The deal is this: larger die size chips are harder manufacture cost-effectively make because you get fewer good die per wafer. A wafer is a fixed size and costs the same to process, regardless of the number of functional die you actually get from it. So, the more die you fit on it, and the more die that actually work when you are finished processing, the lower your final selling price can be. Since the die size for this chip is much larger than "normal" and will be made in fabs that arguably will have the same defectivity rates, they will likely get less working die from a wafer than "normal" and thus their costs to the consumer will be larger.
That's how I got my job. I have a BS in chemical engineering and knew Unix, so I applied for a spot and thought I did well on the interview. Later on they told me that they didn't hire me because of what I knew (which wasn't enough, incidentally), but my strong desire to learn and willingness to become "apprenticed" were what made me the right guy. In retrospect I'd have to agree with them completely. It's what I'd look for in a admin-to-be.
What you are describing is something nearly every engineering grad feels. I know I felt the same way when I was in your shoes. School grinds you up so much that by the time you are almost done, you've delved so far into something that it's hard to see the value anymore. However, nothing good ever comes easy. You're burned out because you've worked hard. The only piece of advice I can give you is that the workplace is far different from school and you'll quickly appreciate the change. After comparing school and work, I don't think I'd ever want to go back.
Take some time off after graduation (since you'd be insane to drop it at this point!) and do something completely different for 2-3 weeks. Chances are you'll feel much better about CS than you do right now.
I think this is a good lesson for everyone, reminding us of the importance of checking the facts or delving further into the issue when a story is posted on Slashdot before sounding off on it. However, don't feel too bad about what you said. The official reply from Trident didn't address the XF86 developer's request to sign an NDA without the "source code exception clause." Until that is addressed, I don't think the issue has been fully resolved.
Does 7.2 do anything to address the needs of newer users?
Yes, it has the Nautilus graphical shell (which is included in Gnome 1.4). This file manager has a lot of the benefits of the Mac's Finder or the Windows Explorer, along with a few neat tricks of it's own.
Linux is not windows. We don't have to cater to the masses. Linux was never intended to replace Windows on the PC. If it does great!
This statement is kind of contradictory. If it's great to have Linux replace Windows, how will it happen if the intention isn't there to make this a reality? Of course Linux wasn't intended to replace Windows, it was a hack by a guy who just wanted to use the same kind of computer at home that he used at school. By that criteria, the whole project was finished long ago and he could've moved on to something else. But the goal and intentions for Linux have shifted since it's beginnings, and will continue to. Of course we need to accomodate new users--the more the merrier. And they don't need to be comp-sci students either. We have a great thing going and to horde it all to ourselves isn't the right or intelligent thing to do. My mother doesn't need to know how her car engine works in order to drive it, nor would I expect her to. I just want her to have a way to get to my grandmother's house without any hassles so she can help out with things around the house. I want the same for my brother, who not only needs the car to do stuff, but may be curious about some of the stuff under the hood and more interested in learning about the details. He can do that as well. If I had designed the car and was the only one who knew how to operate it, I would make my next goal to fix the design in such a way that others could use it without having to know everything.
Of course your friend was unimpressed with Nautilus. It looks the way it does because so many Linux users insist that they don't want or need a good UI and are happy when a company that was trying to develop one went out of business. Nautilus isn't ready for prime time--it's got a ways to go. Eazel was a company that needed long term investors, not short term ones. The software is still in development and I'm sure the pace will reduce now that the developers aren't getting paid to work on it full-time, but hopefully it'll still achieve it's goals. It's sad that is the way it has to be, but that's the reality of the situation.
Eazel was formed to try to take something that was good, but complicated, (Linux) and add another part that made it easier for people who didn't want to deal with complications. What's so bad about that? I don't mind building software from source, but my wife does. She has neither the training nor the patience to do it, but that doesn't mean that I want her to use something inferior to do her work. I want to use what I know to help her, and if that means adding another layer to make it easier for her, I'm going to do it.
Why use pancake mix when I could use flour, eggs, and yeast to get the same result? Why buy a car with automatic transmission when I could buy one with a manual transmission? Should I have to know how to fly a plane just to get from Texas to Greece? Do you see my point?
