Oh I agree with you partially. The music industry has several additional problems.
1) Too much history. Many people refuse to listen to today's music and instead prefer music from the eighties, or seventies. That hurts because in the eighties or earlier there was not as much legacy and hence less competition. Legacy music does not die, just gets copied.
2) To a large degree people do not want to experiment. To have innovation you need people who want to listen to innovation. This goes back to the legacy argument and the fact that people are not interested in listening to something radical. Easy example, techno in North America. Hardly anybody wants to hear it, hence no market.
3) It used to be that bands would play little gigs and amuse people in a bar. What do people want now? They want bars with DJ's, dancing girls in skimpy outfits and glowing sticks. How can a band compete? A band cannot compete because bars can make more money by amusing people in other ways that does not require a band. Bands cost money, and cause people to drink or eat slower.
4) Times have changed. Consider the movie Wayne's World 2. Consider how Wayne and the guys acted? Anybody who watches the movie today considers his behavior quaint and cute. Yet at the time when the movie was made it was serious stuff.
We have the Internet, PayTV, Extreme-Sports, and we have a mess. Frankly I don't see how music will get out of this mess. It makes you even wonder if this is the state of the music industry for the next fourty years. There are always cycles and maybe we are in a down cycle.
I love having a notebook with about 3-4 hours of battery life. In fact if I could get 7-8 hours that would be fabulous. Because of the advantages of having a notebook with long battery live my habits change. For example I will for extended period of times sit in a cafe, work, AND talk with people. I will not worry that I will run out of juice. It is a truly amazing ability.
Imagine you had a notebook with the following specifications: - 12 hours of battery life, - Wifi, GPRS/3G - 1440x900 screen - about the size of a letter sized organizer and max 1" high - affordable
To a large degree the Apple 15" fits in with some problem area's (affordability, battery life is 3-4 hours, and screen). People's habits and needs would completely change because the vast majority would purchase these notebooks and NOT desktops. Ok gamers, and other niche folks would buy desktops because they want full power. But many gamers buy consoles.
Back to the point though, imagine a notebook with those spec's. The software that is being produced today is not the software that we would actually need or use.
So here is where I ask Microsoft, why are you doing this? I truly think that instead of pushing the envelope they want to sell yet another feature. Yet another "killer" user interface in the hopes that people will upgrade.
>>This concept can be held to any kind of patent. From engines to circuit boards to anything. So, your saying there should be no patents. No IP protections.
Yes I am saying that there should be NO patents. Patents have held up great break through's in the adoption of technology, over, and over, and over again!
Examples:
1) Car, Henry Ford to mass produce cars had to circumvent the car patent. 2) Laser, until the patent expired lasers were for the rich or unique. Now you can buy a laser at every corner. 3) GSM, while there are patents involved the reason why it worked is because everybody decided to forgoe the huge licensing fees. 4) And lets not forget software AND hardware, which to a large part worked wonderfully WITHOUT patents.
Patents are monopolies that only cause adoption rate of technologies to be 20 years delayed. I agree with copyrights, trademarks, and industrial design. The reason I agree with those is because they protect VERY specific designs and texts.
Patents these days are NOT for the small time inventor, but solely for the large corporations. Personally I would rather have a corporation rip off my product, as I can rip off their's as well.
Now about the R&D argument and that it would never happen. Well look at the examples where patents were avoided and the results is that the markets are BIGGER without patents!
As much as I would like to say it is over, its not over until its over.
Lets go back to the Microsoft Antri-trust trials. MS has been deemed a monopolist and what happened? Nada, zip, zilch, zero, the big doughnut! So even if SCO looses maybe they will win on some other things.
Who knows what the judge will do and say. Logic does not play any role here...
What disappoints me about the US is its screwed up immigration policy. I am University educated and hold a degree in technology. Classically what the US would like. I once tried to immigrate, but learned that all I could get is an H1B. The H1B would allow me in the US while I might get a greencard. I looked at that and said no way as I would like to build a life.
