Huh. Well, maybe if they prove that using a cell phone several hours a day increases your chance of cancer, maybe that will be an incentive to get them to unglue the phone from their ear occasionally. I hardly see how that could hurt.
Say what you want, but nobody needs a cell phone, and they certainly don't need it for hours a day. And I prefer to give the morons on the road one less thing to be distracted by.
But everything on a.xxx TLD would be 'porn'; if someone decides to put a website there, there would be no question about whether it should be blocked or not. (Well, that is, as long as you don't have a problem with blocking sites in general.) It seems to me that if a rule was enforced that you could only own either the.xxx or.com (or whatever else) version of the domain, most website owners would want the.xxx version for the extra advertising purposes.
Even assuming that we have a lot of sites that refuse to move to the.xxx domains, we haven't lost anything (web censorship doesn't work anyway...), and we've stopped blocking sites that should be allowed. Sounds like an all-around win to me.
I have to comment: I took this test the year they switched it to C++. (Heck, that was only 2-1/2 years ago... why are they switching so soon?) I had never actually written a program in C++ before the test (never bothered to take the class), and in fact the only introduction I had to it was a quick once-over the study guide before I walked into the testing room. I didn't even know C all too well back then. And yet I got a 5 (the highest score) without any effort at all.
(That's not saying much. Many other people said the same. Just so you don't think I'm bragging here.:)
Anyway, if their point is to teach the concepts, I think C++ suits their purpose just fine. In fact, any language will -- Java, C, Pascal, BASIC,... what's that one language that tries to break all the rules?... The problem that I have with it in general is that, well, the test is rather outdated as it is. The majority of the test involves tracing your way through extremely confusing bits of code, trying to keep all the loops, recursive calls, and gotos straight. It seems that this is exactly the kind of thing we're trying to train people to avoid.
If I was to express my personal bias, I think the test should be in straight C. Let's see: lots of people already have experience in it, and it's been proven to work. If written correctly, it lends itself well to the short snippets of code that you're likely to see on a test. Teachers have a vast amount of textbook material and example code at their disposal. And finally, most people are going to have to learn C at some point anyway. It's far too useful and widespread to overlook. But yeah, I know that Java's now considered to be the One True Language by all too many people, so this isn't going to happen... I'd just settle for a test that's well written and thought out.
Good point here. Most people who say this simply say, "We need more innovation in Linux", without giving us a clue as to what that innovation might be. (Saying that we 'need innovation', and then expecting someone else to do it, is one of the silliest and yet most pervasive attitudes among Linux users.) However, by at least pointing to some projects that you think are innovative is a good place to start from.
In any case, I think the reason why we don't see a plethora of big innovations in the Linux world is the 'scratch the itch' philosophy that runs the open source community. Very rarely is somebody's itch something big, or completely different than the current software.
So does anyone have any suggestions for a model that could get people on a grander scale, and will spur innovation? (I don't think that competition from Be would have anything to do with it, BTW. Right now, most Linuxer's are competing with M$, and what we end up with is interfaces and systems that look and act exactly like Windows. Not the kind of innovation I particularly want.)
Of course, this all assumes that Linux needs all sorts of innovative stuff. I'd say that, for many things, it doesn't -- remember, MS bashes us for copying a 30-year-old operating system, while we call it a tried-and-true methodology. But, of course, we never know if somebody will come up with something better until they do...
If he had said that, I would have been fine with it. I don't buy your arguments (If you were spending 4 times as much time coding with C than with Java, either you had a problem that was frighteningly well-suited for Java, or your C coding techniques have problems...), but they are legitimate. The problem I had was the completely irrelevant nature of his attack. That's why I called him a troll, not because he likes Java.
I've seen this 'point' about three times on Slashdot already. So I have to ask:
So What?
What is your argument, really? "Java's better because Java programmers make more money?" That holds about as much water as trying to argue that VB is good because lots of people use it. The amount of money someone makes for writing code in a certain language has nothing to do with how appropriate that language may be for a certain task.
There was an article on/. a day or two ago about the 'evils' of language wars. While I don't have a problem with reasoned debate, at least choose an argument that has some relevance. The original poster made a good point. You, as you correctly stated, were a troll.
