...the standards that most people expect from well polished Apple software. It's not like F/OSS isn't up to the challenge, either... Just look at Firefox for the Mac.
Or better yet, Firefox's cousin, Camino. It's even more polished and integrated into the Mac UI than Firefox (one hazard of cross-platform applications is that they rarely feel 100% native on every platform), though that comes at the expense of not being able to run extensions.
Are you that dense? Have you ever heard of the Gates foundation?
No, and yes.
I take it you don't have email, or you'd likely have recognized the reference to the chain letter with that title (complete with all-caps in some variations) that's been floating around the internet since the late 1990s.
(The annoying thing is, I almost linked to that page in the previous post, but figured, nah, people will recognize it. *sigh* Note to self: when in doubt, underestimate the cultural literacy of "teh Intarweb.")
It's not really that arbitrary, since they've been focusing on the PowerPC platform for the last however-many years. (Though I don't know how much native code there is in the project, since they're using Java to get at the Mac APIs.)
I don't mind it so much for an alpha release -- this may simply be a way of ensuring they have enough funding to do the port -- as long as they don't force you to pay+subscribe to get at the final release.
I remember the last time Flock showed up on Slashdot, they only had a sign-up form for the alpha program and even that collapsed in a pile of molten silicon. The story has been up for an hour, and Flock's website is still responsive.
Features that less than 1% of 1% of their users will ever even look at...
Actually, Flock is aimed at that 1%. And they're betting on that 1% growing.
Most of their target audience will be interested in the built-in feed reader, the drag-n-drop blogging, etc. Whether that's enough people to sustain a company (and whether Flock can collect enough revenue from partnership deals) remains to be seen. Certainly Opera's comparatively small marketshare, usually cited as less than 1% worldwide, has been plenty to sustain them for years,* so it's at least possible.
*Admittedly Opera's got more revenue streams than just partnerships, since they've got cell phone makers licensing their mobile browser, and they'll be selling the Nintendo DS and Wii versions, etc.
Good for you, that you have no need of it. And does your personal lack of need make this not a useful browser to everyone else?
Judging by the general tone of this discussion, yes.
There are an awful lot of people on the web, and on Slashdot, who don't seem to make a distinction between "X is aimed at a different target audience" and "X is pointless." (There's also a large segment of the population for which demonstrating disdain for something is a way of demonstrating superiority, but that's another issue.)
Maybe someone needs to write a "people have different needs and tastes" tutorial. It would have to be in the form of a HOWTO or maybe a man page.
Mac OS X treats Java as just another app framework, equivalent to Cocoa or Carbon. (I'm fairly certain I've seen an older version of that diagram that also listed Classic in that layer.) I imagine they've done a bunch of optimizations to tie it into the system, though I don't know whether it launches the runtime at boot or not. You've probably noticed that on Mac OS, you get your Java runtime from Apple, not from Sun or IBM.
The downside is that things don't work quite the same as they do in Sun's Java runtime, so there are differences between Java-on-Windows and Java-on-Mac. For instance, my wife is an avid Puzzle Pirates player, and the game client is a Java app. There've been Mac-specific bugs in the past, and at one point a major slowdown appeared when the game was run on a Mac. It hasn't been fixed, so while she can still do crafting on the Mac, whenever she does anything multiplayer, she has to switch to the Windows box.
Whatever you do, you can obviously never please a Linux user. First they complain about the missing support from software companies, then when some company ports their application to Linux, they complain about missing sources.
Sure you can. Provide the source and either maintain it, or hand it to someone who will. Problem solved.
Of course, you are oversimplifying things. There are two camps of Linux users on this issue: those who are OK with binary apps, for some purposes at least, and those for whom Free software (with a capital Free) is a philosophical choice.
