And the reason why those two similar scenarios use different software and procedures is that X does not allow for efficient sharing of windows/desktops. Nor does it have NX-like strategies for efficient use over Internet links. Mac and Windows already accommodated these features years ago, while X doesn't give a damn if you want to share an app window while you're in conference... you are out of luck and must resort to bitmap-scraping (VNC) and suffer horrendous performance.
Hey you BUTU, did you ever ask yourself why a *nix user has to go to a CLI to start graphical apps? Or why those remote apps are slower than their Mac and Windows counterparts? Why those users can share multiple copies of their windows while you can't do the same without something like VNC (which is primitive and slow)?
A desktop system needs something more robust, with internal protocols that anticipate the core use cases for a consumer / end user. X is and always was for use by technical staff on managed workstations. It 'beaks' easily, by which I mean that configurations are very fragile and often result in non-working displays because something is a little-bit off. The Unix model of vi-editable ASCII config file (with N possible layouts) creates some of the fragility for X, when something like XML is more appropriate. Further, a subsystem like X should have an API not only for changing res and other params during display operation, but also for SAVING those settings: A big problem with X is that is never managed its own da^# config files.
X is also missing some modern features that would allow easy sharing of apps and desktops *efficiently* over the Internet. I'm tired of seeing add-ons line NX popping into slow bitmap-tossing (VNC) mode whenever more than one instance of a window is involved. X's architecture prevents some very important end-user needs from being effectively fulfilled. Windows and Mac currently have X beaten to a pulp and please don't go into how X inventing remote displays makes it superior because its inferior and insular. If the X part of the ecosystem were healthy someone prominent would have already found a way to make NX functionality standard and given people a way to graphically start remote apps too.
Diesel contains more energy per gallon than gasoline, but I read a report of the lifecycle CO2 emissions of of the two fuels and diesel comes out 20% lower.
Diesel contains more energy per gallon than gasoline, but I read a report of the lifecycle CO2 emissions of of the two fuels and diesel comes out 20% lower.
Punish too little or too much too often or too selectively, and the public will slowly lose its respect for those upholding the law, and even for the law itself.
Would you mind commenting on why, over 9 years at several different Comcast-served residences, using DHCP in my routers to get and forward DNS server numbers to my systems has resulted in extremely slow lookups? I'm talking easily 5+ seconds per lookup with some complex web pages taking more than a minute to load.
I never had this problem with Verizon or Charter. The only solution for getting decent DNS performance on Comcast has been to use non-Comcast servers.
Not it's not a lie. Look at Linux Mint which prides itself on being a better Ubuntu. The number of DEs they actively support is sickening.
Ubuntu itself supports 3, but 2 was already way too much for them (consider how awful Kubuntu is compared to KDE on other distros). And the fact that apps will run under various DEs is not the point... people keep encountering the different DEs and getting confused by the windowing and docking systems, plus they end up running code from both DEs if they're not careful and wind up with a slow machine. Expecting the apps to run with different DEs also stalls vertical integration, making the apps seem broken in lots of small ways or indifferent to users' desire for conveniences.
Not that it matters so much, when the OS is starved for apps to begin with.
That's fine for a 4 year old who is hand-fed apps
on
Desktop Linux Is Dead
·
· Score: 1
and I suppose the proverbial grandma is much the same.
Those are not good audiences to drive marketshare for general purpose personal computing.
Finally, Windows is the dregs and has its position from its long history (as well as being a real PC platform). But technical excellence in the Linux world won't matter to people if they can't easily identify it.
The market is with me on this and its moving towards OS X.
In short, neither "Linux" nor Ubuntu are desktop platforms. They won't attract app developers because they lack platform-defining features and add severe tech support headaches.
Seriously, people... I can't get over the dumbness displayed here over this subject. Android is very successful and Linux-based, so you need to look at the structural differences between Android and a distro like Ubuntu. Hint: the difference starts right within the Linux Foundation which supplies a mobile SDK but not a desktop one!
Who wants to do the tech support for commercial products on "Linux"? Even on a particular distro like Ubuntu, you don't really know what GUI the end user will have to navigate with. There is no easy way to have the user check the OS version and there are new versions coming out every 6 months.
Further, directing someone to change system settings is precarious beyond what it usually is, because the GUIs that make the changes either don't exist or work poorly (written with the wrong assumptions, I dare say).
, it's more that she doesn't even care and/or have a good idea of what Linux even is.
"Linux" is un-knowable to most people. Desktop Linux has 8 or 9 user interfaces, so how is she going to get to know it? It has no defined face, therefore no identity among average desktop users.