I actually do have a 2nd hard drive with linux on it (well, of course!). Different IDE channel, though, and the drive stays spun down, so I don't think that's the problem. And this only happens with the newest version of media player; no other program. The dialogue box is just one example of how slow that program is... it takes several seconds to load the thing, and mouse clicks have a significant lag before being processed...
Now that's the way to get karma... post a definite +5 Funny article from somewhere else, and then gain more karma when you post who the author actually is...
Not that I can fault you, of course; after all, you posting it got it a bigger audience. Good for everyone involved, I guess. Although as you can see, lots of people are already lining up to call you a karma whore. (Truth be told, though, they're just annoyed that they didn't think of it first.)
Even more offtopic, but kinda related to this post: I was thinking one time of creating a program that would grab keywords out of new slashdot articles, try to search for articles on similar topics, pull out +5 comments (probably focusing on 'funny' and 'insightful' comments; 'informative' comments might contain too much specific information), and then post them to the new story. Who wants to bet that such a program would hit the Kap within a week?
One of the most amusing examples of slowdown I've seen (and this is MS, but most bad things unfortunately are...) is the newest windows media player. Try getting a filelist. Takes no less than 45 seconds to bring up an open dialogue. (450MHz, 128M RAM... not top of the line, but definitely not a relic.)
The other thing they want is application integration. For instance, if they go to file/open, and open a text document, they want
an editor. If they then open an MP3 file, a player should show up. You should be able to click a button in your spreadsheet
program and have it sent via e-mail to everyone in your address book.
I know how elistist this sounds, but you pretty much just described OpenDoc.
Hm. OK, I did a little searching, and am now a bit curious as to how it came out. (Did a search, but most of what I found were starry-eyed press releases and such instead of good descriptions of available technology etc. Do you have any references?)
As far as the basic concept behind it (from what I could tell) that instead of having documents of specific types, you have conglomerations of several types of data -- I have my doubts. The types have to be delineated anyway to be useful; it might as well be at the file level as anywhere else. If we go and start stuffing all sorts of things together into one 'document', I imagine that document management would become much like file management is now, which seems rather pointless.
However, I do think that 'modularized' applications are a good idea (partly for the reasons I pointed out in my post.) And you're right; that does lead right in to the idea of unified access to all types of data.
Perhaps the best way to simplify the interface is finally making good use of virtual space - would take a heckuva lot of horsepower
to do it and need a lot of serious research and design to get it usable, but 2D just can't get it done for much longer.
I think the reason that we don't see much in the way of 3D interfaces is that nearly everything we work with is essentially 2D. For instance, all text is 2D (we've been printing on flat paper for hundreds of years, and I see no movement from that arena.) Our monitors are 2D as well, as is our mouse. (Although, admittedly, 3D input devices do exist.) I believe that there is a project going on to create a 3D window manager... does anyone have any information about it?
When putting together my software base, I tend to look for the leanest, fastest, and simplest programs I can find that meet my needs. Although I might keep some feature-laden stuff around, I don't use it on a regular basis. (Heck, I usually do my web browsing in Lynx, only switching to NS when there's a page I really want to see that doesn't work in text mode. I don't switch very often.)
In my opinion, a feature that I don't use is a feature that gets in the way. Since the GUI is what lets me interact with the program, anything that gets in the way can cause me to be extremely annoyed. I just don't have much tolerance for fluff. (Explains why I avoid gnome and kde.)
I'm not saying that a good program can't have lots of features, just that it's hard for programs to include a lot without having some of them get in the way. If your program does 5 things, chances are that every user will use all of them. If it provides 500, everyone will find that 475 of those things are useless to them. Every program needs a way of keeping those 475 things somewhere where they won't be bothersome.
I've talked to several 'computer illiterates' (ranging from never touched a computer, to people who are still on dos 5.0 computers, to people who have always used win9x as their typewriter), and have found that they agree on a couple different points about UI that would make things easier:
They need to be able to see what things are. Right now, our system of icons just doesn't work well enough -- see the iloveyou, which apparently was partly perpetrated by the fact that the text icon looks similar to the script icon. (At least, that's what I heard.) Documents often have the same icon as the related executable. When the icons are small, they're had to identify. Etc, etc. One person suggested that they'd like a color-coding system: for instance, all text/word processor documents are green (or shades of green), perhaps along with an icon to identify exactly what type it is. Executables are red. A directory window full of music might have a blue border around it, but the documents folder has green. Nautilus makes a big deal of quickly seeing what information is where; perhaps this will be a good step.