I just think that if we have something good (like Linux and open source development), it's good to share it with others because it will benefit us in the long run (more applications, more jobs, more competition, more of everything). That's all.
I, for one, am very sad to see Eazel shut it's doors. Call me biased because I verified bugs and wrote reports every extra minute I had, but Nautilus is an important piece of software that the Linux community needs and all of the sharks swimming around this site scavenging for blood sicken me. To say that some of the folks who developed one of the best computer interfaces (i.e. the Mac OS) are better off with their Linux start-up defunct is just nonsensical. Like it or not, Linux isn't what it used to be. Times have changed and will continue to do so, and the Linux interface will have to adapt to accomodate all of the new users that will come to the platform. To just stand around and suggest that everyone needs to get used to typing commands in a terminal window because "that's the way things are and have always been" is short sighted and unrealistic.
To all of the Eazel folks who were affected, my sympathies and a hearty thanks to those (especially Eli Goldberg) who were always there to answer my questions and provide troubleshooting suggestions. I'm happy to hear that most of the major project leaders are going to continue working on Nautilus and look forward to what the future may bring. Maybe in another time and climate, things would have worked out differently. As the story submission says, it _has_ been a fun ride. ---tomg
Informed sources tell me the NSA has been breaking PGP for years
Interesting. While I've always knew the NSA was years ahead of most when it came to computer technology (my guess is 5-8 yrs), I have a healthy doubt they've discovered a factoring algorithm that is that much more advanced than public domain modern math research has produced. This problem has plagued mathematicians since the beginning, and for me to think it's been solved is just too great of a leap of faith. So for this PGP claim to be true, I would assume the NSA has built some amazing pieces of hardware to perform this math in such a short amount of time. I've read the NSA has it's own fab to manufacture in-house chip designs, but I'm short on details for the level of technology their dealing with. I would harbor a guess of 0.1 or 0.07 um (not too unreasonable for the 5-8 time frame), coupled with the fact that they don't have to worry about getting high yields to bring down chip costs. No idea about their EDA tools or systems engineering either, but I'm guessing their focusing more on parallel systems just based on the amount of those big iron systems Cray, SGI, and IBM are pushing these days (trickle down effect from R&D to the marketplace).
Anybody know of a resource that might have better info on this?
No, that's true. Conservatives lined up in support of Starr because they felt the position he was supporting was in line with their principles, and liberals attacked him as an wild man probing far too much into the President's life. Liberals felt the investigation was outrageous and Starr was a nosey, sexually starved religious right winger, conservatives supported it whole-heartedly and said Starr was the most calm of any of the people involved and cared only for the facts. Now it's kind of reversed (liberals support bringing MS into court, conservatives think MS should be left alone) except the man who was once seen as calm and factually driven by conservatives may now be cast as out of control and a government nanny. It's a very interesting twist of fate.
And, even if somebody believes that Bush would be sufficiently pro-MSFT and brazen enough to pull the DOJ off the case -- which seems unlikely given its high profile -- don't forget that there are plenty of states in on the case that wouldn't drop.
This is absolutely true. While the case may hit a few bumps during the transition from Reno to (possibly) Ashcroft, the states are just going to roll over and act as if nothing happened. Remember, one of the first states to look into this was Texas, home of Dubya.
I also find it quite interesting that one of the lawyers now involved in the Microsoft cases is Ken Starr, the man hated by liberals & Clintonians and loved by republicans & conservatives for his work on the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal. I'm wondering how many of those conservatives will view his taking on the MS-DOJ case since it has been *my* observations that most of the opposition to the DOJ-MS case has come from Republicans and pro-laizze-fare economists who *generally* lined up in support for Starr during Clinton-Lewinsky.
Or the even more fatal where another American Astronaut (can't recall his name at the moment) survived one of the first orbital decompression accidents when an unmaned Progress Space module crashed into a solar panel and later into one of Mir's nodes. They actually had to do an internal space walk into the damaged node! If you want to read about what an insane situation the Shuttle-Mir missions were I highly suggest you pick up the book Dragonfly by Bryan Burroughs (sp?). It's *well* worth the time and money.