Geeks have been chasing after a mirage in "desktop Linux". And that's a bigger problem than you might think. Geeks got the "desktop Linux" notion before the pros did, and it became hostage to Geek politics: Thou shalt not standardize the UI (many of us hate GUIs), thou shalt not create an SDK (that's for people who stick to developing apps, who are weenies and n00bs), thou shalt not promote a standard default IDE (again for weenies/n00bs). Thou shalt always cater to system-level developers and tinkerers, who can always decide to create the next PaintShop when they have some extra time because GUI stuff is so simplistic (so much so that we rarely 'sink' to that level).
Incidentally, the mobile world doesn't have these geek desktop political hangups.
You can see the contrast right at the Linux Foundation: They have an SDK for mobile, but not for desktop. And their LSB is some sort of weird non-platform specification deeply affected by the desktop politics; Its so unhelpful that web developers look far more toward a 4-letter acronym (LAMP) as a platform definition than they do to LSB.
Android has it "going on" not only because of its large corporate sponsor, but because it: A) doesn't have "Linux" in its name, B) has an SDK and IDE both encompassing the GUI (this makes Android a real consumer platform), C) was fitted to saleable hardware implementations early in its life.
If operating systems (including the desktop environments) treated keys and certificates as interesting standardized objects complete with consistent/appropriate icons, it would help people feel familiar with and in control of privacy measures like PGP.
It would help further if the FOSS world and other techies had their druthers and started an initiative to identify/brand communications software as adhering to a certain standard that is both consumer-friendly and devoid of any backdoors. If the software carried a certain "trustworthy" badge then users would know it passed scrutiny and that there weren't any "legal snooping" deals being cut with governments, etc.
When I first saw TFA summary, I thought of ZPhone and how cool it would be if similar communication apps like it could be grouped together and explained to average people who are seeking more privacy. If the concept catches on, it could encourage the creation of more user-friendly security software or prompt the big guys like Skype to become more open so they can earn the badge.
A: Because it also has an SDK and official IDE which define interfaces and behavior up to and including the UI. These features let new devs get their legs when adopting the platform, and allow the devs and support people to easily explain things to their users (no standardized UI = support nightmare).
Desktop distros do not provide these things (take a look on the Linux Foundation website... they have an SDK for their mobile Linux, but not for the desktop). Except to a small peculiar subset, desktop distros are hostile to application developers.
Even Linux servers are much better in this regard. Say "LAMP" and you have defined a full-featured platform (even the GUI). The system ease of use isn't strong but the target audience is different (developers, not consumers).
One just has to look at how Google took the Linux core and created a single stable set of APIs and development tools and have come to dominate the cellphone market in sales in just a couple of years and wonder what could have been with desktop Linux if it hadn't been for the juvenile license wars, API and desktop manager wars, and spinning cubes instead of real world usability that sums up most of the past decade of Linux development.
No, the problem is in the techie delusion that something which is ONLY a core (Linux) can somehow be used to define & identify a complete, consumer-oriented desktop platform. There is no SDK for "Linux", hence it is hostile to application developers. There are no reference hardware implementations for the desktop. There is no official IDE that app devs can use to establish their footing on the platform. There is no corporate sponsor which takes responsibility for the delivered OS soup-to-nuts.
Android addresses these underlying issues. And note that ANDROID != LINUX. It is not "Android Linux" and its not marketed that way. People off the street do not ask for a "Linux phone" after they've seen a nice Android unit by ad or acquaintance, which I think you'll agree would be meaningless. ANDROID is the identity of the platform, and techies know that Linux is "somewhere inside"; there is no suggestion of equivalent or interchangeable identity there.
Here's the thing: Its just as meaningless to refer to "Linux" desktops for consumers. But even if the techies start to focus on Ubuntu or somesuch, not only is the identity still "Ubuntu Linux" but Ubuntu is still missing much of what makes Android appealing to consumers and app developers (see above). Shuttleworth thinks he's read the book on platform creation when he really only has a clue (and yes, I could expand on that subtopic).
When consumers are sucked into the "desktop Linux" arena, they find themselves having to learn about different GUIs/desktops, different distros, different package managers and formats, numerous FOSS standards that define internal behavior like filesystems, and industry standards they never had to think about before. Often painfully, they learn that Nvidia is the only well-supported gfx card, the OS will screw them over upper/lowercase differences, they must learn the shell to fix stupid system defaults, and they must pass-on helpful info in CLI form or else other "Linux" users (often people just using a different release of the same distro) will be lost. People who are more technically inclined eventually learn that X11 and audio are designed with the wrong assumptions, and even well-written CLI scripts will break every six months if they have anything to do with managing system features.