The other thing they want is application integration. For instance, if they go to file/open, and open a text document, they want an editor. If they then open an MP3 file, a player should show up. You should be able to click a button in your spreadsheet program and have it sent via e-mail to everyone in your address book. This, of course, runs counter to the unix way of doing things in a lot of ways -- lots of small programs that each have their seperate task. (Disregard that if you use emacs, of course:) It seems that M$ has the jump on everyone there, with the mentality that every program should do everything. (I think it makes for shoddy software, but apparently a lot of people like it.)
To make the unix way of doing things more attractive to these people, I think the best move is to make sure that all programs work together in a standard way. Right now, we have the GNOME and KDE projects that try to set standards, but what if we think a bit bigger? For instance, a body could be chosen that could set exacting standards for how specific applications work. (For instance, an e-mail program can be invoked like so, reads a global address book from such-and-such, etc.) Then, I can imagine (for instance) a toolbar or global menu that has a send e-mail button on it. If you press it, the system tells the current application, "The user wants to send something via e-mail." The application returns what it is they want to send (for instance, the current document.) Then, it's sent to the e-mail program for processing. You could switch from one program to another and continue to use it in the same manner you always have been.
I don't know if that's the best way of doing it, or exactly what kind of interface and technical details would be needed, but it's definately within our grasp. (And here I am, the one who usually says that we don't need to pander to the Windows users, but... hey, I think this would be useful too.)
Finally, about this stuff about getting rid of the files/folders analogy: all the people I've talked to say "don't." As has been pointed out, there's a lot of data on a computer. Some sort of hierarchical method of organization is necessary. I've heard suggestions of organization based on type of data, rather than by what's related to it (like we generally do now), and that may be doable, but the folders analogy makes sense to them. Until someone can give a convincing alternative that makes more sense, we should hold on to it.
The problem with data hiding arises when your 'official' methods aren't good enough. For instance, say that you've got a stack, implemented as an array, and have provided push and pop functions. Great; but what if you need to access it as an array? Since the programmer has been so 'helpful', the data is nice and hidden, and you'll have to make your own copy of it or jump through bizarre hoops to do it. (Or add the functionality to allow you to access it as an array, but that sort of defeats the purpose of the 'data hiding' anyway.) Simplistic to the point of being unrealistic, yeah, but the point is: data hiding can only make things harder, not easier. I happen to be lazy. I'm not going to make things harder on myself to please some stupid VM.
In C, I could write:
int main()
{
Database *myDatabase;
myDatabase = (Database *)malloc(sizeof(Database));
readRecords(myDatabase);
updateRecords(myDatabase, "firingList", "hiringList");
writeRecords(myDatabase);
issueChecks(myDatabase);
}
(No, I wouldn't do it that way... but you could. In fact, with one or two minor changes -- changing the declarations to call constructor functions and changing hte main declaration -- your Java code would've compiled under C as it was.) But well-written C code does, in fact, read nearly as easily as pseudocode. (In fact, I find my bad transcription of your Java code to make more sense than the original. Tell me: does your database actually read records? Of course not: the program reads records and puts them into a database. The readRecords and company functions have no business being part of a database object.) In readability, I don't think that Java has anything on C.
It's true; I don't know much about OO programming. Granted, there are some things for which OO is a very nice paradigm (like when you're actually trying to model real-world objects, or things that are supposed to act like them, such as in UI programming.) But OO is not the One Solution to programming. Whenever I try to read C++ (and Java) programs, it seems that people have been so caught up into the mindset that "objects good, procedural bad" that they sacrifice good design in order to fit it into the object-oriented style.
When I work on a program, I tend to think of the procedure that it follows. Somehow wrapping up abstract procedures into a bundle called an 'object' doesn't make much sense to me. Sure, I can write programs in C++ or Java that follow my conventions, but in that case, I might as well use a different language. And it still doesn't help me when I'm jumping from object to object in someone's program, trying to figure out what each is trying to do to each other.
