Anyone know if the LASIK halo problem stems from the same reason of the Contact Lens halo problem(over large pupil dialation)?
Yes, this is coming from late 1999 so maybe they have more work. I have abnormally large dialation ranges, and abnormally large contraction ranges as well. My eyes pretty much stay dialated.
I have talked to a few doctors about it, they all said don't do it. Even in normal light, my pupils would expand past the area that Lasik can modify so I would get constant ghosts and halos. If you have a large dialation area, anytime you hit that point you will experience it as well. But, like I said, this may be different now.
I'm waiting for a surgery that corrects my contraction problem, then I can worry about Lasik... sigh
I went in to consult with my regular eye doctor (well, was) who was also a Lasik surgeon. He had great things to say about it if your career/hobbies don't strain your eyes.
I have a pretty rare eye condition that pretty much eliminates me as a candidate for Lasik, but some people still have similar symptoms and have had less than desirable results. If you have sensitive eyes to light for whatever reason, make sure to really talk it over with your eye doctor and get more than one opinion. My problem doesn't permit my eyes to contract normally, and apparently this produces some pretty serious havok amongst Lasik patients. If you get your eyes dialated, or sensitive to light, I've heard don't do it from a few sources. Halos around lights are a common tale, but I've also heard of glare that reflects around your eyes and things along those lines.
Best advice I can give: Talk to more than one doctor/surgeon about it before even considering it. Their informational videos are meant to get you to want to do it, so don't take their advice. Talk to people who have had it done that have similar prescriptions/eye conditions. Those are the people you really care about.
it took me a lot of practice to get used to the trackball. Believe it or not, learning how to use the TrackMan FX is actually harder than learning to drive a car.
You actually have to leave the house to drive a car..
I'm really scared of this guys ability to drive. I mean, it's a thumb and your index finger vs. two feet (stick, auto is one) and hands, and all sorts of levers. Then you have other people that are trying to kill you, or your trying to kill them. Equating "learning" how to use a mouse and driving a car is just scary. Maybe this guy doesn't have opposable thumbs.. lets hope not.
Tokyo is one of the most crowded cities in the world. Name an American city that has "coffin hotels" were businessmen stay because they don't want to drive the six hours home every night.
Tokyo is the most crowded city. You know why the businessmen stay in coffin hotels? They didn't realize it was cheaper to take an express trian back home (About $20-$25). Although, maybe they didn't want to spend the $90 for a real business hotel (I've stayed in one, in Shinjuku that was $80 and perfectly reasonable)
The limiting factor isn't living space; drive fifty miles in just about any direction from just about any point in the US and you're in the middle of nowhere. The limiting factor is a sufficient biomass to support humanity.
There are many places in the US where you can't drive 50 miles to get away from the city. Granted, if you drive 50 miles from Tokyo, you will also be in the middle of no where (unless you plan on taking long routes to get out). Most people don't drive distances like that in Japan though, that's why JRL is doing so well. They have more trains than they know what to do with and they all work really well to get you where you need to go. Need to go from Shinjuku to Aikihabara, done -- take a local train. Cheap ($1.50 or so) and fairly efficient. Want to go from Tokyo Station to Kyoto -- take an express or a super express, $25 - $100 and it's taking you the equivalent of 8 hours by car. That's why Japan is perfectly livable: because they designed it (mostly) smart.
(It'd probably be better to rattle off something like a *country*'s popuation, and not a city.) The whole argument goes down as it's possible for people to be perfectly happy to live in an area that is over 9,000ppkm^2. Forget what it's country or city, it all breaks down the same.
Certainly, if you tired to put everyone in the world into Texas, the most likely result would be that we just shoot each other until we are back down to 30 people per square kilometer
Sorry, it is perfectly reasonable to believe that you have an area with 9,000 people per square kilo without them shooting themselves. Many cities do have areas like this, and the whole of Tokyo is well over that. I'm not saying you do put them into Texas, all I'm saying is that it is perfectly possible and plausible that in a land area the size of Texas, 6 billion people can live perfectly fine.
You're operating on the false notion that it would be a sustainable situation for the whole world to be as crowded as the most densely populated parts are today.
Uhm, I'm trying really hard to understand how you got to that point to think that is what I was saying. Do you realize how small Texas is in relation to the rest of the livable land area in the world? It's tiny. I'm talking small here. 6.2 billion people can live there, with more comfort than they do in Tokyo.
Now, all I'm saying is that the planet is no where near carrying capicity.
he only reason the crowded nation of Japan doesn't have starvation is because there exist OTHER nations that have more than enough land to grow food on, and Japan has the ability to trade with them, and it is a wealthy enough nation that it can easily buy as much as it needs.
Uhm, Japan does make a lot of it's own food. I'll give you a hint, they eat fish over there. Lots of fish. Sea weed too. Even some beef, and other things that grow because only about 1/3 of Japan is livable for humans.. the rest, it goes to agriculture.