Numbers 1 and 2 are lies. Tor insists you should use the Torbutton add-on for Firefox in order to address these problems. Cookies from Tor-mode and non-Tor-mode are segregated from each other. So cookies work fine while using Google anonymously - I just tested it and there were no CAPTCHAs.
You're right to feel leery. Comcast should not be altering the content of your web pages AT ALL. In addition, the effectiveness of this tactic over time is questionable: Malware and scam artists are already using popup-style alerts.
The canvas of a web page is simply the wrong context for security alerts. An email would be a bit better, and a US mail postcard or phone call would be better still.
Corporate power is, by nature, less powerful than a tyrannical, omnipotent state.
Similar arguments can be made that most resources (incl. weapons) are controlled by the corporate sector which therefore has ultimate control over the government and the rest of society. You also don't address the trend for corporations to turn to other corporations like Blackwater with armed workers for their "security". And the government is so outsourced that the corporate system essentially applies force for its own ends.
The corporate aristocracy is the heart of the problem. They insist on control without the visibility or responsibility that official titles bring. When everything is provided as a "service" - even voting - democracy is reduced to window dressing and crime is practically redefined as "something the nobodies and poor people do".
Yeah, DNS is the lynchpin. And I gotta wonder to what extent DNSSEC consolidates lockstep control over DNS servers.
I2P does not have a DNS system per se (its more of an informal lookup table where you can specify the source), and the hard numeric addresses are actually crypto keys identifying their respective nodes. While the former can be censored or otherwise messed with, the latter is un-censorable.
Your political forum is shut down the first time some kid quotes 1984.
They won't care about sparse buried quotes on obscure sites. But when Johnny makes a big impression using 1984 quotes and then links to known troublemakers, the copyright book will suddenly get thrown at him (among other nasty legal things).
Slashdot Mirror
And the reason why those two similar scenarios use different software and procedures is that X does not allow for efficient sharing of windows/desktops. Nor does it have NX-like strategies for efficient use over Internet links. Mac and Windows already accommodated these features years ago, while X doesn't give a damn if you want to share an app window while you're in conference... you are out of luck and must resort to bitmap-scraping (VNC) and suffer horrendous performance.
Hey you BUTU, did you ever ask yourself why a *nix user has to go to a CLI to start graphical apps? Or why those remote apps are slower than their Mac and Windows counterparts? Why those users can share multiple copies of their windows while you can't do the same without something like VNC (which is primitive and slow)?
A desktop system needs something more robust, with internal protocols that anticipate the core use cases for a consumer / end user. X is and always was for use by technical staff on managed workstations. It 'beaks' easily, by which I mean that configurations are very fragile and often result in non-working displays because something is a little-bit off. The Unix model of vi-editable ASCII config file (with N possible layouts) creates some of the fragility for X, when something like XML is more appropriate. Further, a subsystem like X should have an API not only for changing res and other params during display operation, but also for SAVING those settings: A big problem with X is that is never managed its own da^# config files.
X is also missing some modern features that would allow easy sharing of apps and desktops *efficiently* over the Internet. I'm tired of seeing add-ons line NX popping into slow bitmap-tossing (VNC) mode whenever more than one instance of a window is involved. X's architecture prevents some very important end-user needs from being effectively fulfilled. Windows and Mac currently have X beaten to a pulp and please don't go into how X inventing remote displays makes it superior because its inferior and insular. If the X part of the ecosystem were healthy someone prominent would have already found a way to make NX functionality standard and given people a way to graphically start remote apps too.
Is this a rotary engine, or the piston kind?
That's what I'd like to know. The very high compression ratio makes me think it is rotary.
Older cars were so economical because they were so light. Newer cars are far more robust in an accident.
Safety or economy, choose one.
My 2001 Golf TDI gets the same 47MPG mileage, and it certainly isn't as light as the 1985 Golf.
Diesel contains more energy per gallon than gasoline, but I read a report of the lifecycle CO2 emissions of of the two fuels and diesel comes out 20% lower.
Sorry, I meant to say 20% lower per mile driven.
Diesel contains more energy per gallon than gasoline, but I read a report of the lifecycle CO2 emissions of of the two fuels and diesel comes out 20% lower.
Punish too little or too much too often or too selectively, and the public will slowly lose its respect for those upholding the law, and even for the law itself.
Alas.