Anyway, that's my chief gripe with the two. (My other major problem is with things like data hiding, which is, in my very humble opinion, complete crap. If I want something hidden, I'll bury it. I really don't need a compiler that tries to protect me from myself.) Maybe the language is decent enough, but as I have yet to see a Java or C++ program that was easy to read, I'm not too inclined to bother with it. C, on the other hand, as long as the confusing parts are commented, reads like a book. It's much more enjoyable to read and use.
You know, comments like this always seem pretty odd. Even assuming that you're correct about Java support being the crucial factor in the choice to use Linux in enterprise situations (and you certainly haven't convinced me), exactly why is it that we want this to happen? It's sort of like saying, "We need a GUI just like Windows, so the masses will migrate to Linux." If it's a good idea, and people like it, then yes, go ahead and implement it. But doing something for the sake of getting bigger market share seems like a waste of resources that could be used to make our computing experience more enjoyable.
*shrug* If Linux were to 'embrace Java' to the point that a significant percentage of the applications were written in it, I'd probably think of changing operating systems. I tend to change the source for many of the programs I use, and if they were programmed in Java, I couldn't do that. (C++ is bad enough; I can't even follow Java without getting sick of it.) I think there are quite a few more people in the same situation; if we always pander to what's percieved as the important market (which invariably isn't the people who already use it), we'll end up alienating people.
So the article says that Linux users don't like Java. (I think a more appropriate way of putting it is that Linux users aren't quite as infactuated with it as their counterparts elsewhere, but stuff like that isn't interesting enough to make it onto Slashdot.) I don't see any problem here. Why should we try to learn to like something that we dislike? We should make Linux benefit us, and if becoming an 'enterprise OS' doesn't help us in that cause, why should we bother?
As in the true copyright protection that lets billions of stolen mp3s get downloaded each day?
No, as in true copyright protection with reasonable limits to the terms of the copyright.
I'd believe this (I'd like copyright terms to revert back to reasonable time limits), but the people using Napster wouldn't respect those limits either. Just look at the selection of songs available on Napster -- how many of those are more than 14 years old? (I believe that was the original term, though I probably got my info from slashdot, so I can't be sure.) Would the availability of older music reduce the demand for the current top 40 songs? Maybe, but I tend to doubt it.
We should be trying to get copyright terms reduced, but support for Napster is, IMO, counterproductive, or at least not useful. If you really believe in the principles of music that is freely available, then support it not by this pseudo-rebellion against the RIAA, but by actually listening to music that is freely released, giving money to unknown bands that you like, so on and so forth.
If you want to use Napster to grab the latest music, that's fine by me, as long as you don't hide behind the pretense that you're part of some 'revolution.' Not wanting to pay for something is hardly revolutionary -- consumers have wanted to keep their money for thousands of years. It's simply being cheap. (Or thrifty, if you like.)
Although I tend to think that RMS is a nut, I like some of what he advocates -- not that people start simply taking all their software (and other IP) without paying for it, but that we should encourage authors to release it for free. We should be following the same premise with music. Honor the requests of those who create the music, but encourage artists to create music under our terms.
Just out of curiosity, where is this battle that you see? Browsing at 0, I see one unfounded attack on apple (which has been modded down), and two more with complaints (both about the price of the hardware, which I'd consider to be a very valid point.) Every time an Apple story is posted, we have more people posting about how everyone's attacking them than we actually see attacks. The truth is, the vast majority Linux users are more than happy to see what's going on with OSX.
Hey, like Taco, I'd like to get a mac & osx sometime too. It seems like it would be useful and fun to be able to develop programs for both platforms at once. (I don't think I'll do it, because of the aforementioned pricing problem, but if I end up having the money to spend, I'll go for it.) There's quite a contingent of slashdotters... of whom probably at least 10% use Linux:)... that feels the same way. Sorry, but there's no feud going on.
I don't usually complain about bizarre moderation, but could some intelligent person please fix what this moderator did? To be called on-topic would be a stretch of the imagination, and it's most definately something that has been covered (far more intelligently) in the past. Slashdotters should be rather embarrassed that a pointless troll was labeled as 'interesting' by one of their peers. (And he's got to be laughing about the fact that somehow that post earned him karma.)
