"significantly better" will not be achieved by slick technology X or cool feature Y. It's about 2 things.
(1) attention to detail: every error message, every dialog, every application toolbar being easily comprehensible by a non-expert user. From this point of view Gnome's focus on usability is the most important desktop development
(2) integration: the whole operating system has to be manageable from the GUI - here DBUS and similar features will help a lot - and different applications should all use the same look and feel - which means _somebody_ has to win the desktop war.
Uh, I think his opinion is based on Red Hat's (substantial) experience with Linux on the desktop. And as a longterm desktop user, he's right. So add me to your ass directory, ass collector.
But presumably it is perfectly legit for cheeplinux or someone similar to buy one copy of RHEL and then redistribute it for $5 a pop... so are any firms doing this?
Heh... not sure if this is real or a troll, which makes it a great troll if it is one. But one point about the Marshall plan: the money pumped into Europe mostly had to be spent buying stuff from US companies. (Classic "tied aid".) So there were expectations of payback. That's not to say the Marshall plan was a bad thing, but it was more enlightened self-interest than selflessness. As "for ensuring the world is a better place": [insert standard comment about South American countries fucked over by US foreign policy].
Never underestimate human foolishness. I've had jobs where I asked for, and got, the root password on the first day; and all the company's boxes had the same password.
You know, I may have been missing something, but I've never seen a cool clock on Linux. Or Windows or any other operating system. I guess for me, clocks just aren't cool. A consistent user interface so that all my apps behave the same way would be cool, though.
Actually, I think it is more pleasant to work with systems that look and feel "easy on the eye". I've just installed a recent Mandrake and the default font makes things look very pleasant.
very reasonable - although I might equally say that I find it hard to get too worked up about the "infringement of my freedom" from beer being sold in pints. But this issue isn't just about pints of beer, it holds true for much bigger trades, where the transaction costs are correspondingly greater. Pints were just an example.
Indeed I do. I am such a crazy, statist, left winger that I don't want to measure all my own pints. Bet you get some funny looks when you go down the pub.
"Measuring it yourself" is exactly the sort of transaction cost that the law would eradicate. Your point about watering beer suggests another useful government intervention - don't let pubs water down beer. (Because the beer is sold under a brand name, this is an example of government intervention to prevent a prisoner's dilemma situation emerging where everybody waters down beer to take advantage of the brand name that is supported by other pubs' full strength version. Obviously pubs are free to make their own, weak beer. However, it's simpler to compare products when some of the inputs are held similar between products - to compare two pints of beer which have different prices, strengths and taste, rather than comparing two glasses of beer which have all the above as well as different amounts.)
Here's one: forcing companies to sell to customers using standard units allows easier comparison between different offerings, which reduces transaction costs and brings us closer to ideal free-market conditions of perfect information. In other words, if every pub sells pints - or indeed half-litres - it's easier for me to figure out which pubs are cheaper.
You're right! Let's build an instant messaging client, and an Exchange server, into the kernel. Finally, Linux will be network aware and I will be able to connect to the internet from this laptop.
You can - I have - but it isn't always easy. PHP's OO support is not great. Some examples:
* No support for exception handling * No "private" or "protected" * Static methods can't find out what class they are called from (am I in Dog::bark() or Chihuahua::bark()?) * No way to create methods on the fly (for e.g. accessors/mutators)
I came from Perl and recently had to use PHP for a few months, now I'm doing Java; I definitely find PHP lags behind both of these for OO. On the other hand, it is easy to write and has a lot of very useful built-in functions.
Of course you'd go to the mechanic, and so would I. My point is that if your mechanic behaved in the way you recommend, he would demand that you learn to fix your own car. It's not sensible to look down on people for not sharing your specialized interests. Also, a world in which we all had to do everything for ourselves would be a very poor place - we would have returned to the Stone Age.
I write my own code. I compile my own kernel. I have messed with Makefiles and played with Perl.
