They missed one thing though. The iPod Mini is pretty, this one looks like someone drop a clump of dough, and stuck a display and some buttons in it. But I guess some people like the look of dough!
Please correct me if I'm wrong, but as I understand the GPL it should be possible to do this:
One person pays for the Windows version and downloads the code for it, which he is entitled to according to the GPL. This is published, and we then have a fork. Any new code from the public GPL code is included in the forked code. Normally there shouldn't be any code changed only for the Windows version so we only need the Windows source once. Of course, unless the Windows source contains code that is not under the GPL.
Would this work?
This whole thing is a shame, since an important thing for more wide-spread desktop Linux usage is that you can use the same software (preferably free) as you're used to using in Windows. But that's another discussion!
Fellow Slashdotters, please learn this: the fact that something doesn't suit you doesn't mean it's crap. Remember, you are not the customer. There's a market for advanced do-it-all remotes. Just to name an example, Philips made the Pronto which is a touch-screen remote. It cost a few hundred dollars, a friend of mine's dad has one. He also recently spent $5000 or more upgrading his hifi set. Philips decided there's a market for even more up-scale remotes, so they've introduced a Pronto with a color display, for someting like $1200 if my memory serves me right.
This device from Sony does a whole lot of things better than previous offerings on the market (more powerful, more legible screen, tactile feedback LCD display, and hard buttons, to name a few). People spend tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars on home cinema sets. They can afford to spend $700 on one of these.
Aside from being really nice for the intended customers, it has a high geek coolnes factor. Stop complaining, start drooling!
I really fail to see what value is added with having a colour screen and video playback. I don't think many people have any need for video playback they'd be using a portable device.
While the screen might not be that useful, have a look at this use case:
Billy has 200GB of movies. Steve is having friends over to watch some movies, and knows Steve has loads of 'em, so he invites him over too. A lot of Billy's movies are in DivX, or some other format Steve's DVD player can't handle. So he brings his portable video player, plugs it in to Steve's TV. And the evening is a success!
(I'm just a student so far, but use cases should have a cheesy ending, right?)
1) This is not the unix way of doing things. Small individual apps that can be combined in powerful ways.
ImageMagick is great. So is The Gimp. I'd say ImageMagick is more the unix way of doing things, but there is still definitely a place for The Gimp.
Mozilla should break into separate apps to handle separate tasks.
That soundslike agreat idea! I seem to remember reading that the other parts (chat) were being made into separate apps as well, but a quick googling showed nothing.
spamd is a new approach to blocking spam. Its called greylisting. It rejects all email with a temporary failure notice in the hopes that the large volume spam senders don't have the resources to wait 30mins and send the same email again
While it's an interesting idea, it wouldn't work. At least not in a university environment (I work at one) and probably not in most other places either. One of the benefits of email is that it is delivered very quickly. If an email takes 60 seconds to come through, that's slow. People want to be able to talk on the phone, say "I'm sending you that document" and get confirmation that it arrived while they're waiting.
Adding a 30 minute time penalty on email would mean taking a big step backwards.
9/10ths of the channels on any of the reputable networks are dedicated to illegally distributing mp3z, moviez, warez or pr0n
To quote a.sig here on Slashdot, "for the millionth time, stop exaggerating!" It's not that bad. Sure, there may be a lot of trading channels, but there are also a whole lot of channels where people come to chat.
Do we really need all this HIG crap?!? My UI was "usable", at least for me, before all of this HIG things were implemented.
Yes. Or rather, each and every one of us might not be in dear need of it, but if we want Linux and free software to grow into the mainstream, then we sorely need human interface guidelines and more of the kind. Open source programmers write software to scratch their personal itch--that itch most often doesn't include creating user interfaces that follow good user interface practices, as long as they understand how it works things are fine. Then it's good to have guidelines to follow, so that they easily can make it easier for other people to use their software. Knowing when to do this or that isn't always easy, but it gets easier when you can quickly look into guidelines and find the answer.
It's great to see betas leaked. While we in the free software world of course shouldn't just follow in Microsofts path, we should keep a close eye on them. Hopefully, by the time Longhorn is released we will have most if not all improvements implemented. In this release, I don't see much to copy. Actually, it was more of Microsoft playing catch-up with free software (Firefox).