No, you can't have the entire world as densely populated as Japan is - as long as people still need to eat food grown on farms.
The world is as densely populated as Japan is, however Tokyo is the most densly populated city in the world. Understand the difference between Country and City? It's a rather large one...
Tokyo's 2,187 km^2 is nowhere near enough to support those 26 million people. Just because it is nice to live there doesn't mean it would continue to be if they were cut off from the food imports (even if we ignore ocean products), energy in its various forms, raw materials and other niceties of life.
Did I say it is enough to support them? No. Don't believe I did, purely talking about carrying capacity.
My example is not flawed. At all, feel free to point out one flaw if 6.2 billion people lived in a land area the size of Texas. I'd like to hear it. Aside from privacy/size constraints, it works. It's less dense than Tokyo. So.. let's hear why it's flawed.
My point was that someone just said that we were near carrying capacity. It's utter rubbish to think we're anywhere near that. Simple math shows how silly that idea is.
You can throw more money each year at telling people to turn down the heating, but each year the human population increases closer to (or perhaps beyond) the carrying capacity of the planet. This is the real problem.
Sorry, I'm in a foul mood but shove this up your ass. We are no where near the capacity for the planet. Here's something to prove my statement: Land area of Texas: 678,054 km^2 Land area of Tokyo: 2,187 km^2 Population of Tokyo: ~26 million Population of World: ~6.2 billion Population density of Tokyo: 11,888 people per KM^2 Population density if the world lived in Texas: 9,143 people per KM^2
That's 2,000 people less per KM^2, and Tokyo is a very livable area.
What's orange and yellow and looks good on hippies?
And you're stating here that the only thing that keeps Linux from being widespread is that developers have to deal with two windowing architectures? Give me a break! If everyone dropped KDE tomorrow, the interface would suck for common users (in comparison to a more user-friendly interface like Apple or Windows). If everyone dropped Gnome tomorrow, the interface would suck for common users.
No, I'm not talking purely about windowing architectures. I'm talking about an entire system-wide unified architecture. If you look at OSX you have Cocao and other standard development tools. You can choose your look, functionality, and all that. However, it's a unified development architecture. We already have some good UI designers in the OSS community, the problem is not KDE vs. Gnome -- it's what you said: Not geared towards consumers.
Having a unified architecture would allow products to be developed entirely consistent because you wouldn't have one product using libmozilla while another is using libkonqueror (or whatever KDE uses). Every consumer-level operating system has a unified architecture. Linux doesn't.
I also think that if we do switch to a unified architecture, KDE would be a better choice as the basis for it. Gnome has some great features, but those can be merged into KDE just as well.
Microsoft is that big. They have $18 billion in the bank. They can buy their customers. They can buy top programmers. They influence the guys in suits. They're still the monopoly.
I really would love to see Microsoft try to buy IBM. That would be funny. Or even Oracle for that matter. Microsoft could buy Oracle, but soon as they did it if there were any fluctuations in the stock market or anything it would crush MS. They aren't that freaking big. Yeah, they have a lot of cash reserves, but many many many more companies have higher valuation than Microsoft.
Every competitor to Microsoft has withered on the vine, poisoned by its own hubris. Lotus, Borland, Novell, Wordperfect, Corel--they all made strategic blunders, alienated their users, gave MS the opening it needed to eat their lunch. Oracle is heading that way. A few more releases of SQL Server, and maybe bundling the SQL Server engine in the NT operating system, and Oracle will dwindle into insignificance.
You picked stupid companies. I'm sorry, but it's true. These companies seemed to have no insight what so ever. Delphi? What the hell were they thinking? Corel hasn't been a competitor of MS in years and years and years. Thinking that Oracle is going to go under to SQL Server is bunk though. If SQL Server becomes the standard enterprise DB solution, I'm selling snocones in the park. You need security, and as MS said, they aren't engineered for security. Any enterprise that utilizes an operating system and enterprise solution from a company deserves what they get.
Linux has a crack at being an enterprise operating system; I just hope it can gather enough momentum before it's too late.
I don't think Linux should be an enterprise operating system. BSD I think is a better choice, hell, even Darwin is. Linux is a great workstation operating system. It's halfway between an Microsoft box and a real server. It's great just for that.
Anders Hejlsberg (of Turbo Pascal and Delphi fame). The chief architect of Delphi? The Borland compiler that had more problems than anything else. I knew several people inside of Borland that bashed the hell out of Delphi. Justifiably so, in my opinion, when Pascal eventually evolved into it it was horrible. Absolutely horrible.
Herb Sutter works at Microsoft? My heart just sunk a few notches. I kind of feel stupid not knowing that he works there.
Bobby Schmidt I don't think is a really "star" developer. He's high profile in the same way the Perens is.