No kidding. My favorite example (not a console game, but still a great game): an old flight simulator called Corncob 3D.
It had very primitive, simplistic flat polygon objects (for instance, other people essentially looked like paper dolls), and its sound effects were limited to tinny FM sound and music. It's idea of 'ground texture' was a sprinkling of black dots on the ground to give you some sense of movement.
And yet, whenever a missile would pass right over my plane, I'd duck. I tried the game again maybe six months ago, and within an hour I had already lost track of time and was entranced by the game. No other game has ever managed to get me that involved, even with flashy graphics and sound. Extra graphics can be nice, of course, but they don't have anywhere near the impact of well-thought-out gameplay.
OK, I don't want to give this project bad luck, or anything, but I was curious as to what may happen if the Indrema flops? I would assume that the console's software (not the games; just their additions to the operating system and whatnot to make their box work) is probably heavily intertwined with GPLed code, in which case some or all of it would also be under the GPL. (Can anyone confirm or deny this?)
So if Indrema either dies after it's launched, or doesn't quite make it that far, would it be possible that they would release specs, plans etc. for the hardware, allowing some enterprising person (or just some great hacker) to start putting them together themselves?
This would be a good solution to the problem of obsolete hardware that you can't get any more (how many of you have old NES games around, but your systems are broken?) Also, the Indrema seems like it might be a great way for budding console game programmers to hone their skills -- and a completely open system might even further that.
But if that's how you decide whether to buy a console, then you're obviously not a console gamer anyway... after all, this position is really no different than you would expect from any other console manufacturer. So you probably weren't a customer anyway. (If you do own a console, then you're just whining, I suppose, and will buy it if the games are good enough.)
They're trying to sell to the market that will buy a console, not to the very limited group that will base their buying decisions on the company's politics rather than how good the console is. That's not neccesarily a bad position to take, but I don't think that anyone's too sad about not selling to you.
(Aside: Would the mute button and turning off the monitor for the first part of class be considered a circumvention technology? Even if not, it's not a terribly satisfactory solution.)
Even better -- would walking out of the room during the ads and coming back for the movie be called circumvention? (I can just imagine: DVD players sold with a matching couch, maybe with straps to tie you down, that require you to be sitting on it in order to play the movie.)
Slashdot Mirror
Say what you want, but nobody needs a cell phone, and they certainly don't need it for hours a day. And I prefer to give the morons on the road one less thing to be distracted by.
Even assuming that we have a lot of sites that refuse to move to the .xxx domains, we haven't lost anything (web censorship doesn't work anyway...), and we've stopped blocking sites that should be allowed. Sounds like an all-around win to me.
They'll probably get the brilliant idea to become the 'e' in 'e-Business'.
(That's not saying much. Many other people said the same. Just so you don't think I'm bragging here. :)
Anyway, if their point is to teach the concepts, I think C++ suits their purpose just fine. In fact, any language will -- Java, C, Pascal, BASIC, ... what's that one language that tries to break all the rules? ... The problem that I have with it in general is that, well, the test is rather outdated as it is. The majority of the test involves tracing your way through extremely confusing bits of code, trying to keep all the loops, recursive calls, and gotos straight. It seems that this is exactly the kind of thing we're trying to train people to avoid.
If I was to express my personal bias, I think the test should be in straight C. Let's see: lots of people already have experience in it, and it's been proven to work. If written correctly, it lends itself well to the short snippets of code that you're likely to see on a test. Teachers have a vast amount of textbook material and example code at their disposal. And finally, most people are going to have to learn C at some point anyway. It's far too useful and widespread to overlook. But yeah, I know that Java's now considered to be the One True Language by all too many people, so this isn't going to happen... I'd just settle for a test that's well written and thought out.
In any case, I think the reason why we don't see a plethora of big innovations in the Linux world is the 'scratch the itch' philosophy that runs the open source community. Very rarely is somebody's itch something big, or completely different than the current software.
