Observations: Krita has years to go. GIMP is not difficult to use. What people are describing as difficult seems to be weighed on the amount of time one has to read up on the GIMP tutorials versus reading up on the Help for Krita.
Note: Digikam is what you want if you just want to touch up your digital images recently shot from your personal camera.
GIMP and Cinepaint are what you want to use if you want to utilize your digital images and turn them into a portfolio.
Comparing Krita to GIMP and declaring Krita the easy-to-use alternative is really misleading people. That's like comparing Scribus 1.2 to LaTeX/Kile and declaring Scribus 1.2 the only choice for PDF documentation publishing. Any one can tell you that if you are doing large technical documentation (books, presentations, etc..) you want to leverage LaTeX. But then you might have to get off your butt and learn it. Scribus isn't a breeze to learn but nothing like that visual feedback mechanism of instant gratification to give one a sense it is more intuitive, powerful and thus easier to utilize.
Both Scribus 1.2 and LaTeX are wonderful tools. I recommend learning both and leveraging them where they make sense.
Scribus 1.2 is like a poor man's scaled down version of Create 11, by Stone Design that runs only on OS X (100% Pure Cocoa app).
Stone Design Create
http://www.stone.com/Create_Screenshot.html
The day Apple uses Qt for an Office setup will be the day OS X is dead.
Either people are dense or just too damn lazy to learn Cocoa/Objective-C or they just don't understand the direction Apple intends for its Operating System and Applications--100% Cocoa.
It's taken too damn long and like myself many former NeXT/Apple employees got tired of waiting for this transition but it is beginning to be exactly what Steve assured us during the merger between NeXT and Apple.
Apple didn't develop Xcode so folks could have a really cool C++ IDE. They developed it so that people could easily use several existing languages available in Cocoa but discover that the most useful language is ObjC.
PDF 1.5 is Adobe's current standard and soon followed by PDF 1.6.
Mac OS X utilizes PDF 1.4 and soon PDF 1.5. Adobe licenses prior versions of PDF to be royalty free which only makes sense--give them a taste to what PDF does and encourage them to purchase the latest version to leverage all that PDF can do.
We had a huge pain in the rear issue with Adobe at NeXT and then Apple dealing with Display Postscript--even though we co-developed the standard and actually perfected it. After months of futile negotiations the DPS model for then Rhapsody, now OS X was switched to a modified PDF- Display PDF with custom additions for OS X only.
Adobe is not in the business of free software. They leverage it, yes, but they are a consulting firm.
This smacks of collusion between Microsoft and the hardware vendors.
If Microsoft designates a level version of Longhorn and with it a similiar requirements range in third party hardware both the Hardware vendors and Microsoft force pricing on the market, moreso than they already do.
Solution: LINUX, FreeBSD, etc...
Problem: Video Hardware that has level awareness notification tags built-into their systems that are probed by the boot process and stay inactive if the system has an improper Level/mixed Level configuration. This results in people being pigeon-holed into a certain configuration or forced to upgrade an entire system, at once, in order to play the latest games. Great for hardware suppliers. A nightmare for clone vendors trying whose current strength is offering a mix'n'match approach to 3rd party PC hardware. This would bite Microsoft in the ass more than they want to realize.
Right now the gaming market drives the video card and hardware markets.
My question would be the only way this benefits Microsoft is in the area of support and lawsuit protection. If they can minimize the number of hardware combinations they need to support then they limit their arm of liability.
On a side note, the problem I have with libertarian ideology is the same problem that i have with communism ideology: It just doesn't account for human nature.
Actually, you don't get Libertarianism. It demands human nature to be accountable from every Individual, and not from a general consensus. With this only me, myself and I are responsible for all my mistakes and not Society made me do it.
These two clearly don't have that much confidence in debating on real solutions if they keep blocking everyone else who could really pose a threat during the debates.
I know quite a large group of Linux users do use Debian in some form or another, as well as utilize the dselect/apt-get tools to manage their package repositories.
Do these numbers even bother to take this into account?
It is rather ironic that we have the technical skills, in droves, to develop dynamically publishable content, yet we immediately whine about the costs of doing it when the stuff is already Open Source.
So much for utilizing projects like Apache Forrest or better yet Cocoon 2.1.5.1.
Take John Carmack, as an example. He dropped out of college after 2 semesters. He is the person that video card manufacturers worship in the hopes he uses their architecture to pioneer the next-generation of gaming. Is he someone you'd also consider not contributing to the advance of the computer science world?
How the hell did Carmack's name get run through the mud? The man writes and has advanced the graphics gaming engine R&D with his programming and design skills. I agree the parent poster's reference to Bill's lack of formal education reducing him to an imbecile of Computer Science is baseless at best.
Having your way paid to get into Yale and later Harvard, followed by nearly bankrupting every business your family invests for you to run to then becoming Governor and now President is considered prerequisites to being fully qualified?