Anders Hejlsberg was the chief architect of one of the worst languages Borland has ever signed on. Delphi wasn't even a good implementation. I knew people who worked at Borland who felt that way too. High up people. For the first 3-4 years that Delphi was around, it sucked ass. That isn't much to be proud of.
ps: I'm not sure I agree with you that MS is a dinosaur; I at least give it the status of an alligator -- the beasties date from prehistory, but have survived thousands of years with their primitive design and even today are a force to be reckoned with - effective, if brutal.:)
Probably betteer, but then again, alligators are only brutal and deadly in their own element. Makes ya think.
You really miss the problem. People don't give a damn about whether there is a Gnome, KDE, or unified desktop architecture. The problem is ease-of-use and consistent interface. There isn't a Linux distribution that accomplishes it. Unifying Gnome and KDE would only accomplish a less diverse failure of a user interface. You hand a unified gnome/KDE product to a user, and you get an interface which a user cannot setup and configure themselves without poring through cryptic, spotty documentation.
Unified Architecture == Consistent Interface Ease-of-Use == Decent design, basic window managers, with applications that utilize the consistent interface functionality of above.
I don't miss the problem, I just don't think you understood what I meant by coming under a unified architecture. I was pretty much speaking that for Linux to really succeed on the desktop, it has to be as seemless as the Windows desktop, probably more so. Think Apple:)
And well, about the "Microsoft is stupid" affirmation: I believe it's so plain obvious that you are an ignorant zealot, that I don't need to write any comments about it.
Affirmation does not mean what you are using it as. If I said, "Microsoft is stupid" than it would be a statement, not an affirmation. If I said, "It's a fact microsoft is stupid." it would be an assertion and an affirmation. If you clarified and asked if that is what I said, and I said yes, then I would be affirming Microsoft is stupid.
However, saying Microsoft lacks innovation abilities and employees less programmers with impressive reputations than the OSS world has is not an affirmation. At all. In no sense of the word. Everyone knows that Microsoft is poor at innovation. They have yet to introduce a new concept into the world. Ever.
Some other words that go along that you could definitely stand to learn: High-Profile
zealot - I am not fanatical for anything, maybe you missed that. If I was a zealot, I wouldn't also criticize Linux.
adjective from: Again, the whole "high-profile" part is an relative adjective that you are assigning to them, just because they are famous and you're one of their followers. This is incorrect because I said they were high-profile developers, which is a noun. If I said his personality is high-profile or his skill is high-profile it would be an adjective. I never said either. You admit they are famous, but not high-profile? Again, please review a dictionary before speaking next time.
And I'm not a Stallman follower, I think he's a bloody loon.
But most of them aren't famous as programmers, but as activists and revolutionaries. Everyone talks about how Linus was a revolutionary when he released his kernel as GPL code and opened the development process to everyone, but you won't see any mainstream magazine talking about his programming skills ("look, he planned and documented every single detail before implementing, wow, what a well designed structure he wrote in foo.c").
Sure, tell that to Dr. Knuth or Larry Wall. I'm sure they will really think you are dead right. Name one developer who doesn't know who Knuth is and I'll show you one developer who is in the wrong profession.
* I consider as "high profile" those who plan and document everything before they implement. You have be be a good engineer to be "high profile" programmer, just knowing C/C++ And Assembly won't make you "high profile".
Uhm, they are high profile because they are well known for their skills? Other wise they are highly skilled. Maybe you need a dictionary too.
Well, you don't have to be a genius to know that what you just said was plain stupid and baseless. If you believe that programming is all about giving interviews to magazines, I'm sorry to tell you that you are confusing "programming" with something else. Is it just me or wasn't "high-profile" programming about good software engineering? I mean, I didn't knew that it was about being "pop".
Yep, you do need a dictionary and maybe understand other portions of writing and debate. Could you please go and attempt to understand that high-profile means that you are well known. Typically it involves your skill at programming and that is why you are well known. High profile is not the perfect developer sitting at home in a dark room never releasing anything they have written to the outside world. It is just you that's confused about this, lets stick to terminology we have all agreed on. When you change definitions of such things as basic as "high profile" you make debate very pointless.
Good back peddle to attempt to change your argument though. "Oh no, I don't have a leg to stand on in the debate of high profile OSS developers vs. high profile proprietary developers so I'm going to change what high profile means and hope he doesn't notice."
Good strategy, in fact, that is very similar to Microsoft innovation. Lets take what ever one else does, and make it our own?
Great job proving my point, I applaud you. Either you are genius and were merely acting as devil's advocate in order to prove what I was saying or you are incredibly poor at debate. Either way, thanks.
Programming is about knowledge , it is definitely not about having hundreds of followers and giving interviews to magazines and newspapers. You can be a good programmer, and at the same time, a famous one, but you don't need to be famous so you can have good programming skills.
The famous open source developers didn't get famous because of their looks.