Then I read Business Week and read the article, "Aliens: A little less alientated". Essentially it talks about how illegal aliens can get bank accounts, driver's licenses, mortgages, etc. I just read that and shook my head. I am not shaking my head at the aliens, but the fact that the aliens get so many rights. On the one hand I want to do things by the book and become part of society. Then I read the way to do it is become an illegal alien in the US. IT JUST DOES MAKE SENSE...
These days I have huge amounts of data to back up. The traditional route is to use a backup device. I forgo all of that and use synchronization. If my data is scattered in an organized manner across multiple hard disks and multiple computers then it does not matter if a computer goes down. This is what is killing SUN. And google is a prime example....
Then again, I studied parallel processing and love this cluster stuff...
One of the things that I like to do is find the Silver Bullet of tools. So I keep searching the internet and keep installing new tools. Yet here is an interesting result, am I closer to getting my app done?
We developers always like new and neat tricks, but yet it seems we are still building the same apps at the same speed. It took the Mono team about three years to build the Mono stack. Well, you know I could probably write most of my apps in three years.
I am not trying to rail C# or Java, as my point is that maybe we should be thinking about how to code properly. Maybe the language is not THAT big of an issue....
I think WP missed the move to Windows, BUT what seems to have been forgotten is that Microsoft was the first company to bundle all of the applications. At that time Office was unheard of and quickly things changed because Office was cheaper than buying the applications individually.
I have been reading this thread and my eyes just roll. Well I really thought your post showed REAL insight that I never really thought about.
You can argue however you want to argue, but the fact that lions, tigers, wolfs need to eat does underscore a gaping inconsistency.
The rebuttal is that Noah in all his wisdom loaded enough "food" for the animals. Well, to get back to your three generations issues that means loading up at least 100 gazelles to keep the lions, tigers, wolfs fed. At that point I am sure somebody would have made some notes to the effect, "Well Noah, got the 100 gazelles, 100 elk?"
The interesting bit here is that you end up with a combinatorial explosion of actual numbers of animals that had to be put into the boat.
..snip.. "Despite what you might hear from nutty scientists and nuttier religious zealots, religious faith and science are not mutually exclusive."..snip..
Well..... I am not so sure on this. Like your post says you take religion on faith. So if you read the religious text's of many religions there is a pre-programmed conflict with science. Some religions more than others.
Without understanding Buddism too well, I think that is the one of the only religions that does not conflict with science too much. But take Christianity, or Islam and you are asking for problems.
When originally I heard about Mono I was skeptical. Then I met up with Miguel had a talk to him and was optimistic. There were some posts of his that made me upbeat about Mono. Now ever since Novell bought Ximian I am really skeptical again.
Mono SHOULD NOT be a Microsoft.NET clone. Mono will never succeed and it will fail miserably. Nobody can compete or be compatible with Microsoft, just ask Mainsoft, Bristol, and other companies that licensed Microsoft technologies.
I am amazed that people think it is in Microsoft's interest to build cross-platform application. Microsoft has said, time and time again that it is not in their interest. Microsoft has their own operating system and that is their interest. So what I wonder is why people keep thinking it would be good to run Windows Apps on Linux.
Wine, and CrossOffice are hacks until more applications are ported. When I use my OSX box, or my Linux box or even my Windows box I look for native applications, not emulation. Native apps run faster, better and are more stable.
Mono should go back and focus on doing their own thing again. Just like the Jakarta team focused on building good Open Source applications.
However, lets consider the purchase of Visual Studio. I have included a compiler, editor, debugger, and SDK. I could even think about using Delphi, or even C++ Builder. Regarding build systems I could use Subversion, Ant, and some other things.
Heck MSDN Universal is in the same price range as TrollTech. With MSDN Universal you get everything a developer ever needs (OS, tools, Servers, etc, etc albeit on the Windows platform).
My point is that when the original parent said 3000 was the smallest bit of the overall equation, in fact it is the largest bit for what you get. Good development tools can be easily had in the lower three digit range. What Trolltech develops is not worth four digits.
I kid you not. Could it be that BECAUSE people thought, Ahh 3K noise in contrast to wages and software, that we have an off shoring issue?