Seeing that the man has worked in the Private sector on large scale projects and seen them through to fruition, has Principles that are tolerant, elastic and compassionate with an unwavoring support of the US Constitution strikes me as having a much greater duty to becoming the US President.
I recall a certain individual who never won an election and ultimately became President. Honest Abe now is the trump card for both the Demos and Repubs when it suits their brand of Principless Politics.
Yeah the man is more than qualified, on the fronts of intelligence, ethics and his fierce fight to preseve Individual Liberty.
I can guarantee you the man actually writes his own speeches and if given the chance to debate Kerry and Bush will really wake up many Americans while offending others because they'll be too pigheaded to admit they are backing lemmings. Nothing like someone who can articulate emphatically without the need of boorish rhetoric or hickish connectivity that will later get debated ad nauseam on Hardball. Even the lamen would find his debate insightful and promising to what the America can attain, without compromsing its founding principles.
It is quite clear to me that 99.99% of Americans don't know that this Government is a Secular Government for many reasons, not the least of which is a nation of Liberty that demands self-discipline of every individual who claims to embrace these Liberties afforded to every citizen of the United States. This framework made it clear that in order to preserve religious freedom the nation must be secular and view all religions as inherently part of such freedom of thoughts and personal beliefs. This demands no one religion, regardless of its popularity at any time during this nation's lifespan shall claim the right of being the offical religion. If this were to happen the very fabric of our US Constitution would be a sham and be nothing but ink on a dead scroll.
Being a Libertarian I want to know your position, constitutionally speaking, on what reasonable position the Executive office of the President of the United States should take when they take the oath of office and claim to defend the Liberties and Bill of Rights of the US Constitution?
Should it not be clear that all Religious organizations, regardless of one's personal views, be granted Tax Exempt Status or else all Tax Exemption Statuses of traditional and non-traditional bodies be revoked?
The Political Lobbying Machine should be revoked to level the playing field for all. Would it not be most prudent that we demand the US Government develop strict standards specifications for all domestic and foreign--commercial and non-commercial--business entities to pass these standards and maintain them to ensure the US Consumers with the highest quality of goods and services at the most competitive prices? Should not the US Government focus on preserving Domestic Tranquility instead of redefining what Domestic Tranquility is for its US Citizenship?
Michael, would you not agree that a US Government standards group assuring highests standards overseeing private sector companies(i.e., FS=Factors of Safety and Assurance):
redeveloping an updated national power grid,
amongst a state-to-state heavy industrial highspeed, as well as a consumer highspeed lightrail infrastructure
, has the potential and minimum expectations of generating millions of new jobs? Would not upgrading the nation's much needed system of services be a necessity to any future president elect to make as a cornerstone of their office, versus this ludicrous Global War on Terror, we and many other nations helped birth during the past 59 years since WWII?
Seeing two parties pandering to religious and socialist special interests spits at the very fabric of this Republic. Allowing the rapid consolidation of the banking, telecommunications, public utilities, oil industries so on and so forth reduces competition, raises the cost of living without providing a cost of living increase to compensate and ultimately leaves us all ethically, economically and morally bankrupt to a system run by a business elite that includes all the industries aforementioned. People complain about health care reform when the Government should be demanding that all States honor any health care policy that meets a level, sound and equally accessible standard created and maintained by an impartial, objective Congress.
Everyone is deflecting the fact that the cost of goods and services is going unchecked because the entry to business that will offer comparable goods and services is very difficult to breach.
Today lacks a Trust Buster. What's your take on the effects corporate lobbying has done to business sector and whether or not disbandoning it would help level the playing field and allow innovation to be top dog instead of marketing falsehoods that giants of industry pump to the mass media?
P.S. They'll have to clone me before I vote non-Libertarian. Those who claim it is a wasted vote are the same lemmings who thought the American Revolution was just a fantasy.
When I worked at NeXT and then Apple during the merger and a year afterwards, we had the big financial decisions to rip out Display Postscript which NeXT co-developed with Adobe on the basis that Adobe would not negotiate on terms regarding the licensing fees they charged to use Postscript.
So Engineering designed Quartz to utilize all the Postscript primitives ala PDF and since Adobe already opened up PDF the financial issues were resolved. The addition of compositing and all the fancy Quartz Extreme capabilities came from years of Window Server development at NeXT and Apple.
Hands down the most brilliant and accessible group of people to work with and learn from. If California wasn't so damn expensive I never would have left. I have not remotely been around such talent since leaving in mid 98.
I'll leave it you to draw consequences. All I know is that news was spread Sarge will come around september this year (on debianplanet on aug.2), but then again: Debian releases when it is time. (from debian.org)
What you are looking for is, "I'll leave it up to you to draw conclusions."
You point out TeTeX at 14+MB which is as bare as it gets for TeTeX, then comes the TeTeX-Doc and the TeTeX-Extra which by now we're up to over 50MBs.
Oh and here is the real kicker. Debian has updated 2.02 3 if not 4 times this month. Now 150MB+ to over 200MBs of fixes? Nope. SP2 looks a bit smaller now don't it?