And, about the "famous" part: Famous to who? To the Open Source "community" (sic)? Well, I believe that Torvalds is the only OSS programmer who is "super pop" outside the OSS community. Famous in the community. Not the OSS community, the developer one. If you don't know the people in high profile positions that do pretty much the same thing as you, maybe you should become involved in your industry. I know windows based developers. Even some Mac based developers. They know who a lot of the high profile open source developers are even though they don't do any open source development. It's hard when they get interviewed in Wired, and other high visibility magazines.
You people should stop making unfounded affirmations, they're as empty and biased as saying "XYZ is the best person in the world". In all honesty, you are the one being stupid. Your comment about knowledge reeks of bias. If you honestly believed programming is about knowledge, why else would they be famous? Think about it. What part of this is unfounded? It's pretty much a given that the OSS community has more developers than Microsoft. It's also logical to assume since there are several "famous" developers involved in OSS and, well, none in the Microsoft camp that we don't have to worry to much about MS's innovation to outsmart the OSS movement. The day MS innovation can fool a 6th grader, maybe I'll give them some credit.
Now, I dislike MS as much as the next Linux bigot, but just hold your horses here. Do you think Linux just sprang out of the void, like some quantum fluctuation? If anything, Linux is based on older technology than Windows.
Sure, Windows is a POS, but this a totally BS argument.
Do a comparison. How much source code has been added to the Linux kernel, and lets throw in GUIs was well. Do a comparison between Linux and KDE from today to five years ago. Now do the same with Microsoft products.
They're not done changing in responce to other OSes, but they've already started long ago. The only way they can compete with Linux is the zero price, high stability. Right now, the "only" thing MS has on Linux is more commercial apps, a better GUI (in the seemless integration sense), and tech support. The first two, those can be overcome.
Perhaps you meant MS would change in ways other than their technology or product... Yes, I meant more so that their role as a major software vendor would change. What the OSS world really needs is a very solid groupware system, that works with Exchange. Then some miscellaneous services, and the server market would be owned by UNIX/Linux variants.
I'm not saying that OSS developers are not smart, but do you have any data to prove that? Arrogance is not the best way of doing things, you should be aware of that. Try to avoid this kind of affirmation in the future.
I'm mostly speaking of the high-profile, genius developers that the OSS community has. Torvalds, Stallman, Wall, etc. How many star developers that are famous does Microsoft employ?
Ultimately MS will probably kill Oracle, Borland, and a few others. In doing so, they will eliminate thousands of software engineering jobs which enable people to write open source software in their spare time.
I really don't mean to sound trollish, and I'm definitely not flaming, but this is rather stupid. I will give up everything, never touch a computer again, and join the circus if Microsoft can kill off IBM, Oracle, Sun, and the others.
Microsoft is not that big. Microsoft is not all powerful. Microsoft is dependant upon the OEM dealers. Dell, Gateway, Acer, Toshiba, etc. If they had another option for an operating system that was better than Windows (I mean actually better, not "It can do most the stuff, pretty decent") than MS will be history.
If Linux wants to beat MS, that's what they do. Build a unified windowing SDK, that's much better than Xt. Build a unified system SDK, for socket communication and all that. Finish Wine. Then, MS won't be able to stand a chance.
However, I bet we'll see MS come out with a Linux kernel before we'll see a unified Linux architecture adopted as a standard.
This makes me wonder, how many microsoft developers have worked on opensource code?
Probably quite a few, would be my guess. I know of one, forgot his name, that used to love hacking on one open source package (also can't remember) -- I met him years back at an LWE. I think that in order for Linux to really get ready for the desktop we have to get rid of the whole Gnome/KDE battle and come under a unified architecture. Maybe X, maybe not. Gnome has been a pain in my ass everytime I try to use it. I use blackbox (used to use icewm) and love it. Most people switching need the extra gui hints of Gnome and KDE but everyone bitches about upgrading.
Interesting: they aparently are abandoning their whole total-cost-of-ownership argument. Balmer states, "We cannot price at zero" and "We can't beat them [Linux] on price" - thus implying that Linux's price is zero. Quite the opposite from "it costs you more in the long run!"
I think they are just starting to realize they can't beat them. Outsmarting some of the smartest developers on the planet is going to be very difficult. We don't need marketing, we have word of mouth. It's proven itself time and time again that word of mouth is more important than any advertising campaign ever ran.
Microsoft will change their "Strategy" claiming they will win with it each time they do it. In reality, it's showing Microsoft doesn't really know what to do with it. They'll pull BS lines, about IBM and liability, but in reality it means nothing.
I think the last strategy Microsoft will come up with is writing quality software, which is the real reason why most people switch I think. At that point, I hope it's too late for them. They've had their time in the spotlight, they've helped and done their part evolving computers to where they've been. They are a dinosaur now, desperately holding on by using yesterdays flawed technology and attempting to purchase innovation. Not to say I think Microsoft will ever go away. It's going to change drastically though.