Does this mean that I want each of my apps to have a different file open dialog? It does not. Do I want to learn the behaviours of 3 different widget sets. No, I don't. On the other hand, do I want to reject good GUI applications because they use a different toolkit to my chosen desktop? Not that either.
2) It isn't our responsibility to pander to the ignornance or laziness of others. It is their responsiblity to learn, or not, as they see fit.
I hope your mechanic tells you that, next time you bring your car in to be fixed. And I don't normally laugh at bad spelling, but as you're so contemptuous of other people's ignorance...
This guy is completely right, but it's not as bad as he thinks.
First, there are serious efforts being made to interoperate between the major desktop - e.g. freedesktop.org.
Second, Linux's first desktop target, according to industry analysts, is very large corporate desktops - where Linux's security, the ability to have defaults set by a sysadmin, and low TCO are winners. In this space, Linux doesn't have to be perfect - nor does it have to allow users to install "any old application". It just has to be good enough.
I suspect that as Linux desktop developers' experience grows from these initial big installs, they will develop the capabilities to move into the mainstream home market - which is much more picky, has user demand for much more varied apps, and also doesn't make much cash. But even if this doesn't happen, I don't mind if Windows maintains market share here. So long as its total monopoly is broken, that is the main thing.
IBM spokeswoman Trink Guarino declined to comment on McBride's allegations other than to say, "the open community is completely capable of reacting on its own to SCO's allegations."... taking down their servers, streams of contempt and vitriol on every message board known to man.... Yup.
It is rather unlikely that anybody trying to burn a CD of music will look under the "archiving" menu. Read the report, it has interesting things to say about this sort of naming issue.
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"significantly better" will not be achieved by slick technology X or cool feature Y. It's about 2 things.
(1) attention to detail: every error message, every dialog, every application toolbar being easily comprehensible by a non-expert user. From this point of view Gnome's focus on usability is the most important desktop development
(2) integration: the whole operating system has to be manageable from the GUI - here DBUS and similar features will help a lot - and different applications should all use the same look and feel - which means _somebody_ has to win the desktop war.
OpenGL and "beauty" are less important, IMHO.
Dave
Uh, I think his opinion is based on Red Hat's (substantial) experience with Linux on the desktop. And as a longterm desktop user, he's right. So add me to your ass directory, ass collector.
But presumably it is perfectly legit for cheeplinux or someone similar to buy one copy of RHEL and then redistribute it for $5 a pop... so are any firms doing this?
If you speak well, you are usually not a computer geek.
Heh... not sure if this is real or a troll, which makes it a great troll if it is one. But one point about the Marshall plan: the money pumped into Europe mostly had to be spent buying stuff from US companies. (Classic "tied aid".) So there were expectations of payback. That's not to say the Marshall plan was a bad thing, but it was more enlightened self-interest than selflessness. As "for ensuring the world is a better place": [insert standard comment about South American countries fucked over by US foreign policy].
... I like a bit of optimism with my morning coffee.
very elegant I'm sure, but could you tell us again, in English?
Never underestimate human foolishness. I've had jobs where I asked for, and got, the root password on the first day; and all the company's boxes had the same password.
You know, I may have been missing something, but I've never seen a cool clock on Linux. Or Windows or any other operating system. I guess for me, clocks just aren't cool. A consistent user interface so that all my apps behave the same way would be cool, though.
Actually, I think it is more pleasant to work with systems that look and feel "easy on the eye". I've just installed a recent Mandrake and the default font makes things look very pleasant.
very reasonable - although I might equally say that I find it hard to get too worked up about the "infringement of my freedom" from beer being sold in pints. But this issue isn't just about pints of beer, it holds true for much bigger trades, where the transaction costs are correspondingly greater. Pints were just an example.
... except that, as I learnt yesterday from another poster, Amazon uses Perl and HTML::Mason for its templating engine. And please don't mention Perl in the same breath as PHP, you know how we hate that.