And that doesn't even touch the -1,-2,..-20 Debian patches they keep spewing out for project after project.
The only plus for a 56k access is they don't cap youru downloads on a monthly basis. The badside obviously is bandwidth, but for me its time down waiting for important packages like TeTeX to update.
Having a SVN approach to patching systems makes sense. Or CVS if you prefer a different versioning system approach.
It's already been said but it is worth repeating, especially when one runs KDE or GNOME. Just Build a freakin' base package and update us with Binary Images that are new or replaced, documentation that is new or revision updates and binaries to the executables, libraries, so on that change and not the mountains of innert parts that don't change.
You can't tell me KDELIBS , KDEBASE needs to be completely rebuilt each.x revions or -x revision by Debian and by completely rebuilt I mean all the inert files that don't actually get touched during the build process other than to make sure some wallpaper image still exists. Hell the Wallpaper backdrops, etc should be add-ons, not part of the distributions. But then again I suppose everyone thinks we all have T1 access.
So they cut the bus to 1/3rd the Clock Speed. For the categories it is targeted it won't be noticeable as it would be for a researcher, developer, ecetera.
The Screen Real Estate is a major improvement. The prior iMac had nothing remotely like the specs of these new screens. The 20 in at 16 x 10 is a major step up for their LCDs that aren't a Cinema Display.
The fact the high end is just over US $2k and picturing an end consumer with a 160 Gig drive, so on and so forth, the only modification most will make is to bump up the RAM. Big deal. That issue is solved rapidely.
Add an Air Port Extreme with a Base station in the House and being that it is only 21lbs take it where you want and relax. It's a lot easier to move this desktop system than a PowerMac G5 in one shot.
This has a less Medical Office look and a more Business Office appearance that will help propel sales into the Enterprise markets.
Thus Apple couldn?t have merely licensed the operating system in the mid-80s. OK, then they should have licensed the entire platform to other hardware manufacturers. Admittedly this was possible, and, according to Jim Carlton?s Apple book, was exactly what Apple?s executives considered but rejected. (
Carlton?s book is seriously flawed in many ways (not the least of which his conclusion that the company was on the verge of going out of business circa 1999), but it?s worth reading if taken with several grains of salt.) The idea was that Apple would license the Mac platform to a handful of big-name companies like Kodak, Motorola, and AT&T ? not a wide-open licensing scheme where any company could decide to start making Mac clones.
Having been an employee at NeXT and Apple between the years 1996 and 1998 I can testify that not only was the 1999 modest but in fact, in 1997 Apple had only 3 months worth of working capital on which to run the company. One of the most necessary and drastic actions Steve took was to revoke the Sabbatical Program. Nearly 1/3rd of the entire staff had earned up to 12 weeks of paid vacation. Not to mention the merging of 20 some odd separate marketing departments into the vaunted "Think Different" single marketing department. Or the over 500 staffed IT Department costing the company over $45 Million annually to run with over 180 in-house applications that had yet to be sold to consumers? Steve gutted that group and what useful software has and continues to be adapted to current and hopefully future software from Apple. We all found the gluttony within Apple to be disgusting (meanwhile during the merger Apple Engineers were pissed with our free variety of beverages perks and how upbeat and enjoyable the NeXT headquarters work environments actual were). My personal favorite change was when Steve gutted the outside Latte/Espresso vendor from within Apple proper along with the Cafe staff. It sent a storm of posts on the internal web anonymous bitch section (employee feedback section) until the day arrived when Steve was praised because he introduced everyone to the newly revamped Cafe with free Coffee/Lattes for Staff. It just reminds me how speculation can sure create wild stories, and how experiencing it in actuality helps calm those storms of BS.
We only had 12 weeks in which to effectively redefine Apple, trim the exhorbitant costs that it was taking just to keep the company afloat, and more importantly market products to get Apple back on track. It was then early in 1998 we all were asked to head off campus to what would be the unveiling of Apple's Future--iMac.
I agree the clone licensing campaign that Steve revoked was necessary for Apple to survive. Steve learned well with all the grandiose ideals at NeXT and was not about to make the same mistakes back at Apple, now that he had one last chance.
How many people realize that a stroll around Steve's neighborhood with an Executive of Microsoft turned into the $150 Million non-voting shares investment from Microsoft back into Apple and how when that was revealed in Boston that most folks hadn't a clue how important ending that feud was to Apple's future bottom line.
Give me a break. The Shell alone in NT/2K/XP is a painful experience, let alone customizing the POS and dealing with Registry Entries
Having years on NT/2K/XP along side years on NeXTSTEP/Openstep and LINUX and soon OS X let's not even go there with which OS's should be the market leaders for sheer capabilities versus Reality that shows us time and time again that 3rd Rate is the American Way.
