Reading his article where he parrots everything that Microsoft feeds him, I don't think he is biased because you would need an opinion and some traces of personality (both missing in this case) to be biased.
KDE constantly wins all DE-awards, is being used by the majority of Linux-users and is generally more advanced and more rapidly evolving than Gnome (all this despite huge amounts of money dumped into Gnome.)
It would be pretty stupid for Novell to lose SuSE's most important selling point.
SuSE isn't for Qt-haters, it's for people who want to get work done. It's one of the finest distributions out there and because most users want KDE and not Gnome, Novell would be stupid to create yet-another-mediocre-Gnome-distribution.
This fact is irrelevant because adding OO to a Windows computer (again irrelevant wether MSO is already installed or not as OO can be installed additionally without any problems) is not a huge step.
Let's just ignore the fact that Microsoft didn't engineer any of the real revolutionary technologies (like multitasking, virtual memory, managed code or multiprocessing) so they don't have any engineering wealth I can see.
Anyway, there are few businesses with such huge profit margins as a software-domination (like Windows, MSOffice, Photoshop, AutoCAD, etc.) no matter what business Microsoft chooses, their profitability will suffer.
We all deride their security holes, but why do we know about them? (Linux, OS X, and BSD varients have holes too) Hackers target the OSes that the vast majority of computers use. (Why attack 4%, 8%, or 12% when you can attack the 76%?)
Please explain why CodeRed, CodeRed2 and Nimda (and others) targetted IIS which runs only 20% (and shrinking) share of the market and not Apache which runs 70% (and rising)?
It's more like that:
It doesn't matter wether Microsoft's product runs 12% (like MS SQL), 20% (like IIS) or 95% (like Windows), it's always Microsoft's products that get mass-infected.
vi, awk, pico etc. are not used for creating reports and spreadsheets (Just like notepad isn't used for spreadsheets in Windows). Trying to imply that they are makes you just a poor little MS-troll scared seeing his beloved company erode.
Their software is cheap. Windows and Office are essentially just repackaged and made incompatible every 3-4 years, some features added and that's it. Not really expensive.
It's just sold expensively, to pay for XBox, MSN, WinCE and their profits of course.
Because Microsoft's number one sales argument is that their products are "the standard", everywhere around the world.
When some regions like Munich and Israel adopt a different standard, their big sales argument starts to tumble.
Software vendors better jump off.NET because maybe the next generation of customers might want to use non-MS systems or existing customers are located in non-MS regions. Better play it save and use Java or Qt.
Customers will see big examples of how Linux is a real alternative and is used big time in the real world. That alone (that it can be done) will cost Microsoft billions.
The constant efforts by MS to be as incompatible as possible will no longer help them and start to hurt them.
Fact is Microsoft has not much to gain and a lot to lose. All their non-x86-desktop efforts are losing massively money (XBox) or marketshare (IIS) or both (WinCE, Stinger-cellphones).
All loyal MS customers who use MS technology (like.NET): Expect to pay more for your licenses.
All MS-critics who use cross-platform technology (like Java, OpenOffice): Expect Microsoft to reward your forward thinking with sweet discounts.
They sell to a saturated market and need to grow earnings to maintain their stock-price.
Because Microsoft no longer gets new customers, actually they are starting to lose customers, the only way to raise earnings is to squeeze out more of existing customers locked in.
Their new licensing programme is doing exactly that and is just the start.
The irony is that only the Microsoft-loyal customers are getting ripped off, while customers who haven't bought into MS-technologies (and run servers on Unix) like for example Munich get huge offers for discounts.
However with rising licensing costs, the incentive to move away also rises, so I don't think Microsoft can play that game much longer. Very soon their earnings will begin to fall. Either because they lose just too many customers or because they will have no other choice other than to lower prices.
I hate to be the bringer of inconvenient reality here, but pretty much every browser I've ever used has had "restore Webpages," to use your terminology. Most of them call it "save session on exit" though.
Yes, but (at least every browser I tried) is only able to restore just one window and ignores on which desktop it was and which geometry that window had.
So basically it's useless.
And I've never encountered "aim:" protocol links so far. I'd rather have "fish:" (aka scp), "man:" and "info:":-)
Konqueror is integrated and has some nice features other browsers can only dream about:
When you log out and back in, all your Webpages are restored. On the right desktop and with the right geometry - no more temporary bookmarks!
Bookmark handling is great because you can add bookmarks and bookmark-directories at the same place you select them. "Manage bookmarks" is seldom needed anymore.
But don't forget that there's a great implementation of MDI out there: the mozilla tabs
Actually it's something completely different. MDI allowes multiple documents to be worked with simultaneously (hence the name) while Tabs just switch between views, it's merely a switchable single document interface.
Putting my own personal bias into it, attitudes like Sven's are what I see as the big imediment towards adoption of open source.
Wrong. The most important problem is that the world is crawling with idiots who think that just because "the market leader" uses something it has a good user interface.
Graphic artists - REAL graphic artists - are very likely to use more than just one monitor. And guess what, being able to put windows on both monitors and essentially being able to work on each monitor independently or not, just as needed is a big advantage. The same can be said about multiple desktops.
Of course the only thing some morons notice is that it's "different" than Photoshop. Because of the tight mental limits of those characters they will say that anything different to Photoshop is bad.
In Gimp you can tear off all menus for exactly that reason.