Slashdot Mirror
Anyone know if the LASIK halo problem stems from the same reason of the Contact Lens halo problem(over large pupil dialation)?
Yes, this is coming from late 1999 so maybe they have more work. I have abnormally large dialation ranges, and abnormally large contraction ranges as well. My eyes pretty much stay dialated.
I have talked to a few doctors about it, they all said don't do it. Even in normal light, my pupils would expand past the area that Lasik can modify so I would get constant ghosts and halos. If you have a large dialation area, anytime you hit that point you will experience it as well. But, like I said, this may be different now.
I'm waiting for a surgery that corrects my contraction problem, then I can worry about Lasik... sigh
I went in to consult with my regular eye doctor (well, was) who was also a Lasik surgeon. He had great things to say about it if your career/hobbies don't strain your eyes.
I have a pretty rare eye condition that pretty much eliminates me as a candidate for Lasik, but some people still have similar symptoms and have had less than desirable results. If you have sensitive eyes to light for whatever reason, make sure to really talk it over with your eye doctor and get more than one opinion. My problem doesn't permit my eyes to contract normally, and apparently this produces some pretty serious havok amongst Lasik patients. If you get your eyes dialated, or sensitive to light, I've heard don't do it from a few sources. Halos around lights are a common tale, but I've also heard of glare that reflects around your eyes and things along those lines.
Best advice I can give: Talk to more than one doctor/surgeon about it before even considering it. Their informational videos are meant to get you to want to do it, so don't take their advice. Talk to people who have had it done that have similar prescriptions/eye conditions. Those are the people you really care about.
...funding was continued by another Democratic leader called George Bush.
I do not think that word means what you think it means.
I'm really scared of this guys ability to drive. I mean, it's a thumb and your index finger vs. two feet (stick, auto is one) and hands, and all sorts of levers. Then you have other people that are trying to kill you, or your trying to kill them. Equating "learning" how to use a mouse and driving a car is just scary. Maybe this guy doesn't have opposable thumbs.. lets hope not.
Tokyo is one of the most crowded cities in the world. Name an American city that has "coffin hotels" were businessmen stay because they don't want to drive the six hours home every night.
Tokyo is the most crowded city. You know why the businessmen stay in coffin hotels? They didn't realize it was cheaper to take an express trian back home (About $20-$25). Although, maybe they didn't want to spend the $90 for a real business hotel (I've stayed in one, in Shinjuku that was $80 and perfectly reasonable)
The limiting factor isn't living space; drive fifty miles in just about any direction from just about any point in the US and you're in the middle of nowhere. The limiting factor is a sufficient biomass to support humanity.
There are many places in the US where you can't drive 50 miles to get away from the city. Granted, if you drive 50 miles from Tokyo, you will also be in the middle of no where (unless you plan on taking long routes to get out). Most people don't drive distances like that in Japan though, that's why JRL is doing so well. They have more trains than they know what to do with and they all work really well to get you where you need to go. Need to go from Shinjuku to Aikihabara, done -- take a local train. Cheap ($1.50 or so) and fairly efficient. Want to go from Tokyo Station to Kyoto -- take an express or a super express, $25 - $100 and it's taking you the equivalent of 8 hours by car. That's why Japan is perfectly livable: because they designed it (mostly) smart.
(It'd probably be better to rattle off something like a *country*'s popuation, and not a city.)
The whole argument goes down as it's possible for people to be perfectly happy to live in an area that is over 9,000ppkm^2. Forget what it's country or city, it all breaks down the same.
Certainly, if you tired to put everyone in the world into Texas, the most likely result would be that we just shoot each other until we are back down to 30 people per square kilometer
Sorry, it is perfectly reasonable to believe that you have an area with 9,000 people per square kilo without them shooting themselves. Many cities do have areas like this, and the whole of Tokyo is well over that. I'm not saying you do put them into Texas, all I'm saying is that it is perfectly possible and plausible that in a land area the size of Texas, 6 billion people can live perfectly fine.
You're operating on the false notion that it would be a sustainable situation for the whole world to be as crowded as the most densely populated parts are today.
Uhm, I'm trying really hard to understand how you got to that point to think that is what I was saying. Do you realize how small Texas is in relation to the rest of the livable land area in the world? It's tiny. I'm talking small here. 6.2 billion people can live there, with more comfort than they do in Tokyo.
Now, all I'm saying is that the planet is no where near carrying capicity.
he only reason the crowded nation of Japan doesn't have starvation is because there exist OTHER nations that have more than enough land to grow food on, and Japan has the ability to trade with them, and it is a wealthy enough nation that it can easily buy as much as it needs.
Uhm, Japan does make a lot of it's own food. I'll give you a hint, they eat fish over there. Lots of fish. Sea weed too. Even some beef, and other things that grow because only about 1/3 of Japan is livable for humans.. the rest, it goes to agriculture.
No, you can't have the entire world as densely populated as Japan is - as long as people still need to eat food grown on farms.