So does anyone have any suggestions for a model that could get people on a grander scale, and will spur innovation? (I don't think that competition from Be would have anything to do with it, BTW. Right now, most Linuxer's are competing with M$, and what we end up with is interfaces and systems that look and act exactly like Windows. Not the kind of innovation I particularly want.)
Of course, this all assumes that Linux needs all sorts of innovative stuff. I'd say that, for many things, it doesn't -- remember, MS bashes us for copying a 30-year-old operating system, while we call it a tried-and-true methodology. But, of course, we never know if somebody will come up with something better until they do...
If he had said that, I would have been fine with it. I don't buy your arguments (If you were spending 4 times as much time coding with C than with Java, either you had a problem that was frighteningly well-suited for Java, or your C coding techniques have problems...), but they are legitimate. The problem I had was the completely irrelevant nature of his attack. That's why I called him a troll, not because he likes Java.
So What?
What is your argument, really? "Java's better because Java programmers make more money?" That holds about as much water as trying to argue that VB is good because lots of people use it. The amount of money someone makes for writing code in a certain language has nothing to do with how appropriate that language may be for a certain task.
There was an article on /. a day or two ago about the 'evils' of language wars. While I don't have a problem with reasoned debate, at least choose an argument that has some relevance. The original poster made a good point. You, as you correctly stated, were a troll.
I actually do have a 2nd hard drive with linux on it (well, of course!). Different IDE channel, though, and the drive stays spun down, so I don't think that's the problem. And this only happens with the newest version of media player; no other program. The dialogue box is just one example of how slow that program is ... it takes several seconds to load the thing, and mouse clicks have a significant lag before being processed...
Not that I can fault you, of course; after all, you posting it got it a bigger audience. Good for everyone involved, I guess. Although as you can see, lots of people are already lining up to call you a karma whore. (Truth be told, though, they're just annoyed that they didn't think of it first.)
Even more offtopic, but kinda related to this post: I was thinking one time of creating a program that would grab keywords out of new slashdot articles, try to search for articles on similar topics, pull out +5 comments (probably focusing on 'funny' and 'insightful' comments; 'informative' comments might contain too much specific information), and then post them to the new story. Who wants to bet that such a program would hit the Kap within a week?
One of the most amusing examples of slowdown I've seen (and this is MS, but most bad things unfortunately are...) is the newest windows media player. Try getting a filelist. Takes no less than 45 seconds to bring up an open dialogue. (450MHz, 128M RAM ... not top of the line, but definitely not a relic.)
Oh, come on, that's easy. Just pull the plug.
I know how elistist this sounds, but you pretty much just described OpenDoc.
Hm. OK, I did a little searching, and am now a bit curious as to how it came out. (Did a search, but most of what I found were starry-eyed press releases and such instead of good descriptions of available technology etc. Do you have any references?)
As far as the basic concept behind it (from what I could tell) that instead of having documents of specific types, you have conglomerations of several types of data -- I have my doubts. The types have to be delineated anyway to be useful; it might as well be at the file level as anywhere else. If we go and start stuffing all sorts of things together into one 'document', I imagine that document management would become much like file management is now, which seems rather pointless.
However, I do think that 'modularized' applications are a good idea (partly for the reasons I pointed out in my post.) And you're right; that does lead right in to the idea of unified access to all types of data.
Perhaps the best way to simplify the interface is finally making good use of virtual space - would take a heckuva lot of horsepower to do it and need a lot of serious research and design to get it usable, but 2D just can't get it done for much longer. I think the reason that we don't see much in the way of 3D interfaces is that nearly everything we work with is essentially 2D. For instance, all text is 2D (we've been printing on flat paper for hundreds of years, and I see no movement from that arena.) Our monitors are 2D as well, as is our mouse. (Although, admittedly, 3D input devices do exist.) I believe that there is a project going on to create a 3D window manager ... does anyone have any information about it?
In my opinion, a feature that I don't use is a feature that gets in the way. Since the GUI is what lets me interact with the program, anything that gets in the way can cause me to be extremely annoyed. I just don't have much tolerance for fluff. (Explains why I avoid gnome and kde.)
I'm not saying that a good program can't have lots of features, just that it's hard for programs to include a lot without having some of them get in the way. If your program does 5 things, chances are that every user will use all of them. If it provides 500, everyone will find that 475 of those things are useless to them. Every program needs a way of keeping those 475 things somewhere where they won't be bothersome.