One of the main advantages over Photoshop IMO. Of course it doesn't matter to the GIMP-UI bashers out there. They haven't tried GIMP for longer than 5 minutes and will neither be able nor willing to understand some of the really nice usability features of the Gimp.
Reading his article where he parrots everything that Microsoft feeds him, I don't think he is biased because you would need an opinion and some traces of personality (both missing in this case) to be biased.
He's just an extension of MSFT-marketing.
It would be pretty stupid for Novell to lose SuSE's most important selling point.
SuSE isn't for Qt-haters, it's for people who want to get work done. It's one of the finest distributions out there and because most users want KDE and not Gnome, Novell would be stupid to create yet-another-mediocre-Gnome-distribution.
If Novell forces SuSE to use Gnome and therefore become yet another "like Redhat" distribution, it will die.
This fact is irrelevant because adding OO to a Windows computer (again irrelevant wether MSO is already installed or not as OO can be installed additionally without any problems) is not a huge step.
Let's just ignore the fact that Microsoft didn't engineer any of the real revolutionary technologies (like multitasking, virtual memory, managed code or multiprocessing) so they don't have any engineering wealth I can see.
Anyway, there are few businesses with such huge profit margins as a software-domination (like Windows, MSOffice, Photoshop, AutoCAD, etc.) no matter what business Microsoft chooses, their profitability will suffer.
Of course they will read the old formats, the point is that new, incompatible formats are introduced.
Wrong, about 80% of revenue of Windows and MS Office is profit which goes directly to wallstreet, NY.
Also there is no programming done in Israel and the branch will have to send money for that back home.
Most probably less than 10% would stay in Israel.
Why should they? Telling citizens to download OO for free is much more friendly and nice than telling them to buy MSO for 455$.
Please explain why CodeRed, CodeRed2 and Nimda (and others) targetted IIS which runs only 20% (and shrinking) share of the market and not Apache which runs 70% (and rising)?
It's more like that:
It doesn't matter wether Microsoft's product runs 12% (like MS SQL), 20% (like IIS) or 95% (like Windows), it's always Microsoft's products that get mass-infected.
But why wait for years for Microsoft to sell you a product more expensive than all others when alternatives exist right now?
What you posted is irrelevant nonsense.
vi, awk, pico etc. are not used for creating reports and spreadsheets (Just like notepad isn't used for spreadsheets in Windows). Trying to imply that they are makes you just a poor little MS-troll scared seeing his beloved company erode.
Their software is cheap. Windows and Office are essentially just repackaged and made incompatible every 3-4 years, some features added and that's it. Not really expensive.
It's just sold expensively, to pay for XBox, MSN, WinCE and their profits of course.
When some regions like Munich and Israel adopt a different standard, their big sales argument starts to tumble.
Software vendors better jump off .NET because maybe the next generation of customers might want to use non-MS systems or existing customers are located in non-MS regions. Better play it save and use Java or Qt.
Customers will see big examples of how Linux is a real alternative and is used big time in the real world. That alone (that it can be done) will cost Microsoft billions.
The constant efforts by MS to be as incompatible as possible will no longer help them and start to hurt them.
All loyal MS customers who use MS technology (like .NET): Expect to pay more for your licenses.
All MS-critics who use cross-platform technology (like Java, OpenOffice): Expect Microsoft to reward your forward thinking with sweet discounts.
They sell to a saturated market and need to grow earnings to maintain their stock-price.
Because Microsoft no longer gets new customers, actually they are starting to lose customers, the only way to raise earnings is to squeeze out more of existing customers locked in.
Their new licensing programme is doing exactly that and is just the start.
The irony is that only the Microsoft-loyal customers are getting ripped off, while customers who haven't bought into MS-technologies (and run servers on Unix) like for example Munich get huge offers for discounts.
However with rising licensing costs, the incentive to move away also rises, so I don't think Microsoft can play that game much longer. Very soon their earnings will begin to fall. Either because they lose just too many customers or because they will have no other choice other than to lower prices.
It just reloads the tabs for *ONE* window and on the desktop you happen to start it.
Yes, but (at least every browser I tried) is only able to restore just one window and ignores on which desktop it was and which geometry that window had.
So basically it's useless.
And I've never encountered "aim:" protocol links so far. I'd rather have "fish:" (aka scp), "man:" and "info:" :-)
Of course stuff like that has nothing to do with Safari which uses a different UI.
Well "is ideal" isn't leaving any room for preferences.
Actually it's something completely different. MDI allowes multiple documents to be worked with simultaneously (hence the name) while Tabs just switch between views, it's merely a switchable single document interface.
It's not nearly as closed minded as "[..] Photoshop and its imitators have shown that a true MDI workspace is ideal for image editing"
That's closed mindness at it's finest. And to complain about closed-mindness of others just tops it off.
Wrong. The most important problem is that the world is crawling with idiots who think that just because "the market leader" uses something it has a good user interface.
Graphic artists - REAL graphic artists - are very likely to use more than just one monitor. And guess what, being able to put windows on both monitors and essentially being able to work on each monitor independently or not, just as needed is a big advantage. The same can be said about multiple desktops.
Of course the only thing some morons notice is that it's "different" than Photoshop. Because of the tight mental limits of those characters they will say that anything different to Photoshop is bad.
One of the main advantages over Photoshop IMO. Of course it doesn't matter to the GIMP-UI bashers out there. They haven't tried GIMP for longer than 5 minutes and will neither be able nor willing to understand some of the really nice usability features of the Gimp.