indicated that HP does not care. Looking at things this way makes that very clear. Too bad the average person can't somehow see that.
(Wishing we could edit posts sometimes, or amend them at the least with a time stamp...)
we should be supporting our local mom 'n pop computer builders, or building our own for friends and family.
Lots of people want the general purpose computer to go away now. Same for the Internet. Seems that everybody likes open standards until they somehow establish a position of dominance. Then greed and fear of what might come next takes over.
Wall street wants nice little quarters, every single quarter better than the last for as many as they can get them. This means our "market" works against us because the incentive to create change and improve is just not there.
They say it is, but really it isn't. Any company willing to take significant risks will see its stock go down, particularly if said risk takes more than a few of their nice little quarters down during the investment period.
Nobody wants that because it is hard to come back from. Better to simply litigate and license away the potential changes because that means lots more of those nice little quarters one after the others...
I used to respect HP and what it stood for. In some ways I still do, but I fear the pressure of Wall Street means I am going to be able to plot my history on the corporate road maps and that sucks.
Do business locally, use OSS tools and tell your friends. Sometimes this will come at a slight cost premium --so what? Most people can afford a little bit more for choice, particularly when they combine their new hardware with OSS.
It comes down to this:
Is a better choice worth a bit of work or not? Seems to me, this country was founded with a bit of work and a desire for choice in life. Man, just how far away from that have we come?
On one hand, HP is making good use of OSS in their higher-end offerings. Their value proposition is growing sound along with the other slow learners. (IBM, SGI, SUN... --Not in any particular order BTW.) But, the stuff they sell to consumers (cough, gasp hack), I mean American citizens is utter crap designed to maximize monthly revenue. This is best done with lock-in and they know it.
We know it too, yet most people don't care. Just can't figure that out. I mean, if it were food, people would be up in arms. "It's inhumane to force people to eat food from one source! Blah Blah..." Electronics are no different yet somehow people don't make the connection.
It is so bad, the big corps are flat out saying they are going to screw us over in the name of providing more choice! Liars and doublespeakers all of them...
Build your own damn box, then use it to tell (HP/DELL, others) what you did and why they did not get the business.
on the native display system?
Do you run VNC there too? The case we were talking about happens when you are working on the local display and have to move...
Application needs to move also, but cannot unless you have done something in advance (xmove, VNC...).
In a corporate situation I can see this working nicely with application servers, but what about the home machine, or machines in different locations/networks?
I am not sure how VNC works in this case. Hints? ???