It doesn't stop there either. I'm on the JSC mailing list for ISS mission reports and I was startled to read on day that the same Kurs docking system and Elektron systems that were causing many of the problems encountered on Mir are in use on ISS! In fact, I can recall reading a couple of weeks ago that one of the Kurs systems aboard the ISS was being returned to Earth for troubleshooting...I just shook my head. Maybe it's time we rethink the way NASA operates.
Reading the rest of your comment, you're completely missing the point. Solaris is NOT a desktop environment - its a server! So why are they forcing a desktop onto it?
Wrong. Solaris is used for both desktop computing and serving--at my employer, just in my particular division, we have 300 workstations in constant use by engineers as desktop machines. Based on the fact that you don't even know how Solaris can be used and think freedom can only be had through an individually run project, it's not worth my time to continue this discussion.
How many times has this been said? Mozilla has been saying this for 2 years, and IE is still running strong;-)
But Mozilla has yet to ship 1.0 and IE 5.5 is out...maybe you could better spend your time helping the Mozilla team by running test builds and writing bug reports instead of hanging out on/. and complaining about the speed.
Nautilus does have a market--the Linux/Unix desktop. Since Eazel doesn't see a stronghold there, the only way to help build one is to find out what pieces are lacking and work on those. In this case we're getting a graphical shell from some of the guys that built one for the Macintosh. What's wrong with that? Nothing that I can see. I welcome Eazel into the Linux fold.
I think Sun's move to phase out CDE in favor of GNOME was intelligent from both a business and strategic angle. They know the development in the CDE arena severely lags that of the GNOME project and it's better for them to join the GNOME team and contribute to a standard desktop than to swim upstream and continue working on CDE. Since Eazel is building the new file manager for GNOME it's only natural that Nautilus gets shipped with Solaris as well. Plus running GNOME on SOlaris provides a unified GUI across many versions of Unix, which helps users when they have access to many machines running different OSes.
And your assumption about everyone who wants a GUI has Win or OSX is *very, very wrong.* I want a great, easy to use GUI yet I don't want to give up the control of my software to a single corporation and become a slave to their desires. That's why I'm using free software. That's why I'm here.
Oh, and to any moderators out there. His comment isn't insightful - its the party line. Mine aren't "overrated"...they're my opinion.
Party line?! Sounds like your role my friend. You're the one bashing prominent open source projects on/., not me. And the last time I checked, that *is* the party line around here. I've been running test builds of Nautilus for a while now and I've watched the project go from something cool sounding to something cool to use.
Damn, I can't believe I got dragged into another silly flame fest. My fellow lurkers, please forgive me.
It's hardly vaporware. Download it and give it a test drive--it's easily one of the best open source projects going right now. The easy install option for software from their online catalog is going to make a big difference in how new Linux users feel when they log in for the first time and want to upgrade stuff. Not only does it download the RPM you selected, it checks for dependencies and downloads those as well. A cool feature IMO. The only real drawback in running Nautilus as this time is sluggishness, but that is a problem I'm sure they'll fix.
Frankly, I'm glad Andy and a bunch of former Apple and Be engineers are bringing their expertise to Linux and GNOME. It says a lot about the direction we're headed.
Intel has quite a lot to do with this kind of shortage. In case you didn't know, the factories that manufacture integrated circuits (called "fabs"--short for fabrication) are some of the highest consumers of water and electricity. Intel has one of their largest facitilies in Silicon Valley and if they cut their power usage it frees up a large quantity of energy for others to use. It takes an extrodinary amount of energy to run all of the furnaces, ion implanters, robotics, water/chemical scrubbers, etc. that remain online 24/7 in a fab. The amount of power used by your PC is minimal compared to that of a fab.
Next time instead of going on a tirade about something you know little about, try educating yourself a bit more before you post. This story is relevant to many Slashdot readers since we are have a great deal of influence in the creation, analyzation, and solution for these types of problems. There are quite a few of us who are interested in stories other than yet-another-kernel-patch or device hacked to run Linux.