Of course the UI has changed a bit, but other than new colours there didn't seem to be much enhancements. I guess I'll go back to study the screen shots more carefully. I'd better hurry before the rest of you make Flexbeta grind to a halt completely--it's already slow!
Yes, it is just a very small hard drive. Have a look at this picture.
As for the sturdiness, I can say that I've had no problems with mine for the few years I've had it. I've taken a few thousand pictures with it, but I haven't dropped the camera when it was reading or writing to it. However, according to what I've read they seem to be good in this aspect. It isn't solid state, so it's not as rugged as that, but you don't have to worry too much about it in normal conditions.
I think it's the fact that the more popular bloggers put their ideas across in a clearer way than the less know bloggers..
Also, it's a matter of gathering the interesting ideas. There are a lot of things being said - if someone can put together the most interesting things that's worth a lot. What I looked for in the Wired article (but never came to) was a mention of whether the blogs that they claimed were "plagiarized" came up with the interesting ideas repeatedly, or if they were one-offs. If so, you can't expect people to link to them, but it's wise to link to the best aggregators.
Please note that this has more or less already been done. Audi's A2 model only has a small opening where you can fill up washer fluids and oil, but that's it. You won't get near the engine. However, this model hasn't been introduced in the US. Have a look at how it looks at this Swedish Audi site.
My printer works. If Aunt Tillie wants hers to work, she can pay me to set it up for her, or she can pay me to write software that makes it easier.
Why the hell is it CUPS's (or anyone else's) responsiblity to do this? If IBM and Red Hat are going to profit from easy printer sharing, let them write good config utilities. The CUPS team got the reward they were after. Their printers work.
To a certain extent, I agree. It's definitely not the authors' responsibility. However, a lot of people would like to see free software used more, also by non-technical users. If you don't care about this, fine. There's no point in making your software user-friendly so long as you know how it works. But if you're interested in getting more people, including non-technical users, to use your software, then you have an interest in making it user friendly. And I believe a lot of free software authors do want their software to be more widely used.
Umm, isn't legislating against 'monopolies' a breach of rights (to free trade for instance)? Businesses should be able to do what they want, how the hell do you think the US got to be the richest country in the world? It wasn't just because of a war that happened 50 years ago.
For the free market to work, there may be no monopolies. Many believe the government is the anti-thesis to the market, which is wrong. They need each other. A large reason why the US got to be the richest country in the world is because they are liberal when it comes to companies - until they go too far, which is when the very strict anti-trust laws come in. The idea is that these laws have so hard punishments that the companies self-regulate, and back down when they are too close to being a monopoly.
What I'd like to see is a nice, standardized binary distribution method, with good OS integration. RPM is good, but requires opening it in a program. What I'd like to see is a way to, by simply double-clicking on the RPM, install it to the directory of my choice (e.g. have it bring up an installer similar to the ones commonly used in Windows).
How about using Debian packages? They work really well. But they're not executables, you say. Okay, so how about making extensions to the desktop environment so that when you double-click on a.deb it will send it to a graphical version of apt/dpkg. In fact, with a graphical front-end to i e dselect you've made software installation even easier than how it's traditionally done on Windows - you don't even have to download, save the file and remember where you saved it. All you have to do is click the "Install software" icon, choose what you want, and then it will automagically be downloaded and installed.
Okay, so while the Debian archive is huge, it doesn't have every piece of software. Then allow the user to enter a url, or maybe to download a custom deb package from a homepage, which the author has packaged. No, not all authors want to package software specifically for Debian systems*, but if they want Normal Everyday People to be able to install their software easily, perhaps they would be okay with that.
* However, in the future it would be good to not have it specific to Debian, for example via filesystem enhancements (I saw something here about virtual paths).
I hope you don't see me as a Debian zeelot, I just think this is currently the best way to do it. If mainstream Linux adoption is done via Red Hat or whatever free alternative, that's fine. Only that I wouldn't be using it...
"Microsoft has always played an interesting game when it comes to standards," he said. "They're going to support them as necessary to get technology broadly adopted. But at the same time, they're an (intellectual property) company. That's the case with any big business."
I would have agreed, if after broadly adopted he would have said "they stop playing according to the standard and thereby break compatibility with other software". If you're an analyst on Microsoft, you should know what embrace and extend is, and I think he should have mentioned it here. That is, unless he's partial to Microsoft, which the company claims it isn't.