How come it is when as a Linux user I visit the Firefox, Thunderbird or Mozilla distribution top pages the web developers were smart enough to test for my OS via the HTTP headers but not smart enough to at the very least put a Linux friendly, scaled-down screenshot of these applications on the front page along-side the Download for Linux and Tux Penguin icon?
Instead I get to see that butt-ugly XP look for screen shots to the right of Firefox the browser reloaded.
I think it's a very pertinent question, as the USA seems to be trailing other countries like the UK when it comes to mobile phone coverage, usage, and general technological trends, so if mobile phones supplant iPod usage over here, you'll probably see it over there in a year or two.
Not to burst your bubble but have you compared the square miles of The United States of America to that of the UK?
I really feel sad for all of you that live in the UK if it is common that your cellphones are becoming physical appendages to your personal being. In the States we simply say, "Get a Life!"
With roughly 300 Million legal US Citizens the odds of cell phones supplanting the iPod in essence by absorbing its functionality is assinine.
iPods are popular but guess what? Most people over 50 don't own them and would never purchase one-the same folks that comprise 2/3rds of the GDP and don't want to be on the Internet.
What seems odd is that no one does surveys on charting Internet usage over time. Most folks I know who were using the Internet before it became the 'big thing' rarely use it now. The fad has worn off. It is now once again a tool to be used to get answers then put back up on the shelf, so-to-speak.
Phone companies are mistrusted, in the States, due to too many experiences that support the need to mistrust them.
This shouldn't come as much of a surprise, but unless Telcos are challenged with losing customer bases at alarming rates to outside competitors they don't move to improve services for customers. It just doesn't make sense to them to give new services if customers aren't canceling accounts. Progress doesn't arrive in the States through altruistic means. It comes from the notion of Free Enterprise and disgruntled entrepreneurs who create dissent to these services luring customers to a better solution. With enough mindshare Telcos regroup and either Lobby to block these new services, offer to buy out these new companies, or offer equivalent services.
Wanna take a guess why I listed the order in which the Telcos respond? They don't improve services unless they can't stop competitors from doing it and thus take their customer base from them.
Welcome to the United States of America. We offer you opportunity in countless occupations. You just have to get it yourself.
How about "and the engineers who built and understand it more than anyone else in the world."
Oh shit what a baseless and overly confident statement inferring these software programmers are actually Engineers that are the last bastion of higher thought. Last time I checked most Linux heads aren't graduates in various fields of Engineerings.
With the economy so fucked up the fact no one has published a Web Portal reaching out to contact Mechanical, Electrical Civil, Computer Science and off-shoot disciplines of folks bored and way too intelligent to be flipping burgers while they look for work in their respective fields, to collaborate and actually improve Linux, not to mention the entire IT industry.
Instead, most of this top talent is taking Food Service jobs, Retail jobs just to make ends meat until they can get back into the 'Game.'
The mantra never changed even after Java was born and even after all the politics settled with Sun deciding to use Java when it was clear Avie and Co. found the Openstep for Solaris progress not worth pursuing.
To this quote:
I've read that Java has just overtaken Cobol as the most popular language. As a standard, you couldn't wish for more. But as a medium of expression, you could do a lot better. Of all the great programmers I can think of, I know of only one who would voluntarily program in Java. And of all the great programmers I can think of who don't work for Sun, on Java, I know of zero.
I answer, "Try the entire Cocoa Team that includes pre and post merger with Apple. If Sun had listened to NeXT Java would actually be a better language."
Quite a few innovations that Apple Engineering does with Java comes from Objective-C experts. But then again this gentleman has a Ph.D so automagically he gets recognized as a Visionary?
I've rarely met a Visionary who actually wanted to waste the time it took to satisfy the Ph.D requirements, regardless of discipline.
No offense, but as long as Nokia and other cell phone manufacturers work with projects like Mozilla, Safari, Opera, and indirectly KDE Macromedia can play the role of ass-kisser all they want, but it won't matter.
Hypothetical: A team of developers designing an XML server-side application in say, Cocoon 2 Frameworks, is asked about WML/WAP and one of the demands is a scaled down graphics enabled version of certain corporate processes that get served already via the browser of your choice. With SVG support built-into Cocoon 2 do you think the developers who have architected via the MVC+ paradigm a sight that pipelines html4/xhtml1.x/xsl-fo/xsp/wml/svg so on and so forth are going to actually put in the time to ramp up on FLASH when they can just add an SVG-tiny pipeline to an already well-designed sitemap.xmap?
With today's server-side frameworks targeted at multiple end-clients it seems Macromedia should be augmenting SVG by offering the Tools to create SVG-Mobile and SVG1.1/SVG1.2/SVGPrint aware content, as well as get involved with the authoring of the specifications.
Macromedia is in a position where they can take Flash to become SVG but with being a tools vendor offer applications that act as Content Management Tools for Graphics professionals who want to take pre-press ideas to the Web and beyond.
Macromedia needs to realize something: Flash will never win out against SVG when SVG is ready for Prime-time. Too many industry Giants as well as Open Source advocates who actually make the best browsers in the World actually have the clout this time around.