Would you mind commenting on why, over 9 years at several different Comcast-served residences, using DHCP in my routers to get and forward DNS server numbers to my systems has resulted in extremely slow lookups? I'm talking easily 5+ seconds per lookup with some complex web pages taking more than a minute to load.
I never had this problem with Verizon or Charter. The only solution for getting decent DNS performance on Comcast has been to use non-Comcast servers.
Not it's not a lie. Look at Linux Mint which prides itself on being a better Ubuntu. The number of DEs they actively support is sickening.
Ubuntu itself supports 3, but 2 was already way too much for them (consider how awful Kubuntu is compared to KDE on other distros). And the fact that apps will run under various DEs is not the point... people keep encountering the different DEs and getting confused by the windowing and docking systems, plus they end up running code from both DEs if they're not careful and wind up with a slow machine. Expecting the apps to run with different DEs also stalls vertical integration, making the apps seem broken in lots of small ways or indifferent to users' desire for conveniences.
Not that it matters so much, when the OS is starved for apps to begin with.
and I suppose the proverbial grandma is much the same.
Those are not good audiences to drive marketshare for general purpose personal computing.
Finally, Windows is the dregs and has its position from its long history (as well as being a real PC platform). But technical excellence in the Linux world won't matter to people if they can't easily identify it.
The market is with me on this and its moving towards OS X.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1826490&cid=33936156
Also...
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1826490&cid=33936448
In short, neither "Linux" nor Ubuntu are desktop platforms. They won't attract app developers because they lack platform-defining features and add severe tech support headaches.
Seriously, people... I can't get over the dumbness displayed here over this subject. Android is very successful and Linux-based, so you need to look at the structural differences between Android and a distro like Ubuntu. Hint: the difference starts right within the Linux Foundation which supplies a mobile SDK but not a desktop one!
Who wants to do the tech support for commercial products on "Linux"? Even on a particular distro like Ubuntu, you don't really know what GUI the end user will have to navigate with. There is no easy way to have the user check the OS version and there are new versions coming out every 6 months.
Further, directing someone to change system settings is precarious beyond what it usually is, because the GUIs that make the changes either don't exist or work poorly (written with the wrong assumptions, I dare say).
, it's more that she doesn't even care and/or have a good idea of what Linux even is.
"Linux" is un-knowable to most people. Desktop Linux has 8 or 9 user interfaces, so how is she going to get to know it? It has no defined face, therefore no identity among average desktop users.
Geeks have been chasing after a mirage in "desktop Linux". And that's a bigger problem than you might think. Geeks got the "desktop Linux" notion before the pros did, and it became hostage to Geek politics: Thou shalt not standardize the UI (many of us hate GUIs), thou shalt not create an SDK (that's for people who stick to developing apps, who are weenies and n00bs), thou shalt not promote a standard default IDE (again for weenies/n00bs). Thou shalt always cater to system-level developers and tinkerers, who can always decide to create the next PaintShop when they have some extra time because GUI stuff is so simplistic (so much so that we rarely 'sink' to that level).
Incidentally, the mobile world doesn't have these geek desktop political hangups.
You can see the contrast right at the Linux Foundation: They have an SDK for mobile, but not for desktop. And their LSB is some sort of weird non-platform specification deeply affected by the desktop politics; Its so unhelpful that web developers look far more toward a 4-letter acronym (LAMP) as a platform definition than they do to LSB.
Android has it "going on" not only because of its large corporate sponsor, but because it: A) doesn't have "Linux" in its name, B) has an SDK and IDE both encompassing the GUI (this makes Android a real consumer platform), C) was fitted to saleable hardware implementations early in its life.
Interestingly, the ZPhone website now has this:
Submitted to IETF as a proposal for a public standard, and source code is published
So maybe ZPhone itself would serve as a kind of assurance of privacy/trust.
If operating systems (including the desktop environments) treated keys and certificates as interesting standardized objects complete with consistent/appropriate icons, it would help people feel familiar with and in control of privacy measures like PGP.
It would help further if the FOSS world and other techies had their druthers and started an initiative to identify/brand communications software as adhering to a certain standard that is both consumer-friendly and devoid of any backdoors. If the software carried a certain "trustworthy" badge then users would know it passed scrutiny and that there weren't any "legal snooping" deals being cut with governments, etc.
When I first saw TFA summary, I thought of ZPhone and how cool it would be if similar communication apps like it could be grouped together and explained to average people who are seeking more privacy. If the concept catches on, it could encourage the creation of more user-friendly security software or prompt the big guys like Skype to become more open so they can earn the badge.
Android has apps. Why??