Sometimes I wonder who makes these illogical decisions. Certainly not people who have a clue about what they are doing , thats for sure. Why are there not more savvy people in higer places?
You don't think Verisign knows which palms to grease?
Once, when I was out learning to drive, the detector missed me. And it was a Sunday evening out on a rather small road, with no other traffic. After a few minutes I had to start backing the car to hit the detector. It felt rather strange, but eventually I hit it and the lights turned green.
You'd think that schools would care about cost, security, etc. But they don't.
I would rather say that the ones in charge are not aware of these rather intricate issues that you put forth. As techs we might not think about it when we get worked up about our issues, but the most important aspect in school is what education the pupils get. Ensuring the education is good should be the main interest of the people in charge of schools. Of course they should make sure all other aspects are sane and good as well, but to expect that they are aware of these techni-social issues is a bit over the top, I think. Especially since they listen to their employees, and if their techs (as you say) will give a distorted view of reality, it's harder for the people in charge to get a good view.
In short, it's not that they care, it's that they don't know. And from their point of view, hey, it isn't all that easy. Computer issues aren't prio one.
Remember folks... the only reason people use Google is because it's not bastardized with corporate greed
Actually, I don't think most people are that idealistic. The reason most people, including myself, use Google is simply because it's the best search engine. Now for the reason why we like Google so much, I'm sure it has a great deal to do with the fact that they aren't greedy, among other things. Their stance on censorship of search results also comes to mind.
Well, I hope everyone understands that Microsoft probabably hasn't misunderstood anything. Not as much as it might seem. As has been stated before, those guys aren't dumb. They probably understand very well why open source works so well. But that isn't something they're telling openly. What they say is what they believe their customers will believe, what arguments will hurt the open source movement. It's all about spreading fear, uncertainty and doubt. Remember how it went when you were 13? That's this.
"Participation in and release of the report was not sanctioned by @Stake," the security and consulting company said. "The values and opinions of the report are not in line with @Stake's views."
What?! What exactly wasn't true about what was said?
No no, they didn't say it wasn't true. You're under the presupposition that their views are grounded in truth. Apparently it isn't. They didn't want one of their employees to come there and say the pesky truth.
Slashdot Mirror
They missed one thing though. The iPod Mini is pretty, this one looks like someone drop a clump of dough, and stuck a display and some buttons in it. But I guess some people like the look of dough!
Please correct me if I'm wrong, but as I understand the GPL it should be possible to do this:
One person pays for the Windows version and downloads the code for it, which he is entitled to according to the GPL. This is published, and we then have a fork. Any new code from the public GPL code is included in the forked code. Normally there shouldn't be any code changed only for the Windows version so we only need the Windows source once. Of course, unless the Windows source contains code that is not under the GPL.
Would this work?
This whole thing is a shame, since an important thing for more wide-spread desktop Linux usage is that you can use the same software (preferably free) as you're used to using in Windows. But that's another discussion!
Fellow Slashdotters, please learn this: the fact that something doesn't suit you doesn't mean it's crap. Remember, you are not the customer. There's a market for advanced do-it-all remotes. Just to name an example, Philips made the Pronto which is a touch-screen remote. It cost a few hundred dollars, a friend of mine's dad has one. He also recently spent $5000 or more upgrading his hifi set. Philips decided there's a market for even more up-scale remotes, so they've introduced a Pronto with a color display, for someting like $1200 if my memory serves me right.
This device from Sony does a whole lot of things better than previous offerings on the market (more powerful, more legible screen, tactile feedback LCD display, and hard buttons, to name a few). People spend tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars on home cinema sets. They can afford to spend $700 on one of these.
Aside from being really nice for the intended customers, it has a high geek coolnes factor. Stop complaining, start drooling!
I really fail to see what value is added with having a colour screen and video playback. I don't think many people have any need for video playback they'd be using a portable device.
While the screen might not be that useful, have a look at this use case:
Billy has 200GB of movies. Steve is having friends over to watch some movies, and knows Steve has loads of 'em, so he invites him over too. A lot of Billy's movies are in DivX, or some other format Steve's DVD player can't handle. So he brings his portable video player, plugs it in to Steve's TV. And the evening is a success!
(I'm just a student so far, but use cases should have a cheesy ending, right?)
1) This is not the unix way of doing things. Small individual apps that can be combined in powerful ways.