What the hell is with the incessant use of PNG for large images on web sites if they are massive in file size, and take too damn long to download, for those of us who aren't on 1.5ADSL or Cable?
I'm dyin' to hear about the Open-Sourceness of PNG and adopting its usage because of this blah, blah, blah.
Either make PNG compress graphics better than JPEG or don't use it is my solution.
It's not that damn hard to put a black backdrop on your JPEG and throw it up at about 1/6th the file size.
Besides the only large image files worth downloading aren't computer Icons, but are of the female persuasion (I don't speak for homosexuals but I'm sure they can adjust my statement accordingly).
Slashdot Mirror
Inkscape. It's farther along than Sodipodi.
http://www.inkscape.org
Given: I use Debian Sid/KDE 3.3 daily
Observations: Krita has years to go. GIMP is not difficult to use. What people are describing as difficult seems to be weighed on the amount of time one has to read up on the GIMP tutorials versus reading up on the Help for Krita.
Note: Digikam is what you want if you just want to touch up your digital images recently shot from your personal camera.
GIMP and Cinepaint are what you want to use if you want to utilize your digital images and turn them into a portfolio.
Comparing Krita to GIMP and declaring Krita the easy-to-use alternative is really misleading people. That's like comparing Scribus 1.2 to LaTeX/Kile and declaring Scribus 1.2 the only choice for PDF documentation publishing. Any one can tell you that if you are doing large technical documentation (books, presentations, etc..) you want to leverage LaTeX. But then you might have to get off your butt and learn it. Scribus isn't a breeze to learn but nothing like that visual feedback mechanism of instant gratification to give one a sense it is more intuitive, powerful and thus easier to utilize.
Both Scribus 1.2 and LaTeX are wonderful tools. I recommend learning both and leveraging them where they make sense.
Scribus 1.2 is like a poor man's scaled down version of Create 11, by Stone Design that runs only on OS X (100% Pure Cocoa app).
Stone Design Create
http://www.stone.com/Create_Screenshot.html
The day Apple uses Qt for an Office setup will be the day OS X is dead.
Either people are dense or just too damn lazy to learn Cocoa/Objective-C or they just don't understand the direction Apple intends for its Operating System and Applications--100% Cocoa.
It's taken too damn long and like myself many former NeXT/Apple employees got tired of waiting for this transition but it is beginning to be exactly what Steve assured us during the merger between NeXT and Apple.
Apple didn't develop Xcode so folks could have a really cool C++ IDE. They developed it so that people could easily use several existing languages available in Cocoa but discover that the most useful language is ObjC.
PDF 1.5 is Adobe's current standard and soon followed by PDF 1.6.
Mac OS X utilizes PDF 1.4 and soon PDF 1.5. Adobe licenses prior versions of PDF to be royalty free which only makes sense--give them a taste to what PDF does and encourage them to purchase the latest version to leverage all that PDF can do.
We had a huge pain in the rear issue with Adobe at NeXT and then Apple dealing with Display Postscript--even though we co-developed the standard and actually perfected it. After months of futile negotiations the DPS model for then Rhapsody, now OS X was switched to a modified PDF- Display PDF with custom additions for OS X only.
Adobe is not in the business of free software. They leverage it, yes, but they are a consulting firm.
Democrats vs. SuperDemocrats.
This smacks of collusion between Microsoft and the hardware vendors.
If Microsoft designates a level version of Longhorn and with it a similiar requirements range in third party hardware both the Hardware vendors and Microsoft force pricing on the market, moreso than they already do.
Solution: LINUX, FreeBSD, etc...
Problem: Video Hardware that has level awareness notification tags built-into their systems that are probed by the boot process and stay inactive if the system has an improper Level/mixed Level configuration. This results in people being pigeon-holed into a certain configuration or forced to upgrade an entire system, at once, in order to play the latest games. Great for hardware suppliers. A nightmare for clone vendors trying whose current strength is offering a mix'n'match approach to 3rd party PC hardware. This would bite Microsoft in the ass more than they want to realize.
Right now the gaming market drives the video card and hardware markets.
My question would be the only way this benefits Microsoft is in the area of support and lawsuit protection. If they can minimize the number of hardware combinations they need to support then they limit their arm of liability.
Just a few thoughts..
Actually, you don't get Libertarianism. It demands human nature to be accountable from every Individual, and not from a general consensus. With this only me, myself and I are responsible for all my mistakes and not Society made me do it.
These two clearly don't have that much confidence in debating on real solutions if they keep blocking everyone else who could really pose a threat during the debates.
This will be the usual boring debates of old.
I know quite a large group of Linux users do use Debian in some form or another, as well as utilize the dselect/apt-get tools to manage their package repositories.
Do these numbers even bother to take this into account?
It is rather ironic that we have the technical skills, in droves, to develop dynamically publishable content, yet we immediately whine about the costs of doing it when the stuff is already Open Source.