Personally, I'm in the former camp. I've even paid for binary-only Linux software on occasion, particularly with a few Windows apps I used that introduced Linux releases. I figured the best way to encourage them to keep working on the Linux versions would be to show there was a market, and that's why (for example) I was one of the first to buy a license for the Linux port of Opera (back with Opera was shareware) even though I was primarily a Mozilla user at that time, and even though it took several versions before it caught up to the Windows version in quality.
The tarball might be downloaded from anywhere, but if the hashes don't match you have a different file than the package maintainer used, and it won't be installed.
That doesn't tell you that it's safe, it tells you that it's the same thing the package maintainer used. All it means is you're passing the responsibility for auditing up the chain to the package maintainer.*
Now, the package maintainer for your distro may audit the code themselves, or they may rely on similar hashes/signatures to make sure that the source they use is the same as the source the project itself provides. In which case that's passing the buck up once again.
So really, what you're doing is relying on the original source to be safe...so it's not much different than relying on the original binary to be safe. It comes down to this: Do I trust the provider of this software? Inclusion in a distro can be seen as a vote of confidence: Gentoo includes app X, implying that Gentoo believes X is not going to take over my machine. You can choose to believe that anything included in your distro is likely to be safe, or rather that anything unsafe in it is unsafe by accident and not deliberately. (Choosing otherwise makes it a hell of a lot harder to build and maintain a system, though it can certainly be done.)
But hash checks and GPG signatures don't tell you that an app is safe, whether you download it as source or as a binary. They only tell you that it hasn't been altered.
*Note that the same is true for RPM-based distros like Fedora or SuSE -- packages are signed with GPG, and it won't install if the signature doesn't validate -- and I would assume for Debian-derived distros as well. This isn't a distro war issue.
Given Qt's close association with KDE, and the naming conventions that have arisen for KDE apps, "clunKy" or "Klunky" sound like appropriate terminology.
I've developed a much better sense of local* geography "flying" around with Google Earth. It's one thing to try to associate views from different locations with points on maps. It's another thing to step back, get some perspective, and see a mix of "real" visuals (the aerial/satllite photography) and maps so that you can say, unequivacably, "OK, those are the mountains I can see from over here, and that range of hills up there is actually the same range of hills over there..." etc.
Sure, it'd be even better to charter an airplane to fly around, but most of us don't have that much pocket change -- and this lets me check out any region I want (assuming sufficient coverage), not just places near where I am.
*By "local" I mean southern California, which is pretty damn big.
Actually, this does remind me of one of those stories where someone does a scientific study to find out something that "everyone already knows."
Except, of course, we didn't all know it before, we suspected it, and assumed it was true. Every once in a while you find out that something "everyone knows" isn't true after all, so getting confirmation does have value.
you could walk around various rooms in your mansion until you got to the reading den, walls covered with bookshelves. s you zoom in you can see the titles on the binders, and you can "reach in" and select one and open it and start reading.
Better idea: I click on the E-Book Library icon, which opens up a Spotlight-style search box. I start typing in the title or author of the book I want, it starts returning matching results, and after I've typed three letters it's narrowed down far enough that I can click on The Right Tool for the Right Job, by Com & Sense. Rather than spending 1 minute walking through the virtual mansion to get to the library, then another 2 minutes looking through all the bookshelves, trying to remember where I left it, I've found it in about 15 seconds.
Slashdot Mirror
...the standards that most people expect from well polished Apple software. It's not like F/OSS isn't up to the challenge, either... Just look at Firefox for the Mac.
Or better yet, Firefox's cousin, Camino. It's even more polished and integrated into the Mac UI than Firefox (one hazard of cross-platform applications is that they rarely feel 100% native on every platform), though that comes at the expense of not being able to run extensions.
Are you that dense? Have you ever heard of the Gates foundation?
No, and yes.
I take it you don't have email, or you'd likely have recognized the reference to the chain letter with that title (complete with all-caps in some variations) that's been floating around the internet since the late 1990s.
(The annoying thing is, I almost linked to that page in the previous post, but figured, nah, people will recognize it. *sigh* Note to self: when in doubt, underestimate the cultural literacy of "teh Intarweb.")