Having gone through the manager cycle the problem is not the single costs, but the package. And if you can save anywhere then as a manager you do it. Hence why off shoring is so interesting to many companies.
The reality is that people and software companies have to start thinking differently since the "ol" days of charging an arm and leg have disappeared.
I was a manager of a team of about 20 people. We went to a company similar to TrollTech, except they were called Rational. When you start to multiply the numbers, and remember you do not JUST buy an SDK. But you need an editor, computer, build system, etc, etc. It all starts to add up.
When I use toolkits like wxWidget or even GTK and the helper apps the money needed to get Qt simply does not add up.
Heck, it would be cheaper and more effective to buy Visual Studio C++ and then use Winelib. Probably the application would run better as well.
Sounds interesting, BUT.... The problem QT are as follows:
1) No GPL version for the Windows platform. As much as people in the Open Source community might hate MS, many (most) Open Source packages are cross-platform where Windows is a platform.
2) A non GPL version of the library costs an outrageous sum of money. Sure Trolltech wants to make money, but lower the costs a bit.
3) Why compete against Java? Somebody who uses Java is not going to switch to Qt as Java is still simpler. To me C++ != Java, and I am not saying one is better or worse than the other.
Frankly, I tend to prefer wxWindows, which has many of facilities mentioned in the parent post. And there are plenty of bindings for wxWindows (Python, Java,.NET, etc)
Maybe it is because we are skeptical...
on
A New Ice Age?
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
Sure global warming may be happening... BUT and this is probably why the slashdot people are laisse faire, maybe it is part of the overall scheme of things by none other than mother nature.
When that little warming period and ice age hit, which was not caused by humanity, would the arguments not be the same? EG would the green people would be saying to stop burning all of those fires to heat homes?
Frankly I think the only real way of stopping global warming is to kill off about 2/3 of our planet. There are just too many of us.
Let me give you an example. Germany, which is trying to be green installed a huge number of wind powered generators in the North Sea. They have just found out that because of all those generators the coast is getting 10% more sunshine and 10% less rain. I then ask the question, are we not dammed if we do and dammed if we do not?
So unless you are ready to volenteer your life in the name of "humanity" nothing much is going to change.
BTW I do not agree with your quote as planet Earth has withstood worse things than humans and continued. What might not survive are the humans!
Interesting that you mention this. I do not know whether to believe you or not. So lets say I am going to give you the benefit of the doubt.
The reason why I mention this is because I had the same thing happen to me with Netscape. In 1996 when Netscape held their first conference I was blown off by Netscape. We wanted to initally buy about 4000 client licenses. In the end what happened was that we were too small for their tastes (I was working for a major Swiss Bank at that time).
While attending their conference I saw that Netscape's days were numbered. BTW the meeting blow off happened after the conference. I could not exactly put a finger on it, but the buzz at the Netscape conference seemed wrong.
Tying this back to Ximian leads to me believe that maybe this is "Netscape" all over again. Hmmm.... Interesting, not sure, something to think about no doubt...
I have three boxes OSX, Windows and Linux. I use all three and have to say it is all about the applications. Linux for server side is fantastic, even for development purposes. However as a general client OS Linux has a very LONG way to go.
When I compare my general client OS OSX I see what an ideal UNIX client is all about. I am even thinking that having people copy Windows is really the wrong way to do things.
Let me give an example. On the OSX box to do Windows file sharing there is a simple check box. From there the user's home directories are shared. Nowhere is there any feature to define the domain, security descriptors, etc. The OSX box defines default security descriptors.
The interesting bit is that Apple has determined for the average use that this is good enough. Frankly Apple is right. However, I wanted more and to do that I needed to edit the Samba configuration file. That is ok because I am a power user.
My point is that Windows forces everything to be editable using GUI dialog boxes and that makes for some REALLY hideous dialog boxes. Apple on the other hand does enough to make the system usable. The extras are up to the skill level of the user. The advantage of this approach is that you do not waste developer bandwidth adding unnecessary features that people do not want.