A: Because it also has an SDK and official IDE which define interfaces and behavior up to and including the UI. These features let new devs get their legs when adopting the platform, and allow the devs and support people to easily explain things to their users (no standardized UI = support nightmare).
Desktop distros do not provide these things (take a look on the Linux Foundation website... they have an SDK for their mobile Linux, but not for the desktop). Except to a small peculiar subset, desktop distros are hostile to application developers.
Even Linux servers are much better in this regard. Say "LAMP" and you have defined a full-featured platform (even the GUI). The system ease of use isn't strong but the target audience is different (developers, not consumers).
One just has to look at how Google took the Linux core and created a single stable set of APIs and development tools and have come to dominate the cellphone market in sales in just a couple of years and wonder what could have been with desktop Linux if it hadn't been for the juvenile license wars, API and desktop manager wars, and spinning cubes instead of real world usability that sums up most of the past decade of Linux development.
No, the problem is in the techie delusion that something which is ONLY a core (Linux) can somehow be used to define & identify a complete, consumer-oriented desktop platform. There is no SDK for "Linux", hence it is hostile to application developers. There are no reference hardware implementations for the desktop. There is no official IDE that app devs can use to establish their footing on the platform. There is no corporate sponsor which takes responsibility for the delivered OS soup-to-nuts.
Android addresses these underlying issues. And note that ANDROID != LINUX. It is not "Android Linux" and its not marketed that way. People off the street do not ask for a "Linux phone" after they've seen a nice Android unit by ad or acquaintance, which I think you'll agree would be meaningless. ANDROID is the identity of the platform, and techies know that Linux is "somewhere inside"; there is no suggestion of equivalent or interchangeable identity there.
Here's the thing: Its just as meaningless to refer to "Linux" desktops for consumers. But even if the techies start to focus on Ubuntu or somesuch, not only is the identity still "Ubuntu Linux" but Ubuntu is still missing much of what makes Android appealing to consumers and app developers (see above). Shuttleworth thinks he's read the book on platform creation when he really only has a clue (and yes, I could expand on that subtopic).
When consumers are sucked into the "desktop Linux" arena, they find themselves having to learn about different GUIs/desktops, different distros, different package managers and formats, numerous FOSS standards that define internal behavior like filesystems, and industry standards they never had to think about before. Often painfully, they learn that Nvidia is the only well-supported gfx card, the OS will screw them over upper/lowercase differences, they must learn the shell to fix stupid system defaults, and they must pass-on helpful info in CLI form or else other "Linux" users (often people just using a different release of the same distro) will be lost. People who are more technically inclined eventually learn that X11 and audio are designed with the wrong assumptions, and even well-written CLI scripts will break every six months if they have anything to do with managing system features.
Numbers 1 and 2 are lies. Tor insists you should use the Torbutton add-on for Firefox in order to address these problems. Cookies from Tor-mode and non-Tor-mode are segregated from each other. So cookies work fine while using Google anonymously - I just tested it and there were no CAPTCHAs.
You're right, but it *also* legitimizes the act of an ISP editing your data stream.
You're right to feel leery. Comcast should not be altering the content of your web pages AT ALL. In addition, the effectiveness of this tactic over time is questionable: Malware and scam artists are already using popup-style alerts.
The canvas of a web page is simply the wrong context for security alerts. An email would be a bit better, and a US mail postcard or phone call would be better still.
Corporate power is, by nature, less powerful than a tyrannical, omnipotent state.
Similar arguments can be made that most resources (incl. weapons) are controlled by the corporate sector which therefore has ultimate control over the government and the rest of society. You also don't address the trend for corporations to turn to other corporations like Blackwater with armed workers for their "security". And the government is so outsourced that the corporate system essentially applies force for its own ends.
The corporate aristocracy is the heart of the problem. They insist on control without the visibility or responsibility that official titles bring. When everything is provided as a "service" - even voting - democracy is reduced to window dressing and crime is practically redefined as "something the nobodies and poor people do".
Yeah, DNS is the lynchpin. And I gotta wonder to what extent DNSSEC consolidates lockstep control over DNS servers.
I2P does not have a DNS system per se (its more of an informal lookup table where you can specify the source), and the hard numeric addresses are actually crypto keys identifying their respective nodes. While the former can be censored or otherwise messed with, the latter is un-censorable.
Your political forum is shut down the first time some kid quotes 1984.
They won't care about sparse buried quotes on obscure sites. But when Johnny makes a big impression using 1984 quotes and then links to known troublemakers, the copyright book will suddenly get thrown at him (among other nasty legal things).
...by giving total control to western corporations (especially Hollywood).
Much more accurate now.