That is a giant sucking sound you're hearing from Windows Vista beta...
You mean Vista will automatically take over Jobs from other operating systems?
I thought when you get that card you have to pay everyone else $50.
Does this mean that BILL GATES IS SHARING HIS FORTUNE?
What, a software magnate running for President? Yeah, right! As if that would ever happen!
Oh, crap.
Maybe they should turn to piracy?
Nah, there's plenty of them on the net already...
It's not really that arbitrary, since they've been focusing on the PowerPC platform for the last however-many years. (Though I don't know how much native code there is in the project, since they're using Java to get at the Mac APIs.)
I don't mind it so much for an alpha release -- this may simply be a way of ensuring they have enough funding to do the port -- as long as they don't force you to pay+subscribe to get at the final release.
NASA should really change Opportunity's name the T-1000.
So the only way to stop it is to drop it into a vat full of molten steel. Good to know -- it should be pretty safe on Mars!
They can work out law that classifies video games as harmful to minors, but they can't work out a law to protect their citizens from spyware.
Glad to know they have their priorities straight.
Don't you think you're giving him undo criticism? It's not his fault Slashdot doesn't include a spelling chequer.
Yes, I'd say yore rite about that.
Now if you'll excuse me, its thyme fore me to set up a gnu balks.
Sometimes I think we need to allot a lot of spaces to people who write "alot."
I remember the last time Flock showed up on Slashdot, they only had a sign-up form for the alpha program and even that collapsed in a pile of molten silicon. The story has been up for an hour, and Flock's website is still responsive.
Features that less than 1% of 1% of their users will ever even look at...
Actually, Flock is aimed at that 1%. And they're betting on that 1% growing.
Most of their target audience will be interested in the built-in feed reader, the drag-n-drop blogging, etc. Whether that's enough people to sustain a company (and whether Flock can collect enough revenue from partnership deals) remains to be seen. Certainly Opera's comparatively small marketshare, usually cited as less than 1% worldwide, has been plenty to sustain them for years,* so it's at least possible.
*Admittedly Opera's got more revenue streams than just partnerships, since they've got cell phone makers licensing their mobile browser, and they'll be selling the Nintendo DS and Wii versions, etc.
Watch it, you're expressing a rational, informed opinion! This is Slashdot, we can't have that!
Good for you, that you have no need of it. And does your personal lack of need make this not a useful browser to everyone else?
Judging by the general tone of this discussion, yes.
There are an awful lot of people on the web, and on Slashdot, who don't seem to make a distinction between "X is aimed at a different target audience" and "X is pointless." (There's also a large segment of the population for which demonstrating disdain for something is a way of demonstrating superiority, but that's another issue.)
Maybe someone needs to write a "people have different needs and tastes" tutorial. It would have to be in the form of a HOWTO or maybe a man page.
There's coffee in that nebula!
Argh! You beat me to it! Obviously my reflexes are too slow. I should've been sampling the nebula earlier.
Mac OS X treats Java as just another app framework, equivalent to Cocoa or Carbon. (I'm fairly certain I've seen an older version of that diagram that also listed Classic in that layer.) I imagine they've done a bunch of optimizations to tie it into the system, though I don't know whether it launches the runtime at boot or not. You've probably noticed that on Mac OS, you get your Java runtime from Apple, not from Sun or IBM.
The downside is that things don't work quite the same as they do in Sun's Java runtime, so there are differences between Java-on-Windows and Java-on-Mac. For instance, my wife is an avid Puzzle Pirates player, and the game client is a Java app. There've been Mac-specific bugs in the past, and at one point a major slowdown appeared when the game was run on a Mac. It hasn't been fixed, so while she can still do crafting on the Mac, whenever she does anything multiplayer, she has to switch to the Windows box.
No, no, obviously, they're loosing grey hair in the same sense that one "looses the dogs" -- i.e. they're setting the grey hair free.