So I wonder if Linux should not follow the same path. Instead of copying Windows, why not look at the features that people want and create distributions geared towards those people. Sure people will argue, but what are the required features? Counter argument is that OSX is a better platform than Windows, and Apple managed to do it, why can't we?
First the format YYYMMDD is used, and if I am not mistaken Sweden uses that. Also that format is very useful when you want to sort things. Try sorting in another date format, and you will quickly see problems being created.
About the DDMMYYYY format, it is used in many many countries. For example Canada uses this format. It makes more sense.
MMDDYY is not that logical when you think about it. Sure convention dictates that is how people say things, but logically it makes no sense whatsoever. Even with respect to sorting this is a bad format.
Lets say that you import or hire workers to take care of the elderly. Are they going to be making a huge salary? NO, because those jobs are literally shit, and you get very little respect. If you were to pay more then health care costs sky-rocket.
Frankly on this issue the Japanese have the right attitude. Hire less professionals, pay them more and overall you have a better system. Instead of forcing the professionals to do "grunt" work let them focus on interacting with the elderly.
The long term is not entirely how you think it really is. My father worked as Plant President of one of these "sweat shops" in the car industry. His hardest decision was whether or not to employ child labor.
The problem of child labor and the labor conditions is that what we consider right and what the people of the country consider right are two entirely different things. That is the entire problem in a nutshell.
In the case of child labor my father could have not employed children and that would solve nothing as the child would get work elsewhere. Or he could employ child labor with a minium age of say 12 and make sure that they do work which they can, get a fair wage like other workers and if possible get the entire family to work there. At least under those circumstances child labor is least disruptive for all those concerned.
Now about cheap labor? Well with time cheap becomes more expensive and people's standard of living improves. I have seen it happen in many countries and it will continue to happen.
HOWEVER, and here is what I think the root of the problem is. Many "non civilised" countries are becoming very bright and adept at doing what we took for granted (eg software, design, hardware). And that hurts because it shows Western Civilization better wake and start smelling the coffee!
Ok, I find a fundemental problem with your statement. "SP2 will address..." Gee, interesting, something that is not yet out will address the problem that is being caused. Is the solution not to have the problem in the first place?
Frankly this is what sucks about the MS vision. "Today things will not work, but tomorrow all will be better". You are constantly chasing the dream.
That is why I use Open Source software even on Windows. I have very little headaches. Had one recently BECAUSE of IE and a new scam that Casino's spyware have.
I read the book from Micheal Moore, "Stupid White Guys". If you remove the sensationalism he does make a very valid point. His point is that politics is basically screwed up. Clinton in his years talked well, but he was Bush in fancier clothes.
I understand why Nader wants to run. Frankly if I was an American I would vote for him. However, the political mess is not exclusive to the US. In Germany or Canada it is the same mess. Germany talks about reforms, HA!
The more and more I think about this, is that if the politicians are not careful, extremism is going to be the smallest of their problems.
>>> For commercial development of closed source software, the licensing fees for Trolltech are generally accepted and favored among KDE developers since this ensures support for KDE/Qt in both ways: either someone contributes code to the open source community, or he pays the developers of Qt, both which directly benefit KDE in the end.
The problem with the closed source software fees is that they are outrageous. Shareware developers need not apply, which happen to make the Windows platform what it is today. Shareware developers should not be underestimated in their importance.
To get a license for both Windows and Linux for QT you would have to pay 2500 USD minimum. Gee for that I can get a universal subscript to MSDN, which gives me an IDE, OS, Office, Windows, Windows Server, etc,etc. And what do I get from Trolltech? And SDK! Gee, yippee...
My point is that shareware developers are not against paying money. Contrary they would pay money, but reasonable amounts!
While in the simplest form I agree, overall I disagree.
"All's fair in love and war" is what I would respond. To me these extra add-ons is an arms race to build the ultimate client. Frankly I am sure it would make the game more interesting if there was a market for this "arms" race.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh I agree with you partially. The music industry has several additional problems.