They need to be able to see what things are. Right now, our system of icons just doesn't work well enough -- see the iloveyou, which apparently was partly perpetrated by the fact that the text icon looks similar to the script icon. (At least, that's what I heard.) Documents often have the same icon as the related executable. When the icons are small, they're had to identify. Etc, etc. One person suggested that they'd like a color-coding system: for instance, all text/word processor documents are green (or shades of green), perhaps along with an icon to identify exactly what type it is. Executables are red. A directory window full of music might have a blue border around it, but the documents folder has green. Nautilus makes a big deal of quickly seeing what information is where; perhaps this will be a good step.
The other thing they want is application integration. For instance, if they go to file/open, and open a text document, they want an editor. If they then open an MP3 file, a player should show up. You should be able to click a button in your spreadsheet program and have it sent via e-mail to everyone in your address book. This, of course, runs counter to the unix way of doing things in a lot of ways -- lots of small programs that each have their seperate task. (Disregard that if you use emacs, of course :) It seems that M$ has the jump on everyone there, with the mentality that every program should do everything. (I think it makes for shoddy software, but apparently a lot of people like it.)
To make the unix way of doing things more attractive to these people, I think the best move is to make sure that all programs work together in a standard way. Right now, we have the GNOME and KDE projects that try to set standards, but what if we think a bit bigger? For instance, a body could be chosen that could set exacting standards for how specific applications work. (For instance, an e-mail program can be invoked like so, reads a global address book from such-and-such, etc.) Then, I can imagine (for instance) a toolbar or global menu that has a send e-mail button on it. If you press it, the system tells the current application, "The user wants to send something via e-mail." The application returns what it is they want to send (for instance, the current document.) Then, it's sent to the e-mail program for processing. You could switch from one program to another and continue to use it in the same manner you always have been.
I don't know if that's the best way of doing it, or exactly what kind of interface and technical details would be needed, but it's definately within our grasp. (And here I am, the one who usually says that we don't need to pander to the Windows users, but ... hey, I think this would be useful too.)
Finally, about this stuff about getting rid of the files/folders analogy: all the people I've talked to say "don't." As has been pointed out, there's a lot of data on a computer. Some sort of hierarchical method of organization is necessary. I've heard suggestions of organization based on type of data, rather than by what's related to it (like we generally do now), and that may be doable, but the folders analogy makes sense to them. Until someone can give a convincing alternative that makes more sense, we should hold on to it.
In C, I could write:
int main()
{
Database *myDatabase;
myDatabase = (Database *)malloc(sizeof(Database));
readRecords(myDatabase);
updateRecords(myDatabase, "firingList", "hiringList");
writeRecords(myDatabase);
issueChecks(myDatabase);
}
(No, I wouldn't do it that way ... but you could. In fact, with one or two minor changes -- changing the declarations to call constructor functions and changing hte main declaration -- your Java code would've compiled under C as it was.) But well-written C code does, in fact, read nearly as easily as pseudocode. (In fact, I find my bad transcription of your Java code to make more sense than the original. Tell me: does your database actually read records? Of course not: the program reads records and puts them into a database. The readRecords and company functions have no business being part of a database object.) In readability, I don't think that Java has anything on C.
When I work on a program, I tend to think of the procedure that it follows. Somehow wrapping up abstract procedures into a bundle called an 'object' doesn't make much sense to me. Sure, I can write programs in C++ or Java that follow my conventions, but in that case, I might as well use a different language. And it still doesn't help me when I'm jumping from object to object in someone's program, trying to figure out what each is trying to do to each other.
Anyway, that's my chief gripe with the two. (My other major problem is with things like data hiding, which is, in my very humble opinion, complete crap. If I want something hidden, I'll bury it. I really don't need a compiler that tries to protect me from myself.) Maybe the language is decent enough, but as I have yet to see a Java or C++ program that was easy to read, I'm not too inclined to bother with it. C, on the other hand, as long as the confusing parts are commented, reads like a book. It's much more enjoyable to read and use.