So much for utilizing projects like Apache Forrest or better yet Cocoon 2.1.5.1.
How the hell did Carmack's name get run through the mud? The man writes and has advanced the graphics gaming engine R&D with his programming and design skills. I agree the parent poster's reference to Bill's lack of formal education reducing him to an imbecile of Computer Science is baseless at best.
Having your way paid to get into Yale and later Harvard, followed by nearly bankrupting every business your family invests for you to run to then becoming Governor and now President is considered prerequisites to being fully qualified?
Seeing that the man has worked in the Private sector on large scale projects and seen them through to fruition, has Principles that are tolerant, elastic and compassionate with an unwavoring support of the US Constitution strikes me as having a much greater duty to becoming the US President.
I recall a certain individual who never won an election and ultimately became President. Honest Abe now is the trump card for both the Demos and Repubs when it suits their brand of Principless Politics.
Yeah the man is more than qualified, on the fronts of intelligence, ethics and his fierce fight to preseve Individual Liberty.
I can guarantee you the man actually writes his own speeches and if given the chance to debate Kerry and Bush will really wake up many Americans while offending others because they'll be too pigheaded to admit they are backing lemmings. Nothing like someone who can articulate emphatically without the need of boorish rhetoric or hickish connectivity that will later get debated ad nauseam on Hardball. Even the lamen would find his debate insightful and promising to what the America can attain, without compromsing its founding principles.
It is quite clear to me that 99.99% of Americans don't know that this Government is a Secular Government for many reasons, not the least of which is a nation of Liberty that demands self-discipline of every individual who claims to embrace these Liberties afforded to every citizen of the United States. This framework made it clear that in order to preserve religious freedom the nation must be secular and view all religions as inherently part of such freedom of thoughts and personal beliefs. This demands no one religion, regardless of its popularity at any time during this nation's lifespan shall claim the right of being the offical religion. If this were to happen the very fabric of our US Constitution would be a sham and be nothing but ink on a dead scroll.
Being a Libertarian I want to know your position, constitutionally speaking, on what reasonable position the Executive office of the President of the United States should take when they take the oath of office and claim to defend the Liberties and Bill of Rights of the US Constitution?
Should it not be clear that all Religious organizations, regardless of one's personal views, be granted Tax Exempt Status or else all Tax Exemption Statuses of traditional and non-traditional bodies be revoked?
The Political Lobbying Machine should be revoked to level the playing field for all. Would it not be most prudent that we demand the US Government develop strict standards specifications for all domestic and foreign--commercial and non-commercial--business entities to pass these standards and maintain them to ensure the US Consumers with the highest quality of goods and services at the most competitive prices? Should not the US Government focus on preserving Domestic Tranquility instead of redefining what Domestic Tranquility is for its US Citizenship?
Michael, would you not agree that a US Government standards group assuring highests standards overseeing private sector companies(i.e., FS=Factors of Safety and Assurance):
- redeveloping an updated national power grid,
- amongst a state-to-state heavy industrial highspeed, as well as a consumer highspeed lightrail infrastructure
, has the potential and minimum expectations of generating millions of new jobs? Would not upgrading the nation's much needed system of services be a necessity to any future president elect to make as a cornerstone of their office, versus this ludicrous Global War on Terror, we and many other nations helped birth during the past 59 years since WWII?Seeing two parties pandering to religious and socialist special interests spits at the very fabric of this Republic. Allowing the rapid consolidation of the banking, telecommunications, public utilities, oil industries so on and so forth reduces competition, raises the cost of living without providing a cost of living increase to compensate and ultimately leaves us all ethically, economically and morally bankrupt to a system run by a business elite that includes all the industries aforementioned. People complain about health care reform when the Government should be demanding that all States honor any health care policy that meets a level, sound and equally accessible standard created and maintained by an impartial, objective Congress.
Everyone is deflecting the fact that the cost of goods and services is going unchecked because the entry to business that will offer comparable goods and services is very difficult to breach.
Today lacks a Trust Buster. What's your take on the effects corporate lobbying has done to business sector and whether or not disbandoning it would help level the playing field and allow innovation to be top dog instead of marketing falsehoods that giants of industry pump to the mass media?
P.S. They'll have to clone me before I vote non-Libertarian. Those who claim it is a wasted vote are the same lemmings who thought the American Revolution was just a fantasy.
When I worked at NeXT and then Apple during the merger and a year afterwards, we had the big financial decisions to rip out Display Postscript which NeXT co-developed with Adobe on the basis that Adobe would not negotiate on terms regarding the licensing fees they charged to use Postscript.
So Engineering designed Quartz to utilize all the Postscript primitives ala PDF and since Adobe already opened up PDF the financial issues were resolved. The addition of compositing and all the fancy Quartz Extreme capabilities came from years of Window Server development at NeXT and Apple.