I wish I could get my parents and family to answer everytime I read yet another post about how voting is "such a waste of time" and "it doesn't make any difference." Then they could tell you what it's like to live under a different system where you have no say in government policies. Like the time my uncle was dragged out into the street at gun point and forced into a line with the other males in their village. The soliders shot and killed them one at a time while everyone in their village was forced to watch this attrocity. While they did spare the lives of the younger males (they probably put them in the line just to scare them from joining an opposition movement), this is certainly something kids don't need in their lives. Or my father having to drink water out of a 2" deep puddle filled with tadpoles 'cause there simply wasn't any other water to be found. Or my mother and grandmother running to the hilltops as their village was burned to the ground. How would you feel if you lived under a government that didn't see the fault in a system whereby the higher your crop yields are the larger your debt becomes? Or one didn't see any need to educate it's citizens? It's easy to say you wouldn't put up with it and you would leave, but after you spend all your time just trying to get food and sleep would you really have the time to eduate yourself or save money to get out? Probably not. It's easy to say that kind of stuff when the chips aren't stacked against you.
After living under oppression family can't *believe* that people in this country don't take the time to vote on the choices that *do* affect their lives. Politicians, organizations, and corporations wouldn't be spending so much money on this stuff if it didn't make a difference and telling yourself that voting doesn't matter is utter bullshit. You don't *want* to take the time to vote? Fine. It just makes my vote that much more valuable and my opinions and choices more weighed and I can push for the policies I feel are best for this country. You push for the status quo, I work within the confines of the current system to better my life and the lives of others. That's what your selfishness can lead to. While you wait for the ideal candidate to tailor a message to you and stand on the sidelines complaining about the system, those of us voting will be pushing toward working, active policies with goais of attainable, sensible solutions.
As an alumni of NCSU I'm happy to hear the Dell/NT boxes I saw upon a visit my old alma matter aren't as big a threat to the engineering school as I initially percieved them to be. When I graduated the Sun boxes were king, and upon visiting several years later I was horrified to see NT machines creeping in. Working with Red Hat was definately the best way to go since the company is right down the road from the school and the NCSU distro is based on Red Hat. Today I'm glad to be a wolf packer!;)
Classic Batman was always drawn very large and menacing.
Actually, large and menacing is more of the modern adaptation of Batman. THe older stuff is more bright and campy and while it was a great place to start, it pales in comparison to a good Kelley Jones rendition (my personal fav). I love the way Jones draws the tall ears and huge tattered cape--it's enough to give you chills on a dark, lonely night!:)
Actually, "A Practical Guide to Unix [3rd Ed]" isn't really that out of date. The author's name is Mark Sobell and I've got a copy within arm's length right now that I refer to quite often. It's the book I gave our summer intern to use as she "unlearned" NT.;)
I'm an end user and here's my two cents. When I first started using Linux I installed both KDE (1.1.2) and GNOME (1.0). I tried out each of them for a week, mostly by just going through my normal, everyday work routines which consists of a web surfing, email, and editing HTML files and images. You know, nothing too involved or taxing. I found that KDE was the better option because it felt faster and more responsive, so I stuck with it. GNOME 1.0 had very poor performance on my computer even though my system has plenty of RAM and a moderately fast CPU. I also thought the KDE desktop was better integrated and more intuitive, at least as intuitive as a Linux desktop can be.
Philosophically I've always felt more "in tune" with the GNOME project than KDE (I used a Mac for many years) so I kept my eye on GNOME and watched it's progression from afar, still happily using KDE. Many moons later I caught wind of the Nautilus project from Eazel and desperately wanted to use that, so I started to consider a switch over to GNOME. That's when I found out about Helixcode's version and my interest was piqued. I read several reviews of Helix GNOME 1.2 and it sounded nice, but the one that really pushed me to test it out was Joe Barr's review (@ LinuxWorld) where he said he was switching over from KDE after using it. I ordered the CDs from Helixcode and installed them the day they arrived.
I won't go into many details of the installation, but it was the most painless upgrade I've ever done. I knew the moment I logged in that I was going to switch over from KDE--the default desktop appearance was much more asthetically pleasing than KDE, the performance issue was much improved to the point where I really didn't notice any difference between the two environments, and the Helix Update feature was worth the $25 alone.
I haven't tested out KDE 2.0 so I can't say how it compares to Helix GNOME, but I did install Nautilus Preview Release 1 last night and found myself really excited by the way things are working out in the GNOME world. Based on my experiences with the Helixcode and Eazel products, I really think I'm going to stay a GNOME user.
