why do we ASSUME that software HAS to 'evolve' and change? that's absurd.
A better question might be why you assume you know what other people are thinking. Your comment is full of strawmen, and really doesn't add much to the discussion.
As I understand it, X11 is horribly out of date. It should be clear to anyone that there are some stone-age omissions in X: - Basic transparency is either an ugly hack that glitches all the time (xcompmgr) or else a fairly extravagant system like compiz. - Smooth fonts is an extra. - Multiple displays is an extra. - There are serious security flaws in areas such as screen locking. See this great series of points by the author of xscreensaver. Then, there's all this support for legacy technologies that don't affect 90% of Linux/BSD systems, let alone the potential general market. All in all, X11 has fundamental weaknesses, doesn't reflect modern usage and is really too big to fix. Legacy support and compatibility are so important that problems can't be fixed.
I haven't been following Wayland too closely, but my understanding is that it will address these issues as fundamentals of the system. I hope it does address each of these issues, because they are important. Performance could certainly improve on X. Let's hope it does with Wayland. I'm not that familiar with how display servers work either, so correct me if I'm wrong about anything. No need to rage, I'm not trollling anyone.
My prediction is that it will become fashionable to whine about Wayland, lots of people will resist it for a while, but in the end it will be the most suitable alternative and only the truly stubborn and those who need X for some reason will avoid it. See the history of PulseAudio for reference.
Sorry about the identical AC post below. I forgot to sign in.
I'm tempted to accuse you of not ever really trying Xfce. I use Xfce every day, and it is certainly not buggy. Neither the debian stable version nor the current version. The problem is that it seems incomplete to some people. However, if you're comfortable with the command line, you might actually prefer it, as I do. The sophistication of Gnome/KDE applications can just make things more difficult, in that respect. I don't think there's anything much that you can do with Gnome 2 but not Xfce. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
I have 10 virtual desktops. Who needs more monitors?
Using more monitors means more power consumption and it's more taxing on the system. Besides, given that I actually use 5+ virtual desktops at any given time, I'd need at least 5 monitors to not have to switch.
Maybe YOU don't need it, but some of us have real jobs and need to know where to be, down to the femtosecond. I would have had to wind my old clock in a few hundred million years, but after I get one of these babies, I won't have to.
I would guess that something like uzbl would have users with the biggest dicks on average. One female user pulls down the average as much as one 12-inch user pulls it up. You need to find the browser with the highest male-to-female ratio.
What kind of open source software other than perhaps LibreOffice or gimp would most people be unacquainted with already?
All of it. I would say that about half of computer users barely know what programmes they're using. They just recognise the icons they need to double-click to do what they want (e.g. "need to open the internet" => double-click the blue "e")
It's one thing spreading the word, and quite another posting about something like this on a site like Slashdot.
A fair point. I imagine the point in this is that people will be able to get the less computer-savvy to install such programmes, without getting them to just download and install it. A lot of people would still associate quality software with installation from a disc. A lot of people fear every installer downloaded from the internet, with good reason. Seriously, most people are not capable of deciding what software to use and setting up their system as such. But the software these people use greatly affects us all. However, I personally have long since stopped trying to influence other people's habits. Make one suggestion and you become responsible for all the consequences.
No it's not. It's one company making a complaint about another. If this is the beginning of the big companies goading one another into following standards, it's great news for the user. But it probably isn't.
In case anyone else tries this in Firefox, try it in Chrome and it will work. As a devoted fan, I don't know what that says about my beloved Firefox. Is it possible that this was just written for Chrome's javascript implementation and doesn't necessarily mean one is better than the other?
“Our own internal metrics, customer feedback, and even a recent third-party report confirms that no mail service offers better protection than Hotmail.”
But then it turns out, as usual, that
The research was commissioned and paid for by Microsoft. Microsoft chose the webmail services to be tested, Microsoft had right of veto over publication of the results.
The whole thing is pretty funny, really. Absolutely pathetic. When I read things like this, I always wonder if they actually fool themselves too. The evidence is everywhere that Gmail has better spam protection. I use Gmail all the time, and my spam filter just fills up. Misses something every few months; always a surprise. And I've never come across a false positive. However, logging into Hotmail just now, it had 2 messages in the spam folder, but all the inbox had were 6 spam messages.