Hands down the most brilliant and accessible group of people to work with and learn from. If California wasn't so damn expensive I never would have left. I have not remotely been around such talent since leaving in mid 98.
You point out TeTeX at 14+MB which is as bare as it gets for TeTeX, then comes the TeTeX-Doc and the TeTeX-Extra which by now we're up to over 50MBs.
Oh and here is the real kicker. Debian has updated 2.02 3 if not 4 times this month. Now 150MB+ to over 200MBs of fixes? Nope. SP2 looks a bit smaller now don't it?
And that doesn't even touch the -1,-2,..-20 Debian patches they keep spewing out for project after project.
The only plus for a 56k access is they don't cap youru downloads on a monthly basis. The badside obviously is bandwidth, but for me its time down waiting for important packages like TeTeX to update.
Having a SVN approach to patching systems makes sense. Or CVS if you prefer a different versioning system approach.
It's already been said but it is worth repeating, especially when one runs KDE or GNOME. Just Build a freakin' base package and update us with Binary Images that are new or replaced, documentation that is new or revision updates and binaries to the executables, libraries, so on that change and not the mountains of innert parts that don't change.
You can't tell me KDELIBS , KDEBASE needs to be completely rebuilt each .x revions or -x revision by Debian and by completely rebuilt I mean all the inert files that don't actually get touched during the build process other than to make sure some wallpaper image still exists. Hell the Wallpaper backdrops, etc should be add-ons, not part of the distributions. But then again I suppose everyone thinks we all have T1 access.
K.I.S.S.
So they cut the bus to 1/3rd the Clock Speed. For the categories it is targeted it won't be noticeable as it would be for a researcher, developer, ecetera.
The Screen Real Estate is a major improvement. The prior iMac had nothing remotely like the specs of these new screens. The 20 in at 16 x 10 is a major step up for their LCDs that aren't a Cinema Display.
The fact the high end is just over US $2k and picturing an end consumer with a 160 Gig drive, so on and so forth, the only modification most will make is to bump up the RAM. Big deal. That issue is solved rapidely.
Add an Air Port Extreme with a Base station in the House and being that it is only 21lbs take it where you want and relax. It's a lot easier to move this desktop system than a PowerMac G5 in one shot.
This has a less Medical Office look and a more Business Office appearance that will help propel sales into the Enterprise markets.
Having been an employee at NeXT and Apple between the years 1996 and 1998 I can testify that not only was the 1999 modest but in fact, in 1997 Apple had only 3 months worth of working capital on which to run the company. One of the most necessary and drastic actions Steve took was to revoke the Sabbatical Program. Nearly 1/3rd of the entire staff had earned up to 12 weeks of paid vacation. Not to mention the merging of 20 some odd separate marketing departments into the vaunted "Think Different" single marketing department. Or the over 500 staffed IT Department costing the company over $45 Million annually to run with over 180 in-house applications that had yet to be sold to consumers? Steve gutted that group and what useful software has and continues to be adapted to current and hopefully future software from Apple. We all found the gluttony within Apple to be disgusting (meanwhile during the merger Apple Engineers were pissed with our free variety of beverages perks and how upbeat and enjoyable the NeXT headquarters work environments actual were). My personal favorite change was when Steve gutted the outside Latte/Espresso vendor from within Apple proper along with the Cafe staff. It sent a storm of posts on the internal web anonymous bitch section (employee feedback section) until the day arrived when Steve was praised because he introduced everyone to the newly revamped Cafe with free Coffee/Lattes for Staff. It just reminds me how speculation can sure create wild stories, and how experiencing it in actuality helps calm those storms of BS.
We only had 12 weeks in which to effectively redefine Apple, trim the exhorbitant costs that it was taking just to keep the company afloat, and more importantly market products to get Apple back on track. It was then early in 1998 we all were asked to head off campus to what would be the unveiling of Apple's Future--iMac.
I agree the clone licensing campaign that Steve revoked was necessary for Apple to survive. Steve learned well with all the grandiose ideals at NeXT and was not about to make the same mistakes back at Apple, now that he had one last chance.
How many people realize that a stroll around Steve's neighborhood with an Executive of Microsoft turned into the $150 Million non-voting shares investment from Microsoft back into Apple and how when that was revealed in Boston that most folks hadn't a clue how important ending that feud was to Apple's future bottom line.
Comparing a high-end UNIX Operating System to XP?
Give me a break. The Shell alone in NT/2K/XP is a painful experience, let alone customizing the POS and dealing with Registry Entries
Having years on NT/2K/XP along side years on NeXTSTEP/Openstep and LINUX and soon OS X let's not even go there with which OS's should be the market leaders for sheer capabilities versus Reality that shows us time and time again that 3rd Rate is the American Way.
How come it is when as a Linux user I visit the Firefox, Thunderbird or Mozilla distribution top pages the web developers were smart enough to test for my OS via the HTTP headers but not smart enough to at the very least put a Linux friendly, scaled-down screenshot of these applications on the front page along-side the Download for Linux and Tux Penguin icon?