Indeed I do. I am such a crazy, statist, left winger that I don't want to measure all my own pints. Bet you get some funny looks when you go down the pub.
Wow. Kudos to Amazon for having the balls to go with Perl, rather than a more corporate language... I think that is quite an advertisement for Perl.
Does Mason use Amazon? The monks would be interested!
"Measuring it yourself" is exactly the sort of transaction cost that the law would eradicate. Your point about watering beer suggests another useful government intervention - don't let pubs water down beer. (Because the beer is sold under a brand name, this is an example of government intervention to prevent a prisoner's dilemma situation emerging where everybody waters down beer to take advantage of the brand name that is supported by other pubs' full strength version. Obviously pubs are free to make their own, weak beer. However, it's simpler to compare products when some of the inputs are held similar between products - to compare two pints of beer which have different prices, strengths and taste, rather than comparing two glasses of beer which have all the above as well as different amounts.)
Here's one: forcing companies to sell to customers using standard units allows easier comparison between different offerings, which reduces transaction costs and brings us closer to ideal free-market conditions of perfect information. In other words, if every pub sells pints - or indeed half-litres - it's easier for me to figure out which pubs are cheaper.
You're right! Let's build an instant messaging client, and an Exchange server, into the kernel. Finally, Linux will be network aware and I will be able to connect to the internet from this laptop.
you can code it like a pro with objects et al
You can - I have - but it isn't always easy. PHP's OO support is not great. Some examples:
* No support for exception handling
* No "private" or "protected"
* Static methods can't find out what class they are called from (am I in Dog::bark() or Chihuahua::bark()?)
* No way to create methods on the fly (for e.g. accessors/mutators)
I came from Perl and recently had to use PHP for a few months, now I'm doing Java; I definitely find PHP lags behind both of these for OO. On the other hand, it is easy to write and has a lot of very useful built-in functions.
Of course you'd go to the mechanic, and so would I. My point is that if your mechanic behaved in the way you recommend, he would demand that you learn to fix your own car. It's not sensible to look down on people for not sharing your specialized interests. Also, a world in which we all had to do everything for ourselves would be a very poor place - we would have returned to the Stone Age.
I write my own code. I compile my own kernel. I have messed with Makefiles and played with Perl.
Does this mean that I want each of my apps to have a different file open dialog? It does not. Do I want to learn the behaviours of 3 different widget sets. No, I don't. On the other hand, do I want to reject good GUI applications because they use a different toolkit to my chosen desktop? Not that either.
2) It isn't our responsibility to pander to the ignornance or laziness of others. It is their responsiblity to learn, or not, as they see fit.
I hope your mechanic tells you that, next time you bring your car in to be fixed. And I don't normally laugh at bad spelling, but as you're so contemptuous of other people's ignorance...
First, there are serious efforts being made to interoperate between the major desktop - e.g. freedesktop.org.
Second, Linux's first desktop target, according to industry analysts, is very large corporate desktops - where Linux's security, the ability to have defaults set by a sysadmin, and low TCO are winners. In this space, Linux doesn't have to be perfect - nor does it have to allow users to install "any old application". It just has to be good enough.
I suspect that as Linux desktop developers' experience grows from these initial big installs, they will develop the capabilities to move into the mainstream home market - which is much more picky, has user demand for much more varied apps, and also doesn't make much cash. But even if this doesn't happen, I don't mind if Windows maintains market share here. So long as its total monopoly is broken, that is the main thing.
IBM spokeswoman Trink Guarino declined to comment on McBride's allegations other than to say, "the open community is completely capable of reacting on its own to SCO's allegations." ... taking down their servers, streams of contempt and vitriol on every message board known to man.... Yup.
SCO sucks donkey balls! This post sponsored by IBM.
It is rather unlikely that anybody trying to burn a CD of music will look under the "archiving" menu. Read the report, it has interesting things to say about this sort of naming issue.