1) Too much history. Many people refuse to listen to today's music and instead prefer music from the eighties, or seventies. That hurts because in the eighties or earlier there was not as much legacy and hence less competition. Legacy music does not die, just gets copied.
2) To a large degree people do not want to experiment. To have innovation you need people who want to listen to innovation. This goes back to the legacy argument and the fact that people are not interested in listening to something radical. Easy example, techno in North America. Hardly anybody wants to hear it, hence no market.
3) It used to be that bands would play little gigs and amuse people in a bar. What do people want now? They want bars with DJ's, dancing girls in skimpy outfits and glowing sticks. How can a band compete? A band cannot compete because bars can make more money by amusing people in other ways that does not require a band. Bands cost money, and cause people to drink or eat slower.
4) Times have changed. Consider the movie Wayne's World 2. Consider how Wayne and the guys acted? Anybody who watches the movie today considers his behavior quaint and cute. Yet at the time when the movie was made it was serious stuff.
We have the Internet, PayTV, Extreme-Sports, and we have a mess. Frankly I don't see how music will get out of this mess. It makes you even wonder if this is the state of the music industry for the next fourty years. There are always cycles and maybe we are in a down cycle.
I love having a notebook with about 3-4 hours of battery life. In fact if I could get 7-8 hours that would be fabulous. Because of the advantages of having a notebook with long battery live my habits change. For example I will for extended period of times sit in a cafe, work, AND talk with people. I will not worry that I will run out of juice. It is a truly amazing ability.
Imagine you had a notebook with the following specifications:
- 12 hours of battery life,
- Wifi, GPRS/3G
- 1440x900 screen
- about the size of a letter sized organizer and max 1" high
- affordable
To a large degree the Apple 15" fits in with some problem area's (affordability, battery life is 3-4 hours, and screen). People's habits and needs would completely change because the vast majority would purchase these notebooks and NOT desktops. Ok gamers, and other niche folks would buy desktops because they want full power. But many gamers buy consoles.
Back to the point though, imagine a notebook with those spec's. The software that is being produced today is not the software that we would actually need or use.
So here is where I ask Microsoft, why are you doing this? I truly think that instead of pushing the envelope they want to sell yet another feature. Yet another "killer" user interface in the hopes that people will upgrade.
>>This concept can be held to any kind of patent. From engines to circuit boards to anything. So, your saying there should be no patents. No IP protections.
Yes I am saying that there should be NO patents. Patents have held up great break through's in the adoption of technology, over, and over, and over again!
Examples:
1) Car, Henry Ford to mass produce cars had to circumvent the car patent.
2) Laser, until the patent expired lasers were for the rich or unique. Now you can buy a laser at every corner.
3) GSM, while there are patents involved the reason why it worked is because everybody decided to forgoe the huge licensing fees.
4) And lets not forget software AND hardware, which to a large part worked wonderfully WITHOUT patents.
Patents are monopolies that only cause adoption rate of technologies to be 20 years delayed. I agree with copyrights, trademarks, and industrial design. The reason I agree with those is because they protect VERY specific designs and texts.
Patents these days are NOT for the small time inventor, but solely for the large corporations. Personally I would rather have a corporation rip off my product, as I can rip off their's as well.
Now about the R&D argument and that it would never happen. Well look at the examples where patents were avoided and the results is that the markets are BIGGER without patents!
As much as I would like to say it is over, its not over until its over.
Lets go back to the Microsoft Antri-trust trials. MS has been deemed a monopolist and what happened? Nada, zip, zilch, zero, the big doughnut! So even if SCO looses maybe they will win on some other things.
Who knows what the judge will do and say. Logic does not play any role here...
I would not blame Public Education entirely...
What disappoints me about the US is its screwed up immigration policy. I am University educated and hold a degree in technology. Classically what the US would like. I once tried to immigrate, but learned that all I could get is an H1B. The H1B would allow me in the US while I might get a greencard. I looked at that and said no way as I would like to build a life.