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The deal is this: larger die size chips are harder manufacture cost-effectively make because you get fewer good die per wafer. A wafer is a fixed size and costs the same to process, regardless of the number of functional die you actually get from it. So, the more die you fit on it, and the more die that actually work when you are finished processing, the lower your final selling price can be. Since the die size for this chip is much larger than "normal" and will be made in fabs that arguably will have the same defectivity rates, they will likely get less working die from a wafer than "normal" and thus their costs to the consumer will be larger.
That's how I got my job. I have a BS in chemical engineering and knew Unix, so I applied for a spot and thought I did well on the interview. Later on they told me that they didn't hire me because of what I knew (which wasn't enough, incidentally), but my strong desire to learn and willingness to become "apprenticed" were what made me the right guy. In retrospect I'd have to agree with them completely. It's what I'd look for in a admin-to-be.
I'm curious about this quiz. Do you have a copy of the questions online that I can check out?
Take some time off after graduation (since you'd be insane to drop it at this point!) and do something completely different for 2-3 weeks. Chances are you'll feel much better about CS than you do right now.
I think this is a good lesson for everyone, reminding us of the importance of checking the facts or delving further into the issue when a story is posted on Slashdot before sounding off on it. However, don't feel too bad about what you said. The official reply from Trident didn't address the XF86 developer's request to sign an NDA without the "source code exception clause." Until that is addressed, I don't think the issue has been fully resolved.
Maybe he was joking about all the pathetic bug reports that are offered during bug bash fests...I dunno.
In the Debian distrubution.
Yes, it has the Nautilus graphical shell (which is included in Gnome 1.4). This file manager has a lot of the benefits of the Mac's Finder or the Windows Explorer, along with a few neat tricks of it's own.
This statement is kind of contradictory. If it's great to have Linux replace Windows, how will it happen if the intention isn't there to make this a reality? Of course Linux wasn't intended to replace Windows, it was a hack by a guy who just wanted to use the same kind of computer at home that he used at school. By that criteria, the whole project was finished long ago and he could've moved on to something else. But the goal and intentions for Linux have shifted since it's beginnings, and will continue to. Of course we need to accomodate new users--the more the merrier. And they don't need to be comp-sci students either. We have a great thing going and to horde it all to ourselves isn't the right or intelligent thing to do. My mother doesn't need to know how her car engine works in order to drive it, nor would I expect her to. I just want her to have a way to get to my grandmother's house without any hassles so she can help out with things around the house. I want the same for my brother, who not only needs the car to do stuff, but may be curious about some of the stuff under the hood and more interested in learning about the details. He can do that as well. If I had designed the car and was the only one who knew how to operate it, I would make my next goal to fix the design in such a way that others could use it without having to know everything.
Of course your friend was unimpressed with Nautilus. It looks the way it does because so many Linux users insist that they don't want or need a good UI and are happy when a company that was trying to develop one went out of business. Nautilus isn't ready for prime time--it's got a ways to go. Eazel was a company that needed long term investors, not short term ones. The software is still in development and I'm sure the pace will reduce now that the developers aren't getting paid to work on it full-time, but hopefully it'll still achieve it's goals. It's sad that is the way it has to be, but that's the reality of the situation.
Eazel was formed to try to take something that was good, but complicated, (Linux) and add another part that made it easier for people who didn't want to deal with complications. What's so bad about that? I don't mind building software from source, but my wife does. She has neither the training nor the patience to do it, but that doesn't mean that I want her to use something inferior to do her work. I want to use what I know to help her, and if that means adding another layer to make it easier for her, I'm going to do it.
Why use pancake mix when I could use flour, eggs, and yeast to get the same result? Why buy a car with automatic transmission when I could buy one with a manual transmission? Should I have to know how to fly a plane just to get from Texas to Greece? Do you see my point?
I just think that if we have something good (like Linux and open source development), it's good to share it with others because it will benefit us in the long run (more applications, more jobs, more competition, more of everything). That's all.