*shrug* If Linux were to 'embrace Java' to the point that a significant percentage of the applications were written in it, I'd probably think of changing operating systems. I tend to change the source for many of the programs I use, and if they were programmed in Java, I couldn't do that. (C++ is bad enough; I can't even follow Java without getting sick of it.) I think there are quite a few more people in the same situation; if we always pander to what's percieved as the important market (which invariably isn't the people who already use it), we'll end up alienating people.
So the article says that Linux users don't like Java. (I think a more appropriate way of putting it is that Linux users aren't quite as infactuated with it as their counterparts elsewhere, but stuff like that isn't interesting enough to make it onto Slashdot.) I don't see any problem here. Why should we try to learn to like something that we dislike? We should make Linux benefit us, and if becoming an 'enterprise OS' doesn't help us in that cause, why should we bother?
No, as in true copyright protection with reasonable limits to the terms of the copyright.
I'd believe this (I'd like copyright terms to revert back to reasonable time limits), but the people using Napster wouldn't respect those limits either. Just look at the selection of songs available on Napster -- how many of those are more than 14 years old? (I believe that was the original term, though I probably got my info from slashdot, so I can't be sure.) Would the availability of older music reduce the demand for the current top 40 songs? Maybe, but I tend to doubt it.
We should be trying to get copyright terms reduced, but support for Napster is, IMO, counterproductive, or at least not useful. If you really believe in the principles of music that is freely available, then support it not by this pseudo-rebellion against the RIAA, but by actually listening to music that is freely released, giving money to unknown bands that you like, so on and so forth.
If you want to use Napster to grab the latest music, that's fine by me, as long as you don't hide behind the pretense that you're part of some 'revolution.' Not wanting to pay for something is hardly revolutionary -- consumers have wanted to keep their money for thousands of years. It's simply being cheap. (Or thrifty, if you like.)
Although I tend to think that RMS is a nut, I like some of what he advocates -- not that people start simply taking all their software (and other IP) without paying for it, but that we should encourage authors to release it for free. We should be following the same premise with music. Honor the requests of those who create the music, but encourage artists to create music under our terms.
Hey, like Taco, I'd like to get a mac & osx sometime too. It seems like it would be useful and fun to be able to develop programs for both platforms at once. (I don't think I'll do it, because of the aforementioned pricing problem, but if I end up having the money to spend, I'll go for it.) There's quite a contingent of slashdotters ... of whom probably at least 10% use Linux :) ... that feels the same way. Sorry, but there's no feud going on.
I don't usually complain about bizarre moderation, but could some intelligent person please fix what this moderator did? To be called on-topic would be a stretch of the imagination, and it's most definately something that has been covered (far more intelligently) in the past. Slashdotters should be rather embarrassed that a pointless troll was labeled as 'interesting' by one of their peers. (And he's got to be laughing about the fact that somehow that post earned him karma.)
It had very primitive, simplistic flat polygon objects (for instance, other people essentially looked like paper dolls), and its sound effects were limited to tinny FM sound and music. It's idea of 'ground texture' was a sprinkling of black dots on the ground to give you some sense of movement.
And yet, whenever a missile would pass right over my plane, I'd duck. I tried the game again maybe six months ago, and within an hour I had already lost track of time and was entranced by the game. No other game has ever managed to get me that involved, even with flashy graphics and sound. Extra graphics can be nice, of course, but they don't have anywhere near the impact of well-thought-out gameplay.
So if Indrema either dies after it's launched, or doesn't quite make it that far, would it be possible that they would release specs, plans etc. for the hardware, allowing some enterprising person (or just some great hacker) to start putting them together themselves?
This would be a good solution to the problem of obsolete hardware that you can't get any more (how many of you have old NES games around, but your systems are broken?) Also, the Indrema seems like it might be a great way for budding console game programmers to hone their skills -- and a completely open system might even further that.
They're trying to sell to the market that will buy a console, not to the very limited group that will base their buying decisions on the company's politics rather than how good the console is. That's not neccesarily a bad position to take, but I don't think that anyone's too sad about not selling to you.
Even better -- would walking out of the room during the ads and coming back for the movie be called circumvention? (I can just imagine: DVD players sold with a matching couch, maybe with straps to tie you down, that require you to be sitting on it in order to play the movie.)