Then I read Business Week and read the article, "Aliens: A little less alientated". Essentially it talks about how illegal aliens can get bank accounts, driver's licenses, mortgages, etc. I just read that and shook my head. I am not shaking my head at the aliens, but the fact that the aliens get so many rights. On the one hand I want to do things by the book and become part of society. Then I read the way to do it is become an illegal alien in the US. IT JUST DOES MAKE SENSE...
It is about synchronization...
These days I have huge amounts of data to back up. The traditional route is to use a backup device. I forgo all of that and use synchronization. If my data is scattered in an organized manner across multiple hard disks and multiple computers then it does not matter if a computer goes down. This is what is killing SUN. And google is a prime example....
Then again, I studied parallel processing and love this cluster stuff...
One of the things that I like to do is find the Silver Bullet of tools. So I keep searching the internet and keep installing new tools. Yet here is an interesting result, am I closer to getting my app done?
We developers always like new and neat tricks, but yet it seems we are still building the same apps at the same speed. It took the Mono team about three years to build the Mono stack. Well, you know I could probably write most of my apps in three years.
I am not trying to rail C# or Java, as my point is that maybe we should be thinking about how to code properly. Maybe the language is not THAT big of an issue....
I think WP missed the move to Windows, BUT what seems to have been forgotten is that Microsoft was the first company to bundle all of the applications. At that time Office was unheard of and quickly things changed because Office was cheaper than buying the applications individually.
Hmmm, bundling.... Hmmm....
I have been reading this thread and my eyes just roll. Well I really thought your post showed REAL insight that I never really thought about.
You can argue however you want to argue, but the fact that lions, tigers, wolfs need to eat does underscore a gaping inconsistency.
The rebuttal is that Noah in all his wisdom loaded enough "food" for the animals. Well, to get back to your three generations issues that means loading up at least 100 gazelles to keep the lions, tigers, wolfs fed. At that point I am sure somebody would have made some notes to the effect, "Well Noah, got the 100 gazelles, 100 elk?"
The interesting bit here is that you end up with a combinatorial explosion of actual numbers of animals that had to be put into the boat.
hmmm.....
..snip.. "Despite what you might hear from nutty scientists and nuttier religious zealots, religious faith and science are not mutually exclusive." ..snip..
Well..... I am not so sure on this. Like your post says you take religion on faith. So if you read the religious text's of many religions there is a pre-programmed conflict with science. Some religions more than others.
Without understanding Buddism too well, I think that is the one of the only religions that does not conflict with science too much. But take Christianity, or Islam and you are asking for problems.
When originally I heard about Mono I was skeptical. Then I met up with Miguel had a talk to him and was optimistic. There were some posts of his that made me upbeat about Mono. Now ever since Novell bought Ximian I am really skeptical again.
.NET clone. Mono will never succeed and it will fail miserably. Nobody can compete or be compatible with Microsoft, just ask Mainsoft, Bristol, and other companies that licensed Microsoft technologies.
Mono SHOULD NOT be a Microsoft
I am amazed that people think it is in Microsoft's interest to build cross-platform application. Microsoft has said, time and time again that it is not in their interest. Microsoft has their own operating system and that is their interest. So what I wonder is why people keep thinking it would be good to run Windows Apps on Linux.
Wine, and CrossOffice are hacks until more applications are ported. When I use my OSX box, or my Linux box or even my Windows box I look for native applications, not emulation. Native apps run faster, better and are more stable.
Mono should go back and focus on doing their own thing again. Just like the Jakarta team focused on building good Open Source applications.
Yes you are right regarding the other tools.
However, lets consider the purchase of Visual Studio. I have included a compiler, editor, debugger, and SDK. I could even think about using Delphi, or even C++ Builder. Regarding build systems I could use Subversion, Ant, and some other things.
Heck MSDN Universal is in the same price range as TrollTech. With MSDN Universal you get everything a developer ever needs (OS, tools, Servers, etc, etc albeit on the Windows platform).
My point is that when the original parent said 3000 was the smallest bit of the overall equation, in fact it is the largest bit for what you get. Good development tools can be easily had in the lower three digit range. What Trolltech develops is not worth four digits.