The world is as densely populated as Japan is, however Tokyo is the most densly populated city in the world. Understand the difference between Country and City? It's a rather large one...
Tokyo's 2,187 km^2 is nowhere near enough to support those 26 million people. Just because it is nice to live there doesn't mean it would continue to be if they were cut off from the food imports (even if we ignore ocean products), energy in its various forms, raw materials and other niceties of life.
Did I say it is enough to support them? No. Don't believe I did, purely talking about carrying capacity.
My example is not flawed. At all, feel free to point out one flaw if 6.2 billion people lived in a land area the size of Texas. I'd like to hear it. Aside from privacy/size constraints, it works. It's less dense than Tokyo. So.. let's hear why it's flawed.
My point was that someone just said that we were near carrying capacity. It's utter rubbish to think we're anywhere near that. Simple math shows how silly that idea is.
You can throw more money each year at telling people to turn down the heating, but each year the human population increases closer to (or perhaps beyond) the carrying capacity of the planet. This is the real problem.
Sorry, I'm in a foul mood but shove this up your ass. We are no where near the capacity for the planet. Here's something to prove my statement:
Land area of Texas: 678,054 km^2
Land area of Tokyo: 2,187 km^2
Population of Tokyo: ~26 million
Population of World: ~6.2 billion
Population density of Tokyo: 11,888 people per KM^2
Population density if the world lived in Texas: 9,143 people per KM^2
That's 2,000 people less per KM^2, and Tokyo is a very livable area.
What's orange and yellow and looks good on hippies?
Fire
And you're stating here that the only thing that keeps Linux from being widespread is that developers have to deal with two windowing architectures? Give me a break! If everyone dropped KDE tomorrow, the interface would suck for common users (in comparison to a more user-friendly interface like Apple or Windows). If everyone dropped Gnome tomorrow, the interface would suck for common users.
No, I'm not talking purely about windowing architectures. I'm talking about an entire system-wide unified architecture. If you look at OSX you have Cocao and other standard development tools. You can choose your look, functionality, and all that. However, it's a unified development architecture. We already have some good UI designers in the OSS community, the problem is not KDE vs. Gnome -- it's what you said: Not geared towards consumers.
Having a unified architecture would allow products to be developed entirely consistent because you wouldn't have one product using libmozilla while another is using libkonqueror (or whatever KDE uses). Every consumer-level operating system has a unified architecture. Linux doesn't.
I also think that if we do switch to a unified architecture, KDE would be a better choice as the basis for it. Gnome has some great features, but those can be merged into KDE just as well.
Microsoft is that big. They have $18 billion in the bank. They can buy their customers. They can buy top programmers. They influence the guys in suits. They're still the monopoly.
I really would love to see Microsoft try to buy IBM. That would be funny. Or even Oracle for that matter. Microsoft could buy Oracle, but soon as they did it if there were any fluctuations in the stock market or anything it would crush MS. They aren't that freaking big. Yeah, they have a lot of cash reserves, but many many many more companies have higher valuation than Microsoft.
Every competitor to Microsoft has withered on the vine, poisoned by its own hubris. Lotus, Borland, Novell, Wordperfect, Corel--they all made strategic blunders, alienated their users, gave MS the opening it needed to eat their lunch. Oracle is heading that way. A few more releases of SQL Server, and maybe bundling the SQL Server engine in the NT operating system, and Oracle will dwindle into insignificance.
You picked stupid companies. I'm sorry, but it's true. These companies seemed to have no insight what so ever. Delphi? What the hell were they thinking? Corel hasn't been a competitor of MS in years and years and years. Thinking that Oracle is going to go under to SQL Server is bunk though. If SQL Server becomes the standard enterprise DB solution, I'm selling snocones in the park. You need security, and as MS said, they aren't engineered for security. Any enterprise that utilizes an operating system and enterprise solution from a company deserves what they get.
Linux has a crack at being an enterprise operating system; I just hope it can gather enough momentum before it's too late.
I don't think Linux should be an enterprise operating system. BSD I think is a better choice, hell, even Darwin is. Linux is a great workstation operating system. It's halfway between an Microsoft box and a real server. It's great just for that.
Anders Hejlsberg (of Turbo Pascal and Delphi fame).
The chief architect of Delphi? The Borland compiler that had more problems than anything else. I knew several people inside of Borland that bashed the hell out of Delphi. Justifiably so, in my opinion, when Pascal eventually evolved into it it was horrible. Absolutely horrible.
TP was pretty good though.
Herb Sutter works at Microsoft? My heart just sunk a few notches. I kind of feel stupid not knowing that he works there.
Bobby Schmidt I don't think is a really "star" developer. He's high profile in the same way the Perens is.