That was me for my first 2-3 years of Linux usage. Now I don't recommend it to just anyone any more.
I completely agree up until this point:
the consumer market will be almost exclusively dominated by tablets.
The keyboard is still vastly superior to the touchscreen for a whole range of uses, and it's not just the geeks and "professionals" that realise this. If tablets are ever the ubiquitous consumer computers, they're going to need some seriously improved input method. Voice input has obvious drawbacks; typing is the next fastest way of communicating. Some kind of fancy hologram, maybe?
I predict that, within 15 years, the idea of tapping on a hard screen is going to seem hilariously old-fashioned and ineffective compared to whatever takes its place.
This is one of the most odious, repeatedly parroted phrases I know. Let me explain why:
First of all, it is a direct statement that those with money should be those who make all the decisions. This has obvious inherent flaws. But I imagine you are not one of the super-rich. All the same, you obviously only say this because you are on the side of the majority. My issue with your enraged (and heavily capitalised) post is that you imply that unnecessary limitations are OK if they don't affect most people, and that the rest of us should shut up about it. How is that possibly the case? Just because Microsoft have the resources to sponsor companies to close down their devices doesn't mean they should be allowed to. You may have heard of court cases against MS along these lines.
On the Apple note, the difference is that they make all their product in-house, and so there's no fear of their OS becoming the only compatible one in the industry. However, of course I object to their efforts to make the iPod (etc.) incompatible with other software than iTunes. I don't see why I wouldn't object to it.
Slashdot Mirror
Richard, is that you?
why do we ASSUME that software HAS to 'evolve' and change? that's absurd.
A better question might be why you assume you know what other people are thinking.
Your comment is full of strawmen, and really doesn't add much to the discussion.
Could you elaborate on what the basic functionality being surrendered is?
Unixen
Germanic plural for Unix?
I am very much in favour of this.
As I understand it, X11 is horribly out of date.
It should be clear to anyone that there are some stone-age omissions in X:
- Basic transparency is either an ugly hack that glitches all the time (xcompmgr) or else a fairly extravagant system like compiz.
- Smooth fonts is an extra.
- Multiple displays is an extra.
- There are serious security flaws in areas such as screen locking. See this great series of points by the author of xscreensaver.
Then, there's all this support for legacy technologies that don't affect 90% of Linux/BSD systems, let alone the potential general market.
All in all, X11 has fundamental weaknesses, doesn't reflect modern usage and is really too big to fix. Legacy support and compatibility are so important that problems can't be fixed.
I haven't been following Wayland too closely, but my understanding is that it will address these issues as fundamentals of the system. I hope it does address each of these issues, because they are important. Performance could certainly improve on X. Let's hope it does with Wayland.
I'm not that familiar with how display servers work either, so correct me if I'm wrong about anything. No need to rage, I'm not trollling anyone.
My prediction is that it will become fashionable to whine about Wayland, lots of people will resist it for a while, but in the end it will be the most suitable alternative and only the truly stubborn and those who need X for some reason will avoid it. See the history of PulseAudio for reference.
Sorry about the identical AC post below. I forgot to sign in.
endure xfce's bugs
I'm tempted to accuse you of not ever really trying Xfce. I use Xfce every day, and it is certainly not buggy. Neither the debian stable version nor the current version.
The problem is that it seems incomplete to some people. However, if you're comfortable with the command line, you might actually prefer it, as I do. The sophistication of Gnome/KDE applications can just make things more difficult, in that respect. I don't think there's anything much that you can do with Gnome 2 but not Xfce. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
I have 10 virtual desktops. Who needs more monitors?
Using more monitors means more power consumption and it's more taxing on the system.
Besides, given that I actually use 5+ virtual desktops at any given time, I'd need at least 5 monitors to not have to switch.
Maybe YOU don't need it, but some of us have real jobs and need to know where to be, down to the femtosecond.
I would have had to wind my old clock in a few hundred million years, but after I get one of these babies, I won't have to.
I would guess that something like uzbl would have users with the biggest dicks on average. One female user pulls down the average as much as one 12-inch user pulls it up. You need to find the browser with the highest male-to-female ratio.
(why the fuck am I writing this)
But, given the current Firefox release schedule, that's probably only a few days old.