ImageMagick is great. So is The Gimp. I'd say ImageMagick is more the unix way of doing things, but there is still definitely a place for The Gimp.
Mozilla should break into separate apps to handle separate tasks.
That sounds like a great idea! I seem to remember reading that the other parts (chat) were being made into separate apps as well, but a quick googling showed nothing.
spamd is a new approach to blocking spam. Its called greylisting. It rejects all email with a temporary failure notice in the hopes that the large volume spam senders don't have the resources to wait 30mins and send the same email again
While it's an interesting idea, it wouldn't work. At least not in a university environment (I work at one) and probably not in most other places either. One of the benefits of email is that it is delivered very quickly. If an email takes 60 seconds to come through, that's slow. People want to be able to talk on the phone, say "I'm sending you that document" and get confirmation that it arrived while they're waiting.
Adding a 30 minute time penalty on email would mean taking a big step backwards.
9/10ths of the channels on any of the reputable networks are dedicated to illegally distributing mp3z, moviez, warez or pr0n
.sig here on Slashdot, "for the millionth time, stop exaggerating!" It's not that bad. Sure, there may be a lot of trading channels, but there are also a whole lot of channels where people come to chat.
To quote a
Do we really need all this HIG crap?!? My UI was "usable", at least for me, before all of this HIG things were implemented.
Yes. Or rather, each and every one of us might not be in dear need of it, but if we want Linux and free software to grow into the mainstream, then we sorely need human interface guidelines and more of the kind. Open source programmers write software to scratch their personal itch--that itch most often doesn't include creating user interfaces that follow good user interface practices, as long as they understand how it works things are fine. Then it's good to have guidelines to follow, so that they easily can make it easier for other people to use their software. Knowing when to do this or that isn't always easy, but it gets easier when you can quickly look into guidelines and find the answer.
It's great to see betas leaked. While we in the free software world of course shouldn't just follow in Microsofts path, we should keep a close eye on them. Hopefully, by the time Longhorn is released we will have most if not all improvements implemented. In this release, I don't see much to copy. Actually, it was more of Microsoft playing catch-up with free software (Firefox).
Of course the UI has changed a bit, but other than new colours there didn't seem to be much enhancements. I guess I'll go back to study the screen shots more carefully. I'd better hurry before the rest of you make Flexbeta grind to a halt completely--it's already slow!
Yes, it is just a very small hard drive. Have a look at this picture.
As for the sturdiness, I can say that I've had no problems with mine for the few years I've had it. I've taken a few thousand pictures with it, but I haven't dropped the camera when it was reading or writing to it. However, according to what I've read they seem to be good in this aspect. It isn't solid state, so it's not as rugged as that, but you don't have to worry too much about it in normal conditions.
Well, here we have some people people who won't have any trouble remembering their ip addresses when we start using ipv6.
I think it's the fact that the more popular bloggers put their ideas across in a clearer way than the less know bloggers..
Also, it's a matter of gathering the interesting ideas. There are a lot of things being said - if someone can put together the most interesting things that's worth a lot. What I looked for in the Wired article (but never came to) was a mention of whether the blogs that they claimed were "plagiarized" came up with the interesting ideas repeatedly, or if they were one-offs. If so, you can't expect people to link to them, but it's wise to link to the best aggregators.
True, it was massive and you'd look a dick wearing it, but technologically fantastic.
...
Say, that reminds me of something I saw someone wearing on the street the other day
Please note that this has more or less already been done. Audi's A2 model only has a small opening where you can fill up washer fluids and oil, but that's it. You won't get near the engine. However, this model hasn't been introduced in the US. Have a look at how it looks at this Swedish Audi site.
My printer works. If Aunt Tillie wants hers to work, she can pay me to set it up for her, or she can pay me to write software that makes it easier.
Why the hell is it CUPS's (or anyone else's) responsiblity to do this? If IBM and Red Hat are going to profit from easy printer sharing, let them write good config utilities. The CUPS team got the reward they were after. Their printers work.
To a certain extent, I agree. It's definitely not the authors' responsibility. However, a lot of people would like to see free software used more, also by non-technical users. If you don't care about this, fine. There's no point in making your software user-friendly so long as you know how it works. But if you're interested in getting more people, including non-technical users, to use your software, then you have an interest in making it user friendly. And I believe a lot of free software authors do want their software to be more widely used.