Hmmm, off shore.... Hmmm.....
I kid you not. Could it be that BECAUSE people thought, Ahh 3K noise in contrast to wages and software, that we have an off shoring issue?
Having gone through the manager cycle the problem is not the single costs, but the package. And if you can save anywhere then as a manager you do it. Hence why off shoring is so interesting to many companies.
The reality is that people and software companies have to start thinking differently since the "ol" days of charging an arm and leg have disappeared.
I was a manager of a team of about 20 people. We went to a company similar to TrollTech, except they were called Rational. When you start to multiply the numbers, and remember you do not JUST buy an SDK. But you need an editor, computer, build system, etc, etc. It all starts to add up.
When I use toolkits like wxWidget or even GTK and the helper apps the money needed to get Qt simply does not add up.
Heck, it would be cheaper and more effective to buy Visual Studio C++ and then use Winelib. Probably the application would run better as well.
Sounds interesting, BUT.... The problem QT are as follows:
.NET, etc)
1) No GPL version for the Windows platform. As much as people in the Open Source community might hate MS, many (most) Open Source packages are cross-platform where Windows is a platform.
2) A non GPL version of the library costs an outrageous sum of money. Sure Trolltech wants to make money, but lower the costs a bit.
3) Why compete against Java? Somebody who uses Java is not going to switch to Qt as Java is still simpler. To me C++ != Java, and I am not saying one is better or worse than the other.
Frankly, I tend to prefer wxWindows, which has many of facilities mentioned in the parent post. And there are plenty of bindings for wxWindows (Python, Java,
Sure global warming may be happening... BUT and this is probably why the slashdot people are laisse faire, maybe it is part of the overall scheme of things by none other than mother nature.
When that little warming period and ice age hit, which was not caused by humanity, would the arguments not be the same? EG would the green people would be saying to stop burning all of those fires to heat homes?
Frankly I think the only real way of stopping global warming is to kill off about 2/3 of our planet. There are just too many of us.
Let me give you an example. Germany, which is trying to be green installed a huge number of wind powered generators in the North Sea. They have just found out that because of all those generators the coast is getting 10% more sunshine and 10% less rain. I then ask the question, are we not dammed if we do and dammed if we do not?
So unless you are ready to volenteer your life in the name of "humanity" nothing much is going to change.
BTW I do not agree with your quote as planet Earth has withstood worse things than humans and continued. What might not survive are the humans!
Interesting that you mention this. I do not know whether to believe you or not. So lets say I am going to give you the benefit of the doubt.
The reason why I mention this is because I had the same thing happen to me with Netscape. In 1996 when Netscape held their first conference I was blown off by Netscape. We wanted to initally buy about 4000 client licenses. In the end what happened was that we were too small for their tastes (I was working for a major Swiss Bank at that time).
While attending their conference I saw that Netscape's days were numbered. BTW the meeting blow off happened after the conference. I could not exactly put a finger on it, but the buzz at the Netscape conference seemed wrong.
Tying this back to Ximian leads to me believe that maybe this is "Netscape" all over again. Hmmm.... Interesting, not sure, something to think about no doubt...
I have three boxes OSX, Windows and Linux. I use all three and have to say it is all about the applications. Linux for server side is fantastic, even for development purposes. However as a general client OS Linux has a very LONG way to go.
When I compare my general client OS OSX I see what an ideal UNIX client is all about. I am even thinking that having people copy Windows is really the wrong way to do things.
Let me give an example. On the OSX box to do Windows file sharing there is a simple check box. From there the user's home directories are shared. Nowhere is there any feature to define the domain, security descriptors, etc. The OSX box defines default security descriptors.
The interesting bit is that Apple has determined for the average use that this is good enough. Frankly Apple is right. However, I wanted more and to do that I needed to edit the Samba configuration file. That is ok because I am a power user.
My point is that Windows forces everything to be editable using GUI dialog boxes and that makes for some REALLY hideous dialog boxes. Apple on the other hand does enough to make the system usable. The extras are up to the skill level of the user. The advantage of this approach is that you do not waste developer bandwidth adding unnecessary features that people do not want.