What kind of open source software other than perhaps LibreOffice or gimp would most people be unacquainted with already?
All of it. I would say that about half of computer users barely know what programmes they're using. They just recognise the icons they need to double-click to do what they want (e.g. "need to open the internet" => double-click the blue "e")
It's one thing spreading the word, and quite another posting about something like this on a site like Slashdot.
A fair point. I imagine the point in this is that people will be able to get the less computer-savvy to install such programmes, without getting them to just download and install it. A lot of people would still associate quality software with installation from a disc. A lot of people fear every installer downloaded from the internet, with good reason. Seriously, most people are not capable of deciding what software to use and setting up their system as such. But the software these people use greatly affects us all.
However, I personally have long since stopped trying to influence other people's habits. Make one suggestion and you become responsible for all the consequences.
Black swan. Only a fool would answer no to that question.
Besides, some of us are high right now, you insensitive clod.
You may be interested to hear that the UK, among other places, is not in America.
I don't think you understand how bittorrent works...
No it's not. It's one company making a complaint about another.
If this is the beginning of the big companies goading one another into following standards, it's great news for the user.
But it probably isn't.
In case anyone else tries this in Firefox, try it in Chrome and it will work.
As a devoted fan, I don't know what that says about my beloved Firefox. Is it possible that this was just written for Chrome's javascript implementation and doesn't necessarily mean one is better than the other?
Binary Tetris is based on dominoes instead of tetrominoes and is called Dis.
Yes, it would be helpful to RTFA. FTFA:
“Our own internal metrics, customer feedback, and even a recent third-party report confirms that no mail service offers better protection than Hotmail.”
But then it turns out, as usual, that
The research was commissioned and paid for by Microsoft. Microsoft chose the webmail services to be tested, Microsoft had right of veto over publication of the results.
The whole thing is pretty funny, really. Absolutely pathetic. When I read things like this, I always wonder if they actually fool themselves too. The evidence is everywhere that Gmail has better spam protection. I use Gmail all the time, and my spam filter just fills up. Misses something every few months; always a surprise. And I've never come across a false positive.
However, logging into Hotmail just now, it had 2 messages in the spam folder, but all the inbox had were 6 spam messages.
They were the animation crowd that made the fantastic Home Movies...which itself sounds like porn as well. Hmm.
That was me for my first 2-3 years of Linux usage. Now I don't recommend it to just anyone any more.
I completely agree up until this point:
the consumer market will be almost exclusively dominated by tablets.
The keyboard is still vastly superior to the touchscreen for a whole range of uses, and it's not just the geeks and "professionals" that realise this. If tablets are ever the ubiquitous consumer computers, they're going to need some seriously improved input method. Voice input has obvious drawbacks; typing is the next fastest way of communicating. Some kind of fancy hologram, maybe?
I predict that, within 15 years, the idea of tapping on a hard screen is going to seem hilariously old-fashioned and ineffective compared to whatever takes its place.
I think if the mods had a "+5, Hysterical" option, people would use it all the time.
If someone says something is >6,000 years old, you should take that to mean, "God gave it an apparent age of X-6000 years at creation".
Apparently, the MPAA made the estimate for them based on the logic that each file hacked incurs the file's original production costs.
Vote with your wallet
This is one of the most odious, repeatedly parroted phrases I know. Let me explain why:
First of all, it is a direct statement that those with money should be those who make all the decisions. This has obvious inherent flaws. But I imagine you are not one of the super-rich. All the same, you obviously only say this because you are on the side of the majority. My issue with your enraged (and heavily capitalised) post is that you imply that unnecessary limitations are OK if they don't affect most people, and that the rest of us should shut up about it. How is that possibly the case? Just because Microsoft have the resources to sponsor companies to close down their devices doesn't mean they should be allowed to. You may have heard of court cases against MS along these lines.
On the Apple note, the difference is that they make all their product in-house, and so there's no fear of their OS becoming the only compatible one in the industry. However, of course I object to their efforts to make the iPod (etc.) incompatible with other software than iTunes. I don't see why I wouldn't object to it.
Anyone who has ever dealt with animals will tell you most of them can understand when you're pointing at an object
And anyone who has ever dealt with creationists will tell you most of them are no more intelligent than any other primate