Instead I get to see that butt-ugly XP look for screen shots to the right of Firefox the browser reloaded.
Not to burst your bubble but have you compared the square miles of The United States of America to that of the UK?
I really feel sad for all of you that live in the UK if it is common that your cellphones are becoming physical appendages to your personal being. In the States we simply say, "Get a Life!"
With roughly 300 Million legal US Citizens the odds of cell phones supplanting the iPod in essence by absorbing its functionality is assinine.
iPods are popular but guess what? Most people over 50 don't own them and would never purchase one-the same folks that comprise 2/3rds of the GDP and don't want to be on the Internet.
What seems odd is that no one does surveys on charting Internet usage over time. Most folks I know who were using the Internet before it became the 'big thing' rarely use it now. The fad has worn off. It is now once again a tool to be used to get answers then put back up on the shelf, so-to-speak.
Phone companies are mistrusted, in the States, due to too many experiences that support the need to mistrust them.
This shouldn't come as much of a surprise, but unless Telcos are challenged with losing customer bases at alarming rates to outside competitors they don't move to improve services for customers. It just doesn't make sense to them to give new services if customers aren't canceling accounts. Progress doesn't arrive in the States through altruistic means. It comes from the notion of Free Enterprise and disgruntled entrepreneurs who create dissent to these services luring customers to a better solution. With enough mindshare Telcos regroup and either Lobby to block these new services, offer to buy out these new companies, or offer equivalent services.
Wanna take a guess why I listed the order in which the Telcos respond? They don't improve services unless they can't stop competitors from doing it and thus take their customer base from them.
Welcome to the United States of America. We offer you opportunity in countless occupations. You just have to get it yourself.
Oh shit what a baseless and overly confident statement inferring these software programmers are actually Engineers that are the last bastion of higher thought. Last time I checked most Linux heads aren't graduates in various fields of Engineerings.
With the economy so fucked up the fact no one has published a Web Portal reaching out to contact Mechanical, Electrical Civil, Computer Science and off-shoot disciplines of folks bored and way too intelligent to be flipping burgers while they look for work in their respective fields, to collaborate and actually improve Linux, not to mention the entire IT industry.
Instead, most of this top talent is taking Food Service jobs, Retail jobs just to make ends meat until they can get back into the 'Game.'
labeled as arrogant.
We had a mantra during the Openstep initiative.
The mantra never changed even after Java was born and even after all the politics settled with Sun deciding to use Java when it was clear Avie and Co. found the Openstep for Solaris progress not worth pursuing.
To this quote:
I answer, "Try the entire Cocoa Team that includes pre and post merger with Apple. If Sun had listened to NeXT Java would actually be a better language."
Quite a few innovations that Apple Engineering does with Java comes from Objective-C experts. But then again this gentleman has a Ph.D so automagically he gets recognized as a Visionary?
I've rarely met a Visionary who actually wanted to waste the time it took to satisfy the Ph.D requirements, regardless of discipline.
No offense, but as long as Nokia and other cell phone manufacturers work with projects like Mozilla, Safari, Opera, and indirectly KDE Macromedia can play the role of ass-kisser all they want, but it won't matter.
Hypothetical: A team of developers designing an XML server-side application in say, Cocoon 2 Frameworks, is asked about WML/WAP and one of the demands is a scaled down graphics enabled version of certain corporate processes that get served already via the browser of your choice. With SVG support built-into Cocoon 2 do you think the developers who have architected via the MVC+ paradigm a sight that pipelines html4/xhtml1.x/xsl-fo/xsp/wml/svg so on and so forth are going to actually put in the time to ramp up on FLASH when they can just add an SVG-tiny pipeline to an already well-designed sitemap.xmap?
With today's server-side frameworks targeted at multiple end-clients it seems Macromedia should be augmenting SVG by offering the Tools to create SVG-Mobile and SVG1.1/SVG1.2/SVGPrint aware content, as well as get involved with the authoring of the specifications.
Macromedia is in a position where they can take Flash to become SVG but with being a tools vendor offer applications that act as Content Management Tools for Graphics professionals who want to take pre-press ideas to the Web and beyond.
Macromedia needs to realize something: Flash will never win out against SVG when SVG is ready for Prime-time. Too many industry Giants as well as Open Source advocates who actually make the best browsers in the World actually have the clout this time around.
What the hell is with the incessant use of PNG for large images on web sites if they are massive in file size, and take too damn long to download, for those of us who aren't on 1.5ADSL or Cable?
I'm dyin' to hear about the Open-Sourceness of PNG and adopting its usage because of this blah, blah, blah.
Either make PNG compress graphics better than JPEG or don't use it is my solution.
It's not that damn hard to put a black backdrop on your JPEG and throw it up at about 1/6th the file size.
Besides the only large image files worth downloading aren't computer Icons, but are of the female persuasion (I don't speak for homosexuals but I'm sure they can adjust my statement accordingly).