So I wonder if Linux should not follow the same path. Instead of copying Windows, why not look at the features that people want and create distributions geared towards those people. Sure people will argue, but what are the required features? Counter argument is that OSX is a better platform than Windows, and Apple managed to do it, why can't we?
Gee man are you been provincial?
First the format YYYMMDD is used, and if I am not mistaken Sweden uses that. Also that format is very useful when you want to sort things. Try sorting in another date format, and you will quickly see problems being created.
About the DDMMYYYY format, it is used in many many countries. For example Canada uses this format. It makes more sense.
MMDDYY is not that logical when you think about it. Sure convention dictates that is how people say things, but logically it makes no sense whatsoever. Even with respect to sorting this is a bad format.
Well you make a REALLY good point here.
Lets say that you import or hire workers to take care of the elderly. Are they going to be making a huge salary? NO, because those jobs are literally shit, and you get very little respect. If you were to pay more then health care costs sky-rocket.
Frankly on this issue the Japanese have the right attitude. Hire less professionals, pay them more and overall you have a better system. Instead of forcing the professionals to do "grunt" work let them focus on interacting with the elderly.
The long term is not entirely how you think it really is. My father worked as Plant President of one of these "sweat shops" in the car industry. His hardest decision was whether or not to employ child labor.
The problem of child labor and the labor conditions is that what we consider right and what the people of the country consider right are two entirely different things. That is the entire problem in a nutshell.
In the case of child labor my father could have not employed children and that would solve nothing as the child would get work elsewhere. Or he could employ child labor with a minium age of say 12 and make sure that they do work which they can, get a fair wage like other workers and if possible get the entire family to work there. At least under those circumstances child labor is least disruptive for all those concerned.
Now about cheap labor? Well with time cheap becomes more expensive and people's standard of living improves. I have seen it happen in many countries and it will continue to happen.
HOWEVER, and here is what I think the root of the problem is. Many "non civilised" countries are becoming very bright and adept at doing what we took for granted (eg software, design, hardware). And that hurts because it shows Western Civilization better wake and start smelling the coffee!
Ok, I find a fundemental problem with your statement. "SP2 will address..." Gee, interesting, something that is not yet out will address the problem that is being caused. Is the solution not to have the problem in the first place?
Frankly this is what sucks about the MS vision. "Today things will not work, but tomorrow all will be better". You are constantly chasing the dream.
That is why I use Open Source software even on Windows. I have very little headaches. Had one recently BECAUSE of IE and a new scam that Casino's spyware have.
I read the book from Micheal Moore, "Stupid White Guys". If you remove the sensationalism he does make a very valid point. His point is that politics is basically screwed up. Clinton in his years talked well, but he was Bush in fancier clothes.
I understand why Nader wants to run. Frankly if I was an American I would vote for him. However, the political mess is not exclusive to the US. In Germany or Canada it is the same mess. Germany talks about reforms, HA!
The more and more I think about this, is that if the politicians are not careful, extremism is going to be the smallest of their problems.
>>> For commercial development of closed source software, the licensing fees for Trolltech are generally accepted and favored among KDE developers since this ensures support for KDE/Qt in both ways: either someone contributes code to the open source community, or he pays the developers of Qt, both which directly benefit KDE in the end.
The problem with the closed source software fees is that they are outrageous. Shareware developers need not apply, which happen to make the Windows platform what it is today. Shareware developers should not be underestimated in their importance.
To get a license for both Windows and Linux for QT you would have to pay 2500 USD minimum. Gee for that I can get a universal subscript to MSDN, which gives me an IDE, OS, Office, Windows, Windows Server, etc,etc. And what do I get from Trolltech? And SDK! Gee, yippee...
My point is that shareware developers are not against paying money. Contrary they would pay money, but reasonable amounts!
While in the simplest form I agree, overall I disagree.
"All's fair in love and war" is what I would respond. To me these extra add-ons is an arms race to build the ultimate client. Frankly I am sure it would make the game more interesting if there was a market for this "arms" race.