Anders Hejlsberg was the chief architect of one of the worst languages Borland has ever signed on. Delphi wasn't even a good implementation. I knew people who worked at Borland who felt that way too. High up people. For the first 3-4 years that Delphi was around, it sucked ass. That isn't much to be proud of.
ps: I'm not sure I agree with you that MS is a dinosaur; I at least give it the status of an alligator -- the beasties date from prehistory, but have survived thousands of years with their primitive design and even today are a force to be reckoned with - effective, if brutal. :)
Probably betteer, but then again, alligators are only brutal and deadly in their own element. Makes ya think.
Excellent comment by the way, very well written.
You really miss the problem. People don't give a damn about whether there is a Gnome, KDE, or unified desktop architecture. The problem is ease-of-use and consistent interface. There isn't a Linux distribution that accomplishes it. Unifying Gnome and KDE would only accomplish a less diverse failure of a user interface. You hand a unified gnome/KDE product to a user, and you get an interface which a user cannot setup and configure themselves without poring through cryptic, spotty documentation.
:)
Unified Architecture == Consistent Interface
Ease-of-Use == Decent design, basic window managers, with applications that utilize the consistent interface functionality of above.
I don't miss the problem, I just don't think you understood what I meant by coming under a unified architecture. I was pretty much speaking that for Linux to really succeed on the desktop, it has to be as seemless as the Windows desktop, probably more so. Think Apple
Forgot one more thing:
And well, about the "Microsoft is stupid" affirmation: I believe it's so plain obvious that you are an ignorant zealot, that I don't need to write any comments about it.
Affirmation does not mean what you are using it as. If I said, "Microsoft is stupid" than it would be a statement, not an affirmation. If I said, "It's a fact microsoft is stupid." it would be an assertion and an affirmation. If you clarified and asked if that is what I said, and I said yes, then I would be affirming Microsoft is stupid.
However, saying Microsoft lacks innovation abilities and employees less programmers with impressive reputations than the OSS world has is not an affirmation. At all. In no sense of the word. Everyone knows that Microsoft is poor at innovation. They have yet to introduce a new concept into the world. Ever.
Some other words that go along that you could definitely stand to learn:
High-Profile
zealot - I am not fanatical for anything, maybe you missed that. If I was a zealot, I wouldn't also criticize Linux.
adjective from: Again, the whole "high-profile" part is an relative adjective that you are assigning to them, just because they are famous and you're one of their followers.
This is incorrect because I said they were high-profile developers, which is a noun. If I said his personality is high-profile or his skill is high-profile it would be an adjective. I never said either. You admit they are famous, but not high-profile? Again, please review a dictionary before speaking next time.
And I'm not a Stallman follower, I think he's a bloody loon.
But most of them aren't famous as programmers, but as activists and revolutionaries. Everyone talks about how Linus was a revolutionary when he released his kernel as GPL code and opened the development process to everyone, but you won't see any mainstream magazine talking about his programming skills ("look, he planned and documented every single detail before implementing, wow, what a well designed structure he wrote in foo.c").
Sure, tell that to Dr. Knuth or Larry Wall. I'm sure they will really think you are dead right. Name one developer who doesn't know who Knuth is and I'll show you one developer who is in the wrong profession.
* I consider as "high profile" those who plan and document everything before they implement. You have be be a good engineer to be "high profile" programmer, just knowing C/C++ And Assembly won't make you "high profile".
Uhm, they are high profile because they are well known for their skills? Other wise they are highly skilled. Maybe you need a dictionary too.
Well, you don't have to be a genius to know that what you just said was plain stupid and baseless. If you believe that programming is all about giving interviews to magazines, I'm sorry to tell you that you are confusing "programming" with something else. Is it just me or wasn't "high-profile" programming about good software engineering? I mean, I didn't knew that it was about being "pop".
Yep, you do need a dictionary and maybe understand other portions of writing and debate. Could you please go and attempt to understand that high-profile means that you are well known. Typically it involves your skill at programming and that is why you are well known. High profile is not the perfect developer sitting at home in a dark room never releasing anything they have written to the outside world. It is just you that's confused about this, lets stick to terminology we have all agreed on. When you change definitions of such things as basic as "high profile" you make debate very pointless.
Good back peddle to attempt to change your argument though. "Oh no, I don't have a leg to stand on in the debate of high profile OSS developers vs. high profile proprietary developers so I'm going to change what high profile means and hope he doesn't notice."
Good strategy, in fact, that is very similar to Microsoft innovation. Lets take what ever one else does, and make it our own?
Great job proving my point, I applaud you. Either you are genius and were merely acting as devil's advocate in order to prove what I was saying or you are incredibly poor at debate. Either way, thanks.
Programming is about knowledge , it is definitely not about having hundreds of followers and giving interviews to magazines and newspapers. You can be a good programmer, and at the same time, a famous one, but you don't need to be famous so you can have good programming skills.
The famous open source developers didn't get famous because of their looks.
And, about the "famous" part: Famous to who? To the Open Source "community" (sic)? Well, I believe that Torvalds is the only OSS programmer who is "super pop" outside the OSS community.