Umm, isn't legislating against 'monopolies' a breach of rights (to free trade for instance)? Businesses should be able to do what they want, how the hell do you think the US got to be the richest country in the world? It wasn't just because of a war that happened 50 years ago.
For the free market to work, there may be no monopolies. Many believe the government is the anti-thesis to the market, which is wrong. They need each other. A large reason why the US got to be the richest country in the world is because they are liberal when it comes to companies - until they go too far, which is when the very strict anti-trust laws come in. The idea is that these laws have so hard punishments that the companies self-regulate, and back down when they are too close to being a monopoly.
What I'd like to see is a nice, standardized binary distribution method, with good OS integration. RPM is good, but requires opening it in a program. What I'd like to see is a way to, by simply double-clicking on the RPM, install it to the directory of my choice (e.g. have it bring up an installer similar to the ones commonly used in Windows).
.deb it will send it to a graphical version of apt/dpkg. In fact, with a graphical front-end to i e dselect you've made software installation even easier than how it's traditionally done on Windows - you don't even have to download, save the file and remember where you saved it. All you have to do is click the "Install software" icon, choose what you want, and then it will automagically be downloaded and installed.
...
How about using Debian packages? They work really well. But they're not executables, you say. Okay, so how about making extensions to the desktop environment so that when you double-click on a
Okay, so while the Debian archive is huge, it doesn't have every piece of software. Then allow the user to enter a url, or maybe to download a custom deb package from a homepage, which the author has packaged. No, not all authors want to package software specifically for Debian systems*, but if they want Normal Everyday People to be able to install their software easily, perhaps they would be okay with that.
* However, in the future it would be good to not have it specific to Debian, for example via filesystem enhancements (I saw something here about virtual paths).
I hope you don't see me as a Debian zeelot, I just think this is currently the best way to do it. If mainstream Linux adoption is done via Red Hat or whatever free alternative, that's fine. Only that I wouldn't be using it
"Microsoft has always played an interesting game when it comes to standards," he said. "They're going to support them as necessary to get technology broadly adopted. But at the same time, they're an (intellectual property) company. That's the case with any big business."
I would have agreed, if after broadly adopted he would have said "they stop playing according to the standard and thereby break compatibility with other software". If you're an analyst on Microsoft, you should know what embrace and extend is, and I think he should have mentioned it here. That is, unless he's partial to Microsoft, which the company claims it isn't.
Sometimes I wonder who makes these illogical decisions. Certainly not people who have a clue about what they are doing , thats for sure. Why are there not more savvy people in higer places?
You don't think Verisign knows which palms to grease?
Hey CowboyNeal, you didn't get first post on that story. Sorry.
Once, when I was out learning to drive, the detector missed me. And it was a Sunday evening out on a rather small road, with no other traffic. After a few minutes I had to start backing the car to hit the detector. It felt rather strange, but eventually I hit it and the lights turned green.
You'd think that schools would care about cost, security, etc. But they don't.
I would rather say that the ones in charge are not aware of these rather intricate issues that you put forth. As techs we might not think about it when we get worked up about our issues, but the most important aspect in school is what education the pupils get. Ensuring the education is good should be the main interest of the people in charge of schools. Of course they should make sure all other aspects are sane and good as well, but to expect that they are aware of these techni-social issues is a bit over the top, I think. Especially since they listen to their employees, and if their techs (as you say) will give a distorted view of reality, it's harder for the people in charge to get a good view.
In short, it's not that they care, it's that they don't know. And from their point of view, hey, it isn't all that easy. Computer issues aren't prio one.
Remember folks... the only reason people use Google is because it's not bastardized with corporate greed
Actually, I don't think most people are that idealistic. The reason most people, including myself, use Google is simply because it's the best search engine. Now for the reason why we like Google so much, I'm sure it has a great deal to do with the fact that they aren't greedy, among other things. Their stance on censorship of search results also comes to mind.
Well, I hope everyone understands that Microsoft probabably hasn't misunderstood anything. Not as much as it might seem. As has been stated before, those guys aren't dumb. They probably understand very well why open source works so well. But that isn't something they're telling openly. What they say is what they believe their customers will believe, what arguments will hurt the open source movement. It's all about spreading fear, uncertainty and doubt. Remember how it went when you were 13? That's this.