Whatever you do, you can obviously never please a Linux user. First they complain about the missing support from software companies, then when some company ports their application to Linux, they complain about missing sources.
Sure you can. Provide the source and either maintain it, or hand it to someone who will. Problem solved.
Of course, you are oversimplifying things. There are two camps of Linux users on this issue: those who are OK with binary apps, for some purposes at least, and those for whom Free software (with a capital Free) is a philosophical choice.
Personally, I'm in the former camp. I've even paid for binary-only Linux software on occasion, particularly with a few Windows apps I used that introduced Linux releases. I figured the best way to encourage them to keep working on the Linux versions would be to show there was a market, and that's why (for example) I was one of the first to buy a license for the Linux port of Opera (back with Opera was shareware) even though I was primarily a Mozilla user at that time, and even though it took several versions before it caught up to the Windows version in quality.
The tarball might be downloaded from anywhere, but if the hashes don't match you have a different file than the package maintainer used, and it won't be installed.
That doesn't tell you that it's safe, it tells you that it's the same thing the package maintainer used. All it means is you're passing the responsibility for auditing up the chain to the package maintainer.*
Now, the package maintainer for your distro may audit the code themselves, or they may rely on similar hashes/signatures to make sure that the source they use is the same as the source the project itself provides. In which case that's passing the buck up once again.
So really, what you're doing is relying on the original source to be safe...so it's not much different than relying on the original binary to be safe. It comes down to this: Do I trust the provider of this software? Inclusion in a distro can be seen as a vote of confidence: Gentoo includes app X, implying that Gentoo believes X is not going to take over my machine. You can choose to believe that anything included in your distro is likely to be safe, or rather that anything unsafe in it is unsafe by accident and not deliberately. (Choosing otherwise makes it a hell of a lot harder to build and maintain a system, though it can certainly be done.)
But hash checks and GPG signatures don't tell you that an app is safe, whether you download it as source or as a binary. They only tell you that it hasn't been altered.
*Note that the same is true for RPM-based distros like Fedora or SuSE -- packages are signed with GPG, and it won't install if the signature doesn't validate -- and I would assume for Debian-derived distros as well. This isn't a distro war issue.
clunky with a capital K
Given Qt's close association with KDE, and the naming conventions that have arisen for KDE apps, "clunKy" or "Klunky" sound like appropriate terminology.
I've developed a much better sense of local* geography "flying" around with Google Earth. It's one thing to try to associate views from different locations with points on maps. It's another thing to step back, get some perspective, and see a mix of "real" visuals (the aerial/satllite photography) and maps so that you can say, unequivacably, "OK, those are the mountains I can see from over here, and that range of hills up there is actually the same range of hills over there..." etc.
Sure, it'd be even better to charter an airplane to fly around, but most of us don't have that much pocket change -- and this lets me check out any region I want (assuming sufficient coverage), not just places near where I am.
*By "local" I mean southern California, which is pretty damn big.
Oh, sure, you can run Linux on this Earth... but just imagine a Beowulf cluster of them!
Actually, this does remind me of one of those stories where someone does a scientific study to find out something that "everyone already knows."
Except, of course, we didn't all know it before, we suspected it, and assumed it was true. Every once in a while you find out that something "everyone knows" isn't true after all, so getting confirmation does have value.
you could walk around various rooms in your mansion until you got to the reading den, walls covered with bookshelves. s you zoom in you can see the titles on the binders, and you can "reach in" and select one and open it and start reading.
Better idea: I click on the E-Book Library icon, which opens up a Spotlight-style search box. I start typing in the title or author of the book I want, it starts returning matching results, and after I've typed three letters it's narrowed down far enough that I can click on The Right Tool for the Right Job, by Com & Sense. Rather than spending 1 minute walking through the virtual mansion to get to the library, then another 2 minutes looking through all the bookshelves, trying to remember where I left it, I've found it in about 15 seconds.