Famous in the community. Not the OSS community, the developer one. If you don't know the people in high profile positions that do pretty much the same thing as you, maybe you should become involved in your industry. I know windows based developers. Even some Mac based developers. They know who a lot of the high profile open source developers are even though they don't do any open source development. It's hard when they get interviewed in Wired, and other high visibility magazines.
You people should stop making unfounded affirmations, they're as empty and biased as saying "XYZ is the best person in the world".
In all honesty, you are the one being stupid. Your comment about knowledge reeks of bias. If you honestly believed programming is about knowledge, why else would they be famous? Think about it. What part of this is unfounded? It's pretty much a given that the OSS community has more developers than Microsoft. It's also logical to assume since there are several "famous" developers involved in OSS and, well, none in the Microsoft camp that we don't have to worry to much about MS's innovation to outsmart the OSS movement. The day MS innovation can fool a 6th grader, maybe I'll give them some credit.
Now, I dislike MS as much as the next Linux bigot, but just hold your horses here. Do you think Linux just sprang out of the void, like some quantum fluctuation? If anything, Linux is based on older technology than Windows.
Sure, Windows is a POS, but this a totally BS argument.
Do a comparison. How much source code has been added to the Linux kernel, and lets throw in GUIs was well. Do a comparison between Linux and KDE from today to five years ago. Now do the same with Microsoft products.
Find out who is the dinosaur.
They're not done changing in responce to other
OSes, but they've already started long ago.
The only way they can compete with Linux is the zero price, high stability. Right now, the "only" thing MS has on Linux is more commercial apps, a better GUI (in the seemless integration sense), and tech support. The first two, those can be overcome.
Perhaps you meant MS would change in ways other
than their technology or product...
Yes, I meant more so that their role as a major software vendor would change. What the OSS world really needs is a very solid groupware system, that works with Exchange. Then some miscellaneous services, and the server market would be owned by UNIX/Linux variants.
I'm not saying that OSS developers are not smart, but do you have any data to prove that? Arrogance is not the best way of doing things, you should be aware of that. Try to avoid this kind of affirmation in the future.
I'm mostly speaking of the high-profile, genius developers that the OSS community has. Torvalds, Stallman, Wall, etc. How many star developers that are famous does Microsoft employ?
That's my point right there.
Ultimately MS will probably kill Oracle, Borland, and a few others. In doing
so, they will eliminate thousands of software engineering jobs which enable
people to write open source software in their spare time.
I really don't mean to sound trollish, and I'm definitely not flaming, but this is rather stupid. I will give up everything, never touch a computer again, and join the circus if Microsoft can kill off IBM, Oracle, Sun, and the others.
Microsoft is not that big. Microsoft is not all powerful. Microsoft is dependant upon the OEM dealers. Dell, Gateway, Acer, Toshiba, etc. If they had another option for an operating system that was better than Windows (I mean actually better, not "It can do most the stuff, pretty decent") than MS will be history.
If Linux wants to beat MS, that's what they do. Build a unified windowing SDK, that's much better than Xt. Build a unified system SDK, for socket communication and all that. Finish Wine. Then, MS won't be able to stand a chance.
However, I bet we'll see MS come out with a Linux kernel before we'll see a unified Linux architecture adopted as a standard.
This makes me wonder, how many microsoft developers have worked on opensource code?
Probably quite a few, would be my guess. I know of one, forgot his name, that used to love hacking on one open source package (also can't remember) -- I met him years back at an LWE. I think that in order for Linux to really get ready for the desktop we have to get rid of the whole Gnome/KDE battle and come under a unified architecture. Maybe X, maybe not. Gnome has been a pain in my ass everytime I try to use it. I use blackbox (used to use icewm) and love it. Most people switching need the extra gui hints of Gnome and KDE but everyone bitches about upgrading.
Interesting: they aparently are abandoning their whole total-cost-of-ownership argument. Balmer states, "We cannot price at zero" and "We can't beat them [Linux] on price" - thus implying that Linux's price is zero. Quite the opposite from "it costs you more in the long run!"
I think they are just starting to realize they can't beat them. Outsmarting some of the smartest developers on the planet is going to be very difficult. We don't need marketing, we have word of mouth. It's proven itself time and time again that word of mouth is more important than any advertising campaign ever ran.
Microsoft will change their "Strategy" claiming they will win with it each time they do it. In reality, it's showing Microsoft doesn't really know what to do with it. They'll pull BS lines, about IBM and liability, but in reality it means nothing.
I think the last strategy Microsoft will come up with is writing quality software, which is the real reason why most people switch I think. At that point, I hope it's too late for them. They've had their time in the spotlight, they've helped and done their part evolving computers to where they've been. They are a dinosaur now, desperately holding on by using yesterdays flawed technology and attempting to purchase innovation. Not to say I think Microsoft will ever go away. It's going to change drastically though.