To all of the Eazel folks who were affected, my sympathies and a hearty thanks to those (especially Eli Goldberg) who were always there to answer my questions and provide troubleshooting suggestions. I'm happy to hear that most of the major project leaders are going to continue working on Nautilus and look forward to what the future may bring. Maybe in another time and climate, things would have worked out differently. As the story submission says, it _has_ been a fun ride. ---tomg
Interesting. While I've always knew the NSA was years ahead of most when it came to computer technology (my guess is 5-8 yrs), I have a healthy doubt they've discovered a factoring algorithm that is that much more advanced than public domain modern math research has produced. This problem has plagued mathematicians since the beginning, and for me to think it's been solved is just too great of a leap of faith. So for this PGP claim to be true, I would assume the NSA has built some amazing pieces of hardware to perform this math in such a short amount of time. I've read the NSA has it's own fab to manufacture in-house chip designs, but I'm short on details for the level of technology their dealing with. I would harbor a guess of 0.1 or 0.07 um (not too unreasonable for the 5-8 time frame), coupled with the fact that they don't have to worry about getting high yields to bring down chip costs. No idea about their EDA tools or systems engineering either, but I'm guessing their focusing more on parallel systems just based on the amount of those big iron systems Cray, SGI, and IBM are pushing these days (trickle down effect from R&D to the marketplace).
Anybody know of a resource that might have better info on this?
Looks like the NC influence on Red Hat is really starting to show through. "Swing your parntner round and round!" :)
No, that's true. Conservatives lined up in support of Starr because they felt the position he was supporting was in line with their principles, and liberals attacked him as an wild man probing far too much into the President's life. Liberals felt the investigation was outrageous and Starr was a nosey, sexually starved religious right winger, conservatives supported it whole-heartedly and said Starr was the most calm of any of the people involved and cared only for the facts. Now it's kind of reversed (liberals support bringing MS into court, conservatives think MS should be left alone) except the man who was once seen as calm and factually driven by conservatives may now be cast as out of control and a government nanny. It's a very interesting twist of fate.
Oops, that should say: the states *aren't* just going to roll over and act as if nothing happened.
This is absolutely true. While the case may hit a few bumps during the transition from Reno to (possibly) Ashcroft, the states are just going to roll over and act as if nothing happened. Remember, one of the first states to look into this was Texas, home of Dubya.
I also find it quite interesting that one of the lawyers now involved in the Microsoft cases is Ken Starr, the man hated by liberals & Clintonians and loved by republicans & conservatives for his work on the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal. I'm wondering how many of those conservatives will view his taking on the MS-DOJ case since it has been *my* observations that most of the opposition to the DOJ-MS case has come from Republicans and pro-laizze-fare economists who *generally* lined up in support for Starr during Clinton-Lewinsky.
It doesn't stop there either. I'm on the JSC mailing list for ISS mission reports and I was startled to read on day that the same Kurs docking system and Elektron systems that were causing many of the problems encountered on Mir are in use on ISS! In fact, I can recall reading a couple of weeks ago that one of the Kurs systems aboard the ISS was being returned to Earth for troubleshooting...I just shook my head. Maybe it's time we rethink the way NASA operates.
Wrong. Solaris is used for both desktop computing and serving--at my employer, just in my particular division, we have 300 workstations in constant use by engineers as desktop machines. Based on the fact that you don't even know how Solaris can be used and think freedom can only be had through an individually run project, it's not worth my time to continue this discussion.
But Mozilla has yet to ship 1.0 and IE 5.5 is out...maybe you could better spend your time helping the Mozilla team by running test builds and writing bug reports instead of hanging out on /. and complaining about the speed.
Nautilus does have a market--the Linux/Unix desktop. Since Eazel doesn't see a stronghold there, the only way to help build one is to find out what pieces are lacking and work on those. In this case we're getting a graphical shell from some of the guys that built one for the Macintosh. What's wrong with that? Nothing that I can see. I welcome Eazel into the Linux fold.
I think Sun's move to phase out CDE in favor of GNOME was intelligent from both a business and strategic angle. They know the development in the CDE arena severely lags that of the GNOME project and it's better for them to join the GNOME team and contribute to a standard desktop than to swim upstream and continue working on CDE. Since Eazel is building the new file manager for GNOME it's only natural that Nautilus gets shipped with Solaris as well. Plus running GNOME on SOlaris provides a unified GUI across many versions of Unix, which helps users when they have access to many machines running different OSes.
And your assumption about everyone who wants a GUI has Win or OSX is *very, very wrong.* I want a great, easy to use GUI yet I don't want to give up the control of my software to a single corporation and become a slave to their desires. That's why I'm using free software. That's why I'm here.
Oh, and to any moderators out there. His comment isn't insightful - its the party line. Mine aren't "overrated"...they're my opinion.
Party line?! Sounds like your role my friend. You're the one bashing prominent open source projects on /., not me. And the last time I checked, that *is* the party line around here. I've been running test builds of Nautilus for a while now and I've watched the project go from something cool sounding to something cool to use.
Damn, I can't believe I got dragged into another silly flame fest. My fellow lurkers, please forgive me.
Frankly, I'm glad Andy and a bunch of former Apple and Be engineers are bringing their expertise to Linux and GNOME. It says a lot about the direction we're headed.
Next time instead of going on a tirade about something you know little about, try educating yourself a bit more before you post. This story is relevant to many Slashdot readers since we are have a great deal of influence in the creation, analyzation, and solution for these types of problems. There are quite a few of us who are interested in stories other than yet-another-kernel-patch or device hacked to run Linux.
After living under oppression family can't *believe* that people in this country don't take the time to vote on the choices that *do* affect their lives. Politicians, organizations, and corporations wouldn't be spending so much money on this stuff if it didn't make a difference and telling yourself that voting doesn't matter is utter bullshit. You don't *want* to take the time to vote? Fine. It just makes my vote that much more valuable and my opinions and choices more weighed and I can push for the policies I feel are best for this country. You push for the status quo, I work within the confines of the current system to better my life and the lives of others. That's what your selfishness can lead to. While you wait for the ideal candidate to tailor a message to you and stand on the sidelines complaining about the system, those of us voting will be pushing toward working, active policies with goais of attainable, sensible solutions.
As an alumni of NCSU I'm happy to hear the Dell/NT boxes I saw upon a visit my old alma matter aren't as big a threat to the engineering school as I initially percieved them to be. When I graduated the Sun boxes were king, and upon visiting several years later I was horrified to see NT machines creeping in. Working with Red Hat was definately the best way to go since the company is right down the road from the school and the NCSU distro is based on Red Hat. Today I'm glad to be a wolf packer! ;)
Actually, large and menacing is more of the modern adaptation of Batman. THe older stuff is more bright and campy and while it was a great place to start, it pales in comparison to a good Kelley Jones rendition (my personal fav). I love the way Jones draws the tall ears and huge tattered cape--it's enough to give you chills on a dark, lonely night! :)
Actually, "A Practical Guide to Unix [3rd Ed]" isn't really that out of date. The author's name is Mark Sobell and I've got a copy within arm's length right now that I refer to quite often. It's the book I gave our summer intern to use as she "unlearned" NT. ;)
Philosophically I've always felt more "in tune" with the GNOME project than KDE (I used a Mac for many years) so I kept my eye on GNOME and watched it's progression from afar, still happily using KDE. Many moons later I caught wind of the Nautilus project from Eazel and desperately wanted to use that, so I started to consider a switch over to GNOME. That's when I found out about Helixcode's version and my interest was piqued. I read several reviews of Helix GNOME 1.2 and it sounded nice, but the one that really pushed me to test it out was Joe Barr's review (@ LinuxWorld) where he said he was switching over from KDE after using it. I ordered the CDs from Helixcode and installed them the day they arrived.
I won't go into many details of the installation, but it was the most painless upgrade I've ever done. I knew the moment I logged in that I was going to switch over from KDE--the default desktop appearance was much more asthetically pleasing than KDE, the performance issue was much improved to the point where I really didn't notice any difference between the two environments, and the Helix Update feature was worth the $25 alone.
I haven't tested out KDE 2.0 so I can't say how it compares to Helix GNOME, but I did install Nautilus Preview Release 1 last night and found myself really excited by the way things are working out in the GNOME world. Based on my experiences with the Helixcode and Eazel products, I really think I'm going to stay a GNOME user.